Mark Gildersleeve Part 13

In order to render this colloquy more intelligible, it will be necessary to state that about eight or nine months previously the public mind was intensely agitated and shocked by the details of a murder of a very atrocious character. The crime had been committed by a sailor who had shipped for a short voyage on a small coaster. When at sea he had slain the captain, mate, and cook, and then running the craft near sh.o.r.e, had scuttled her, leaving in the yawl with a small sum of money belonging to the captain, to obtain which had been the sole motive of the triple murder. Landing on the sea-coast a few miles below Sandy Hook, the murderer had been captured by some fishermen, who had watched his suspicious movements. The smack, instead of sinking, was found adrift, with the proofs of the horrid deed still fresh and visible. The guilt seemed, therefore, plainly fixed on the accused, and there was but little doubt that the trial would result in his conviction. Still the evidence against him was but circ.u.mstantial, and his counsel, a man of ability, made strenuous and persistent efforts to clear him. In the progress of the case, it came out that the prisoner was an old and hardened desperado, who had been incarcerated many times in various countries for misdemeanors of every degree. It was furthermore discovered that he had given to the court an a.s.sumed name, and that his true one was Klove, and native place Belton. This revelation, naturally enough, created some excitement among the older inhabitants of that town, who still remembered Klove as a boy of fourteen, who had been forced to leave the place in consequence of an accusation of theft. This charge, although not proven at the time, was now resurrected, and brought up to his prejudice as an ill.u.s.tration of how youthful depravity would lead eventually to the gravest and blackest crimes. Mr. Heath, who was a clerk at the time Klove was living in Belton, and had a distinct recollection of him, was naturally much interested in the progress of his trial, and read and re-read the reports of it as they appeared in the newspapers, with an absorbing interest. In singular contrast was his dislike to having the subject mentioned or talked about in his family.

Mrs. Applegate, who had a predilection for the horrible, was full of the murder, and discussed it at every meal, much to her brother's annoyance.

As the trial drew near its close, Mr. Heath took a short trip, being absent about a week. While he was away, the trial, which was held at Freehold, came to an end; and, in spite of the skilful efforts to exculpate him, the prisoner was convicted. The case was too clear to admit of the slightest doubt, and the jury found him guilty of murder.

His lawyer tried strenuously to obtain a new trial, but without avail, and he was remanded for sentence.

The very next night Klove broke jail--a bar of the window of his cell had been wrenched out, and watch-spring saws and files were found lying about, conveying the impression that he had received a.s.sistance. A turnkey was suspected of complicity and dismissed, although the proof was hardly sufficient to implicate him. It was this escaped pirate--this murderer whose recapture, after having eluded the officers of justice for several months, when announced by Mrs. Applegate to her brother, produced such a shock to the latter's feelings. The fellow, it appeared, instead of fleeing to some distant land, had repaired to his former low haunts in New York, and spent his time in idleness and carousing, for he was apparently well supplied with money. While in liquor and in an unguarded moment, he had betrayed himself by some compromising remark, which, coming to the knowledge of the police, caused him to be speedily secured, and on a requisition from the Governor of New Jersey, conveyed back to his quarters in the county jail at Freehold. He was now placed in double irons, and kept so strictly guarded day and night as to preclude the possibility of a second evasion.

Soon after Klove's recapture, Mr. Heath again started on a mysterious journey. During his absence the news came that strong efforts were being made by some influential person to obtain a pardon for Klove from the Governor. To account for these singular manifestations in behalf of so great a criminal, it was rumored and popularly believed that Klove was not Klove, but the losel son of a venerable bishop of the Episcopal Church, distinguished alike for piety and learning, who was naturally anxious to save his offspring from the disgraceful, though well-merited, death of a felon. Nothing transpired, however, to sustain this report, which was simply a figment of the imagination, due, doubtless, to the popular love for the marvellous. Meanwhile Klove had been sentenced to death, and lay in prison awaiting his doom.

A fortnight or so elapsed before Mr. Heath returned. Edna saw at a glance that there was a change for the worse in her father's condition.

