_ CHAPTER XXXV. A CRISIS AT THE COURT-HOUSE
In that bare upper room they had shared, the judge, crushed and broken, watched beside the bed on which the dead man lay; unconscious of the flight of time he sat with his head bowed in his hands, having scarcely altered his position since he begged those who carried Mahaffy up the narrow stairs to leave him alone with his friend.
He was living over the past. He recalled his first meeting with Mahaffy in the stuffy cabin of the small river packet from which they had later gone ashore at Pleasantville; he thanked God that it had been given him to see beneath Solomon's forbidding exterior and into that starved heart! He reviewed each phase of the almost insensible growth of their intimacy; he remembered Mahaffy's fine true loyalty at the time of his arrest--he thought of Damon and Pythias--Mahaffy had reached the heights of a sublime devotion; he could only feel enobled that he had inspired it.
At last the dusk of twilight invaded the room. He lighted the candles on the chimneypiece, then he resumed his seat and his former attitude. Suddenly he became aware of a small hand that was resting on his arm and glanced up; Hannibal had stolen quietly into the room. The boy pointed to the still figure on the bed.
"Judge, what makes Mr. Mahaffy lie so quiet--is he dead?" he asked in a whisper.
"Yes, dear lad," began the judge in a shaking voice as he drew Hannibal toward him, "your friend and mine is dead--we have lost him." He lifted the boy into his lap, and Hannibal pressed a tear-stained face against the judge's shoulder. "How did you get here?" the judge questioned gently.
"Uncle Bob fetched me," said Hannibal. "He's down-stairs, but he didn't tell me Mr. Mahaffy was dead-"
"We have sustained a great loss, Hannibal, and we must never forget the moral grandeur of the man. Some day, when you are older, and I can bring myself to speak of it, I will tell you of his last moments." The judge's voice broke, a thick sob rose chokingly in his throat. "Poor Solomon! A man of such tender feeling that he hid it from the world, for his was a rare nature which only revealed itself to the chosen few he honored with his love." The judge lapsed into a momentary brooding silence, in which his great arms drew the boy closer against his heart. "Dear lad, since I left you at Belle Plain a very astonishing knowledge has come to me. It was the Hand of Providence--I see it now--that first brought us together. You must not call me judge any more; I am your grandfather your mother was my daughter."
Hannibal instantly sat erect and looked up at the judge, his blue eyes wide with amazement at this extraordinary statement.
"It is a very strange story, Hannibal, and its links are not all in my hands, but I am sure because of what I already know. I, who thought that not a drop of my blood flowed in any veins but my own, live again in you. Do you understand what I am telling you? Your are my own dear little grandson--" and the judge looked down with no uncertain love and pride into the small face upturned to his.
"I am glad if you are my grandfather, judge," said Hannibal very gravely. "I always liked you."
"Thank you, dear lad," responded the judge with equal gravity, and then as Hannibal nestled back in his grandfather's arms a single big tear dropped from the end of that gentleman's prominent nose.
"There will be many and great changes in store for us," continued the judge. "But as we met adversity with dignity, I am sure we shall be able to endure prosperity with equanimity, only unworthy natures are affected by what is at best superficial and accidental. I mean that the blight of poverty is about to be lifted from our lives."
"Do you mean we ain't going to be pore any longer, grandfather?" asked Hannibal.
The judge regarded him with infinite tenderness of expression; he was profoundly moved.
"Would you mind saying that again, dear lad?"
"Do you mean we ain't going to be pore any longer, grandfather?" repeated Hannibal.
"I shall enjoy an adequate competency which I am about to recover. It will be sufficient for the indulgence of those simple and intellectual tastes I propose to cultivate for the future." In spite of himself the judge sighed. This was hardly in line with his ideals, but the right to choose was no longer his. "You will be very rich, Hannibal. The Quintard lands--your grandmother was a Quintard--will be yours; they run up into the hundred of thousand of acres here about; this land will all be yours as soon as I can establish your identity."
"Will Uncle Bob be rich too?" inquired Hannibal.
"Certainly. How can he be poor when we possess wealth?" answered the judge.
"You reckon he will always live with us, don't you, grandfather?"
"I would not have it otherwise. I admire Mr. Yancy--he is simple and direct, and fit for any company under heaven except that of fools. His treatment of you has placed me under everlasting obligations; he shall share what we have. My one bitter, unavailing regret is that Solomon Mahaffy will not be here to partake of our altered fortunes." And the judge sighed deeply.
"Uncle Bob told me Mr. Mahaffy got hurt in a duel, grandfather?" said Hannibal.
"He was as inexperienced as a child in the use of firearms, and he had to deal with scoundrels who had neither mercy nor generous feeling--but his courage was magnificent."
