The Bondboy

by Ogden, George W

  Merely surmises, said Hammer. If surmises were to be admitted before that court and that jury, said he, he could surmise his client out of there in two minutes. But the court was of the opinion that the evidence warranted the prosecutor there. He was allowed to proceed.

  “Ollie Chase could not have dressed herself that way in those few intervening minutes. She had made her preparations long before that tragic hour; she was ready and waiting–waiting for what?

  “Gentlemen, I will tell you. Joe Newbolt had discovered the hiding-place of his employer’s money. He had stolen it, and was preparing to depart in secrecy in the dead of night; and I tell you, gentlemen of the jury, he was not going alone!”

  “Oh, what a scandalous lie!” said Mrs. Newbolt in a horrified voice which, low-pitched and groaning that it was carried to the farthest corner of that big, solemn room.

  The outburst caused a little movement in the room, attended by considerable noise and some shifting of feet. Some laughed, for there are some to laugh everywhere at the most sincere emotions of the human breast. The judge rapped for order. A flush of anger mounted to his usually passive face; he turned to the sheriff with a gesture of command.

  “Remove that woman from the room, Mr. Sheriff, and retain her in custody!” said he.

  The sheriff came forward hastily and took Mrs. Newbolt by the arm. She stood at his touch and stretched out her hands to the judge.

  “I didn’t mean to say it out loud, Judge Maxwell, but I thought it so hard, I reckon, sir, that it got away. Anybody that knows my Joe––”

  “Come on, ma’am,” the sheriff ordered.

  Joe was on his feet. The sheriff’s special deputy put his hands on the prisoner’s shoulders and tried to force him down into his seat. The deputy was a little man, sandy, freckled, and frail, and his efforts, ludicrously eager, threw the court-room into a fit of unseemly laughter. The little man might as well have attempted to bend one of the oak columns which supported the court-house portico.

  Judge Maxwell was properly angry now. He rapped loudly, and threatened penalties for contempt. When the mirth quieted, which it did with a suddenness almost tragic, Joe spoke. “I wish to apologize to you for mother’s words, sir,” said he, addressing the judge, inclining his head slightly to the prosecuting attorney afterward, as if to include him, upon second thought. “She was moved out of her calm and dignity by the statement of Mr. Lucas, sir, and I give you my word of honor that she’ll say no more. I’d like to have her here by me, sir, if you’d grant me that favor. You can understand, sir, that a man needs a friend at his side in an hour like this.”

  Judge Maxwell’s face was losing its redness of wrath; the hard lines were melting out of it. He pondered a moment, looking with gathered brows at Joe. The little deputy had given over his struggle, and now stood with one hand twisted in the back of Joe’s coat. The sheriff kept his hold on Mrs. Newbolt’s arm. She lifted her contrite face to the judge, tears in her eyes.

  “Very well,” said the judge, “the court will accept your apology, and hold you responsible for her future behavior. Madam, resume your seat, and do not interrupt the prosecuting attorney again.”

  Mrs. Newbolt justified Joe’s plea by sitting quietly while the prosecutor continued. But her interruption had acted like an explosion in the train of his ideas; he was so much disconcerted by it that he finished rather tamely, reserving his force, as people understood, for his closing speech.

  Hammer rose in consequence, and plunged into the effort of his life. He painted the character of Isom Chase in horrible guise; he pointed out his narrowness, his wickedness, his cruelty, his quickness to lift his hand. He wept and he sobbed, and splashed tears all around him.

  It was one of the most satisfying pieces of public oratory ever heard in Shelbyville, from the standpoint of sentiment, and the view of the unschooled. But as a legal and logical argument it was as foolish and futile as Hammer’s own fat tears. He kept it up for an hour, and he might have gone on for another if his tears had not given out. Without tears, Hammer’s eloquence dwindled and his oratory dried.

  Mrs. Newbolt blessed him in her heart, and the irresponsible and vacillating public wiped its cheeks clean of its tears and settled down to have its emotions warped the other way. Everybody said that Hammer had done well. He had made a fine effort, it showed what they had contended for all along, that Hammer had it naturally in him, and was bound to land in congress yet.

