XVIII
Itwas after dark, and the lights at the station-house were shining across a street still crowded with the curious and the idle, when Daniel finally reached the little cell where Leigh had been lodged since the shooting. He found the boy lying face downward on the bare cot in the corner, his head on his arms. Daniel had to touch his shoulder before he roused himself and looked up. His white, drawn face and his disheveled hair shocked his brother. He looked as if he had aged two years in five hours.
“I’ve come to help you, Leigh,” said Daniel simply.
Leigh raised himself to a sitting posture, dropping his feet heavily to the floor. Daniel saw the traces of tears on his blurred face, but he pulled himself together, though his lips shook.
“Are they going to keep me here all night?” he asked sullenly.
Daniel sat down beside him on the cot.
“I’m afraid so, Leigh. Father offered bail, and so did Judge Jessup, but I don’t think you’llget out to-night.” He laid his hand kindly on his brother’s shoulder. “Tell me about it.”
Leigh’s face worked convulsively, and he set his teeth hard on his lower lip. Daniel waited, his hand still on the boy’s shoulder, his eyes immeasurably kind. He did not blame Leigh, and he was shocked at the change in him. It was a subtle thing, but it was there—that shot had killed Leigh’s boyhood. Daniel saw it.
It seemed a long time before Leigh could speak.
“I—I never saw any one die before, Dan!” he said at last, swallowing hard.
“It’s a mighty tragic thing, Leigh,” agreed Daniel. “I never saw any one die like that myself.”
“Oh, Lord—he looked so terrible!” cried Leigh, covering his face with his slender, shaking, boyish hands. “I’ll—I’ll never forget it!”
He fell to shuddering, in a state of collapse. Daniel patted his shoulder kindly and waited. The boy would have to tell it his own way. It seemed a long time, though, and the dim light in the cell flared up and down.
Daniel looked about the narrow chamber; it was barren and dirty and exceedingly oppressive. He thought of his mother. This was her baby, her darling boy, the one she believed to be the cominggenius of the family. It moved Daniel with infinite compassion and indignation.
Leigh lifted his haggard face from his hands and looked at his brother.
“Will they hang me, Dan?” he asked hoarsely.
“Not while I can lift a voice in your defense, Leigh; not while there’s any power on earth that your brother can move to save you!” cried Daniel his own voice deepening with emotion. “I’m your lawyer now, dear boy. Tell me about it. I’ve got to know. They say you went up to Corwin’s room; that he was half drunk and unarmed, and you shot him in cold blood.”
“I didn’t know he was unarmed!” cried Leigh passionately. “You know I didn’t, Dan. I had to shoot him. He was belying Fanchon; he dared to talk ill of Fanchon——”
“Leave Fanchon out!” cried Daniel. “Forget her for five minutes. Think of yourself, Leigh, of your own defense. Tell me about that shot.”
“I tell you I had to shoot him!” Leigh’s young face was distorted; a man’s fury looked out of his young eyes. “I’d shoot him again this minute if he stood there”—he pointed a shaking finger at the wall opposite—“and said such things of Fanchon!”
“For Heaven’s sake, leave Fanchon out! How did you do it, Leigh! I’m going to save you, Iwill save you, but you must tell me. Forget that I’m your brother, remember that I’m your lawyer. Tell me the whole story, Leigh.”
Leigh, still choking with wrath, tried to command himself.
“I was going home this afternoon,” he began hoarsely, “and Bernstein—you know, the movie man—he met me and told me to tell father about this—this man, Corwin.”
Daniel suppressed an exclamation.
“He had no right to tell a boy like you.”
“I had a right to hear, Dan,” Leigh cried with passionate emphasis. “I’m the only one who cares for Fanchon——”
“Nonsense!” said Daniel roughly. “Where’s William? You forget William.”
Leigh set his face hard.
“Not even William! Didn’t he sit and wait for her to come home that night? Do you think I’d do such a thing? Do you think any man would do such a thing if he loved a woman?”
