The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson: The Dream Of X & Other Fantastic Visions (6 page)

And young Jem Turrill was in very sore trouble, indeed; though far less a guilty-souled man than the woman or the Court believed him. Indeed, by
the woman and the Court, he was already foredoomed to condemnation; but
Judge Barclay saw a little deeper, and was striving, somewhat
inefficiently, to elicit such replies from the prisoner as should present his case
in a less dreadful light. But young Jem only stood like a clumsy oaf,
protesting with sullen earnestness his innocence to the old Judge who desired
to believe him; and to the Court that entirely disbelieved him. Once, in the m
idst of his protesting of innocence he stopped, and looked suddenly at Mrs Judge Barclay—the one woman in the court—as if he had an abrupt thought
that she perhaps might understand that he was innocent of the worst. The
action was born of a sudden, rather hopeless instinct, that became instantly wholly hopeless, as his look met her grim, unfaltering gaze, as merciless as that of any man present. And with a hopeless little half-drunken shrugging of
his shoulders he had turned from her, and once more faced the old Judge,
whose leaning towards mercy he perceived dimly.

The details were brief enough. He had been up at the shanty of one
Duncan Larsden, playing cards, during the past night (it was early morning
still). Pistol shots a little before dawn had brought up the sheriff and a couple
of his men, who found Larsden dead, with a bullet-wound in his head.
Young Jem Turrill was gone, and with him, as was shortly proved, at least
two hundred ounces of Larsden’s gold. The sheriff took up the hot trail, and ran the young man down within two hours, and already he was in the Court, being tried for his life. Indeed, so speedily had events moved that his old mother at that very moment awaited him in the shanty with a newly cooked damper, and a freshly opened tin of salmon, all unaware of the dreadfulness
that was falling.

As I have said, Jem sullenly but vehemently protested his innocence.
When caught by the sheriff he was found to have on him a one hundred
ounce bag of gold-dust, in addition to the nuggets of the dead man. The gold dust he was easily able to prove as his own property; at least, it had been his
on the previous evening. His version was that Larsden had lost his two
hundred ounces of nuggets to him, and had then staked his claim against the
three hundred ounces of gold that Jem held. Larsden had won, but even as
he declared himself winner, two aces had dropped out of his sleeve, and Jem
had rounded upon him as a cheat—a swizzler. At the accusation, Larsden had drawn on him, but his “gun” had missed fire, and Jem had got home a
good useful shot before the other man had time to pull the trigger a second
time, and Duncan Larsden had slipped out noisily into the twilight of life.
Jem had then got a sick fright that the affair might look bad for him, and, like a silly young fool, had proceeded to make it immediately ten thousand times worse by bolting with the gold. Possibly, if he had been more sober, he would
have seen the folly of his action in time, but regrets were useless; he had
bolted, and been found with the “stolen” gold upon him.

It is true that, in young Jem’s favour, it was found that a miss-fire
cartridge occupied one of the chambers of Larsden’s revolver, but this was not exactly evidence; and against this one favourable item was the fact that
the young man had gone off with the two hundred ounces of gold that had not been his the previous evening. This was the thing that condemned him; there was no thought of mercy on the part of the jurors; there had been far
too much thieving in the township of late; it was a matter that vitally affected each and every one of them, for some had gold in their shanties or tents, and others hoped some time to be in a like pleasing condition. The result of such interests, dealing with such evidence, was a foregone conclusion—young Jem
Turrill was sentenced to be hanged the next morning at dawn; the gallows a
tree just outside of the north end of the township. It had been used previously for the same purpose, having a convenient bough.

As Jem was led out of the shanty where the Court had been held, he
turned suddenly and stared fiercely at Mrs Judge Barclay; she was, as I have said, the only woman there.

“Hey!” shouted the sullen Jem, with an extraordinary flash of analytical inspiration. “You’m a hard-hearted old brute you be! Sittin’ there an’ thinkin’ proper to have me murdered, you old hag!”

He was hustled away, for old Mrs Barclay was well enough liked, and thoroughly respected; and the only effect of the young man’s outburst was to
fix more firmly on her mind, and on the minds of all the others, that he was
but a brutish creature, and better hanged soon than late. Even old Judge
Barclay was conscious of a momentary flash of anger against him for his
address to his wife.

And so the young man went out to the little log-built lock-up, where he
was to fret away the hours that remained.

Meanwhile, someone told his old mother.

At daybreak next day, however, when the sheriff visited the lock-up with a number of his posse to lead young Turrill to his own grim version of under-
the-greenwood-tree, he found the men he had left on guard comfortably
ensconced within the lock-up, in a state of beatific drunkenness, but Jem, the
condemned (but soul-guiltless) murderer, was distinctly not there.

Explanations from the guard were confused, and the sheriff twisted the key on him, in turn, whilst he organised search parties for Jem Turrill. The
search parties were not a success, and it seemed that Jem had got safely away,
but the sheriff was an obstinate man, and having arranged a hanging, was
determined that a hanging there should be. He stuck, therefore, to the search, but adopted a new method; he watched the comings and goings of Jem’s old
mother.

Meanwhile, old Judge Barclay, having a day of rest before him, chose to go fishing, accompanied, as ever, by Mrs Barclay. He was in a restful and
contented frame of mind. He was thoroughly, though secretly, glad that
young Jem had escaped. He felt in his heart that, whatever the evidence, the man was less guilty than proof had shown.

