Part 5

And now the astonished old man in the witness box saw the whole court-room seem to move forward, people leaving their seats to peer; heard over and over the sheriff’s “Silence in the court!” and saw on the faces of the jury that passed the carved bit of wood from hand to hand the smiles of fathers and grandfathers who would like to take it home to the children.

But his relief was short-lived: Burton Evans had pounced on him.

The questions came thick and fast, after the old man had told the story of his movements that night. Cattle in the swamp? What cattle? Wasn’t he a little over-anxious about another man’s cattle--a man he owed rent to? (No objection from Colonel Donaldson.) Did he have owl’s eyes that he could find his way about on a pitch-black night? If his mission were an honest one, why didn’t he light a lantern? Was it his custom to draw back and hide from passers-by? Was it his custom not to acknowledge a friendly greeting in the road? Did he usually sleep as sound as he slept that night?

But old Jeff, buffeted about like an untrained boxer standing before a professional, managed somehow to keep on his feet, to stick to the truth, though the sweat stood out on his face, and his limp old hat was twisted into a rag, and the crowd and jury swam round and round before him.

Groggy, he came down at last, though not until the judge himself had interposed in his behalf, and not until the eyes of the jury were full of compassion, and not until from the front bench came the voice of a mother trying to quiet a sobbing child.

He sank down limp into his chair, to find Squire Kirby tugging at the coat-tails of Colonel Donaldson, who had risen, and whispering over and over, his voice full of respect now:

“Rest the case, Colonel! Rest the case, rest the case! You’ve brought out the Injun! You give Evans rope, an’ he’s hung hisself! Colonel Donaldson, Colonel Donaldson, give the case to the jury as quick as you kin!”

* * * * *

But the ancient lawyer regarded not at all the frantic whispers or the tugs at his coat-tails. Voice still dry and impersonal, he spoke to the judge:

“May it please Your Honor, I want Mr. Blainey put on the stand once more. I have just a few questions to ask him. There are some details which I overlooked. I am sure, sir, that a man of Mr. Blainey’s humane and just temperament will not mind going on the stand again. I am sure the state attorney can have no possible objections, sir. Mr. Blainey?”

Followed a brief excited conference between Blainey and Evans. Then, very pale, Blainey was in the witness chair, and Donaldson was standing very straight by his table, the afternoon sun streaming through one of the high gothic windows of the old courthouse, and shining full on his thin, hawk-like face.

“Mr. Blainey, what time did you leave the store that night?”

“I’ve answered that once,” said Blainey.

“Well, answer it again!”

“I said eleven.”

“Wasn’t it later than that?”

Blainey looked at Evans, who nodded, his lips compressed.

“Oh, it might have been half past.”

“Was it as late as twelve?”

“No--it was not!”

And now once more the sheriff shouted “Silence in the court!” For the old lawyer had advanced two quick steps toward the witness, and suddenly his voice, shrill and grating, rang out, while a thrill like an electric shock ran through the court-room.

“Wasn’t it two o’clock? Answer me, sir--wasn’t it two?... You do not answer. Very well. Answer me this: Did some friends of yours drive out to see you that night in a car? Did they park the car in the woods near your store? Did they bring with them some liquor and some cards and some chips? Did you have a game of poker in the basement of your store? Did all of you imbibe freely of that liquor in the course of the game? Did you, while under the influence of that liquor, throw lighted cigar and cigarette stubs on the floor of the basement of that store that was littered with packing of all sorts, and excelsior?”

Again Evans was on his feet, apoplectic with objections. But the old lawyer went on, before the judge could speak, his voice high-pitched and metallic, filling the excited court-room.

“Is it a fact, sir, that at two o’clock your friends took you home in that car? Is it a fact, sir, that before you reached that house you saw a glow in the sky? And that when these friends wanted to go back you said: ‘Let the damn store burn--it’s insured’?”

“Don’t answer those questions,” thundered Evans. “Your Honor, this man’s not on trial!”

