VIII.
In those long days while Mink languished in jail, he wondered how the world could wag on without him. He hungered with acute pangs for the mountains; he pined for the sun and the wind. Sometimes he stood for hours at the window, straining for a breath of air. Then the barred aspect of the narrow scene outside of the grating maddened him, and he would fling himself upon his bed; and it would seem to him that he could never rise again.
He speculated upon Alethea with a virulence of rage which almost frightened him,—whether she had heard of his arrest, how she had received the news.
“Mighty pious, I reckon,” he sneered. “I know ez well ez ef I hed seen her ez she be a-goin’ ’round the kentry a-tellin’ ’bout my wickedness, an’ how she worried an’ worked with me, an’ couldn’t git me shet o’ my evil ways.”
He thought of Elvira, too, with a certain melancholy relish of her fancied grief. His heart had softened toward her as his grudge against Alethea waxed hot. “She tuk it powerful hard, I know. I’ll be bound it mighty nigh killed her,—she set so much store by me. But I reckon her folks air glad, bein’ ez they never favored me.”
It seemed to him, as he reflected on the probable sentiment of his friends and neighbors, that he had lived in a wolfish community, ready with cowardly cruelty to attack and mangle him since fortune had brought him down.
“I’m carrion now; I’ll hev ter expec’ the wolves an’ buzzards,” he said bitterly to his lawyer, as they canvassed together what witnesses they had best summon to prove his general good character, and whom they should challenge on the jury list. There was hardly a man of the number on whom Mink had not played some grievous prank calculated to produce a rankling grudge and foster prejudice. He recited these with a lugubrious gravity incongruous enough with the subject matter, that often elicited bursts of unwilling laughter from the perplexed counsel.
This was a bluff, florid man of forty, with a hearty, resonant voice, a light blue eye, thick, yellow hair, which he wore cut straight across beneath his ears, showing its density, and thrown back without parting from his forehead. When the locks fell forward, as they often did, he tossed them back with an impatient gesture. He had a long mustache and beard. His lips were peculiarly red. Altogether he was a high-colored, noisy, confident, blustering fellow, and he inspired Mink with great faith.
“I done a better thing ’n I knowed of whenst I voted an’ electioneered so brash fur you-uns ez floater in the legislatur’,” said Mink one day, in a burst of hopefulness. When he had sent for the lawyer to defend him, he had based his appeal for aid partly on his political services, and relied on them to atone for any deficiency of fees.
“Do it again, Mink, early and often!” And the floater’s jolly laughter rang out, jarring against the walls of the bare room, which was, however, far more cheerful for the sound.
Mink had found in the requirements of the approaching trial, urged upon his attention by the lawyer, a certain respite from his mental anguish. But in the midst of the night, griefs would beset him. In his dreams the humble, foolish individuality of the idiot boy was invested with awe, with a deep pathos, with a terrible dignity. It seemed often that he was awakened by the clutch of a hand to an imperative consciousness of the crime of which he was accused, to a torturing uncertainty of his guilt or innocence. His conscience strove in vain to reckon with him.
“Mebbe, though, the jury kin tell?” he said one morning, piteously, to his counsel, who had come cheerily in, to find him wild-eyed and haggard.
“A jury,” said the lawyer sententiously, “is the cussedness of one man multiplied by twelve.”
He had flung his somewhat portly bulk into a chair which creaked beneath his weight, and he was looking at his client with calculating keenness. He had supplemented a fair knowledge of the law with a theory of human motives, deduced from his experience among men both as a politician and before the courts. In their less complex expressions he was quick to detect them. But he was devoid of intuition, of divination. His instincts were blunt. His moral perceptions were good, but elementary. His apprehension of crime was set forth in its entirety and in due detail by the code of Tennessee with the consequent penalty prescribed by the statute. He recognized no wrong unpunishable by law. The exquisite anguish of a moral doubt, the deep, helpless, hopeless affliction of remorse, the keen, unassuaged pangs of irreparability,—he had no spiritual sense to take cognizance of these immaterial issues. If Mink, escaping by his counsel’s clever use of a technicality, should ever again think of the miller, dream of the boy weltering in the river, wake with the sound of that weird scream in his ears, Mr. Harshaw would wonder at him as a fool. As to the bar of conscience, how could that vague essence assume all the functions of a court under the constitution?
And still conning his simple alphabet of the intricate language of emotions, he interpreted the prisoner’s wan cheek and restless eyes as the expression of fear. This induced a secret irritation and an anxiety as to how he had best conduct the case, in view of his professional reputation. He had besought Mink in his own interests to be frank, and now he was perplexed by doubts of his client’s candor.