Leigh was aflame now, and Daniel was silent. Like a flash arose the picture of William and Virginia. He had felt sure for a long time that William had repented in dust and ashes. The boy was right; no man who loved a woman would have sat there and waited that night.
“Corwin was insulting my sister-in-law,” Leighwent on. “He was lying about her and blackening her. I wouldn’t stand for it. I didn’t wait to tell father. Father has never been just to her. I went home and got his pistol. I was going to hold it to Corwin’s head and make him write a retraction—that’s what I went there to do!”
Daniel shook his head mournfully. He recognized the familiar methods of the heroes of light fiction and the movies. Leigh had been acting a story, or, rather, he had started to act a story, and had failed. How in the world could he get this side of it—before a jury?
“What did Corwin say? What did he do when you got there, Leigh? What made you shoot an unarmed man?”
Leigh winced. His brother’s tone, and the bald statement of an ugly fact, drove the truth home, but he set his teeth hard, scowling into space for a moment. The change in him moved Daniel again. Leigh had been a boy in the morning; to-night he had killed a man!
“I’ve told you,” he said hoarsely. “I shot him for his lies about Fanchon. I—I had to shoot him, Dan. He wasn’t fit to live!”
As Leigh spoke, he flung his arm out with a gesture of passionate fury. Daniel caught the arm and held it.
“Leigh, tell me the whole of it. I’m your lawyer—do you hear?”
Something in Daniel, his strength and his will, conquered, and the younger brother yielded to it. He drew a quick breath and straightened himself, feeling the clasp of Daniel’s hand on his arm. Then he told his story—told it from the beginning to the end, his voice only breaking a little.
“I suppose he died right away,” he said as he finished. “He didn’t move any more. He deserved it—but, oh Lord, Dan! I don’t want to see another man die because I shot him! Maybe I’m a coward, but I don’t!”
“You’re no coward,” replied Daniel quietly. “It’s a trying thing to see even a brute like that die, I reckon.” He glanced at the boy’s face and hesitated. “We’re going to put up a big fight, Leigh.”
Leigh’s mouth twisted oddly; he was trying to keep his lips from shaking.
“I reckon I can stand for it, Dan. Mother——” He looked at his brother.
“You’ll see her soon. You know how she loves you. We’re all behind you, boy!”
Dan rose as he spoke. He hated to leave Leigh, but it was inevitable. He stood looking down at him, aware that Leigh winked back fresh tears at the thought of his mother. But the prisoner’sthoughts shifted elsewhere. He looked up shyly, reluctantly.
“And Fanchon?”
Daniel’s face hardened.
“She’s locked in her room, Leigh, and won’t see any of us. She treats us like enemies now. She hasn’t even asked where you are.”
Leigh’s face went from red to white.
“She’d see me, though!” he cried with conviction. “You don’t understand—you don’t know her!”
Daniel said nothing to this, and there was a little pause, while his intolerable opinion of Fanchon seemed to thicken the very atmosphere the angry boy was breathing. Leigh’s eyes flashed, and he hit his lip hard, but his elder brother held out his hand.
“I’ve got to go now.”
There was a break in Daniel’s voice. His other arm went around the prisoner’s shoulders. Leigh broke down at the touch, and the brothers clung together.
Then Daniel tore himself away.
“We’ll get you out of this, Leigh—God bless you!”
A moment more and Daniel got out into the corridor, where he stumbled blindly, dashing tears from his eyes.
The turnkey, locking the door of the cell, was startled.
“Anything the matter, sir?”
“Nothing!” said Daniel, swallowing the lump in his throat. “Nothing!”
He made his way hastily out of the station-house.
He did not stop even to confer with Judge Jessup. They had already covered most of the case in their previous talks; the morning would do for Judge Jessup. It was late, and Daniel wanted to reassure Mrs. Carter. He was horribly sorry for his mother. There seemed no way to comfort her. She was fairly stunned by the blow, and she could only keep on crying out that Leigh was a child, nothing but a child!
Daniel walked slowly at first. He did not want people to think that he was slinking home because his brother was in the station-house, charged with murder. The main street of the town was quiet enough at that hour, but it was evident that there was suppressed excitement. Little groups were gathered here and there along his way from the station-house, and men stopped talking to observe him covertly as he passed.
