Matthew sat in a solemn hall. It was “across the river”—north of the Loop and west of the Michigan Avenue bridge, in a region of vacant dilapidated buildings, of windows without panes and walls peeling and crumbling. A mighty, gray stone structure covered half the block. The front was wrinkled and uneven, with a shrunken door under an iron balcony. Three elevators with musty, clanking chains faced the door and rolled solemnly up five floors. The lobby was bordered with dark stone; the floor was white and gray and cold, and across one side was a huge sign—“Robert E. Crowe, State’s Attorney, Office.” Across the other side one read, “Criminal Court.”
Within these doors, beyond a narrow, oak-paneled hall, sat Matthew Towns, in a high-ceilinged room. The long narrow windows, with flapping dirty green shades, admitted a faint light. The walls were painted orange-yellow. The lights were hanging from the ceiling in chandeliers of metal once brass-colored, with each light socket in an ornamental oak-leaf holder. The globes were of a bluish-yellow glass, pear-shaped. The Bench, of polished oak, was at the rear of a circular oaken-railed enclosure. The enclosure had tables and chairs for lawyers, clients, and witnesses. Well to the front of this green-carpeted space was the desk of the clerk. To the rear, on a raised platform, were seats for the jury. Raised yet higher was the platform upon which rested the judge’s bench; on either side of the bench were doors with signs, “Judge’s Chambers,” “Jury Rooms.” Facing this circular enclosure were long seats in rows for the spectators. The floor here was the same dirty gray, much-worn tile, and the ceiling over the whole, while very high, was noticeable only because it was so soiled and stained.
Soft sunshine filtered in and lighted up the rich polish of the oak. Behind the high desk sat the judge—heavily silked, his grave, gray face looking sternly out upon the world. The strained faces of that world, white, black, and brown, were crowded in the benches below, and some stood in hushed silence. Policemen, bareheaded, moved silently about the throng, and two officials with silver and gilt stood just below the judge. There should have been music, Matthew thought, some slow beat like the Saul death march or the pulse of the Holy Grail. Then the judge spoke:
“Matthew Towns, stand up.”
And Matthew rose and stood, center of a thousand eyes, and a sigh and a hiss went through the hall. For he was tall and impressive. The crisp hair curled on his high forehead. The soft brown of his eyes glowed dark on the lighter brown of his smooth skin. His gray suit lay smooth above the muscles and long bones of his close-knit body. He looked the judge full in the face. The eyes of the judge grew somber—but for a tint of skin, but for a curl of hair, but for a fuller curve of lip and cheek, this might have been his own son, this man whom his son had known and honored.
“Matthew Towns,” he said in low, slow tones, “you stand accused of an awful crime. With your knowledge and at least tacit consent, some person whom you know and we do not, planned to put a hundred, perhaps five hundred souls to torture, pain, and sudden death. At the last minute, when literally moments counted, you rescued these people from the grave. It may have been a brave—a heroic deed. It may have been a kind of deathbed repentance or even the panic of cowardice. In any case the guilt—the grave and terrible guilt hangs over you for your refusal to reveal the name or names of these blood-guilty plotters of midnight dread—of these enemies of God and man. With the stoicism worthy of a better cause and a cynical hardness, you let these men walk free and take upon yourself all the punishment and shame. It has a certain fineness of sacrifice, I admit; but it is wrong, cruel, hateful to civilization and criminal in effect and intent. There is for you no shadow of real excuse. You are a man of education and culture. You have traveled and read. I know that you have suffered injustice and perhaps insult and that your soul is bitter. But you are to blame if you have let this drown the heart of your manhood. You have no real excuse for this criminal and dangerous silence, and I have but one clear duty before me, and that is to punish you severely. I could pronounce the sentence of death upon you for deliberate conspiracy to maim and murder your fellow men; but I will temper justice with mercy so as still to give you chance for repentance. Matthew Towns, I sentence you to ten years at hard labor in the State Prison at Joliet.”
The sun burst clear through the dim windows and lighted the young face of the prisoner.
Someone in the audience sobbed; another started to applaud. Matthew Towns followed the guard into the anteroom, and thither the Princess came, moving quietly to where he stood with shackled hands. The windows all about were barred, and at the farther end of the room stood the stolid officer with a pistol and keys. Down below hummed the traffic.
She took both his manacled hands in hers, and he steeled himself to look the last time at that face and into the deep glory of her eyes. She was simply dressed in black, with one great white pearl in the parting of her breasts.
“You are a brave man, Matthew Towns, brave and great. You have sacrificed your life for me.”
Matthew smiled whimsically.
“I am a small man, small and selfish and singularly short of sight. I served myself as well as you, and served us both ill, because I was dreaming selfish little dreams. Now I am content; for life, which was twisting itself beyond my sight and reason, has become suddenly straight and simple. Your Royal Highness”—he saw the pain in her eyes, and he changed: “My Princess,” he said, “your path of life is straight before you and clear. You were born to power. Use it. Guide your groping people. You will go back now to the world and begin your great task as the ruler of millions and the councilor of the world’s great leaders.
