Part 4

When the shadows begin to fall upon a human life, they fall quickly and darkly.

In Boyd Westover's mail was a letter from the agent who had arranged the mortgage loan upon Wanalah plantation, threatening to abandon the arrangement on the ground that young Westover's conviction impaired the security. This sorely troubled Boyd Westover--for if he was to go to prison his mother's financial ease was a matter of primary concern to him. It didn't trouble Jack Towns in the least.

"Leave that to me for answer," the lawyer said, taking possession of the letter. "The man ought to seek employment as an oyster-opener at Rockett's. That's about his size. That mortgage is completely executed. I've seen to it, pending--other things. That will stand, and, as the property is amply good for it, the fellow's an idiot to want to fly his bargain."

There was news in the next mail that could not be so lightly dismissed. The family physician wrote that Boyd's mother, already in feeble and precarious health, had been shocked by the tidings of her son's calamity into a condition that threatened the worst. This calamity was one which even Boyd Westover's stoicism could not face without flinching. From childhood his affection for his mother had been a dominant passion, and since his father's death it had become fatherly as well as filial. He had jealously guarded that "little mother," as he called her, against every shock, every care, every breath of an adverse wind as it were. He had made a veritable pet of her, and while never for a moment laying aside his chivalric respect and reverence, he had added to them a certain big brotherly manner in which she had found joy untellable. If she wearied while walking with him in the house grounds, he would pick her up, as he might have done with any child, and in spite of her laughing protests, carry her into the porch and deposit her in a hammock. If a light shone disagreeably in her eyes he discovered it and shut it off before she became conscious of its glare. If she went to her room to rest he quietly stationed a maid at the foot of the stairs with orders to permit no noise and no passing up or down.

Now that news came of this dearly loved little mother's serious illness, the young man was made to suffer agonies by the consciousness that her affliction was on his account, so that it required all of Jack Towns's eloquence to convince him that he was himself in nowise to blame for it. By way of emphasizing that, the young lawyer had to put the matter into brutally plain phrase.

"If you were guilty of the crime of which you have been convicted, and for which you will have to serve a term in state's prison, you would do well to scourge your soul with a whip of scorpions for your sin against the mother who bore you. As you are innocent of that and of all other crimes you have no right to hold yourself responsible for the consequences of other people's mistakes."

"Am I free to go to my mother while she yet lives?" Boyd asked in an agony of apprehension.

Then Jack Towns lied--like the generous gentleman he was.

"No," he said. "Legally you are free to go anywhere you please--to Mozambique or the dominions of Mumbo Jumbo if you choose. But you are free only because of the generous confidence of the Judge and the Commonwealth's Attorney in your honor as a gentleman. You are bound by that honor not to leave Richmond during the days granted you."

As a matter of fact Jack Towns had in his possession a letter addressed to him by the Westover family physician in which were written these words:

"Whatever else happens, for heaven's sake don't let Boyd come home now. The shock of seeing him would kill his mother out of hand."

But Jack Towns was a lawyer and he found a better way of putting the matter by way of accomplishing his purpose.

Still another thing darkened the young man's way. It was not because of news, but because of no news at all.

There was no line in any of his mails from Margaret Conway, the woman he loved with all his soul, the woman who had plighted her troth to him in the impassioned words he so well remembered:

"I am not a woman to love lightly or lightly to forget. Love seems to me a holy thing, and to trifle with it a blasphemy. I have given you my love, Boyd, and there is no power in all the universe that can make me take it back. Even you could not do that. Nothing you might do--even if it were crime itself--could alter the fact that my love is all yours, now and forever."

Upon reflection, he absolved Margaret from blame, and with good reason. Upon his first accusation he had not written to her at all in supplement to the love letter of that night. He had regarded the whole matter as a thing preposterous, which a hearing in the magistrate's court would promptly dissipate into thin air, and it had been his kindly thought not to tell her of the absurd accusation until he could tell her also of the ridiculous end made of it at a court hearing. When at last the matter had assumed a serious aspect he had written her a letter in which he had asserted his innocence but without protesting it in any impassioned way. To that he had added:

"Of course if I am a man of honor I am bound to offer you a release from the engagement between us, while if I am not an honorable man but the criminal I am accused of being, you are free to take your release without permission from me."

A calculation showed that if that letter had reached its destination when it should, and if an answer had been sent by the first returning mail, he should now have the reply. But mails were slow and uncertain in those days and The Oaks lay far up near the Blue Ridge and seven miles from the post office. It might easily have happened that his letter to Margaret had not reached her as soon as it should; or that the shock of it might have unfitted her to reply immediately; or that her answer might have been delayed in transmission. All these were possibilities, and they comforted the young man.

But as the days went by and still no letter came from Margaret the comfort became less and less, until at last he despaired and summoned his stoicism to his relief.

