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Title: Two Days' Solitary Imprisonment
1898
Author: Edward Bellamy
Release Date: September 21, 2007 [EBook #22706]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWO DAYS' SOLITARY IMPRISONMENT ***
Produced by David Widger
TWO DAYS' SOLITARY IMPRISONMENT
By Edward Bellamy
1898
Mr. Joseph Kilgore was suffering from one of those spring influenzas
which make a man feel as if he were his own grandfather. His nose had
acquired the shape of a turnip and the complexion of a beet. All his
bones ached as if he had been soundly thrashed, and his eyes were weak
and watery. Your deadly disease is oftener than not a gentleman who
takes your life without mauling you, but the minor diseases are
mere bruisers who just go in for making one as uncomfortable and
unpresentable as possible. Mr. Kilgore's influenza had been coming on
for several days, and when he woke up this particular morning and heard
the rain dripping on the piazza-roof just under his bedroom-window, he
concluded, like a sensible man, that he would stay at home and nurse
himself over the fire that day, instead of going to the office. So he
turned over and snoozed for an hour or two, luxuriating in a sense of
aches and pains just pronounced enough to make the warmth and softness
of the bed delightful.
Toward noon, the edge of this enjoyment becoming dulled, he got up,
dressed, and came downstairs to the parlor, where his brother's wife (he
was a bachelor, living with a married brother) had considerately kindled
up a coal-fire in the grate for his benefit.
After lying off in the rocking-chair till past dinner-time, he began to
feel better and consequently restless. Concluding that he would like to
read, he went rummaging about the bookcases for a likely-looking novel.
At length he found in the upper shelf of a closet a book called "Rôles
of a Detective," containing various thrilling accounts of crimes and the
entanglement of criminals in the meshes of law and evidence.
One story in particular made a strong impression on his mind. It was a
tale of circumstantial evidence, and about how it very nearly hung an
innocent man for a murder which he had no thought of committing.
It struck Joseph rather forcibly that this victim of circumstantial
evidence was as respectable and inoffensive a person as himself, and
probably had never any more thought of being in danger from the law.
Circumstances had set their trap for him while he was quite unconscious
of peril, and he only awoke to find himself in the toils. And from this
he went on to reflect upon the horrible but unquestionable fact that
every year a certain proportion, and perhaps a very considerable
proportion, of those who suffered the penalties of the law, and even
the death-penalty, are innocent men,--victims of false or mistaken
evidence. No man, however wise or virtuous, can be sure that he will not
be taken in this fearful conscription of victims to the blind deity of
justice. "None can tell," thought Joseph, with a shudder, "that the word
he is saying, the road he is turning, the appointment he is making, or
whatever other innocent act he is now engaged in, may not prove the
last mesh in some self-woven death-net, the closing link in some damning
chain of evidence whose devilish subtlety shall half convince him that
he must be guilty as it wholly convinces others."
Timidity is generally associated with imaginativeness, if not its
result, and Joseph, although he concealed the fact pretty well under
the mask of reticence, was constitutionally very timid. He had an
unprofitable habit of taking every incident of possible embarrassment
or danger that occurred to his mind as the suggestion for imaginary
situations of inconvenience or peril, which he would then work out,
fancying how he would feel and what he would do, with the utmost
elaboration, and often with really more nervous excitement than he would
be likely to experience if the events supposed should really occur.
So now, and all the more because he was a little out of sorts, the
suggestions of this story began to take the form in his mind of an
imaginary case of circumstantial evidence of which he was the victim.
His fancy worked up the details of a fictitious case against himself,
which he, although perfectly innocent, could meet with nothing more than
his bare denial.
He imagined the first beginnings of suspicion; he saw it filming the
eyes of his acquaintances, then of his friends, and at last sicklying
over the face even of his brother Silas. In fancy he made frantic
attempts to regain the confidence of his friends, to break through the
impalpable, impenetrable barrier which the first stir of suspicion had
put between their minds and his. He cried, he begged, he pleaded. But in
vain, all in vain. Suspicion had made his appeals and adjurations sound
even to his friends as strange and meaningless as the Babel-builders'
words of a sudden became to each other. The yellow badge of suspicion
once upon him, all men kept afar, as if he were a fever-ship in
quarantine. No solitary imprisonment in a cell of stone could so utterly
exclude him from the fellowship of men as the invisible walls of this
dungeon of suspicion. And at last he saw himself giving up the hopeless
struggle, yielding to his fate in dumb despair, only praying that the
end might come speedily, perhaps even reduced to the abject-ness of
confessing the crime he had not committed, in order that he might at
least have the pity of men, since he could not regain their confidence.
