Satan Sanderson Part 34

He left her, and she sat dully trying to think. The regular jar of the trucks had set itself to a rhythm--no hope, no hope, no hope! She knew now that there was none. When the bishop reentered she did not turn her head. He sat beside her a while and she was aware again of his voice, speaking soothingly. At moments thereafter he was there, at others she knew that she was alone, but she was unconscious of the flight of time.

She knew only that the day was fading. On the chilly whirling landscape she saw only a crowded room, a jury-box, a judge's bench, and Hugh before it, listening to the sentence that would take him from her for ever. The bright sunlight was mercilessly, satanically cruel, and G.o.d a sneering monster turning a crank.

Into her conscious view grew distant snowy ranges, hills unrolling at their feet, a straggling town, a staring white court-house and a grim low building beside it. She rose stumblingly, the train quivering to the brakes, as the bishop entered.

"This is Smoky Mountain," she said with numb lips. "That is the building where he is being tried. I am going there now."

The bishop opened the door. "We stop here twenty minutes," he said. "I will walk a little way with you."

CHAPTER XLVII

BETWEEN THE MILLSTONES

Hugh's haggard face peered after them through a rift in a window curtain. What could she have suspected? Not the truth! And only that could betray him. Presently the bishop would return, the train would start again, and this spot of terror would be behind him. What had he to do with Harry Sanderson?

He bethought himself suddenly of the door--if some one should come in upon him! With a qualm of fear he stood up, staggered to it and turned the key in the lock. There was not the wonted buzz about the station; the place was silent, save for the throb of the halted engine, and the shadow of the train on the frosty platform quivered like a criminal. A block away he saw the court-house--knots of people were standing about its door, waiting for what? A fit of trembling seized him.

All his years Hugh had been a moral coward. Life to him had been sweet for the grosser, material pleasures it held. He had cared for n.o.body, had held nothing sacred. When his sins had found him out, he had not repented; he had only cursed the accident of discovery. The sincerest feeling of regret he had known had been in the chapel when he had thought of his dead mother. Since one dismal night on Smoky Mountain, dread, d.o.g.g.i.ng and relentless, had been his hateful bedfellow. He had now only to keep silence, let Harry Sanderson pay the penalty, and he need dread no more. Hugh Stires, to the persuasion of the law, would be dead. As soon as might be he could disappear--as the rector of St. James had disappeared before. He might change his name and live at ease in some other quarter of the world, his alarm laid for ever.

But a worse thing would haunt him, to scare his sleep. He would be doubly blood-guilty!

In the awful moment while he clung to the iron bars of the collapsing rose-window, with the flames clutching at him, Hugh had looked into h.e.l.l, and shivered before the judgment: _The wages of sin is death_. In that fiery ordeal the cheapness and swagger, the ostentation and self-esteem had burned away, and his soul had stood naked as a winter wood. Dying had not then been the Austere Terror. What came after--that had appalled him. Yet Harry Sanderson was not afraid of the hereafter; he chose death calmly, knowing that he, Hugh, was unfit to die!

He thought of the little gold cross Jessica had held before him. The last time he had seen it was during that memorable game when Harry had set it on the table. In his pocket was a battered red disk--a reminder of the days that Harry had won, which had never been rendered. He thought of the stabbing agony that had come and come again, to strike each time more deeply. The death that he had cheated in the chapel might be near him now. But whenever death should come, what should he say when he stood before his Judge, with such a fearful double burden on his soul? He was horribly afraid!

Suppose he waited. Harry might be convicted, sentenced, but he could save him at the last moment. When he was safe on his way to South America, he could write the bishop--beg him to go to Smoky Mountain and convince himself. But how soon would that be? It would be long, long--and justice was swift. And what if death should take him unawares beforehand? It would be too late then, too late for ever and ever!

Suppose he told the truth now and saved Harry. He had never done a brave deed for the sake of truth or righteousness, or for the love of any human being, but he could do one now. For the one red counter that had been a symbol of a day of evil living, he could render a deed that would make requital for those unpaid days! He would not have played the coward's part. It would repair the wrong he had done Jessica. He would have made expiation. Forgiveness and pity, not reproaches and shame, would follow him. And it would balance, perhaps, the one dreadful count that stood against him. He thought of the scaffold and shivered. Yet there was a more terrible thought: _It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living G.o.d!_

He made his way again to the door and unlocked it. It was only to cross that s.p.a.ce, to speak, and then the grim brick building--and the penalty.

With a hoa.r.s.e cry he slammed the door to and frantically locked it. The edge of the searching pain was upon him again. He stumbled back to the couch and fell across it face down, dragging the cushions in frantic haste over his head, to shut out the sick throbbing of the steam, that seemed shuddering at the fate his cowering soul dared not face.

The groups outside of the court-house made way deferentially for Jessica, but she was unconscious of it. Some one asked a question on the steps, and she heard the answer: "The State has just finished, and the judge is charging."

The narrow hall was filled, and though all who saw gave her instant place, the s.p.a.ce beyond the inner door was crowded beyond the possibility of pa.s.sage. She could see the judge's bench, with its sedate gray-bearded figure, the jury-box at the left, the moving restless faces about it, set like a living mosaic. Only the table where the lawyers and the prisoner sat she could not see, or the empty chair where she had sat yesterday. What had Hugh thought, she wondered dully, when he had not seen her there that day? Had he thought that her trust had failed?

