The closing of the inquest upon the body of Jacob Van Deust was a mere
formality. It was generally understood that there was within reach, if
not in actual possession, some evidence that would go far to connect
Dorn Hackett with the crime, and Squire Bodley even hinted as much in
a few remarks that he made to the jury; but it was deemed injudicious
to make it known at this juncture, and the jury, by the Squire's
direction, returned a verdict of "death by violence at the hands of
some person unknown."
Mary Wallace, ignorant of the slow, serpentine, and deadly ways of the
thing men amuse themselves by calling "justice," when the finding of
the jury was told to her that night found it difficult to understand
why Dorn should be kept in jail, when there seemed to be no evidence
which the coroner's jury has found sufficient to connect him with the
crime.
"Uncle," said she, timidly approaching grim Mr. Thatcher, as he sat on
the stone door-step, surrounded by a litter of fine shavings that he
had scraped from a whale-lance handle that he was finishing by the
last light of day, "why is it that, if the jury gave their verdict
that the murder was done by some unknown person, they don't let Mr.
Hackett out of jail?"
"Did you ever see a cat playing with a live mouse that she had
caught?"
"Yes, uncle."
"How she lets it go a little way off, making it think it is going to
escape, and then pounces on it again? How she pretends she isn't
paying any attention to it, and has no notion of hurting it, and then
suddenly tears it to pieces?"
"Yes, uncle," repeated Mary with a shudder.
"Well, that's the way the law does with a man."
Mary covered her face with her hands, and wept softly, while he went
on:
"If they still hold on to Dorn Hackett, it is because they hope to get
proof enough against him to make him out guilty. I have heard lawyers
say that the law presumes every man to be innocent until he is proved
guilty; and when I was a younger man, I actually believed that; but as
I have got older, I have learned that practically, in the
administration of the law, when a crime is committed somebody has got
to suffer for it, for the sake of the moral effect on the community;
and it don't really make much difference who it is, so long as the
poor devil who is caught cannot prove himself innocent, which is
sometimes a mighty hard thing to do. He may not be guilty, but they
will try to make him out so. Better hang him than admit having made a
blunder in his arrest."
"Oh, but uncle! you don't believe Dorn could be guilty, do you?"
He looked at her pale anxious face with a feeling of deep pity,--for
his eyes were keen enough to see that it was of her lover she
spoke,--and replied with unwonted tenderness:
"No, my poor child. No, I don't; and I wouldn't if I knew nothing more
about him than your trust in him."
Two low sounds mingled softly, and were doubtless duly noted by the
recording angel on duty: a sigh from Uncle Thatcher, and a sniff of
disgust from his lean and rancorous wife in the dark room behind him.
He sighed to think, as he looked at Mary, and appreciated the worth of
her full and perfect love, what a treasure his profligate son had lost
in her, among all the good he had recklessly cast from him. Aunt
Thatcher sniffed because she did not dare to express openly her
contempt for his weakness in manifesting sympathy for the poor orphan
who had won her hearty and unextinguishable hatred by rejection of
Silas's advances.
"And if Dorn cannot, as you say it is difficult to do, prove himself
innocent, what will they do with him?"
"They'll hang him," exclaimed Aunt Thatcher, in a tone of malicious
triumph, unable longer to contain herself, and now appearing in the
door to enjoy Mary's horror.
Uncle Thatcher turned upon her with a look of disgust and retorted:
"Sallie Thatcher, if the devil himself ain't ashamed of you, he's
meaner than I take him for."
"Oh, indeed! I'm so bad, am I? Thank you, Mr. Thatcher. Just because I
don't choose to take up for a murderer and a thief. I'm sure any body
might have known what he'd come to when he commenced by nearly killing
my poor boy."
"Your 'poor boy' deserved all he got, and more, too; and I've good
reasons of my own for thinking that we'll both see the day we'll have
to regret that Dorn Hackett didn't finish him then."
Aunt Thatcher's surprise and rage at hearing those words deprived her
for a moment of the power of articulation, and she could only give
vent to her feelings by a sort of wild beast howl of fury. But very
soon her ready tongue loosened itself again, and she poured forth a
torrent of reproach, vituperation, and malediction directed at random
against her husband, against Mary, against Dorn, against the world,
indeed, excepting only her "poor injured boy."
When Uncle Thatcher had had enough of this, he straightened himself up
before her, and she, as if fearing the weight of his heavy hand,
retreated into the dark room. But he did not seem to have any
intention of personal violence. He simply pulled the door to, locked
it on the outside, and sat down again. A moment afterward the door was
tried and rattled from the inside.
