The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories Part 2

He thought, with a sort of numb wonderment, that it was strange he should feel no more compa.s.sion for the object stretched out here, dumb, dead, bruised, and b.l.o.o.d.y, which so short a s.p.a.ce since he had seen full of life and interest, animated by a genial courtesy and graced with learning and subtle insight; now so unknowing, so unlettered, so blind! Whither went this ethereal invest.i.ture of life?--for it was not mere being; one might exist hardily enough without it. Did the darkness close over it, too, or was it not the germ of the soul, the budding of that wider knowledge and finer aspiration to flower hereafter in rarer air? He did not know; he only vaguely cared, and he reproached himself dully that he cared no more.

For he--his life was threatened! With the renewal of the thought he experienced a certain animosity toward the man that he should not have known enough to take better care of himself. Why must he needs die here, in this horrible unexplained way, and leave other men, chance a.s.sociates, to risk stretching hemp for murder? He felt his strong life beating in his throat almost to suffocation at the mere suggestion. Again the lie tempted him, to be again withstood; and as he strode into the room upon the calling of his name, he saw how futile, how flimsy, was every device, for, fluttering in the coroner's hand, he recognized the sketch of the "Witch-Face" which the dead man had made, and the masterly drawing of his own imposing figure in the foreground. He had forgotten it utterly for the time being. In the surprise and confusion that had beset him, it had not occurred to him to speculate how he had chanced to be subpoenaed, how the idea could have occurred to the coroner that he knew aught of the stranger. As he stood against the batten door, the pale light from the interstices of the unc.h.i.n.ked logs, all the grayer because it alternated with the sombre timbers, falling upon his face and figure, his hat upturned in front, revealing his brow with a forelock of straight black hair, his brilliant dark eyes, and his distinctly cut definite features, the sketch-book was swiftly pa.s.sed from one to another of the jury, reluctantly relinquished here and there, and more than once eliciting half-smothered exclamations of delighted wonder from the unsophisticated mountaineers, as they glanced back and forth from the man leaning against the door to the counterfeit presentment on the paper.

Constant Hite experienced a glow of vicarious pride as he remembered the satisfaction that the artist had taken in the sketch, and he wished that that still thing on the bier could know how his work, most wonderful it seemed, was appreciated. And then, with a swift revulsion of feeling, he realized that it was this which had entrapped him; this bit of paper had brought him into fear and trouble and risk of his life. The man might be of the revenue force. He might have encountered other moons.h.i.+ners, and thus have come to his violent death. If this were his vocation, it brought Hite into dark suspicion by virtue of the fact, known to a few of the neighborhood, that he himself was a distiller of brush whiskey. No one else had seen the stranger till the finding of the body. He gathered this from the trend of the inquiry after the formal preliminary queries. The seven men, as they sat together on a bench made by pa.s.sing a plank between the logs of the wall diagonally across the corner of the room, chewed meditatively their quids of tobacco, and now and then spat profusely on the ground, their faces growing more perplexed and graver as the examination progressed.

When Hite disclosed the circ.u.mstance that on the previous day he had encountered a "stranger man" near the "Witch-Face," there was a palpable sensation among them. They glanced at one another meaningly, and a sudden irritation was perceptible in the coroner's manner as he sat in a rickety chair near the improvised bier. He was a citizen of the valley region, a trifle more sophisticated than the jury, and disposed to seriously deprecate the introduction of any morbid or superst.i.tious element into so grave a matter. He had a bald head, a lean face, the bones very clearly defined about the temple and cheek and jaw, a scanty grizzled beard; and he was dressed somewhat farmer fas.h.i.+on, in blue jeans, with his boots drawn high over his trousers, but with a stiffly starched white s.h.i.+rt,--the collar and cravat in evidence, the cuffs, however, vanished up the big sleeves of his coat.

"The exact place of the meeting is not material," he said frowningly.

But Hite's mercurial interest in the drawing had revived anew.

"Thar she be," he exclaimed, so suddenly that the jury started with a common impulse, "the ole witch-face,"--he pointed at the sketch in the coroner's hand,--"a mite ter the east an' a leetle south in the pictur', ez nat'ral ez life!"

