Part 11

As he had comforted his wife when they had witnessed the bolt from the blue, so now he sat facing her in her third ordeal. Only now she was not on the home porch, but in the arena. He could not hold her hands. Now she dared not close her eyes and cry; it was not the work of one thunderbolt she had to see. Now, under the darting questions of the court-examiner, she was like a frightened girl lost in the woods and groping through a tempest, with lightning thrusts pursuing her on every side, stitching the woods with fire like the needle in a sewing-machine stabbing and stabbing at the dodging shuttle.

The old woman had gone down into the pit for her son. She had been led through the bogs and the sewers of vice. Almost unspeakable, almost unthinkable wickedness had been taught to her till she had become deeply versed in the lore that saddens the eyes of the scarlet women of Babylon. But still her love purified her, and almost sanctified the strategy she practised, the lies she told, the truths she concealed, the plots she devised with the uncanny canniness of an old peasant. People not only felt that it was her duty to fight for her young like a mad she-wolf, but they would have despised her for any failure of sacrifice.

She sat for hours baffling the inquisitor, foreseeing his wiles by intuition, evading his masked pitfalls by instinct. She was terribly afraid of him, yet more afraid of herself, afraid that she would break down and become a brainless, weeping thing. It was the sincerity of her fight against this weakness that made her so dangerous to the prosecuting attorney. He wanted to compel her to admit that her son had confessed his deed to her. She sought to avoid this admission. She had not guessed that he was more in dread of her tears than of her guile. He was gentler with her than her own attorneys had been. At all costs he felt that he must not succeed too well with her.

The whole trial had become by now as academic as a game of chess, to all but the lonely, homesick parents. The prosecuting attorney knew that the mother was not telling the truth; the judge and the jury knew that she was not telling the truth. But unless this could be geometrically demonstrated the jury would disregard its own senses. Yet the prosecutor knew that if he succeeded in trapping the mother too abruptly into any admission dangerous to her son she would probably break down and cry her dreary old heart out, and then those twelve superhuman jurors would weep with her and care for nothing on earth except her consolation.

The crisis came as crises love to come, without warning. The question had been simple enough, and the tone as gentle as possible: "You have just stated, Mrs. Coburn, that your son spoke to you in his apartment the day he is alleged to have committed this act, but I find that at the first and second trials you testified that you did not see him in his apartment at all. Which, please, is the correct statement?"

In a flash she realized what she had done. It is so hard to build and defend a fortress of lies, and she was very old and not very wise, tired out, confused by the stare of the mob and the knowledge that every word she uttered endangered the life she had borne. Now she felt that she had undone everything. She blamed herself for ruining the work of years. She saw her son led to death because of her blunder. Her answer to the question and the patient courtesy of the attorney was to throw her hands into the air, toss her white head to and fro, and give up the battle. The tears came like a gush of blood from a deep wound; they poured through the lean fingers she pressed against her gaunt cheeks, and she shook with the dry, weak weeping of senility and utter desolation. Then her old arms yearned for him as when a babe.

"I want my boy! I want my boy!"

* * * * *

The judge grew very busy among his papers, the prosecuting attorney swallowed hard. The jurymen thought no more of evidence and of the stability of the laws. They all had mothers, or memory-mothers, and they only resolved that whatever crime Stephen Coburn might have committed, it would be a more dastardly crime for them to drive their twelve daggers into the aching breast that had suckled him. On the instant the trial had resolved itself into "The People _vs._ One Poor Old Mother." The jury's tears voted for them, and their real verdict was surging up in one thought:

"This white haired saint wants her boy: he may be a black sheep, but she wants him, and she shall have him, by--" whatever was each juryman's favorite oath.

When the judge had finished his charge the jury stumbled on one another's heels to get to their sanctum. There they reached a verdict so quickly that, as the saying is, the foreman was coming back into the court-room before the twelfth man was out of it. Amazed at their own unanimity, they were properly ashamed, each of the other eleven, for their mawkish weakness, and their treachery to the stern requirements of higher citizenship. But they went home not entirely unconsoled by the old woman's cry of beatitude at that phrase, "Not Guilty."

She went among them sobbing with ecstasy, and her tears splashed their hands like holy water. It was all outrageously illegal, and sentimental, and harmful to the sanctity of the law. And yet, is it entirely desirable that men should ever grow unmindful of the tears of old mothers?