"Stay in there and keep quiet, if you know what's good for you,"
growled Uncle Thatcher.
The rattling ceased, and all was again quiet.
"Uncle," said Mary, after a little pause, "I want to go and see Dorn."
"In jail?"
"Yes."
"Well," he replied, a little doubtfully, "people might talk."
"Let them, if they will. I don't care--or, at least, I don't care
enough to prevent my going to him when he is in trouble. What can they
say, but that we are lovers. Well, yes, we are, and it is no time for
me to seek to hide it when others look coldly and cruelly on him. He
loves me--I know he does; and I love him--with all my heart. And we
were going to be married very soon, uncle. I would have told you
before, but I was afraid. Now you are so kind to me that I'm not
afraid to tell you any more. And oh, Uncle, I _must_ go to him!"
"Forgive me, little Mary--and may God forgive me for having made poor
Lottie's orphan child afraid to put confidence in me. You say you want
to go and see him. You shall. I'll hitch up early to-morrow morning
and take you over to Sag Harbor myself."
Long before daylight the next morning Mary, who had not closed her
eyes during the seemingly interminable night, was up and had breakfast
prepared. Whether Aunt Thatcher was still under the influence of the
sullen fury that possessed her when the door was closed upon her the
night before, or had fresh fuel added to the fire of her temper by
overhearing the arrangement between her husband and niece, did not
appear. At all events she spoke no word of question or remark, and was
still abed when they took their departure.
The sun was not risen above the sea when Uncle Thatcher's old carryall
creaked through the one long rambling street of the little village,
and entered upon the Sag Harbor road; but his upward glinting beams
already spread with gold and crimson the lower edges of the fleecy
clouds on the eastern horizon. Diamonds of dew still clung to the long
grass blades, and the points of the forest leaves and the morning
breeze, heavy with the salt smell of the sea, was fresh and bracing.
Robins flitted across the road with sharp notes, as of query why folks
should be abroad so early, and a belated rabbit, homeward bound to his
burrow in the brush, sat up-reared upon his haunches and seemed
paralyzed by astonishment until the horses were almost upon him, when
he bounded swiftly away. Higher and higher rose the sun, and as his
ardent rays licked up the dew, light clouds of yellow dust swirled and
spread behind the rapidly-moving wheels. Past orchards, where red
winter apples glowed in the sunshine like balls of blood amid the
foliage of the trees; past fields still golden with the stubble of the
early ripened grain; past fallow lands, where the blue-bird carolled
gayly on the hollow stump in which he and his mate had reared their
springtime brood; past leafy woods, where nuts were ripening, the
wheels rolled fast until they reached the quaint old town--their
journey's end--and halted beneath the old-time tavern's venerable
elms.
Leaving the horses hitched, after having carefully watered them, Uncle
Thatcher accompanied his niece to the jail and asked permission for
her to see Dorn Hackett, which the jailor, having no orders to the
contrary, readily accorded. Mr. Thatcher did not enter. Though far
from being a nervous man, he felt as if the close clammy atmosphere of
that stone warehouse of sin and sorrow sent a chill to his heart.
Besides, he had no business with Dorn Hackett. With a great breath of
relief he turned his back upon the jail and wandered off down to the
wharf to look at the shipping--for Sag Harbor had shipping in those
days--to learn if there was any change in the oil and whalebone
markets, and perhaps to ascertain what was coming to his share of that
schooner in which he was part owner.
Dorn was just bidding adieu to his lawyer, when Mary appeared in the
corridor.
"By jove! Here's a pretty girl come to see some prisoner!" exclaimed
the lawyer at sight of her.
Dorn paid no attention to the remark. There was but one pretty girl in
the world about whom he cared to think, and he did not expect her to
come there. What, then, was his surprise when, the lawyer having
stepped aside to give place to the visitor at his cell-door, he looked
out and beheld the beautiful face of his own true-love, Mary. With a
cry of surprise and joy he thrust his arms through between the bars,
catching her in an embrace, and their lips met in a long and ardent
kiss. The lawyer, who was a young man, and possessed of a very lively
appreciation of feminine beauty, lingered a few moments and then
quietly took his departure.
"I hardly know whether I am most glad or ashamed to see you here,
darling," said Dorn, looking tenderly at his beloved.
"Glad, I hope, dearest. Should you feel ashamed of being unfortunate?
It is only guilt of which one need be ashamed; and that, I well know,
my dear Dorn has not."
"True. But it is very hard to wash the prison taint off, even from an
innocent man."
"Do not think so, my love. Everybody will know yet how true and good
you are, and will be all the kinder to you for the mistake that has
given us so much pain and trouble."
