The Gentleman From Indiana

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The surgeon drew back with an exclamation; but the Teller's whisper
gathered strength, and they heard him murmuring oddly to himself. Meredith
moved forward.

"What's that?" he asked, with a startled gesture.

"Seems to be trying to sing, or something," said Barrett, bending over to
listen. The Teller swung his arm heavily over the side of the cot, the
fingers never ceasing their painful twitching, and Gay leaned down and
gently moved the cloths so that the white, scarred lips were free. They
moved steadily; they seemed to be framing the semblance of an old ballad
that Meredith knew; the whisper grew more distinct, and it became a rich
but broken voice, and they heard it singing, like the sound of some far,
halting minstrelsy:

"Wave willows--murmur waters--golden sunbeams smile, Earthly music--cannot
waken--lovely--Annie Lisle."

"My God!" cried Tom Meredith.

The bandaged hand waved jauntily over the Teller's head. "Ah, men," he
said, almost clearly, and tried to lift himself on his arm, "I tell you
it's a grand eleven we have this year! There will be little left of
anything that stands against them. Did you see Jim Romley ride over his
man this afternoon?"

As the voice grew clearer the sheriff stepped forward, but Tom Meredith,
with a loud exclamation of grief, threw himself on his knees beside the
cot and seized the wandering fingers in his own. "John!" he cried. "John!
Is it _you_?"

The voice went on rapidly, not heeding him: "Ah, you needn't howl; I'd
have been as much use at right as that Sophomore. Well, laugh away, you
Indians! If it hadn't been for this ankle--but it seems to be my chest
that's hurt--and side--not that it matters, you know; the Sophomore's just
as good, or better. It's only my egotism. Yes, it must be the side--and
chest--and head--all over, I believe. Not that it matters--I'll try again
next year--next year I'll make it a daily, Helen said, not that I should
call you Helen--I mean Miss--Miss--Fisbee--no, Sherwood--but I've always
thought Helen was the prettiest name in the world--you'll forgive me?--And
please tell Parker there's no more copy, and won't be--I wouldn't grind
out another stick to save his immortal--yes, yes, a daily--she said-ah, I
never made a good trade--no--they can't come seven miles--but I'll finish
_you_, Skillett, first; I know _you_! I know nearly all of you! Now let's
sing 'Annie Lisle.'" He lifted his hand as if to beat the time for a
chorus.

"Oh, John, John!" cried Tom Meredith, and sobbed outright. "My boy--my
boy--old friend----" The cry of the classmate was like that of a mother,
for it was his old idol and hero who lay helpless and broken before him.

The brougham lamps and the apathetic sparks of the cab gleamed in front of
the hospital till daylight. Two other pairs of lamps joined them in the
earliest of the small hours, these subjoined to two deep-hooded phaetons,
from each of which quickly descended a gentleman with a beard, an air of
eminence, and a small, ominous black box. The air of eminence was
justified by the haste with which Meredith had sent for them, and by their
wide repute. They arrived almost simultaneously, and hastily shook hands
as they made their way to the ward down the long hall and up the narrow
corridor. They had a short conversation with Gay and a word with the
nurse, then turned the others out of the room by a practiced innuendo of
manner. They stayed a long time in the room without opening the door.
Meredith paced the hall alone, sometimes stopping to speak to Warren
Smith; but the two officials of peace sat together in dumb consternation
and astonishment. The sleepy young man relaxed himself resignedly upon a
bench in the hall had returned to the dormance from which he had been
roused. The big hospital was very still. Now and then a nurse went through
the hall, carrying something, and sometimes a neat young physician passed
cheerfully along, looking as if he had many patients who were well enough
to testify to his skill, but sick enough to pay for it. Outside, through
the open front doors, the crickets chirped.

Meredith went out on the steps, and breathed the cool night air. A slender
taint of drugs hung everywhere about the building, and the almost
imperceptible permeation sickened him; it was deadly, he thought, and
imbued with a hideous portent of suffering. That John Harkless, of all
men, should lie stifled with ether, and bandaged and splintered, and
smeared with horrible unguents, while they stabbed and slashed and
tortured him, and made an outrage and a sin of that grand, big, dexterous
body of his! Meredith shuddered. The lights in the little ward were turned
up, and they seemed to shine from a chamber of horrors, while he waited,
as a brother might have waited outside the Inquisition--if, indeed, a
brother would have been allowed to wait outside the Inquisition.

