Chapter XVII: Love That Is Not Ashamed

The closing of the inquest upon the body of Jacob Van Deust was a mere formality. It was generally understood that there was within reach, if not in actual possession, some evidence that would go far to connect Dorn Hackett with the crime, and Squire Bodley even hinted as much in a few remarks that he made to the jury; but it was deemed injudicious to make it known at this juncture, and the jury, by the Squire's direction, returned a verdict of "death by violence at the hands of some person unknown."

Mary Wallace, ignorant of the slow, serpentine, and deadly ways of the thing men amuse themselves by calling "justice," when the finding of the jury was told to her that night found it difficult to understand why Dorn should be kept in jail, when there seemed to be no evidence which the coroner's jury has found sufficient to connect him with the crime.

"Uncle," said she, timidly approaching grim Mr. Thatcher, as he sat on the stone door-step, surrounded by a litter of fine shavings that he had scraped from a whale-lance handle that he was finishing by the last light of day, "why is it that, if the jury gave their verdict that the murder was done by some unknown person, they don't let Mr. Hackett out of jail?"

"Did you ever see a cat playing with a live mouse that she had caught?"

"Yes, uncle."

"How she lets it go a little way off, making it think it is going to escape, and then pounces on it again? How she pretends she isn't paying any attention to it, and has no notion of hurting it, and then suddenly tears it to pieces?"

"Yes, uncle," repeated Mary with a shudder.

"Well, that's the way the law does with a man."

Mary covered her face with her hands, and wept softly, while he went on:

"If they still hold on to Dorn Hackett, it is because they hope to get proof enough against him to make him out guilty. I have heard lawyers say that the law presumes every man to be innocent until he is proved guilty; and when I was a younger man, I actually believed that; but as I have got older, I have learned that practically, in the administration of the law, when a crime is committed somebody has got to suffer for it, for the sake of the moral effect on the community; and it don't really make much difference who it is, so long as the poor devil who is caught cannot prove himself innocent, which is sometimes a mighty hard thing to do. He may not be guilty, but they will try to make him out so. Better hang him than admit having made a blunder in his arrest."

"Oh, but uncle! you don't believe Dorn could be guilty, do you?"

He looked at her pale anxious face with a feeling of deep pity,--for his eyes were keen enough to see that it was of her lover she spoke,--and replied with unwonted tenderness:

"No, my poor child. No, I don't; and I wouldn't if I knew nothing more about him than your trust in him."

Two low sounds mingled softly, and were doubtless duly noted by the recording angel on duty: a sigh from Uncle Thatcher, and a sniff of disgust from his lean and rancorous wife in the dark room behind him. He sighed to think, as he looked at Mary, and appreciated the worth of her full and perfect love, what a treasure his profligate son had lost in her, among all the good he had recklessly cast from him. Aunt Thatcher sniffed because she did not dare to express openly her contempt for his weakness in manifesting sympathy for the poor orphan who had won her hearty and unextinguishable hatred by rejection of Silas's advances.

"And if Dorn cannot, as you say it is difficult to do, prove himself innocent, what will they do with him?"

"They'll hang him," exclaimed Aunt Thatcher, in a tone of malicious triumph, unable longer to contain herself, and now appearing in the door to enjoy Mary's horror.

Uncle Thatcher turned upon her with a look of disgust and retorted:

"Sallie Thatcher, if the devil himself ain't ashamed of you, he's meaner than I take him for."

"Oh, indeed! I'm so bad, am I? Thank you, Mr. Thatcher. Just because I don't choose to take up for a murderer and a thief. I'm sure any body might have known what he'd come to when he commenced by nearly killing my poor boy."

"Your 'poor boy' deserved all he got, and more, too; and I've good reasons of my own for thinking that we'll both see the day we'll have to regret that Dorn Hackett didn't finish him then."

Aunt Thatcher's surprise and rage at hearing those words deprived her for a moment of the power of articulation, and she could only give vent to her feelings by a sort of wild beast howl of fury. But very soon her ready tongue loosened itself again, and she poured forth a torrent of reproach, vituperation, and malediction directed at random against her husband, against Mary, against Dorn, against the world, indeed, excepting only her "poor injured boy."

When Uncle Thatcher had had enough of this, he straightened himself up before her, and she, as if fearing the weight of his heavy hand, retreated into the dark room. But he did not seem to have any intention of personal violence. He simply pulled the door to, locked it on the outside, and sat down again. A moment afterward the door was tried and rattled from the inside.

