THE COLOUR LINE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 83, 8 April 1911, Page 10

THE COLOUR LINE.

'Twas a matter of life and death, and the young man was not a little taken aback to find the verdict against him. I Acting as his own lawyer, he had made an eloquent plea, and then rested his case, confident, as was the world at large, in the impartiality of Chief Justice Podger. Now bias, 'he instinctively felt, had passed sentence upon him. Vain as he knew it to be, he must needs expostulate. "But what possible objection, judgo, can you have to my marrying Rachel. She " "Loves you, sir — unfortunately. I'm perfectly aware of the fact." "My family " "Is an honourable one, sir; none more so." "My means " "Are adequate to support fifty wives. You needn't tell me that. I know it, young man, just as well as you do. Didn't /I draw up your father's will?" " My character '' "Is irreproachable ; too much so, if anything." "What in the world then ?" 1 Lionel Armstrong broke off abruptly of j his own accord, being about at his wits' end. Judge Podger looked him up and t down, and up again ; then, fixing his glance, he smiled maliciously. Lionel had many inclies, and gave the impression of being every one of them a man. A more satisfactory son-in-law would, to all appearances, be faor to , seek. Looking his scrutiniser unflmchj ingly in the eye, he frankly admitted : "Rachel is very young, but '* " Rachel," interposed her father dog- | matically, "is now seventeen. — exactly the age her mother was when I married her — and can not marry any too soon to suit me. I believe in early marriages, sir — love marriages, at that. Seventeen' s the right age for a girl to marry at — neither younger nor older." He paused as if defying his would-be !ion-in-law to controvert this statement; but Lionel failing ignominiously to take any such advantage of the situation, the judge went on : " Now don't you go i running away with the idea that I've got some one in mind for her, for I , haven't. I wish to goodness. I had. r Uhe first thing, you know, she'll be eighteen ; and if there's anything 1 abominate, it's an old maid. Furthermore, I'm not as young as- I used to be. — this damn gout'll be tho death of me one of these uays ! — and my heart's ' «et on seeing my girl settled before I go." The judge spoke precisely as he might have done had he been confiding his troubles to some old crony of whose iiympathy he was fully assured. Lionel, however, was not in a- very sympathetic humour. " For the life ol me," he declared, nettled no less than, mystified, " I can't see what objoet'-on "Of course you can't," the judge put in; "'but I can; and I'd sooner see my daughter dead and buried beside her dear mother than married to a man with red hair!" Had the judge's sentence concluded with the words, "than married to a red-handed murderer," his refusal of his daughter's hand could not have been more emphatic, nor his detestation of the colour in question more strongly expressed. To say that poor Lionel *tood aghast would be to sin absurdly on the side of artistic reserve. His guilt waa undeniable. It cried aloud to heaven from Crod only knows how many mouths. Standing there, his sin thus brought home to him, 'he looked for all tli« world aa if his enemy had met him in the way, and, aware of the judge's prejudice, had heaped coals of fire upon his head. His face, however, outrivalled his . hair, ac he stammered : "But — but — why, judge, you must b& "Not a bit of it, ait; quit© th« contrary. My objection " " Is irrational " "Insuperable; and anything but irrational, young man— the result of years of observation on the bench. Why, sir, the most desperate criminals I ever had the pleasure of sentencing were every one of them, red-headed. Now, you needn't get excited; that doesn't alteithe facts in the least; for twenty long years I've noted the relation between red hair and crime — ever since a redheaded nincompoop tried to rob me of ray wife." '"Of Mrs. Podger?" "Then Mies Odium, sir — wanted her to run away with him, the scoundrel ! Would have worked it, too, only 1 came upon tho scene in tho nick of v time, and carried her off bodily myself !" "Rachel," said Lionel, breathing heavily, " has told me the story of your elopement with her mother. Your example is Worthy of imitation." " Nothing of the kind, sir !" roared the judge. "No two cases could possibly be less parallel. In the first place, her father wouldn't listen to reason.; then, there's no red-headixl whipper-snapper trying to cajole Rachel into, marrying him." "There is not," Lionel agreed. But his ready concurrence with the other's opinion did not seem to bring about any better understanding between them. Ensued an awkward silence. At length Lionel spoke up: /'lf that's all, I'm perfectly willing to dye it." "Dye it! Dye what, sir?" "My hair." " Your hair ! Perfectly willing to dye it ! — go about a walking lie ! — in disguise ! What did I tell you? I might have known it !" And the judge took out a note-book and therein wrote triumphantly. Then, sternly eyeing young Armstrong as if he were a 'felon m the dock, he accused: "You have been trying to get her to run away with you?" " I have." "And failed?" '• Yes." "Couldn't induce her to leave her poor old sick father?" "No !" , "Oh, you !" Outraged justice was plainly at a lo«j for an epithet. By dying of apoplexy, righteous indignation seemed determined to prove Lionel g'lilfcy of manslaughter. Interposed the prisoner: "Ono moment, judge. Mr. Odium, if I mistake not, was neither vnjry young nor in the very best of health when " "Confound it, sir! What has that to do with it?" The well-fed face of Chief Justice Podger was now purple. "Never mind," answered Lionel, wearily. "One more question, judge, and I'm done : Were my hair not red, would you have any objection to my marrying Rachel?" "None whatever, sir I" And with that Judge Podger, venerable jurist, bowed his daughter's suitor out. To the ousted Lionel, the familiar etreete of his native crt-y were bewilderingly foreign, their wonted din maddening, intoferable. Motormenj clanged bells-, chauffeurs tooted horns, jai-vies cried "Hey, there !"— all at him. Pedestrians seemed to go out of their way to jostle him. A dozen times he came near being run over. And as he stumbled blindly on, his indifferent spirit, walking beside him, a thing apart, smiled to see his body I hiist-en. to get out of the way of death. F'jtr the first time in his life, he realised tte awe-inspiring quality of man, reached a height of spiritual aloofnees whence ho could look down upon the burdenboarer scornfully as did the saint of old, and say: "That acs, my body!" After a time, of wfeich . he kept nq

