Chapter XXII: At Bay

Unfortunately, matters were not so easily arranged in Washington as Judge Kirtley had intimated in his telegram they might be. After learning of the situation, Mrs. Pennybacker had a strong suspicion that the dispatch was intentionally optimistic. Nor was she far wrong. Judge Kirtley was convinced from his knowledge of Mr. De Jarnette that his object was not to bring punishment upon his sister-in-law, but to get the child. He was equally convinced, however, that when Mr. De Jarnette found her blocking the way to the accomplishment of his purpose she would be swept aside regardless of the consequences to herself. He was, therefore, exceedingly anxious to avoid the possibility of her forcing his hand.

It was found when the party reached Washington that Richard De Jarnette was inexorable. And as Judge Kirtley explained to Margaret, the child was now of such age that his guardian could reasonably claim to be able to care for him, as he could not have done for an infant. The situation was grave.

They had gone directly to the Massachusetts Avenue house, which had been closed since Margaret's flight except for the periodical visits of a caretaker. It had been Mrs. Kirtley's task to see that it was ready for the sorrowful home-coming.

"No, I am not going to Maria's," Mrs. Pennybacker had told Bess. "Margaret needs us. And besides, Maria always rubs my fur the wrong way, and just now I want it to lie straight."

Several days elapsed after their return before Margaret saw anything of Richard De Jarnette. When she did he came to make a formal demand for the child.

She refused absolutely to give him up.

In thinking of that interview when he was gone she felt depressingly aware that she had done her cause no good, for she had said many bitter intemperate things, being under great provocation. To them all he listened without reply until she had spent herself. Then he said,

"My dead brother's will gave me this child. I accept it as a sacred trust. The courts have sustained that will and my claim. I shall have the child. I beg that you will not deceive yourself, nor let any one else deceive you into thinking that my determination is subject to change."

"You will never get him," she said, "unless you tear him by force from my arms!"

He bowed gravely then and left her.

The next day an officer appeared at the Massachusetts Avenue house with a paper to serve upon Mrs. De Jarnette.

Habeas corpus proceedings had been instituted in the District Supreme Court by Richard De Jarnette to recover the custody of his ward, Philip Varnum De Jarnette. Margaret Varnum De Jarnette, the mother of the child, was named as respondent in the suit. The paper was an order duly signed requiring the respondent to show cause October twelfth at 10 a. m. why writ of habeas corpus should not be issued.

October twelfth was one week away.

* * * * *

The court-room was crowded to its utmost capacity when the De Jarnette case was called. A contest for the custody of a child rarely fails to excite interest, and in this case it was greatly enhanced by the social position and financial standing of the litigants. Besides this, the case had attracted much attention because of the legal points involved.

The daily papers had done their best to prepare the public for this trial. The account of the finding of the child after years of search had been given in full (with one notable exception) from the Smeltzer point of view. The details of the sensational will case were revived and the kidnapping by the mother on the night following the decision which awarded her child to the guardian under the will. The accident by which Victor De Jarnette lost his life was recalled and related with much circumstantiality and some enlargement. It was all discussed in many a household in Washington during the week preceding the trial, and it brought to the court-room a good attendance that day. Women were there in unusual numbers, drawn thither by their sympathies as well as their curiosity. John Harcourt, looking back of him, thought he had never seen so many there before.

Margaret, accompanied by Mrs. Pennybacker, Bess and Mrs. Kirtley, sat beside the old Judge,--Mr. De Jarnette by his counsel. This by a chance brought the two who were fighting for the child side by side, while Philip, in childish ignorance of what it all meant, sat between them. Of course nothing had been said to him about the case, and the arguments of counsel threw no enlightenment upon the matter to him.

But there was one book that Philip had learned to read if he did not know anything about the weighty volumes they were quoting from, and that was his mother's face. He saw from it now that something was wrong, and climbing up into her lap, he took her cheeks between his chubby hands and kissed her gravely on lips and eyes. Then, satisfied at the faint smile his caress evoked, he slid down to the floor, placed his chair close to hers, and laid his head against her shoulder. The little byplay was not lost on those in the vicinity, and the clerk, looking up just then, wondered what it could be that he had lost. The women spectators and some of the men were wiping their eyes.

There had been a fearful strain upon Margaret in these last few days,--the journey, the suspense, the constantly-growing fear of how it would terminate were almost more than she could stand up against. She had a strange sudden sense of unreality. She looked around to see if it were really she. Then by one of those quick reversions that the mind sometimes makes, it seemed to her that she had been in precisely this place once before, not in that other trial, but in one just like this, that Mrs. Pennybacker sat beside her then as now, that Philip leaned against her thus, and that a man was saying this identical thing. She looked around at the court officers half dazed.

As the trial proceeded she lost hope, Mr. De Jarnette's attorney was making out such a clear case. But when Judge Kirtley spoke it did not seem that there was room for doubt as to how it would go. She _must_ get the child. He closed with a powerful plea for a mother's supreme right.

After the closing of the arguments the Judge spoke:

"The question to be determined," he said, "is not one of sentiment, but of law. Briefly stated it is this: Whether the statute of Charles II,