THE pulses of life throbbed languidly in Chattalla. Sometimes there
was hardly a creature to be seen upon the Square--and then again
the noontide sunshine would rest only on the figure of a belated
countryman, drunk overnight, lying in the safe shadow of the Temple
of Justice, and sleeping off the effects of “bust head,” in the soft
spring grass beneath the budding sycamore tree. Sometimes a wagon
would rattle heavily across the stones; at long intervals the sound of
chaffering would rise upon the air from “Jerusalem;” or perhaps the
silence might be broken by the talk of a knot of gentlemen who brought
chairs from the bank, and took up a position in the midst of the
public pavement. If you should thread your way through this group, you
would not overhear the discussion of news of the present day, local or
foreign--you would catch such phrases as--“The enemy’s artillery opened
the ball,”--or, “Then we executed a brilliant flank movement.” And you
would go on realizing that all their interest lay in the past, and that
they looked upon the future as only capable of furnishing a series of
meagre and supplemental episodes.
It seemed to Estwicke afterward that one of these episodes, which
roused Chattalla and diverted it momentarily from its occupation of
contemplating its own history, was charged with the special purpose
of effecting a breach between himself and General Vayne. It operated
solely upon the peculiarities of their respective temperaments, for
each had in the matter as slight concern as might be.
One morning Estwicke came down by rail from the barracks, and as he
entered the lower cross-hall of the court-house he encountered General
Vayne marching meditatively back and forth upon the brick-paved floor.
“I have been endeavoring, sir,” said General Vayne, as he offered his
hand, “to drill some raw recruits of recollections. I am a witness, you
know, in that Jartree suit against the life insurance company--shabby,
shabby affair! Do you know, sir,” lowering his voice effectively,
“that the pretext upon which they refuse to pay the loss is that Major
Jartree died--by--his--own--hand!” Impressive pause. “They claim that
the deed was done for the sake of securing the insurance money for his
children!” Still more impressive pause. “That he _died_, sir, in
the act of cheating and chousing. _My_ friend, Major Jartree!”
He drew himself up to his full height, twirling his mustache fiercely
with his left hand, and looking frowningly intent--much as he did when
he led a charge at Shiloh or Monterey.
There was an expression of embarrassment on Estwicke’s face; he was
about to speak, but General Vayne, roused with affronted friendship,
went swiftly on,--
“I am only to testify to the life-long integrity of Major Jartree--my
limited knowledge of the minutiæ of this affair will permit me to go no
further. But I am glad to enter the lists on any terms. I am glad to
break a lance for those orphaned children! _Six_ of them, Captain
Estwicke--six of those helpless children, all under fifteen years of
age! No father--mother a confirmed invalid--and their half-brothers
both family-men struggling along on little tid-bits of salaries.
But”--with a change of voice, and waving the whole matter into a
diminishing distance with his expressive left hand, “the effort on
the part of the company to avoid the obligation is utterly futile. It
will only be painful to Major Jartree’s friends and relatives to hear
the puny, malicious attempts to tarnish his motives and character.
_That_ can’t be done, sir, here in Chattalla, where the man was
known and beloved and revered--_my_ friend, Major Jartree! It is
impossible for them to procure any reputable, credible testimony!”
“Perhaps you are unaware,” said Estwicke, with a sudden hot flush,
“that I am here to-day to testify in behalf of the insurance company.”
General Vayne fell back a step.
“Most certainly, sir, I was unaware of it,” he said, with slow
emphasis. “And”--severely--“it seems to me you should before have
stated the fact.”
Now, General Vayne was the father of a daughter--otherwise Estwicke
would have sharply retorted that he had found it impossible to get in
a word edgewise. He trembled with the effort at repression, but still
stood confronting the elder gentleman, and intimating by his expectant
eye that he anticipated something more definite in the way of an
apology.
In General Vayne’s foolish, partisan indignation that the legal
adversary of Major Jartree’s orphans had any witness at all, and that
he himself had been thus unwittingly and ludicrously hob-nobbing with
the enemy, he would have been glad to put Estwicke off with something
less than the full honors of war. But the young man’s manner and
attitude constrained him.