“He will be!” cried the old lawyer, “for perjury in open court! I am _not_ surmising, Your Honor. I can prove the truth of everything I have implied, sir. I was fortunate enough to get hold of the number of that car. Through the number I traced the occupants. Happily for the good of our humanity, sir, there is always to be found among a group of young men, however wild, one who will tell the truth. Such a one is young John Duckett, who was in that car that night.” He turned to the court-room. “Mr. Court Crier--call John Duckett into court!”

* * * * *

At one side of the witness chair that sat high above the main court-room, and which was on a level with the judge’s seat, ran a railing. And now Frank Blainey, who had been growing whiter and whiter, turned sideways, his arm on this railing, and buried his face in his arm, his fingers clutching at his hair. With a cry, Mrs. Blainey sprang to her feet and started forward. The voice of the judge was clear and compelling.

“Keep your seat, madam. Stay where you are, the rest of you. This witness has not fainted. Mr. Crier, one minute. Do not call the other witness until I so instruct you. Mr. Blainey, here, seems to have something on his mind. Mr. Blainey?”

Blainey raised his face. The glance he shot at Donaldson was a bit wild, a bit vicious, too. His hair was all disheveled. He sat limp in his chair. The judge, turning toward him, went on.

“Mr. Blainey, if you have anything to say concerning the facts implied in Colonel Donaldson’s questions, you are at liberty to speak, sir. Otherwise this witness, Mr. Duckett, will be called. My advice to you, Mr. Blainey, is that you speak.”

The court-room was straining forward now; hundreds of tense faces were turned toward the witness chair, faces strained in the effort to hear the mumbling, halting, reluctant words.

“I--I-- Aw, it’s all true!”

“Sit up, Mr. Blainey!” commanded the judge. “Look at me, sir. You have perjured yourself in this court! That is a grave offense; but it is as nothing, sir, compared with the motive behind that perjury. In order to save your practices from exposure, you would have sent an old man to prison, probably for the remainder of his natural life. I have no words strong enough, sir, to express my abhorrence, and the abhorrence of all men, of what you’ve done! Are you listening, Mr. Blainey?”

Again the vicious glance around, followed by the bowed head, and a nod.

“But,” continued the judge, “the law puts in my hands the means of punishing you. By your own confession, you have committed perjury, and perjury is punished by a long jail sentence and a heavy fine. Combined, they will not be sufficient for your offense, but they will be enough, sir, to make you remember all the rest of your days--”

And now he stopped, for from his seat, face quivering, old Jeff had sprung to his feet.

“Jedge!” he cried. “Don’t send him to the pen, Jedge! Jedge, he’s Sam Blainey’s son!”

Compassionately the judge looked down at him where he stood beside the table, trembling; then he spoke:

“Sit down, old man. Frank Blainey, the man whom you have attempted so grievously to wrong pleads for you. And because of his plea, which I can do nothing but honor and accede to, I shall remit any prison sentence which I might have imposed. But I warn you, sir, that when the time for your trial comes, in the due process of law, I shall fine you to the very limit allowed me by the statute. Mr. Sheriff, see that this man, Frank Blainey, does not leave the jurisdiction of this court.”

“Old man, stand up once more, so that all in this court-room may see you.... Jeff Potter, this plea of yours shall go down on the records of this court as a memorial to you and as a high example to all men who may know or read of it of that quality of mercy which is the sovereign good in human nature. And now, gentlemen of the jury, you are automatically discharged from this case, and I shall ask the crowd to pass out quietly, for court is adjourned.”

How many people old Jeff shook hands with that afternoon, he never knew. He did know though that Burton Evans was the first among them; that Mrs. Carson, who came next, was crying; that the strong hands of Bill Carson and Squire Kirby almost crushed his own frailer hand; and that off yonder, at a table below the clerk’s desk, a prim old lawyer in a long black coat had picked up a carved Indian and was presenting it to a little girl in a blue dress, with an old-fashioned bow strange to see.

