Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

“This—” he said. “I didn’t expect—I didn’t look to see—. I’m going to pray,” he said. “I aint going to pray aloud. But I hope—” He looked at them. “I wish … Maybe some of you all anyway had better do the same.” He bowed his head. They watched him, quiet and grave, while he sat motionless behind the table, the light morning wind moving faintly in his thin hair and the shadow-stipple of windy leaves gliding and flowing across the starched bulge of bosom and the gleaming bone-buttoned cuffs, as rigid and almost as large as sections of six-inch stovepipe, at his joined hands. He raised his head. “Armstid against Snopes,” he said. Mrs Armstid spoke. She did not move, she looked at nothing, her hands clasped in her lap, speaking in that flat, toneless and hopeless voice:

“That Texas man said —”

“Wait,” the Justice said. He looked about at the faces, the blurred eyes fleeing behind the thick lenses. “Where is the defendant? I dont see him.”

“He wouldn’t come,” the bailiff said.

“Wouldn’t come?” the Justice said. “Didn’t you serve the papers on him?”

“He wouldn’t take them,” the bailiff said. “He said—”

“Then he is in contempt!” the Justice cried.

“What for?” Lump Snopes said. “Aint nobody proved yet they was his horses.” The Justice looked at him.

“Are you representing the defendant?” he said. Snopes blinked at him for a moment.

“What’s that mean?” he said. “That you aim for me to pay whatever fine you think you can clap onto him?”

“So he refuses to defend himself,” the Justice said. “Dont he know that I can find against him for that reason, even if pure justice and decency aint enough?”

“It’ll be pure something,” Snopes said. “It dont take no mind-reader to see how your mind is—”

“Shut up, Snopes,” the bailiff said. “If you aint in this case, you keep out of it.” He turned back to the Justice. “What you want me to do: go over to the Bend and fetch Snopes here anyway? I reckon I can do it.”

“No,” the Justice said. “Wait.” He looked about at the sober faces again with that bafflement, that dread. “Does anybody here know for sho who them horses belonged to? Anybody?” They looked back at him, sober, attentive—at the neat immaculate old man sitting with his hands locked together on the table before him to still the trembling. “All right, Mrs Armstid,” he said. “Tell the Court what happened.” She told it, unmoving, in the flat, inflectionless voice, looking at nothing, while they listened quietly, coming to the end and ceasing without even any fall of voice, as though the tale mattered nothing and came to nothing. The Justice was looking down at his hands. When she ceased, he looked up at her. “But you haven’t showed yet that Snopes owned the horses. The one you want to sue is that Texas man. And he’s gone. If you got a judgment against him, you couldn’t collect the money. Dont you see?”

“Mr Snopes brought him here,” Mrs Armstid said. “Likely that Texas man wouldn’t have knowed where Frenchman’s Bend was if Mr Snopes hadn’t showed him.”

“But it was the Texas man that sold the horses and collected the money for them.” The Justice looked about again at the faces. “Is that right? You, Bookwright, is that what happened?”

“Yes,” Bookwright said. The Justice looked at Mrs Armstid again, with that pity and grief. As the morning increased the wind had risen, so that from time to time gusts of it ran through the branches overhead, bringing a faint snow of petals, prematurely bloomed as the spring itself had condensed with spendthrift speed after the hard winter, and the heavy and drowsing scent of them, about the motionless heads.

“He give Mr Snopes Henry’s money. He said Henry hadn’t bought no horse. He said I could get the money from Mr Snopes tomorrow.”

“And you have witnesses that saw and heard him?”

“Yes, sir. The other men that was there saw him give Mr Snopes the money and say that I could get it—”

“And you asked Snopes for the money?”

“Yes, sir. He said that Texas man taken it away with him when he left. But I would …” She ceased again, perhaps looking down at her hands also. Certainly she was not looking at anyone.

“Yes?” the Justice said. “You would what?”

“I would know them five dollars. I earned them myself, weaving at night after Henry and the chaps was asleep. Some of the ladies in Jefferson would save up string and uch and give it to me and I would weave things and sell them. I earned that money a little at a time and I would know it when I saw it because I would take the can outen the chimney and count it now and then while it was making up to enough to buy my chaps some shoes for next winter. I would know it if I was to see it again. If Mr Snopes would just let—”

“Suppose there was somebody seen Flem give that money back to that Texas fellow,” Lump Snopes said suddenly.

“Did anybody here see that?” the Justice said.