Woven with the Ship Part 26

Indeed, the "Major" was not the least curious object in the collection. Few people knew that the t.i.tle represented gallant and youthful soldiering in Rebellion days before he shrivelled and dried up in the musty little shop. When, therefore, he was found dead among his raffle of goods, about half after seven on a summer evening, with his brains brutally beaten out by a hammer, which lay by his side, the greatest excitement was manifested everywhere. That a man should be murdered in a store on one of the main thoroughfares of the city at that hour and in that way; that the murderer should make his escape by the front door, which was left open, were in themselves sufficiently remarkable facts to engage widespread attention.

Rewards were offered by the city government; the metropolitan police force, supplemented by the best detectives that could be imported, who were paid by private subscription, worked upon the case in vain. No clew presented itself, nothing whatever was discovered. The contents of the shop were finally sold at auction and the store was closed. The estate, which was surprisingly small, contrary to the general opinion,--which, in fact, consisted merely of the proceeds of the sale of the goods,--was administered in the interests of some distant connections, and the whole affair after a short time was practically forgotten. Yet somewhere on the earth a man wandered with the guilt of murder heavy on his soul.

When it was announced in the advertis.e.m.e.nts that Sir Henry Irving, the great English actor, was to play _The Bells_ on Thursday night, society--and those not within the charmed circle who could sc.r.a.pe together the unusual price demanded by the elaborate nature of Sir Henry's staging--antic.i.p.ated a great intellectual treat. To see the character of Matthias interpreted by such a master of the tragic art could hardly be called entertaining, of course, yet anything which takes us out of the humdrum routine of every-day life and quickens the blood that beats with such commonplace sluggishness ordinarily is most desirable. It is easy, therefore, to understand the avidity with which the opportunity for paying the unusual price for being shocked and terrified was welcomed.

The play, with its d.a.m.nable iteration of chiming sleigh-bells and its awful portrayal of the struggles of a crime-stained human soul against diabolic memories, proceeded with that wonderful smoothness and effectiveness for which Sir Henry's productions were famous. After the short intermission at the close of the second act, the audience, most of whom were familiar with the story, settled themselves with delicious thrills of foreboding antic.i.p.ation to witness the dreadful and harrowing denouement in which the murderer's dream--that the crime of years is at last exposed and the brand of guilt is fixed upon his honored brow--is exhibited on the stage in all its terrific realism.

The house, including the stage, was totally dark. A weird, ghastly beam of light thrown from the wings fell fitfully upon the face of Sir Henry,--no, of Matthias himself. The great actor's ident.i.ty was lost, merged, forgotten in the character he portrayed. Not another thing could be perceived in the theatre. The gaze of every man and woman and child in that vast a.s.semblage was concentrated upon that beautiful, mobile, terrible face. The silence with which the audience listened to that piercing, shuddering voice out of the darkness was oppressive.

Could one's attention have been distracted from that stage he might have caught the quickening intake of deep breaths, or here and there marked the low, quivering sighs with which nervous people, under the influence of that terrible portrayal of the agony of remorse and apprehension at detected murder, trembled, watched, and waited.

Yet there was nothing actually to be seen in the opera-house but the face of the actor, or sometimes a white, ghastly hand and a dim, dark suggestion of a body writhing in mortal torture, so keen as almost to pa.s.s belief, in a _tour de force_ of unwilling confession. The detachment was perfect, the illusion was complete; there before them was a soul in judgment.

As the man was forced, under the influence of a higher power than his own, to describe the murder, the base violation of hospitality, the blow of the axe that killed a guest, by which fifteen years before he had laid the foundation of his fortune; as he was constrained to act again before his judges in hypnotic trance the awful happenings of the tragedy of that Christmas Eve, of which none had suspected him; and when, on being released from the spell, his confession was read to him by the court, and the realization came to him that the fabric of respectability which he had carefully created upon the shifting sand of murder had crashed into nothing,--who, that has seen it, or heard it, will ever forget the fearful anguish and despair of that wrecked soul?

As Matthias fell prostrate at the feet of the judges, moaning in utter desolation and abandonment, the appalling stillness was suddenly broken, and this time the sound came not from the stage. Out of the darkness of the auditorium a thin, high voice, fraught with a note of torture more real and intense, if possible, than that which the marvellous skill of the actor had produced, was hurled into the great vault of the theatre.

"No, no," it cried; "you are wrong. It was a hammer!"