"Stay in there and keep quiet, if you know what's good for you," growled Uncle Thatcher.

The rattling ceased, and all was again quiet.

"Uncle," said Mary, after a little pause, "I want to go and see Dorn."

"In jail?"

"Yes."

"Well," he replied, a little doubtfully, "people might talk."

"Let them, if they will. I don't care--or, at least, I don't care enough to prevent my going to him when he is in trouble. What can they say, but that we are lovers. Well, yes, we are, and it is no time for me to seek to hide it when others look coldly and cruelly on him. He loves me--I know he does; and I love him--with all my heart. And we were going to be married very soon, uncle. I would have told you before, but I was afraid. Now you are so kind to me that I'm not afraid to tell you any more. And oh, Uncle, I _must_ go to him!"

"Forgive me, little Mary--and may God forgive me for having made poor Lottie's orphan child afraid to put confidence in me. You say you want to go and see him. You shall. I'll hitch up early to-morrow morning and take you over to Sag Harbor myself."

Long before daylight the next morning Mary, who had not closed her eyes during the seemingly interminable night, was up and had breakfast prepared. Whether Aunt Thatcher was still under the influence of the sullen fury that possessed her when the door was closed upon her the night before, or had fresh fuel added to the fire of her temper by overhearing the arrangement between her husband and niece, did not appear. At all events she spoke no word of question or remark, and was still abed when they took their departure.

The sun was not risen above the sea when Uncle Thatcher's old carryall creaked through the one long rambling street of the little village, and entered upon the Sag Harbor road; but his upward glinting beams already spread with gold and crimson the lower edges of the fleecy clouds on the eastern horizon. Diamonds of dew still clung to the long grass blades, and the points of the forest leaves and the morning breeze, heavy with the salt smell of the sea, was fresh and bracing. Robins flitted across the road with sharp notes, as of query why folks should be abroad so early, and a belated rabbit, homeward bound to his burrow in the brush, sat up-reared upon his haunches and seemed paralyzed by astonishment until the horses were almost upon him, when he bounded swiftly away. Higher and higher rose the sun, and as his ardent rays licked up the dew, light clouds of yellow dust swirled and spread behind the rapidly-moving wheels. Past orchards, where red winter apples glowed in the sunshine like balls of blood amid the foliage of the trees; past fields still golden with the stubble of the early ripened grain; past fallow lands, where the blue-bird carolled gayly on the hollow stump in which he and his mate had reared their springtime brood; past leafy woods, where nuts were ripening, the wheels rolled fast until they reached the quaint old town--their journey's end--and halted beneath the old-time tavern's venerable elms.

Leaving the horses hitched, after having carefully watered them, Uncle Thatcher accompanied his niece to the jail and asked permission for her to see Dorn Hackett, which the jailor, having no orders to the contrary, readily accorded. Mr. Thatcher did not enter. Though far from being a nervous man, he felt as if the close clammy atmosphere of that stone warehouse of sin and sorrow sent a chill to his heart. Besides, he had no business with Dorn Hackett. With a great breath of relief he turned his back upon the jail and wandered off down to the wharf to look at the shipping--for Sag Harbor had shipping in those days--to learn if there was any change in the oil and whalebone markets, and perhaps to ascertain what was coming to his share of that schooner in which he was part owner.

Dorn was just bidding adieu to his lawyer, when Mary appeared in the corridor.

"By jove! Here's a pretty girl come to see some prisoner!" exclaimed the lawyer at sight of her.

Dorn paid no attention to the remark. There was but one pretty girl in the world about whom he cared to think, and he did not expect her to come there. What, then, was his surprise when, the lawyer having stepped aside to give place to the visitor at his cell-door, he looked out and beheld the beautiful face of his own true-love, Mary. With a cry of surprise and joy he thrust his arms through between the bars, catching her in an embrace, and their lips met in a long and ardent kiss. The lawyer, who was a young man, and possessed of a very lively appreciation of feminine beauty, lingered a few moments and then quietly took his departure.

"I hardly know whether I am most glad or ashamed to see you here, darling," said Dorn, looking tenderly at his beloved.

"Glad, I hope, dearest. Should you feel ashamed of being unfortunate? It is only guilt of which one need be ashamed; and that, I well know, my dear Dorn has not."

"True. But it is very hard to wash the prison taint off, even from an innocent man."

"Do not think so, my love. Everybody will know yet how true and good you are, and will be all the kinder to you for the mistake that has given us so much pain and trouble."