And so strongly had this vision taken hold on him that his breath came
irregularly, and his forehead was damp as he drew his hand across it.
As has been intimated, it was Mr. Joseph Kil-gore's very bad habit to
waste his nervous tissue in the conscientiously minute elaboration of
such painful imaginary situations as that above described, and in his
present experience there was nothing particularly novel or extraordinary
for him. It was the occurrence of a singular coincidence between this
internal experience and a wholly independent course of actual events,
which made that waking nightmare the beginning of a somewhat remarkable
comedy, or, more properly, a tragedy, of errors. For, as Joseph lay back
in his chair, in a state of nervous exhaustion and moral collapse, the
parlor-door was thrown open, and Mrs. Silas Kilgore, his sister-in-law,
burst into the room. She was quite pale, and her black eyes were fixed
on Joseph's with the eager intensity, as if seeking moral support,
noticeable in those who communicate startling news which they have not
had time to digest.
The effect of this apparition upon Joseph in his unstrung condition may
be readily imagined. He sprang up, much paler than Mrs. Kilgore, his
lips apart, and his eyes staring with the premonition of something
shocking. These symptoms of extraordinary excitement even before she
had spoken, and this air as if he had expected a shocking revelation,
recurred to her mind later, in connection with other circumstances, but
just now she was too full of her intelligence to dwell on anything else.
"A man was murdered in our barn last night. They 've found the body!"
she exclaimed.
As the meaning of her words broke on him, Joseph was filled with
that sort of mental confusion which one experiences when the scene or
circumstances of a dream recur in actual life. Was he still dreaming
that ghostly vision of suspicion and the death-trap of circumstances?
Was this a mere continuation of it? No, he was awake; his sister-in-law
standing there, with pallid face and staring eyes, was not an
apparition. The horrid, fatal reality which he had been imagining was
actually upon him.
"I did not do it!" dropped from his ashen lips.
"You do it? Are you crazy? Who said anything about your doing it?" cried
the astounded woman.
The ring of genuine amazement in her voice was scarcely needed to recall
Joseph to the practical bearing of his surroundings, and break the spell
of superstitious dread. The sound of his own words had done it. With a
powerful effort he regained something like self-control, and said, with
a forced laugh:--
"What an absurd thing for me to say! I don't know what I could have been
thinking of. Very odd, was it not? But, dear me! a man murdered in our
barn? You don't tell me! How terrible!"
His constrained, overdone manner was not calculated to abate Mrs.
Kilgore's astonishment, and she continued to stare at him with an
expression in which a vague terror began to appear. There are few
shorter transitions than that from panic to anger. Seeing that her
astonishment at his reception of the news increased rather than
diminished, he became exasperated at the intolerable position in which
he was placed. His face, before so pale, flushed with anger.
"Damnation! What are you staring at me that way for?" he cried fiercely.
Mrs. Kilgore gave a little cry, half of indignation, half of fright, and
went out of the room, shutting the door after her.
Joseph had ample opportunity to review the situation before he was again
disturbed, which, indeed, was not till some hours later, at dusk, when
Silas came home, and the tea-table was set. Silas had been promptly
summoned from his shop when the discovery of the body was made, and had
been busy all the afternoon with the police, the coroner, and the crowds
of visitors to the scene of the tragedy.
The conversation at the tea-table ran entirely upon the various
incidents of the discovery, the inquest, and the measures of the police
for the apprehension of the criminal. Mrs. Kilgore was so full of
questions that she scarcely gave Silas time to answer, and Joseph
flattered himself that his comparative silence was not noticeable.
Nevertheless, as they rose from the table, Silas remarked:--
"You don't seem much interested in our murder, Joseph; you have n't
asked the first question about it."