It was in the late afternoon, just as old Judge Barclay was having an exciting moment with an exceptionally fine fish, that both he and his wife heard a woman screaming somewhere among the trees on their side of the
river. The Judge handed his rod to his wife, and ran off in the direction of the sound. Mrs Judge Barclay consigned the rod to the river-bank, and followed
him. The screams continued, and the old Judge began to run, breathlessly, and his wife also, with a sudden, new-born feeling of something that was
worse than discomfort stirring peculiar emotions within her. They dashed on
among the trees, guided by the screams, and burst through into a small
clearing, in the midst of which stood a solitary oak; and so had view of a
painful and dreadful sight—Justice, the Fetish of all perfect man, about to
accept a victim.

There was a group of men under a great bough of the oak, and one of
the men was trying to throw a rope up over the branch; and even as the old Judge and his wife ran across the clearing, he succeeded; whereupon several
of the men ran and caught hold of the dangling end, and proceeded to haul
the slack over the branch. Mrs Judge Barclay saw then, all in a moment, as it
were, that the other end of the rope was fast about the neck of a man who
had his back turned to her, and she experienced a peculiar little sick feeling,
as Nature began to have birth in her. She was still hastening towards the
group as she discovered these details, and in almost the same instant she
discovered that the screaming came from a woman who was held by a couple
of the men.

Her glance went again to the others. Several of them had stepped back a
little from the noosed man, and had their Smith and Wessons in their hands. She recognised the sheriff, and knew that the man with the rope about his neck was Jem Turrill. She did not know that they were going to shoot poor
Jem full up with lead as soon as he should have swung sufficiently to get the
“taste of the hangin’ into his heart.” Nor, if she had realised the fact, would
she have understood that mercy was really at the back of the men’s intention
—mercy with the cestus, instead of the gentle fingers of woman, but mercy
nevertheless. And so came Mrs Judge Barclay to the group of men intent
about their work.

The condemned lad (for he was scarcely more) stood pale and grimly
silent, swallowing constantly and dreadfully at the dryness that seemed to fill
his throat, and looking with wild eyes at the woman held by the two men, for
it was his old mother.

“Help! Help!” she would scream, and fall into a sudden, trembling
silence, quivering so that her quivering shook the two brawny men who held
her, so callously determined. And again her scream would ring out madly, “Help! Help!” crying to any god that might be listening.

Mrs Judge Barclay stood a moment, looking at it all with wider eyes than she had ever opened before—seeing it, and at last beginning, with a
horrible sickness in all her being, to understand something of what old Judge
Barclay, her husband, had never been given words or skill to “make seen” to
her.

The mother’s crying broke out again, fierce and terrible in its white-hot intensity:—“Help! Help!” And she began to struggle like a maniac, with the
two big men who held her. The dreadfulness of it all!
…
It was she, his own mother, who had innocently led the posse to where her son was hid. They had
watched her, as I have told, and had followed her, secretly, as she slipped
away quietly through the woods, taking a towelful of damper and tinned
goods to Jem’s hiding-place. She it was who had managed the escape for him
by conveying drink to the man on guard, and she it was who had found the
hiding-place for him, and she it was who had brought him food; and now
she had brought him to his death. She began to scream incoherent words and
to give out scarcely human sounds, and her struggles became so fierce that her clothing was ripped literally into ribbons of cloth and cotton in the hands of the two unemotional, almost casually determined men who had held her
off from going to her son.

Old Mrs Barclay stared, suffering at last in understanding of the stern and deathly intention that informed the group of men “about their business”;
and with her heart sick with the horror of pain that seemed suddenly to
emanate from that one plague-spot of tragedy, and fill all the earth. Her grim old face had grown ghastly under its pale tan colour…. This was Justice, the
Justice that she had so constantly hammered into her husband the need of dealing, without shrinking…. This madly desperate mother, and this lad,
barely out of his teens (she was seeing sanely at last), standing noosed within
a few yards of her, and already, as it were, looking at his mother from the other side of the Eternity of Death…. And the sheriffs men (the Men of
Death they seemed now to her) all around, so dreadly purposeful and
obdurate to the Voice of Natural Pity that wailed at them out of the lips of
the crazed mother…. This was what she—she, Anna Barclay, had urged her
husband towards many and many a time; she had never known; never!
Never—NEVER! … She could almost have screamed her denial….

No wonder John (her husband) had been always so inclined towards mercy…. My God, were there often such scenes as these going on in the
same world…. Was there often this weight of terror and complete HORROR bred into being by the deliberate doings of Man, for any purpose whatever— call it Justice or by any other name?… This dreadfulness. This dreadfulness
that choked her. This … and suddenly she found her voice:

“STOP!” she cried, with a voice as deep and hoarse as a man’s. “STOP!” … She waved her hands a moment incoherently, fighting to take control of
the fierce passion of horror and agony of pity that beat through every fibre of
her, possessing her. “Stop!” she cried again; and then:

“How dare you! … Oh, how dare all you men be met together here to do this—to do such a thing! To do such a thing
…
” She stopped abruptly,
and stared at the men, as if they were things incredibly monstrous, and they,
on their part, looked round at her and the Judge, only then aware of their
advent.

“Let him go at once!” said old Mrs Judge Barclay, speaking again, as her
voice became once more a controllable possession…. “Let him go to his
mother…. Let them both go.”