  When the prosecutor resumed for the last word he seemed to be in a vicious temper. He seemed to be prompted by motives of revenge, rather than justice. If he had been a near relative of the deceased, under the obligation of exacting life for life with his own hands, he could not have shown more vindictive personal resentment against the accused. He reverted to Joe’s reservation in his testimony.

  “There is no question in my mind, gentlemen of the jury,” said he, “that the silence behind which this defendant hides is the silence of guilt, and that silence brands him blacker than any confession that his tongue could make.

  “‘Words passed between us,’ and ‘it was between him and me.’ That, gentlemen of the jury, is the explanation this defendant gives, the only, the weak, the obviously dishonest explanation, that he ever has offered, or that the kindly admonishment of this court could draw from his lips. Guilt sits on his face; every line of his base countenance is a confession; every brutal snarl from his reluctant tongue is testimony of his evil heart. He was a thief, and, when he was caught, he murdered. ‘Out of his own mouth he has uttered his condemnation,’ and there is but one penalty fitting this hideous crime–the penalty of death!

  “Never before has the fair name of our county been stained by such an atrocious crime; never before has there been such a conspiracy between the guilty to defeat the ends of justice in this moral and respected community. I call upon you, gentlemen of the jury, for the safety of our households and the sanctity of our hearths, to bring in your verdict of guilty under the indictment.

  “It is a solemn and awful thing to stand here in the presence of the Almighty and ask the life of one of his creatures, made by Him in His own image and endowed by Him with reason and superiority above all else that moves on the earth or in the waters under it. But this man, Joe Newbolt, has debased that image and abused that reason and superiority which raises him above the beasts of the field. He has murdered a defenseless old man; he has, by that act and deed, forfeited his right to life and liberty under the law.”

  The prosecutor made one of his effective pauses. There was the stillness of midnight in the crowded court-room. The sound of dashing rain was loud on the window-panes, the hoarse voice of the gray old elm which combed the wind with its high-flung branches, was like the distant groan of the sea.

  In that aching silence Ollie Chase turned suddenly, as if she had heard someone call her name. She started, her white face grew whiter. But nobody seemed conscious of her presence, except the prosecutor, who wheeled upon her and leveled his accusing finger at her where she sat.

  There was the bearing of sudden and reckless impulse in his act. He surely had not meditated that bold challenge of one who had passed under his merciless hand, and was now, according to all accepted procedure, beyond his reach and his concern. But Sam Lucas did that unusual thing. He stood pointing at her, his jaw trembling as if the intensity of his passion had palsied his tongue.

  “Gentlemen of the jury, what part this woman played in that dark night’s work the world may never know,” said he. “But the world is not blind, and its judgments are usually justified by time. This woman, Ollie Chase, and this defendant have conspired to hold silence between them, in what hope, to what unholy end, God alone knows. But who will believe the weak and improbable story this woman has told on the witness-stand? Who is so blind that he cannot see the stain of her infidelity and the ghastly blight of that midnight shadow upon her quaking soul?”

  He turned from her abruptly. Hammer partly rose, as if to enter an objection. He seemed to reconsider
it, and sat down. Ollie shrank against her mother’s shoulders, trembling. The older woman, fierce as a dragon in the sudden focus of the crowd’s attention and eyes, fixed in one shifting sweep from the prosecuting attorney to her daughter, put her arm about Ollie and comforted her with whispered words.

  The prosecutor proceeded, solemnly:

  “I tell you, gentlemen, that these two people, Ollie Chase and Joseph Newbolt, alone in that house that night, alone in that house for two days before this tragedy darkened it, before the blood of gray old Isom Chase ran down upon its threshold, these two conspired in their guilt to hide the truth.

  “If this woman would open her lips, if this woman would break the seal of this guilty compact and speak, the mystery of this case would dissolve, and the heroic romance which this defendant is trying to put over the squalid facts of his guilt would turn out only a sordid story of midnight lust and robbery. If conscience would trouble this woman to speak, gentlemen of the jury–but she has no conscience, and she has no heart!”

