“Oh, please don’t joke about it, Uncle Dan.”
“Why not? May as well be cheerful about it, as I tell a friend of mine whose
been through a worse experience than yours, Laura. And the chap is beginning to
buck up a bit. Comes to an old dried-up fossil like your Uncle Dan, who matches
his troubles with others that make his seem like mere shadows. And what’s more,
he lets your old uncle Dan give a hand to the still more wretched ones, and
then trots back to his own daily treadmill of pain and bears it like a
man?”
She sighed and shook her head helplessly, as if to say that she knew just what
panacea her uncle had to offer, but in her case at least his “medicine” would
fail. Unmindful of her little motion of despair, he continued:
“You know, dear child, we’ve all got to bear our share of sorrow in this world
of ours. We can’t evade it. I believe God meant us, each, to have his
individual portion of pain. We cannot fathom his design in the matter, but that
it was his design I think is proven by the tortures of His own Son.”
“But people to-day are denying the very existence of pain. The new religious
tell us there is no pain—no—no real sorrow or trouble in the world.
It’s
all an—error—that’s what they call it. That everything is good and
right, and
it’s
only our wrong thinking that forces this—‘error’ which we call
pain or trouble, or what not. It’s a philosophy I should think you might
understand—and believe.”
“It’s a lame philosophy,” said her uncle gently. “By our own pain we can
understand and feel that of others, and we must feel
that
pain of others. It is that alone will soften the hard heart of the
world. When we deny or ignore the existence of suffering and sin, we lose our
ability and heart to pity, and therefore help. We become selfish, inhuman. It’s
a much better, a much even brighter philosophy I am preaching to you, and I
wish I could shout it aloud to the whole world. I know your griefs and feel for
them. Could I help them, if I denied their existence? No. As it is, I am going
to treat you—just like the rest of my patients. I’m going to give you my chief
and universal prescription.”
“I know what that is,” she said softly, and again she sighed.
“It is,” said he, solemnly, “to show you other griefs greater than your
own, and in the contemplation, and, if possible, alleviation of which you may,
in time, forget your own.”
She rested with her cheek against his hand, her eyes closed.
“I don’t deny there are worse—troubles than mine,” she said, “but, oh,
indeed, dear Uncle Dan, the mere knowledge of them will not cure my own
pains.”
“That’s because you are still at the primary—the selfish stage; still drowning
yourself in your own tears. You have not been aroused—interested in other
people’s troubles yet, because your own case is still acute; but, mark my
words, the medicine I offer you works slowly, but surely!”
“Slowly—but surely!” she repeated, and then suddenly sobbed, her face pressed
against her uncle’s hand. She spoke with her face still hidden:
“If you knew all that I have suffered! The waiting—waiting—the terrible waiting.
I think that was the worst of all. And then—”
She uncovered her face and looked up at him with a tragically, piteous
expression.
“Aunt Marthy died of nothing else but—a broken heart. Just that—call it by any
other medical term you please. It was that that killed her. And old Mary—our
old Mary—died in the poor-house. Oh, think of it!”
She wrung her hands desperately together.
“I want to pull him down, Uncle Dan! I want to pull him down. There is murder in
my heart!” she cried.
“I expect your lawyer to-morrow night, Laura. You shall have your wish. I’ll
have a talk with him first. There’s a slight doubt whether he’ll take the
case.”
“You think then there’s a question of my——”
“No, no. You’ve a clear case. No doubt of that. But Holt has been out of
professional harness for a year or more. He was—or thinks he was—forced to
retire. He’s the man I was speaking to you about a few minutes since. Life has
been a hard battle for Holt, and he has had to fight with his back to the wall.
He’s practically a recluse now; but I’m inclined to think that the very thing
to save the man from his own dark broodings would be to interest him anew in
his work. If he takes your case, it will be a re-entry into his old field. Once
there, I believe he will stay.”
“A good lawyer?” she asked dubiously.
“Good as they make ’em.”
“Then, why?”
“A case like your own, Laura. A personal obsession. An acute case of personal
sorrows. As I’ve told you, however, I’ve done my bit to jerk his mind at times
from his own pangs and interest him in others, and he’s marching the treadmill
now like a veritable giant.”
“Was his case then so sad?” she asked wistfully.
“It was more lasting than sad. It was like a cyclone, which roots up one’s very
being. One of those gigantic storms not all men are forced to
whether
I’m going to tell you all about him. Laura, for I want you to know
something of the man who is to defend your rights.”
V.
“You probably know my friend by
reputation
at least,” said the doctor. “He is Lenox Holt.”
“But he is a—murderer!” she gasped, sitting back and regarding her uncle
aghast.
