McClure\'s Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 written by Various

V >> Various >> McClure\'s Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13

"Come along," said the policeman kindly. "All witnesses are treated
that way. We'll give you the most comfortable quarters we've got."

He took Isaac by the arm after the professional manner. The young
man flung off the touch. For an instant his eyes swept the station
menacingly. What if he should exert his strength! There were
two--three--four officers in the room. He might even overpower these,
and dash for liberty. He saw the livid reflection of electric lights
through the windows. Unconsciously he contracted his sinews, and
tightened his muscles until they were rigid. Then the hopelessness of
his position burst upon him like a red strontian fire. He felt blasted
by his disgrace.

"What are you doing to me?" he cried out. "Put me in prison? My God!
This will kill my mother!"

The next morning at ten o'clock Tom Muldoon was released on ten
thousand dollars bail. The surety was promptly furnished by the
alderman of the--th Ward. Muldoon was to present himself before the
grand jury, which met the first Monday in each month. As this was the
beginning of the month, his appearance could not be required for three
weeks at least, and by mutual agreement of the district attorney and
the counsel for the defendant, action might be put off for one or even
for two months more, pending the recovery or eventual death of the
assaulted. This would give the saloon-keeper plenty of time for the
two ribs that Isaac Masters had crushed, to mend!

There are sensitive men and women who would go insane after spending
an innocent night in a cell. In the dryest, the largest, the best of
them there is everything to debase the manhood and nauseate the soul.
The tin cup on the grated window-sill, half-filled with soup which the
last occupant left; the cot to the right of the hopeless door, made
of two boards and one straw mattress; and that necessity which is the
nameless horror of such a narrow incarceration--that which suffocates
and poisons; then the flickering jet up the concrete corridor, casting
such fitful shadows by the prisoner's side that he starts from his cot
in terror to touch the phantoms lest they be real; the alternate waves
of choking heat and harrowing cold; the hammering of the steam-pipes;
the curses, the groans, and the eruptive breathing of the sleeping
and the drunken; the thoughts of home, and friends, and irreparable
disgrace; the feeble hope that, after all, the family will not hear
of this so far away; and the despair because they will--mad visions
of suicide; blasphemy, repentant tears and prayers, each chasing the
other amid the persistent thought that all things are impotent but
freedom. Oh, what a night! What a night!

There are souls that have existed five, ten years under the courtine
of Catharine in the Petropavlovskaya Fortress--drugged, tortured, at
last killed like rats in a hole. All the while the maledict banner
of the Romanoffs writhes above them. What has been the power to keep
alive thousands of prisoners in those bastions, beyond the natural
endurance of the flesh? The glory of principle.

No wonder that a ghastly face and haggard eyes and wavering steps
followed the keeper to the American court-room the next morning;
for nothing could be tortured into a principle to stimulate Isaac's
courage. It is easy to die for right, but not for wrong.

There were three short flights of iron that led past tiers of cells,
through the tombs, into the prisoner's dock. Isaac dully remembered
the huge coils of steam-pipe that curled up the side of the wall. He
thought of pythons. As he passed by, the prisoners awaiting sentence
held the rods of their doors in their hands, like monkeys, and swore,
and laughed, and shot questions at the keeper as he passed along.

"Have you no friends in the city?" proceeded the judge, after he had
examined the witness.

Isaac shook his head disconsolately. "I have about five dollars; that
is all, and my bag--and, sir, my character."

"Then I am afraid I shall have to hold you over in default of bail
until the trial." The judge nodded to the sheriff to bring on the next
case.

"Where are you taking me?"

"To the City Jail," answered the sheriff curtly. "Come along!" With a
mighty effort Isaac wrenched himself loose, and strode to the bar.

"Judge!" he cried. "Judge, you wouldn't do that! Let me go! I will
come back on the trial. Look at me, Judge! What have I done? Why
should I be sent to prison? I am an honest man!"

But the judge was used to such scenes, and he turned his head wearily
away.

"The law requires the government to hold the witness in default of
bail, in cases of capital crime." The judge was a kind man, and he
tried to do a kind act by explaining the subtle process of the law
again to the lad. When he had done this, he nodded. And now the men
approached Isaac to remove him, by force if necessary. But the New
Hampshire boy stood before the bar of justice stolidly. His eyes
wandered aimlessly, and his lips muttered. Paralysis swept near him at
that instant.

