The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain, and Other Stories. Mary Noailles Murfree

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ progress, barely spacious enough to contain the bier, the jury, and the witness under examination; and yet so great was the sound of the rain outside and the stir of the assemblage that little or naught was overheard without.

      Now and again the waiting witnesses looked with doubt and curiosity and suspicion at a new-comer, with an obvious disposition to hope and believe that others knew more of the matter than they, and thus were more liable to accusation. Occasionally, a low-toned, husky query would be met by a curt rejoinder suggesting a cautious reticence and a rising enmity, blockading all investigation save the obligatory inquisition of a coroner's jury. An object of ever-recurrent scrutiny was a stranger in the vicinity, who had been subpoenaed also. The facial effect of culture and sophistication was illustrated in his inexpressive, controlled, masklike countenance. He was generally known as the "valley man with the lung complaint," who had built a cabin on the mountain during the summer, banished hither by the advice of his physician for the value to the lungs of the soft, healing air. He wore a brown derby hat, a fawn-colored suit, and a brown overcoat, with the collar upturned. He was blond and young, and so impassive was his sober, decorous aspect that the aptest detective could have discerned naught of significance as he stood, quite silent and composed, in the centre of the place where it was dry, exempt from the gusts of rain that the wind now and again flung in spray upon the outermost members of the group, one hand in the pocket of his trousers, the other toying with a cigar which so far he held unlighted.

      Of the two women present, one, seated upon the beam of a broken plough, refuse of the agricultural industry long ago collapsed here, was calmly smoking her pipe—a wrinkled, unimpressed personality, who had seen many years, and whose manner might imply that all these chances of life and death came in the gross, and that existence was a medley at best. The other, a witness, was young. More than once the "valley man" cast a covert glance at her as, clad in a brown homespun dress, she leaned against the log wall, her face, which was very pale, half turned toward it, as if to hide the features already much obscured by the white sunbonnet drawn far over it. One arm was lifted, and her hand was passed between the unchinked logs in a convulsive grasp upon them. Her figure was tall and slender, and expressive in its rigid constraint; it was an attitude of despair, of repulsion, of fear. It might have implied grief, or remorse, or anxiety. Often the eyes of the prescient victims of circumstantial evidence rested dubiously upon her. To the great majority of men, the presence of women in affairs of business is an intrusive evil of times out of joint. Now, since matters of life and liberty were in the balance, the primitive denizens of Witch-Face Mountain felt that the admission of Narcissa Hanway's testimony to consideration and credibility evinced an essential defect in the law of the land, and the fallibility of all human reasoning. What distorted impression might not so appalling an event make upon one so young, so feminine, so inexperienced! What exaggerated wild thing might she not say, unintentionally inculpating half Witch-Face Mountain in robbery and murder!

      Constant Hite, as he bluffly entered the passageway, his head up, his eyes wide and bright, his vigorous step elastic and light, gave no token of the spiritual war he had waged as he came. Already he felt in great jeopardy. On account of his illicit vocation he could ill abide the scrutiny of the law. With scant proof, he argued, a moonshiner might be suspected of highway robbery and murder. As he had journeyed hither with the constable and his fellows, who conserved the air of disinterested spectators, but who he knew had been summoned to aid the officer in case he should evade or delay, when he would have been forthwith arrested, he had been sorely tempted to deny having ever seen the stranger, in whose company he had spent an hour or so of the previous day. He had been able to put the lie from him with a normal moral impulse. He did not appreciate the turpitude of perjury. He esteemed it only a natural lie invested with pomp and circumstance; and the New Testament on which he should be sworn meant no more to his unlettered conscience than the horn-book, since he knew as little of its contents. But a lie is a skulking thing, and he had scant affinity with it.

      He thought, with a sort of numb wonderment, that it was strange he should feel no more compassion for the object stretched out here, dumb, dead, bruised, and bloody, which so short a space since he had seen full of life and interest, animated by a genial courtesy and graced with learning and subtle insight; now so unknowing, so unlettered, so blind! Whither went this ethereal investiture of life?—for it was not mere being; one might exist hardily enough without it. Did the darkness close over it, too, or was it not the germ of the soul, the budding of that wider knowledge and finer aspiration to flower hereafter in rarer air? He did not know; he only vaguely cared, and he reproached himself dully that he cared no more. For he—his life was threatened! With the renewal of the thought he experienced a certain animosity toward the man that he should not have known enough to take better care of himself. Why must he needs die here, in this horrible unexplained way, and leave other men, chance associates, to risk stretching hemp for murder? He felt his strong life beating in his throat almost to suffocation at the mere suggestion. Again the lie tempted him, to be again withstood; and as he strode into the room upon the calling of his name, he saw how futile, how flimsy, was every device, for, fluttering in the coroner's hand, he recognized the sketch of the "Witch-Face" which the dead man had made, and the masterly drawing of his own imposing figure in the foreground. He had forgotten it utterly for the time being. In the surprise and confusion that had beset him, it had not occurred to him to speculate how he had chanced to be subpoenaed, how the idea could have occurred to the coroner that he knew aught of the stranger. As he stood against the batten door, the pale light from the interstices of the unchinked logs, all the grayer because it alternated with the sombre timbers, falling upon his face and figure, his hat upturned in front, revealing his brow with a forelock of straight black hair, his brilliant dark eyes, and his distinctly cut definite features, the sketch-book was swiftly passed from one to another of the jury, reluctantly relinquished here and there, and more than once eliciting half-smothered exclamations of delighted wonder from the unsophisticated mountaineers, as they glanced back and forth from the man leaning against the door to the counterfeit presentment on the paper.

      Constant Hite experienced a glow of vicarious pride as he remembered the satisfaction that the artist had taken in the sketch, and he wished that that still thing on the bier could know how his work, most wonderful it seemed, was appreciated. And then, with a swift revulsion of feeling, he realized that it was this which had entrapped him; this bit of paper had brought him into fear and trouble and risk of his life. The man might be of the revenue force. He might have encountered other moonshiners, and thus have come to his violent death. If this were his vocation, it brought Hite into dark suspicion by virtue of the fact, known to a few of the neighborhood, that he himself was a distiller of brush whiskey. No one else had seen the stranger till the finding of the body. He gathered this from the trend of the inquiry after the formal preliminary queries. The seven men, as they sat together on a bench made by passing a plank between the logs of the wall diagonally across the corner of the room, chewed meditatively their quids of tobacco, and now and then spat profusely on the ground, their faces growing more perplexed and graver as the examination progressed.

      When Hite disclosed the circumstance that on the previous day he had encountered a "stranger man" near the "Witch-Face," there was a palpable sensation among them. They glanced at one another meaningly, and a sudden irritation was perceptible in the coroner's manner as he sat in a rickety chair near the improvised bier. He was a citizen of the valley region, a trifle more sophisticated than the jury, and disposed to seriously deprecate the introduction of any morbid or superstitious element into so grave a matter. He had a bald head, a lean face, the bones very clearly defined about the temple and cheek and jaw, a scanty grizzled beard; and he was dressed somewhat farmer fashion, in blue jeans, with his boots drawn high over his trousers, but with a stiffly starched white shirt—the collar and cravat in evidence, the cuffs, however, vanished up the big sleeves of his coat.

      "The exact place of the meeting is not material," he said frowningly.

      But Hite's mercurial interest in the drawing had revived anew.

      "Thar she be," he exclaimed, so suddenly that the jury started with a common impulse, "the ole witch-face,"—he pointed at the sketch in the coroner's hand—"a mite ter the east an' a СКАЧАТЬ