Mrs. Kilgore was just leaving the room, and she turned her head to
see how he would answer. But he, too, turned off the matter by saying
something about Maria's loquaciousness having left him no chance. After
tea the little family circle was gathered in the parlor. Mrs. Kilgore
was sewing; Silas read the newspaper, and Joseph sat up by the fire.
From time to time, as he glanced around, he caught Mrs. Kilgore's eyes
studying him very intently. Her manner indicated that her indignation
at his behavior and language earlier in the afternoon had been quite
neutralized by her curiosity as to its cause.
"There 's nothing in the paper to-night but the murder, and I know that
already," exclaimed Silas, finally. "Maria, where's there something to
read? Hullo! what's this?"
He had taken up from the table the story of circumstantial evidence
which Joseph had been reading that morning.
"Why, Maria, here's that murder-book you wouldn't let me finish last
summer for fear I'd murder you some night. Who on earth hunted up that
book of all books, to-day of all days?"
"I did," replied Joseph, clearing his throat, in order to speak with a
natural inflection.
"You did?" exclaimed Silas.
"You must have looked the house over to find it, for I hid it
carefully," said Mrs. Kilgore, looking sharply at him. "What made you so
anxious to get it?"
"I was not particularly anxious. I was merely looking for something to
read," said Joseph, making a pretense of yawning, as if the matter was a
very trivial one.
"I suppose the murder brought it to his mind," said Silas.
"Why, no!" exclaimed Mrs. Kilgore quickly. "You must have been reading
it before the murder. Now that I remember, I saw it in your hands."
"Before the murder, were you, Joseph? Why, that's almost enough to make
one feel superstitious," said Silas, turning around in his chair, so as
to look fairly at him.
Joseph had half a mind to make a clean breast of the matter then and
there, and explain to them how curiously the reading of that book had
affected him. But he reflected that Silas was rather unimaginative, and
would probably be more mystified than enlightened by his explanation.
"I do believe it was reading that book which made you act so queerly
when I brought you in the news of the murder," pursued Mrs. Kilgore.
"How is that? How did he act queerly?" asked Silas.
"I am not aware that I acted queerly at all," said Joseph doggedly.
He knew well enough he had acted queerly, and did not mean to deny
that; but, as children and confused persons often do, he answered to the
underlying motive rather than the language. He only thought of denying
the inference of suspicion that her words seemed to him to suggest. But
to Mrs. Kilgore he very naturally seemed to be prevaricating.
"Why, Joseph!" said she, in a raised voice, and with a slight asperity;
"you know how you jumped up, looking like a ghost, the moment I opened
the door, and the first thing you said after I 'd told you that they
'd found a murdered man in the barn, was--Why, Joseph, what's the
matter?"
But I must go back a little. When the conversation turned on the book
and Joseph's connection with it, a minute or so previous, Silas had
quite naturally glanced over at his brother, and, as the talk went on,
his glance had become a somewhat concentrated gaze, although expressive
of nothing but the curiosity and slight wonder which the circumstances
suggested. It would not do to have Silas think that he avoided his eyes,
and so Joseph had, as soon as he felt this gaze, turned his own face
rather sharply toward it. He had meant merely to meet his brother's look
in a natural and unaffected manner. But, although never more sensible of
just what such a manner would be, he was utterly unable to compass it.
He was perfectly aware that the expression of his eyes was much too
serious and challenging,--and yet he could not, for the soul of him,
modify it. Nor did he dare to withdraw his gaze after it had once met
his brother's, although knowing that it was fast becoming a fierce
stare, and perceiving that Silas had already noticed something peculiar
in it. For to drop his eyes would be utter discomfiture and rout. As
Mrs. Kilgore alluded to his queer demeanor when she told him the news,
his face began to flush with the anticipation of the revelation that was
coming at this most unfavorable moment, even while his eyes were locked
with the already startled ones of Silas. As she went on, the flush
covered the lower part of his face, and rose like a spring-tide up his
cheeks, and lent a fierce, congested glare to his eyes. He felt how
woeful and irretrievable a thing it would be for him just then to lose
his countenance, and at the thought the flush burned deeper and merged
higher. It overspread his high, bald, intellectual forehead, and
incarnadined his sconce up to the very top of it. At this moment it was
that Mrs. Kilgore broke off her narrative with the exclamation, "Why,
Joseph, what's the matter?"
