Chapter XXVI: A Terrible Scene

We must now explain the cause of the parlor storm. It came on in this way:

All the guests of Haymore Hall—with the exception of the Legg family in the library—were still assembled in the drawing-room.

The Campbell party, father, mother and daughter, still occupied the obscure sofa against the rear wall of the back division.

Judy and Will Walling were seated near, talking with them.

Dandy, Mike and Longman were standing on the rug before the fire, exchanging confidences on the affairs of the evening.

Gentleman Geff reclined, stupidly staring, on a divan in the recess of the front bay window, and occasionally drew from his pocket a large flask, which, with trembling hands, he uncorked and put to his lips.

Ran walked about from one group of friends to another, trying to seem at ease, but too surely in a state of intense anxiety.

Presently he took heart of grace and went up to the group on the sofa, touched the Rev. James Campbell on the shoulder and said:

“Come with me, please, reverend sir; I wish to consult you.”

The rector arose and drew the arm of his host within his own and walked away with him. They did not leave the drawing-room, but went slowly up and down its length for the first few minutes in silence.

Ran did not seem to know how to open the subject he had on his mind. So it was the rector, after all, who, probably divining the nature of his friend’s difficulty, was the first to speak and to speak to the point.

“The hour is late, and something should be done with that——” He paused, unwilling to use the words that arose to his lips, and he indicated the inebriate by a movement of his thumb.

“Yes,” said Ran, “that is what puzzles me. It was of that I wished to talk with you.”

“Go on then! Let me have your views. It is late, as I remarked before, and I should have taken my wife and daughter home an hour ago, but that I did not wish to leave you until something should be settled in regard to this man.”

“But you will not leave us to-night? Rooms have already been prepared for you!” exclaimed Ran.

“My dear young friend, I thank you heartily, for myself and my womenkind, but we must return to the rectory to-night. My daughter has left her young babe there,” replied the rector.

“But it is so late.”

“But the distance is so short.”

“Do oblige us by staying, Mr. Campbell.”

“My dear Mr. Hay, don’t you see it is impossible, much as I thank you?”

“Well, I am sorry. So will Judy be.”

“And now about the disposition of this—Montgomery?”

“Yes,” sighed Randolph Hay.

“What do you intend to do?”

“I do not know, sir. I want you to tell me, if you please. I might send for a constable to take him to the lockup house, as they call it here; but I do not like to do that. I might send him in a carriage to the village tavern, but I think he would drink himself to death there; or I might give him a bed here for the present, and indeed this is what I would rather do.”

“Eh—what? Keep the fellow here?”

“For the present, yes.”

“And in the name of common sense—why?”

“Well, to keep him out of harm’s way.”

“My good young friend, you did well to take counsel with me. You would have done well to take counsel of any sane man on such a subject.”

“Why, what do you mean?”

“I begin to suspect that you need a trustee for your estate and a guardian for your person!”

“I don’t understand you!”

“Listen, then! That fellow deserves to go to prison. He might be sent to the village inn. But, my friend, he must not be allowed to spend so much as one night under your roof. To let him do so would be an act of insanity.”

“But why?”

“For more reasons than one. In the first place, he is the fraudulent claimant of your name and estate, though his claim will not bear an instant of light, a ray of truth, let in upon it; yet your allowing him to remain in the house to which he came as its pretended master, would seem, to him at least, to be giving some color to his pretensions. Do you see?”

“I see what you mean, but I am not afraid of anything he, poor wretch, may think or say or do. Is there any other reason why he should not be sheltered here?”

“Yes—not so strong a reason, to be sure; but a most decent one.”

“Well?”

“He is a bigamist. He came here bringing a cruelly deceived, falsely married woman, who was never, therefore, wife or bride. She, not ‘Mrs.’ anybody, but Miss Legg, is here in your house under the charge of her parents, who are your guests. Therefore it would be unseemly—to use the mildest term—for him to remain under the same roof. Do you see now?”