IV

The road came pouring down from the wooded hills, and the house faced the pond as before. But there was a new guest in the house. Up-stairs, in a room with a sloping wall and a low ceiling and a dormer window, sat a young man whose face had been prominent so long in the press and in the court-room that now he preferred to keep away from human eyes. So he sat in the little room and read eternally. He had acquired the habit of books in the whitewashed cell where he had spent the three of his years that should have been the happiest, busiest, best of all. He read anything he could find now--old books, old magazines, old newspapers. Finally he read even the old family Bible his mother had toted into his room for his comfort. It was a bulky tome with print of giant size and pictures of crude imagery, with here and there blank pages for recording births, deaths, marriages. Here he found the names of all his brothers and sisters, and all of them were entered among the deaths. The manners of the deaths were recorded in the shaky handwriting of fresh grief: Alice Anne, scarlet fever; James Arthur, Jr., convulsions; Andrew Morton, whooping-cough; Cicely Jane, typhoid; Amos Turner, drowned while saving his brother Stephen's life; Edward John, killed in train wreck.

Sick at heart, he turned away from the record, but the book fell open of itself at a full-page insert of the Decalogue, illuminated by some artless printer with gaudy splotches of gold, red and blue and green initials, and silly curlicues of arabesque, as if the man had been ignorant of what they meant, those ten pillars of the world.

Stephen smiled wanly at the bad taste of the decoration, till one line of fire leaped from the text at him, "Thou Shalt Not Kill." But he needed no further lessoning in that wisdom. He retreated from the accusing page and went to lean against the dormer window and look out upon the world from the jail of his past. No jury could release him from that. Everywhere he looked, everywhere he thought, he saw evidence of the penalty he had brought upon his father and mother, more than upon himself and his future. He knew that his father's life-work had been ruined, and that his honorable career would be summed up in the remembrance that he was the old man who bankrupted himself to save his son from the gallows. He knew that this very house, which remained as the last refuge, was mortgaged again as when his father and mother had come into it before he was born. The ironic circle was complete.

Down-stairs he could hear the slow and heavy footsteps of his father, and the creak of the chair as he dropped heavily into it. Then he heard the screen-door flap and heard his mother's rocking-chair begin its seesaw strain. He knew that their tired old hands would be clasped and that their tired old eyes would be staring off at the lightning-shattered oaks. He heard them say, just about as always:

"What you been doin', Paw?"

"Just putterin' 'round the barn. What you been doin', Maw?"

"Just putterin' 'round the kitchen gettin' supper started. I went up-stairs and knocked at Stevie's door. He didn't answer. Guess he's asleep."

"Guess so."

"It seems awful good, Paw, to be back in this old place, don't it?--you and me just settin' here and our boy safe and sound asleep up-stairs."

"That's so. As the fellow says in the circus, here we are again, Maw."

"Here we are again, Paw."

AND THIS IS MARRIAGE

His soul floated upward from the lowermost depths of oblivion, slowly, as a water-plant, broken beneath, drifts to the surface. And then he was awake and unutterably afraid.

His soul opened, as it were, its eyes in terror and his fleshly eyelids went ajar. There was nothing to frighten him except his own thoughts, but they seemed to have waited all ready loaded with despair for the instant of his waking.

The room was black about him. The world was black. He had left the window open, but he could not see outdoors. Only his memory told him where the window was. Never a star pinked the heavens to distinguish it. He could not tell casement from sky, nor window from wall, nor wall from ceiling or floor. He was as one hung in primeval chaos before light had been decreed.

He could not see his own pillow. He knew of it only because he felt it where it was hot under his hot cheek. He could not see the hand he raised to push the hair from his wet brow. He knew that he had a hand and a brow only from their contact, from the sense of himself in them, from the throb of his pulse at the surface of himself.

He felt almost completely disembodied, poised in space, in infinite gloom, alone with complete loneliness. As the old phrase puts it, he was all by himself.

The only sound in his universe, besides the heavy surf of his own blood beating in his ears, was the faint, slow breathing of his wife, asleep in the same bed, yet separated from him by a sword of hostility that kept their souls as far apart as planets are.

He laughed in bitter silence to think how false she was to the devoted love she had promised him, how harsh her last words had been and how strange from the lips that used to murmur every devotion, every love-word, every trust.