Alas, he had found John Harkless! He had "lost track" of him as men
sometimes do lose track of their best beloved, but it had always been a
comfort to know that Harkless _was_--somewhere, a comfort without which he
could hardly have got along. Like others he had been waiting for John to
turn up--on top, of course; for people would always believe in him so,
that he would be shoved ahead, no matter how much he hung back himself--
but Meredith had not expected him to turn up in Indiana. He had heard
vaguely that Harkless was abroad, and he had a general expectation that
people would hear of him over there some day, with papers like the "Times"
beseeching him to go on missions. And he found him here, in his own home,
a stranger, alone and dying, receiving what ministrations were reserved
for Jerry the Teller. But it was Helen Sherwood who had found him. He
wondered how much those two had seen of each other, down there in
Plattville. If they had liked each other, and Harkless could have lived,
he thought it might have simplified some things for Helen. "Poor Helen!"
he exclaimed aloud. Her telegram had a ring, even in the barren four
sentences. He wondered how much they had liked each other. Perhaps she
would wish to come at once. When those fellows came out of the room he
would send her a word by telegraph.

When they came out--ah! he did not want them to come out; he was afraid.
They were an eternity--why didn't they come? No; he hoped they would not
come, just now. In a little time, in a few minutes, even, he would not
dread a few words so much; but _now_ he couldn't quite bear to be told he
had found his friend only to lose him, the man he had always most needed,
wanted, loved. Everybody had always cared for Harkless, wherever he went.
That _he_ had always cared for everybody was part of the reason, maybe.
Meredith remembered, now, hearing a man who had spent a day in Plattville
on business speak of him: "They've got a young fellow down there who'll be
Governor in a few years. He's a sort of dictator; and runs the party all
over that part of the State to suit his own sweet will, just by sheer
personality. And there isn't a man in that district who wouldn't
cheerfully lie down in the mud to let him pass over dry. It's that young
Harkless, you know; owns the 'Herald,' the paper that downed McCune and
smashed those imitation 'White-Caps' in Carlow County." Meredith had been
momentarily struck by the coincidence of the name, but his notion of
Harkless was so inseparably connected with what was (to his mind) a
handsome and more spacious--certainly more illuminated--field of action,
that the idea that this might be his friend never entered his head. Helen
had said something once--he could not remember what--that made him think
she had half suspected it, and he had laughed. He thought of the whimsical
fate that had taken her to Plattville, of the reason for her going, and
the old thought came to him that the world is, after all, so very small.
He looked up at the twinkling stars; they were reassuring and kind. Under
their benignancy no loss could befall, no fate miscarry--for in his last
thought he felt his vision opened, for the moment, to perceive a fine
tracery of fate.

"Ah, that would be too beautiful!" he said.

And then he shivered; for his name was spoken from within.

It was soon plain to him that he need not have feared a few words, for he
did not in the least understand those with which the eminent surgeons
favored him; and they at once took their departure. He did understand,
however, what Horner told him. Mr. Barrett, Warren Smith, and the sleepy
young man had reentered the ward; and Horner was following, but waited for
Meredith. Somehow, the look of the sheriff's Sunday coat, wrinkling
forlornly from his broad, bent shoulders, was both touching and solemn. He
said simply: "He's conscious and not out of his head. They're gone in to
take his ante-mortem statement," and they went into the room.

Harkless's eyes were bandaged. The lawyer was speaking to him, and as
Horner went awkwardly toward the cot. Warren said something indicative of
the sheriff's presence, and the hand on the sheet made a formless motion
which Horner understood, for he took the pale fingers in his own, very
gently, and then set them back. Smith turned toward Meredith, but the
latter made a gesture which forbade the attorney to speak of him, and went
to a corner and sat down with his head in his hands.

The sleepy young man opened a notebook and shook a stylographic pen so
that the ink might flow freely. The lawyer, briefly and with unlegal
agitation, administered an oath, to which Harkless responded feebly, and
then there was silence.

"Now, Mr. Harkless, if you please," said Barrett, insinuatingly; "if you
feel like telling us as much as you can about it?"

He answered in a low, rather indistinct voice, very deliberately, pausing
before almost every word. It was easy work for the sleepy stenographer.