"Why should I have expected her to write to me?" he asked himself. "What obligation can she owe to a convicted criminal? I was a fool to look for a letter. I must bear my burden alone. I must meet my fate with a calm mind."

Then another thought came to him.

"I am living in a fool's paradise. Jack Towns professes still to believe in me, and perhaps he does. But how can I expect anybody else to do so? In view of the testimony against me, there is no room or reason for doubt of my guilt in any sane mind. I must recognize that and face it with what courage I can. I am a convicted criminal, and I must expect everybody to regard me as such. I must go through my life with that brand upon my brow. There is an end of hope for me. I must simply endure."

It was characteristic of him that in all this melancholy meditation, no thought of suicide entered his mind. He had from his youth up held his life in readiness for sacrifice in any worthy behalf. There was never a time when he would not have given it as a forfeit in behalf of those he loved, never a time when he would not have laid it down gladly in answer to any call of duty. But the cowardly thought of destroying it by way of himself escaping from intolerable sufferings did not suggest itself to his brave young soul. It is a man's part to endure what comes to a man, and Boyd Westover was altogether a man.

He remembered Margaret's impassioned promise, and he doubted not the sincerity of her soul in giving it. But he absolved her now and accepted the result as part and parcel of the strangely bewildering Fate that had overtaken him.

To that effect he wrote to her on the night before the day appointed for his sentencing. On that day had come to him the crushing news of his mother's death, and very bitterly he had felt the cruelty of a fate that forbade him even to go home to bury his dead.

He wrote to Margaret:

"I find that I have been expecting some letter from you in reply to my late one. I realize that I had neither right nor reason to expect anything of the kind. I am a convicted criminal, convicted upon testimony so conclusive that no sane person can doubt its truth. To-morrow morning I shall be sentenced. You can have no relations with me. You can bear me no duty of any kind. It is only to say this that I write to you now, to say that I hold you absolved from any and all obligations toward me, and that I shall live and die cherishing in full measure my faith in your loyalty and truth. You are never to let a doubt of that vex your mind."

With that he finally banished all thought of his past life, its joys, its sorrows, its aspirations and its apprehensions, from his mind.

"How long a sentence will they give me, Jack?" he asked his lawyer.

"I don't know. The shortest, probably, or very nearly the shortest that the law allows; not over two years at any rate."

"Of course it doesn't matter," Boyd answered. "Two minutes or two years of shame are all one to a sensitive man, and as for the 'hard labor,' I'm strong and well. I probably shall not find it interesting to grind stove lids or do whatever else the prison authorities set me at, but at any rate the work will occupy the time and prevent me from thinking too deeply. It will tire me, too, so that I shall sleep of nights."

Jack Towns found nothing to say by way of reply, and he said nothing. Presently Boyd drew a package of papers from his pocket and passed it over to the man he regarded as the one friend left him in all the world now.

"Perhaps you'd better look into that," he said. "It may help Wanalah out of difficulty. I don't know. The thing came in my mail a week ago, but it didn't interest me then and I slipped it into my pocket and forgot all about it. No, don't bother with it now. Read it later. Just now I have something else to talk to you about. You've promised to look after my affairs while I'm in prison, and there's one thing I want to ask you. Don't let the overseer at Wanalah work the servants too hard. There is no need. With only ordinary crops the plantation can easily carry its load now, and I don't want the people there overworked. See to it please. Now if you don't mind, I'm going to bed. To-morrow night I'll lie in a cell."

With that the young man withdrew, and after half an hour of sad gazing at the moonlight that streamed in through the window, Jack Towns turned up the gas and set to work reading the papers that had failed to interest their owner. They interested Jack Towns amazingly, and he had no sooner finished the reading of them than he hurried unceremoniously into Boyd's room, and shaking him said:

"Here, get up. This thing must be attended to immediately. There are papers to be drawn and executed at once. So hustle into some clothes quick."

IX

THE COURAGE OF WOMANHOOD

When rumors came to The Oaks of Boyd Westover's trouble, Margaret Conway's first impulse was to drive over to Wanalah and comfort Boyd's mother with assurances that there could be no truth in the reports. Margaret had always cherished a very tender affection for Mrs. Westover, and during the brief time since her love had been pledged to Boyd, she had found that affection rapidly taking upon itself the character of a girl's tenderness for her mother. Having never known a mother of her own, the girl was quick to make herself a daughter in affection where she was presently to become a daughter in law and in fact. She drove every day to Wanalah and spent loving hours there with the gentle invalid who had so warmly welcomed her daughterly love.

But when the evil news of Boyd's conviction came and Margaret planned to go earlier than usual to Wanalah, Colonel Conway objected.

"You will only distress yourself and afflict her," he said. "This thing will be your only topic of conversation, and what can either of you say that will bring comfort to the other?"