"Ah, my dear girl, it is your love and not your reason that tells me
so. Even people who have no other reason for hating the man who has
been the victim of such a mistake, will find sufficient the
consciousness that they have erred in supposing him guilty, and will
always profess to view him with suspicion, whether they feel it or
not. There is nothing that people generally abhor so much as a
confession of fallibility. But, no matter. I have your love and
confidence, dear Mary; I'm sure I have, or you would not be here; and
for all beyond that I'd ask small odds from the world if I were free
again."
"And you will be, dearest, I am sure of it. It can never be possible
that a man should be punished by law for that of which he is not
guilty."
"Ah, you think so? Then you have not read much about people who have
been convicted upon circumstantial evidence. I have read a whole book
about such cases, and I tell you it takes very little real proof to
hang a man sometimes."
"Oh, Dorn! Don't talk so! You make me wild with horror and fear!"
"Well, there,--there,--darling. I won't say any more about it. I
shouldn't have said so much, but somehow I have got into a bad way of
talking back since I have had to make the acquaintance of a lawyer."
And kissing her tenderly, he sought to remove the terror that he had
unthinkingly given her, making light even of what he had just said,
and forcing himself to speak much more hopefully than he dared to
feel.
"Lem, you know," he said, "has gone to New York to find a witness who
will certainly clear me if we can bring him into court."
"Ruth told me that he had gone, and the object of his going, as far as
she knew, but he did not give her any particulars."
"No? Then I'll tell you all about it."
Thereupon he proceeded to inform her of all the untoward events that
had happened to him after his leaving her on the last night they were
together; his running through the woods and falling into the new road;
the aid given him by the little elderly gentleman; the missing of the
boat he had hoped to catch; the opportune arrival of the old man,
probably a smuggler, etc., etc., just as has already been narrated in
his interview with Lem, but much more slowly, as this time the story
was much broken by affectionate condolences and consequent digressions
to love-making. He told her also of Lem's unsuccessful attempt to
learn from Peter Van Deust who the little gentleman was.
"What a pity it is," she said, "that you did not think to ask him his
name! Was there nothing about him that you can remember that might
help to his identification--no personal peculiarity of look, or dress,
or manner of speech?"
He shook his head regretfully, saying, "I was not much in the humor to
notice peculiarities just then. But yes, come to think about it, there
was one little incident that rather amused me at the time, badly as I
felt; but I have not thought of it since until now. The little
gentleman had a very slow, cautious, and precise way of speaking. I
asked him what time it was, when we were down at the beach. He pulled
out his watch and replied very deliberately: 'Without desiring to be
understood as committing myself to an affirmation of the absolute
accuracy of my time-piece, I may say that, to the best of my
information and belief, it is now eleven minutes past ten o'clock.'"
"Ah, I have seen him! I recognize his phrase, 'information and
belief'!" exclaimed Mary, "and know just how he said it. Ruth and I
met him the first time he came into the neighborhood, looking for the
Van Deusts, 'supposed to be brothers' as he then said. Ruth imitates
him, sometimes, and does it very well. When we come to match together
our remembrances of him, I am sure we will be able to give Lem some
information that will help him to find the man."
"I certainly hope you may," answered Dorn, "for I can do nothing more.
I have got to resign myself to play the passive part of a football for
other people to bounce about, without being able to help myself,
whether I am going into the goal or the ditch. I have a lawyer, but he
seems to look rather blue over the prospect."
"Then get another."
"And have two of them looking blue? No, no. That would be more than I
could stand. One is enough. Sailors don't take very kindly to lawyers,
any way, you know."
At the end of an hour--a very short time as it seemed to them, but the
limit set by the jailor, who now appeared, looking in at the corridor
door from time to time, with an air of expectation--Mary said she
would have to be going.
"How did you come over?" asked Dorn.
"Uncle Thatcher brought me."
"The--mischief he did! And did he know you were coming to see me?"
"Yes, he brought me for the purpose. Oh, Dorn, he has turned to be
ever so kind and good to me! I told him I loved you--"
"God bless you, my darling!" exclaimed her lover, interrupting her
with a kiss.
"--and that we were going to be married. And he did not say one word
against it. He even said that he did not believe you were guilty; and
when I told him I wanted to come and see you, he answered that he
would hitch up early this morning and bring me; and so he did."
"Mary, if I've ever said a word against Uncle Thatcher I want to take
it all back. A man who does me as good a turn as he has this day, I
can never after hold any grudge against."
Mary went home that night with a much lightened heart, and looked so
nearly happy that Aunt Thatcher would have liked to have bitten her,
for sheer vexation and spite.