“In that case,” he resumed stiffly, “I beg to withdraw anything
offensive I may have said concerning the character of the testimony
which the insurance company can command.”
Here Estwicke should have dropped it.
“I did not have the opportunity,” he persisted, however, imperiously
resolved to place himself exactly right upon the record, “to intimate
earlier my slight connection with the affair. I was interested and
surprised by what you were saying.”
And here General Vayne should have dropped it.
“And, if I may ask, what did I say to surprise you?” he demanded.
Combat was to Estwicke like the breath of his nostrils. Already
restive under the many restraints imposed by the other’s seniority and
paternity, his aggressive manner was only imperfectly tempered as he
replied:--
“If you may ask, I may answer. I was surprised that so serious a doubt
should be entertained that Major Jartree killed himself.”
“Doubt, sir! That he killed himself!” exclaimed General Vayne. “If
I were warned of God in a vision I could not--I could not constrain
myself to believe it! My friend”--his voice trembled--“Major Jartree!”
“And, Captain Estwicke,” he added, after a momentary pause, “it will be
very difficult to make a jury believe _that_, in the face of Major
Jartree’s character, which, fortunately, he left behind him, and which
cannot be taken away even--from--a--dead--man.”
“I shall not attempt to make a jury believe it,” said Estwicke,
irritated beyond bounds. “I shall only tell the jury, under oath, what
I know.”
General Vayne looked at him gravely.
“I beg your pardon once more. I supposed that you were here to prove
some slight collateral point. I had no idea that you intended to
_try_ to make the jury believe that. Let me ask you, Captain
Estwicke,” he continued, in a sudden tremor for the result of the
case, “how you, a stranger, happen to be so fully informed about this
matter?”
So much had been said of questionable intent that Estwicke fancied an
implication in this, too.
“I should answer that question more appropriately from the witness
stand,” he replied, altogether overtaken.
“Thank you!” cried General Vayne, fierily, “I am schooled!”
He was about to pass by, but Estwicke, already penitent, hastily added--
“I was at Bandusia Springs when he killed himself--I mean when he died.”
“I perceive in you, sir, a very formidable witness against the widow
and the orphan,” said General Vayne, hotly.
“I assure you,” returned Estwicke, losing every vestige of
self-control, “other people have some rights under the law--even an
insurance company--and the law accords them my testimony, such as it
is.”
“I wish you joy of your tilt in its behalf, and I have the honor to
wish you also, sir, a very good morning.” And General Vayne passed
swiftly through the door and strode off down the pavement to the gate,
twirling his long, gray mustache, and touching his hat with a military
salute to the men he met, who greeted him in like manner.
There were ten windows in the Circuit Court room, all of them furnished
with great, green shutters, which stood, night and day, broadly
flaring. This gave them from within a bare and unnaturally glaring
aspect, and might have suggested, to a mind enervated and rendered
morbid by the sophistication of shades and inside blinds, a painful
resemblance to eyes lidless and lashless. In the summer-time, when the
grimy and cobwebbed sashes were thrown up, the thick leaves of the
sycamore close at hand, with here the flash of the dew and there the
flutter of a wing, afforded a pretty make-shift for upholstery, but
to-day only the budding branches touched the glass and occasionally
rapped sharply upon it as if to call to order the assemblage within.
Besides the Bar, many of the unprofessional “quality” of Chattalla
were present, and a considerable number of heavy country fellows from
the outlying districts of the county, clad in brown jeans and stolidly
eying the town folks, lounged on the benches or strolled aimlessly in
and out of the room. Close to the wall, on the left, sat rows of the
litigation-loving negroes, whose habit it is to frequent the trial of
all causes, great or small. Admirers of oratory are these, and never a
word is lost upon them. The jury held their heads attentively askew,
for already the plaintiffs _prima facie_ case had been made out,
and depositions were being read on the other side. Then Estwicke was
called, and as he took his conspicuous place on the stand an expectant
silence ensued.