At her words it seemed as if every drop of blood in his body poured into
his face. He could endure it no longer. He rose abruptly, strode out of
the parlor, and went to his room, although it was but eight o'clock,
and he had no fire there. If he had staid another moment he must have
brained Silas and his wife with the poker, such an ungovernable anger
boiled up in him with the sense of his causeless, shameful discomfiture.
As Joseph left the parlor the eyes of Silas and his wife met each other,
--his dull with bewilderment and terror at a spectral fear; hers keen
with a definite suspicion. But even her loquacity was subdued by a real
fright. She had nothing to say. Her sensation was like that of one who,
hunting a hare, stumbles upon a wolf. She had been both offended and
made curious by Joseph's demeanor that afternoon, but the horrid idea
that within a moment had been suggested to both their minds had so
little occurred to her as a serious possibility that she was even on the
point of rallying Joseph on it before her husband. Some time after he
had left the parlor Silas asked, with averted face:--
"What was it that he said when you told him the news?" and then she
repeated his words.
And Joseph, sitting wild-eyed upon his bed in the darkness in the room
above, red no longer, but pale as death, heard the murmur of the voices,
and knew that she was telling him. No one of the household slept much
that night, except Mrs. Kil-gore. Whenever she awoke she heard her
husband tossing restlessly, but she dared not ask him what was
the matter. In vain did Silas rehearse to himself all through the
night-hours how petty were the trifles in Joseph's demeanor which
had disturbed him. They were of the sort of trifles which create that
species of certainty known as moral certainty,--the strongest of all
in the mind it occupies, although so incapable of being communicated to
others. It mattered little how much evidence there was, if it sufficed
to lodge the faintest trace of suspicion in his mind. For, like some
poisons, an atom of suspicion is as fatal as the largest quantity, Nay,
perhaps, even more surely so, for against great suspicion the mind often
takes arms and makes valiant head; but a little doubt, by its timid and
hesitant demeanor, disarms opposition, and is readily entertained. And
all that night, lying awake, and knowing that Silas was sleepless just
the other side of the partition, and that the fungus of suspicion was
moment by moment overgrowing his mind, he could hardly wait for morning,
but would fain have rushed, even now in the darkness, to his bedside to
cry: "I did not do it! Believe me, brother, I did not do it!"
In the morning, however, the sun shone brightly into his room, and last
night's events and misunderstandings seemed like a bad dream. He went
downstairs almost cheery. He did not find Silas, but Mrs. Kilgore
was about. He was rather startled to observe the entire change in her
demeanor. Yesterday she was constantly following him up with her sharp
black eyes and brisk questions and exclamations, but now she seemed
frightened, acted in a constrained manner, and avoided his eyes.
"Where is Silas?" he asked, as they sat down to table.
"He said that there was something he must see to at the shop before work
began, so he had an early breakfast," replied Mrs. Kilgore, with her
eyes on her plate.
Had she been looking up, she would have seen a piteous constriction in
the muscles of Joseph's face. His heart was sick, and all his regained
courage sank away. It was no bad dream. Silas was afraid to meet him.
He left his meal untasted, and went to the office. A dozen acquaintances
stopped him on his way down-street to ask about the murder; and all day
long somebody was dropping in to pester him on the same subject. He told
them with a dull, abstracted air all the fresh details he knew, but
felt all the time as if he cheated each auditor of the vital part of the
matter, in that he failed to shout after him:--
"Silas suspects me of it!"
Silas had, indeed, left the house early for the purpose of avoiding his
brother. He was in a condition of mind and nerve in which he did not
dare to meet him. At tea the brothers met for the first time since the
night previous. There was a constraint between them like that between
strangers, but stronger and more chilling far than ever that is. There
is no chill like that which comes between friends, and the nearer the
friends the more deathly the cold. Silas made a little effort to speak
of business-matters, but could not keep it up, and soon a silence
settled over the party, only broken by the words of table-service. Mrs.
Kilgore sat pale and frightened all through the meal without venturing a
single phrase, and scarcely looking up from her plate.