"Ah, my dear girl, it is your love and not your reason that tells me so. Even people who have no other reason for hating the man who has been the victim of such a mistake, will find sufficient the consciousness that they have erred in supposing him guilty, and will always profess to view him with suspicion, whether they feel it or not. There is nothing that people generally abhor so much as a confession of fallibility. But, no matter. I have your love and confidence, dear Mary; I'm sure I have, or you would not be here; and for all beyond that I'd ask small odds from the world if I were free again."

"And you will be, dearest, I am sure of it. It can never be possible that a man should be punished by law for that of which he is not guilty."

"Ah, you think so? Then you have not read much about people who have been convicted upon circumstantial evidence. I have read a whole book about such cases, and I tell you it takes very little real proof to hang a man sometimes."

"Oh, Dorn! Don't talk so! You make me wild with horror and fear!"

"Well, there,--there,--darling. I won't say any more about it. I shouldn't have said so much, but somehow I have got into a bad way of talking back since I have had to make the acquaintance of a lawyer."

And kissing her tenderly, he sought to remove the terror that he had unthinkingly given her, making light even of what he had just said, and forcing himself to speak much more hopefully than he dared to feel.

"Lem, you know," he said, "has gone to New York to find a witness who will certainly clear me if we can bring him into court."

"Ruth told me that he had gone, and the object of his going, as far as she knew, but he did not give her any particulars."

"No? Then I'll tell you all about it."

Thereupon he proceeded to inform her of all the untoward events that had happened to him after his leaving her on the last night they were together; his running through the woods and falling into the new road; the aid given him by the little elderly gentleman; the missing of the boat he had hoped to catch; the opportune arrival of the old man, probably a smuggler, etc., etc., just as has already been narrated in his interview with Lem, but much more slowly, as this time the story was much broken by affectionate condolences and consequent digressions to love-making. He told her also of Lem's unsuccessful attempt to learn from Peter Van Deust who the little gentleman was.

"What a pity it is," she said, "that you did not think to ask him his name! Was there nothing about him that you can remember that might help to his identification--no personal peculiarity of look, or dress, or manner of speech?"

He shook his head regretfully, saying, "I was not much in the humor to notice peculiarities just then. But yes, come to think about it, there was one little incident that rather amused me at the time, badly as I felt; but I have not thought of it since until now. The little gentleman had a very slow, cautious, and precise way of speaking. I asked him what time it was, when we were down at the beach. He pulled out his watch and replied very deliberately: 'Without desiring to be understood as committing myself to an affirmation of the absolute accuracy of my time-piece, I may say that, to the best of my information and belief, it is now eleven minutes past ten o'clock.'"

"Ah, I have seen him! I recognize his phrase, 'information and belief'!" exclaimed Mary, "and know just how he said it. Ruth and I met him the first time he came into the neighborhood, looking for the Van Deusts, 'supposed to be brothers' as he then said. Ruth imitates him, sometimes, and does it very well. When we come to match together our remembrances of him, I am sure we will be able to give Lem some information that will help him to find the man."

"I certainly hope you may," answered Dorn, "for I can do nothing more. I have got to resign myself to play the passive part of a football for other people to bounce about, without being able to help myself, whether I am going into the goal or the ditch. I have a lawyer, but he seems to look rather blue over the prospect."

"Then get another."

"And have two of them looking blue? No, no. That would be more than I could stand. One is enough. Sailors don't take very kindly to lawyers, any way, you know."

At the end of an hour--a very short time as it seemed to them, but the limit set by the jailor, who now appeared, looking in at the corridor door from time to time, with an air of expectation--Mary said she would have to be going.

"How did you come over?" asked Dorn.

"Uncle Thatcher brought me."

"The--mischief he did! And did he know you were coming to see me?"

"Yes, he brought me for the purpose. Oh, Dorn, he has turned to be ever so kind and good to me! I told him I loved you--"

"God bless you, my darling!" exclaimed her lover, interrupting her with a kiss.

"--and that we were going to be married. And he did not say one word against it. He even said that he did not believe you were guilty; and when I told him I wanted to come and see you, he answered that he would hitch up early this morning and bring me; and so he did."

"Mary, if I've ever said a word against Uncle Thatcher I want to take it all back. A man who does me as good a turn as he has this day, I can never after hold any grudge against."

Mary went home that night with a much lightened heart, and looked so nearly happy that Aunt Thatcher would have liked to have bitten her, for sheer vexation and spite.