The glare of the ten windows was full upon his expressive, irregular
features, and his dark red hair, clipped close about his finely shaped
head. His whiskers and mustache seemed to take a lighter tinge.
There was a slight frown upon his face, and a grave, almost anxious,
intentness in his brown eyes belied the cool, impassive manner with
which he awaited the questions.
The first of these were comparatively unimportant, and elicited ready
replies. They were put by the defendant’s senior counsel, a muscular,
wiry, hatchet-faced man of the name of Kendricks, a stranger at this
bar, and bearing in his garb and manner the stamp of a metropolis. He
was a practitioner of some note in the city of Marston, and Temple
Meredith had at first regarded with self-gratulation the fact of being
associated with him in this case. It was calculated, Meredith thought,
to impress the public with a sense of his increasing professional
importance, since it could not be generally known that the influence of
a kinsman, who was a director in the insurance company, had caused that
corporation to secure also the young fellow’s valuable services. And
in fact his services were valuable. He had done most of the drudgery
in preparing the case, he had studied it carefully, drawn the papers,
discovered important testimony, and armed himself to the teeth with
precedent. But now that it had come on for trial, and was before the
public, Kendricks had resumed his position as principal performer, and
left the young man, ambitious of distinction, to saw away on the second
fiddle with what complacence he might. Meredith maintained his habitual
serenity of aspect, but, after the manner of such young shoots who
desire to be century oaks in a fortnight, he felt ill-used. It never
occurred to him that this state of silent obscurity was exactly the
same which Kendricks had graced some twenty years before.
Presently a sudden break occurred in the examination.
“State anything that Major Jartree may have said to you on the subject
of suicide.”
The witness hesitated, turned his hat in his hand, and glanced
down at it, conscious of General Vayne’s fierce eyes fixed upon
him--conscious of no others. A flush rose into his face--and then he
looked up. He was sensible of an angry contempt for himself that he
had sought to shirk any man’s gaze, that there should be any man whose
displeasure he deprecated--and deprecated for a selfish reason. And
in this instant he caught the expression of faces that had a far more
unnerving effect--that smote upon his heart. The dead man’s two sons
sat before him--shabby-genteel young drudges, with joyless, troubled
eyes, in which he read the terrible anxiety that possesses men who
hold character dear, when character is called in question. And he
remembered, too, the widow and the six orphans whose little all was in
jeopardy.
He chafed under the sense of these influences. “Have I a conscience?”
he asked himself. “Do I realize the obligations of an oath?”
In the effort to sustain his equilibrium he was unaware how much of
the indifference, which he sought to foster in his mind and heart, was
expressed in his manner as he replied, “Major Jartree often spoke to me
of suicide. He alluded to it as ‘the solution of a problem.’”
General Vayne threw himself back impatiently in his chair, which
creaked beneath the shifting of his heavy weight. There was a cruel,
blanching dismay in the faces of the dead man’s sons. They looked at
each other in painful doubt and bewilderment, and then they looked back
in increasing surprise at the witness.
This to the crowd seemed almost conclusive. The depositions of the
physicians which had been read proved only that Major Jartree had for
some time, under advice, used morphine, and had taken an overdose. From
their showing, it might have been an accident. This testimony seemed to
indicate a deliberate intention.
Estwicke was requested to give the particulars, so far as his memory
might serve, of all that Major Jartree had said alluding to suicide,
and the circumstances under which these conversations took place.
And as he complied, the impression he created was one which his
slightest friend might regret. His glance was both hard and careless.