“No, no, my child. He is reputed to be a murderer you mean.”
“But I thought he killed the man. I remember reading in the newspapers portions
of the trial.”
“And I,” said the doctor,
“had the personal confidence of the man himself.
He was quite young when he married the woman. She was of questionable origin
and beneath him in every way. I remember the wedding very well, for the reason
that I was called in to attend the bride. She told her husband she was subject
to fainting spells. I diagnosed her case as dipsomania.”1
“She was a light, foolish thing, and like many of her kind as sly and cute as
she was weak and frail. He saw only her beauty, which was of a
sort
that baffles one as to why it should be associated with mean qualities of
mind and heart.”2
“At this time, for a young man, he was really at the top of his
profession
. His friends watched with no small degree of irritation and contempt
the devastating effect upon him of marriage. He seemed interested in only one
thing on earth. His profession, his friends, his few relatives even—all were
slighted for the woman he had married and upon whom he lavished a soul that
overflowed with a bondless love. His was an unsuspicious, trusting nature—like
your own, my child—and possibly when the
revelation
came, that was the reason he saw fire and blood, as perhaps you do
now, and his hands leaped forth to perform the will of his brain. In desire, at
least, so he has told me, he was for a moment, a murderer. Such impulses203come to us all, Laura, at the crucial moment. We are all sons of
Cain, but not all of us are tempted!”
“They were in Boston at the time—she and her lover, that is. She had trumped up
some plausible excuse for her absence. Her mother, I believe she claimed, was
dying. She even produced a telegram to that effect, and strenuously and
virtuously she opposed his going with her. She was supposed to be in Westland,
Mass., and, indeed, she managed to have letters sent to him daily from this
town. He told me, at the time, he had not the slightest suspicion of her, and
his sudden
determination
to go to Westland was due simply to an overwhelming impulse to see
her—his wife!”
“At Westland, of course he found she was not there, and still unsuspicious of
the truth, though alarmed for her safety, he started for Boston. You see he
found one of his own letters at the house redirected to the Boston address.
What took place in Boston had been pretty well threshed out in the papers. The
argument was that finding his wife with his friend, he shot and killed the man
in the presence of his wife and with the man’s own revolver. He was tried
twice, and finally acquitted.”3
“There was one point in dispute. Did, or did he not fire the shot that killed
his betrayer? Only one person besides himself, could answer that question and
she had set a price upon her testimony. Can you guess what that price was? No,
not mere money, but the pardon of herself by her husband.” 4
“It’s one of the curious ironies of life that we often blindly injure those we love
the best. This was the case with this weak woman. She did love her husband, in
spite of her hopeless vileness of character, but she did not realize how much
she loved him until she had lost him.” 5
“At first she sought to win him back by cajolery and tears, and previous to the
trial was quite a figure in the papers and about the tombs. But I don’t believe
he even saw the woman. What he did see was his past and future—the former
glowing with hope and promise; the latter stretching out like a black desert,
dark and without a dawn. He saw the woman as others had seen her always,
shallow, vain, weak, wicked and wanton. Even her beauty had a tarnished
glitter, which now irritated him.” 6
“He spent his hours pondering over how he had ever come to love so mean a thing, he
who had set his ideals so high. The one bit of comfort was the thought that if
freedom should come to him he would be—alone!”
7
“It was a hard fight they made, and harder because his attorneys knew of the eye
witness’ knowledge of his innocence. That there had been a struggle between the
men, with Holt as
aggressor
was admitted; but it was the other man who seized
the revolver from the drawer of a table, where he must have kept it for just
such an emergency, and it was he who shot himself, accidentally or otherwise.
The only thing that saved Holt from the chair was public opinion and the fact
that the revolver was not Holt’s. It showed at least he had come unprepared.
The wife’s deliberate absence in Europe at the time of the trial, however, had
a damning effect, since, having loudly proclaimed her lover and repentance it
was taken as proof of her knowledge of his guilt that she did not testify in
his behalf.” 8
“Stupid and weak as I have said she was, it was natural for her to make this false
step. Had she gone upon the stand, and freely told the truth, which would have
removed from her husband the last suspicion of guilt, his heart might have been
touched; but she sought to force him to take her back by withholding the truth;
by threats, since tears had failed.” 9
“Now that’s Holt’s tragedy, Laura. You, like every one else who have heard of the
case, believe him guilty. I do not. I am sure, in fact, he is not. But Holt is
aware of the fact that the world, like you, still holds him in suspicion, and
although the law has set him free, it has not taken the blot from his name and
fame. There is nothing harder to bear than injustice. Holt is smarting under a
sense of the cruel injustice of his situation. He has brooded over it so much,
in fact, that it has become monomania with him”
10
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