Читать книгу Counsel for the Defense - Scott Leroy - Страница 11

Table of Contents

Katherine’s refusal of Harrison Blake’s unforeseen proposal, during the summer she had graduated from Vassar, had, until the present hour, been the most painful experience of her life.

Ever since that far-away autumn of her fourteenth year when Blake had led an at-first forlorn crusade against “Blind Charlie” Peck and swept that apparently unconquerable autocrat and his corrupt machine from power, she had admired Blake as the ideal public man. He had seemed so fine, so big already, and loomed so large in promise—it was the fall following his proposal that he was elected lieutenant-governor—that it had been a humiliation to her that she, so insignificant, so unworthy, could not give him that intractable passion, love. But though he had gone very pale at her stammered answer, he had borne his disappointment like a gallant gentleman; and in the years since then he had acquitted himself to perfection in that most difficult of rôles, the lover who must be content to be mere friend.

Katherine still retained her girlish admiration of Mr. Blake. Despite his having been so conspicuous at the forefront of public affairs, no scandal had ever soiled his name. His rectitude, so said people whose memories ran back a generation, was due mainly to fine qualities inherited from his mother, for his father had been a good-natured, hearty, popular politician with no discoverable bias toward over-scrupulosity. In fact, twenty years ago there had been a great to-do touching the voting, through a plan of the elder Blake’s devising, of a gang of negroes half a dozen times down in a river-front ward. But his party had rushed loyally to his rescue, and had vindicated him by sending him to Congress; and his sudden death on the day after taking his seat had at the time abashed all accusation, and had suffused his memory with a romantic afterglow of sentiment.

Blake lived alone with his mother in a house adjoining the Wests’, and a few moments after Katherine had left her father she turned into the Blakes’ yard. The house stood far back in a spacious lawn, shady with broad maples and aspiring pines, and set here and there with shrubs and flower-beds and a fountain whose misty spray hung a golden aureole upon the sunlight. It was quite worthy of Westville’s most distinguished citizen—a big, roomy house of brick, its sterner lines all softened with cool ivy, and with a wide piazza crossing its entire front and embracing its two sides.

The hour was that at which Westville arose from its accustomed mid-day dinner—which was the reason Katherine was calling at Blake’s home instead of going downtown to his office. She was informed that he was in. Telling the maid she would await him in his library, where she knew he received all clients who called on business at his home, she ascended the well-remembered stairway and entered a large, light room with walls booked to the ceiling.

Despite her declaration to her father that that old love episode had been long forgotten by Mr. Blake, at this moment it was not forgotten by her. She could not subdue a fluttering agitation over the circumstance that she was about to appeal for succour to a man she had once refused.

She had but a moment to wait. Blake’s tall, straight figure entered and strode rapidly across the room, his right hand outstretched.

“What—you, Katherine! I’m so glad to see you!”

She had risen. “And I to see you, Mr. Blake.” For all he had once vowed himself her lover, she had never overcome her girlhood awe of him sufficiently to use the more familiar “Harrison.”

“I knew you were coming home, but I had not expected to see you so soon. Please sit down again.”

She resumed her soft leather-covered chair, and he took the swivel chair at his great flat-topped library desk. His manner was most cordial, but lurking beneath it Katherine sensed a certain constraint—due perhaps, to their old relationship—perhaps due to meeting a friend involved in a family disgrace.

Blake was close upon forty, with a dark, strong, handsome face, penetrating but pleasant eyes, and black hair slightly marked with gray. He was well dressed but not too well dressed, as became a public man whose following was largely of the country. His person gave an immediate impression of a polished but not over-polished gentleman—of a man who in acquiring a large grace of manner, has lost nothing of virility and bigness and purpose.

“It seems quite natural,” Katherine began, smiling, and trying to speak lightly, “that each time I come home it is to congratulate you upon some new honour.”

“New honour?” queried he.

“Oh, your name reaches even to New York! We hear that you are spoken of to succeed Senator Grayson when he retires next year.”

“Oh, that!” He smiled—still with some constraint. “I won’t try to make you believe that I’m indifferent about the matter. But I don’t need to tell you that there’s many a slip betwixt being ‘spoken of’ and actually being chosen.”

There was an instant of awkward silence. Then Katherine went straight to the business of her visit.

“Of course you know about father.”

He nodded. “And I do not need to say, Katherine, how very, very sorry I am.”

“I was certain of your sympathy. Things look black on the surface for him, but I want you to know that he is innocent.”

“I am relieved to be assured of that,” he said, hesitatingly. “For, frankly, as you say, things do look black.”

She leaned forward and spoke rapidly, her hands tightly clasped.