Now and then he turned, with an idle gesture, his soft hat which he
held folded in his hand. His manner seemed the exponent of a callous
nature--the very tones of his voice indicated a peculiarly frivolous
insensibility to the painful and even tragic elements involved in the
recital. For it began to be very evident that a bankrupt, in broken
health, in great depression of spirit, in frantic anxiety for his
children’s future and the support of an invalid wife, the dead man had
sacrificed his honesty, his conscience, his life, for a pittance, and
sacrificed it in vain. He had talked too much in his loneliness and his
sorrows to a friendly young stranger whom he had met at the “Springs,”
whither his sons had sent him for a few weeks to recuperate his health
and divert his mind--they felt every day even yet the hard pinching of
the economies which that extravagance had entailed upon them. Though
Estwicke gave every detail so lightly, as he recounted the scenes, they
seemed to pass visibly before the jury. Even the least imaginative
among them had a vivid mental picture of the long, mysterious, wooded
Cumberland spurs, and the grim gray cliff projected against a red
sunset sky, and heard the dead man’s shrill tones, breaking into the
still evening air, as he rose, and with uplifted hand protested,--“A
man’s life is his own, Captain Estwicke,--shall he not say when it
shall end!” And again there was a conversation in the freshness of the
morning as they sat in the observatory, which hung over the precipice
and quivered and shuddered with the wind, and here he had calculated
the depth below, and argued with his companion whether it were certain
death to fall. And once they drank together the sparkling chalybeate
water that bubbled out from a cleft in a crag. “I wish you health,
my young friend,” he had said. “You are at the entrance of the great
stage. I hope you have a fine _rôle_ to play, and a good stock
company of friends for support, and a great ovation and glorification
awaiting you. I am but a supernumerary at best, and nearer the exit
than you think. Instead of this health-giving water I should drink some
deadly drug. And then you would see with what grace I can make my bow
to an audience which has not troubled itself overmuch about me, and
about which I shall trouble myself no more.”
General Vayne rose and walked heavily out of the room. He went down the
stairs, leaning ponderously on the balustrade, and joined Mr. Ridgeway
who chanced to be aimlessly strolling about the porch.
“Sir,” said General Vayne, facing round upon his friend in the
flickering shadow of the leafless sycamore boughs, “sir, the quality
of sympathy is the one quality which lifts the human animal above the
beasts that perish. The man who lacks it, lacks his soul.”
After a pause he continued impressively. “It is a quality, sir, which
ennobles a beggar and adorns a prince.”
Then he fell suddenly from his rounded periods into an inconsequent
heap, so to speak, of indignation.
“I--tell--you--what--it--is--sir,”--he said in that effective
diminuendo--“this belated invasion--this post-mortem invasion, as one
might call it, is”--
He checked himself; he would not speak disparagingly of a man behind
his back,--not even of the post-mortem invader, his own familiar
home-made Yankee who invaded his native soil.
For a time the two elderly gentlemen sat on the front steps in silence.
Then General Vayne rose and paced up and down the brick-floored hall,
struggling with an inclination to return to the court-room and hear the
testimony that was so repugnant to him. Finally the impulse prevailed.
When he went back he found that Estwicke was under cross-examination.
This was very skilfully conducted, but elicited nothing of value,
except that he had heard other men who had never committed suicide say
many like things, and that he had considered these of no special import
until after Major Jartree’s death. There were no contradictions, no
admissions, no involutions. He was the ideal witness, bold, succinct,
and as transparent as crystal. As he went down from the stand,
Meredith, with the _camaraderie_ of youth, indicated by a gesture
of invitation, a vacant chair at his side. Estwicke hesitated; then,
saying to himself that he would not truckle, he would not seem to avoid
them, he sat down by the defendant’s lawyers, although he thought as he
did so that this was an overt act of perfect accord which he might well
spare himself, and he felt as if he and they were conspirators in some
dark deed against the widow and the orphans.
The plaintiff’s rebutting testimony was now to be taken, and General
Vayne was the first witness called.
“Will you state,” said the counsel, “what was Major Jartree’s character
for integrity.”
“Sir,” exclaimed General Vayne, while the tears rushed to his
enthusiastic eyes, and he made an agitated gesture as if he would clasp
his missing right hand--clasping only the empty air, “I would answer
for his integrity with my life--with--my--life!”
There was throughout the room an electric current of painful sympathy.
The jury were surprised, thrilled, touched. The hatchet-faced Kendricks
was on his feet in an instant with an objection.
