Part 37

Nothing, therefore, remains for the Court but to pronounce the sentence which a jury, almost wholly of your own selection, has adjudged your fitting doom. The crime you have committed is the most dreadful known to the law. For it there is but one penalty, the requisition of your life in forfeit for the one you have taken. The sentence of the Court is that you be conducted hence to the prison from which you came, and that you be confined there until Friday, the 18th day of March, following, and that you then, between the hours of 7 and 11 in the morning, be hanged by the neck until you are dead, and may God have mercy on you!

This is all that Billy Warlock knows or cares to know of the circumstances under which Lotchen became his child. He never made the slightest effort to discover more. It didn't interest him, and he didn't wish it to interest her. She was his child, and that was enough--at least, it was enough for several years. The precise moment at which it ceased to be enough is not fixed in Billy's mind, but last Christmas, when Lotchen found a gold watch in her stocking, and when she came and put her arms around his neck and kissed him, which she hadn't done very often of late, and when she whispered that she wished she had something to give him, Billy turned his eyes to the floor and stuck his big fists in his trowsers pockets, and did a power of thinking. He knew then, if he had not fully known it before, that for her to be his child was not enough. So he said very solemnly, "Are you sure you mean that, Lotchen? Now, don't answer without you know, for you might have something you wouldn't want to give me, and if I was to ask for it and you was to look hesitatin', I--well I don't know what I should do."

"I don't have to think, Billy," Lotchen answered promptly, "for I've been thinking a great deal and wondering whether you--"

She stopped there short, and her face--her pretty face, her dear, round, dimpled face, her truthful, honest, womanly face--got very red, and she jumped up and ran out of the room.

After that last Christmas, Billy and Lotchen talked and walked with each other on a different footing from that on which their intercourse had previously been conducted. He said nothing to her, nor she to him, that referred to their interrupted conversation until October came, and then one day he said: "Lotchen, is my Christmas gift ready?" and he held out his hand to her--both hands--and smiled.

"Yes, Billy," she answered.

And on next Tuesday morning, Christmas morning, when the bells are ringing merrily and all the world is glad, Billy Warlock, as I said at the very beginning of my story, dressed in his big frock coat and the whitest of snowy neckties, will--but you know the rest, so what's the use of my telling it?

MR. CINCH.

In the construction of Mr. Cinch nature had been generous, not to say prodigal, of materials, but certainly a wiser discretion might have been exercised in using them. The centre of Mr. Cinch's gravity was much too far above his waist. All the rest of him appeared to have been fitted out at the expense of his legs, which, unable to endure so oppressive a burden, had spread.

To say that the shape of his legs was a source of unhappiness to Mr. Cinch would be a feeble and inadequate expression of his feelings. "Them bow-legs" was a phrase into which he poured a degree of self-contempt altogether pitiful. They were, of course, homely to look at and not in the least serviceable. Unaided by his stout hickory stick, they could not transport Mr. Cinch across the room. But there was no evidence that their shape or size was due on their part to any motive of malice or of indolence, and it seemed quite unreasonable that he should feel toward them so harshly.

His disgust for them did not, indeed, originate with himself. It is entirely probable that he would never have thought of despising them as he did but for Mrs. Cinch. That excellent lady, with all her many virtues, could never forgive those legs. Their degeneration, as she regarded it, had not begun when she married Mr. Cinch. He was then a slight young man and his legs were unexceptionable in size and shape. They had become bowed and insufficient within comparatively recent years, and she had never felt quite able to accept Mr. Cinch's assurances that he was not at fault in the matter.

Let it not be thought that this excellent couple were wanting toward each other in those sweet graces which so beautify the marriage relation. They had lived and loved together nearly a quarter of a century, and had shared in those years their full measure of joys and sorrows. But Mrs. Cinch was not without her humors, and when she was entertaining an acid humor she could not get her husband's unfortunate legs out of her mind.

No matter what may have been the subject that had originally vexed her, it was the invariable experience that those legs became the focus to which her excited wrath was drawn, and then, indeed, it must be owned, she was exceedingly hard to deal with. She would recall in bitter phrases the fact that he had married her with other and honester legs, and she would plainly intimate that in substituting these he had acted in an unfair and unmanly way.

This was naturally distressing to Mr. Cinch. He keenly felt the injustice of the insinuation, but at the same time his mind was filled with a supreme loathing of his legs, and he was only deterred from going to a hospital and from having them straightway taken off by the reflection that an entirely legless husband was not likely to be more satisfactory, upon the whole, than one whose legs were bowed.

It was from a domestic scene such as these sentences have indicated that Mr. Cinch issued one morning recently, and passing out through his hallway into the street as fast as he could wobble, he tumbled into his waiting coupe and hurried down to business. Mr. Cinch was the keeper of a livery-stable, an establishment held in much esteem by the public and the trade, and yielding an abundant revenue. His business was one of the largest of its kind in New York, a fact which, with many others equally important, was set forth in unmistakable phrases upon Mr. Cinch's business cards, copiously illustrated with cuts of prancing horses and handsome vehicles and of the extensive premises in which they were kept.

The appearance of the coupe as it rolled into the stable fetched from the inner office Mr. Cinch's manager, a bald-headed young man, with red eyes and a hopeful soul, who dexterously assisted his employer to alight, and aided him into the main office and into the huge arm-chair, so placed as to command a fair view of the entire establishment. From this arm-chair, Mr. Cinch rarely moved throughout the live-long day.

"Well, Bob," said Mr. Cinch, so soon as he had caught his breath, "how's things going?"

"Fair to middlin', sir, fair to middlin'. The regulars is 'bout the same, but the casuals is light."

"Well, a man can't always have things the way he wants 'em, Bob; ef he could there wouldn't be as much trouble as they is."

"No, sir, that's very true, sir, nor so much fun, neither, come to think of it."

"How do you make that out, Bob?"

"Well, sir, ef everybody could have whatever they wanted, there wouldn't be much excitement going on. They'd get tired o' wanting before long fearful that the time 'ud come when they wouldn't be nothin' to want."

Mr. Cinch was quite impressed with the force of this philosophy. Bob's views on men and things often entertained Mr. Cinch. He had a good deal of respect for Bob. Bob's circumstances had denied him many of those early advantages which are so useful in cultivating the habit of profound thought, and yet, to his greater credit, it must be said that he not infrequently performed a deal of subtle cogitation. In this he pleased Mr. Cinch, who was by no means all a man of beef and brawn. Mr. Cinch had read a considerable quantity of poetry and was a subscriber to a scientific periodical. He had a decided tendency toward occult speculation, and had reached that point in his orthodoxy where he believed there were a good many more things that we don't know than that we do.

He had turned over Bob's remark once or twice in his mind, and was about to say something by way of rejoinder when the office door was opened and a young woman entered, observing that she wished to pay her bill.

She was a tall, well-dressed, stoutly built young woman, with large, strong features, and an abundant supply of blonde hair, partially covered with a sombre brown bonnet. Her eyes were big and blue, and her voice quite pleasant to hear.

"This way, miss," said Bob, from his high stool behind the desk. "What name, please?"

"Frances Emiline Beeks."

"Beeks, miss? Yes, miss. Let's see--BA to BE, Barker, Becker, Beech, Beeks! Frances Emiline Beeks. Eighty-seven dollars and fifty cents, if you please."