Chapter 9

"I can work fourteen hours a day, mother, and live upon pork and beans, as well as the next man." He stood to his full height, displaying to the pale woman the outlines of massive muscular development. His hands were huge and callous, their grip the terror of his mates after a husking bee. He had measured his great strength but once; that was in the dead of winter, with the snow drifted five feet deep between the barn and the house. A heifer, well grown, had been taken sick, and needed warmth for recovery. Isaac swung the sick beast over his shoulders, holding its legs two in each hand before his head, and strode through the storm, subduing the battling snow with as much ease as he did the bellowing calf. His mother met him at the woodshed door. Behind the gladiator rose the forbidding background of a stark mountain range; but to her astonished and unfocussed sight, her son seemed greater than the mountain, and more compelling than its peaks. From that hour his whisper was her law; and from that day--for how could the adoring mother help telling her quarterly caller all about the heifer?--Isaac had no more wrestling matches in the valley.

August burned into September, and September, triumphant in her procession of royal colors, marched into October, the month of months. Mrs. Masters had already completed her pathetic preparations for her son's departure. There, in the family carpet-bag, which his father had carried with him on his annual trip to Portland, were stowed a half dozen pairs of well-darned woollen stockings, the few decent shirts that Isaac had left, his winter flannels, which had already served six years, his comb and brush, a hand mirror that had been one of his mother's wedding presents, likewise a couple of towels that had formed a part of her self-made trousseau; and we must not forget the neckties that Abbie had sewed from remnants of her dresses, and which Isaac naïvely considered masterpieces of the haberdasher's art.

At the mouth of the deep bag Mrs. Masters tucked a Bible which fifty years ago had been presented to her husband by his Sunday-school teacher as a prize for regular attendance. This inscription was written in a wavering hand upon the blank page:

"_In the eighth year of the reign of Josiah, while he was yet young, he began to seek after the God of David his father_.-- 2 Chron. xxxiv. 3."

"For," said Mrs. Masters softly to Abbie, after she had read the inscription aloud, and had patted the book affectionately, "this is the first prize my Josiah ever had, an' the Lord knows he thought more on it than he did of Lucy, his mare. An' if there should happen any accident to Isaac, they'd find by opening of his bag that ef he was alone in a far country he was a Christian, nor ashamed of it, neither."

Isaac had only money enough saved up to take him as far as Boston, and to board him in the cheapest way for several days.

"If I can't work," he said proudly, straightening to his full height, "no one can!"

It is just such country lads as this--strong, self-reliant, religious--who, when poverty has projected them out of her granite mountains upon granite pavements, each as hard and bleak as the other, by massive determination have conquered a predestined success.

Too soon, for those who were to be left behind, the day of separation came. Mrs. Masters's haggard face and Abbie's red eyes told of unuttered misery.

But Isaac did not notice these signs of distress. He was absorbed in his future. The last bustle was over, the last breakfast gulped down amid forced smiles and ready tears, the last button sewed on at the last moment; and now Mrs. Masters's lunch of mince pie, apples, and doughnuts was tenderly tucked into the jaws of the carpet-bag; thereby disturbing a love letter that Abbie had hidden there. A young neighbor had volunteered to drive Isaac down the mountain to the station.

"All aboard! Hurry up, Ike!" cried this young person, consulting his silver watch, and casting a look of mingled commiseration and envy upon the giant, locked in the arms of the two women, who hardly reached to the second button of his coat. Isaac caught the glance, and started to tear himself away. But his mother laid her gnarled hand gently upon his arm, and led him into the unused parlor.

"Just a minute, Abbie dear, I want to be alone with my boy," she waved the girl back. "Then you can have him last. It's my right an' your'n!"

She closed the door, and led him under the crayon portrait of his father, framed in immortelles. She raised her arms, and he stooped that they might clasp about his neck.

"Isaac," she said hoarsely, "I ain't no longer young nor very strong. Remember 'fore you go away from the farm that you're the son of an honest man, an' a pious woman, and"--dropping with great solemnity into scriptural language--"I beseech you, my son, not to disgrace your godly name."