“I have come to see you, Mr. Blake, because you have always been our friend—my friend, and a kinder friend than a young girl had any right to expect—because I know you have the ability to bring out the truth no matter how dark the circumstantial evidence may seem. I have come, Mr. Blake, to ask you, to beg you, to be my father’s lawyer.”

He stared at her, and his face grew pale.

“To be your father’s lawyer?” he repeated.

“Yes, yes—to be my father’s lawyer.”

He turned in his chair and looked out to where the fountain was flinging its iridescent drapery to the wind. She gazed at his strong, clean-cut profile in breathless expectation.

“I again assure you he is innocent,” she urged pleadingly. “I know you can clear him.”

“You have evidence to prove his innocence?” asked Blake.

“That you can easily uncover.”

He slowly swung about. Though with all his powerful will he strove to control himself, he was profoundly agitated, and he spoke with a very great effort.

“You have put me in a most embarrassing situation, Katherine.”

She caught her breath.

“You mean?”

“I mean that I should like to help you, but—but——”

“Yes? Yes?”

“But I cannot.”

“Cannot! You mean—you refuse his case?”

“It pains me, but I must.”

She grew as white as death.

“Oh!” she breathed. “Oh!” She gazed at him, lips wide, in utter dismay.

Suddenly she seized his arm. “But you have not yet thought it over—you have not considered,” she cried rapidly. “I cannot take no for your answer. I beg you, I implore you, to take the case.”

He seemed to be struggling between two desires. A slender, well-knit hand stretched out and clutched a ruler; his brow was moist; but he kept silent.

“Mr. Blake, I beg you, I implore you, to reconsider,” she feverishly pursued. “Do you not see what it will mean to my father? If you take the case, he is as good as cleared!”

His voice came forth low and husky. “It is because it is beyond my power to clear him that I refuse.”

“Beyond your power?”

“Listen, Katherine,” he answered. “I am glad you believe your father innocent. The faith you have is the faith a daughter ought to have. I do not want to hurt you, but I must tell you the truth—I do not share your faith.”

“You refuse, then, because you think him guilty?”

He inclined his head. “The evidence is conclusive. It is beyond my power, beyond the power of any lawyer, to clear him.”

This sudden failure of the aid she had so confidently counted as already hers, was a blow that for the moment completely stunned her. She sank back in her chair and her head dropped down into her hands.

Blake wiped his face with his handkerchief. After a moment, he went on in an agitated, persuasive voice:

“I do not want you to think, because I refuse, that I am any less your friend. If I took the case, and did my best, your father would be convicted just the same. I am going to open my heart to you, Katherine. I should like very much to be chosen for that senatorship. Naturally, I do not wish to do any useless thing that will impair my chances. Now for me, an aspirant for public favour, to champion against the aroused public the case of a man who has—forgive me the word—who has betrayed that public, and in the end to lose that case, as I most certainly should—it would be nothing less than political suicide. Your father would gain nothing. I would lose—perhaps everything. Don’t you see?”

“I follow your reasons,” she said brokenly into her hands, “I do not blame you—I accept your answer—but I still believe my father innocent.”

“And for that faith, as I told you, I admire and honour you.”

She slowly rose. He likewise stood up.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“I do not know,” she answered dully. “I was so confident of your aid, that I had thought of no alternative.”

“Your father has tried other lawyers?”

“Yes. They have all refused. You can guess their reason.”

He was silent for an instant.

“Why not take the case yourself?”

“I take the case!” cried Katherine, amazed.

“Yes. You are a lawyer.”

“But I have never handled a case in court! I am not even admitted to the bar of the state. And, besides, a woman lawyer in Westville—— No, it’s quite out of the question.”

“I was only suggesting it, you know,” he said apologetically.

“Oh, I realized you did not mean it seriously.”

Her face grew ashen as her failure came to her afresh. She gazed at him with a final desperation.

“Then your answer—it is final?”

“I am sorry, but it is final,” said he.

Her head dropped.

“Thank you,” she said dully. “Good-by.” And she started away.

“Wait, Katherine.”

She paused, and he came to her side. His features were gray-hued and were twitching strangely; for an instant she had the wild impression that his old love for her still lived.

“I am sorry that—that the first time you asked aid of me—I should fail you. But but——”

“I understand.”

“One word more.” But he let several moments pass before he spoke it, and he wet his lips continually. “Remember, I am still your friend. Though I cannot take the case, I shall be glad, in a private way, to advise you upon any matters you may care to lay before me.”

“You are very good.”

“Then you accept?”

“How can I refuse? Thank you.”

