Then through the gloom there ran the audible shiver of pent-up sighs, low whispers, and the stretching of tired muscles.
When I reached the Judge, he was just entering the door of the anteroom opening into his private quarters. His sunny smile had returned, although the voice had not altogether regained its former ring. He said,--
"I trust you were not too late. I waited a few minutes, hoping you had come, and then when it became so dark, I ordered a light lit, but I couldn"t find you in the crowd. Come in. Let me present you to the district attorney and to the young lawyer whom I appointed to defend the prisoner. While I was pa.s.sing sentence, they were discussing the verdict. Were you in time for the sentence?" he continued.
"No," I answered, after shaking hands with both gentlemen and taking the chair which one of them offered me, "only the last part. But I saw the man before they led him away, and I must say he didn"t look much like a criminal. Tell me something about the murder," and I turned to the young lawyer, a smooth-faced young man with long black hair tucked behind his ears and a frank, open countenance.
"You"d better ask the district attorney," he answered, with a slight shrug of his shoulders. "He is the only one about here who seems to know anything about the _murder_; my client, Crouch, didn"t, anyhow. I was counsel for the defense."
He spoke with some feeling, and I thought with some irritation, but whether because of his chagrin at losing the case or because of real sympathy for the negro I could not tell.
"You seem to forget the jury," answered the district attorney in a self-satisfied way; "they evidently knew something about it." There was a certain elation in his manner, as he spoke, that surprised me--quite as if he had won a bet. That a life had been played for and lost seemed only to heighten his interest in the game.
"No, I don"t forget the jury," retorted the young man, "and I don"t forget some of the witnesses; nor do I forget what you made them say and how you got some of them tangled up. That negro is as innocent of that crime as I am. Don"t you think so, Judge?" and he turned to the table and began gathering up his papers.
His Honor had settled himself in his chair, the back tipped against the wall. His old manner had returned, so had the charm of his voice.
He had picked up a reed pipe when he entered the room, and had filled it with tobacco, which he had broken in finer grains in the palm of his hand. He was now puffing away steadily to keep it alight.
"I have no opinion to offer, gentlemen, one way or the other. The matter, of course, is closed as far as I am concerned. I think you will both agree, however, whatever may be your personal feelings, that my rulings were fair. As far as I could see, the witnesses told a straight story, and upon their evidence the jury brought in the verdict. I think, too, my charge was just. There was"--here the Judge puffed away vigorously--"there was, therefore, nothing left for me to do but"--puff--puff--"to sentence him. Hang that pipe! It won"t draw,"
and the Judge, with one of his musical laughs, rose from his chair and pulled a straw from the broom in the corner.
The district attorney looked at the discomfited opposing counsel and laughed. Then he added, as an expression of ill-concealed contempt for his inexperience crept over his face:--
"Don"t worry over it, my boy. This is one of your first cases, and I know it comes hard, but you"ll get over it before you"ve tried as many of them as I have. The n.i.g.g.e.r hadn"t a dollar, and somebody had to defend him. The Judge appointed you, and you"ve done your duty well, and lost--that"s all there is to it. But I"ll tell you one thing for your information,"--and his voice a.s.sumed a serious tone,--"and one which you did not notice in this trial, and which you would have done had you known the ways of these n.i.g.g.e.rs as I do, and it went a long way with me in establishing his guilt. From the time Crouch was arrested, down to this very afternoon when the Judge sentenced him, not one of his people has ever turned up,--no father, mother, wife, nor child,--not one."
"That"s not news to me," interrupted the young man. "I tried to get something from Crouch myself, but he wouldn"t talk."
"Of course he wouldn"t talk, and you know why; simply because he didn"t want to be spotted for some other crime. This n.i.g.g.e.r Crouch"--and the district attorney looked my way--"is a product of the war, and one of the worst it has given us--a shiftless tramp that preys on society." His remarks were evidently intended for me, for the Judge was not listening, nor was the young lawyer. "Most of this cla.s.s of criminals have no homes, and if they had they lie about them, so afraid are they, if they"re fortunate enough to be discharged, that they"ll be rearrested for a crime committed somewhere else."
"Which discharge doesn"t very often happen around here," remarked the young man with a sneer. "Not if you can help it."
"No, which doesn"t very often happen around here _if I can help it_.
You"re right. That"s what I"m here for," the district attorney retorted with some irritation. "And now I"ll tell you another thing. I had a second talk with Crouch only this afternoon after the verdict"--and he turned to me--"while the Judge was lunching with you, sir, and I begged him, now that it was all over, to send for his people, but he was stubborn as a mule, and swore he had no one who would want to see him. I don"t suppose he had; he"s been an outcast since he was born."
"And that"s why you worked so hard to hang him, was it?" The young man was thoroughly angry. I could see the color mount to his cheeks. I could see, too, that Crouch had no friends, except this young sprig of the law, who seemed as much chagrined over the loss of his case as anything else. And yet, I confess, I did not let my sympathies for the under dog get the better of me. I knew enough of the record of this new race not to recognize that there could be two sides to questions like this.
The district attorney bit his lip at the young man"s thrust. Then he answered him slowly, but without any show of anger:--
"You have one thing left, you know. You can ask for a new trial. What do you say, Judge?"
The Judge made no answer. He evidently had lost all interest in the case, for during the discussion he had been engaged in twisting the end of the straw into the stem of the pipe and peering into the clogged bowl with one eye shut.
