THE STATE VS. DIEUDONNE LANE
Judge Henderson, haggard, shaken, turned and walked down one of the
halls which traversed the courthouse building. In the central space,
where the two halls crossed at right angles, was a curving stair leading
up to the courtrooms and the offices of the immediate servants of
justice. As he stood here he saw again the tall figure of Horace Brooks
approaching. He walked even more stooped forward than was usually his
case, shambling, his feet turned out at wide angles. His great face in
its fringe of red beard hung forward--but it bore now nothing but
smiles. It showed nothing of triumph over the man he saw standing here
waiting, humble and broken. He himself had said that he lacked birth and
breeding. If so, whence got he this strange gentleness which marked his
face now, as he stepped up to Judge Henderson--the man who but now had
stood between him and success--who must always, so long as he lived,
stand between him and happiness--the man whom he had beaten?
"Judge," said Horace Brooks, "I reckon about the best thing we can do is
to go right on up to the court and get this thing cleaned up. You've
heard the news by now?"
Henderson nodded. "Yes, just now."
"Well, that softens up a lot of things, doesn't it? It will make things
easier for everyone concerned--a whole lot easier for you and me, Judge.
Now we can ask for the quashing of this indictment and the court can't
help granting it. Cowles is there. He's just gone up. Adamson is with
him."
So they went up before the court, and the judge listened to the story of
the sad-faced officer and the sad-faced old man with him. And presently
the clerk at his side inscribed in the records: "The State vs. Dieudonne
Lane, murder in the first degree. Indictment quashed on motion of
Assistant State's Attorney."
"You will discharge the prisoner from custody, Mr. Sheriff," said the
judge.
"I'd like to say, if it please the Court," said Cowles, drawing a large
and adequate handkerchief from his pocket and blowing a large and
adequate nose, "that last night, at the time of the--the disturbance
which these gentlemen here helped me to quell--this same young man
that's just been discharged--why, he helped me as much as anybody."
"What do you mean?" demanded the judge severely. "You let him out of
your custody when he was under commitment?"
"Yes, your Honor. I may have been short in some of my duties, your
Honor. I let a woman--a young woman--go in there last night to see him
for a few minutes. When she went out I must have forgot to lock the
door. What they said, now, it must have stirred me up some way. When the
mob formed and came to the jail the prisoner had walked out. But right
at the worst of it, there he was. And after it he went on back to jail
alone. When I got back he was in his cell. The door wasn't locked even
then. My wife wasn't there.
"I reckon, your Honor, we've all of us sort of made a general mistake,"
concluded Dan Cowles deprecatingly. "I allowed I'd tell this Court about
it."
So, amid the frowning silence of the court, and the silence as well of
all who heard this, the two attorneys, the sheriff and Ephraim Adamson
walked on down the winding stairs.
Adamson saw coming across the courthouse yard the figure of an angular
woman, dressed in calico, a sun-bonnet on her head, a sodden
handkerchief in her hand. He walked on hurriedly to meet her. At the
very spot where so lately he and his son had stood to challenge the
world to combat, he took this gaunt old woman in his arms, in the
sunlight before all the world. "Mother!" said he.
And at about this same time--since after all the world and life and
swift keen joy of living must go on just the same--two young persons
stood not far distant from that scene; stood not in the full light of
the sun, stood not in the wisdom and sadness of middle age, but in
youth--in youth and the glory and splendor of the vast, ineffable,
indispensable illusion. The dim twilight which lighted them might have
been the soft, vague light of the world's own dawning--the same which
poor Miss Julia had seen that very day.
Cowles hastened away from the door after he had thrown back the
bolts--the bolts and bars which had been laughed at by love all this
time. The young man came out into the stone-floored hall where Anne
Oglesby stood waiting for him--all beautiful and fresh and clean and
sweet--fragrant as a very flower in her worthiness for love.
"Don!" she said, and held out her arms, running toward him.
"Oh, Anne! Anne!"
His arms went about her. And this time there was no one there to see.