  He turned again to Ollie, savagely; her mother covered her with her arm, as if to protect her from a blow.

  “There she cowers in her guilty silence, in what hope God alone knows, but if she would speak––”

  “I will speak!” Ollie cried.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXI

  OLLIE SPEAKS

  Ollie’s voice, low and steady in earnest determination, broke the current of his denunciation as a knife severs a straining cord. The suddenness of her declaration almost made the prosecutor reel. She was sitting up, straight and outwardly calm, pushing her cloak and other detached belongings away from her with an unconscious movement of disencumbering herself for some desperate leap.

  “I’ll tell everything–if you’ll let me–now,” said she, rising to her feet.

  She was white and cold, but steady, and sternly resolute. The prosecutor had not expected that; his challenge had been only a spectacular play for effect. Her offer to speak left him mentally groping behind himself for a support. It would have been different if he had been certain of what she desired to say. As she stood before him there, bloodless, and in such calm of outward aspect that it was almost hysterical, he did not know whether she was friend or foe.

  Joe had not expected it; the hundreds of spectators had not looked for that, and Hammer was as much surprised as a ponderous, barber-minded man could be. Yet he was the first, of all of them there, to get his wits in hand. The prosecutor had challenged her, and, he argued, what she had to say must be in justification of both herself and Joe. He stood up quickly, and demanded that Ollie Chase be put under oath and brought to the witness-stand.

  Ollie’s mother had hold of her hand, looking up into her face in great consternation, begging her to sit down and keep still. In general, people were standing, and Uncle Posen Spratt was worming the big end of his steer-horn trumpet between shoulders of men and headgear of women to hear what he could not see.

  Judge Maxwell commanded order. The prosecuting attorney began to protest against the fulfilment of the very thing that, with so much feeling and earnestness, he had demanded but a minute before.

  “Considering this late hour in the proceedings, your honor––” he began.

  Judge Maxwell silenced him with a stern and reproving look.

  “It is never too late for justice, Mr. Prosecutor,” said he. “Let that woman come forward and be sworn.”

  Hammer went eagerly to the assistance of Ollie, opening the little gate in the railing for her officiously, putting his palm under her elbow in his sustaining fashion. The clerk administered the oath; Ollie dropped her hand wearily at her side.

  “I lied the other day,” said she, as one surrendering at the end of a hopeless defense, “and I’m tired of hiding the truth any more.”

  Joe Newbolt was moved by a strange feeling of mingled thankfulness and regret. Tears had started to his eyes, and were coursing down his face, unheeded and unchecked. The torture of the past days and weeks, the challenge of his honor, the doubt of his sincerity; the rough assaults of the prosecuting attorney, the palpable unfriendliness of the people–none of these things ever had drawn from him a tear. But this simple act of justice on the part of Ollie Chase moved the deep waters of his soul.

  His mother had taken his hand between her rough palms, and was chafing it, as if to call back its warmth and life. She was not looking at her son, for her faith had not departed from him for one moment, and would not have diminished if they had condemned him under the accusation. Her eyes were on Ollie’s face, her lips were murmuring beneath her breath:

  “Thank the Lord for His justice and mercy! Thank the Lord, thank the Lord!”

  Ollie had settled in the witness-chair again, in the midst of her wide-skirted mourning habit, as on that other day. Joe Newbolt prayed in his heart for the mitigation of public censure, and for strength to sustain her in her hour of sacrifice.

  That Ollie had come forward to save him–unasked, unexpected–was like the comfort of a cloak against the wintry wind. The public believed that she was going to “own up” to it now, and to clinch the case against Joe. Some of them began to make mental calculations on the capacity of the jail yard, and to lay plans for securing passes to the hanging.

  Hammer stepped forward to question the witness, and the prosecuting attorney sat down, alert and ready to interpose in case things should start the wrong way. He had lost sight of justice completely, after the fixed habit of his kind, in his eagerness to advance his own prospects by securing the conviction of the accused.

  Ollie sat facing Judge Maxwell, who had turned in his swivel-chair; moved out of his bearing of studious concentration, which was his usual characteristic on the bench.