He was evidently laboring under a recurrence of one of his melancholic spells, with aggravated symptoms. His form had wasted, and his countenance become haggard. In short, he plainly exhibited the signs of one borne down by a great weight of grief. To his daughter's affectionate inquiries, he replied only in monosyllables, and repaired immediately to his apartments. Edna consulted with her aunt, and Dr.

Wattletop was again summoned; but Mr. Heath peremptorily refused to see him or any other physician, and the two ladies were left a prey to their apprehensions.

Mr. Heath's condition excited the doctor's professional curiosity. It was an abstruse physiological problem, and spurred his zeal. By dint of patient investigation, and consultation with the family, he discovered the great interest Mr. Heath took in the pirate Klove. He questioned the groom and gardener in relation to the stranger who had been harbored by Mr. Heath, and by comparing their descriptions with others, came to the conclusion that the mysterious visitor and Klove were one and the same man. To satisfy himself clearly on that point and obtain a further clue to this singular affair, he proceeded to Freehold. Here he was not only confirmed in his conclusions, but learned, furthermore, that a gentleman, a stranger, answering closely to a description of Mr. Heath, had been noticed in attendance at the trial, and in frequent consultation with the prisoner's lawyer.

There was no longer any doubt in the doctor's mind of the existence of some connection or intimacy between the pirate and the patrician, which the mere fact of the former's having once lived in Belton would scarcely account for. He was inclined to suspect a secret tie of kinship, had it not been clearly established at the trial that Klove was born in Germany, and brought to the United States in childhood by his parents.

Still cudgelling his brains for a plausible theory to account for Mr.

Heath's singular proceedings, he was at length forced to refer them to some phase of hypochondria.

Mrs. Applegate was decidedly of the opinion, now, that her brother was going out of his mind. She had often heard of such cases, she informed Dr. Wattletop. Mr. Applegate had a friend who was taken so, though, to be sure, his trouble arose from the Millerite excitement, and fear of the world's coming to an end. "Of course Rufus has no dread of that kind or anything of the sort, but I do think and believe that it all grows out of his son's death, and nothing else."

"Do you really think that he is so much affected by his son's death?"

asked the doctor, with an incredulous expression.

"I don't think he has been the same man since. To be sure he didn't take on so much at first, and didn't seem to realize it fully; but I believe he feels it more and more, and it is that that has made him so different from what he used to be. Poor Edna! dear me, she worries so about her father, and I'm very much afraid she'll fall sick if this continues. Her room is near his, and she says she hears him pacing the floor at all hours of the night."

"Insomnia, eh?"

"And he talks to himself so often; and then again, if you speak to him, or question him, he looks at you so vacantly without replying."

Precursory sign of cerebral disease, thought the doctor.

"It's dreadful--dreadful!" continued Mrs. Applegate. "I can't help but think sometimes that Rufus is losing his senses, and yet such a thing as insanity was never known in our family."

Dr. Wattletop had arrived at a somewhat similar conclusion. He believed Mr. Heath's disease was taking the form of monomania, brought about by the combined effects of disappointment and grief on an overwrought brain. In such a condition the distracted mind was not only readily affected by any striking or impressive event, but apt to identify itself therewith in some bizarre manner.

"It is very important in Mr. Heath's present state, Mrs. Applegate, that we should keep his mind as free as possible from any agitation. No exciting news should reach him. If it were possible to keep the newspapers from him, it would be well; but I presume that is out of the question. However, be careful and vigilant. I think he needs rest and tranquillity more than anything else now. If he would only consent to see me, and if I could only interrogate him a little, I might form a more intelligent opinion of his condition. At the last interview I had with him, we had an interchange of opinions on subjects connected with certain plans of his, and I don't think he was pleased with my comments on them; so I don't know how far my attendance on him would be acceptable now."

"He won't hear of any physician's being spoken to about him. I have tried my utmost, and Edna has pleaded; but he's as obstinate as can be, and won't listen to us," said Mrs. Applegate.

