Читать книгу The Sky Line of Spruce - Эдисон Маршалл - Страница 6

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For the moment that chance meeting thrilled all the spectators with the sense of monumental drama. The convicts stared; Howard, the second guard, forgot his vigilance and stared with open mouth. He started absurdly, rather guiltily, when the old man whirled toward him.

"What are you doing with Ben Darby in a convict gang?" the old wanderer demanded.

"What am I doin'?" Howard's astonishment gave way to righteous indignation. "I'm guardin' convicts, that's what I'm a-doin'." He composed himself then and shifted his gun from his left to his right shoulder. "He's here in this gang because he's a convict. Ask my friend, here, if you want to know the details. And who might you be?"

There was no immediate answer to that question. The old man had turned his eyes again to the tall, trembling figure of Ben, trying to find further proof of his identity. To Ezra Melville there could no longer be any shadow of doubt as to the truth: even that he had found the young man working in a gang of convicts could not impugn the fact that the dark-gray vivid eyes, set in the vivid face under dark, beetling brows, were unquestionably those of the boy he had seen grow to manhood's years, Ben Darby.

It was true that he had changed. His face was more deeply lined, his eyes more bright and nervous; there was a long, dark scar just under the short hair at his temple that Melville had never seen before. And the finality of despair seemed to settle over the droll features as he walked nearer and took Darby's hand.

"Ben, Ben!" he said, evidently struggling with deep emotion. "What are you doing here?"

The younger man gave him his hand, but continued to stare at him in growing bewilderment. "Five years—for burglary," he answered simply. "Guilty, too—I don't know anything more. And I can't remember—who you are."

"You don't know me?" Some of Ben's own bewilderment seemed to pass to him. "You know Ezra Melville—"

Sprigley, whose beliefs in regard to Ben had been strengthened by the little episode, stepped quickly to Melville's side. "He's suffering loss of memory," he explained swiftly. "At least, he's either lost his memory or he's doing a powerful lot of faking. This is the first time he ever recalled his own name."

"I'm not faking," Ben told them quietly. "I honestly don't remember you—I feel that I ought to, but I don't. I honestly didn't remember my name was Darby until a minute ago—then just as soon as you spoke it, I knew the truth. Nothing can surprise me, any more. I suppose you're kin of mine—?"

Melville gazed at him in incredulous astonishment, then turned to Sprigley. "May I talk to you about this case?" he asked quietly. "If not to you, who can I talk to? There are a few points that might help to clear up—"

Ordering his men to their work, Melville and Sprigley stood apart, and for nearly an hour engaged in the most earnest conversation. The afternoon was shadow-flaked and paling when they had finished, and before Sprigley led his men back within the gray walls he had arranged for Melville to come to the prison after the dinner hour and confer with Mitchell, the warden.

Many and important were the developments arising from this latter conference. One of the least of them was that Melville's northward journey was postponed for some days, and that within a week this same white-haired, lean old man, dressed in the garb of the cinder trail, was pleading his case to no less a personage than the governor of the State of Washington in whom authority for dealing with Ben's case was absolutely vested. It came about, from the same cause, that a noted alienist, Forest, of Seattle, visited Ben Darby in his cell; and finally that the prisoner himself, under the strict guard of Sprigley, was taken to the capital at Olympia.

The brief inquisition that followed, changing the entire current of Ben Darby's life, occurred in the private office of McNamara, the Governor. McNamara himself stood up to greet them when they entered, the guard and the convict. Ezra Melville and Forest, the alienist from Seattle, were already in session. The latter conducted the examination.

He tried his subject first on some of the most simple tests for sanity. It became evident at once, however, that except for his amnesia Ben's mind was perfectly sound: he passed all general intelligence tests with a high score, he conversed easily, he talked frankly of his symptoms. He had perfect understanding of the general sweep of events in the past twenty years: his amnesia seemed confined to his own activities and the activities of those intimately connected with him. Where he had been, what he had done, all the events of his life up to the night of his arrest remained, for all his effort to remember them, absolutely in darkness.

"You don't remember this man?" Forest asked him quietly, indicating Ezra Melville.

Again Ben's eyes studied the droll, gray face. "With the vaguest kind of memory. I know I've seen him before—often. I can't tell anything else."

"He's a good friend of your family. He knew your folks. I should say he was a very good friend, to take the trouble and time he has, in your behalf."