"I understand. I don't want to go off my head again before I finish. Of
course I know why you want this. If it were only for myself I should tell
you nothing, because, if I am to leave, I should like it better if no one
were punished. But that's a bad community over there; they are
everlastingly worrying our people; they have always been a bother to us,
and it's time it was stopped for good. I don't believe very much in
punishment, but you can't do a great deal of reforming with the Cross-
Roaders unless you catch them young--very young, before they're weaned--
they wean them on whiskey, I think. I realize you needn't have sworn me
for me to tell you this."

Homer and Smith had started at the mention of the Cross-Roads, but they
subdued their ejaculations, while Mr. Barrett looked as if he had known
it, of course. The room was still, save for the dim voice and the soft
transcribings of the stylographic pen.

"I left Judge Briscoe's, and went west on the pike to a big tree. It
rained, and I stepped under the tree for shelter. There was a man on the
other side of the fence. It was Bob Skillett. He was carrying his gown and
hood--I suppose it was that--on his arm. Then I saw two others a little
farther east, in the middle of the road; and I think they had followed me
from the Briscoes', or near there. They had their foolish regalia on, as
all the rest had,--there was plenty of lightning to see. The two in the
road were simply standing there in the rain, looking at me through the
eye-holes in their hoods. I knew there were others--plenty--but I thought
they were coming from behind me--the west.

"I wanted to get home--the court-house yard was good enough for me--so I
started east, toward town. I passed the two gentlemen; and one fell down
as I went by him, but the other fired a shot as a signal, and I got his
hood off his face for it--I stopped long enough--and it was Force Johnson.
I know him well. Then I ran, and they followed. A little ahead of me I saw
six or eight of them spread across the road. I knew I'd have a time
getting through, so I jumped the fence to cut across the fields, and I lit
in a swarm of them--it had rained them just where I jumped. I set my back
to the fence, but one of the fellows in the road leaned over and smashed
my head in, rather--with the butt of a gun, I believe. I came out from the
fence and they made a little circle around me. No one said anything. I saw
they had ropes and saplings, and I didn't want that, exactly, so I went
into them. I got a good many hoods off before it was over, and I can swear
to quite a number besides those I told you."

He named the men, slowly and carefully. Then he went on: "I think they
gave up the notion of whipping. We all got into a bunch, and they couldn't
clear to shoot without hitting some of their own: and there was a lot of
gouging and kicking--one fellow nearly got my left eye, and I tried to
tear him apart and he screamed so that I think he was hurt. Once or twice
I thought I might get away, but somebody hammered me over the head and
face again, and I got dizzy; and then they all jumped away from me
suddenly, and Bob Skillett stepped up--and--shot me. He waited for a good
flurry of lightning, and I was slow tumbling down. Some one else fired a
shot-gun, I think--I can't be sure--about the same time, from the side. I
tried to get up, but I couldn't, and then they got together, for a
consultation. The man I had hurt--I didn't recognize him--came and looked
at me. He was nursing himself all over; and groaned; and I laughed, I--at
any rate, my arm was lying stretched out on the grass, and he stamped his
heel into my hand, and after a little of that I quit feeling.

"I'm not quite clear about what happened afterwards. They went away, not
far, I think. There's an old shed, a cattle-shelter, near there, and I
think the storm drove them under it to wait for a slack. It seemed a long
time. Sometimes I was conscious, sometimes I wasn't. I thought I might be
drowned, but I suppose the rain was good for me. Then I remember being in
motion, being dragged and carried a long way. They took me up a steep,
short slope, and set me down near the top. I knew that was the railroad
embankment, and I thought they meant to lay me across the track, but it
didn't occur to them, I suppose--they are not familiar with melodrama--and
a long time after that I felt and heard a great banging and rattling under
me and all about me, and it came to me that they had disposed of me by
hoisting me into an empty freight-car. The odd part of it was that the car
wasn't empty, for there were two men already in it, and I knew them by
what they said to me.

"They were the two shell-men who cheated Hartley Bowlder, and they weren't
vindictive; they even seemed to be trying to help me a little, though
perhaps they were only stealing my clothes, and maybe they thought for
them to do anything unpleasant would be superfluous; I could see that they
thought I was done for, and that they had been hiding in the car when I
was put there. I asked them to try to call the train men for me, but they
wouldn't listen, or else I couldn't make myself understood. That's all.
The rest is a blur. I haven't known anything more until those surgeons
were here. Please tell me how long ago it happened. I shall not die, I
think; there are a good many things I want to know about." He moved
restlessly and the nurse soothed him.