He accompanied her down the stairway and to the door. Heavy-hearted, she returned home. This was sad news to bring her father, whom but half an hour before she had so confidently cheered; and she knew not in what fresh direction to turn for aid.

She went straight up to her father’s room. With him she found a stranger, who had a vague, far-distant familiarity.

The two men rose.

“This is my daughter,” said Doctor West.

The stranger bowed slightly.

“I have heard of Miss West,” he said, and in his manner Katherine’s quick instinct read strong preconceived disapprobation.

“And, Katherine,” continued her father, “this is Mr. Bruce.”

She stopped short.

“Mr. Bruce of the Express?”

“Of the Express,” Bruce calmly repeated.

Her dejected figure grew suddenly tense, and her cheeks glowed with hot colour. She moved up before the editor and gazed with flashing eyes into his square-jawed face.

“So you are the man who wrote those brutal things about father?”

He bristled at her hostile tone and manner, and there was a quick snapping behind the heavy glasses.

“I am the man who wrote those true things about your father,” he said with cold emphasis.

“And after that you dare come into this house!”

“Pardon me, Miss West, but a newspaper man dares go wherever his business takes him.”

She was trembling all over.

“Then let me inform you that you have no business here. Neither my father nor myself has anything whatever to say to yellow journalists!”

“Katherine! Katherine!” interjected her father.

Bruce bowed, his face a dull red.

“I shall leave, Miss West, just as soon as Doctor West answers my last question. I called to see if he wished to make any statement, and I was asking him about his lawyer. He told me he had as yet secured none, but that you were applying to Mr. Blake.”

Doctor West stepped toward her eagerly.

“Yes, Katherine, what did he say? Will he take the case?”

She turned from Bruce, and as she looked into the white, worn face of her father, the fire of her anger went out.

“He said—he said——”

“Yes—yes?”

She put her arms about him.

“Don’t you mind, father dear, what he said.”

Doctor West grew yet more pale.

“Then—he said—the same as the others?”

She held him tight.

“Dear daddy!”

“Then—he refused?”

“Yes—but don’t you mind it,” she tried to say bravely.

Without a sound, the old man’s head dropped upon his chest. He held to Katherine a moment; then he moved waveringly to an old haircloth sofa, sank down upon it and bowed his face into his hands.

Bruce broke the silence.

“I am to understand, then, that your father has no lawyer?”

Katherine wheeled from the bowed figure, and her anger leaped instantly to a white heat.

“And why has he no lawyer?” she cried. “Because of the inhuman things you wrote about him!”

“You forget, Miss West, that I am running a newspaper, and it is my business to print the news.”

“The news, yes; but not a malignant, ferocious distortion of the news! Look at my father there. Does it not fill your soul with shame to think of the black injustice you have done him?”

“Mere sentiment! Understand, I do not let conventional sentiment stand between me and my duty.”

“Your duty!” There was a world of scorn in her voice. “And, pray, what is your duty?”

“Part of it is to establish, and maintain, decent standards of public service in this town.”

“Don’t hide behind that hypocritical pretence! I’ve heard about you. I know the sort of man you are. You saw a safe chance for a yellow story for your yellow newspaper, a safe chance to gain prominence by yelping at the head of the pack. If he had been a rich man, if he had had a strong political party behind him, would you have dared assail him as you have? Never! Oh, it was brutal—infamous—cowardly!”

There was an angry fire behind the editor’s thick glasses, and his square chin thrust itself out. He took a step nearer.

“Listen to me!” he commanded in a slow, defiant voice. “Your opinion is to me a matter of complete indifference. I tell you that a man who betrays his city is a traitor, and that I would treat an old traitor exactly as I would treat a young traitor, I tell you that I take it as a sign of an awakening public conscience when reputable lawyers refuse to defend a man who has done what your father has done. And, finally, I predict that, try as you may, you will not be able to find a decent lawyer who will dare to take his case. And I glory in it, and consider it the result of my work!” He bowed to her. “And now, Miss West, I wish you good afternoon.”

She stood quivering, gasping, while he crossed to the door. As his hand fell upon the knob she sprang forward.

“Wait!” she cried. “Wait! He has a lawyer!”

He paused.

“Indeed! And whom?”

“One who is going to make you take back every cowardly word you have printed!”

“Who is it, Katherine?” It was her father who spoke.

She turned. Doctor West had raised his head, and in his eyes was an eager, hopeful light. She bent over him and slipped an arm about his shoulders.

“Father dear,” she quavered, “since we can get no one else, will you take me?”

“Take you?” he exclaimed.

“Because,” she quavered on, “whether you will or not, I’m going to stay in Westville and be your lawyer.”