"Sorry. As it is, I am to a certain extent groping in the dark, and under the circ.u.mstances, as you can readily understand, it is very difficult to prescribe a course of treatment with any degree of confidence. I don't know what else I can say or recommend just now. As I said, prevent as far as possible any vexatious, exciting, or annoying news from reaching him. Note every symptom, and advise me."

Such commonplace advice was doubtless all that the physician could offer, as Mr. Heath stubbornly refused to see him or any other medical man, and indeed, had given himself up to such complete isolation, as to deny audience even to his business agent, and to the architect in charge of the construction of the Hospital and the Home, so that the building of those inst.i.tutions was now perforce suspended. He even began to evince an aversion to the society of his family, and to avoid meeting them, took his meals by himself in his own apartments.

XVI.

One Friday Klove was hanged.

The public prints of the following day were filled with details of the occurrence, and Mrs. Applegate, mindful of the doctor's injunctions, strove to keep her brother from reading them. A futile effort, though, for Mr. Heath, on finding that the newspapers were not brought to him at the usual time, rang the bell violently, and rated the servant soundly for the omission.

The magnifico was in his chamber, and looked as aged as a man of eighty.

His hair and beard had turned white, his eyes were cavernous and feverishly bright. Roused momentarily by the incident just mentioned, he returned to his seat in an arm-chair near the fire, where, wrapped in a dressing-gown, he had probably pa.s.sed the night, as his couch was undisturbed. He soon relapsed into a gloomy meditation, holding in his hands the folded newspaper, which he apparently hesitated and dreaded to read. Suddenly, with an effort, his fingers spread the sheet open, and he scanned the columns rapidly until his eyes rested on the account of Klove's execution. To an unusually long description of the horrible affair was appended what purported to be the confession of the malefactor, made to the clergyman in attendance, and reported verbatim.

It ran thus:

CONFESSION OF KLOVE, THE PIRATE.

When I was a boy I lived in Belton, in this State. My mother was a widow, for my father died the year after we came to this country from Germany. There were two of us children, me and a girl. My mother did washing for a living, and I worked for a man named Cook, who was very hard to get along with, and to him I lay all my troubles. I suppose I must forgive everybody now, as I hope to be forgiven myself, but it's mighty hard to let up on him. Now I ain't a-going to say that I didn't kill the men aboard the smack, and that I am unjustly sentenced to die; but I say this, and I believe, as I hope for mercy hereafter, that if it hadn't been for the unjust way in which I was treated when I was a boy, by that man, I wouldn't be here now. The way of it all was this: One day Cook sent me with some money to pay a bill at the store. I didn't know how much there was, but when the store-keeper counted it he said it ran short ten dollars. When I went back to Cook and told him, he got angry, and said he had given me the right sum, and I must have stolen the difference. Now he had a grudge against me, and I believe he never gave me the money, but wanted to get me into trouble. I knew I couldn't have lost it, and the shop-keeper counted it before my eyes, and he couldn't have taken it.

Howsomever, Cook swore I stole the money, and they locked me up.