  “Now, Mrs. Chase, tell your story in your own way, and take your own time for it,” said Hammer, kindly patronizing.

  “I don’t want Joe to suffer for me,” she said, letting her sad eyes rest on him for a moment. “What he kept back wasn’t for his own sake. It was for mine.”

  “Yes; go on, Mrs. Chase,” said Hammer as she hesitated there.

  “Joe didn’t shoot Isom. That happened just the way he’s said. I know all about it, for I was there. Joe didn’t know anything about that money. I’ll tell you about that, too.”

  “Now, your honor,” began the prosecutor complainingly, “it seems to me that the time and place for evidence of this nature has gone by. This witness has testified already, and to an entirely different set of facts. I don’t know what influences have been at work to induce her to frame up a new story, but––”

  “Your zeal is commendable, Mr. Prosecutor,” said the judge, “but it must not be allowed to obscure the human rights at hazard in this case. Let the witness proceed.”

  Ollie shuddered like one entering cold water as she let her eyes take a flight out over the crowd. Perhaps she saw something in it that appalled her, or perhaps she realized only then that she was about to expose the nakedness of her soul before the world.

  “Go ahead, Mrs. Chase,” prompted Hammer. “You say you know about that sack of money?”

  “I was taking it away with me,” said she, drawing a long breath and expelling it with an audible sigh.

  She seemed very tired, and she looked most hopeless, pitiable, and forlorn; still there was no wavering from the task that she had set for herself, no shrinking from its pain. “I was going to meet Curtis Morgan, the book-agent man that you’ve asked me about before. We intended to run off to the city together. Joe knew about it; he stopped me that night.”

  She paused again, picking at her fingers nervously.

  “You say that Joe stopped you–” Hammer began. She cut him off, taking up her suspended narrative without spirit, as one resumes a burden.

  “Yes, but let me tell you first.” She looked frankly into Judge Maxwell’s eyes.

  “Address the jury, Mrs. Chase,” admonished Hammer. She turned and looked steadily into the foreman’s bearded face.

  “There n
ever was a thing out of the way between me and Joe. Joe never made love to me; he never kissed me, he never seemed to want to. When Curtis Morgan came to board with us I was about ready to die, I was so tired and lonesome and starved for a kind word.

  “Isom was a hard man–harder than anybody knows that never worked for him. He worked me like I was only a plow or a hoe, without any feeling or any heart. Morgan and me–Mr. Morgan, he–well, we fell in love. We didn’t act right, and Joe found it out. That was the day that Mr. Morgan and I planned to run away together. He was coming back for me that night.”

  “You say that you and Morgan didn’t act right,” said Hammer, not satisfied with a statement that might leave the jurymen the labor of conjecture. “Do you mean to say that there were improper relations between you? that you were, in a word, unfaithful to your husband, Isom Chase?”

  Ollie’s pale face grew scarlet; she hung her head.

  “Yes,” she answered, in voice shamed and low.

  Her mother, shocked and astounded by this public revelation, sat as if crouching in the place where Ollie had left her. Judge Maxwell nodded encouragingly to the woman who was making her open confession.

  “Go on,” said he.

  His eyes shifted from her to Joe Newbolt, who was looking at Ollie with every evidence of acute suffering and sympathy in his face. The judge studied him intently; Joe, his attention centered on Ollie, was insensible to the scrutiny.

  Ollie told how she and Morgan had made their plans in the orchard that afternoon, and how she had gone to the house and prepared to carry out the compact that night, not knowing that Joe had overheard them and sent Morgan away. She had a most attentive and appreciative audience. She spoke in a low voice, her face turned toward the jury, according to Hammer’s directions. He could not afford to have them lose one word of that belated evidence.

  “I knew where Isom hid his money,” said she, “and that night when I thought Joe was asleep I took up the loose board in the closet of the room where Isom and I slept and took out that little sack. There was another one like it, but I only took my share. I’d worked for it, and starved and suffered, and it was mine. I didn’t consider that I was robbing him.”