"Am--I--imprisoned because I am friendless and poor? Is this your
law?"

The judge shrugged his shoulders, but many in the court-room felt
uncomfortable.

"Then," spoke Isaac Masters, rising to his greatest height, and
uplifting his hand as if to call God to witness, "if this is law--damn
your law!" It was his first and last oath. Every man in the room
started to his feet at the utterance of that supreme legal blasphemy.
But the judge was silent. What sentence might he not inflict for such
contempt of court? What sentence could he? The witness had no money,
wherewith to be fined, and he was going to prison at any rate. The
judge was great enough to put himself in Isaac's place. He stroked his
beard meditatively.

"Remove the witness," he said. This was sentence enough. Although
two officers advanced cautiously, as if prepared for a tussle, a babe
might have led the giant unto the confines of Hades by the pressure of
its little finger. For Isaac wept.

[Illustration: "OH, MY GOD!" HE SOBBED. "MY GOD! MY GOD!"]

* * * * *

There were two other witnesses in the white-washed cell to which Isaac
was assigned. It was on the south side, and large, and sunny, and
often the door was left unlocked; but the cell looked out into a
crumbling grave-yard. One of these witnesses was a boy of about
eighteen, pale to the suggestion of a mortal disease. It did not
take Isaac long to find out that this complexion did not indicate
consumption, but was only prison pallor. The other prisoner was less
pathetic as to color, but he was listless and discouraged. The only
amusement of these men consisted in chewing tobacco in enormous
quantities, playing surreptitious games of high-low-jack, in reading
the daily paper, a single magazine, and waiting for the sun to enter
the barred window, and watching it in the afternoon as it slipped
away. These two men tried to cheer the new comer in a rude, hearty
way; but when the country lad learned that they had been in detention
for six months already, held by the government as main witnesses
against the first mate of their brig, their words were as dust. They
only choked him.

"What did you do," Isaac asked, "to get you in such a scrape?"

"We saw the mate shoot the cook; that's all."

"If I'd known," said the pale boy, with, a look out of the window,
"how Uncle Sam keeps us so long--I wished I hadn't said nothing. But
we get a dollar a day; that's something." And with a sigh that he
meant to engulf with his philosophy, the boy turned his face away, so
that Isaac should not suspect the tears that salted the flavor of the
coarse tobacco.

The dark outlook, the blind future, the hopeless cell, the disordered
table, the lazy life that deadened all activity but that of the
imagination, the lack of vigorous air, the lounging companionship,
but, above all things, the thought of his mother and Abbie, and the
brooding over what he dared to call an outrage perpetrated, in the
name of the law, upon himself--these things made a turmoil of Isaac's
brain. There was a daily conflict between the Christian and the
criminal way of looking at his irreparable misfortune which he was
surprised to find that even the possession of his father's Bible could
not control.

There were times when it needed all his intelligence to keep him from
springing on the keeper, and running amuck in the ward-room, simply
for the sake of uttering a violent, brutal protest. Then there were
hours when he was too exhausted to leave his cot. At such a time he
wrote a letter, his first letter to his mother, and he made the keeper
promise to have it mailed so that no one could possibly suspect that
it started from a prison.

"DEAR MOTHER"--it ran--"I have not written to you for three
weeks since I have been here, because I have been sick. I am
now in a very safe place, and am doing pretty well. I clear my
food and board and seventy-five cents a day. I have not been
paid yet. I think you had better not write to me until I can
give you a permanent address. I read my Bible every day and
love you more dearly than ever. I have tried to do my duty as
you would have me. Give my love to Abbie. I will write soon
again.

"Ever your affectionate son,

"ISAAC."

The simpleton! Could he not suspect that country papers copy from city
columns all that is of special local interest, and more? And did he
not know that it is one of the disgraces of modern journalism that no
department is so copiously edited, annotated, and illustrated as that
of criminal intelligence?

Could he not surmise that on the Saturday following his incarceration
the very mountains rang with the news? That it should be mangled
and turned topsy-turvy, and that in the eyes of his simple-minded
neighbors he should be thought of as the murderer, by reason of
his great strength? For how could it come into the intelligence of
law-abiding citizens and law-respecting people, that a man should be
shut up in prison, no matter what the newspapers said, unless he had
_done_ something to deserve it? What did the mountaineers know about
the laws of bail, and habeas corpus? And could such news, gossiped by
one neighbor, repeated by another, confirmed by a third, fail to reach
the desolate farm-house in which a woman, feeble, old and faint of
heart, lay trembling between life and death?