"And if the Judge granted it, what good would it do?" burst out the young man as he rose to his feet. "If Sam Crouch had a soul as white as snow, it wouldn"t help him with these juries around here as long as his skin is the color it is!" and he put on his hat and left the room.
The Judge looked after him a moment and then said to me,--
"Our young men, sir, are impetuous and outspoken, but their hearts are all right. I haven"t a doubt but that Crouch was guilty. He"s probably been a vagrant all his life."
III
Some weeks after these occurrences I was on my way South, and again found myself within reach of the sleepy old park and the gruesome court-room.
I was the only pa.s.senger in the Pullman. I had traveled all night in this royal fashion--a whole car to myself--with the porter, a quiet, attentive young colored man of perhaps thirty years of age, duly installed as First Gentleman of the Bedchamber, and I had settled myself for a morning of seclusion when my privacy was broken in upon at a way station by the entrance of a young man in a shooting jacket and cap, and high boots splashed with mud.
He carried a folding gun in a leather case, an overcoat, and a game-bag, and was followed by two dogs. The porter relieved him of his belongings, stowed his gun in the rack, hung his overcoat on the hook, and distributed the rest of his equipment within reach of his hand.
Then he led the dogs back to the baggage car.
The next moment the young sportsman glanced over the car, rose from his seat, and held out his hand.
"Haven"t forgotten me, have you? Met you at the luncheon, you know--time the Judge was late waiting for the jury to come in."
To my delight and astonishment it was the young man in the Prince Albert coat.
He proved, as the morning wore on, to be a most entertaining young fellow, telling me of his sport and the birds he had shot, and of how good one dog was and how stupid the other, and how next week he was going after ducks down the river, and he described a small club-house which a dozen of his friends had built, and where, with true Southern hospitality, he insisted I should join him.
And then we fell to talking about the luncheon, and what a charming morning we had spent, and of the pretty girls and the dear grandmother; and we laughed again over the Judge"s stories, and he told me another, the Judge"s last, which he had heard his Honor tell at another luncheon; and then the porter put up a table, and spread a cloth, and began opening things with a corkscrew, and filling empty gla.s.ses with crushed ice and other things, and altogether we had a most comfortable and fraternal and much-to-be-desired half hour.
Just before he left the train--he had to get out at the junction--some further reference to the Judge brought to my recollection that ghostly afternoon in the courtroom. Suddenly the picture of the negro with that look of stolid resignation on his face came before me. I asked him if any appeal had been taken in the case as suggested by the district attorney.
"Appeal? In the Crouch case? Not much. Hung him high as Haman."
"When?"
""Bout a week ago. And by the way, a very curious thing happened at the hanging. The first time they strung Crouch up the rope broke and let him down, and they had to send eight miles for another. While they were waiting the mail arrived. The post-office was right opposite. In the bag was a letter for Crouch, care of the warden, but not directed to the jail. The postmaster brought it over and the warden opened it and read it to the prisoner, asking him who it was from, and the n.i.g.g.e.r said it was from his mother--that the man she worked for had written it. Of course the warden knew it was from Crouch"s girl, for Crouch had always sworn he had no family, so the Judge told me. Then Crouch asked the warden if he"d answer it for him before he died. The warden said he would, and got a sheet of paper, a pen and ink, and sitting down by Crouch under the gallows asked him what he wanted to say. And now, here comes the funny part. All that negro wanted to say was just this:--
""I"m enjoying good health and I hope to see you before long."
"SAM CROUCH."
"Then Crouch reached over and took the pen out of the warden"s hands, and marked a cross underneath what the warden had written, and when the warden asked him what he did that for, he said he wanted his mother to have something he had touched himself. By that time the new rope came and they swung him up. Curious, wasn"t it? The warden said it was the funniest message he ever knew a dying n.i.g.g.e.r to send, and he"d hung a good many of "em. It struck me as being some secret kind of a pa.s.sword. You never can tell about these c.o.o.ns."
"Did the warden mail it?"
"Oh, yes, of course he mailed it--warden"s square as a brick. Sent it, of course, care of the man the girl works for. He lives somewhere around here, or Crouch said he did. Awfully glad to see you again--I get out here."
The porter brought in the dogs, I picked up the gun, and we conducted the young sportsman out of the car and into a buggy waiting for him at the end of the platform.
As I entered the car again and waved my hand to him from the open window, I saw a negro woman dart from out the crowd of loungers, as if in eager search of some one. She was a tall, bony, ill-formed woman, wearing the rude garb of a farm hand--blue cotton gown, brown sunbonnet, and the rough muddy shoes of a man.
The dress was faded almost white in parts, and patched with different colors, but looked fresh and clean. It was held together over her flat bust by big bone b.u.t.tons. There was neither collar nor belt. The sleeves were rolled up above the elbows, showing her strong, muscular arms, tough as rawhide. The hands were large and bony, with big knuckles, the mark of the hoe in the palms.
In her eagerness to speak to the porter the sunbonnet had slipped off.
Black as the face was, it brought to my mind, strange to say, those weather-tanned fishwives of the Normandy coast--those st.u.r.dy, patient, earnest women, accustomed to toil and exposure and to the buffetings of wind and tempest.
When the porter appeared on his way back to the car, she sprang forward, and caught him by the arm.
"Oh, I"m dat sorry! An" he ain"t come wid ye?" she cried. "But ye see him, didn"t ye?" The voice was singularly sweet and musical. "Ye did?
Oh, dat"s good."