Part 15
Surprise was something Dr. Lloyd was never known to express or imply. He sat looking at the visitor with his calm professional eye, as if it were the most habitual thing in the world for sane lawyers to come into his office at night, wanting to know about ghosts.
“I want to know all about absurd illusions,—in people of undoubted sanity.”
“Subject of some scope,” dryly remarked the doctor.
“I want to know all that _you_ know about hallucinations, visions. I want an elaborate exposition of the visual apparatus as connected with the brain, and of the derangement of its nervous functions.”
“Upon my word, you’re a pretty fellow!”
“And then I want you to lend me _all_ your books.” And once more he gazed around on the coveted treasures of the shelves.
One of the great logs had burned in two, the chunks falling forward upon the other blazing sticks. The doctor had made a move toward the tongs, but the lawyer arose, and with a sort of cumbrous agility kicked first one and then the other into the space between the dogs. Dr. Lloyd watched this proceeding with silent disapproval. Far be it from him to put his dapper old-fashioned foot-gear to any such purpose.
The warmth of the fire was grateful, for it had grown much colder without. The wind surged down the street like the passing of many feet, some tumultuous human rush. The fir-tree beside the door was filled with voices, sibilant whisperings, sighs. Clouds were scudding through the sky; Kenbigh could see them from where he sat listening to the doctor’s monologue. The moonlight lay on the old-fashioned garden without, all pillaged by the autumn winds,—the rose-bushes but leafless wands; the arbors, naked trellises; the walks, laid off with rectangular precision, showing what the symmetry of its summer guise had been, as a skeleton might suggest the perfection of the human form. The lights in the two-story frame house beyond—for the doctor’s office was in the yard of his dwelling and the garden lay a little to the rear—were extinguished one by one. A dog close by barked for a time, with echoes from the hills and depressions, and then fell to howling mournfully. The doctor talked on, now and then taking down the books to illustrate; marking the passages with a neat strip of paper in lieu of turning down a leaf, as Kenbigh seemed disposed to do. He piled the volumes beside his apt pupil on the candle-stand, and as the lawyer fell to at them he himself read for a time, as a light recreation, from a history in some twelve volumes. To a country gentleman of ample leisure and bookish habit, this lengthy work was but as a mouthful.
Dr. Lloyd rose at last, knocked the ashes out of his pipe upon the head of one of the fire-dogs, glanced at the absorbed lawyer, and remarked, “You’ll come over to my house to go to bed after a little more, won’t you?”
“Reckon so,” responded Kenbigh, without lifting his head.
The fire flared up the chimney in great white flames; they emanated from a lustrous, restless, pulsing red heart. The sparks flew. The faint and joyous sounds from the logs were like some fine fairy minstrelsy which one is hardly sure one hears. A sylvan fragrance came from the pile of wood in the corner, the baskets of chips, the pine knots.
The doctor left the room, opened the door and looked back.
“Don’t you set the house afire and burn up these books,” he said, with the first touch of feeling in his tones that night.
The results of the attorney-general’s vigil were abundantly manifest in his speech to the jury the following day. For that body was recruited by summoning another talesman in Rood’s place, and the trial perforce began anew; Gwinnan apparently thinking this alternative served better the ends of justice than to risk the delays and vicissitudes of again securing a competent jury. This decision encouraged Mink, who had been tortured by the fear that by some disaster the case would be continued to the next term. He was not now greatly perturbed by the strange turn which the attorney-general had contrived to give to Alethea’s testimony. Since Harshaw had found that any one claimed to have seen Tad after the report of the boy’s death he had felt confident of an acquittal, laying much stress on the necessity of proving the _corpus delicti_, as he phrased it; and Mink accepted his lawyer’s opinion and relied upon it. He had not been greatly affected by Rood’s fate, so absorbed was he by his own interests; but it was a moment of tense excitement when the testimony again reached the juncture at which, on the preceding day, the unfortunate juror had leaned forward and pointed at the witness, his question failing on his lips in the dumbness of death. Nothing further was elicited from Alethea except that she did believe in ghosts, but that she was sure she had seen Tad alive, albeit he had stood among the graves with a blanched face, disappearing in a moment, lost in the mist.
The whole testimony occupied much less time than on the previous day, and as the afternoon progressed it began to be apparent that the case would go to the jury before the court adjourned.