They didn't keep me long, though, for they couldn't bring any proof, and was obliged to let me off. But I couldn't stay in Belton after that, for no one would employ me, and they all shunned me for a thief. So I left the place and went to New York, but as I was a stranger there, and didn't know any one, I couldn't find work. Then I shipped for a three years' cruise, for I thought by that time all would be forgot, and I could go back home. As bad luck would have it, my shipmates found out that I had been locked up for thieving, and when one of the crew had his chest broken open, and some things missing, they laid it to me. I was innocent, but they wouldn't believe it, and the character I had got went against me, and I wasn't spared a bit. The captain abused me, the mate rope's-ended me, and the men kicked me and called me jail-bird, until I was more miserable than a dog. My whole feelings were changed. I got bitter and revengeful, and if it hadn't been that I couldn't get away I would have knived some of my shipmates. When the vessel touched at the Sandwich Islands, I ran away and knocked about with the beach-combers, a wicked set of outcasts, until I became bad as any of them. I lived among the Islands several years. I shipped again, ran down to Valparaiso, and made several voyages up and down the coast. One day I got into a drunken row in a pulqueria, and stabbed a Chilian. This caused me to be sent to work in the mines as a convict. I got away from there after staying three years and shipped in a French ship to Bordeaux, and from there I got to New York. I hadn't been in the States for ten years, and all that time I hadn't heard anything from my folks. I had become so reckless as to have no wish to see any of them. When in New York I went one night to a dance-house in Cherry Street, and there among the women I found my sister. We didn't know each other at first, but I discovered her by a queer scar on her neck, which she got from a burn when a child. After questioning her, I found out that my mother took on so about me that she left Belton soon after I did, and went to New York. There she fell sick, and died in want, and there was my sister a degraded creature. What little good was left in me was turned by this sight into bad, and I swore to be even with a world that had been so unjust to me and mine. The old feeling of vengeance rose up in my breast--the devil got hold of me, and I thought of Cook. That night I started off to find him, and went to Belton. I hung around there till I found out he was dead and gone some years. If he had been living I would have killed him, sure. All that's wrong, I know, but I couldn't help it. Then I felt just like waging war on all the world. I went to California, and kept a drinking shop on what they called the Barbary coast, where I used to rob miners. Finally I shot one that showed fight, and the Vigilance Committee drove me off, and I came back to the States and went to New Orleans, staid awhile, and came north. I knocked around New York for a time, and finally shipped on the smack, where I committed the deed that's brought me here. The world has got the best of me at last, and it was very wrong and sinful for me to kill the men, and it is right that I should suffer for it and be hung; I ain't a-going to deny that; but I know this and repeat it, that if I had been treated right when a boy, if I hadn't been accused of stealing when I was innocent, I wouldn't be here now, and my sister wouldn't have been ruined. We might have been as happy and as good as any, so let Almighty G.o.d judge. Before I go I want to say this: that in the trial I was fairly treated, and I want to publicly thank all those people who were so kind to me. One gentleman has been very good to me, did all he could to help me, and I can't be too grateful to him. He happened just to have remembered me when I was a boy and lived in Belton, and to this kind and benevolent man, I say, may G.o.d bless him and reward him.

Rufus Heath read those lines with dilated eyes and shortened breath, like one undergoing the rack. When he had finished, he let the paper drop and uttered a deep groan. His head sank back on his chair, and he pressed his hands over his temples and brow as if to smother distracting thoughts. He remained thus for some time, until a light hand was placed on his shoulder, when he started as if it had been a blow.

The intruder was Edna, who, having knocked at the door and receiving no reply, had entered the room with some anxiety. "Father, dear father, how you frighten me! What ails you? Are you in pain?" exclaimed she, alarmed at his wild aspect. "Do tell me, please tell me, what is the matter?"

"Matter--matter," repeated Mr. Heath abstractedly, as he rose and walked towards the window. "No--no--nothing, child, nothing. Why do you--Ring the bell for James and leave me--leave me, I tell you. I have business to occupy me." He was rattling his fingers nervously on the window-panes as he spoke, and looking vacantly out. His daughter strove to draw him aside, and looking in his face asked anxiously if she might be permitted to send for a physician. "I'm sure there's something the matter with you--you look so very, very strange. Do please, father, may I?"

"No, no, no! Leave me, Edna, and do as I bid you." She obeyed, and Mr.

Heath made a struggle to regain his self-possession. When the servant came, he directed him to bring a decanter of brandy. As soon as it was brought, with a trembling hand he poured out a tumblerful and gulped it down. It seemed to affect him no more than so much water, and pacing the room, he forced a laugh as he soliloquized: "Idiot, idiot, and threefold fool! What is it to me that this vagabond and ruffian has met his deserts? Nothing, surely nothing. Then why should I worry about it? Why should I be tormented and maddened by it? Those who murder must expect to be hung. A man is responsible only for his own crimes--the crimes he himself commits, and surely none other, none other. What a monstrous, cruel, wicked doctrine it would be that would hold men to account for the remote and indirect consequences of trivial and commonplace acts.