Presently Hannibal was deep in his account of those adventures he had shared with Miss Betty.
"And Miss Malroy--where is she now?" asked the judge, in the first pause of the boy's narrative.
"She's at Mr. Bowen's house. Mr. Carrington and Mr. Cavendish are here too. Mrs. Cavendish stayed down yonder at the Bates' plantation. Grandfather, it were Captain Murrell who had me stole--do you reckon he was going to take me back to Mr. Bladen?"
"I will see Miss Malroy in the morning. We must combine--our interests are identical. There should be hemp in this for more than one scoundrel! I can see now how criminal my disinclination to push myself to the front has been!" said the judge, with conviction. "Never again will I shrink from what I know to be a public duty."
A little later they went down-stairs, where the judge had Yancy make up a bed for himself and Hannibal on the floor. He would watch alone beside Mahaffy, he was certain this would have been the dead man's wish; then he said good night and mounted heavily to the floor above to resume his vigil and his musings.
Just at daybreak Yancy was roused by the pressure of a hand on his shoulder, and opening his eyes saw that the judge was bending over him.
"Dress!" he said briefly. "There's every prospect of trouble--get your rifle and come with me!"
Yancy noted that this prospect of trouble seemed to afford the judge a pleasurable sensation; indeed, he had quite lost his former air of somber and suppressed melancholy.
"I let you sleep, thinking you needed the rest," the judge went on. "But ever since midnight we've been on the verge of riot and possible bloodshed. They've arrested John Murrell--it's claimed he's planned a servile rebellion! A man named Hues, who had wormed his way into his confidence, made the arrest. He carried Murrell into Memphis, but the local magistrate, intimidated, most likely, declined to have anything to do with holding him. In spite of this, Hues managed to get his prisoner lodged in jail, but along about nightfall the situation began to look serious. Folks were swarming into town armed to the teeth, and Hues fetched Murrell across country to Raleigh--"
"Yes?" said Yancy.
"Well, the sheriff has refused to take Murrell into custody. Hues has him down at the court-house, but whether or not he is going to be able to hold him is another matter!"
Yancy and Hannibal had dressed by this time, and the judge led the way from the house. The Scratch Hiller looked about him. Across the street a group of men, the greater number of whom were armed, stood in front of Pegloe's tavern. Glancing in the direction of the court-house, he observed that the square before it held other groups. But what impressed him more was the ominous silence that was everywhere. At his elbow the judge was breathing deep.
"We are face to face with a very deplorable condition, Mr. Yancy. Court was to sit here to-day, but judge Morrow and the public prosecutor have left town, and as you see, Murrell's friends have gathered for a rescue. There's a sprinkling of the better element--but only a sprinkling. I saw judge Morrow this morning at four o'clock--I told him I would obligate myself to present for his consideration evidence of a striking and sensational character, evidence which would show conclusively that Murrell should be held to await the action of the next grand jury--this was after a conference with Hues--I guaranteed his safety. Sir, the man refused to listen to me! He showed himself utterly devoid of any feeling of public duty." The bitter sense of failure and futility was leaving the judge. The situation made its demands on that basic faith in his own powers which remained imbedded in his character.
They had entered the court-house square. 'On the steps of the building Betts was arguing loudly with Hues, who stood in the doorway, rifle in hand.
"Maybe you don't know this is county property?" the sheriff was saying. "And that you have taken unlawful possession of it for an unlawful purpose? I am going to open them doors-a passel of strangers can't keep folks out of a building their own money has bought and paid for!" While he was speaking, the judge had pushed his way through the crowd to the foot of the steps.
"That was very nicely said, Mr. Betts," observed the judge. He smiled widely and sweetly. The sheriff gave him a hostile glare. "Do you know that Morrow has left town?" the judge went on.
"I ain't got nothing to do with judge Morrow. It's my duty to see that this building is ready for him when he's a mind to open court in it."
"You are willing to assume the responsibility of throwing open these doors?" inquired the judge affably.
"I shorely am," said Betts. "Why, some of these folks are our leading people!"
The judge turned to the crowd, and spoke in a tone of excessive civility. "Just a word, gentlemen!--the sheriff is right; it is your court-house and you should not be kept out of it. No doubt there are some of you whose presence in this building will sooner or later be urgently desired. We are going to let all who wish to enter, but I beg you to remember that there will be five men inside whose prejudices are all in favor of law and order." He pushed past Hues and entered the court-house, followed by Yancy and Hannibal. "We'll let 'em in where I can talk to 'em," he said almost gaily. "Besides, they'll come in anyhow when they get ready, so there's no sense in exciting them."