“Could I say more--or less?” cried the witness, suddenly, forestalling
the plaintiff’s counsel, “knowing him as I did--_my_ friend, Major
Jartree! Only the voice of the stranger is raised against him!”
All eyes were turned toward Estwicke. He was a-tingle in every fibre,
his face grew hot and scarlet, the veins in his temples were blue and
swollen; he made a movement as if he were about to rise.
“Steady--steady!” said the placid and debonair Meredith in an
undertone, laying a staying hand on Estwicke’s shoulder.
The contentious Kendricks was in his element. “I appeal to your Honor,”
he vociferated, “to protect my witness”--Estwicke gasped--“to protect
my witness against these aspersions intended to prejudice the jury
against the conclusive testimony he has given.”
“Aspersions!” exclaimed General Vayne, leaning forward suddenly toward
the plaintiff’s lawyers. “_Did_ he say _aspersions_?”
There was a jostling rush forward to obtain a better view of the actors
in the little drama, and the constantly contracting crowd was shaded
off by a line of black faces enlivened by glittering ivories and the
whites of astonished rolling eyes. A clamor of voices had arisen, and
above all dominated the sheriff’s stentorian “Silence in court!”
“I’ll commit somebody presently,” said the judge impersonally. He had a
wooden face, an impassive manner, and a brier-root pipe which he smoked
imperturbably throughout the proceedings. He was a man of few words but
of prompt action; at the sound of his inexpressive voice the tumult was
stilled instantly.
“Will your Honor be so good as to admonish the witness that reflections
on those who preceded him are not evidence and are inadmissible.”
“The witness must comport himself with all due regard to this court and
counsel,” said the judge. Then the examination was resumed.
“What was Major Jartree’s habit of conversation?”
“He often spoke figuratively. He might have been easily misunderstood
by a man of different mental calibre--a literal-minded man.”
“Will your Honor instruct the witness to confine himself to the
necessary replies,” exclaimed Kendricks, again on his feet. “The
witness does not answer questions. He is only seeking to utilize
Captain Estwicke’s testimony, which he has heard, to make an argument.
I see that we ought to have had all these witnesses put under the rule.”
“Too late, now,” interpolated the judge, dryly.
“Instead of answering questions,” pursued Kendricks, “the witness
is trying to persuade the jury that all Major Jartree said to
Captain Estwicke were merely flowers of rhetoric which”--with a fine
sneer--“his limited mental capacity prevented him from comprehending.”
“Counsel may sit down,” said the impassive judge, who had weathered
many a storm like this.
Kendricks sat down in--paradoxically--a towering rage, and the
plaintiffs lawyer proceeded.
“What was Major Jartree’s temperament?”
The witness looked inquiringly.
“State whether he was kindly disposed, or otherwise, and anything you
may know of his character.”
“Kind, sir? He had the kindest heart that ever beat! He was humane,
and gentle, and generous! He was imbued with a fine char-r-ity.” Here
the witness demonstrated his own char-r-ity by pausing impressively to
scowl at Estwicke. “He saw men, not as they were, but as they sought to
be. He revered his fellow-creature. He beheld in man the majesty of his
Maker’s image!”
“I object,” cried Kendricks hastily. For there was a change ominous to
his client’s interests in the expression of the jurymen. They had all
known and been “mighty sorry” for Major Jartree, who was an amiable but
useless old gentleman, and nobody’s enemy but his own. They recognized
him in all this, but somehow he loomed before them in impressive
proportions as General Vayne lent them his moral magnifying glass. “If
the court please, this is not evidence,” persisted Kendricks.
“Keep strictly to the point,” said the judge.
“I will, your Honor,” returned the witness earnestly.
“Was he a religious man?”
“He was a sincere and humble Christian,” said General Vayne
conclusively--in his own way he was a pious man himself.
“Can you state anything which would intimate his possible horror of the
crime of suicide?”
“Sir, he entertained a deep reverence for the sanctity of life. He took
ample cognizance of that stupendous right to exist which dignifies the
meanest worm of the earth. I once heard him say to a grandchild who was
torturing an insect--‘My dear, the beetle is your brother. Spare him!’”