With partings like this the primitive Christians must have sent their sons into the whirlwind of the world.

Then Isaac broke down for the first time, and with the tears streaming, he lifted his mother bodily in his arms, and promised her, and kissed her. "Mother trusts you, Ikey," was all she could say. But his time had come. There was a crunching of wheels.

"Now go to Abbie. Leave me here! Good-by; you have always been a good boy, dear." Mrs. Masters's voice sank into a whisper; the strong man, moved as he was, could not comprehend her exhaustion.

Abbie was waiting for him at the door, and he went to her. The impatient wagon had gone down the road. They were to cut through the pasture, and meet it at the brook. There they were to part.

They clasped hands. Isaac turned. A gaunt, gray face, broken, helpless, hopeless, peered out beneath the green paper shade of the parlor window. If he had known--a doubt crossed his brain, but the girl twitched his hand, and the cloud scattered. Down the hill they ran, down, until the brook was reached. There they stood, panting, breathless, listening. There were only a few minutes left, and they hid behind an oak tree and clasped.

* * * * *

It was long after dark when the train came to its halt in its vaulted terminus. It was due at seven, but an excursion on the road delayed it until after nine. However, this did not disconcert Isaac Masters. He hurried out to the front of the station, where the row of herdics greeted him savagely. Carrying his father's old carpet-bag, he looked from his faded hat to his broad toes the ideal country bumpkin; yet his head was not turned by the rumbling of the pavements, the whiz of the electrics, the blaze of the arc lights, nor by the hectic inhalations that seem to comprehend all the human restlessness of a city just before it retires to sleep. His breath came faster, and his great chest rose and fell; these were the only indications of acclimation. Isaac had started from home absolutely without any "pull" or introduction but his own willingness to work. Utterly ignorant of the city, and knowing no one in it, on the way down in the train he had marked out a line of conduct from which he determined not to be swerved.

To the mountain mind the policeman becomes the embodiment of a righteously executed law. At home, their only constable was one of the most respected men in the community. Isaac argued from experience--and how else should he? This was his syllogism:

A policeman is the most respectable of men in my town.

This man before me is a policeman.

Therefore he must be the most upright man in the city. I will go to him for advice.

The city casuist might have smiled at the major premise--and laughed at the ingenuous conclusion. Yet if brass buttons, a cork hat and a "billy" are the emblems of guardianship and probity, the country boy has the right argument on his side, and the casuist none at all.

It never occurred to Isaac that the policeman could either make a mistake of judgment, or meditate one. Therefore he approached the guardian of the peace confidently.

This gentleman, who had noticed the traveller as soon as he had emerged from the depot, awaited his approach with becoming dignity. The patronage and disdain that the metropolis feels for the hamlet were in his air.

"Excuse me, sir--I want to ask you--" began Isaac, after a proper obeisance.

"Move on, will yer!"

"But I wanted to ask you--"

"Phwat are ye blockin' up the road fur, young man?"

"I want you to help me!"

"The ---- you do!" He looked about ferociously. "Look here, sonny, if ye don't move along, an' have plenty of shtyle about it, I'll help ye to the lock-up--so help me--!"

Isaac looked down upon the man, whom he could have crushed with one swoop of his hands. The consternation of his first broken ideal possessed his heart. With a deadly pallor upon his face, he hurried up the clanging street, and the coarse laughter of brutes tingled in his ears. He swallowed this rough inhospitality, which is the hemlock that poisons country faith. Take from the pavement enough dust to cover the point of a penknife, and insert it in the arm of a child, and in a week it will be dead with tetanus. After this first encounter with the protectors of the people, Isaac felt as if his soul had been bedaubed with mud. He experienced a contracting tetanus of the heart. Had he not planned all the lonesome day to cast himself upon the kindness of the first policeman whom he saw? What other guide or protector was there left for him in the strange city? The rebuff which he had received half annihilated his intelligence.