The surprise of the day was the speech of the attorney-general. It opened simply enough. He sought to show that it was impossible for Tad to be alive. The poor boy was doubtless at the bottom of the river. How could it be otherwise? Assume, as his learned opponent would have them believe, that he had swum ashore. Where was he now? The suggestion that he was in the custody of some enemy of the prisoner, who sought by concealing him to effect the incarceration of Reuben Lorey in the penitentiary for a long term, was so absurd that he hesitated to argue such a foolish position before so intelligent a body of men as the jury whom he had the pleasure of addressing. Who would, for revenge, encounter the hazards of such a scheme? The boy was as well known throughout the section as Piomingo Bald. Any chance glimpse of him by a casual visitor would fling the conspirators themselves into the clutches of the law, that would be loath to lightly loose its hold on such rascals. Who would voluntarily burden themselves with the support of an idiot? If anybody had found Tad, he would have been mighty quick to carry the boy back to old man Griff. Say that no one had detained him,—what then? He was an idiot, incapable of taking care of himself. If he were wandering at large, starving, half clad, would not some one have seen him besides Alethea Sayles, in all these weeks, gentlemen, in all these months? It was a remarkable story that the witness had told,—a remarkable story. (The counsel seemed to find fit expression of his sense of its solemnity by sinking his basso profundo to a thunderous mutter.) No one for a moment could doubt the sanity of that witness. She was evidently a girl of fine common sense; an excellent girl, too,—no one could for a moment doubt the truth of any word she uttered. The fact was, Alethea Sayles saw a strange thing that night. She thought she saw Tad. It was only his image, not himself. “The forlorn boy is dead, gentlemen,” he continued. “She saw the fantasy of her own anxious, overwrought brain. He was in her mind. She had pondered long upon him, and upon the plight of her lover, who had killed him. What wonder, then, that in the mist, and the flickering moonlight, and the lonely midnight, she should fancy that she saw him!”
He told the gaping and amazed jury that this was not an isolated instance. He mentioned other victims of hallucination; he detailed the strange experiences of Nicolai, of Spinoza, of Dr. Bostock, of Lord Londonderry, of Baron de Géramb, of Leuret, of Lord Brougham.
Harshaw, who had sat listening, with his hands in his pockets and his legs crossed, a smile of ostentatious derision upon his face, grew grave upon the mention of the last name. He had never heard of the others, but to attempt to bolster a theory of spectral apparition by this name, revered in the profession, was, he felt, a juridical sacrilege that should cause the attorney-general to be at the very least stricken from the rolls.
As Kenbigh went on, expounding the relative and interdependent functions of the brain and eye, the fine and subtle theories of spiritual and physical life, its vague boundaries, its unmeasured capabilities,—the deductions, the keen analysis of science, all reduced to the vernacular in the mouth of a man trained by years of practice to speak to the people,—Harshaw sat in blank dismay. He had never heard of any spiritual manifestation but the vulgar graveyard ghost, usually headless, stalking in its shroud to accomplish missions of vengeance upon the very ignorant in the deep midnight. But Kenbigh’s account of sundry ethereal-minded and mild-mannered spectres, with a preference for high company, singing, appearing at dinner-tables, conversing agreeably, arrayed in conventional garb, as decorous and reasonable and as mindful of etiquette as if still bound by all the restraints of the world, the flesh, and the devil, disappearing as noiselessly as they had come, with no appreciable result of the visit,—it shocked every sense of precedent within him. He was country-bred and did not know that when ghosts are fashionable they conduct themselves as fashionable people do. He noted keenly the discrepancies in the scientific explanations. Always, despite its show of learning, its systems, its terminology, its physiology, its psychology, and its persistent reference of supernatural appearances to natural causes, Reason retires from the spectral exhibition with some admission of occult influences, not fully understood,—in effect making a bow to the ghost in question, “Saving your presence.” He noticed, too, that the jury were listening with that intentness and eager interest which characterize every mind, even the most ignorant, in considering things of the other world, manifestations of hidden agencies. When he rose to reply he felt at a loss. The sound, however, of his own hearty voice ringing against the walls, instead of the sepulchral basso profundo of the attorney for the State, the motion of his own stalwart arm sawing the air,—for he was in the habit of impressing his views with a good deal of muscular exertion,—had an invigorating effect upon him, and brought him back to his normal state of confidence and bluster. He found words for his ready scorn. He sought to discredit the attorney-general’s phantoms. He did not know where the counsel got these old women’s tales; they were an insult to the intelligence of the jury. The learned counsel knew mighty well he wasn’t going to be called upon for his authorities,—medical books can’t be produced as evidence in a court of justice, much less ghost stories, “Raw-head and bloody-bones”! For his own part, he didn’t believe a word of them. A fact is a thing that can be proved. The law requires authentication. “Henry Brougham, Lord Chancellor, saw visions, did he? And may be Lord Coke dreamed dreams,” he sneered indignantly. “And Lord Mansfield perchance walked in his sleep. And who knows they did? And what drivel is this! Gentlemen, _we_ live in the nineteenth century!”