count, he found himself come, by what streets he knew not, to a bascule bridge over the Harlem, listening to the lapping of the waters as to an irresistible siren's eong inviting him to drown. He was in exactly the humour to accept such an invitation. Had Rachel died, or married another, or taken vows — forswearing him for the church — he had borne it like a man, met heroically any of the many aspects of Melpomene, but this contemptible trick of late's, this forcing upon him of the role of marionette in the hands of Momus, filled him with such disgust for life that— the moment being what is miscalled psychological — the idea, uf suicide took hold of that great body of his, full of its absurd desire to live, determined to throw it headlong into the river. When the gods say to man : "We would laugh! Play the clown!" may not he-, as a last resort, call upon his friend Death to save him from the unmerited indignity? The mood of the ridiculously rejected suitor answering "Yes I" there ensued a warning of the flesh against the spirit and of the spirit against the flesh, of which conflict a third Lionel Armstrong seemed to be a detached but somewhat interested spectator. Chance intervening, the struggle was but a matter of seconds. The idea momentarily relaxing ite grip, the body instinctively backed away from the water. Then there was darkness. When Lionel camo to himself, l*e was huddled at the bottom of a concrete pi^ His mind was perfectly clear, and he realised instantly what had happened. He had backed into the receptacle for the counterpoise of the bridge. Any minute a boat might come along, and then ! Poe's tale of "The Pit and the Pendulum" flashed across hie soul like a flame from hell that eears and shrivels. He was a prisoner, and the counterpoise weighed tons. Straining his ears for the hoarse whistle of an approaching steamer, he cried aloud in agony. His voice seemed but to ascend as through a monstrous megaphone to the deaf blue above him. One glance at the floor of the pit was enough to dissipate any hope of tlie great mass of metal's not coming to rest there, and tho difference between, the diameter of the pit and that of the counterpoise might be a few inches, but no more. What so lately had appeared to him the sweetest and most desirable thing left in the world was now at hand, namely accidental death. To his mind's eye it was approaching in the shape of a phantom -veeeel with a raucous voice. But now he and his body were at one in their franfk desire to escape, ill thenfutile efforts. From the point of view of the pit, the sentence which had been passed upon him by Judge Podger was so preposterous tnat it was unbelievable but that it would be reversed by his better judgment. It now seemed to contain none of that finality characteristic of the eminent jurist's spoken word. A man who can not in eighteen years lay' the ghost of a jealousy, what business has he to be on the bench, or anywhere save in an insane asylum? Recognising the absurdity, the injustice, the. criminal insanity, of the judge's verdict, would not even his daughter reconsider her decision, and consent to elope, or, at worst to marry — her father willy-nilly — when of age? Thus the dream came to torment him, and to add to the horror of the idea of death. To his disordered mind's eye, the counterpoise took the form of the execu-tioner-elephant's foot, and himself of the condemned criminal. Like a cat he sprang at the walls and clawed them, till bleeding finger-tips and torn nails brought him to his senses. He tried to collect his thoughts, but could not keep still — yet must neede laugh himself to scorn for his vain running round and round like a beast about to perish. Hamstrung though ho was by horror, he none the less kept going. Madness lay the way of inaction. Fell a lassitude upon the body, leaving the mind active. Long since his involuntary cries, for help had become hoarse, whispers that sounded in his eais like the echoes of mocking laughter. Suddenly the whistle of a river steamer blew and a flesh-disintegrating awe caused his gigantic frame to tenee aa if charg-ed with electricity ; then, as if the current were all al once turned off, to wilt, to collapse, to r lose visible inches. As slowly the counterpoi&a began to descend, Lionel, after fumbling desperately in his pockets, drew forth a penknife and thereon smiled grimly. Here was wherewith to light Fate, an alternative at least. The right of choice was still hie. A second time he smiled, now not so grimly; then, grinding his teetli together, he flung the alternativa out of the pit, far up into the air, watched it turn its someieaailus with curious in terest, and when, descending, it disappeared, he bad© farewell to tho bluo heavens, laid down on the concrete floor, and there rested his head x as on a'pillow. A water-rat of that species which no pied piper hae yet been found to charm out of our coast cities, intent on the spectacle of the bridge's uprearing. to let the steamer pass, was not a little surprised to see a ehiny something shoot out of the mouth of the pit, turn, over and over in the air, and land at his very feet. In the twinkling of an eye it was harmless in his pocket, his grimy paw gloating over the smoothness of the mother-of-pearl handle ; his for keeps, despite the fact that he must needs peek into the pit, long enough to learn that its lawful owner was there, lying at full length, long enough to think that "dead men don't need no knives." An instant- later the bridge-tender's homicidal hand was stayed by a "Hole on dere ! JDere's an ole guy failed inta. de pit!" No matter what the risk to freedom, to worldly possession, the bsarer of this startling intelligence could not but wait to see. "de drunk" hauled out — at a safe distance, of course ; not but what he was ready to cross his heart that- he had seen nothing of no knife, and to. turn his pockets inside out in proof-y-of its being in his left shoe. It was his by rights. Had it not been "trowed away?" Had he not "saved de ole guy's life?" Now, should any curious readers wonder how vermin so intelligent as my water-rat could come to speak repeatedly of Lionel Armstrong as "de ole guy," let me tell them that when peeked at, the would-be son-in-law of the prejudiced chief-juetice was prone upon his face, and that his hair was snow-white.— Harry Cowell, in The Argonaut.