Skilful lawyers cheat justice every day; thousands and thousands of villains have been rescued from the clutches of the law by their paid advocates, and set loose on society, to again plunder and kill. As well hold these advocates responsible for the crimes subsequently committed by their clients, as to tax me with--pshaw! it's too absurd to deserve a moment's thought. What a simpleton I am to quake like a puny child because a low ruffian meets his merited fate! How ridiculous--absurd--preposterous! No, no; I am getting old and childish--old and childish," he continued to croon, until interrupted by the entrance of a servant with luncheon, who was quickly bidden to withdraw.

The luncheon remained untouched.

Again in the arm-chair, and staring with a look of despair at the fire; again torturing thoughts seethe in his brain. The pirate Klove was hung yesterday for murder. What a blood-stained desperado he was, and what a life he had led! Where was his soul now? Who would exchange places with him to gain the whole world? And all this had arisen, he said, from the dishonesty of some one who had caused him to be unjustly accused of stealing a small sum of money. What a flimsy and shameless apology!

What an atrocious attempt to shift the responsibility of h.e.l.lish deeds to other shoulders; to drag some innocent person to everlasting perdition with him! Suppose Cook, his employer, had really given him the money, and had no intention of wrongfully accusing him--what then?

Perhaps the money was lost, and if so, if any one had found it they would naturally have kept it. Of course, anybody would do that. It's a very common thing for persons to do. It is an everyday occurrence. No one but a fool would act otherwise. Ten dollars is but a trifle, and to attribute to the loss of a sum so paltry such terrible, awful consequences, is simply ridiculous. But the boy should not have been allowed to rest under the imputation of having stolen it. He should have been saved from arrest. They discharged him--yes, they discharged him.

He was not long imprisoned. True, but he should have been cleared from suspicion at any cost--any cost! His innocence proclaimed in thunder tones far and wide! To omit that was wrong, fearfully, bitterly wrong!

Not doing so, forced him to leave home in disgrace; made him an outcast, killed his mother, drove his sister to shame. Horror!... And he thanked the kind gentleman who had been so good to him, and with his dying breath, bade G.o.d bless and reward him! "O Christ, help--help me!"

These last words escaped from Mr. Heath in a lacerating cry. He pressed his hands to his face as if to shut out some horrifying sight, and remained so until he gradually fell into a dreamy stupor. The excited mind ceased to work, and became numb. Luminous images floated before his mental vision, and kaleidoscopic interminglings of uncouth objects and faces.

Then the wearied and distracted brain lapsed into a feverish slumber--a slumber alive with fearful visions. He dreamt he was in a prison-cell.

It was night, and the grated door swung open to admit the jailer and hangman. They pinioned him, and led him out to the scaffold. At the foot of the gallows lay a coffin, containing the corpse of Klove, with horribly distorted features. The hangman was about pulling a cap over his face, when Mr. Heath awoke with trembling limbs, and a cold sweat starting from every pore.

It was evening, for he had lain in that stupor and sleep for hours.

Again he resorted to the brandy to dissipate the lingering impressions of the frightful nightmare, and then rang the bell. The servant appeared, and desired to know what his master wanted. Nothing--nothing.

Yes, to have light in the library--he would read. Did Mr. Heath wish to have dinner brought up to him? No, no; leave me--leave me. The man lit the gas in the library, replenished the grate, and left.

The library was the room adjoining Mr. Heath's, and thither he went. He took a volume from a shelf, and returned to his apartment; then resumed his seat and lethargic stare at the fire. The book fell unheeded from his grasp.

Hours pa.s.sed, and again the coa.r.s.e, distorted, purple features of Klove appeared--once the countenance of a timid boy, who stood falsely accused and cowering before a stern magistrate; thence driven by a storm of hisses, and flying from home, followed by a widowed mother and child-sister. And the brand THIEF clings to the hapless lad, and enmeshes him in a web of misfortune; now reckless with despair, he plunges into vice and crime, until the law forces him to yield up his spotted soul on the gallows!

_And how fared the real thief?_