Winter Evening Tales Part 14

"Did I not tell you to stop him?"

"Ef de Lord in heaven want him stopped, Ma.s.sa James, He'll send the messenger--Plato could not do it!"

"How did he go?"

"On de little brown mare--his own horse done broke all up."

"How much money did you give him?"

"Money, sar?"

"How much? Tell the truth."

"Four hundred dollars."

"That will do. Tell Ca.s.sie I want my breakfast."

At breakfast he glanced at Lulu's empty chair, but said nothing. In the house all was as if no great sin and sorrow had darkened its threshold and left a stain upon its hearthstone. The churning and cleaning was going on as usual. Only Ca.s.sie was quieter, and Lulu lay, white and motionless, in the little vine-shaded room that looked too cool and pretty for grief to enter. The unhappy father sat still all day, pondering many things that he had not before thought of. Every footfall made his heart turn sick, but the night came, and there was no further bad news.

On the second day he went into Lulu's room, hoping to say a word of comfort to her. She listened apathetically, and turned her face to the wall with a great sob. He began to feel some irritation in the atmosphere of misery which surrounded him. It was very hard to be made so wretched for another's sin. The thought in an instant became a reproach. Was he altogether innocent? The second and third days pa.s.sed; he began to be sure then that David must have reached a point beyond the probability of pursuit.

On the fourth day he went to the cotton field. He visited the overseer's house, he spent the day in going over accounts and making estimates. He tried to forget that _something_ had happened which made life appear a different thing. In the grey, chill, misty evening he returned home. The negroes were filing down the long lane before him, each bearing their last basket of cotton--all of them silent, depressed with their weariness, and intensely sensitive to the melancholy influence of the autumn twilight.

Lorimer did not care to pa.s.s them. He saw them, one by one, leave their cotton at the ginhouse, and trail despondingly off to their cabins. Then he rode slowly up to his own door. A man sat on the verandah smoking. At the sight of him his heart fell fathoms deep.

"Good evening." He tried to give his voice a cheerful welcoming sound, but he could not do it; and the visitor's att.i.tude was not encouraging.

"Good evening, Lorimer. I'm right sorry to tell you that you will be wanted on some unpleasant business very early to-morrow morning."

He tried to answer, but utterly failed; his tongue was as dumb as his soul was heavy. He only drew a chair forward and sat down.

"Fact is your son is in a tighter place than any man would care for. I brought him up to Sheriff Gillelands' this afternoon. Perhaps he can make it out a case of 'justifiable homicide'--hope he can. He's about as likely a young man as I ever saw."

Still no answer.

"Well, Lorimer, I think you're right. Talking won't help things, and may make them a sight worse. You'll be over to Judge Lepperts' in the morning?--say about ten o'clock."

"Yes. Will you have some supper?"

"No; this is not hungry work. My pipe is more satisfactory under the circ.u.mstances. I'll have to saddle up, too. There's others to see yet.

Is there any one particular you'd like on the jury?"

"No. You must do your duty, Sheriff."

He heard him gallop away, and stood still, clasping and unclasping his hands in a maze of anguish. David at Sheriff Gillelands'! David to be tried for murder in the morning! What could he do? If David had not confessed to the shooting of Whaley, would he be compelled to give his evidence? Surely, conscience would not require so hard a duty of him.

At length he determined to go and see David before he decided upon the course he ought to take. The sheriff's was only about three miles distant. He rode over there at once. His son, with travel-stained clothes and blood-shot hopeless eyes, looked up to see him enter. His heart was full of a great love, but it was wronged, even at that hour, by an irritation that would first and foremost a.s.sert itself. Instead of saying, "My dear, dear lad!" the lament which was in his heart, he said, "So this is the end of it, David?"

"Yes. It is the end."

"You ought not to have run away."

"No. I ought to have let you surrender me to justice; that would have put you all right."

"I wasna thinking o' that. A man flying from justice is condemned by the act."

"It would have made no matter. There is only one verdict and one end possible."

"Have you then confessed the murder?"

He awaited the answer in an agony. It came with a terrible distinctness.

"Whaley lived thirty hours. He told. His brother-in-law has gone on with the cattle. Four of the drivers are come back as witnesses. They are in the house."

"But you have not yourself confessed?"

"Yes. I told Sheriff Gillelands I shot the man. If I had not done so you would; I knew that. I have at least spared you the pain and shame of denouncing your own son!"

"Oh, David, David! I would not. My dear lad, I would not! I would hae gane to the end o' the world first. Why didna you trust me?"

"How could I, father?"

He let the words drop wearily, and covered his face with his hands.

After a pause, he said, "Poor Lulu! Don't tell her if you can help it, until--all is over. How glad I am this day that my mother is dead!"

The wretched father could endure the scene no longer. He went into the outer room to find out what hope of escape remained for his son. The sheriff was full of pity, and entered readily into a discussion of David's chances. But he was obliged to point out that they were extremely small. The jury and the judge were all alike cattle men; their sympathies were positively against everything likely to weaken the discipline necessary in carrying large herds of cattle safely across the continent. In the moment of extremest danger, David had not only refused a.s.sistance, but had shot his employer.

"He called him a coward, and you'll admit that's a vera aggravating name."

The sheriff readily admitted that under any ordinary circ.u.mstances in Texas that epithet would justify a murder; "but," he added, "most any Texan would say he was a coward to stand still and see eight thousand head of cattle on the stampede. You'll excuse me, Lorimer, I'd say so myself."

He went home again and shut himself in his room to think. But after many hours, he was just as far as ever from any coherent decision. Justice!

Justice! Justice! The whole current of his spiritual and mental const.i.tution ran that road. Blood for blood; a life for a life; it was meet and right, and he acknowledged it with bleeding heart and streaming eyes. But, clear and distinct above the tumult of this current, he heard something which made him cry out with an equally unhappy father of old, "Oh, Absalom! My son, my son Absalom!"

Then came the accuser and boldly told him that he had neglected his duty, and driven his son into the way of sin and death; and that the seeds sown in domestic bickering and unkindness had only brought forth their natural fruit. The scales fell from his eyes; all the past became clear to him. His own righteousness was dreadful in his sight. He cried out with his whole soul, "G.o.d be merciful! G.o.d be merciful!"

The darkest despairs are the most silent. All the night long he was only able to utter that one heartbroken cry for pity and help. At the earliest daylight he was with his son. He was amazed to find him calm, almost cheerful. "The worst is over father," he said. "I have done a great wrong; I acknowledge the justice of the punishment, and am willing to suffer it."

"But after death! Oh, David, David--afterward!"

"I shall dare to hope--for Christ also has died, the just for the unjust."

Then the father, with a solemn earnestness, spoke to his son of that eternity whose sh.o.r.es his feet were touching. At this hour he would shirk no truth; he would encourage no false hope. And David listened; for this side of his father's character he had always had great respect, and in those first hours of remorse following the murder, not the least part of his suffering had been the fearful looking forward to the Divine vengeance which he could never fly from. But there had been _One_ with him that night, _One_ who is not very far from us at any time; and though David had but tremblingly understood His voice, and almost feared to accept its comfort, he was in those desperate circ.u.mstances when men cannot reason and philosophize, when nothing remains for them but to believe.

"Dinna get by the truth, my dear lad; you hae committed a great sin, there is nae doubt o' that."

"But G.o.d's mercy, I trust, is greater."

"And you hae nothing to bring him from a' the years o' your life! Oh, David, David!"