The aspersion of Lord Brougham—for thus he considered the anecdote—was very bitter to him. He was a man of few enthusiasms, and such hero-worship as was possible to him had been expended upon the great lights of his profession whose acquaintance he had formed in his early reading of law, some twenty years ago. He so dwelt upon this point that the jury received the valuable impression that Henry Brougham was a chancellor and a “valley man,” hailing from Knoxville, perhaps, and was held in high esteem by the lawyers in Shaftesville, and that Harshaw seemed to think the attorney-general had slandered him. He wrenched himself from this phase of the subject with some difficulty. “Gentlemen,” he said sarcastically, “the attorney-general is a mighty smart man. He’s got a heap of learning lately about visions.” He glanced down obliquely at his opponent; he would have given a good deal to know how the counsel for the State came by his information. He could have sworn that it was not indigenous. “But there are plenty of folks in this town could have told him just as much and more. He’s mighty particular to show the difference between _il_-lusion and _de_-lusion, and hallucination and mania. Visions! That ain’t what _we_ call ’em, gentlemen. Down here in the flat woods we call ’em—‘snakes’!” The hit told, and he went on, encouraged. “Right over yonder in Tim Becker’s saloon they keep every assortment of vision. Men have seen green rabbits there, and black dogs, and snakes, and whole menageries of hallucinations. Is anybody going to believe Alethea Sayles had the jim-jams that night, coming from camp-meeting? She had no call to see visions! This girl had her head in her hands; she was leaning on the fence; she felt some one touch her; she looked up, and saw the boy before her. Mighty few of the ghosts that we have heard of had such consistency of entity as to make their presence perceived by the sense of touch; on the contrary, it is thus that their unreality is often demonstrated in these same fables. A lady passes her fan through one immaterial image. A man thrusts his knife vainly into the misty heart of another. And why does this instance differ? Because, gentlemen, there was no phantom. It was Tad Simpkins in flesh and blood. The fugitive boy sees Alethea Sayles, whom he knows well; he is about to appeal to her; he lays his hand on her hand. She lifts her head, and at the unexpected appari—sight, she screams, and the foolish boy is frightened, and flees!”
He went on to say that he would impose upon the patience of this court and jury only for a few moments longer. He wanted to contradict the statements of the attorney-general that no one would voluntarily burden himself with the support of a useless member of society. “How many yaller dogs at your houses, gentlemen? I’d be afraid to count how many at mine. How many of your wife’s relations? No, gentlemen, none of us are so rich in this world’s goods as we deserve to be, but we ain’t got down to dividing bread and meat that close yet. As to the reckless crime of keeping the boy in hiding in order to put Mink Lorey in the penitentiary for involuntary manslaughter,—why, gentlemen, if there were not just such reckless people continually committing crimes, the consequences of which they cannot escape, the attorney-general and I would have nothing to do. We’d have to suck our paws for a living, like a bear in the winter, and look at one another,—a profitless entertainment, gentlemen.”
He sat down, his pink smile enlivening his countenance, well satisfied with his efforts and with the prospects of the case.
The attorney-general, who had the last word, was very brief in saying it. The judge charged the jury, and he, too, was brief. The long slant of sunshine falling athwart the room was reddening when the jury were led out by the officer to their deliberations, noisily ascending the stairs to the jury-room above, assigned to their use.
XIII.
They slouched into their lair, looking more like offenders detained against their will than the free and enlightened citizens of a great country in the exercise of the precious privilege of serving on the jury. They were all tired. They had undergone much excitement. They felt the mental strain of the arguments and counter-arguments to which they had listened.