She became aware suddenly that the figure at the high bench was speaking, had been speaking all along. She could not think clearly, and her brain struggled with the incisive matter-of-fact sentences.

"With the prisoner's later career in Smoky Mountain they had nothing to do, nor had the law. The question it asked--the only question it asked--was, did he kill Moreau? They might be loath to believe the same man capable of such contradictory acts--the courageous saving of a child from death, for example, and the shooting down of a fellow-mortal in cold blood--but it had been truly said that such contrasts were not impossible, nay, were even matters of common observation. Prejudice and bias aside, and sympathy and liking aside, they const.i.tuted a tribunal of justice. This the State had a right to demand, and this they, the jury, had made solemn oath to give."

The words had no meaning for her ears. "What did he say?" she whispered to herself piteously.

In her abyss of torture she felt the tense expectancy stirring audibly in the room like a still breeze in forest leaves--saw the averted faces of the jury as they rose to file out. She caught but a glimpse of the prisoner, as the sheriff touched his arm and led the way quickly to the door through which he had been brought.

It opened and closed upon them, and the tension of the packed room broke all at once in a great respiration of relief and a buzz of conversation.

A voice spoke beside her. It was Doctor Brent. "Come with me," he said.

"Felder asked me to watch for you. We can wait in the judge's room."

CHAPTER XLVIII

THE VERDICT

Meanwhile in the narrow cell Harry was alone with his bitterness. His judicial sense, keenly alive, from the very first had appreciated the woeful weakness, evidentially speaking, of his position. He had no illusions on this score. A little while--after such deliberation as was decent and seemly--and he would be a condemned criminal, waiting in the shadow of the hempen noose. In such localities justice was swift. There would be scant time between verdict and penalty--not enough, doubtless, for the problem to solve itself. For the only solution possible was Hugh's dying in the hospital at Aniston. So long as the other lived, he must play out the role.

And if Hugh did die, but died too late? What a satire on truth and justice! The same error which put the rope about his own neck would fold the real Hugh in the odor of sanct.i.ty. He would lie in the little jail yard in a felon's grave, and Hugh in the cemetery on the hill, beneath a marble monument erected by St. James Parish to the Reverend Henry Sanderson. He was in an _impa.s.se_. In the dock, or in the cell with the death-watch sitting at its door, it was all one. He had elected the path, and if it led to the bleak edge of life, to the barren abyss of shame, he must tread it.

His own life--he had come in his thinking to a point where that mattered least of all. Harry Sanderson, the vanished rector of St. James, mattered. And Jessica! On the cot lay a slender blue-bound book--Tennyson's _Becket_. She had sent it to him, in a hamper of her favorites, some days before. He picked it up and held it in his hand, touching the limp leather gently. It was as soft as her cheek, and there was about the leaves a hint of that intangible perfume that his mind always a.s.sociated with her--

... the smell of the jasmin-flower That she used to wear in her breast!

Far more than his life, more than the name and fame of the Reverend Henry Sanderson, she mattered! Could he write it for her eye, the whole truth, so that sometime--afterward--the bishop might know, and the blot be erased from his career? Impossible! With Hugh buried in Aniston and he in Smoky Mountain, who was there but would smile at such a tale? She might shout it to the world, and it would answer with derision. And what comfort would the truth be to her?

Could he say to her: "Your husband lies dead under my tombstone, not innocent, but unregenerate and vile. I, who you think am your husband, am not and never was. You have come to my call--but I am nothing to you.

You are the wife of the guilty murderer of Moreau!" Could he leave this behind him, and, pa.s.sing from her life for ever, turn the memory of their love into an irremediable bitterness? No--no! Better never to tell her! Better to let her live her life, holding her faith and dream, treasuring her belief in his regeneration and innocence!

He thought of the closing chapter in his life at Aniston, when in that hour of his despair he had prayed by his study desk. The words he had then said aloud recurred to him: "If I am delivered, it must be by some way of Thine Own that I can not conceive, for I can not help myself." He was powerless to help himself still. He had given over his life into the keeping of a Power in which his better manhood had trusted. If it exacted the final tribute for those ribald years of Satan Sanderson, the price would be paid!

A step came in the corridor--a voice spoke his name. The summons had come. As he laid the blue book back on the cot, its closing words--the dying utterance of the martyred Becket--flashed through his mind, the personal cry of his own soul:

"Into Thy hands, O Lord--into Thy hands!"

Before the opening door the hum of voices in the court-room sank to stillness itself. The jury had taken their places; their looks were sober and downcast. The judge was in his seat, his hand combing his beard. Harry faced him calmly. The door of a side room was partly open and a girl's white face looked in, but he did not see.

"Gentlemen of the jury, have you arrived at a verdict?"

"We have."

There was a confusion in the hall--abrupt voices and the sound of feet.

The crowd stirred and the judge frowningly lifted his gavel.

"What say you, guilty or not guilty?"

The foreman did not answer. He was leaning forward, looking over the heads of the crowd. The judge stood up. People turned, and the room was suddenly a-rustle with surprised movement. The crowd at the back of the room parted, and up the center aisle, toward the judge's desk, staggered a figure--a man whose face, ghastly and convulsed, was partly swathed in bandages. At the door of the judge's room a girl stood transfixed and staring.

The crowd gasped. They saw the familiar profile, a replica of the prisoner's--the mark that slanted across the brow--the eyes preternaturally bright and fevered.