In the court-house, Murrell, bound hand and foot, was seated between Carrington and the Earl of Lambeth in the little railed-off space below the judge's bench. Fear and suffering had blanched his unshaven cheeks and given a wild light to his deeply sunken eyes. At sight of Yancy a smothered exclamation broke from his lips, he had supposed this man dead these many months!
Hues had abandoned his post and the crowd, suddenly grown clamorous, stormed the narrow entrance. One of the doors, borne from its hinges, went down with a crash. The judge, a fierce light flashing from his eyes, turned to Yancy.
"No matter what happens, this fellow Murrell is not to escape--if he calls on his friends to rescue him he is to be shot!"
The hall was filling with swearing, struggling men, the floor shook beneath their heavy tread; then they burst into the court-room and saluted Murrell with a great shout. But Murrell, bound, in rags, and silent, his lips frozen in a wolfish grin, was a depressing sight, and the boldest felt something of his unrestrained lawlessness go from him.
Less noisy now, the crowd spread itself out among the benches or swarmed up into the tiny gallery at the back of the building. Man after man had hurried forward, intent on passing beyond the railing, but each lead encountered the judge, formidable and forbidding, and had turned aside. Gradually the many pairs of eyes roving over the little group surrounding the outlaw focussed themselves on Slocum Price. It was in unconscious recognition of that moral force which was his, a tribute to the grim dignity of his unshaken courage; what he would do seemed worth considering.
He was charmed to hear his name pass in a whisper from lip to lip. Well, it was time they knew him! He squared his ponderous shoulders and made a gesture commanding silence. Battered, shabby and debauched, he was like some old war horse who sniffs the odor of battle that the wind incontinently brings to his nostrils.
"Don't let him speak!" cried a voice, and a tumult succeeded.
Cool and indomitable the judge waited for it to subside. He saw that the color was stealing back into Murrell's face. The outlaw was feeling that he was a leader not overthrown, these were his friends and followers, his safety was their safety too. In a lull in the storm of sound the judge attempted to make himself heard, but his words were lost in the angry roar that descended on him.
"Don't let him speak! Kill him! Kill him!"
A score of men sprang to their feet and from all sides came the click of rifle and pistol hammers as they were drawn to the full cock. The judge's fate seemed to rest on a breath. He swung about on his heel and gave a curt nod to Yancy and Cavendish, who, falling back a step, tossed their guns to their shoulders and covered Murrell. A sudden hush grew up out of the tumult; the cries, angry and jeering, dwindled to a murmur, and a dead pall of silence rested on the crowded room.
The very taste of triumph was in the judge's mouth. Then came a commotion at the back of the building, a whispered ripple of comment, and Colonel Fentress elbowed his way through the crowd. At sight of his enemy the judge's face went from white to red, while his eyes blazed; but for the moment the force of his emotions left him speechless. Here and there, as he advanced, Fentress recognized a friend and bowed coolly to the right and left.
"What does this ridiculous mockery mean?" he demanded harshly. "Mr. Sheriff, as a member of the bar, I protest! Why don't you clear the building?" He did not wait for Betts to answer him, but continued. "Where is this man Hues?"
"Yonder, Colonel, by the captain," said Betts.
"I have a warrant for his arrest. You will take him into custody."
"Wait!" cried the judge. "I represent Mr. Hues. I desire to see that warrant!"
But Fentress ignored him. He addressed the crowded benches.
"Gentlemen, it is a serious matter forcibly to seize a man without authority from the courts and expose him to the danger of mob violence--Mr. Hues will learn this before we have done with him."
Instantly there was a noisy demonstration that swelled into a burst of applause, which quickly spent itself. The struggle seemed to have narrowed to an individual, contest for supremacy between Fentress and the judge. On the edge of the railed off space they confronted each other: the colonel, a tall, well-cared-for presence; the judge shabby and unkempt. For a moment their eyes met, while the judge's face purpled and paled, and purpled again. The silence deepened. Fentress' thin lips opened, twitched, but no sound came from them; then his glance wavered and fell. He turned away.
"Mr. Sheriff!" he called sharply.
"All right, Colonel!"
"Take your man into custody," ordered Fentress. As he spoke he handed the warrant to Betts, who looked at it, grinned, and stepped toward Hues. He would have pushed the judge aside had not that gentleman, bowing civilly, made way for him.
"In my profound respect for the law and properly constituted authority I yield to no man, not even to Colonel Fentress," he said, with a gracious gesture. "I would not place the slightest obstacle in the way of its sanctioned manifestation. Colonel Fentress comes here with that high sanction." He bowed again ceremoniously to the colonel. "I repeat, I respect his dependence upon the law!" He whirled suddenly.