“Oh, yes, I see. How oblique one’s vision is at times, however. Well, Mr. Campbell, you have told me what I must not do with him; will you now tell me what I may?”

“Certainly. If your merciful spirit shrinks from passing him over into the hands of the law, you can have him put into a carriage and taken to the village inn—‘The Red Fox,’ Giles Scroggins, host.”

“I will do so, and hold myself responsible for his expenses there,” said Randolph Hay.

And then both men looked toward the divan in the front bay window, on which lolled Gentleman Geff, very drunk and getting drunker every instant, for he now had the big flask turned up to his mouth, with his head thrown so far back that he was evidently draining the last drop of its contents. When he had done so, he made a futile attempt to restore the empty flask to his pocket, but instead let it fall to the floor, while he dropped back into his lolling position.

It was at this moment that Clay Legg strode into the drawing-room, fresh from his humiliating interview with his father, smarting under the disclosure of his sister’s dishonor.

He strode past all the guests in his way, and straight up to the side of his late friend and patron, Gentleman Geff, struck his hand heavily on the drunkard’s shoulder, shook him roughly and said:

“Do you know, you brute! you devil! what is before you?”

Gentleman Geff opened his heavy red eyes and stared in a deep stupor, through which fury began to kindle slowly, like flame from under a thick smoke.

“Answer me, you beast!” demanded Legg, with another and rougher shake of the wretch under his grasp. “Do you know what is before you?”

“No! nor care!” roared the madman, with a perfect stream of profanity and obscenity.

“Then listen to me!” said Legg, when at length the torrent from Tartarus was stayed. “What is before you is first a trial for bigamy, with fourteen years of penal serviture, with hard labor, bread and water, ball and chain, dark cell and frequent flogging thrown in!”

Gentleman Geff answered this by a glare of hatred and defiance and another inundation from the River of Styx.

Legg waited until that flood was exhausted and then added:

“Nor is that all! For when your first term of penal servitude shall be served out, another indictment will await you for conspiracy, perjury, forgery and fraud, by which you sought to gain possession of the Haymore estate, and another fourteen years, at least, of imprisonment, hard labor, stripes, chains and the rest!”

Again Gentleman Geff opened his lips in a way that made his mouth seem the opening of the pit of fire and brimstone for the blasting curses that issued from it.

And again Legg waited in sarcastic silence until the smoke and flame had sunk down, and then he added:

“If you should live through your second term you will have served twenty-eight years and you will be near sixty years of age—a very hoary-headed sinner, indeed! And yet, at the end of that time, the United States will want you on a charge of highway robbery and attempted murder, and will get you under the international extradition treaty. And you will pass the remainder of your guilty life in an American prison, where not only are the strong and rebellious criminals compelled to labor, but the aged, the infirm, and the invalids are scourged and driven to hard work, until they drop dead (if all tales be true). ‘Do you like the picture?’”

A blast of fury, profanity and indecency, more diabolical than all that bad preceded it, stormed from the mouth of the madman, and raved like a whirlwind around the ears of the listener.

When this had died of its own frenzy, Legg spoke again and for the last time.

“Do you know, you fiend, who are here? I will tell you! The witnesses who will convict you of every crime known to mankind. There on the sofa, at the opposite end of this room, a little in the shadow, sits your wife, Jennie Montgomery, whom you married, deserted and afterward stabbed, and left for dead in the streets in New York. There she sits between her mother and father, all three bent on prosecuting you to the full extent of the law! Look attentively and you will see them! There, talking with Lawyer Walling, is Randolph Hay, your benefactor, who saved you from starving and shared his hut with you in the mining camp of Grizzly Gulch, and whom you robbed, tried to murder and left for dead in the Black Woods of California so that you might claim his name and place with impunity! He will be compelled to prosecute you! And across the hall, in the library with her father, is the woman you deceived into a false marriage. She will prosecute you with all the vim, venom and virulence of a proud, outraged and revengeful woman. That is, if she does not prefer to execute you with her own hands.”