“It hev fairly gin me a mis’ry in my head ter hev ter hear ter them red-mouthed lawyers jaw an’ jaw, like they done!” exclaimed one, flinging himself in a chair, and putting his feet up against the round sides of the stove, which was cold and fireless, the day being warm and genial. The windows were open, the sunlight streaming over the dusty floor and chairs and benches. Two or three of the jurymen, looking out, laughing, and making signs to the people in the streets, were smartly remonstrated with by the officer in charge.
His objections had the effect of congregating them in the middle of the room, where the discussion began, most of them lighting their pipes, and tilting their chairs on the hind legs. Two or three lifted their feet to the giddy eminence of the backs of other chairs; several stretched themselves at lank, ungainly length upon the benches. They were mostly young or middle-aged men; the senior of the party being a farmer of fifty, with a pointed, shaven chin, newly sprouting with a bristly beard, over which he often passed his hand with a meditative gesture. His eyes were downcast; he leaned his elbows on his knees; his mien was depressed, not to say afflicted. “I ain’t hearn ten words together,” he remarked. “I never knowed when they lef’ off, sca’cely, bein’ so all-fired oneasy an’ beset ’bout them cattle o’ mine.” He turned to explain to the new juror whom they had taken on that morning. “Ben Doaks hed my cattle a-summerin’ of ’em up on Piomingo Bald, an’ when the cattle war rounded up I went thar ter pick out mine, an’ I druv ’em down an’ got ez far ez Shaftesville, an’ I let ’em go on with Bob, my son, ’bout fifteen year old. An’ I stopped hyar ter git a drink an’ hear a leetle news. An’ durned ef they didn’t ketch me on the jury! An’ Bob dunno what’s kem o’ me, an’ I dunno what’s kem o’ Bob an’ the cattle, nor how fur they hed traveled along the road ’fore they fund out I warn’t comin’ arter.”
“Waal, I reckon they be all right,” said the new man, a hunter from the mountains, just come into town with game to sell.
“Lord knows! _I_ don’t!” said the old fellow, sighing over the futility of speculation. “Ef Bob war ter draw the idee ez I got hurt, or robbed, or scrimmagin’ in them town grog-shops,—I hev always been tellin’ him a all-fired pack o’ lies ’bout the dangers in sech places, bein’ ez I warn’t willin’ ter let him go whar I’d go myself,—he’d leave them cattle a-standin’ thar in the road, an’ kem back ter town ter s’arch fur me. He hain’t got much ’speriunce, an’ he ain’t ekal ter keerin’ fur them cattle. They’ll stray, an’ I’ll never see ’em agin.”
“I reckon they hev strayed back ter the mountings by this time; must be wilder ’n bucks, ef they hev been out all summer,” suggested a broad-faced twinkling-eyed young fellow, with a jocose wink at the others.
“Bob dozes, too; sorter sleepy-headed, ye know,” said the old man, taking note of all the contingencies. “I hev seen him snooze in the saddle, ef the cattle war slow. He’s growin’, an’ runs mighty hard, an’ ef he sets still, he falls off. Ef he got tired, he’s apt ter lie down in a fence-corner ter rest; an’ he mought go ter sleep thar, an’ somebody mought toll the cattle off. Or else he mought ax somebody ter keer fur the cattle till he could kem back an’ find me. Lord A’mighty, thar’s no yearthly tellin’ what Bob mought do!”
“Then, again, he _moughtn’t_” said Jerry Price. “Ye hev jes’ got ter gin up yer hold on worldly things when ye air on a jury, like ye war dead.”
“Yes; but when ye air dead ye ain’t able ter be pestered by studyin’ ’bout what yer administrator air a-doin’ with yer yearthly chattels an’ cattle.”
“How d’ye know?” demanded Price. “Arter all we hearn ter-day, a body mought b’lieve a real likely harnt air ekal ter ennything in motion an’ looks, an’ ye dunno _what_ they air studyin’ ’bout. But time’s a-wastin’. ’Less we air wantin’ ter bide hyar all night agin, we hed better be talkin’ ’bout our verdict on Mink Lorey. The jedge’s waitin’, an’ from all I hev seen o’ him he ain’t handy at patience.”
“Waal, sir,” said the man with his feet on the stove, who was the foreman of the jury, taking his pipe from his mouth, “I ain’t settin’ much store on Gwinnan. I don’t b’lieve he acted right an’ ’cordin’ ter law about this jury. Thar’s thirteen men on this jury!”
