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: