CHAPTER XLV

BARNABY PROMISES TO GO

AT

T THIS juncture of affairs at Padanaram, the county attorney found himself in a position curiously embarrassing to an official honestly anxious to win the reputation of doing his duty, yet faced with one of those crimes which from the beginning he knew to be unpunishable, because the people held it less a crime than was the inciting cause. He had no illusions for the tinkling brass and empty sounds of a criminal code not founded in the conscience of its public.

Back of the public, the stolidness no less than the conscience of which stood to baffle him, and distinct from it, was the governor of the state, a man of affairs, who represented the judgment of the greater community on the Ashgrave riot, and was indisposed to take acaccount of the immobility of the smaller community, with which was the county attorney's official relationship.

Under these circumstances, there was the wisdom of the serpent manifested in the loud clamour of an investigation so searching as to fail of little, save the discovery of the offenders. From the moment when he played in rivalry with the coroner at the inquest, to that when the lapse of time enabled him safely to allow the inquiry to die, the county attorney hung as a menace on the quiet and good fame of Padanaram, and during the period of active interest retained the confidence of the authorities of the state.

He had no distinctly formed purpose to the condonement of crime, but simply precomprehension that no degree of proof necessary to individual conviction could be secured, since every possible witness could of right stand mute under the plea that his answer might tend to self-crimination, and public judgment held that through these men had been removed a menace to the Protestant faith of the community which no process of law could reach.

Yet there was a moment that threatened endless complications to the county attorney's simple programme, when Bill Holden and Si Patterson developed a drunken impulse to turn state's evidence, under the double hope of personal immunity and possible pecuniary reward, which a curious misconception of the enduring qualities of money under reckless expending, had rendered desirable. The conscience of a public official may, however, prove not without recourse, even under such a menace as this. Under the law, one is not permitted confession, without solemn warning that whatever he may say can be used against him, and that it is his right to refrain from saying anything that will tend to disgrace or incriminate himself. Moreover, to promise immunity in return for testimony, is to place it in the category of purchase evidence, and, therefore, to discredit it. Consequently the witness must be prepared to state that no promise has been made, and, consequently, he must be prepared to take his chances.

Under these conditions, what more fair than that a conscientious prosecutor should decline to avail himself of testimony that might prove incriminating to the witness, unless the witness is fully warned in advance of his danger and his rights? Counsel was assigned the would-be revealers of the secrets of the Ashgrave night,

and they learned that whatever they said would be usable against themselves, while as to any immunity in the future, they must so far take it on trust as to be able to answer on the stand that no promises whatever had been made them in return for their speaking.

Thenceforth their mouths were fast shut. As Bill Holden in his lucid, non-conventional speech expressed it:

"We hain't such lunes as to trot out the goods till the brass is planted down on the counter not if we know ourselves, an' we guess we do."

The prosecuting attorney reported his disappointment to the governor, a disappointment sustainable only under a rapt contemplation of the vindication of the constitutional right of every citizen to hold his tongue, when its loose wagging may prove personally injurious, a right so frequently honoured in the breach that one may not blame a man, oppressed not impossibly with a flux of verbosity on the part of others, who sees to its safeguarding, even at the expense of honour he might gain officially in the unravelling of a criminal mystery that remains dark and mute.

"This yere county 'turney sorter remin's a feller o' Miss Allen down Belmont way," Blanket confided to Barnaby one evening, while the investigation was dragging slowly on.

His old liking for Barnaby remained and, united with his older liking for gossip, led him to haunt the places which Barnaby affected. In his turn, the latter was not sorry for the help that the stage driver proved in disposing of hours that hung heavy on his hands. His detention as a witness released him from the necessity of considering whether, in deference to Amanda's wishes, he ought not to leave, while her refusal to see him robbed

his enforced residence near her of any advantage it might otherwise have had.

Ef

"Miss Allen," Blanket continued in explanation, "is jest the neates' housekeeper thar be in seven towns. you dumped a mess o' dirt in her settin'-room, she 'd sweep it round and round till thar war n't a bit o' dirt left. 'Fore this feller gits through, thar won't a' ben no riot nor no fire nor nobody dead. I only hope to massy he won't bring Joe Ashgrave back to arth!"

"I don't believe there's anybody who wants him, unless it's his wife," answered Barnaby, more bitter in mood than was his custom.

"She only thinks she wants him, 'cause she can't get him," Blanket assured him. "I somehow guess, ef the Widder Marlow sh'd say 'yes,' I 'd wish I had n't axed her."

"She don't seem likely to get a chance," laughed Barnaby.

"Sartain 's you 're born she 'll get a chance sometime," Blanket declared. "More 'n a half-dozen times, I've hed to bite my tongue to keep it from poppin' out, an' some o' these days I 'll furget and then the fat 'll be in the fire."

"There ought to be a society for the protection of unprotected widowers," suggested Barnaby,

"A sorter Neal Dow law agin marryin' widders might be a good thing," he admitted.

"Yes, for those who need guardians.'

"Wall, I'd like tu know what guv'ment 's fur, ef 'taint 'cause ev'rybody kin tend to some other feller's consarns better 'n he kin to his own."

"'T ain't your time yet to take up the widder business," Blanket said a little later, "'cause no matter how on'ry a feller may be, when he 's dead, folks hes got to purtend

to be sorry an' hes got to hev time tu get over it. Thar's too many on us got a pussonal intrist in the custom ever to let it be given up."

"I don't think she 's ever likely to marry again," said Barnaby.

"I don't nuther, onless the right man axes her," declared Blanket.

Childish as he knew it, Barnaby felt better for having Blanket say these things, and lost no opportunity to give the conversation a turn that might lead reasonably to their repetition. Yet behind it all he had an abiding sense of the woman's strength of will, and that in some way, incomprehensible to him, she was persuaded that she had no right to marry again. He could not follow this out logically; he could not name any one thing or any number of things that led him to the belief. He merely knew that he held it, and while he held it, no argument of his own and no judgment of others could persuade him. Yet he found comfort in assurances to the contrary even from Blanket.

As the stage driver had said, something was due to the memory of the dead man, whatever had been his shortcomings in life, and Barnaby, with his fuller knowledge of and dependence on convention, would have given this full play, save for that underlying conviction of his of the sincerity of whatever Amanda did. Thus when she kept herself close within her father's house, refusing to see visitors, and demanding that he should not even try to see her, he knew there was nothing of pretence in the act, which in another might have been the method of feeding the flames of his passion. She was, to his mind, genuinely and truly mourning the death of Ashgrave, and this was so far inexplicable that, for its very strangeness, he accepted it as final.