"I can tell her I love her and that I loyally believe in Boyd," answered the girl with all the pride of her race in her voice and attitude.

"But how can you say that, daughter, in face of the evidence?"

"It isn't evidence--it's merely testimony. The evidence lies in Boyd Westover's character and it flatly contradicts the testimony. The testimony is false; the evidence is subject to no possible question. I'm sorry you don't see it so, Father."

The old man paced the floor for a space and then answered:

"Perhaps I do see it so. I'd like to, at any rate; I'm strongly disposed to give the young man the benefit of the doubt, but--"

"There isn't any doubt," interjected the passionate girl with vehemence. "There isn't any doubt, and I shall quarrel even with you, Father, if you suggest such a thing."

"Be calm, my child," pleaded the old man placatively. "Perhaps you are right. I'm disposed to take your view--strongly so. But there's your Aunt Betsy, you know."

"Yes, I know. She's the only human being you were ever afraid of, Father. But you're afraid of her as everybody else is--everybody but me. I don't know why."

"But your Aunt Betsy presents the matter in a way that must be considered. She says--"

"Oh, I know what she says," interrupted the overwrought girl. "She has said it all to me, over and over again. She urges the conventions--the cowardly shams and falsities of our artificial life. She talks of 'what people will say,' as if it made any difference what people say when we know we are doing right. You _know_ that Boyd Westover is an honorable man, just as I know it. If you hadn't been afraid of Aunt Betsy, you'd have done your duty like a man; you'd have gone to Boyd's side. You'd have stood by him in his hour of need--"

"But, Margaret, what good would that have done in face of the evidence or the testimony, for I agree with you that there's a difference?"

"It would have strengthened and encouraged him with the assurance that one brave man at least knew his character and was ready to face calumny with an assertion of his confidence. But you were afraid of Aunt Betsy. It is the only cowardice I ever knew you to be guilty of. She talks of placing 'blots on our escutcheon'--as if we had an escutcheon, whatever that sort of thing may be; I tell you the worst blot of all was made by your failure to go to Richmond and stand by Boyd in his undeserved trouble. You played the part of a coward there. Pardon me if my words are harsh. I feel them and mean them. Now I am going to Wanalah. I, at least, will do my part as a descendant of a brave race, if all the demons of perdition stand in the way."

With that the girl moved proudly out of the house, mounted the horse that a negro held waiting for her, and rode away.

She did not return until after the funeral at Wanalah, which her father and her aunt attended, and when she returned, her attitude was one of stately reserve which appalled her father and "grieved" her aunt.

In the meanwhile she had written every day a loyal letter to Boyd Westover.

Not one of those letters ever reached him. Nor did any of his letters come to her. Aunt Betsy had deemed it her "duty to the family" to see to that, and Aunt Betsy prided herself upon doing her duty, no matter how disagreeable it might be--to others.

But the failure of the missives left Margaret in sorely distressing perplexity. Why did not Boyd write to her? Why did he not take her into his confidence? Especially why did he not respond, in some way, to her repeated avowals of splendid loyalty and confidence?

She could not understand. She could not even inquire. She could only mourn.

X

THE PACKET OF PAPERS

Jack Towns was accustomed to have about him whatever there was that could make his hard-working life comfortable, if any reasonable expenditure of money could secure it. And he interpreted the words "reasonable expenditure," in that connection, rather liberally. His income was large and he had nobody anywhere dependent upon him. Accordingly he was one of the two or three self-indulgent men in Richmond at that time, who possessed a set bath tub with water taps running into it and a showering apparatus above.

When he roused his friend that night, after hurriedly running through the packet of papers, he was full of an eagerness and enthusiasm which the other did not seem to share. Boyd Westover was sleepy, and worse still, in his present case, he was indifferent. What good could a packet of papers or anything else bring to a man disgraced, condemned, doomed to a life of lost repute? He heartily wished that Jack had kept the papers and done whatever he pleased with them after the closing of the prison doors behind himself on the approaching day. But in response to Jack's insistence, he arose, drew on a light dressing gown and slippers, and offered his dully uninterested presence in Jack's dining room. 4 Promptly recognizing his condition of mind, Jack took matters into his own hands, after a masterful habit he had. He seized Boyd by the elbow and led him into the bath room.

"There," he said; "lay off your gown and pull your toes out of those slippers. Hop into the tub and I'll wake you up."

At the next instant the cold shower descended upon the young man's head and person, and Jack continued his chatter.

"Now you're awake, rub yourself down and come into the dining room. I've got to have you awake and you and I are going to work all night. I've sent Dick for half a hundred oysters and a dozen bottles of cold ale, and later he'll make black coffee for us. Hurry up now, and 'do try to be interested' as a bashful friend of mine said to a girl when he was about to propose to her."