Isaac could no more put up at the great hotel he saw on his right than the majority of us can take a trip to Japan. Isaac hurried on. Why did he leave home? The fear of a great city is more teasing than the terror of a wilderness or of a desert. There the trees or the rocks or the sand befriends you. But in the city the penniless stranger has no part in people or home or doorsteps. Every one's heart is against him. It is the anguish of hunger amid plenty, the rattling of thirst amid rivers of wine, the serration of loneliness amid humanity thicker than barnacles upon a wharf pile. Such a terror--not of cowardice, but of friendlessness--seized Isaac Masters, and a foreboding that he might possibly fail after all made his spine tingle. Still he drove on. He had passed through the main street--or across it--he did not know--until the electric lights cast dim shadows, until stately banks had given way to unkempt brick fronts, until the glittering bar-rooms had been exchanged for vulgar saloons--until--

Masters came to a sudden halt, and dropping his bag, uttered a loud cry. The curtained door of a grog-shop opened upon him. A hatless man dashed out, swearing horribly, and all but fell into Isaac's arms. With a cry of terror the runner dodged the pedestrian, and bolted down the street. Not twenty feet behind him bounded his pursuer.

By this time the country boy had slipped into the shadow of the building, where he could see without being seen. In that moment Isaac caught sight of a dazed group of men within, and the profile of the pursuer against the hot light of the saloon. He saw a brute holding a pistol in his out-stretched hand. Before Isaac understood the situation, the weapon shot out two flames and two staccato reports. These were followed by the intense silence which is like the darkness upon the heels of lightning.

Isaac's eyes were now strained upon the creature who was shot. He saw the man stagger, throw up his hands, and fall. He heard a groan. At that time the murderer with the smoking revolver was not more than ten paces away. As he fired, he had stopped. When he saw his victim fall, he gave a hoarse laugh.

By this time the lights in the saloon were put out, and its occupants had fled. The rustle of human buzzards flocking to the tragedy had begun. A motion that the murderer made to escape aroused the New Hampshire boy to a fierce sense of justice. A few bounds brought him by the side of the ruffian, who looked upon him with astonishment, and then with inflamed fear. Isaac furiously struck the pointed pistol to the pavement, and grasped the fellow's waist. Then he knew that he had almost met his match. Isaac held his opponent's left arm by the wrist, and tightened the vise. The murderer held the boy around his neck with a contracting grip such as only a prize-fighter understands. Neither spoke a word. It was power--power against skill.

There was a crash and a cry and a fall. But not until Isaac knew that the man under him was helpless did he utter a sound. Then he called: "Police! Police!"

The answer was a blinding blow upon the crown of his head. Then, before his head swam away into unconsciousness, he felt a strange thing happen to his wrists.

* * * * *

The first lieutenant, the captain, and the superintendent are different beings from the officer of the street, who has no gilt stripes upon his sleeves. The one, having passed through all grades, is supposed to have been chosen not only because of his fidelity and bravery, but because of his discriminating gentleness or gentlemanliness. The other, a private of the force, often a foreigner, with foreign instincts, and eager for promotion (that is, he means to make as many arrests as possible), confuses the difference between rudeness and authority, brutality and law. By the time he is a sergeant sense has been schooled into him, and he ought to know better.

The superintendent looked at Isaac steadily and not unkindly, while he listened to the officer's story.

"Off with those bracelets!" he said, sternly.

Isaac Masters regarded the superintendent gratefully. For the first time since he had been rebuffed by the station policeman, his natural expression of trust returned to his face.

"I'll forgive him," said the boy of a simple, Christian education. "It was dark--and he made a mistake." Isaac wiped the clotted blood from his cheeks. "Can I go now?"

Even a less experienced man than the white-haired superintendent would have known that the young man before him could no more have committed a crime or told an untruth than an oak. The policeman who had clubbed him, perhaps with the best intentions in the world, hung his head.

"Let me hear your story first." The superior officer spoke in his most fatherly tones. He really pitied the country lad.