_The Century Magazine_

“A SOURCE OF IRRITATION”

BY

STACY AUMONIER

“A SOURCE OF IRRITATION”[3]

By STACY AUMONIER

To look at old Sam Gates you would never suspect him of having nerves. His sixty-nine years of close application to the needs of the soil had given him a certain earthy stolidity. To observe him hoeing, or thinning out a broad field of turnips, hardly attracted one’s attention, he seemed so much part and parcel of the whole scheme. He blended into the soil like a glorified swede. Nevertheless, the half-dozen people who claimed his acquaintance knew him to be a man who suffered from little moods of irritability.

And on this glorious morning a little incident annoyed him unreasonably. It concerned his niece Aggie. She was a plump girl with clear, blue eyes, and a face as round and inexpressive as the dumplings for which the county was famous. She came slowly across the long sweep of the downland and, putting down the bundle wrapped in a red handkerchief which contained his breakfast and dinner, she said:

“Well, Uncle, is there any noos?”

Now, this may not appear to the casual reader to be a remark likely to cause irritation, but it affected old Sam Gates as a very silly and unnecessary question. It was, moreover, the constant repetition of it which was beginning to anger him. He met his niece twice a day. In the morning she brought his bundle of food at seven, and when he passed his sister’s cottage on the way home to tea at five she was invariably hanging about the gate, and she always said in the same voice:

“Well, Uncle, is there any noos?”

Noos! What noos should there be? For sixty-nine years he had never lived farther than five miles from Halvesham. For nearly sixty of those years he had bent his back above the soil. There were, indeed, historic occasions. Once, for instance, when he had married Annie Hachet. And there was the birth of his daughter. There was also a famous occasion when he had visited London. Once he had been to a flower-show at Market Roughborough. He either went or didn’t go to church on Sundays. He had had many interesting chats with Mr. James at the Cowman, and three years ago had sold a pig to Mrs. Way. But he couldn’t always have interesting noos of this sort up his sleeve. Didn’t the silly zany know that for the last three weeks he had been hoeing and thinning out turnips for Mr. Hodge on this very same field? What noos could there be?

He blinked at his niece, and didn’t answer. She undid the parcel and said:

“Mrs. Goping’s fowl got out again last night.”

“Ah,” he replied in a non-committal manner and began to munch his bread and bacon. His niece picked up the handkerchief and, humming to herself, walked back across the field.

It was a glorious morning, and a white sea mist added to the promise of a hot day. He sat there munching, thinking of nothing in particular, but gradually subsiding into a mood of placid content. He noticed the back of Aggie disappear in the distance. It was a mile to the cottage and a mile and a half to Halvesham. Silly things, girls. They were all alike. One had to make allowances. He dismissed her from his thoughts, and took a long swig of tea out of a bottle. Insects buzzed lazily. He tapped his pocket to assure himself that his pouch of shag was there, and then he continued munching. When he had finished, he lighted his pipe and stretched himself comfortably. He looked along the line of turnips he had thinned and then across the adjoining field of swedes. Silver streaks appeared on the sea below the mist. In some dim way he felt happy in his solitude amidst this sweeping immensity of earth and sea and sky.

And then something else came to irritate him: it was one of “these dratted airyplanes.” “Airyplanes” were his pet aversion. He could find nothing to be said in their favor. Nasty, noisy, disfiguring things that seared the heavens and made the earth dangerous. And every day there seemed to be more and more of them. Of course “this old war” was responsible for a lot of them, he knew. The war was a “plaguy noosance.” They were short-handed on the farm, beer and tobacco were dear, and Mrs. Steven’s nephew had been and got wounded in the foot.

He turned his attention once more to the turnips; but an “airyplane” has an annoying genius for gripping one’s attention. When it appears on the scene, however much we dislike it, it has a way of taking the stage-center. We cannot help constantly looking at it. And so it was with old Sam Gates. He spat on his hands and blinked up at the sky. And suddenly the aëroplane behaved in a very extraordinary manner. It was well over the sea when it seemed to lurch drunkenly and skimmed the water. Then it shot up at a dangerous angle and zigzagged. It started to go farther out, and then turned and made for the land. The engines were making a curious grating noise. It rose once more, and then suddenly dived downward, and came plump down right in the middle of Mr. Hodge’s field of swedes.

