Eli Part 3

"I await a motion," said he, "if our friend will allow me the privilege of speaking."

Mr. Washington calmly bowed.

Then the foreman, when n.o.body seemed disposed to move, speaking slowly at first, and piecemeal, alternating language with smoke, gradually edged into the current of the evidence, and ended by going all over it again, with fresh force and point. His cigar glowed and chilled in the darkening room as he talked.

"Now," he said, when he had drawn all the threads together to the point of guilt, "what are we going to do upon this evidence?"

"I 'll tell you something," said Eli. "I did n't want to say it because I know what you 'll all think, but I 'll tell you, all the same."

"Ah!" said the foreman.

Eli stood up and faced the others.

"'Most all o' you know what our Bar is in a southeast gale. They ain't a man here that would dare to try and cross it when the sea's breakin' on it. The man that says he would, lies!" And he looked at the foreman, and waited a moment.

"When my wife took sick, and I stopped goin' to sea, two year ago, and took up boat-fishin', I did n't know half as much about the coast as the young boys do, and one afternoon it was blowin' a gale, and we was all hands comin' in, and pa.s.sin' along the Bar to go sheer 'round it to the west'ard, and Captain Fred Cook--he's short-sighted--got on to the Bar before he knew it, and then he hed to go ahead, whether or no; and I was right after him, and I s'posed he knew, and I followed him. Well, he was floated over, as luck was, all right; but when I 'd just got on the Bar, a roller dropped back and let my bowsprit down into the sand, and then come up quicker'n lightnin' and shouldered the boat over, t' other end first, and slung me into the water; and when I come up, I see somethin'

black, and there was John Wood's boat runnin' by me before the wind with a rush--and 'fore I knew an'thing, he had me by the hair by one hand, and in his boat, and we was over the Bar. Now, I tell you, a man that looks the way I saw him look when I come over the gunwale, face up, don't go 'round breakin' in and hookin' things. He hed n't one chance in five, and he was a married man, too, with small children. And what's more," he added incautiously, "he did n't stop there. When he found out, this last spring, that I was goin' to lose my place, he lent me money enough to pay the interest that was overdue on the mortgage, of his own accord."

And he stopped suddenly.

"You have certainly explained yourself," said the foreman. "I think we understand you distinctly."

"There is n't one word of truth in that idea," said Eli, flushing up, "and you know it. I 've paid him back every cent. I know him better 'n any of you, that's all, and when I know he ain't guilty, I won't say he is; and I can set here as long as any other man."

"Lively times some folks 'll hev, when they go home," said a spare tin-pedler, stroking his long yellow goatee. "Go into the store: n.o.body speak to you; go to cattle-show: everybody follow you 'round; go to the wharf: n.o.body weigh your fish; go to buy seed-cakes to the cart: baker won't give no tick."

"How much does it cost, Mr. Foreman," said the butcher, "for a man 't 's obliged to leave town, to move a family out West? I only ask for information. I have known a case where a man had to leave--could n't live there no longer--wa' n't wanted."

There was a knock. An officer, sent by the judge, inquired whether the jury were likely soon to agree.

"It rests with you, sir," said the foreman, looking at Eli.

But Eli sat doggedly with his hands in his pockets, and did not look up or speak.

"Say to the judge that I cannot tell," said the foreman.

It was eight o'clock when the officer returned, with orders to take the jury across the street to the hotel, to supper. They went out in pairs, except that the juryman who was left to fall in with Eli made three with the file ahead, and left Eli to walk alone. This was noticed by the bystanders. At the hotel, Eli could not eat a mouthful. He was seated at one end of the table, and was left entirely out of the conversation.

When the jury were escorted back to the courthouse, rumors had evidently begun to arise from his having walked alone, for there was quite a little crowd at the hotel door, to see them. They went as before: four pairs, a file of three, and Eli alone. Then the spectators understood it.

When the jury were locked into their room again for the night, Mr.

Eldridge sat down by Eli and lit his pipe.

"I understand," he said, "just how you feel. Now, between you and me, there was a good-hearted fellow that kept me out of a bad mess once. I 've never told anybody just what it was, and I don't mean to tell you now, but it brought my blood up standing, to find how near I 'd come to putting a fine steamer and two hundred and forty pa.s.sengers under water.

Well, one day, a year or so after that, this man had a chance to get a good ship, only there was some talk against him, that he drank a little.

Well, the owners told him they wanted to see me, and he come to me, and says he, 'Mr. Eldridge, I hope you 'll speak a good word for me; if you do, I 'll get the ship, but if they refuse me this one, I 'm dished everywhere.' Well, the owners put me the square question, and I had to tell 'em. Well, I met him that afternoon on Sacramento Street, as white as a sheet, and he would n't speak to me, but pa.s.sed right by, and that night he went and shipped before the mast. That's the last I ever heard of him; but I had to do it. Now," he added, "this man 's been good to you; but the case is proved, and you ought to vote with the rest of us."