They all sat motionless, staring at him.
“Yes, sir,” he declared, reinserting his pipe between his teeth, and speaking with them closed upon it. “I know the law! My uncle war a jestice o’ the peace fur six year, ’bout ten year ago. An’ he hed a Code o’ Tennessee! An’ I read in it! Some mighty interestin’ readin’ in the Code o’ Tennessee. Sure’s ye born, thar is! The law say the juror, ef he be ailin’, kin be excused, an’ another summonsed. But Peter Rood warn’t excused, nor discharged nuthar. He’s on this jury yit.”
“Waal, fur Gawd’s sake, don’t git ter jawin’ ’bout Peter Rood!” cried Bylor, the man on whose chair the dead juror had fallen, and who had turned his face to the close encounter of the stare of death in those glassy eyes. Bylor’s nerves were still unstrung. He looked as ill as a broad-shouldered, sun-burned, brawny fellow could look. “I never slep’ a wink las’ night; an’ that thar cussed ’torney-gineral a-tellin’ them awful tales ’bout harnts all day, an’ that thar solemn Lethe Sayles purtendin’ she hed seen that drownded idjit,—I felt ez ef I’d fall down in a fit ef they didn’t quit it.”
“I don’t b’lieve she seen Tad’s harnt,” said Ben Doaks, instinctively adopting her view.
“Then what war it in the _graveyard_ fur?” demanded the foreman conclusively.
There was momentary silence. The sunshine was dying out on the floor; the dim tracery of the boughs of the hickory-tree was the only manifestation of its presence. The rural sound of the lowing of cattle came in on the soft air,—the village kine were returning from their pastures. The voices of men in the rooms below rose and fell fitfully; they were trying another case, in the interim of waiting for the verdict.
“An’ how kem nobody hev seen him sence, ’ceptin’ Lethe Sayles?” he supplemented his question.
“The jedge hinted ez much ez we-uns oughter be powerful keerful o’ not convictin’ a man fur killin’, when a witness claimed ter hev seen the dead one sence,” argued Jerry Price, ambiguously.
“She never seen nuthin’ but his ghost,” said the foreman.
“Ben, how’d that leetle red cow o’ mine git her hawn bruk?” interpolated the bereaved cattle-owner, meditating on the vicissitudes experienced by his herds in their summer vacation.
“Gawd A’mighty, man, quit talkin’ ’bout yer cattle, interruptin’ we-uns jes’ ez we war a-gittin’ ter the p’int!” exclaimed the foreman.
“I’d heap ruther hear Mr. Beames talk ’bout his cattle ’n hear ’bout harnts, an’ sech,” said Bylor, as he lay on the bench. He was still feeling far from well. He got up presently, and went to the officer, who was at the door, and petitioned for something to drink. But that worthy, determined upon the literal performance of duty, withstood his every persuasion, even when he declared he was “plumb sick;” and the rest of the jury, alarmed lest he should be excused, another juror summoned, and the whole performance of the trial begin anew, the agony of their detention thus lengthening indefinitely, pleaded for him. The officer’s devotion to what he considered his duty did not save him from some abuse.
“’Twould sarve ye right ef we war ter lay a-holt o’ ye an’ fling ye outer this winder,” said Ben Doaks.
“Ye mis’able leetle green gourd, ye dunno nuthin’ ’bout nuthin’,” declared the foreman, the much informed because of the Code.
“Waal, ye kin say what ye wanter,” retorted the official. He was a young man; he had a resolute eye and a shock head. “But ye ain’t goin’ ter git out’n here till ye find yer verdict.” He withdrew his tousled head suddenly, and shut the door on them.
Rebellion availing nothing, they resorted to faction.
“Ye needn’t be so powerful techy ’bout harnts; ye ain’t seen none ez I knows on,” said the foreman, turning upon the sick juror.
“Naw, an’ I don’t wanter hear ’bout none o’ ’em till my stommick feels stronger.”
“Shucks! that air nuthin’ oncommon, seein’ harnts an’ sech. Plenty o’ folks hev seen the same one. Thar’s ever so many o’ them herders on Thunderhead hev seen the harnt ez herds up thar. Rob Carrick seen him. I have hearn him tell ’bout’n it arter he got his mind back. Hain’t you, Ben?”