And then, as if not content with this desecration, it ran along the ground, ripping and tearing up twenty-five yards of good swedes, and then came to a stop.

Old Sam Gates was in a terrible state. The aëroplane was more than a hundred yards away, but he waved his arms and called out:

“Hi, you there, you mustn’t land in they swedes! They’re Mister Hodge’s.”

The instant the aëroplane stopped, a man leaped out and gazed quickly round. He glanced at Sam Gates, and seemed uncertain whether to address him or whether to concentrate his attention on the flying-machine. The latter arrangement appeared to be his ultimate decision. He dived under the engine and became frantically busy. Sam had never seen any one work with such furious energy; but all the same it was not to be tolerated. It was disgraceful. Sam started out across the field, almost hurrying in his indignation. When he appeared within earshot of the aviator he cried out again:

“Hi! you mustn’t rest your old airyplane here! You’ve kicked up all Mr. Hodge’s swedes. A noice thing you’ve done!”

He was within five yards when suddenly the aviator turned and covered him with a revolver! And speaking in a sharp, staccato voice, he said:

“Old Grandfather, you must sit down. I am very much occupied. If you interfere or attempt to go away, I shoot you. So!”

Sam gazed at the horrid, glittering little barrel and gasped. Well, he never! To be threatened with murder when you’re doing your duty in your employer’s private property! But, still, perhaps the man was mad. A man must be more or less mad to go up in one of those crazy things. And life was very sweet on that summer morning despite sixty-nine years. He sat down among the swedes.

The aviator was so busy with his cranks and machinery that he hardly deigned to pay him any attention except to keep the revolver handy. He worked feverishly, and Sam sat watching him. At the end of ten minutes he appeared to have solved his troubles with the machine, but he still seemed very scared. He kept on glancing round and out to sea. When his repairs were complete he straightened his back and wiped the perspiration from his brow. He was apparently on the point of springing back into the machine and going off when a sudden mood of facetiousness, caused by relief from the strain he had endured, came to him. He turned to old Sam and smiled, at the same time remarking:

“Well, old Grandfather, and now we shall be all right, isn’t it?”

He came close up to Sam, and then suddenly started back.

“_Gott!_” he cried, “Paul Jouperts!”

Bewildered, Sam gazed at him, and the madman started talking to him in some foreign tongue. Sam shook his head.

“You no roight,” he remarked, “to come bargin’ through they swedes of Mr. Hodge’s.”

And then the aviator behaved in a most peculiar manner. He came up and examined Sam’s face very closely, and gave a sudden tug at his beard and hair, as if to see whether they were real or false.

“What is your name, old man?” he said.

“Sam Gates.”

The aviator muttered some words that sounded something like “mare vudish,” and then turned to his machine. He appeared to be dazed and in a great state of doubt. He fumbled with some cranks, but kept glancing at old Sam. At last he got into the car and strapped himself in. Then he stopped, and sat there deep in thought. At last he suddenly unstrapped himself and sprang out again and, approaching Sam, said very deliberately:

“Old Grandfather, I shall require you to accompany me.”

Sam gasped.

“Eh?” he said. “What be talkin’ about? ’Company? I got these ’ere loines o’ turnips--I be already behoind--” The disgusting little revolver once more flashed before his eyes.

“There must be no discussion,” came the voice. “It is necessary that you mount the seat of the car without delay. Otherwise I shoot you like the dog you are. So!”

Old Sam was hale and hearty. He had no desire to die so ignominiously. The pleasant smell of the Norfolk downland was in his nostrils; his foot was on his native heath. He mounted the seat of the car, contenting himself with a mutter:

“Well, that be a noice thing, I must say! Flyin’ about the country with all they turnips on’y half thinned!”

He found himself strapped in. The aviator was in a fever of anxiety to get away. The engines made a ghastly splutter and noise. The thing started running along the ground. Suddenly it shot upward, giving the swedes a last contemptuous kick. At twenty minutes to eight that morning old Sam found himself being borne right up above his fields and out to sea! His breath came quickly. He was a little frightened.

“God forgive me!” he murmured.