Clay Legg should have known the dangerous wild beast he was goading to madness, yet he went on with a strange fatuity.

Gentleman Geff had followed with his eyes the index of Clay Legg to the distant sofa, on which sat the wronged wife, Jennie Montgomery, between her father and her mother. He had slowly but surely recognized her, stared at her in stupid dismay until he was again stung to fury by the insulting words of Clay Legg, when he turned his kindling eyes on the face of the man who was drawing such a degrading picture of his fate. It seemed then that it only needed the cessation of the sound of the speaker’s voice to break the spell that held the demoniac; for no sooner had it ceased than he sprang to his feet with a terrible roar and hurled himself toward Legg.

But the latter saw his peril with the speed of lightning and fled away, leaving others to brave the storm he himself had raised.

In an instant the maniac was raging in the midst of “the goodlie company,” and all was fear, panic and confusion.

Little Mike, unhappily, was nearest to the madman and first to attempt to pacify him. But the demon caught up a heavy astral lamp from the table nearest to him and shivered it upon the head of the willing peacemaker, who fell like a slaughtered sheep.

Judy’s shrieks of agony rang out upon the air, and brought the terrified servants to the drawing-room doors.

The demoniac sprang upon the table and seized a heavy chair, which he whirled around his head, threatening all who approached.

Ran and Longman sprang upon the table and threw themselves upon him.

It was at this moment that John Legg, startled by the screams of the women, entered the drawing-room, through the side door leading from the hall.

Yes, it was pandemonium that met the horror-stricken eyes of the man. Can I possibly show you the scene as he beheld it?

As he stood in the doorway, on his left, near the bay window in the upper end of the room, high on the table stood the athletic form of the demoniac, raging and foaming, cursing and threatening in the frenzy of _mania a potu_, swinging aloft the heavy chair which he whirled around his head with the swiftness and velocity of a windmill. On the same table stood Samson Longman and Randolph Hay, struggling to master the maniac, who seemed possessed of the strength of seven devils.

On the floor, near the middle of the room, lay Michael Man, stunned by a wound in his head, prostrate and insensible. Near him were scattered the fragments of the astral lamp that had evidently been the instrument by which his skull had been fractured. Beside him sat Judith Hay, with his wounded head on her lap. She was weeping and wailing, giving full vent to her grief and horror after the manner of her warm-hearted, impulsive race. Beside him on the opposite side knelt the Rev. Mr. Campbell, with a bowl of water and a napkin, washing the blood from the cut.

Away back in the lower end of the long room, on a shady sofa, sat Mrs. Campbell and her daughter, Jennie Montgomery, clasped in each other’s arms, with their heads hidden on each other’s shoulders, too much shocked, horror-stricken, terrified to help, to speak or even to move. From under the same sofa peered the pallid face and staring eyes of Dandy Quin, who had evidently sought that lowly refuge “as the safest place at the crack of doom” for a poor little old man.

Neither Clay Legg nor Will Walling were to be seen anywhere.

All this, which has required some time to describe, was taken in at one view by John Legg. And for one instant he stood in doubt where first to offer help; whether to jump—but no; honest John’s jumping days were over—whether to scramble up on the table and help to subdue the maniac possessed of a legion of devils, or to kneel down by the side of the minister to serve if he could the wounded man. In another moment the doubt was decided for him.

Ran succeeded in getting both his hands around the throat of the demoniac, which he held as in the grip of death, while Longman wrenched and twisted the heavy, murderous missile from his hands and dropped it on the floor and then closed with him in a conquering clasp. But it took all his strength, as well as all of Ran’s, to hold the infuriate, now that his arms were free.

Feeling sure that the maniac was conquered, John Legg turned his attention from the scene of conquest on the table to the scene of suffering on the carpet.