He wanted to whirl on her, shake her out of the cowardly refuge of sleep, and resume the wrangle that had ended in exhaustion.

He wanted to gag her so that she would hear him out for once and not break into every phrase. He wanted to tell her for her own good in one clear, cold, logical, unbroken harangue how atrocious she was, how futile, fiendish, heartless. But he knew that she would not listen to him. Even if he gagged her mouth her mind would still dodge and buffet him. How ancient was the experience that warned a man against argument with a woman! And that wise old saw, "Let sleeping dogs lie," referred even better to wives. He would not let her know that he was awake--awake, perhaps, for hours of misery.

This had happened often of late. It had been a hard week, day after day of bitter toil wearing him down in body and fraying his every nerve.

His business was in a bad way, and he alone could save it, and he could save it only by ingenuity and inspiration. But the inspiration, he was sure, would not come to him till he could rest throughout.

Sleep was his hope, his passion, food, drink, medicine. He was heavily pledged at the bank. He could borrow no more. The president had threatened him if he did not pay what was overdue. Bigger businesses than his were being left to crash. A financial earthquake was rocking every tower in the world.

Though he needed cash vitally to further his business, there was a sharper and sharper demand upon him from creditors desperately harried by their own desperate creditors. He must find with his brain some new source of cash. He must fight the world. But how could he fight without rest? Even pugilists rested between rounds.

He had not slept a whole night for a week. To-night he had gone to bed sternly resolved on a while of annihilation. Anything for the brief sweet death with the morning of resurrection.

And then she had quarreled with him. And now he was awake, and he felt that he would not sleep.

He wondered what the hour was. He was tempted to rise and make a light and look at his watch, but he felt that the effort and the blow of the glare on his eyes might confirm his insomnia. He lay and wondered, consumed with curiosity as to the hour--as if that knowledge could be of value.

By and by, out of the stillness and the widespread black came the slumbrous tone of a far-off town clock. Three times it rumored in the air as if distance moaned faintly thrice.

Three o'clock! He had had but two hours' sleep, and would have no more! And he needed ten! To-morrow morning--this morning!--he must join battle for his very existence.

He lay supine, trying not to clench a muscle, seeking to force his surrender to inanition; but he could not get sleep though he implored his soul for it, prayed God for it.

At length he ceased to try to compel slumber. He lay musing. It is a strange thing to lie musing in the dark. His soul seemed to tug and waver outside his body as he had seen an elephant chained by one leg in a circus tent lean far away from its shackles, and sway and put its trunk forth gropingly. His soul seemed to be under his forehead, pushing at it as against a door. He felt that if he had a larger, freer forehead he would have more soul and more room for his mind to work.

Then the great fear came over him again. In these wakeful moods he suffered ecstasies of fright.

He was appalled with life. He felt helpless, bodyless, doomed.

On his office wall hung a calendar with a colored picture showing fishermen in a little boat in a fog looking up to see a great Atlantic liner just about to run them down. So the universe loomed over him now, rushed down to crush him. The other people of the world were asleep in their places; his creditors, his rivals were resting, gaining strength to overwhelm him on the morrow, and he must face them unrefreshed.

He dreamed forward through crisis after crisis, through bankruptcy, disgrace, and mortal illness. He thought of his family, the children asleep in their beds under the roof that he must uphold like an Atlas. Poor little demanding, demanding things! What would become of them when their father broke down and was turned out of his factory and out of his home? How they would hamper him, cling to him, cry out to him not to let them starve, not to let them go cold or barefoot, not to turn them adrift.

Yet they did not understand him. They loved their mother infinitely more. She watched over them, played with them, cuddled and kissed them, while he had to leave the house before they were up, and came home at night too fagged to play their games or endure their noise. And if they were to be punished, she used him as a threat, and saved them up for him to torment and denounce.

They loved her and were afraid of him. Yet what had she done for them? She had conceived them, borne them, nourished them for a year at most. Thereafter their food, their shelter, their clothes, their education, their whole prosperity must come from their father. Yet the very necessities of the struggle for their welfare kept him from giving them the time that would win their favor. They complained because he did not buy them more. They were discontented with what they had, and covetous of what the neighbors' children had, even where it was less than their own.