The grand jury meets on the first Monday of each month to indict those
for trial against whom reasonable proofs of guilt are obtained. The
saloon loafer had been shot in the groin, and pending his injuries
indictment was waived. In proportion as the wound proved serious and
the recovery prolonged, trial was postponed.

Isaac Masters had now been locked up six weeks. He had not yet heard
from home, and had only written once. About noon, one day, the keeper
came to tell him that a woman wished to see him. Isaac thought that
it was his mother, and the shame of meeting her in the guard-room
surrounded by tiers upon tiers of murderers and thieves and petty
criminals overcame him. The man of strength sat down on his cot, and
putting his hands over his white face, trembled violently. The guard,
who knew that Isaac was an innocent man, spoke to him kindly.

"Go! go!" said the prisoner in a voice of agony, "and tell my mother
that I will be right there."

"Mother!" ejaculated the guard. "She's the youngest mother for a man
of your size I ever see." He winked at the sailor, and went.

Then Isaac knew that it was Abbie, who had come alone, and he
tightened his teeth and lips together, and went down.

Isaac slowly came down the perforated iron stairs that were attached
to his prison wing like an inside fire-escape. On the bench in the
middle of the guard-room sat Abbie--a little, helpless thing she
seemed to him--facing the entrance, as if she feared to remove her
eyes from the door that led to freedom.

Abbie was greatly changed. She was dressed in black. If Isaac had been
a free man, this fact would have startled him. As it was, he was so
spent with suffering that his dulled mind could not understand it.
At first Abbie did not recognize her hearty lover. His huge frame was
gaunt and wasted. His ruddy face was white, and his cheeks hung
in folds like moulded putty. His country clothes dropped about him
aimlessly. From crown to foot he had been devastated by unmerited
disgrace. Grief may glorify; but the other ravages.

This meeting between the lovers was singularly undramatic. Each shrank
a little from the other. They shook hands quietly. His was burning;
her's like a swamp in October dew. He sat down beside her on the bench
awkwardly, while the deputy looked at them with careless curiosity. He
was used to nothing but tragedy and crime, and to his experienced mind
the two had become long ago confused.

"Mother?" asked Isaac, nervously moving his feet. "Didn't she get my
letter?"

The girl nodded gravely, tried to meet his eyes, and then looked away.
Tears fell unresisted down her cheeks. She made no attempt to wipe
them off. It was as if she were too well acquainted with them to check
their flow.

Then the truth began to filter through Isaac's bewebbed intellect. He
spread his knees apart, rested his arms upon them, and bent his head
to his hands. His great figure shook.

"Oh, my God!" he sobbed. "My God! My God!"

"Oh, don't, Isaac, don't!" Abbie put her hand upon his head as if he
had been her boy. "Your mother was as happy as could be. She was happy
to die. We buried her yesterday!"

How could she tell him that his mother had died of grief--too sorely
smitten to bear it--for his sake?

But Isaac's head rose and fell--rose and fell rhythmically between his
hands. His breath came in low groans, like that of an animal smitten
dead by a criminally heavy load.

"She sent her love before she passed away. She wanted you to come back
to the farm as soon as you could. She believed in you, Ikey, even if
you were in prison. She said Paul was in prison, and that it was a
terrible mistake. She knew your father's son would not depart from his
God!"

As Abbie uttered this simple confession of country faith, the
pitiful man lifted up his eyes from the tiled floor and looked at her
gratefully. His dry lips moved, and he tried to speak.

"Yes," was all he said, with fierce humility. Then the lack of breath
choked him.

"She made me promise not to give you up, and to come and see you. Of
course you are innocent, Ikey?" Abbie did not look at him.

"Yes," he answered mechanically.

"I know," she said softly.

Of what use were more words? They would only beat like waves against
the granite of his broken heart. The two sat silent for a time. Then
Abbie said, "I must go." She edged a little towards him, and touched
his coat.

"When will you come out? I will explain it all to the minister and the
neighbors. We will be married as soon as you come home. She wanted us
to! Oh, Ikey! Oh, Ikey! My poor--poor boy!"