The story of Fanchon and Corwin had been magnified by this time until it bore no resemblance to its original form. Scandal is an ugly thing, fedusually by falsehood and growing like a dirty snowball rolled up in a coal-yard. Daniel perceived the curious faces, and was aware of the hush as he approached. Here and there a man took pains to speak to him in sign of open sympathy, but not often.
The long, pleasant street was rather dim under the arching trees, except where a lance of light shot across it from a street-lantern, or the headlight of a passing motor illuminated it broadly for a moment. The inn opposite his father’s office was still brilliant for some belated diners, and he was aware that two or three of the waiters came to the door to stare at him as he went by. In the room over their heads Corwin had been shot to death by his brother—only a few hours before. But he noticed that a Victrola was grinding out a rag-time record in the dining-room in spite of it.
He was glad that the next turn took him through the church lane into the old street that led to his father’s house. Here only an occasional light shone in the houses, standing far apart and surrounded by their old-fashioned gardens, and there were few passers-by.
Daniel slackened his pace, partly because his lameness always troubled him when he was weary, and partly because he wanted to order his thoughts. He found it hard, for he was visited bya vision of Virginia standing in the open door of her home, holding his hand, her eyes full of sympathy—for Leigh!
At his own gate Daniel paused and looked up at the sky. The moon was just rising with an extraordinary beauty. The upper sky looked like a silver sea, pierced here and there by a brilliant star, and against it the dark hills rose in sharpened outlines, silhouetted against the ineffable sky. It had been so yesterday; it would be so to-morrow.
The unchangeable forces of nature seemed to reach Daniel with a new and bitter truth. Things would continue in spite of their little tragedy, even life would go on just the same—except for the coarse man lying dead with Leigh’s bullet in his heart!
He was a long time finding his latch-key, he felt so reluctant to open the door. But, as the lock clicked, his mother appeared at the threshold of the drawing-room, and he saw that she was shaking all over.
“Oh, Danny!” In emotion she always reverted to the baby names of her children. “Oh, Danny, didn’t you bring him home. Where is he?”
“I couldn’t bring him to-night, mother.” Daniel laid his hand kindly on her arm. “He’s all right—I’ve just been with him.”
She looked at him in horror, tears welling up in her eyes.
“He—he isn’t in jail?” she whispered in a faint voice, clutching at Daniel’s sleeve.
He put his arm around her.
“No, mother—he’s in the station-house, that’s all.”
She uttered a cry, burying her face on his shoulder. Emily appeared behind her, in a state of dishevelment, her nose and eyes hopelessly red.
“Hush!” she warned them. “William hasn’t stopped tramping up and down the back piazza. I think he’s going crazy, and it’s got into his legs first. Honest, I do, Dan!”
Daniel made no reply to this, partly because his father had just emerged from the library. Mr. Carter had been busy all the afternoon trying to get his son out on bail. He was worn out, and looked it. His iron-gray hair was standing up in a frill on the top of his head, and his cheeks looked flabby. He had taken off his coat and his boots, and stood there in his shirt-sleeves and stockinged feet.
“Did they take bail?” he asked grimly, looking at Dan over the top of the reading-glasses, which he had forgotten to take off.
Daniel shook his head, and, without anotherword, Mr. Carter turned and went back into the library.
“She’s up there—locked in her room,” Mrs. Carter whispered between sobs on her son’s shoulder. “She won’t even see William, and she’s had her supper sent up. I don’t see how she could eat it, after what she’s done!” And she wept again, clinging to Daniel.
“She hasn’t,” said Emily, sniffing hard. “The tray’s outside in the hall. She never unlocked her door.”
“I wish it would choke her!” said Mrs. Carter, shaken with wrath. Then she drew back from her son’s arm, wiping her eyes. “Oh, Dan, what’s the good of your being a lawyer if you can’t get that boy right out?”
Daniel sighed.
“Give us a little time, mother,” he said gently. “You take her up to bed, Emily. She’s worn out, and she’ll only be ill.”