"It ain't proved," said Eli. "The judge said that if any man had a reasonable doubt, he ought to hold out. Now, I ain't convinced."

"Well, that 's easy said," replied Mr. Eldridge, a little hotly, and he arose, and left him.

The jurymen broke up into little knots, tilted their chairs back, and settled into the easiest positions that their cramped quarters allowed.

Most of them lit their pipes; the captain, and one or two whom he honored, smoked fragrant cigars, and the room was soon filled with a dense cloud.

Eli sat alone by the window.

"Sometimes sell two at one house," said a lank book-agent, arousing himself from a reverie; "once sold three."

"I think the Early Rose is about as profitable as any," said a little farmer, with a large circular beard. "I used to favor Jacobs's Seedling, but they have n't done so well with me of late years."

"Sometimes," said the book-agent, picking his teeth with a quill, "you 'll go to a house, and they 'll say they can't be induced to buy a book of any kind, historical, fict.i.tious, or religious; but you just keep on talking, and show the pictures--'Grant in Boyhood,' 'Grant a Tanner,'

Grant at Head-quarters,' 'Grant in the White House,' 'Grant before Queen Victoria,' and they warm up, I tell you, and not infrequently buy."

"Do you sell de 'Ill.u.s.trated Bible'," asked Washington, "wid de Hypocrypha?"

"No; I have a more popular treatise--the 'Ill.u.s.trated History of the Bible.' Greater variety. Brings in the surrounding nations, in costume.

Cloth, three dollars; sheep, three-fifty; half calf, five-seventy-five; full morocco, gilt edges, seven-fifty. Six hundred and seven ill.u.s.trations on wood and steel. Three different engravings of Abraham alone. Four of Noah,--'Noah before the Flood,' 'Noah Building the Ark,' 'Noah Welcoming the Dove,' 'Noah on Ararat,' Steel engraving of Ezekiel's Wheel, explaining prophecy. Jonah under the gourd, Nineveh in the distance."

Mr. Eldridge and Captain Thomas had drifted into a discussion of harbors, and the captain had drawn his chair up to the table, and, with a cigar in his mouth, was explaining an ingeniously constructed foreign harbor. He was making a rough sketch, with a pen.

"Here is north," he said; "here is the coastline; here are the flats; here are the sluicegates; they store the water here, in--"

Some of the younger men had their heads together, in a corner, about the tin-pedler, who was telling stories of people he had met in his journeys, which brought out repeated bursts of laughter.

In the corner farthest from Eli, a delicate-looking man began to tell the butcher about Eli's wife.

"Twelve years ago this fall," he said, "I taught district-school in the parish where she lived. She was about fourteen then. Her father was a poor farmer, without any faculty. Her mother was dead, and she kept house. I stayed there one week, boarding 'round."

"Prob'ly did n't git not much of any fresh meat that week," suggested the butcher.

"She never said much, but it used to divert me to see her order around her big brothers, just as if she was their mother. She and I got to be great friends; but she was a queer piece. One day at school the girls in her row were communicating, and annoying me, while the third cla.s.s was reciting in 'First Steps in Numbers,' and I was so incensed that I called Lizzie--that's her name--right out, and had her stand up for twenty minutes. She was a shy little thing, and set great store by perfect marks. I saw that she was troubled a good deal, to have all of them looking and laughing at her. But she stood there, with her hands folded behind her, and not a smile or a word."

"Look out for a sullen cow," said the butcher.

"I felt afraid I had been too hasty with her, and I was rather sorry I had been so decided--although, to be sure, she did n't pretend to deny that she had been communicating."

"Of course," said the butcher: "no use lyin' when you 're caught in the act."

"Well, after school, she stayed at her desk, fixing her dinner-pail, and putting her books in a strap, and all that, till all the rest had gone, and then she came up to my desk, where I was correcting compositions."

"Now for music!" said the butcher.

"She had been crying a little. Well, she looked straight in my face, and said she, 'Mr. Pollard, I just wanted to say to you that I was n't doing anything at all when you called me up;' and off she went. Now, that was just like her,--too proud to say a word before the school."

But here his listener's attention was diverted by the voice of the book-agent.

"The very best Bible for teachers, of course, is the limp-cover, protected edges, full Levant morocco, Oxford, silk-sewed, kid-lined, Bishop's Divinity Circuit, with concordance, maps of the Holy Land, weights, measures, and money-tables of the Jews. Nothing like having a really--"

"And so," said the captain, moving back his chair, "they let on the whole head of water, and scour out the channel to a T."