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 nobody,
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, dogging 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
hell, 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 God!_
He made his way again to the door and unlocked it. It was only to cross
that space, to speak, and then the grim brick building--and the penalty.
With a hoarse 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 space beyond the inner door was crowded beyond the
possibility of passage. 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 constituted 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."