He repeated this with a noble gesture of intercession and a fine
oratorical effect. He fixed his magnetic eyes on the jury who were
subtly agitated by an illogical responsive fervor, and then with a
sudden wild burst of indignation he exclaimed:--
“And they ask us to believe that this man, of all men, held himself,
whom God had so nobly endowed, as slighter than the beetle--and took
his life and falsified his character, so graciously won, to cheat an
insurance company. It is monstrous--monstrous! _My_ friend! Major
Jartree!”
“Stop! _Stop!_ STOP!” Kendricks had roared in a steadily
increasing crescendo, but throughout these vociferations General Vayne
had kept steadily on, regarding them only as a strategic movement of
the enemy designed to divert his attention.
“Your Honor, I insist--I _demand_ that you admonish this witness
as to his duty, and require him to conform to it.”
“The witness _must_ answer questions, and say nothing further,”
said the judge emphatically.
The witness turned his flushed, enthusiastic face toward the
plaintiff’s lawyers as an invitation to come again. They were taking
heart of grace. It is not always safe to trust the appearance of a
jury, but those twelve good and lawful men were beginning to assume the
aspect of a row of intent and eager partisans. An influence more potent
than law or right reason swayed them. The witness had fast hold of
their heart-strings, and their pulses quickened under his touch.
“What was the character of Major Jartree’s mind?”
“He possessed a highly cultivated understanding, sir. His power of
discrimination between right and wrong was as solid as the heart of
that tree, and as perfectly adjusted as the hair-trigger of your
pistol, sir.”
“What was his habit in the matter of prudence or rashness?”
“He was cool and deliberate. He possessed remarkable foresight. I will
instance the fact that he foresaw, from the beginning, the result of
the Late War”--which on the day of the surrender had been a great
surprise to General Vayne.
“You are not here to instance facts,” exclaimed Kendricks pettishly.
To this General Vayne paid no manner of attention, but went on eagerly.
“If he were capable of such a deed, for such a purpose--the mere
supposition is abhorrent--he could but have perceived that it would of
necessity defeat itself.”
“I desire to ask of your Honor,” said Kendricks, once more on his feet,
and utterly losing control of his temper, “whether throughout the
testimony of this witness I am to be subjected to the ignominy of this
bravado, and my client’s interests to a flagrant injustice? It is plain
that the witness does not desire to give evidence. He only seeks to
insinuate prejudice and to foster misapprehension in the minds of the
jury.”
General Vayne rose slowly from the chair. The movement at such a moment
was unprecedented and unexpected, and there was a breathless pause of
surprise and doubt. He was so pre-eminently a calm man that he never
found it necessary to subject his intentions to the scrutiny and
question imperative with men of impulse. His gesture was appropriately
deliberate as he reached up to the judge’s desk and grasped the heavy
glass inkstand that stood there. The next moment it was hurled wildly
at the head of the defendant’s counsel, impartially distributing
its contents on the irreproachable shirt-bosoms of the “quality” of
Chattalla, and endangering in its defective aim the row of negroes,
high up on the benches, who dodged as one man. The wind of its flight,
as it crashed harmless against the wall, nearly took off a darkey’s
ear, and impressed with his peril, and holding the threatened member in
his cautious hand, he vociferated--“I tell ye now, dey’d better leff de
ole gen’al alone!”
Kendricks had--instinctively, perhaps--thrust his arm behind him. It
was a significant motion. The next moment something steely and sinister
gleamed in his hand. But quick as he was, he was hardly quick enough.
The pistol was cocked, but not levelled, when General Vayne rushed
upon him. There was a swift, muscular movement of that dextrous left
arm, and the learned counsel, hit fair and full between the eyes, was
sprawling upon the floor, the revolver discharging in his fall, and
the bullet skipping lightsomely through the little that was left of
the crowd. An eager curiosity as to the subsequent proceedings rallied
the audience, and it was re-enforced, in a solid phalanx, by the Grand
Jury, that had been in session in the opposite room, and was roused
from its absorptions by the exhilarating note of the pistol.