The thing was so fantastic and sudden that his mind could not grasp it. He only felt in some vague way that he was going to die, and he struggled to attune his mind to the change. He offered up a mild prayer to God, Who, he felt, must be very near, somewhere up in these clouds. Automatically he thought of the vicar at Halvesham, and a certain sense of comfort came to him at the reflection that on the previous day he had taken a “cooking of runner beans” to God’s representative in that village. He felt calmer after that, but the horrid machine seemed to go higher and higher. He could not turn in his seat and he could see nothing but sea and sky. Of course the man was mad, mad as a March hare. Of what earthly use could _he_ be to any one? Besides, he had talked pure gibberish, and called him Paul something, when he had already told him that his name was Sam. The thing would fall down into the sea soon, and they would both be drowned. Well, well, he had almost reached three-score years and ten. He was protected by a screen, but it seemed very cold. What on earth would Mr. Hodge say? There was no one left to work the land but a fool of a boy named Billy Whitehead at Dene’s Cross. On, on, on they went at a furious pace. His thoughts danced disconnectedly from incidents of his youth, conversations with the vicar, hearty meals in the open, a frock his sister wore on the day of the postman’s wedding, the drone of a psalm, the illness of some ewes belonging to Mr. Hodge. Everything seemed to be moving very rapidly, upsetting his sense of time. He felt outraged, and yet at moments there was something entrancing in the wild experience. He seemed to be living at an incredible pace. Perhaps he was really dead and on his way to the kingdom of God. Perhaps this was the way they took people.

After some indefinite period he suddenly caught sight of a long strip of land. Was this a foreign country, or were they returning? He had by this time lost all feeling of fear. He became interested and almost disappointed. The “airyplane” was not such a fool as it looked. It was very wonderful to be right up in the sky like this. His dreams were suddenly disturbed by a fearful noise. He thought the machine was blown to pieces. It dived and ducked through the air, and things were bursting all round it and making an awful din, and then it went up higher and higher. After a while these noises ceased, and he felt the machine gliding downward. They were really right above solid land--trees, fields, streams, and white villages. Down, down, down they glided. This was a foreign country. There were straight avenues of poplars and canals. This was not Halvesham. He felt the thing glide gently and bump into a field. Some men ran forward and approached them, and the mad aviator called out to them. They were mostly fat men in gray uniforms, and they all spoke this foreign gibberish. Some one came and unstrapped him. He was very stiff and could hardly move. An exceptionally gross-looking man punched him in the ribs and roared with laughter. They all stood round and laughed at him, while the mad aviator talked to them and kept pointing at him. Then he said:

“Old Grandfather, you must come with me.”

He was led to an iron-roofed building and shut in a little room. There were guards outside with fixed bayonets. After a while the mad aviator appeared again, accompanied by two soldiers. He beckoned him to follow. They marched through a quadrangle and entered another building. They went straight into an office where a very important-looking man, covered with medals, sat in an easy-chair. There was a lot of saluting and clicking of heels. The aviator pointed at Sam and said something, and the man with the medals started at sight of him, and then came up and spoke to him in English.

“What is your name? Where do you come from? Your age? The name and birthplace of your parents?”

He seemed intensely interested, and also pulled his hair and beard to see if they came off. So well and naturally did he and the aviator speak English that after a voluble examination they drew apart, and continued the conversation in that language. And the extraordinary conversation was of this nature:

“It is a most remarkable resemblance,” said the man with medals. “_Unglaublich!_ But what do you want me to do with him, Hausemann?”

“The idea came to me suddenly, Excellency,” replied the aviator, “and you may consider it worthless. It is just this. The resemblance is so amazing. Paul Jouperts has given us more valuable information than any one at present in our service, and the English know that. There is an award of five thousand francs on his head. Twice they have captured him, and each time he escaped. All the company commanders and their staff have his photograph. He is a serious thorn in their flesh.”

“Well?” replied the man with the medals.

The aviator whispered confidentially:

“Suppose, your Excellency, that they found the dead body of Paul Jouperts?”

“Well?” replied the big man.