“I don’t care if I am ill!”
Mrs. Carter was desperate; she had eaten nothing, and her head ached from weeping. “I don’t care for anything but my boy—my Leigh! To think of it—while I was making him a cherry pie, too!” she climaxed with more tears.
Emily caught hold of her, sobbing, too. She hadeaten most of the pie, and it touched her to the quick to think of Leigh, pieless and in jail.
“Oh, mama, come up-stairs; it’s going on eleven o’clock!”
Between them, Daniel and Emily got the weeping woman up-stairs. Daniel closed the door on the scene as Emily made her sit down on the side of the bed and snuff lavender salts.
“Your nose is awfully red, mama,” she said feelingly. “It’ll make your head ache worse. Mine aches dreadfully!”
Daniel went softly down to the library, aware of William’s ceaseless march on the back porch. He found his father sitting quietly in the oldest cane-bottom chair, his stockinged feet thrust out in front of him and his hands in his pockets. He had never known his father to sit upright in a hard chair before.
Daniel went wearily over to his mother’s rocker and sank into it, passing his hand over his eyes. He rather dreaded a long talk, now that the tension had snapped; but his father was not inclined to talk, and only asked a question.
“Think they’ll take bail to-morrow?”
Daniel shook his head.
“I’m not sure. Judge Jessup thinks not. Corwin was unarmed and half tipsy. I’ve got to make the coroner see Leigh’s part of it. Leigh has justtold me. He didn’t mean to shoot; he meant to make the man retract his slander of Fanchon.”
Mr. Carter made an inarticulate sound under his breath, and Daniel went on.
“Then it seems that Corwin treated him like a kid—laughed at him, naturally enough. It wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been that the brute was drunk and slapped Leigh’s face. Then the boy snatched out his pistol and fired. He was amazed when he found he had killed the man—that’s all. It’s plain enough. Manslaughter in the second degree, it ought to be, but I’ve got to prove it. You can’t tell which way the coroner’s jury will go. It depends on the witnesses to Corwin’s state and—and character.”
Mr. Carter wagged his head slowly and thoughtfully; his face was haggard and his eyes dim. There was a painful pause, and the clock chimed eleven.
“Mama’s all broken up,” he remarked at last, rising. “I reckon I’d better go up and quiet her.” He moved slowly toward the door, carrying his boots. At the door he paused and looked back. “I haven’t said anything to William,” he remarked grimly; “not a word; but I reckon he’ll have it out now with that—that little hussy up-stairs!”
Daniel made no reply to this, and Mr. Carterpadded softly away. Presently a door shut heavily, and then Daniel heard Emily going to her room. She was crying audibly. It seemed to the listener that she sobbed loudest just outside Fanchon’s door.
Daniel sat quite still. A great weariness had come over him. He had eaten nothing since breakfast, and the fast and the nervous strain had told. He sank back in his chair and almost ceased thinking, his eyes closed.
He was falling asleep from sheer exhaustion when he was startled by a new arrival. The door from the kitchen opened, and Miranda appeared, bearing a tray laden with viands and a smoking cup of tea. She set it down on the corner of the table.
“Yo’ ain’t had noffin’, Mist’ Dan,” she said tearfully. “I knows! Plato, he been down heah to ask fo’ you-all, an’ he tole me yo’ left without yo’ dinner.”
Daniel looked up into the sympathetic dark face and smiled.
“You’re very kind, Miranda. I am hungry; I believe that’s why I nearly fell asleep.”
“Yessuh, I allus eats when I feels bad. Ain’t noffin’ like it, Mist’ Dan. When my pa died I ate piece ob bacon an’ two cabbages, I sho’ did. Ireckon dat’s all dat kep’ me from dyin’ of grief. I sho’ did feel po’erful bad!”
Daniel drew up a chair.
“I’ll take your prescription, Miranda,” he said gratefully.
Miranda beamed tearfully.
“Dat’s right, Mist’ Dan! Dere ain’t any cabbage dere, but dere’s sparrowgrass—an’ dat’s mos’ as good!”