The judge sat astounded upon the bench. “Why, bless my soul, General!”
he exclaimed weakly. And then once more, “Bless my soul!”
He gave, however, a sign of return to judicial consciousness in
imposing a fine of fifty dollars upon General Vayne for contempt of
court; and to the lovers of sensation it seemed that the Grand Jury was
providentially close at hand, for it went back to its den and indicted
the stranger for carrying concealed weapons.
“Mr. Sheriff,” said the judge, “adjourn the court till two o’clock.”
“Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!” quavered Mr. Sheriff, greatly distraught. “The
honorable Circuit Court stands adjourned till two of the clock!”
General Vayne’s friends had hustled him out of the room. He was in the
deepest humiliation. The want of dignity in his demonstration smote
upon him sorely. That _he_ should have so far forgotten himself!
That _he_ should lift his hand against his fellow-man--without a
pistol in it!
When his colleague had left the room the defendant’s junior counsel
walked to the other door and waylaid a plethoric, eager, unwieldy old
man who was hastening after General Vayne.
“Let me detain you a moment,” said Meredith politely. “Mr. Ridgeway, I
think?”
The old gentleman, facing about, solemnly acknowledged it.
“This is a terrible affair, Mr. Ridgeway, and for General Vayne’s own
sake it must not be allowed to stand as it is. As you are a friend of
his, you must help me to get an apology from him.”
The old gentleman seemed on the verge of apoplexy. He became scarlet in
the face as he stood unsteadily before his junior. He spluttered and
gasped in his excitement; his eager words struggled for precedence, and
ran over each other--“Anapology?--’napology, sir? An apology for being
shot at!”
“The pistol was discharged when Mr. Kendricks was knocked down,” said
Meredith. “Do you think it is fair to conclude that he would have fired
it?”
“Wha--what was he doing with it, then?” spluttered the old gentleman
sarcastically.
“Don’t you admit the possibility that he drew it to intimidate General
Vayne--he could not stand still and be struck, and he could not strike
a maimed man. You don’t reflect, Mr. Ridgeway, that General Vayne
will occupy the intolerable position of taking advantage of that
circumstance. Of course Mr. Kendricks can do nothing but submit to the
indignity.”
The old gentleman tugged meditatively at his tuft of beard, as if it
had some cerebral connection and he sought thus to stimulate mental
activity.
As the lawyer was accustomed to present only one side of a question,
and Mr. Ridgeway to see only one side, neither took any notice of Mr.
Kendricks’s “intolerable position,” one ignoring it from intention and
the other from fatuity. And at this moment, that gentleman, walking
the narrow bounds of his room at the hotel, was absorbed in agonizing
deprecation of public opinion, which he knew would not take into
account a hurled inkstand in a case in which a pistol had been drawn on
an unarmed and maimed man.
In a sudden flutter of anxiety, Mr. Ridgeway acceded, with apoplectic
haste, to Meredith’s suggestion, and the ill-assorted couple crossed
the square to one of the lawyer’s offices, where General Vayne sat
with a friend, who, upon recognizing Meredith, rose and left the room,
marvelling greatly as to his mission.
“General Vayne,” said Meredith, who had previously met the elder
gentleman, “I do not come from Mr. Kendricks; understand that. But I
think some disinterested person should say to you, both on his account
and your own, that you mistook altogether his intention. If you had
been calm, you would have realized that his manner of urging his
objection was a mere matter of course; it was his duty to his client’s
interest to seek to injure your testimony.”
“Calm, sir, calm!” exclaimed General Vayne, his bald head purple. “I
assure you, sir, I was as calm as I am at this moment.”
“It is absurd, General,” said Mr. Ridgeway, eagerly, “to attribute to
a sane man an intention of seriously reflecting upon you. Your friends
cannot sufficiently regret that under this delusion you should have
permitted yourself to insult a gentleman”--
“And a gentleman in the discharge of a purely professional duty,” added
the wily young diplomatist.