Meredith rose and left the room with a noiseless step. He went out to the
stars again, and looked to them to check the storm of rage and sorrow that
buffeted his bosom. He understood lynching, now the thing was home to him,
and his feeling was no inspiration of a fear lest the law miscarry; it was
the itch to get his own hand on the rope. Horner came out presently, and
whispered a long, broad, profound curse upon the men of the Cross-Roads,
and Meredith's gratitude to him was keen. Barrett went away, soon after,
leaving the cab for the gentlemen from Plattville. Meredith had a strange,
unreasonable desire to kick Barrett, possibly for his sergeant's sake.
Warren Smith sat in the ward with the nurse and Gay, and the room was very
quiet. It was a long vigil.

They were only waiting.

At five o'clock he was still alive--just that, Smith came out to say.
Meredith sent his driver with a telegram to Helen which would give
Plattville the news that Harkless was found and was not yet gone from
them. Homer took the cab and left for the station; there was a train, and
there were things for him to do in Carlow. At noon Meredith sent a second
telegram to Helen, as barren of detail as the first: he was alive--was a
little improved. This telegram did not reach her, for she was on the way
to Rouen, and half of the population of Carlow--at least, so it appeared
to the unhappy conductor of the accommodation--was with her.

They seemed to feel that they could camp in the hospital halls and
corridors, and they were an incalculable worry to the authorities. More
came on every train, and nearly all brought flowers, and jelly, and
chickens for preparing broth, and they insisted that the two latter
delicacies be fed to the patient at once. Meredith was possessed by an
unaccountable responsibility for them all, and invited a great many to
stay at his own house. They were still in ignorance of the truth about the
Cross-Roads, and some of them spent the day (it was Sunday) in planning an
assault upon the Rouen jail for the purpose of lynching Slattery in case
Harkless's condition did not improve at once. Those who had heard his
statement kept close mouths until the story appeared in full in the Rouen
papers on Monday morning; but by that time every member of the Cross-Roads
White-Caps was lodged in the Rouen jail with Slattery. Homer and a heavily
armed posse rode over to the muddy corners on Sunday night, and the
sheriff discovered that he might have taken the Skilletts and Johnsons
single-handed and unarmed. Their nerve was gone; they were shaken and
afraid; and, to employ a figure somewhat inappropriate to their sullen,
glad surrender, they fell upon his neck in their relief at finding the law
touching them. They had no wish to hear "John Brown's Body" again. They
wanted to get inside of a strong jail, and to throw themselves on the
mercy of the court as soon as possible. And those whom Harkless had not
recognized delayed not to give themselves up; they did not desire to
remain in Six-Cross-Roads. Bob Skillett, Force Johnson, and one or two
others needed the care of a physician badly, and one man was suffering
from a severely wrenched back. Homer had a train stopped at a crossing, so
that his prisoners need not be taken through Plattville, and he brought
them all safely to Rouen. Had there chanced any one to ride through the
deserted Cross-Roads the next morning, passing the trampled fields and the
charred ruins of the two shanties to the east, and listening to the
lamentations of the women and children, he would have declared that at
last the old score had been paid, and that Six-Cross-Roads was wiped out.

The Carlow folks were deeply impressed with the two eminent surgeons, of
whom some of them had heard, and on Tuesday, the bulletins marking
considerable encouragement, most of them decided to temporarily risk the
editor of the "Herald" to such capable hands, and they returned quietly to
their homes; only a few were delayed in reaching Carlow by travelling to
the first station in the opposite direction before they succeeded in
planting themselves on the proper train.

Meanwhile, the object of their solicitude tossed and burned on his bed of
pain. He was delirious most of the time, and, in the intervals of half-
consciousness, found that his desire to live, very strong at first, had
disappeared; he did not care much about anything except rest--he wanted
peace. In his wanderings he was almost always back in his college days,
beholding them in an unhappy, distorted fashion. He would lie asprawl on
the sward with the others, listening to the Seniors singing on the steps,
and, all at once, the old, kindly faces would expand enormously and press
over him with hideous mouthings, and an ugly Senior in cap and gown would
stamp him and grind a spiked heel into his hand; then they would toss him
high into air that was all flames, and he would fall and fall through the
raging heat, seeing the cool earth far beneath him, but never able to get
down to it again. And then he was driven miles and miles by dusky figures,
through a rain of boiling water; and at other times the whole universe was
a vast, hot brass bell, and it gave off a huge, continuous roar and hum,
while he was a mere point of consciousness floating in the exact centre of
the heat and sound waves, and he listened, listened for years, to the
awful, brazen hum from which there could be no escape; at the same time it
seemed to him that he was only a Freshman on the slippery roof of the
tower, trying to steal the clapper of the chapel bell.