“Is the young man dangerously wounded?” he inquired in a low tone of Mr. Campbell.

“We hope not. We hope this may be only a scalp wound. But it will be impossible to tell until there is a surgical examination,” replied the minister.

“Has a doctor been sent for?”

“Yes; Mr. Walling has gone out to dispatch a servant for Mr. Hobbs, the village practitioner.”

“Oh, me poor Mike!” cried Judy, breaking afresh into sobs and tears and dialect. “Me poor, dear, darlint bhoy! Sure he was born to have the head av him broke. Sure, it’s not the first time, though it’s the worst. But, afther all, it is not so bad broke as me own dear Ran’s was, be the same token, and be the hands av that same murthering thaif av the wurruld! Oh! wirra! wirra! It was not enough that he kilt me dear Ran intirely, but now he must kill me poor Mike!” wailed Judy until her words were drowned in a flood of tears.

Mr. Campbell gazed in astonishment for a moment. In this wild Irish girl, giving full swing to her emotions and her brogue, he could scarcely recognize the quiet gentlewoman he had known now for some hours as Mrs. Randolph Hay. But he quickly recovered himself, and atoned for his involuntary rudeness by withdrawing his gaze and offering the gentlest words of consolation.

In the meantime the struggle on the table was continued in grim silence. The opponents saving all their wind for their strife until, as they swayed back and forth, the equilibrium of the board was overbalanced, and table and men fell together to the floor with a loud crash that called forth shrieks from the women.

For one moment the three men rolled together in a knot on the carpet, and the next Gentleman Geff lay flat on his back, with Longman’s knees on his chest and hands around his throat.

“Ran!” exclaimed the hunter, “take my handkerchief out of my coat pocket and tie the feet of this wild beast!”

Ran immediately tried to obey. He drew the large red bandanna from Longman’s pocket, found it strong enough for its purpose, and went around and took hold of the feet of the prostrate madman, but he immediately received a shower of kicks upon his chest that knocked him breathless.

Seeing that, Longman raised his voice again.

“Mr. Legg, come here! We haven’t got a man to deal with, but a devil, and a rum-maddened devil at that!”

Legg immediately rushed to the rescue.

“Have you got a scarf or a handkerchief? A good strong one. All right! Tie this brute’s fore paws together while I hold him down. Samson, my namesake, what amazing strength rum and madness gives a brute!” panted Longman, when he had finished his labor and arose to his feet.

The conquered demoniac lay bound and gagged on the floor, his murderous limbs helpless, his blasphemous tongue speechless. Yet still he writhed, tossed and floundered like some huge, stranded sea monster.

The distressed group gathered around Michael Man were obliged to wait in quietness for the arrival of the doctor, for they dared not even move the wounded man lest they should do him a fatal injury.

Dr. Hobbs came at last, and being a country practitioner, he brought his medicine chest as well as his surgical case with him.

He was a tall, lank, red-haired young Yorkshireman, fresh from the London colleges, who had lately succeeded to the practice of his father, an aged, retired physician of the place.

He found two patients to be treated, one in as dire need as the other.

But after hearing a brief account of the occurrence from Mr. Randolph Hay, he gave his first services to the youth, Michael Man.

The bleeding wound in his head was of itself bringing back the consciousness of the wounded lad.

Dr. Hobbs knelt by his side and made a careful examination of his injuries, and then he told the anxious friends that they were not dangerous, only a deep scalp wound and a very slight fracture of the skull.

He washed and dressed the wound there on the spot, and then directed that the youth should be taken to his room, undressed and put to bed.

A narrow mattress was brought by two menservants, who laid it on the carpet, lifted the wounded youth tenderly, laid him on it and so bore him out of the drawing-room and up the grand staircase to his chamber on the third floor, followed by Dr. Hobbs and Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Hay.

By the time Michael Man was carefully undressed and comfortably settled in bed he recovered his faculties sufficiently to recognize the situation and speak to those around him.