"What is your name? Where do you come from? How did you get there? Tell me all about it. Here, sergeant, get him a glass of water, first."

"Perhaps a little whiskey would do him good," suggested a night-hawk who had just opened the door of the reporters' room. Blood acts terribly upon even the most stolid imagination. Beneath that red-streaked mask it needed all the experience of the superintendent to recognize the innocence of a juvenile heart. As Isaac in indignant refusal turned his disfigured head upon the youthful representative of an aged paper, he seemed to the thoughtless reporter the incarnation of a wounded beast. The young fellow opened the door, and beckoned his mates in to see the new show that was enacting before them. It is only fair to say that it is due to the modern insanity of the press for prying into private affairs that the worst phase of the tragedy I am relating came to pass.

Isaac Masters told his story eagerly and simply.

"I have done nothing to be arrested for," he ended, looking at the superintendent with his round, honest eyes. "I only did my duty as anybody else would. Now let me go. Tell me, Mr. Officer, where I can get a decent night's lodging, for I am going home to-morrow. I've had enough of this city. I want to go home!"

Something like a sob sounded in the throat of the huge boy as he came to this pathetic end. Every man in the station, from the most hardened observer of crime to the youngest reporter of misery, was moved. Isaac himself, still dizzy from the effects of the blow, nauseated by the prison smell, the indescribable odor of crime which no disinfectants can overcome, confounded by the surroundings into which he had been cast, and trembling with the nameless apprehension that all honest people feel when drawn into the arms of the law, swayed and swooned again.

The sergeant and the reporters (for they were not without kind hearts) busied themselves with bringing him to. From an opposite bench the murderer lowered, between scowls of pain, upon the man who had crushed him. There had been revealed to him a simplicity of soul residing in a body of iron. He saw that the country lad had fainted, not from physical weakness, but because of mental anguish. Such an apparent disparity between mind and body had not been brought to the saloon-keeper's experience before.

"He is the only witness, you say, officer?" inquired the chief. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, sorr!"

"We'll have to hold him, then. It's a great pity. I don't suppose he could get a ten-dollar bail." The superintendent shook his gray head thoughtfully. His subordinates did the same, with an exaggerated air of distress.

"Where am I? Oh!" What horror in that exhalation, as Isaac realized the place he was in! He staggered to his feet.

"Give me my bag, quick!" he exclaimed. "I will go."

"I'm afraid you can't go yet." The superintendent spoke as if he hated to do his duty.

"Not go? Why not? You have no right to hold an innocent man!"

"In cases of assault and murder, the witnesses must be held until they can furnish bail. That is the law." The white-haired man hurried his explanation, as if he were ashamed of it.

"I will come back."

The officer shook his head.

"I give you my word I will." Isaac clasped the rail pleadingly.

"I'll have to lock you up to-night; the judge will settle the amount of your bail to-morrow."

"Lock me up? I tell you I have no friends here! How can I get bail? Where will you put me?"

"Show him his cell," replied the chief to his sergeant.

"Come along," said the policeman kindly. "All witnesses are treated that way. We'll give you the most comfortable quarters we've got."

He took Isaac by the arm after the professional manner. The young man flung off the touch. For an instant his eyes swept the station menacingly. What if he should exert his strength! There were two--three--four officers in the room. He might even overpower these, and dash for liberty. He saw the livid reflection of electric lights through the windows. Unconsciously he contracted his sinews, and tightened his muscles until they were rigid. Then the hopelessness of his position burst upon him like a red strontian fire. He felt blasted by his disgrace.

"What are you doing to me?" he cried out. "Put me in prison? My God! This will kill my mother!"

The next morning at ten o'clock Tom Muldoon was released on ten thousand dollars bail. The surety was promptly furnished by the alderman of the--th Ward. Muldoon was to present himself before the grand jury, which met the first Monday in each month. As this was the beginning of the month, his appearance could not be required for three weeks at least, and by mutual agreement of the district attorney and the counsel for the defendant, action might be put off for one or even for two months more, pending the recovery or eventual death of the assaulted. This would give the saloon-keeper plenty of time for the two ribs that Isaac Masters had crushed, to mend!