The silence was of that kind which all felt to be more expressive than
the loudest, most explicit language could be,--more merciless than any
form of verbal accusation. Such silence is a terribly perfect medium,
in which souls are compelled to touch each other, resent as they may
the contact. Several times Joseph was on the point of rising and rushing
from the table. How many more such meals could he stand or could they
stand? All of them recognized that the situation had become perceptibly
more serious and more pronounced on account of that silent tea-table.
There was in particular not the slightest allusion made by any one to
the murder, which, seeing that it had happened but yesterday, and
would naturally still have been an engrossing topic, was an omission
so pointed as to be an open charge of guilt. There is such a thing as
emphasizing a topic by suppressing it, as letters are sunk into stone.
The omission impressed Silas as it did Joseph, but, regarding it from
his point of view, it did not occur to him but that Joseph was the one
solely responsible for it. He, Silas, had refrained from reference to it
because his suspicions in regard to Joseph made the topic unendurable.
But he could not imagine that Joseph could have had any other motive
for his silence on the subject but a guilty conscience,--some secret
knowledge of the crime. Thus regarded, it was a terrible confirmation.
That a perception that he was suspected might cause an innocent man to
act very much as if he were conscious of guilt did not occur to Silas,
as, perhaps, it would have failed to occur to most persons in just his
position.
After leaving the tea-table the brothers went together into the parlor,
according to the family custom. They took their accustomed seats on
opposite sides of the fireplace, but there was no conversation. A veil
was between them. Both were thinking of the same thing,--thinking of
it intensely,--and each knew that the other was thinking of it, and
yet neither for worlds could have commanded the courage to speak of it.
The suspicion had grown definite in Silas's mind, and yet, whenever he
brought himself to the point of putting it in words, it suddenly seemed
impossible, cruel, and absurd. But if Silas found it impossible to
speak, far more so it seemed to Joseph.
To charge another with suspecting us is half to confess ourselves worthy
of suspicion. It is demoralizing,--it is to abandon the pride of
conscious rectitude. To deny an accusation is to concede to it a
possibility, a color of reason; and Joseph shrank with unutterable
repugnance from that. He felt that he could be torn limb from limb
sooner than betray by a word that he recognized the existence of
suspicion so abominable. Besides, of what avail would be a denial
without evidence to disprove a suspicion which had arisen without
evidence? It was a thing too impalpable to contend with. As well fight a
fog as seek to destroy by mere denial suspicion so vague, unsubstantial,
and subtile, as that which enveloped him. Silas would, of course,
eagerly accept his denial; he well knew how he would spring to his side,
how warm and firm would be his hand-clasp, and how great, perhaps,
his momentary relief. But he was, after all, but human, and no man can
control his doubts. Silas would still be unable, when he thought the
matter over, to help the feeling that there was, after all, something
very strange about his conduct from first to last. It is the subtiler
nature of doubt to penetrate the heart more profoundly than confidence,
and to underlie it. No generous St. George of faith can reach the nether
den where it lurks. Or, rather, is it like the ineradicable witch-grass
which, though it be hewed off at the surface, still lives at the root,
and springs forth luxuriantly again at the first favoring season?
Moreover, Joseph hoped that some circumstance, the detection of the
murderer, or a healthier moral tone, might dissipate the cloud of
suspicion between them, and then it would be far better not to have
spoken, for, once put in words, the hateful thing would ever remain
a mutual memory, never again to be denied, and which might come up to
their minds whenever they looked each other in the eye thereafter. And
so the brothers sat opposite each other in silence, their faces growing
grayer as the clock ticked.
"The weather is growing cooler again," said Joseph, at last, rising to
go to his room.
It was at least two hours before his usual bedtime, but he could sit
there no longer.
"Yes, I think we shall have a frost," replied Silas, and the brothers
parted.