Isaac arose unsteadily. It was time for her to go, for the turnkey had
nodded to him.

A fierce, mad indignation at his fate and what it had wrought upon his
mother and upon his honorable name blinded him. He did not even say
good-by, but left the girl standing in the middle of the guard-room
alone. At any cost he must get back to his cell. Supposing his mind
should give way before he got there? He staggered to the stairway. He
threw his hands up, and groped on the railing. A blindness struck him
before he had mounted two steps. He did not hear a woman's shriek, nor
the rushing of feet, nor the sound of his own fall.

When he awaked, he was alone in the witness cell; and when he put his
white hands to his hair, he felt that his head was shaven. The chipper
prison doctor told him that he was getting nicely over a brain fever.

* * * * *

It was three months after this before the case of Tom Muldoon came
upon the docket. The man whom the saloon-keeper had shot had but just
been declared out of clanger and on the road to recovery.

When the case was called, the district attorney arose from his
desk under the bench, and represented to the court that as for some
unforeseen reason the said Frank Stevens, who had been maliciously and
wilfully assaulted and shot by the said Tom Muldoon, had refused to
prosecute, the prosecution rested upon the government, which would
rely upon the direct evidence of one witness to sustain the case.

The district attorney, who was an unbought man, and whose future
election depended upon the number of convictions he secured for the
State, now opened his case with such decision, vigor, and masterful
certainty that the policemen and other friends of the defendant began
to quake for the boss of the--th Ward.

"And now, your honor, I will call to the witness-stand a young man of
stainless life, whom the government has held as a witness since the
brutal assault was committed. He is in the custody of the sheriff of
the county, Isaac Masters!"

All eyes turned to the door at the left of the bench. There was a
bustle of expectancy, and a pallor upon the face of Tom Muldoon.

"Isaac Masters!" repeated the attorney impatiently. "Will the court
officer produce the witness?"

The judge rapped his pencil on the desk in a nervous tattoo. Above all
things he detested delay.

"I hope Your Honor will grant me a few moments," said the attorney,
annoyed. "The witness must surely be here directly."

"It can go over--" began the judge indulgently, when he was
interrupted by the entrance of the sheriff of the county himself. This
man beckoned to the district attorney, and the two whispered together
with the appearance of great excitement.

"Well?" said the judge, yawning. "Produce your witness."

But the attorney for the government came back to his place slowly,
with head bent. He was very pale, and evidently much shaken. The
saloon-keeper's face expanded with hope, as he leaned aside and
whispered to a friendly wardman.

What was the evidence? Where was the witness? Silent? Why? The
question flashed from face to face in the court-room. Had he escaped?
Or been spirited away? Such things had been known to happen. Or had he
become insane during his incarceration? Such things had been known to
happen, too. Gentlemen of the law! Gentlemen of the jury! Sheriff
of the county! Judge of the Superior Court! Where is the witness? We
demand him on penalty of contempt. Contempt of your Honorable Court?
Contempt of court!

What? Is he not here? After all this cost to the State, and to the
man? Why has he not met his enforced appointment? If not here, why
was the innocent witness suffocated behind bars and walls, while the
murderer was free to dispense rum?

"Your Honor," began the attorney, with white lips, "a most unfortunate
occurrence has happened, one that the government truly deplores. The
witness has been suddenly called away. In fact, Your Honor--hem!--in
short, I have been informed by the sheriff that the witness cannot
answer to the summons of the court. He is disqualified from subpoena.
In fact, Your Honor, the witness died this morning."

The lawyer took out his handkerchief ostentatiously. He then bent to
his papers with shaking hands. He looked them over carefully while the
court held its breath.

"As the government is not in possession of any evidence against
Muldoon, I move to nolle prosequi the case."

"It is granted," said the judge, with a keen glance at the bloated
prisoner, whom wardmen and officers of the law were already
congratulating profusely.

"Order!" continued the judge. "Prisoner, stand up! You are allowed
to go upon your own recognizance in the sum of two hundred and fifty
dollars."

The next case was called, a new crowd entered the vitiated room,
and the court proceeded with its routine as if nothing unusual had
happened.

And the silent witness has passed out of every memory but mine, and
that of one poor girl mourning in the New Hampshire hills.