It required only a few moments’ reflection to assure himself that he had best assume, for the purposes of defense, the guilt of the prisoner until proved innocent. As he placed both hands on his knees he pursed up his lips confidentially, and with a quick sidelong glance he said,—
“We’ve got some time, though, before we have to face ’em, Mink. We’re entitled to one continuance, on account of the inflamed state of public sentiment.”
The brooding, abstracted look passed suddenly from Mink’s face, leaving it more recognizable with its wonted bright intentness.
“Air ye ’lowin’ ye’d put off the trial furder ’n the day be set fur, Mr. Harshaw?” he asked, with the accents of dismay. “Fur Gawd’s sake, don’t let ’em do that. I wouldn’t bide hyar, all shet up”—his eyes turned from wall to wall with the baffled eagerness of a caged beast—“I wouldn’t bide hyar a day longer ’n I’m ’bleeged ter, not ter git shet o’ damnation. Lord A’mighty, don’t go a-shovin’ the day off; hurry it up, ef ye kin. I want ter kem ter trial an’ git back ter the mountings. I feel ez ef I be bound ter go.”
The lawyer still looked at him with his keen sidelong glances.
“The jury stands ’twixt you and the mountains, Mink. Mightn’t get out, after all’s said and done.”
Mink looked at him with a sudden alarm in his dilated eyes, as if the contingency had been all undreamed of.
“They’ll be bound ter let me out,” he declared. “I ain’t feared o’ the jury.”
“If you don’t know what you did yourself, you can’t expect them to be much smarter in finding it out,” reasoned the lawyer.
“I ain’t done nuthin’ ter keep me jailed this hyar way,” said Mink, hardily. “I feel it in my bones I’ll git out. I never try them bars,” nodding at the window, “but what I looks fur ’em ter break in my hand.”
“See here,” said the lawyer, sternly, “you let ‘them bars’ alone; you ain’t going ter do yourself any good breaking jail.”
He looked down meditatively at his feet, and stamped one of them that his trousers might slip further down over his boot-leg, which deported itself assertively and obtrusively, as if it were in the habit of being worn on the outside.
“I don’t know,” he said reflectively, “if you want to be tried speedily, but what it’s best, anyhow. We won’t have Averill to preside; he’s incompetent in a number of civil cases, and Jim Gwinnan will hold court. He’s a”—he pursed up his red lips again, and looked about with an air intimating a high degree of contempt; Mink hung upon his words with an oppressive sense of helplessness and eagerness, that now and then found vent in an unconscious long-drawn sigh—“well, he’s a selfish, ambitious sort of fellow, and he’s found out it’s mighty popular to make a blow about cleaning up the docket, and avoiding the law’s delays, and trotting the lawyers right through. He’ll hold court till twelve o’clock at night, and he just opposes, tooth and nail, every motion for delay. I reckon he’d make it look as if we were afraid to come to trial, if we wanted a continuance; so it’s just as well, if you feel ready, for we mightn’t get it, after all.”
Mink experienced a new fear. “Ain’t he a mighty bad kind of a jedge ter hev?” he faltered, quaking before the mental vision of the man who held his fate in the hollow of his hand.
“No,” said Harshaw musingly, “he ain’t a bad judge for us for this reason,—though he’s mighty apt to lean to public opinion, he’s a sound lawyer, and he’s mighty careful about his rulings. He don’t get reversed by the S’preme Court. That’s what he sits on the bench for: not to administer justice,—he don’t think about justice once a week,—but to be affirmed by the S’preme Court. He’s more particular than Averill in little things, and he won’t let the attorney-general walk over him, like Averill does,—sorter spunky.”
“I hev seen the ’torney-gineral,—hearn him speak wunst. They ’lowed he war a fine speaker,” submitted Mink, anxious concerning the untried, unmeasured forces about to be arrayed against him.
“Mighty fine,” said Harshaw, derisively. “Got a beautiful voice—for calling hogs!”
He laughed and rose. “Oh, bless my soul, I plumb forgot!” he exclaimed. “There’s a girl out here wanting to see you. Don’t know but what she may be your sweetheart;” he winked jocosely. “Perkins said she might come in if you want to see her. Looks like she’s walked about forty mile,—plumb beat out.”
Mink was flattered. Instantly he thought of Elvira, and he remembered the journey with his offering of the raccoon that fateful night.
“She hev got dark hair an’ eyes, an’ air toler’ble leetle ter be growed up?” he asked. The remark was in the form of a question, but it was uttered with the conviction of certainty.