“Your dream of the emancipation of the darker races will come true in time, and you will find allies and helpers everywhere, and nowhere more than in black America. Join the hands of the dark people of the earth. Discover in the masses of groveling, filthy, ignorant black and brown and yellow slaves of modern Europe, the spark of manhood which, fanned with knowledge and health, will light anew a great world-culture. Yours is the great chance—the solemn duty. I had thought once that I might help and in some way stand by the arm posts of your throne. That dream is gone. I made a mistake, and now I can only help by bowing beneath the yoke of shame; and by that very deed I am hindered—forever—to help you—or anyone much, I—am proud—infinitely proud to have had at least your friendship.”
The Princess spoke, and as she talked slowly, pausing now and then to search for a word, she seemed to Matthew somehow to change. She was no longer an icon, crimson and splendid, the beautiful perfect thing apart to be worshiped; she became with every struggling word a striving human soul groping for light, needing help and love and the quiet deep sympathy of great, fine souls. And the more she doffed her royalty and donned her sweet and fine womanhood, the further, the more inaccessible, she became to him.
He knew that what she craved and needed for life, he could not give; that they were eternally parted, not by nature or wealth or even by birth, but by the great call of her duty and opportunity, and by the narrow and ever-narrowing limit of his strength and chance. She did not even look at him now with that impersonal glance that seemed to look through him to great spaces beyond and ignore him in the very intensity and remoteness of her gaze. She stood with downcast eyes and nervous hands, and talked, of herself, of her visit to America, of her hopes, of him.
“I am afraid,” she said, “I seem to you inhuman, but I have come up out of great waters into the knowledge of life.” She looked up at him sadly: “Were you too proud to accept from me a little sacrifice that cost me nothing and meant everything to you?”
“It might have cost you a kingdom and the whole future of the darker world. It was just some such catastrophe that the Japanese and Indians rightly feared.”
“And so, innocent of crime, you are going to accept the brand and punishment of a criminal?”
“My innocence is only technical. I was a deliberate co-conspirator with Perigua. I—murdered Jimmie!”
“No—no—how can you say this! You did not dream of peril to your friend, and your pact with Perigua was a counsel of despair!”
“My moral guilt is real. I should have remembered Jimmie. I should have guided Perigua.”
“But,” and she moved nearer, “if the dead man was—Perigua, what harm now to tell the truth?”
“I will not lay my guilt upon the dead. And, too—if I confessed that much, men might probe—further.”
“And so in the end I am the one at fault!”
“No—no.”
“Yes, I know it. But, oh, Matthew, are you not conscience-mad? You would have died for your friend had you known, just as now you go to jail for me and my wild errand. But even granted, dear friend, some of the guilt of which you so fantastically accuse yourself—can you not balance against this the good you can do your people and mine if free?”
“I have thought of this, and I much doubt my fitness. I know and feel too much. Dear Jimmie saw no problem that he could not laugh off—he was valuable; indispensable in this stage of our development. He should be living now, but I who am a mass of quivering nerves and all too delicate sensibility—I am liable to be a Perigua or a hesitating complaining fool—untrained or half-trained, fitted for nothing but—jail.”
“But—but afterward—after ten little years or perhaps less you will still be young and strong.”
“No, I shall be old and weak. My spirit will be broken and my hope and aspirations gone. I know what jail does to men, especially to black men—my father—”
“You are then deliberately sacrificing your life to me and my cause!”
“I am making the only effective and final atonement that I can to the Great Cause which is ours. I might live and work and do infinitely less.”
“You have ten minutes more,” said the guard.
“Is there nothing—is there not something I can do for you?”
“Yes—one thing: that is, if you are able—if you are permitted and can do it without involving yourself too much with me and my plight.”
“Tell me quickly.”
“I would not put this request if I had any other way, if I had any other friend. But I am alone.” She gripped his hands and was silent, looking always straight into his eyes with eyes that never dropped or wavered. “I have a mother in Virginia whom I have forgotten and neglected. She is a great and good woman, and she must know this. Here is a package. It is addressed to her and contains some personal mementoes—my father’s watch, my high-school certificate—old gifts. I want her to have them. I want her to see—you. I want you to see her—it will explain; she is a noble woman; old, gnarled, ignorant, but very wise. She lives in a log cabin and smokes a clay pipe. I want you to go to her if you can, and I want you to tell her my story. Tell her gently, but clearly, and as you think best; tell her I am dead or in a far country—or, if you will, the plain truth. She is seventy years old. She will be dead before I leave those walls, if I ever leave them. If she did not realize where I was or why I was silent, she would die of grief. If she knows the truth or thinks she knows it, she will stand up strong and serene before her God. Tell her I failed with a great vision—great, even if wrong. Make her life’s end happy for her. Leave her her dreams.”
“You have one minute more,” said the guard.
The Princess took the package. The policeman turned, watch in hand. They looked at each other. He let his eyes feast on her for the last time—that never, never again should they forget her grace and beauty and even the gray line of suffering that leapt from nose to chin; suddenly she sank to her knees and kissed both his hands, and was gone.
Next day a great steel gate swung to in Joliet, and Matthew Towns was No. 1,277.