The surprise of the audience for the moment held them still, while the voice shrieked out in the darkness,--

"It is enough! I'll confess. Guilty, oh, my G.o.d, guilty! It was I! The murder--light, for G.o.d's sake, light!"

A woman screamed suddenly. People rose to their feet. One of those strange, swaying movements which bespeak a panic ran through the crowd. Matthias on the stage rose instantly, faced about, and walked toward the dark footlights, a genuine horror in his soul this time, for no human voice that he had ever heard had carried such mortal pain as that which had just spoken. The theatre was filled with a babel of voices. Confused shouts and cries came from all sides.

"Lights, lights!"

"What is it?"

"Go on with the performance!"

At that instant the lights were turned up. There, in the middle aisle, a few rows from the orchestra rail, a tall, thin man, his haggard face white with emotion, his eyes staring, his teeth clinched 'neath bloodless lips, stood swaying unsteadily to and fro. His hands uplifted as if to ward off a blow, he stood utterly oblivious of everything but Matthias. From the chair beside him a woman with a face scarcely less white, in which were mingled incredulity, surprise, and horror, reached her arms up to him as if to save him.

"I can't stand it any longer!" cried the man, staring up at Matthias.

"You've done it. I'll confess all! It has torn me to pieces!" he screamed, clutching at his throat. "The Major--I beat him to death with his hammer, like you did, for his money. I took it from his person. I knew it was there. I was his friend, his only friend. My G.o.d! There was no place to burn his body. He's always at my feet. He's staring at me now by you on the stage!"

Sir Henry shrank away involuntarily as the man went on.

"Pity, pity!" he wailed, staggering, stumbling forward, falling upon his knees nearer to Sir Henry. "Mercy!" he whispered at last, yet with such distinctness that they heard him in every corner of the theatre.

He knelt with his hands outstretched toward the stage, waiting for reprieve, sentence, condemnation,--G.o.d knows what.

The audience stared likewise with suspended hearts from the great but mimic figure of murder on one side of the footlights to the greater and real figure of murder upon the other. As they gazed the man wavered forward again, sank lower, his hands fell, but before he collapsed completely, an officer of the law, the first to recover his wits in the presence of the catastrophe, ran down the aisle and pounced upon him. Grasping his shoulder, he cried,--

"You're my prisoner. I arrest you!"

"Too late," whispered the man; "I'm--going--going--to plead--in another--court."

He pitched forward and fell on his face--dead. And a woman, dry-eyed with horror, old love surviving honor, respect, righteousness, knelt by his side, took his head in her arms, and strove to kiss away from his brow the mark of Cain.

So the mystery of the Major's murder was solved at last, and Sir Henry, as he thought it over in his chamber that night, realized that he had received the greatest tribute that mortal man could pay to his acting. His art had been so perfect--he had appeared the incarnation of terror, remorse, and retribution--that to that struggling soul he had been as the voice of conscience,--nay, as the very voice of G.o.d.

For the man had actually given way, broken down, and confessed a secret crime under the mighty spell of his acting, and, as the criminal in the play, had died in the confession!

OUT OF THE WEST

"The sun sets fair in that Western land, Romance rides over the plains; There hearts are gay at the close of day,-- Man's duty's done, G.o.d reigns."

WARREN GILES

IN OKLAHOMA

AN IDYL OF THE PRAIRIE IN THREE FLIGHTS

"The sun lay dying in the west, The fresh breeze fanned my brow, I rode the steed I loved the best-- Would I were riding now."

I.--THE FIRST FLIGHT

Most written stories end with a wedding, actual or prospective; but this story, like most stories in real life, begins with one. The little old stone church in Manhattan, Kansas, was crowded to the doors one June afternoon. The gray-haired President, the younger men and women of the faculty, and a small sprinkling of the towns-people were there; but the great ma.s.s of the congregation was made up of the students of the State Agricultural College, which was situated on a gentle hill just outside the town. It was Graduation Day, and the day on which Sue Belle Seville and Samuel Maxwell had elected to get married.

Samuel was a Kansas boy, Sue Belle a Kentucky girl. They were both orphans and both graduates from the college that day in the same cla.s.s: Samuel from the agricultural and mechanical department, Sue Belle from the housekeeping, culinary, domestic sciences, and other of the many departments feminine. Maxwell was a manly, energetic, capable fellow, a good student, and a young man who, given an equal chance, should make a fine farmer. On that day he was the envy of all the young men of marriageable age in the college.

