The Blue Wall Part 23

What made me step over to look at the unconscious man's face? I do not know, unless it was the design of Fate. White it was--white and terrible and stamped with evil and dissipation and fearful dreams. But there was a smile on it as if the blow had been a caress, and that smile was still the smile of a child who sees before it all the endless pleasures of self-indulgence.

I felt the years slide back, I saw the mask of evil and folly torn away.

I was sitting again in a beautiful gown in the Trois Folies in Venice, the wind was blowing the flowers on my table, the water in the ca.n.a.l sounded through the lattice, a man was tearing tablecloths from their places, dishes crashed, and then I saw the fellow's smile fly and his face turn sober, and I heard his voice say, "What are _you_ doing here?"

as if he had known me for centuries. Because I knew then, in one look, that John Chalmers and Monty Cranch were one. I had met him for the second time--a wreck of a man--a murderer. But the mystery of a woman's heart--!

"Well," I heard Mr. Roddy say, "are we going to hang him?"

"No," I cried, like a wild thing. "No, Judge. No! No! No!"

"And why not?" he asked, glaring at me.

"It's against your oath, sir," I said, like one inspired. "And it's against honor to hang a creature with lies."

The Judge thought a long time, struggling with himself, until his face was all drawn, but at last he touched the red-haired reporter on the elbow.

"She is right," said he. "The incident is closed."

Something in his low voice was so ringing that for a moment none of us spoke, and I could hear the drawn curtains at the window going flap-flap-flap in the breeze.

At last the reporter looked at his watch. "Well, Judge," he said, with his freckled smile, "I'm sorry you can't see it my way."

"You want to catch your train," the master replied quietly. "It's all right. I have a revolver here in the drawer."

"Probably I'm the one he'll want to see, anyway," Mr. Roddy said in his cool, joking way. "Quite a little drama? Good-night, sir."

"Good-night," said the Judge, without taking his eyes from the man on the floor. "Good-night, Mr. Roddy."

I can remember how the door closed and how we heard the reporter's footsteps go down the walk. Then came the click of the gate and after a minute the toot of the train coming from far away and then the silence of the night. Then out of the silence came the sound of Monty Cranch's breathing, and then the curtains flapped again. But still the Judge stood over the other man, thinking and thinking.

Finally I could not stand it any longer; I had to say something.

Anything would do. I pointed to the baby, sound asleep as a little kitten in the chair.

"Have you seen her?" I asked.

"What!" he answered. "How did she come there? You brought her down?"

"That isn't Julianna," said I. "It's his!"

"His baby!" the Judge cried. "That man's baby!"

I nodded without speaking, for then, just as if Monty had heard his name spoken, he rolled over onto his elbow and sat up. First he looked at the Judge and then I saw that his eyes were turning toward me. I felt my spine alive with a thousand needle p.r.i.c.ks.

"Will he know me?" thought I.

He looked at me with the same surprised look--the same old look I thought, but he only rubbed his neck with one hand and crept up and sat in the big chair, and tried to look up into the Judge's face. He tried to meet the eyes of the master. They were fixed on him. He could not seem to meet the gaze. And there were the two men--one a wreck and a murderer, the other made out of the finest steel. One bowed his head with its mat of hair, the other looked down on him, pouring something on him out of his soul.

"Well, I'm sober now," said Cranch, after a long time. "I know what you're thinking. I know it all. I know it all."

"You are not human," whispered the Judge.

Can you say that certain words call up magic? I do not know. But those words worked a miracle. In a second, like something bursting out of its sh.e.l.l, the Monty Cranch I had treasured in my heart tossed off the murderer, the drunkard, the worthless wretch who had been throttling him and holding him locked up somewhere in that worn and tired body, and came up to the surface like a drowning man struggling for life.

"Human?" he said in a clearing voice. "Human? Am I human? My G.o.d! that is the curse of all of us--we're human. To be human is to be a man. To be human is to be born. To be human is to have the blood and bone and brain that you didn't make or choose. To be human is to be the son of another without choice. To be human is to be the yesterday of your blood and marked with a hundred yesterdays of others' evil."

He jumped up. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot.

"Am I responsible for what I am?" he roared. "Are any of us?"

The Judge looked frightened, I thought.

"Blood is blood," cried Monty, with the veins standing out on his forehead. "That's why I brought the baby here. I wanted to kill her.

Blood is blood. There's mine in that chair--and it is me, and I am my father and he was his father, and there's no escape, do you hear? I wanted to kill her because I loved her, loved her, loved her!"

He fell back in the chair and covered his face with his hand and wept like a child.

I looked at the Judge and I could have believed he was a bronze statue.

He never moved an eyelash. I could not see him breathe. He seemed a metal figure and he frightened me and the child frightened me, because it slept through it all so calm, so innocent--a little quiet thing.

"Well, Chalmers," said the Judge at last, "what do you mean to do?

You're going away. Are you going to leave your daughter here?"

Monty's head was bowed over so his face did not show, but I saw him s.h.i.+ver just as if the Judge's words had blown across him with a draft as cold as ice.

"I'm going to Idaho," he said. "I'm going away to-night. I've got to leave the baby. You know that. Put it in an inst.i.tution and don't let the people know who its father was. Some day my blood will speak to it, Judge, but half my trouble was knowing what I was."

"By inheritance," said the Judge.

"By inheritance," said Monty.

"You love this little daughter?" the Judge whispered.

Monty just s.h.i.+vered again and bowed his head. It was hard to believe he was a murderer. Everything seemed like a dream, with Monty's chest heaving and falling like the pulse of a body's own heart.

"You never want her to know of you--anything about you?" asked the Judge.

"No," choked Monty. "Never!"

"Every man has good in him," said the Judge slowly. "You had better go--now!"

Without a word, then, Monty got up and went. He did not rush off like the reporter. He stopped and touched the baby's dirty little dress with the tips of his fingers. And then he went, and the front door closed slowly and creaked, and the screen door closed slowly and creaked, and his shoes came down slowly on the walk and creaked, and the iron gate-latch creaked. I went to the window and looked out one side of the flapping curtain, and I saw Monty Cranch move along the fence and raise his arms and stop and move again. In the moonlight, with its queer shadows, he still looked like half man and half ape, scuttling away to some place where everything is lost in nothing.

"We can't do anything more to-night," said the Judge, touching my shoulder. "Take the child upstairs."

"Yes, sir," said I.

"Stop!" he said huskily. "Let me look at her. What is in that body? What is in that soul? What is it marked with? What a mystery!"

"It is, indeed," I answered.