The Empty Sack Part 44

"I-I think she did."

"You bet she did! She'd let you see it if she didn't. So _that's_ what smoothed the way for us! I couldn't make it out. You certainly are a little witch, Jennie!"

"It isn't as smooth as all that." Springing to her feet, she turned her back on him, moving away toward the window. "Oh, Bob, I wish I didn't have to tell you. You're so good and kind, and I've been so"-it came out with a burst of confession, her arms outstretched, her hands spread palms upward-"I've been so awful! When you know-"

"Wait!" He seized her by the shoulders with the force which calms emotion from sheer fright. "Wait, Jennie! I know what you're going to tell me."

"Oh, but you can't."

"It's-it's something about Wray, isn't it?"

She nodded dumbly.

"Then we'll put it off. Do you see? That isn't what I came back for. I came back about Teddy, and we must see that through before we think of ourselves. All that'll keep-"

"It won't keep if we go and live together."

"Then we won't go and live together-not till we see how it's to be done.

That's just a detail. In comparison with Teddy, it doesn't matter one way or another. We'll come to it by and by. All we've got to think of now is that there's a boy whose life is hanging by a thread-"

"Yes; but I don't want you to be mixed up in it. I want to-to save you from-from the sacrifice-and-and the disgrace."

He stood back from her with a hard little laugh.

"Good G.o.d! Jennie, I wonder if you have the faintest idea of what love is! You can't have. Do you suppose it matters to me what I'm mixed up in so long as it's something that touches you? Listen! Let me explain to you what love is like when it's the kind I feel for you. I"-he braced himself in order to bring out the words forcibly-"I don't care what Wray is to you or what you are to Wray-not yet. I put that away from me till I've gone with you through the things you've got to meet. They'll not be easy for you, but I want to make them as easy as I can. No one can do it but me, because no one cares for you as I do."

"Oh, I know that."

"Then, if you know it, Jennie, don't force anything else on me when I'm doing my best not to think of it. Let me just love you as well as I know how till we do the things that are right in front of us. After that, if there's a reason why I should hand you over to Wray, or to anybody else, you can tell me, and I'll-"

Pansy's scrambling to attention and a sound on the stairs arrested his words as well as Jennie's rising tears.

"Momma's coming down," the girl whispered, hurriedly. "She wants to see you. Don't forget that you're not to mind anything she says."

To Bob, the moment was one of awed surprise, for the commanding, black-robed figure differed from all his preconceptions, as far as he had any, of Jennie's mother. Advancing rapidly into the room, she took his right hand in hers, laying her left on his head as if in benediction.

"So you're my Jennie's husband. I hope you're a good man, for you've found a good woman. Be loving to each other. The time is coming when love is all that will survive. Let me look at you."

He stood off, smiling, while she made her inspection.

"Love is all there is, anyhow, don't you think, Mrs. Follett?"

"Yes; but it gets no chance in this world."

"Or it is the only thing that does get a chance?"

"It may be the only thing that does get a chance, but that chance is small. There's no hope for the world. Don't think there is, because you'll be disappointed. Each time your disappointment is worse than the last, till you end in despair."

It was the strain Jennie felt obliged to interrupt.

"Momma, Mr. Collingham is going to see Teddy. Don't you want him to take a message?"

"Only the message I've given him myself-that it's only a little way over, and that one of two things must happen then. It will either be sleep, in which nothing will matter, or it will be life, in which he'll be free-understood-supported-instead of being beaten and crushed and mangled, as everyone is here. Tell him that."

He felt it his duty to be cheerier.

"On the other hand, we may get him off; or if we can't get him off altogether-"

"What good would that do-your getting him off? You'd be throwing him back again on a world that doesn't want him."

"Oh, but surely the world _does_-"

"Yes; the world does-I'm wrong-it does to the same extent that it wanted his father-to give it every ounce of his strength with a pittance for his pay-to spend and be spent till he's good for nothing more-and then to be thrown aside to starve. It's possible that even now Teddy would be willing to do this if they'd only let him live; but tell him it's not good enough. I've told him, and I don't think he believes me; but you're a man, and perhaps you can make him see it."

"Yes, momma dear, he'll do the best he can-"

"It won't be the best he can if he tries to keep him here. We've pa.s.sed on, my boy and I. Only our bodies are still on the earth, and that for just a little while. A year from now and we'll both be safe-so safe!-and yet you'd try to keep us in a world where men make a curse of everything."

But Teddy himself was less reconciled than his mother to bidding the world good-by. In proportion as his physical strength returned, the fate that had overtaken him became more and more preposterous. To suppose that he had of his own criminal intention stolen money and killed a man was little short of insane. A man had been killed by a pistol he held in his hand; he had taken money because the need was such that he couldn't help himself; but he, Teddy Follett, was neither a thief nor a murderer in any sense involving the exercise of will. He was sure of that. He declared it to himself again and again and again. It was all that gave him fighting force, compelling him to insist, to a.s.sert himself, and to protest in season and out of season against being shut up in a cell.

The cell was seven feet long and four feet wide. Round the foot of the bunk and along the sides there was a s.p.a.ce of some twelve inches. At the foot there was the iron-ribbed door with a grating, and along the sides a slimy and viscous stone wall. Besides the bunk, a bucket, and a shelf there was nothing whatever in the way of furnishings. Under the bed he was privileged to keep the suitcase with his wardrobe, and on the shelf whatever his mother and sisters brought him in the way of food. By day, the only light was through the grating to the corridor; by night, a feeble electric bulb was extinguished at half past nine. The Brig being an ancient prison, and Teddy but one of a long, long line of murderers who had lain on this hard bed, vermin infested everything.

While Bob Collingham was on his way to him Teddy was in conversation with the chaplain. For this purpose, the door had been unlocked. The visitor leaned against the door post while the prisoner stood in the narrow s.p.a.ce between his bunk and the wall.

It was the Protestant chaplain, a tall, spare, sandy-haired man of some fifty-odd, whose yearning, spiritual face had, through long a.s.sociation with his flock, grown tired and disillusioned. Having sought this post from a genuine sympathy with outcast men, he suffered from their rejection. He was so sure of what would help them, and only one in a hundred ever wanted it. Even that one generally laughed at it when he got out of jail. After eighteen years of self-denying work, the worthy man was sadly pessimistic now as to prospects of reform.

For the minute he was trying to convince Teddy of the righteousness of punishment. He had been drawn to the boy partly because of his youth and good looks, but mainly on account of his callousness to his crime. He seemed to have no conscience, no notion of the difference between right and wrong. "A moral moron" was what he labeled him. The lack of ethical consciousness was the more astonishing because his antecedents had apparently been good.

"You see," he was pointing out, "you can't break the laws by which society protects itself and yet escape the moral and physical results."

But in his long, solitary hours Teddy had been thinking this out.

"Doesn't that depend upon the laws? If the law's wrong-"

"But who's to judge of that?"

"Isn't the citizen to judge of that?"

The parson smiled-his weary, spiritual smile.

"If the citizen was allowed to judge of that-"

"If he wasn't," Teddy broke in, with the impetuosity born of his beginning to think for himself, "if he wasn't, there'd be no such country as the United States. Most of the fireworks in American history are over the fine thing it is to beat the law to it when the law isn't just."

"Ah, but there's a distinction between individual action and great popular movements."

"Great popular movements must be made up of individual actions, mustn't they? If individuals didn't break the laws, each guy on his own account, you wouldn't get any popular movements at all."