There are sensitive men and women who would go insane after spending an innocent night in a cell. In the dryest, the largest, the best of them there is everything to debase the manhood and nauseate the soul. The tin cup on the grated window-sill, half-filled with soup which the last occupant left; the cot to the right of the hopeless door, made of two boards and one straw mattress; and that necessity which is the nameless horror of such a narrow incarceration--that which suffocates and poisons; then the flickering jet up the concrete corridor, casting such fitful shadows by the prisoner's side that he starts from his cot in terror to touch the phantoms lest they be real; the alternate waves of choking heat and harrowing cold; the hammering of the steam-pipes; the curses, the groans, and the eruptive breathing of the sleeping and the drunken; the thoughts of home, and friends, and irreparable disgrace; the feeble hope that, after all, the family will not hear of this so far away; and the despair because they will--mad visions of suicide; blasphemy, repentant tears and prayers, each chasing the other amid the persistent thought that all things are impotent but freedom. Oh, what a night! What a night!

There are souls that have existed five, ten years under the courtine of Catharine in the Petropavlovskaya Fortress--drugged, tortured, at last killed like rats in a hole. All the while the maledict banner of the Romanoffs writhes above them. What has been the power to keep alive thousands of prisoners in those bastions, beyond the natural endurance of the flesh? The glory of principle.

No wonder that a ghastly face and haggard eyes and wavering steps followed the keeper to the American court-room the next morning; for nothing could be tortured into a principle to stimulate Isaac's courage. It is easy to die for right, but not for wrong.

There were three short flights of iron that led past tiers of cells, through the tombs, into the prisoner's dock. Isaac dully remembered the huge coils of steam-pipe that curled up the side of the wall. He thought of pythons. As he passed by, the prisoners awaiting sentence held the rods of their doors in their hands, like monkeys, and swore, and laughed, and shot questions at the keeper as he passed along.

"Have you no friends in the city?" proceeded the judge, after he had examined the witness.

Isaac shook his head disconsolately. "I have about five dollars; that is all, and my bag--and, sir, my character."

"Then I am afraid I shall have to hold you over in default of bail until the trial." The judge nodded to the sheriff to bring on the next case.

"Where are you taking me?"

"To the City Jail," answered the sheriff curtly. "Come along!" With a mighty effort Isaac wrenched himself loose, and strode to the bar.

"Judge!" he cried. "Judge, you wouldn't do that! Let me go! I will come back on the trial. Look at me, Judge! What have I done? Why should I be sent to prison? I am an honest man!"

But the judge was used to such scenes, and he turned his head wearily away.

"The law requires the government to hold the witness in default of bail, in cases of capital crime." The judge was a kind man, and he tried to do a kind act by explaining the subtle process of the law again to the lad. When he had done this, he nodded. And now the men approached Isaac to remove him, by force if necessary. But the New Hampshire boy stood before the bar of justice stolidly. His eyes wandered aimlessly, and his lips muttered. Paralysis swept near him at that instant.

"Am--I--imprisoned because I am friendless and poor? Is this your law?"

The judge shrugged his shoulders, but many in the court-room felt uncomfortable.

"Then," spoke Isaac Masters, rising to his greatest height, and uplifting his hand as if to call God to witness, "if this is law--damn your law!" It was his first and last oath. Every man in the room started to his feet at the utterance of that supreme legal blasphemy. But the judge was silent. What sentence might he not inflict for such contempt of court? What sentence could he? The witness had no money, wherewith to be fined, and he was going to prison at any rate. The judge was great enough to put himself in Isaac's place. He stroked his beard meditatively.

"Remove the witness," he said. This was sentence enough. Although two officers advanced cautiously, as if prepared for a tussle, a babe might have led the giant unto the confines of Hades by the pressure of its little finger. For Isaac wept.