Finally he came to what he would have considered a lucid interval, had it
not appeared that Helen Sherwood was whispering to Tom Meredith at the
foot of his bed. This he knew to be a fictitious presentation of his
fever, for was she not by this time away and away for foreign lands? And,
also, Tom Meredith was a slim young thing, and not the middle-aged youth
with an undeniable stomach and a baldish head, who, by the grotesque
necromancy of his hallucinations, assumed a preposterous likeness to his
old friend. He waved his hand to the figures and they vanished like
figments of a dream; but all the same the vision had been realistic enough
for the lady to look exquisitely pretty. No one could help wishing to stay
in a world which contained as charming a picture as that.

And then, too quickly, the moment of clearness passed; and he was troubled
about the "Herald," beseeching those near him to put copies of the paper
in his hands, threatening angrily to believe they were deceiving him, that
his paper had suspended, if the three issues of the week were not
instantly produced. What did they mean by keeping the truth from him? He
knew the "Herald" had not come out. Who was there to get it out in his
absence? He raised himself on his elbow and struggled to be up; and they
had hard work to quiet him.

But the next night Meredith waited near his bedside, haggard and
dishevelled. Harkless had been lying in a long stupor; suddenly he spoke,
quite loudly, and the young surgeon, Gay, who leaned over him, remembered
the words and the tone all his life.

"Away and away--across the waters," said John Harkless. "She was here--
once--in June."

"What is it, John?" whispered Meredith, huskily. "You're easier, aren't
you?"

And John smiled a little, as if, for an instant, his swathed eyes
penetrated the bandages, and saw and knew his old friend again.

That same night a friend of Rodney McCune's sent a telegram from Rouen:
"He is dying. His paper is dead. Your name goes before convention in
September."

CHAPTER XIII

JAMES FISBEE

On Monday morning three men sat in council in the "Herald" office; that
is, if staring out of dingy windows in a demented silence may be called
sitting in council; that was what Mr. Fisbee and Parker and Ross Schofield
were doing. By almost desperate exertions, these three and Bud Tipworthy
had managed to place before the public the issues of the paper for the
previous week, unaided by their chief, or, rather, aided by long accounts
of his condition and the manner of his mishap; and, in truth, three copies
were at that moment in the possession of Dr. Gay, accompanied by a note
from Parker warning the surgeon to exhibit them to his patient only as a
last resort, as the foreman feared the perusal of them might cause a
relapse.

By indiscriminate turns, acting as editors, reporters, and typesetters--
and particularly space-writers--the three men had worried out three
issues, and part of the fourth (to appear the next morning) was set up;
but they had come to the end of their string, and there were various
horrid gaps yet to fill in spite of a too generous spreading of
advertisements. Bud Tipworthy had been sent out to besiege Miss Tibbs, all
of whose recent buds of rhyme had been hot-housed into inky blossom during
the week, and after a long absence the youth returned with a somewhat
abrupt quatrain, entitled "The Parisians of Old," which she had produced
while he waited--only four lines, according to the measure they meted,
which was not regardful of art--less than a drop in the bucket, or, to
preserve the figure, a single posy where they needed a bouquet. Bud went
down the rickety outside stairs, and sat on the lowest step, whistling
"Wait till the Clouds Roll by, Jenny"; Ross Schofield descended to set up
the quatrain, and Fisbee and Parker were left to silence and troubled
meditation.

They were seated on opposite sides of Harkless's desk. Sheets of blank
scratch-paper lay before them, and they relaxed not their knit brows. Now
and then, one of them, after gazing vacantly about the room for ten or
fifteen minutes, would attack the sheet before him with fiercest energy;
then the energy would taper off, and the paragraph halt, the writer peruse
it dubiously, then angrily tear off the sheet and hurl it to the floor.
All around them lay these snowballs of defeated journalism.

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