Читать книгу Counsel for the Defense - Scott Leroy - Страница 13

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For a long space after Bruce had gone Katherine sat quiveringly upon the old haircloth sofa beside her father, holding his hands tightly, caressingly. Her words tumbled hotly from her lips—words of love of him—of resentment of the injustice which he suffered—and, fiercest of all, of wrath against Editor Bruce, who had so ruthlessly, and for such selfish ends, incited the popular feeling against him. She would make such a fight as Westville had never seen! She would show those lawyers who had been reduced to cowards by Bruce’s demagogy! She would bring the town humiliated to her father’s feet!

But emotion has not only peaks, but plains, and dark valleys. As she cooled and her passion descended to a less exalted level, she began to see the difficulties of, and her unfitness for, the rôle she had so impulsively accepted. An uneasiness for the future crept upon her. As she had told Mr. Blake, she had never handled a case in court. True, she had been a member of the bar for two years, but her duties with the Municipal League had consisted almost entirely in working up evidence in cases of municipal corruption for the use of her legal superiors. An untried lawyer, and a woman lawyer at that—surely a weak reed for her father to lean upon!

But she had thrown down the gage of battle; she had to fight, since there was no other champion; and even in this hour of emotion, when tears were so plenteous and every word was accompanied by a caress, she began to plan the preliminaries of her struggle.

“I shall write to-night to the league for a leave of absence,” she said. “One of the things I must see to at once is to get admitted to the state bar. Do you know when your case is to come up?”

“It has been put over to the September term of court.”

“That gives me four months.”

She was silently thoughtful for a space. “I’ve got to work hard, hard! upon your case. As I see it now, I am inclined to agree with you that the situation has arisen from a misunderstanding—that the agent thought you expected a bribe, and that you thought the bribe a small donation to the hospital.”

“I’m certain that’s how it is,” said her father.

“Then the thing to do is to see Doctor Sherman, and if possible the agent, have them repeat their testimony and try to search out in it the clue to the mistake. And that I shall see to at once.”

Five minutes later Katherine left the house. After walking ten minutes through the quiet, maple-shaded back streets she reached the Wabash Avenue Church, whose rather ponderous pile of Bedford stone was the most ambitious and most frequented place of worship in Westville, and whose bulk was being added to by a lecture room now rising against its side.

Katherine went up a gravelled walk toward a cottage that stood beneath the church’s shadow. The house’s front was covered with a wide-spreading rose vine, a tapestry of rich green which June would gorgeously embroider with sprays of heart-red roses. The cottage looked what Katherine knew it was, a bower of lovers.

Her ring was answered by a fair, fragile young woman whose eyes were the colour of faith and loyalty. A faint colour crept into the young woman’s pale cheeks.

“Why—Katherine—why—why—I don’t know what you think of us, but—but——” She could stammer out no more, but stood in the doorway in distressed uncertainty.

Katherine’s answer was to stretch out her arms. “Elsie!” Instantly the two old friends were in a close embrace.

“I haven’t slept, Katherine,” sobbed Mrs. Sherman, “for thinking of what you would think——”

“I think that, whatever has happened, I love you just the same.”

“Thank you for saying it, Katherine.” Mrs. Sherman gazed at her in tearful gratitude. “I can’t tell you how we have suffered over this—this affair. Oh, if you only knew!”

It was instinctive with Katherine to soothe the pain of others, though suffering herself. “I am certain Doctor Sherman acted from the highest motives,” she assured the young wife. “So say no more about it.”

They had entered the little sitting-room, hung with soft white muslin curtains. “But at the same time, Elsie, I cannot believe my father guilty,” Katherine went on. “And though I honour your husband, why, even the noblest man can be mistaken. My hope of proving my father’s innocence is based on the belief that Doctor Sherman may somehow have made a mistake. At any rate, I’d like to talk over his evidence with him.”

“He’s trying to work on his sermon, though he’s too worn to think. I’ll bring him right in.”

She passed through a door into the study, and a moment later reëntered with Doctor Sherman. The present meeting would have been painful to an ordinary person; doubly so was it to such a hyper-sensitive nature. The young clergyman stood hesitant just within the doorway, his usual pallor greatly deepened, his thin fingers intertwisted—in doubt how to greet Katherine till she stretched out her hand to him.