One of the jurymen asked to see the sketch again. Evidently, in the hasty delineation of the contours of the slope they had not noticed the gigantic grimacing countenance which they all knew so well; the picturesque figure of the mountaineer in the foreground had so impressed the stranger that it was much more nearly complete than the landscape, being definite in every detail, and fully shaded. The book was handed along the row of men, each recognizing the semblance, once pointed out, with a touch of dismayed surprise that alarmed the coroner for the sanity of the verdict; his rational estimate rated spells and bewitchments and omens as far less plausible agencies in disaster than horse-thieves, highwaymen, and moons.h.i.+ners.

"Look at the face of the deceased," he said, with a sort of spare enunciation, coercive somehow in its inexpressiveness. "Ye are sure ye never viewed that man afore yestiddy?"

"I hev said so an' swore it," said Hite, a trifle nettled.

"Ye rode in comp'ny a hour or mo' an' never asked his name?"

"I never axed him no questions, nor he me," replied Hite, "'ceptin'

'bout'n the witch-face. He was powerful streck by that. An' I tole him 't war a onlucky day."

The jury, a dreary row of unkempt heads, and bearded anxious faces, and crouching shoulders askew, cleared their throats, and two uncrossed and recrossed their legs, the plank seat creaking ominously with the motion under their combined weight. A shade of disappointment was settling on the coroner's face. This was slight information indeed from the only person who had seen the man alive. There was silence for a moment. The splas.h.i.+ng of the rain on the roof became drearily audible in the interval. The stir of the group in the s.p.a.ce outside was a.s.serted anew, with their low-toned fitful converse; a black-and-white ox in the weed-grown garden emitted a deep, depressed low of remonstrance against the rain, and the irking of the yoke, and the herbage just beyond his reach. The jurymen might see him through the logs, and now and again one of them mechanically ducked his head to look out upon the dismal aspect of the chimney and orchard, round which so many horses and wagons had not gathered since the daughter of the house was long ago married here. There was a sprinkle of gray in his hair, and he remembered the jollities of the wedding,--incongruous recollection,--and once more he looked at the stark figure, its face covered with a white cloth, which had been done in a sentiment of atonement for the unseemly publicity of its fate.

In spa.r.s.ely settled communities, death, being rare, retains much of the terror which custom lessens in the dense crowds of cities. There death is met at every corner. It goes on 'Change. It sits upon the bench. It is chronicled in the columns of every newspaper. Daily its bells toll. Its melancholy pageantry traverses the streets of wealthy quarters, and it stalks abroad hourly in the slums, and few there are who gaze after it. But here it comes so seldom that its dread features are not made smug by familiarity. When Hite was told to look again at the face and see if memory might not have played him false, to make sure he had never seen the man before yesterday, he hesitated, and advanced with such reluctance, and started back, dropping the cloth, with such swift repulsion, that the coroner, habituated to such matters, gazed at him with a doubtful scrutiny.

"Oh, he looked nowise like that," he exclaimed in a raised, nervous voice that caught the attention of the crowd outside, and resulted in a sudden cessation of stir and colloquy, "though it's him, sure enough! And," with a burst of regret, "he war a mighty pleasant man!"

The coroner, intentionally taking him at a disadvantage, asked abruptly, "What do you work at mostly?"

Hite turned shortly from the bier. "I farms some," he hesitated; "dad bein' mos'ly out o' the field, nowadays, agin' so constant."

"What do you work at mostly?" reiterated the official.

Hite divined his suspicion. Some flying rumor had doubtless come to his ears, how credible, how unimpugnable, the moons.h.i.+ner could not tell. Nevertheless, his loyalty to that secret vocation of his had become a part of his nature, so continuous were its demands upon his courage, his strategy, his foresight, his industry. It was tantamount to his instinct of self-defense. He held his head down, with his excited dark eyes looking up from under his brows at the coroner. But he would not speak. He would admit naught of what was evidently known.

"Warn't ye afeard he might be a revenuer?" suggested the officer.

"I never war afeard, so ter say, o' one man at a time," Hite ventured.