Ben nodded. He did not have to be told that fact. The explanation, however, was beyond him.

Forest leaned forward. "You remember the Saskatchewan River?"

Ben straightened, but the dim images in his mind were not clear enough for him to answer in the affirmative. "I'm afraid not."

Melville leaned forward in his chair. "Ask him if he remembers winning the canoe race at Lodge Pole—or the time he shot the Athabaska Rapids."

Ben turned brightly to him, but slowly shook his head. "I can't remember ever hearing of them before."

"I think you would, in time," Forest remarked. "They must have been interesting experiences. Now what do these mean to you?—Thunder Lake—Abner Darby—Edith Darby—MacLean's College----"

Ben relaxed, focusing his attention on the names. For the instant the scene about him, the anxious, interested faces, faded from his consciousness. Thunder Lake! Somewhere, some time, Thunder Lake had had the most intimate associations with his life. The name stirred him and moved him; dim voices whispered in his ears about it, but he couldn't quite catch what they said. He groped and reached in vain.

There was no doubt but that an under-consciousness had full knowledge of the name and all that it meant. But it simply could not reach that knowledge up into his conscious mind.

Abner Darby! It was curious what a flood of tenderness swept through him as, whispering, he repeated the name. Some one old and white-haired had been named Abner Darby: some one whom he had once worshipped with the fervor of boyhood, but who had leaned on his own, strong shoulders in latter years. Since his own name was Darby, Abner Darby was, in all probability, his father; but his reasoning intelligence, rather than his memory, told him so.

The name of Edith Darby conjured up in his mind a childhood playmate—a girl with towzled yellow curls and chubby, confiding little hands. … But these dim memory-pictures went no further: there were no later visions of Edith as a young woman, blossoming with virgin beauty. They stopped short, and he had a deep, compelling sense of grief. The child, unquestionably a sister, had likely died in early years. The third name of the three, MacLean's College, called up no memories whatever.

"I can hardly say that I remember much about them," he responded at last. "I think they'll come plainer, though, the more I think about them. I just get the barest, vague ideas."

"They'll strengthen in time, I'm sure," Forest told him. "Put them out of your mind, for now. Let it be blank." The alienist again leaned toward him, his eyes searching. There ensued an instant's pause, possessing a certain quality of suspense. Then Forest spoke quickly, sharply. "Wolf Darby!"

In response a curious tremor passed over Ben's frame, giving in some degree the effect of a violent start. "Wolf Darby," he repeated hesitantly. "Why do you call me that?"

"The very fact that you know the name refers to you, not some one else, shows that that blunted memory of yours has begun to function in some degree. Now think. What do you know about 'Wolf' Darby?"

Ben tried in vain to find an answer. A whole world of meaning lingered just beyond the reach of his groping mind; but always it eluded him. It was true, however, that the name gave him a certain sense of pleasure and pride, as if it had been used in compliment to some of his own traits. Far away and long ago, men had called him "Wolf" Darby: he felt that perhaps the name had carried far, through many sparsely settled districts. But what had been the occasion for it he did not know.

He described these dim memory pictures; and Forest's air of satisfaction seemed to imply that his own theories in regard to Ben's case were receiving justification. He appeared quite a little flushed, deeply intent, when he turned to the next feature of the examination. He suddenly spoke quietly to old Ezra Melville; and the latter put a small, cardboard box into his hands.

"I want you to see what I have here," Forest told Ben. "They were your own possessions once—you sent them yourself to Abner Darby, your late father—and I want you to see if you remember them."

Ben's eyes fastened on the box; and the others saw a queer drawing of the lines of his face, a curious tightening and clasping of his fingers. There was little doubt but that his subconsciousness had full cognizance of the contents of that box. He was trembling slightly, too—in excitement and expectation—and Ezra Melville, suddenly standing erect, was trembling too. The moment was charged with the uttermost suspense.

Evidently this was the climax in the examination. Even McNamara, the Governor, was breathless with interest in his chair; Forest had the rapt look of a scientist in some engrossing experiment. He opened the box, taking therefrom a roll of white cotton. This he slowly unrolled, revealing two small, ribboned ornaments of gold or bronze.