“I want you to understand, Katherine dear,” little Mrs. Sherman put in quickly, with a look of adoration at her husband, “that Edgar reached the decision to take the action he did only after days of agony. You know, Katherine, Doctor West was always as kind to me as another father, and I loved him almost like one. At first I begged Edgar not to do anything. Edgar walked the floor for nights—suffering!—oh, how you suffered, Edgar!”

“Isn’t it a little incongruous,” said Doctor Sherman, smiling wanly at her, “for the instrument that struck the blow to complain, in the presence of the victim, of his suffering?”

“But I want her to know it!” persisted the wife. “She must know it to do you justice, dear! It seemed at first disloyal—but finally Edgar decided that his duty to the city——”

“Please say no more, Elsie.” Katherine turned to the pale young minister. “Doctor Sherman, I have not come to utter one single word of recrimination. I have come merely to ask you to tell me all you know about the case.”

“I shall be glad to do so.”

“And could I also talk with Mr. Marcy, the agent?”

“He has left the city, and will not return till the trial.”

Katherine was disappointed by this news. Doctor Sherman, though obviously pained by the task, rehearsed in minutest detail the charges he had made against Doctor West, which charges he would later have to repeat upon the witness stand. Also he recounted Mr. Marcy’s story. Katherine scrutinized every point in these two stories for the loose end, the loop-hole, the flaw, she had thought to find. But flaw there was none. The stories were perfectly straightforward.

Katherine walked slowly away, still going over and over Doctor Sherman’s testimony. Doctor Sherman was telling the indubitable truth—yet her father was indubitably innocent. It was a puzzling case, this her first case—a puzzling, most puzzling case.

When she reached home she was told by her aunt that a gentleman was waiting to see her. She entered the big, old-fashioned parlour, fresh and tasteful despite the stiff black walnut that, in the days of her mother’s marriage, had been spread throughout the land as beauty by the gentlemen who dealt conjointly in furniture and coffins.

From a chair there rose a youthful and somewhat corpulent presence, with a chubby and very serious pink face that sat in a glossy high collar as in a cup. He smiled with a blushful but ingratiating dignity.

“Don’t you remember me? I’m Charlie Horn.”

“Oh!” And instinctively, as if to identify him by Charlie Horn’s well-remembered strawberry-marks, Katherine glanced at his hands. But they were clean, and the warts were gone. She looked at him in doubt. “You can’t be Nellie Horn’s little brother?”

“I’m not so little,” he said, with some resentment. “Since you knew me,” he added a little grandiloquently, “I’ve graduated from Bloomington.”

“Please pardon me! It was kind of you to call, and so soon.”

“Well, you see I came on business. I suppose you have seen this afternoon’s Express?”

She instinctively stiffened.

“I have not.”

He drew out a copy of the Express, opened it, and pointed a plump, pinkish forefinger at the beginning of an article on the first page.

“You see the Express says you are going to be your father’s lawyer.”

Katharine read the indicated paragraphs. Her colour heightened. The statement was blunt and bare, but between the lines she read the contemptuous disapproval of the “new woman” that a few hours since Bruce had displayed before her. Again her anger toward Bruce flared up.

“I am a reporter for the Clarion,” young Charlie Horn announced, striving not to appear too proud. “And I’ve come to interview you.”

“Interview me?” she cried in dismay. “What about?”

“Well, you see,” said he, with his benign smile, “you’re the first woman lawyer that’s ever been in Westville. It’s almost a bigger sensation than your fath—you see, it’s a big story.”

He drew from his pocket a bunch of copy paper. “I want you to tell me about how you are going to handle the case. And about what you think a woman lawyer’s prospects are in Westville. And about what you think will be woman’s status in future society. And you might tell me,” concluded young Charlie Horn, “who your favourite author is, and what you think of golf. That last will interest our readers, for our country club is very popular.”

It had been the experience of Nellie Horn’s brother that the good people of Westville were quite willing—nay, even had a subdued eagerness—to discourse about themselves, and whom they had visited over Sunday, and who was “Sundaying” with them, and what beauties had impressed them most at Niagara Falls; and so that confident young ambassador from the Clarion was somewhat dazed when, a moment later, he found himself standing alone on the West doorstep with a dim sense of having been politely and decisively wished good afternoon.