[Illustration: THE SUN'S LIGHT]

THE SUN'S LIGHT

BY SIR ROBERT BALL,

LOWNDEAN PROFESSOR OF ASTRONOMY AND GEOMETRY AT CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND;
FORMERLY ROYAL ASTRONOMER OF IRELAND.

The light of the great orb of day emanates solely from a closely
fitting robe of surpassing brightness. The great bulk of the sun which
lies within that brilliant mantle is comparatively obscure, and might
at first seem to play but an unimportant part so far as the dispensing
of light and heat is concerned. It may indeed be likened to the
coal-cellar from whence are drawn the supplies that produce the warmth
and brightness of the domestic hearth; while the brilliant robe where
the sun develops its heat corresponds to the grate in which the coal
is consumed. With regard to the thickness of the robe, we might liken
this brilliant exterior to the rind of an orange, while the gloomy
interior regions would correspond to the edible portion of the fruit.
Generally speaking, the rind of the orange is rather too coarse for
the purpose of this illustration. It might be nearer the truth to
affirm that the luminous part of the sun may be compared to the
delicate filmy skin of the peach. There can be no doubt that if this
glorious veil were unhappily stripped from the sun, the great luminary
would forthwith lose its powers of shedding forth light and heat. The
spots which we see so frequently to fleck the dazzling surface, are
merely rents in the brilliant mantle through which we are permitted to
obtain glimpses of the comparatively non-luminous interior.

As the ability of the sun to warm and light this earth arises from the
peculiar properties of the thin glowing shell which surrounds it, a
problem of the greatest interest is presented in an inquiry as to the
material composition of this particular layer of solar substance.
We want, in fact, to ascertain what that special stuff can be which
enables the sun to be so useful to us dwellers on the earth. This
great problem has been solved, and the result is extremely interesting
and instructive; it has been discovered that the material which
confers on the sun its beneficent power is also a material which
is found in the greatest abundance on the earth, where it fulfils
purposes of the very highest importance. Let us see, in the first
place, what is the most patent fact with regard to the structure
of this solar mantle possessed of a glory so indescribable. It is
perfectly plain that it is not composed of any continuous solid
material. It has a granular character which is sometimes perceptible
when viewed through a powerful telescope, but which can be seen more
frequently and studied more satisfactorily on a photographic plate.
These granules have an obvious resemblance to clouds; and clouds,
indeed, we may call them. There is, however, a very wide difference
between the solar clouds and those clouds which float in our own
atmosphere. The clouds which we know so well are, of course, merely
vast collections of globules of water suspended in the air. No doubt
the mighty solar clouds do also consist of incalculable myriads
of globules of some particular substance floating in the solar
atmosphere. The material of which these solar clouds are composed
is, however, I need hardly say, not water, nor is it anything in
the remotest degree resembling water. Some years ago any attempt to
ascertain the particular substance out of which the solar clouds were
formed would at once have been regarded as futile; inasmuch as such a
problem would then have been thought to lie outside the possibilities
of human knowledge. The advance of discovery has, however, shed a
flood of light on the subject, and has revealed the nature of that
material to whose presence we are indebted for the solar beneficence.
The detection of the particular element to which all living creatures
are so much indebted is due to that distinguished physicist, Dr. G.
Johnstone Stoney.

In the whole range of science, one of the most remarkable discoveries
ever made is that which has taught us that the elementary bodies of
which the sun and the stars are constructed are essentially the same
as those of which the earth has been built. This discovery was indeed
as unexpected as it is interesting. Could we ever have anticipated
that a body ninety-three millions of miles away, as the sun is, or a
hundred million of millions of miles distant, as a star may be, should
actually prove to have been formed from the same materials as those
which compose this earth of ours and all which it contains, whether
animate or inanimate? Yet such is indeed the fact. We are thus, in
a measure, prepared to find that the material which forms the great
solar clouds may turn out to be a substance not quite unknown to the
terrestrial chemist. Nay, further, its very abundance in the sun might
seem to suggest that this particular material might perhaps prove to
be one which was very abundant on the earth.

[Illustration: THE SUN'S CORONA.

From a photograph taken by Professor Schaeberle, at Mina Bronces,
Chili, in April, 1893, and kindly loaned by Professor E.S. Holden,
director of the Lick Observatory.]

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13