His bride to be, while she seemed made for better things than the ineffably monotonous drudgery of an ordinary farmer's wife, was nevertheless skilled enough, capable enough, resolute enough, to master her lot and be happy in it whatever it might be. She was a handsome girl, tall, straight, strong, black-haired, blue-eyed, with the healthiest whiteness in her face that one could imagine.

The brief wedding ceremony was soon over. Old Dr. Fairman, the President, gave the bride away in his usual courtly and distinguished manner, and as the village organist played the wedding-march on the sweet-toned old organ, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Maxwell pa.s.sed out of the church, followed by all of the congregation. At the end of the long cinder foot-path extending from the church-door under the double row of trees to the street stood a brand-new Studebaker wagon filled with household goods. Two stout, well-conditioned horses were harnessed to it, while two others, a good mare and a handsome young horse, a three-year-old colt, were fastened to the tail-board by long hitching-straps. The wagon had been transformed by a canvas canopy over the bed into what was popularly known as a "prairie schooner."

The new canvas was white as snow in the sunlight.

Maxwell handed his wife to the seat on the front, pitched quarters to the negro boys who had been holding the horses' heads, gathered up the reins, and, amid a storm of cheers and a shower of rice--especially appropriate to an agricultural college, by the way--and other manifestations of joy and delight, drove away on the wedding journey.

The watchers followed with their eyes the wagon lumbering slowly down the main street until it crossed the bridge over the Kansas River and disappeared among the hills to the southward.

After settling the expenses of their college course and paying for their outfit, the two young people found themselves in possession of some two thousand dollars between them; more than enough, they fancied, backed as it was--or should I say led?--by two stout hearts and by four strong young arms, to wrest a livelihood--nay, a fortune, perhaps--from the prairies of the West.

An old, old story, this. A pair of home-builders going out into a new land to conquer or die; to establish another outpost of civilization on the distant frontier, or to fail. A man and a woman who had taken their all in their hands to consecrate it by their toil to the service of humanity, and to stake their happiness on the success of their endeavor. True builders of the nation, they! Pickets they were, going ahead of the advance guard of the army of civilization's marchers, which, untold ages ago, started in some secluded nook in the far Orient, and, impelled by an irresistible desire for conquest, in successive waves of emigration, has at last compa.s.sed the globe, rolled around the world. Leaders, these two, of that mighty deluge of men and women for whom the sun of hope is ever rising,--but rising in the West.

Never was such a wedding journey. It was springtime in the most bountiful and fertile year that had come to the great State for a generation. The way of the lovers, as they plodded ever southward and westward, led them now past vast fields of yellowing wheat already beginning to ripen for the thresher. Sometimes they drove for miles through towering walls of broad-bladed, cool, green corn; sometimes the trail led them over the untilled, treeless prairies covered with tall, nodding sunflowers in all their gorgeous golden bloom,--blossoms which gave the State a name; and not infrequently their way would take them alongside a limpid river, in that happy season bank full from the frequent rains, where the winding road would be overhung by great trees.

They stopped at night at the different little towns through which their way pa.s.sed, and once in a while they enjoyed the hearty welcome of a lone farm-house. Sometimes they hired a negro boy to drive the wagon from one stopping-place to another, while they mounted the two led horses and galloped over the prairie. Samuel rode well, but to see Sue Belle on that spirited young steed of hers was to see the perfection of dashing horsemanship. An instinctive judge of horse-flesh, she had bought that three-year-old herself. He was a chestnut sorrel with a white blaze on his face, and white forefeet, as handsome and spirited as his mistress. In honor of her native State, she called him Kentucky.

As they progressed farther and farther southwestward the land became more open, the farm-houses were greater distances apart, cultivated fields less frequent, the towns were fewer in number and diminishing in size, the rivers grew smaller and smaller, and trees almost vanished from the landscape. Finally, away out in Cimarron County, where the railroad stopped and civilization ended, they reached their journey's end. Such a wedding-trip they had enjoyed, such a honeymoon they had spent!

They bought a bit of flower-decked prairie, a quarter section crossed in one corner by a little creek flowing southward until it joined a larger steam flowing into the Arkansas River. The chosen land mostly lay on the south side of a slight elevation from which they could survey the gra.s.s-mantled plains melting into the unbroken horizon miles and miles away. The country about was entirely uncultivated and had been mainly given over to cattle-raising; it was a dozen miles to the nearest house and fifteen to the town of Apache, the county-seat.