He busied himself awhile at figuring out how much, all told, his children's upbringing had cost him. The total was astounding. If he had half of that sum now he would not be fretting about his pay-roll or his notes. He would triumph over every obstacle. Next he made estimate of what the children would cost him in the future. As they grew their expenses grew with them. He could not hope for the old comfort of sons, when they made a man strong, for nowadays grown sons must be started in business at huge cost with doubtful results and no intention of repaying the investment. And daughters have to be dressed up like holiday packages, expensive gifts that must be sent prepaid and may be returned, collect.

He could see nothing but vanity back of him and a welter of cost ahead. He could see no hope of ever catching up, of ever resting. His only rest would come when he died.

If he did not sleep soon he would assuredly die or go mad. Perhaps he was going mad already. He had fought too long, too hard. He would begin to babble and giggle soon and be led away to twiddle his fingers and talk with phantoms. He saw himself as he had seen other witless, slavering spectacles that had once been human, and a nausea of fear crushed big sweat out of his wincing skin.

Better to die than to play the living burlesque of himself. Better to die than to face the shame of failure, the shame of reproach and ridicule; the epitaph of his business a few lines in the small type of "Business Troubles." Better to kill himself than risk the danger of going mad and killing perhaps his own children and his wife. He knew a man once, a faithful, devoted, gentle struggler with the world, whom a sudden insanity had led to the butchery of his wife and three little boys. They found him tittering among his mangled dead, and calling them pet names, telling the shattered red things that he had wrought God's will upon them.

What if this should come to him! Better to end all the danger of that by removing himself from the reach of mania or shame. It would be the final proof of his love for his flock. And they would not think bitterly of him. All things are forgiven the dead. They would miss him and remember the best of him.

They would appreciate what they had cost him, too, when they no longer had him to draw on. He felt very sorry for himself. Grown man as he was, he was driven back into infancy by his terrors, and like a pouting, supperless boy, he wanted to die to spite the rest of the family and win their apologies even if he should not hear them.

He wondered if, after all, his wife would not be happier to be rid of him. No, she would regret him for one thing at least, that he left her without means.

Well, she deserved to be penniless. Why should she expect a man to kill himself for her sake and leave her a wealthy widow to buy some other man? Let her practise then some of the economies he had vainly begged of her before. If she had been worthy of his posthumous protection she would not have treated him so outrageously at a time of such stress as this.

She knew he was dog-tired, yet she allowed him to be angered, and she knew just what themes were sure to provoke his wrath. So she had harped on these till she had rendered him to a frenzy.

They had stood about or paced the floor or dropped in chairs and fought as they flung off their clothes piecemeal. She had combed and brushed her hair viciously as she raged, weeping the unbeautiful tears of wrath. But he had not had that comfort of tears; his tears ran down the inside of his soul and burned. She goaded him out of his ordinary self-control--knew just how to do it and reveled in it.

No doubt he had said things to her that a gentleman does not say to a lady, that hardly any man would say to any woman. He was startled to remember what he had said to her. He abhorred the thought of such things coming from his lips--and to the mother of his children. But the blame for these atrocities was also hers. She had driven him frantic; she would have driven a less-dignified man to violence, to blows, perhaps. And she had had the effrontery to blame him for driving her frantic when it was she that drove him.

Finally they had stormed themselves out, squandered their vocabularies of abuse, and taken resort to silence in a pretended dignity. That is, she had done this. He had relapsed into silence because he realized how impervious to truth or justice she was. Facts she would not deal in. Logic she abhorred. Reasoning infuriated her.

And then in grim, mutual contempt they had crept into bed and lain as far apart as they could. He would have gone into another room, but she would have thought he was afraid to hear more of her. Or she would have come knocking at the door and lured him back only to renew the war at some appeal of his to that sense of justice he was forever hoping to find in her soul.

He was aligned now along the very edge of the mattress. It was childish of her to behave so spitefully, but what could he do except repay her in kind? She would not have understood any other behavior. She had turned her back on him, too, and stretched herself as thin as she could as close to the edge as she could lie without falling out.

What a vixen she was! And at this time of all when she should have been gentle, soothing. Even if she had thought him wrong and misinterpreted his natural vehemence as virulence, she should have been patient. What was a wife for but to be a helpmeet? She knew how easily his temper was assuaged, she knew the very words. Why had she avoided them?