“Don’t ye be frighted, Judy, darlint,” he murmured feebly to his pallid, distressed sister, who was bending anxiously over him.

“Sure, and I’m not, Mike, dear. Yourself will be all right soon,” she replied, putting much constraint upon herself.

“Troth, and I’m all right now. So the redskins did come and attack the fort, afther all. But the colonel was aquil to the blackguards,” he added.

And then the doctor perceived that he was becoming delirious, and he administered a sedative. When the patient had grown quiet again the doctor left him, with his sister Judy sitting by his bed, and went downstairs to the drawing-room to attend to the other case waiting for his treatment.

There he found the demoniac still lying on the floor, bound hand and foot. Longman, Dandy and Mr. Campbell were standing around him. They had taken the gag from his mouth, but he was breathing heavily. He had suffered the usual reaction in _mania a potu_, from violent frenzy to deep coma.

The men around him made way for the young doctor, who knelt down beside him, looked into his face, felt his pulse and his heart, and even lifted the heavy, half-closed lids of his swollen eyes. Then he rose and said:

“I think you may unbind him with safety now; he will not be in a condition to assault any one or do any harm for many days to come, if he ever should.”

At this moment Ran re-entered the drawing-room and reported Mike as sleeping quietly.

Then, in the kindness of his heart toward his fallen foe, he stooped and examined the condition of Gentleman Geff, whom Longman had just unbound and straightened out, and who was now lying relaxed and limp on the carpet.

“Now, Mr. Campbell,” said Ran, standing up, “you see that we have no alternative than to put this poor wretch to bed in the house here.”

“Not so,” said the rector. Then turning to the doctor, he inquired: “Will it be safe to remove this man immediately to my house—to the rectory, that is? The distance is short, you know.”

“It will be perfectly safe, sir,” replied the physician.

“Then, Mr. Hay, I shall be much obliged to you for the use of a spring wagon or cart and a mattress with pillows and proper covering to convey this man to the rectory,” said Mr. Campbell, turning to his host.

“But, my dear sir, do you think of what you are about to do?” demanded Ran.

“Yes; my duty.”

“But your daughter?”

“She need never see or speak to him or be troubled by him. Jennie is a very sensible, practical young woman; always was so, like her dear mother. And her misfortunes—the result of her one act of imprudence—have made her even more so. Jennie will be no hindrance.”

“But why should you take so much trouble, make such a sacrifice, assume such a responsibility as to carry this stupefied madman to your quiet house?”

“Because, as I said before, it is my duty. I am a minister of the merciful Gospel, however much below that sacred calling, and must set an example of charity—practice some little of what I preach. The man is my daughter’s husband, however unworthy of her; my own son-in-law, however discreditable to me; and I must do my duty by him, however disagreeable to us all. My dear wife and daughter will give no trouble. There will be no scenes, no hysterics. They are good, true, strong women, and will sustain me in my action. But they need not go near the man. Longman, his mother and myself can take care of him. And now, my friend, will you order the conveyance?”

With a sigh and a gesture of deprecation, Ran went out to give the necessary directions.

There had been some delay caused by this discussion; but it did not matter to the unworthy subject of it; he was lying on the carpet in a dead stupor, and for himself was as well there as anywhere else: so there was no hurry.

In less than half an hour a light spring cart, such as is used by expressmen, was brought around from the stables. It was drawn by two horses and furnished with comfortable bedding, and to this receptacle Gentleman Geff was conveyed in the arms of four men.

The rector and the doctor rode on the seat with the driver, and they took the road to the rectory.

Mrs. Campbell and her daughter, declining all Mr. and Mrs. Hay’s pressing invitations, set out in one of the Hall carriages for their home. Longman rode on the box with the coachman.

Mr. Walling, old Dandy and the Legg family were the only remaining guests at the Hall, and these declined to retire to bed.