As he left the bath room abruptly, Boyd made no reply until he joined the lawyer in the dining room where the papers from the packet lay spread out in the order in which they were to be taken up for consideration. Then he said:

"I will try to be interested, Jack; for your sake I'll do my best. But what interest can a man in my position feel in anything?"

"Now listen to me, Boyd!" Jack Towns said commandingly, and rising to his feet to say it. "Listen to me. You are morbid. You need calomel or something. You're the victim of some mistake and you're in sore trouble. But you are not disgraced. Nobody can disgrace a man but the man himself. You are conscious of your own honor; what matters it what others think? Besides, no honest man in Virginia believes that you are guilty of a sneaking crime or capable of it. The jury that convicted you didn't believe it and not one of them believes it now. The Judge who will sentence you doesn't believe it. If the envious and malignant falsely pretend to believe it, why should you care for the despicable pretense of people so utterly unworthy? If cowards fight shy of your acquaintance, lest recognition of you should compromise themselves, why should you care for the acquaintance of such poltroons? You are Westover of Wanalah--inheritor of an honorable name. You will be that so long as you shall live. It behoves you to bear that name with head erect and with contempt alone for those who do not recognize your worthiness to bear it. This affair is an unfortunate incident. It will soon be over, and you will have a lifetime before you in which to teach men the falsity of the accusation against you. There. My lecture is done. Let us get to these papers. They hold great news for you."

When the two were seated, Jack took up a letter, which was first of the papers in the order of consideration.

"This is from a firm of lawyers, Dodge, Denslow and Deming of Denver--charmingly alliterative throughout--do you happen to know who they are?"

"Yes, in a way. There was a memorandum among my father's papers, that mentioned them."

"Well, go on. What did it say, or reveal, or suggest? This is business, Boyd. Put your thinking machine on it."

"I will,--to oblige you, Jack. The memorandum catalogued a long list of mining lands and mining claims somewhere up in the Rocky Mountains or in some side issue of a range--you'll find the paper in my desk at home--lands and claims which my father had bought during one of his journeys out that way and had placed in my name, as a provision for me in case of accident."

"That accounts for these papers being in your name and not your father's," interrupted Jack. "I was puzzled by that. But go on. I want to hear all about it."

"Well, you know my father was an optimist--a dreamer almost--and he was possessed of an idea, reflected in the memorandum, that these things would make the future Westover of Wanalah--myself or my son if I should have one--enormously rich. As nearly as I could make out, the multitudinous lands and mining claims he bought in my name covered a large area of entirely untillable and not very accessible land somewhere up in the high mountains, where grub-staked miners scratched the surface for silver ore, with now and then a little find of gold. They worked on shares somehow, and this law firm collected my share from time to time and remitted it. It was so small a part of the assets of the estate that I've forgotten how much it was. That's all I know of Dodge, Denslow & Deming."

"You're likely to know a good deal more about them hereafter," said Jack, "if I can awaken in your mind a reasonable interest in a matter that promises to make you the richest man in Virginia, twice or thrice over."

"Cui bono?" responded Boyd. "When my prison term ends I shall have enough, without that, to feed me, and I've nobody else to feed."

"Boyd Westover, if you go on in that mood, I'll chuck you into the bath tub again and set the shower going without giving you a chance to shed your clothes. Can't you see that when you--when--well, when present difficulties are over, this thing will give you an interest in life, something to occupy your mind, something to manage and--oh, I forgot, you don't know the facts yet. It appears from these papers--we won't bother now to read them in detail--that the mining lands your father bought in your name, have proved to be about the richest in the world. They cover practically all of one of the richest deposits of gold, silver, lead, and quicksilver, ever discovered. Listen. This is the way Jake Greenfield puts it in a letter. Jake seems to be a shrewd Yankee whom your lawyers have established on the lands to watch operations and prevent trespass. He writes to the lawyers:

"'I don't s'pose Mr. Westover nor you neither's got a krect idee of what he's got up here. It's like an injun's blanket, with fringes all round it. He's got the blanket an' these fellers what's opened up mines north an' south of him has got the fringes. Nachurly they's a tryin' to git in under the blanket, but I'm a watchin' out an' they're a doin' no trespassin'. They's got the fence corners an' Mr. Weststover's got the field. They's plannin' to buy him out an' they's got experts an' engineers an' lawyers enuff here to run a ship or an orphan asylum. My say to Mr. West Stover is don't bargain with 'em till you know for yourself. That used to be our way in Varmont, whare I come from. This is my wink to a blind hoss, an' a nod with it.'

"The lawyers seem to have taken Jake Greenfield's counsel seriously, so far at least as to send experts of their own to study the situation, and these seem to confirm Jake's judgment. So do these other letters, from the mining men who want to buy you out. I'll read them."

"Can't you summarize them in your own words, Jack?" interrupted Boyd. "The thing doesn't greatly interest me, and--"