After Joseph had gone, Mrs. Kilgore came into the parlor and sat down
with some sewing. She waited for her husband to speak and tell her if
Joseph had said anything. But he sat there staring at the wall, and took
no notice of her. Although she knew so well what had been preying upon
his mind since last evening, yet he had not once referred to the matter,
and she had not dared to do so. It was hard for a talkative little lady
like her to understand this reticence about a matter so deeply felt. She
could not comprehend that there may be griefs so ghastly that we dare
not lift from them the veil of silence. She wanted to "talk it over" a
little. She felt that would do Silas good, because she knew it would be
a relief to her. Nor was she insensible to the gratification it would
afford her vanity to discuss so serious a matter with her husband,
whose general tone with her was one of jest and pleasantry, to the
disparagement of her intellectual powers, as she thought. So, after
glancing up several times timidly at Silas's still set profile, she
said, in a weighty little voice:--
"Don't you think Joseph behaves very strangely about the murder?" Her
words seemed to be several seconds in making an impression on Silas's
mind, and then he slowly turned his face full upon her. It was a
terrible look. The squared jaw, the drawn lips, the dull, distant stare,
repulsed her as one might repulse a stranger intermeddling with a bitter
private grief. Who was she, to come between him and his brother? He did
not seem to think it worth while to say anything to explain so eloquent
a glance, but immediately faced about again, as if dismissing the
interruption from his mind. Mrs. Kilgore did not try to make any more
conversation, but went to her bedroom and cried herself to sleep.
But Silas sat in his chair in the parlor, and took no note of the hours
till the lamp spluttered and went out. All through the evening, in
Joseph's room, which was directly above, he had heard him walking to and
fro, to and fro, sitting down awhile, and then starting again; and if
the pacing had not finally come to an end, Silas could not have gone to
bed, for his heart went out to his brother wrestling there alone with
his dreadful secret, and he could not rest till he thought that he, too,
was at rest.
Indeed, for the very reason that Joseph was so dear to him, and he felt
nothing could change that, he actually hesitated the less to admit these
horrible suspicions. Love is impatient of uncertainly, and would rather
presume the guilt of a friend from its longing to pour itself out in
pity and tenderness, than restrain itself while judgment scrutinizes
evidence and decides by a straw's weight.
A practical reflection, moreover, had occurred to Silas.
If Joseph had really--he did not dare to say to himself what--then
it was of the utmost importance that they should quickly understand each
other, so as to take steps to place him in safety. His desire to share
Joseph's horrible secret was like the feeling with which one would fain
uncover a friend's loathsome disease in order to help him. Before he
went to sleep that night he resolved, therefore, that he would win his
confidence by letting him see in every possible way, short of actual
words, that he suspected the true state of things, and that Joseph might
still confide in him as a faithful brother who would stand by him in the
worst emergency.
On first meeting him the following morning he began to carry out this
project so worthy of fraternal devotion. He sought occasion to shake
hands with Joseph, and gave a meaning pressure to his clasp. At
breakfast he was the only one who talked, and endeavored by his manner
to let Joseph understand that he perfectly comprehended the situation,
and was talking to cover his embarrassment and prevent Mrs. Kilgore
from suspecting anything. Several times also he managed to catch his
brother's eye, and give him a glance implying sympathy and mutual
understanding. This demeanor added the last touch to Joseph's
exasperation.
Evading Silas's evident intention of walking down-street, he got away
alone, and took both dinner and tea at a restaurant, to put off meeting
his brother and sister-in-law as long as possible. He lingered long over
his tea in the darkest, loneliest corner of the eating-house, for the
prospect, no longer to be avoided, of returning home to confront his
sister-in-law's frightened face and Silas's pathetic glances appeared
intolerable. Wild ideas of flying from the city and returning never, or
not until the truth about the murder had come to light, occurred to him.
He even began to arrange what sort of a letter he should write to Silas.
But men of forty, especially of Joseph's temperament, who have moved in
the same business and domestic ruts all their lives, do not readily
make up their minds to bold steps of this sort. To endure suffering or
inconvenience is more natural than to change their settled habits. So
it all ended in his going home at about eight o'clock, and being greatly
relieved to find some callers there.
All three of this strangely stricken family, indeed, shared that
feeling. It was such a rest from the nervous strain whenever either
or both were left alone with Joseph! The earnestness with which Mrs.
Kilgore pressed her guests to stay a little longer was so unusual and
apparently uncalled for that I fancy Mr. and Mrs. Smith had a vague
suspicion that they were being made game of. But they would have been
disabused of that impression could they have appreciated the sinking
of heart with which their hosts heard the frontdoor close, and realized
that they were again left to themselves. Only one thing had occurred to
mar the relief which the call had afforded. The topic of the murder had
been exhausted before Joseph entered, but, just as she was leaving, Mrs.