General Vayne sprang up and began to walk back and forth the length of
the apartment, nervously pulling his mustache.
“And in the presence of a motley throng,” said the elder peacemaker.
“Bringing a court of justice into contempt,” said the lawyer.
“And offering a spectacle of insubordination to the men of your
command, who hold you as an exemplar,” pursued Mr. Ridgeway.
The unsuspecting subject of all this craft groaned aloud.
“Inflicting a public humiliation, and personal injury, and pecuniary
loss upon a man who only sought to do his duty to his client,” said
Meredith.
The simple-hearted gentleman paused in his rapid striding to and fro,
and with that agitated gesture, as if he would clasp his missing hand,
he turned credulous eyes first on one of the tacticians, then on the
other.
“And a stranger in the town!” exclaimed Mr. Ridgeway, capping the
climax.
“I--I--will write to him,” declared General Vayne, altogether
overwhelmed. He turned to the table, and placed pen, ink, and
paper with that adroit left hand. “I--I--am afraid I have been
very hasty--very wrong--I will write.” Then, suddenly, “No, I will
not write. The affront was offered in the presence of a large
assemblage”--this was his way of dignifying that motley little crowd;
“I will apologize publicly, sir, publicly.”
He looked about him wildly for his hat, caught it up, and strode with
his buoyant step into the sunshine, twirling his gray mustache, and
glancing keenly about for the object of his search.
The other two had risen at the same instant, and as they were about to
follow him out of the door, the young lawyer, equally surprised and
elated by the readiness with which peace had been patched up, attempted
to exchange a leer of congratulation with his red-faced coadjutor. The
demonstration was received with an expression of blank inquiry.
“Why, God bless me!” thought young America, feeling much like a child
caught making faces, and mastering the situation with an effort,
“here’s another!”
Kendricks had already emerged from his room at the hotel. It had
required some nerve to face Chattalla again, alive, as he knew it must
be, with its enjoyment of the “fight free for all,” but he did not
want the “cursed little town” to say he was hiding, and with this view
he was strolling listlessly about the public square. There General
Vayne met him. Admiring Chattalla could only see from a distance the
dumb show of an oratorical apology, and catch, now and then, the
echo of a rotund period. It seemed, however, that the thing was very
handsomely done, and handsomely received, too; for this unexpected
turn of affairs had solved the lawyer’s dilemma, which had offered the
equally impracticable alternatives of challenging a one-armed man, or
submitting to the ignominy of a blow. His relief gave his manner an
unwonted geniality, and as they parted, Chattalla, looking after them,
said that this was no doubt the best solution, although the whole
affair, from the inkstand to the apology, was painfully “irregular.”
Then knots of men fell to talking about the propriety of blows, and
apologies, under “The Code.”
It was a long day to Estwicke, and fraught with many anxieties,
but late in the afternoon, as he pressed with the crowd out of the
court-house yard, they all seemed merged in the canvassing of his
position in regard to General Vayne, and how far it might affect
the future. He had inwardly resented the allusion to himself in the
court-room, and he was not a man to tamely submit to an affront. But
how was it possible to openly resent it from one old enough to be
his father, whose hospitality he had often accepted, and with whose
family he was on terms of cordial friendship? Then, too, impartially
viewed, the ground of offence was untenable. He had been called a
stranger, which was true, and it had been intimated that he might have
misunderstood General Vayne’s friend. Ought he, in justice to himself,
to allow this to bar all further intercourse between them; to go to
General Vayne’s house no more; to relinquish, in effect, his hope of
winning the woman he loved, and every dear prospect of the future?
The question was summarily settled. As he crossed the square he passed
General Vayne. The elder gentleman returned his bow with a courtesy
as fierce and as punctilious as if they faced each other at twelve
paces. Estwicke went on, his blood on fire, swearing a mighty oath that
he would take what cognizance he could of his own dignity, and that,
whatever sacrifices might be involved, he would not go again to the
house of a man who had offered him a public affront, confirming its
deliberate intention by his manner afterward, which intimated a feeling
approaching enmity.