Ben's starting eyes fastened on them. No doubt he recognized them. A look of veritable anguish swept his brown face, and all at once small drops of moisture appeared on his brow and through the short hairs at his temples. The dark scar at his temple was suddenly brightly red from the pounding blood beneath.

"The Victoria Cross, of course," he said slowly, brokenly. "I won it, didn't I—the day—that day at Ypres—the day my men were trapped—"

His words faltered then. The wheels of his memory, starting into motion, were stilled once more. Again the great darkness dropped over him; there were only the medals left in their roll of cotton, and the broken fragments of a story—of some wild, stirring event of the war just gone—remaining in his mind. Yet to Forest the experiment was an unqualified success.

"There's no doubt of it!" he exclaimed. He turned to McNamara, the Governor. "His brain is just as sound as yours or mine. With the right environment, the right treatment, he'd be on the straight road to recovery. In a general way of speaking he has recovered now, largely, from the purely temporary trouble that he had before."

McNamara focused an intent gaze first on Ben, then on the alienist. "It is, then—as you guessed."

"Absolutely. The night of his arrest marked the end of his trouble; you might say that his brain simply snapped back into health and began to function normally again, after a period of temporary mania from shell-shock. It is true that his memory was left blank, but there doesn't seem to be any organic reason for it to be blank—other than lack of incentive to remember. Catch me up, if you don't follow me. In other words, he has been slowly convalescing since that night: under the proper stimuli I have no doubt that everything would come back to him."

"And our friend here—Melville—offers to supply those stimuli."

"Exactly. And it's up to you to say whether he gets a chance."

Thoughtfully the executive drummed his desk with his pencil. Presently a smile, markedly boyish and pleasant, broke over his face. More than once, in the line of duty imposed by his high office, he had been obliged to make decisions contrary to every dictate of mercy. He was all the more pleased at this opportunity to do, with a clear conscience, the thing that his kindness prompted. He turned slowly in his chair.

"Darby, I suppose you followed what the doctor said?" he asked easily.

"Fairly well, I think."

"I'll review it, if I may. It seems, Ben, that you have been the victim of a strange set of unfortunate circumstances. Due to the efforts of an old family friend—a most devoted and earnest friend if I may say so—we've looked up your record, and now we know more about you than you know about yourself. You served in France with Canadian troops and there, you will be proud to know, you won among other honors the highest honor that the Government of England can award a hero. There you were shell-shocked, in the last months of the war.

"You did not return to your home. Shell-shock, Forest tells me, is a curious thing, resulting in many forms of mania. Yours led you into crime. For some months you lived as a desperate criminal in Seattle. You came to yourself in the act of breaking into a bank, only to find that your memory of not only your days of crime but all that had gone before was left a blank. That night, as you know, marked your arrest.

"Forest has just explained that you are organically sound—that the recovery of your memory is just a matter of time and the proper stimuli. Now, Ben, it isn't the purpose of this State to punish men when they are not responsible for their deeds. Melville tells me that your record, in your own home, was the best; your war record alone, I believe, would entitle you to the limit of mercy from the State. I don't see how we can hold you responsible for deeds done while you were mentally disabled from shell-shock.

"All you need for complete recovery, to call everything back in your mind, is the proper stimuli. At least that is the opinion of Doctor Forest. What those proper stimuli are of course no one knows for sure—but Doctor Forest has a theory; and I think he will tell you that he will share the credit for it with the same man who has been your friend all the way through. They think they know what is best for you. The final decision has been put up to me as to whether or not they shall be permitted to give it a trial.

"This good friend of yours has offered to try to put it through. He has a plan outlined that he'll tell you of later, that will not only be the best possible influence toward recalling your memory, but will also give you a clean, new start in life. A chance for every success.

"So you needn't return to Walla Walla, Darby. I'm going to parole you—under the charge of your benefactor. Melville, from now on it's up to you."

The little, withered gray man looked very solemn as he rose. The others were stricken instantly solemn too, surprised that the droll smile they were so used to seeing had died on the homely, kindly face. Even his twinkling eyes were sobered too.

Vaguely amused, yet without scorn, McNamara and Forest got up to shake his hand. "I'll look after him," Melville assured them. "Never fear for that."

Slight as he was, wasted by the years, his was a figure of unmistakable dignity as he thanked them, gravely and earnestly, for their kindness in Ben's behalf. Soon after he and his young charge went out together.