Smith made a return to it, saying:--
"Mrs. Kilgore, I was telling my husband I should think you must be
scared to be in the house, for fear the murderer might still be hanging
around."
Mrs. Kilgore shuddered, and cast an instantaneous, wholly involuntary
glance at Joseph. Her husband intercepted it, and, catching his eye, she
saw an expression in it as if he could strangle her for what was really
only the fault of her nerves. She stammered something, and the bustle of
the retiring guests covered her confusion well enough.
Unfortunately, Joseph, too, had caught that sudden, terrified glance of
his sister-in-law's at him, and it affected him more than anything that
had occurred in either of the two days since the murder. As the guests
took their leave, his head dropped on his breast, and his arms fell by
the sides of his chair. Mr. Kilgore wanted to send his wife from the
room, but his voice stuck in his throat, his tongue refused to move.
They waited a moment, and then Joseph said:--
"Send for the police! For God's sake, take me out of this! I can't stand
it any longer!"
It was not yet nine o'clock, and a boy came by in the street crying:--
"Extra! The Kilgore barn murderer captured! Full confession!"
Although the words were perfectly audible through the lowered windows
to all in the room, Mrs. Kilgore was the only one who took any mental
cognizance of them. Nor did either of the men, who sat there like
stones, take note of her as she left the room. A minute later they heard
her scream, and she ran back with the open paper in her hands.
"He did not do it! He is crazy! They have found the murderer!"
Silas fixed an incredulous, questioning stare upon his wife, and then
turned quickly toward his brother. As for Joseph, at first and for
several moments, he gave no sign that he had heard at all. Then he
slowly raised his eyes to his brother's face with a deliberate, cruel
gaze of contemptuous sarcasm and cold aversion. The first effect of this
great relief was to flood his mind with bitter wrath at those who had
done him the great wrong from which, no thanks to them, he had been
rescued.
Mrs. Kilgore hastily read aloud, in a breathless voice, the newspaper
account It seemed that two tramps had taken refuge in the barn from
the storm that had raged the night of the murder, and getting into some
quarrel before morning, one had stabbed the other and fled, only to be
captured two days later and confess everything. When Mrs. Kilgore ceased
reading, Joseph said:--
"It must be a great disappointment for you that they are not going to
hang me for it. I sincerely condole with you."
Mrs. Kilgore cried, "Oh, don't!" and Silas made a gesture of
deprecation, but both felt that Joseph had a right to revile them as he
chose, and they had no right to complain. But he, even while he could
not deny himself the gratification of a little cruel reproach, knew that
they were not to be blamed, that they had been as much the victims of
a fatality as himself, and that this was one of those peculiarly
exasperating wrongs which do not leave the sufferer even the
satisfaction of being angry. Soon he got up and walked across the room,
stretched himself, drew his hand over his forehead, and said:--
"I feel as if I had just been dug up after being buried alive."
At this sign of returning equanimity, Silas took courage and ventured to
say:--
"I know we 've been a pair of crazy fools, Joe, but you 're a little
to blame. What's made you act so queerly? You won't deny that you have
acted so?"
Joseph smiled,--one does n't appreciate the pure luxury of a smile
until he has been deprived of it for a while,--lit a cigar, sat down
with his legs over the arm of his arm-chair,--he had not indulged in an
unconstrained posture for two days,--and told his side of the story.
He explained how, thanks to that tale he was reading, and the ghastly
reverie it suggested, his nerves were all on edge when Mrs. Kilgore
burst in with a piece of news whose extraordinary coincidence with his
train of thought had momentarily thrown him off his balance; and he
tried to make them see that, after that first scene, all the rest was a
logical sequence.
Mrs. Kilgore, by virtue of her finer feminine nervous organization,
understood him so readily that he saw he had made a mistake in not
unbosoming himself to her at first. But Silas evidently did not so
easily take his idea.
"But why did n't you just tell us that you had n't done it, and end the
misunderstanding at one blow?" he asked.
"Why, don't you see," replied Joseph, "that to deny a thing before you
are distinctly suspected of it is to suggest suspicion; while to deny it
afterward, unless you have proof to offer, is useless?"
"What should we have come to but for the capture of the real murderer?"
cried Mrs. Kilgore, with a shudder.
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