But behind him amid the stiff, dark, solemn-visaged furniture (Calvinists, every chair of them!) he left a person far more dazed than himself. Charlie Horn’s call had brought sharply home to Katherine a question that, in the press of affairs, she hardly had as yet considered—how was Westville going to take to a woman lawyer being in its midst? She realized, with a chill of apprehension, how profoundly this question concerned her next few months. Dear, bustling, respectable Westville, she well knew, clung to its own idea of woman’s sphere as to a thing divinely ordered, and to seek to leave which was scarcely less than rebellion against high God. In patriarchal days, when heaven’s justice had been prompter, such a disobedient one would suddenly have found herself rebuked into a bit of saline statuary.

Katherine vividly recalled, when she had announced her intention to study law, what a raising of hands there was, what a loud regretting that she had not a mother. But since she had not settled in Westville, and since she had not been actively practising in New York, the town had become partially reconciled. But this step of hers was new, without a precedent. How would Westville take it?

Her brain burned with this and other matters all afternoon, all evening, and till the dawn began to edge in and crowd the shadows from her room. But when she met her father at the breakfast table her face was fresh and smiling.

“Well, how is my client this morning?” she asked gaily. “Do you realize, daddy, that you are my first really, truly client?”

“And I suppose you’ll be charging me something outrageous as a fee!”

“Something like this”—kissing him on the ear. “But how do you feel?”

“Certain that my lawyer will win my case.” He smiled. “And how are you?”

“Brimful of ideas.”

“Yes? About the——”

“Yes. And about you. First, answer a few of your counsel’s questions. Have you been doing much at your scientific work of late?”

“The last two months, since the water-works has been practically completed, I have spent almost my whole time at it.”

“And your work was interesting?”

“Very. You see, I think I am on the verge of discovering that the typhoid bacillus——”

“You’ll tell me all about that later. Now the first order of your attorney is, just as soon as you have finished your coffee and folded your napkin, back you go to your laboratory.”

“But, Katherine, with this affair——”

“This affair, worry and all, has been shifted off upon your eminent counsel. Work will keep you from worry, so back you go to your darling germs.”

“You’re mighty good, dear, but——”

“No argument! You’ve got to do just what your lawyer tells you. And now,” she added “as I may have to be seeing a lot of people, and as having people about the house may interrupt your work, I’m going to take an office.”

He stared at her.

“Take an office?”

“Yes. Who knows—I may pick up a few other cases. If I do, I know who can use the money.”

“But open an office in Westville! Why, the people——Won’t it be a little more unpleasant——” He paused doubtfully. “Did you see what the Express had to say about you?”

She flushed, but smiled sweetly.

“What the Express said is one reason why I’m going to open an office.”

“Yes?”

“I’m not going to let fear of that Mr. Bruce dictate my life. And since I’m going to be a lawyer, I’m going to be the whole thing. And what’s more, I’m going to act as though I were doing the most ordinary thing in the world. And if Mr. Bruce and the town want to talk, why, we’ll just let ’em talk!”

“But—but—aren’t you afraid?”

“Of course I’m afraid,” she answered promptly. “But when I realize that I’m afraid to do a thing, I’m certain that that is just exactly the thing for me to do. Oh, don’t look so worried, dear”—she leaned across and kissed him—“for I’m going to be the perfectest, properest, politest lady that ever scuttled a convention. And nothing is going to happen to me—nothing at all.”

Breakfast finished, Katherine despotically led her father up to his laboratory. A little later she set out for downtown, looking very fresh in a blue summer dress that had the rare qualities of simplicity and grace. Her colour was perhaps a little warmer than was usual, but she walked along beneath the maples with tranquil mien, seemingly unconscious of some people she passed, giving others a clear, direct glance, smiling and speaking to friends and acquaintances in her most easy manner.

As she turned into Main Street the intelligence that she was coming seemed in some mysterious way to speed before her. Those exemplars of male fashion, the dry goods clerks, craned furtively about front doors. Bare-armed and aproned proprietors of grocery stores and their hirelings appeared beneath the awnings and displayed an unprecedented concern in trying to resuscitate, with aid of sprinkling-cans, bunches of expiring radishes and young onions. Owners of amiable steeds that dozed beside the curb hurried out of cavernous doors, the fear of run-away writ large upon their countenances, to see if a buckle was not loose or a tug perchance unfastened. Behind her, as she passed, Main Street stood statued in mid-action, strap in motionless hand, sprinkling-can tilting its entire contents of restorative over a box of clothes-pins, and gaped and stared. This was epochal for Westville. Never before had a real, live, practising woman lawyer trod the cement walk of Main Street.