“Lord, no! Sandy hair, big brown eyes, and tall, and”—
He paused, for Mink had risen suddenly.
“Ye go tell her,” he said, passionately, pointing at the door,—“go straight an’ tell her ter keep in mind what I said bout’n the harnt on Thunderhead, an’ how I ’lowed she favored him; ef she can’t kill, she sp’iles yer chance.”
“Why, look here, Mink,” remonstrated the lawyer.
“Go ’long an’ tell her!” cried Mink, imperatively. “Tell her I want her ter cl’ar out from hyar. Tell her I can’t breathe ef she’s nigh.” He clutched at his throat, tearing open his collar with both hands. “’Twar her ez brung me hyar. ’Twar her ez got me locked an’ barred up. An’ now I don’t want ter see her no mo’ ez long ez I live. Gin her that word from me,—an’ the Herder on Thunderhead what she favors.”
The lawyer, with a gesture of expostulation, left the cell, appreciating that it was an unpleasant job to tell the travel-stained apparition at the door that her journey was in vain.
She was sitting upon the doorstep, in the sunshine, her brown bonnet hanging half off her golden head; her homespun dress seemed dark upon the rough gray stone. She watched absently, with her serious brown eyes, the gauzy wings of a blue-bottle that droned slumberously by. She held with idle hands the yellow blossoms of the golden-rod that she had plucked by the way. There was no passing in the street, hardly a sound; so still she sat that a lizard, basking in the sun, did not scruple to run across her motionless feet. She had taken off her coarse shoes to ease them after her long walk, for they were swollen and bruised.
She looked up with a start when the lawyer stood in the door. “No, sis,” he said in a debonair fashion, glancing about the street. “Mink ain’t in a good humor to-day, and you can’t see him.”
She cast up to him her haggard eyes, full of appeal, of fear, of woe. He had no intention of stabbing her with the cruel words of the message. “You can’t see him to-day; some other day.” He waved his hand with a promissory gesture, and was turning away.
She sprang up with a cry. “They hendered him! They wouldn’t let him!” she said, with quivering lips.
“Yes, yes. They hindered him,” he kindly prevaricated.
Her eyes were suddenly all on fire. As he caught their gleam he hesitated, looking at her. Her cheeks were flushed. Her teeth were set. She raised her clenched hand.
“He lied ter me, that thar jailer. He ’lowed I mought see Reuben. He lied! he lied! I’ll—I’ll”—She dropped her threatening hand. “Lord! Lord! what kin I do!”
“Look here, girl,” said the lawyer, alarmed at the idea of an indignant demonstration on the part of any of his client’s friends. “’Tain’t the jailer’s fault. Mink said he wouldn’t see you.”
She stood as if stunned for a moment. Then, her confidence in Mink rebounding, “I don’t b’lieve ye!” she said, bluntly.
“Well, then, maybe you will when I tell you that he told me to ask you to clear out, and to remind you of the ‘harnt’ on Thunderhead that he said you favored.”
She shrank back as if he had struck her. He eyed her indignantly. “I reckon you’ll believe me now. Well, begone. We’ve had enough of you.”
He turned and walked off briskly. He heard the court-house bell jangling out its summons, for the chancery court was in session, and he quickened his pace. He gave a start of irritation when he became aware that she was following him. He turned and faced her.
“What do you want?” he said, abruptly.
“I want ter tell ye su’thin’,” she gasped. She leaned forward as if to touch his arm. He moved suddenly back, and she almost fell. She showed no anger, but came a faltering pace nearer, with the same imploring gesture. “I mus’ tell ye suthin’ ’bout Reuben, soon ez I git my breath,—suthin’ ye’d never b’lieve.”
Perhaps it was an unreasoning anger which possessed him, but he was late, and she had cast the lie in his teeth, and somehow her presence irked him, and he vaguely sought to forecast what she had to say.
“No, you won’t, for I ain’t going to listen. You just take yourself off, and stay at home if you know how, and satisfy yourself with the harm you have done already. You’d better put out, and so I tell you.”
He turned once more and strode away rapidly. He heard a faint cry behind him, and, for a time, pursuing steps. He quickened his own. In fact, he presently ran lightly,—marvelously lightly for a man of his bulk,—laughing within himself the while at the absurdity and incongruity of the episode, should it be noticed by any one in the sleepy streets. After a little he looked over his shoulder, half in relenting, half in curiosity.
She was not following him. She was limping back toward her shoes, that lay on the steps of the jail.