"Didn't ye think he might take a notion that you were a moons.h.i.+ner?"

"He never showed no suspicion o' me, noways," replied Hite warily. "We rid tergether free an' favored. He 'peared a powerful book-l'arned man,--like no revenuer ever I see."

"Where did you part company?"

Hite sought to identify the spot by description; and then he was allowed to pa.s.s out, his spirits flagging with the ordeal, and with the knowledge that his connection with the manufacture of brush whiskey was suspected by the coroner's jury, suggesting an adequate motive on his part for waylaying a stranger supposed to be of the revenue force. He felt the dash of the rain in his face as he stood aside to make way for the "valley man with the lung complaint," who was pa.s.sing into the restricted apartment; and despite his whirl of anxiety and excitement and regret and resentment, he noted with a touch of surprise the cool unconcern of the man's face and manner, albeit duly grave and adjusted to the decorums of the melancholy occasion.

He was sworn, and gave his name as Alan Selwyn. The jury listened with interest to his fluent account of his occupation in the valley, which had been mercantile, of his temporary residence here for a bronchial affection; and when he was asked to identify the man who had so mysteriously come to his death, they marked his quick, easy stride as he crossed the room, with his hat in his hand, and his unmoved countenance as he looked fixedly down into the face of the dead. He remained a longer interval than was usual with the witnesses, as if to make sure. Then, still quite businesslike and brisk, he stated that he could not identify him, having certainly never seen him before.

"The only papers which he had on him," said the coroner, watching the effect of his words, "were two letters addressed to you."

The young man started in palpable surprise. As he looked at the exterior of the letters, which were stamped and postmarked, he observed that they must have been taken out of the post-office at Sandford Cross-Roads, to expedite their delivery; the postmaster doubtless consenting to this request on the part of so reputable-looking a person or a possible acquaintance.

"Were you expecting a visitor?" asked the coroner.

"Not at all," responded the puzzled witness.

He was requested to open the letters, read and show them. But he waived this courtesy, asking the coroner to open and read them to the jury. They were of no moment, both on matters of casual business, and Mr. Alan Selwyn was dismissed; the coroner blandly regretting that, in view of his malady, he had been required to come out in so chilly a rain.

Notwithstanding his composure he was in some haste to be gone. He went quickly through the crowd, drawing down his hat over his brow, and deftly b.u.t.toning his overcoat across his chest and throat. He had reached his horse, and had placed one foot in the stirrup, when, chancing to glance back over his shoulder, he saw Narcissa Hanway's white, flowerlike face, her bonnet pushed far back on her tawny yellow hair, both arms outstretched in a gesture of negation and repulsion toward the apartment where the jury sat, while a dark-haired, slow man urged her forward, one hand on her shoulder, and the old mountain woman followed with insistence and encouragement. He hesitated for a moment; then putting spurs to his horse, he rode off swiftly through the slanting lines of rain.

III.

A sense of helplessness in the hands of fate is in some sort conducive to courage. Doubtless many an act of valor which has won the world's applause was precipitated in a degree by desperation and the lack of an alternative. The appearance of stolidity with which the cl.u.s.ter of witnesses--those whose testimony was yet to be given as well as those who had told the little they knew--noted the uncontrolled agitation, the wild eyes, the hysteric sobs, with which Narcissa Hanway was ushered into the contracted apartment where the inquest was in progress, had no correlative calmness of mind or heart. What haphazard accusation might not result from her fear, or her desire to s.h.i.+eld another, or the mere undisciplined horror of the place and the fact!

When one dreads the sheer possibilities, the extremes of terror are reached. More than one of the bearded, unkempt, hardy mountaineers, trudging back and forth in the sheltered s.p.a.ce beneath the loft, steadily chewing their quids of tobacco and eying the rain, would have fled incontinently, had there been any place to run to out of reach of the constable, who was particularly brisk to-day, partic.i.p.ating in exercises of so unusual an interest. The girl's brother, standing beside the door after she had pa.s.sed within, was unconscious of a certain keen covert scrutiny of which he was the subject. He had a square determined face, dark hair, slow gray eyes, and a tall powerful frame; he held his head downward, his hand on the door, his even teeth set in the intensity of his effort to distinguish the voices within.