When Katherine came to Court House Square, she crossed to the south side, passed the Express Building, and made for the Hollingsworth Block, whose first floor was occupied by the New York Store’s “glittering array of vast and profuse fashion.” Above this alluring pageant were two floors of offices; and up the narrow stairway leading thereunto Katherine mounted. She entered a door marked “Hosea Hollingsworth. Attorney-at-Law. Mortgages. Loans. Farms.” In the room were a table, three chairs, a case of law books, a desk, on the top of the desk a “plug” hat, so venerable that it looked a very great-grandsire of hats, and two cuspidors marked with chromatic evidence that they were not present for ornament alone.

From the desk there rose a man, perhaps seventy, lean, tall, smooth-shaven, slightly stooped, dressed in a rusty and wrinkled “Prince Albert” coat, and with a countenance that looked a rank plagiarism of the mask of Voltaire. In one corner of his thin mouth, half chewed away, was an unlighted cigar.

“I believe this is Mr. Hollingsworth?” said Katherine. The question was purely formal, for his lank figure was one of her earliest memories.

“Yes. Come right in,” he returned in a high, nasal voice.

She drew a chair away from the environs of the cuspidors and sat down. He resumed his place at his desk and peered at her through his spectacles, and a dry, almost imperceptible smile played among the fine wrinkles of his leathery face.

“And I believe this is Katherine West—our lady lawyer,” he remarked. “I read in the Express how you——”

Bruce was on her nerves. She could not restrain a sudden flare of temper. “The editor of that paper is a cad!”

“Well, he ain’t exactly what you might call a hand-raised gentleman,” the old lawyer admitted. “At least, I never heard of his exerting himself so hard to be polite that he strained any tendons.”

“You know him, then?”

“A little. He’s my nephew.”

“Oh! I remember.”

“And we live together,” the old man loquaciously drawled on, eying her closely with a smile that might have been either good-natured or satirical. “Batch it—with a nigger who saves us work by stealing things we’d otherwise have to take care of. We scrap most of the time. I make fun of him, and he gets sore. The trouble with the editor of the Express is, he had a doting ma. He should have had an almighty lot of thrashing when a boy, and instead he never tasted beech limb once. He’s suffering from the spared rod.”

Katherine had a shrinking from this old man; an aversion which in her mature years she had had no occasion to examine, but which she had inherited unanalyzed from her childhood, when old Hosie Hollingsworth had been the chief scandal of the town—an infidel, who had dared challenge the creation of the earth in seven days, and yet was not stricken down by a fiery bolt from heaven! She did not pursue the subject of Bruce, but went directly to her business.

“I understand that you have an office to rent.”

“So I have. Like to see it?”

“That is what I called for.”

“Just come along with me.”

He rose, and Katherine followed him to the floor above and into a room furnished much as the one she had just left.

“This office was last used,” commented old Hosie, “by a young fellow who taught school down in Buck Creek Township and got money to study law with. He tried law for a while.” The old man’s thin prehensile lips shifted his cigar to the other side of his mouth. “He’s down in Buck Creek Township teaching school to get money to pay his back office rent.”

“How about the furniture?” asked Katherine.

“That was his. He left it in part payment. You can use it if you want to.”

“But I don’t want those things about”—pointing gingerly to a pair of cuspidors.

“All right. Though I don’t see how you expect to run a law office in Westville without ’em.” He bent over and took them in his hands. “I’ll take ’em along. I need a few more, for my business is picking up.”

“I suppose I can have possession at once.”

“Whenever you please.”

Standing with the cuspidors in his two hands the old lawyer looked her over. He slowly grinned, and a dry cackle came out of his lean throat.

“I was born out there in Buck Creek Township myself,” he said. “Folks all Quakers, same as your ma’s and your Aunt Rachel’s. I was brought up on plowing, husking corn and going to meeting. Never smiled till after I was twenty; wore a halo, size too large, that slipped down and made my ears stick out. My grandfather’s name was Elijah, my father’s Elisha. My father had twelve sons, and beginning with me, Hosea, he named ’em all in order after the minor prophets. Being brought up in a houseful of prophets, naturally a lot of the gift of prophecy sort of got rubbed off on me.”

“Well?” said Katherine impatiently, not seeing the pertinence of this autobiography.

Again he shifted his cigar. “Well, when I prophesy, it’s inspired,” he went on. “And you can take it as the word that came unto Hosea, that a woman lawyer settling in Westville is going to raise the very dickens in this old town!”