"Cavendish--Yancy--Carrington--I call upon you to arrest John Murrell! I do this by virtue of the authority vested in me as a judge of the United States Federal Court. His crime--a mere trifle, my friends--passing counterfeit money! Colonel Fentress will inform you that this is a violation of the law which falls within my jurisdiction," and he beamed blandly on Fentress.
"It's a lie!" cried the colonel.
"You'll answer for that later!" said the judge, with abrupt austerity of tone.
"For all we know you may be some fugitive from justice! Why, your name isn't Price!"
"Are you sure of that?" asked the judge quickly.
"You're an impostor! Your name is Turberville!"
"Permit me to relieve your apprehensions. It is Turberville who has received the appointment. Would you like to examine my credentials?--I have them by me--no? I am obliged for your introduction. It could not have come at a more timely moment!" The judge seemed to dismiss Fentress contemptuously. Once more he faced the packed benches. "Put down your weapons!" he commanded. "This man Murrell will not be released. At the first effort at rescue he will be shot where he sits--we have sworn it--his plotting is at an end." He stalked nearer the benches. "Not one chance in a thousand remains to him. Either he dies here or he lives to betaken before every judge in the state, if necessary, until we find one with courage to try him! Make no mistake--it will best conserve the ends of justice to allow the state court's jurisdiction in this case; and I pledge myself to furnish evidence which will start him well on his road to the gallows!" The judge, a tremendous presence, stalked still nearer the benches. Outfacing the crowd, a sense of the splendor of the part he was being called upon to play flowed through him like some elixir; he felt that he was transcending himself, that his inspiration was drawn from the hidden springs of the spirit, and that he could neither falter nor go astray. "You don't know what you are meddling with! This man has plotted to lay the South in ruins--he has been arming the negroes--it--it is incredible that you should all know this--to such I say, go home and thank God for your escape! For the others"--his shaggy brows met in a menacing frown--"if they force our hand we will toss them John Murrell's dead carcass--that's our answer to their challenge!"
He strode out among the gun muzzles which wavered where they still covered him. He was thinking of Mahaffy--Mahaffy, who had said he was still a man to be reckoned with. For the comfort of his own soul he was proving it.
"Do you know what a servile insurrection means?--you men who have wives and daughters, have you thought of their fate? Of the monstrous savagery to which they would be exposed? Do you believe he could limit and control it? Look at him! Why, he has never had a consideration outside of his own safety, and yet he expects you to risk your necks to save his! He would have left the state before the first blow was struck--his business was all down river--but we are going to keep him here to answer for his crimes! The law, as implacable as it is impartial, has put its mark on him--the shadow in which he sits is the shadow of the gallows!"
The judge paused, but the only sound in that expectant silence was the heavy breathing of men. He drew his unwieldy form erect, while his voice rumbled on, aggressive and threatening in its every intonation.
"You are here to defend something that no longer exists. Your organization is wrecked, your signals and passwords are known, your secrets have become public property--I can even produce a list of your members; there are none of you who do not stand in imminent peril--yet understand, I have no wish to strike at those who have been misled or coerced into joining Murrell's band!" The judge's sodden old face glowed now with the magnanimity of his sentiments. "But I have no feeling of mercy for your leaders, none for Murrell himself. Put down your guns!--you can only kill us after we have killed Murrell--but you can't kill the law! If the arch conspirator dies in this room and hour, on whose head will the punishment fall?" He swung round his ponderous arm in a sweeping gesture and shook a fat but expressive forefinger in the faces of those nearest him. "On yours--and yours--and yours!"
Across the space that separated them the judge grinned his triumph at his enemy. He had known when Fentress entered the room that a word or a sign from him would precipitate a riot, but he knew now that neither this word nor this sign would be given. Then quite suddenly he strode down the aisle, and foot by foot Fentress yielded ground before his advance. A murderous light flashed from the judge's bloodshot eyes and his right hand was stealing toward the frayed tails of his coat.
"Look out--he's getting ready to shoot!" cried a frightened voice.
Instantly by doors and windows the crowd, seized with inexplicable panic, emptied itself into the courthouse yard. Fentress was caught up in the rush and borne from the room and from the building. When he reached the graveled space below the steps he turned. The judge was in the doorway, the center of a struggling group; Mr. Bowen, the minister, Mr. Saul and Mr. Wesley were vainly seeking to pinion his arm.
"Draw--damn you!" he roared at Fentress, as he wrenched himself free, and the crowd swayed to right and left as Fentress was seen to reach for his pistol.
Mr. Saul made a last frantic effort to restrain his friend; he seized the judge's arm just as the latter's finger pressed the trigger, and an instant later Fentress staggered back with the judge's bullet in his shoulder. _