There had been some secret speculation as to whether the man were altogether unknown to the brother and sister, such deep feeling she had evinced, such coercion he had exerted to induce her to give her testimony. Still, the girl was a mere slip of a thing, unused to horrors; and as to recalcitrant witnesses, they all knew the jail had a welcome for the silent until such time as they might find a voice.

Nevertheless, though his urgency had been in the stead of the constable's stronger measures, they eyed him askance as he stood and sought to listen, with his hand on the door. The old woman turned around, her arms falling to her sides with a sort of flounce of triumph, her eyes twinkling beneath the s.h.i.+ning spectacles set upon her brow among the limp ruffles of her thrust-back sunbonnet, a laugh of satisfaction widening her wrinkled face. "Thar now!" she chuckled, "Nar'sa jes' set it down she _wouldn't_ testify, an' crossed her heart an' hoped she'd fall dead fust. But, Ben, we beat her that time!" and she chuckled anew.

The man answered not a word, and listened to the tumult within.

It is seldom, doubtless, that the patience of a coroner's jury is subjected to so strong a strain. But the information which had so far been elicited was hardly more than the bare circ.u.mstance which the body presented,--a man had ridden here, a stranger, and he was dead.

If the girl knew more than this, it would necessitate some care in the examination to secure the facts. She was young, singularly willful and irresponsible, and evidently overcome by grief, or fear, or simply horror. When she was asked to look at the face of the stranger, she only caught a glimpse of it, as if by accident, and turned away, pulling her white bonnet down over her face, and declaring that she would not. "I hev viewed him wunst, an' I won't look at him again,"

she protested, with a burst of sobs.

"Now set down in this cheer, daughter, an' tell us what ye know about it all,--easy an' quiet," said the coroner in a soothing, paternal strain.

"Oh, nuthin', nuthin'!" exclaimed the girl, throwing herself into the chair in the att.i.tude of an abandonment of grief.

"Air ye cryin' 'kase ye war 'quainted with him ennywise?" demanded one of the jurymen, with a quickening interest. He was a neighbor; that is, counting as propinquity a distance of ten miles.

The girl lifted her head suddenly. "I never seen him till yestiddy,"

she protested steadily. "I be a heap apter ter weep 'kase my 'quaintances _ain't_ dead!" She gave him a composed, sarcastic smile, then fell to laughing and crying together.

To the others the discomfiture of their _confrere_ was the first touch of comedy relief in the tragic situation. They cast at one another a glance of appreciation trenching on a smile, and the abashed questioner drew out a plug of tobacco, and with a manner of preoccupation gnawed a bit from it; then replaced it in his pocket, with a physical contortion which caused the plank on which the jury were seated to creak ominously, to the manifest anxiety of the worthies ranged thereon.

"How did you happen to see the man?" he asked, as if he had perceived no significance in her previous answer.

"'Kase I didn't happen ter be blind," her half-m.u.f.fled voice replied.

Her arm was thrown over the back of the chair, and her face was hidden on her elbow.

The coroner interposed quickly: "Where were you goin', an' what did you see?"

She sobbed aloud for a moment. Then ensued an interval of silence.

Suddenly the interest of the subject seemed to lay hold upon her, and she began to speak very rapidly, lifting her white tear-stained face, and pus.h.i.+ng her bonnet back on her rough curling auburn hair:--

"I war a-blackberryin', thar bein' only a few lef' yit, an' I went fur an' furder yit from home; an' ez I kem out'n the woods over yon," half rising, and pointing with a free gesture, "I viewed--or yit I _'lowed_ I viewed--the witch-face through a bunch o' honey locust, the leaves bein' drapped a'ready, they bein' always the fust o' the year ter git bare. An' stiddier leavin' it be, I sot my bucket o' berries at the foot o' a tree', an started down the slope todes the bluff, ter make sure an' view it clar o' the trees." The girl paused, her eyes widening, her voice faltering, her breath coming fast. "An' goin'