(From _The Atlantic Monthly_)
Judge Avery held his pencil poised above the typewritten page of
testimony, then marked the margin with a long firm line. He had not
remembered the plaintiff’s evidence was so clear; that young man
had brought it out very nicely with the neat indirectness of his
questions. On page forty-eight--he turned back the rustling sheets.
Yes, the witness had said about the same thing. With a faint smile of
satisfaction he leaned over and began writing on the pad that lay upon
the book-rest of his easy-chair.
For a moment he paused to read what he had written, the pencil
trembling slightly in his thin blue-veined hand; there was a look of
critical appraisal in his worn face, something vivid, keenly alive,
beneath the bloodless texture of his skin. He struck out a word,
replaced it with another; the wrinkle between his eyebrows deepened and
he smoothed the white hair above his forehead absently, then laid down
the pad. That was the last finding of fact. He would dictate the whole
and his conclusions of law before Court tomorrow.
It must be nearly five, he thought. The sunlight had shrunk to a dusty
orange bar across the red carpet at his feet; through the open window
he could hear the cooing of the pigeons, the soft rustle of their wings
as they moved upon the stone sill. Against the opposite wall the yellow
bindings of the books ran in converging rows to a well of still gray
light that seemed to gather at the end of the room; the surface of the
table in the center shone like a ruddy disk above its dark carven legs;
through the curtains that hung above the doorway to his right he could
hear the voices of the tipstaves talking in the empty courtroom outside.
Rodenbaugh was late. Evidently he was going to finish the Minturn case
this afternoon. A driving young man, Rodenbaugh--he swept uncommon
clean for a new broom. The judge smiled a little grimly, glanced down
at his knees, unpleasantly sharp and narrow beneath the neat fold
of his trousers. Old age did queer tricks to the body, things that
he didn’t like. No doubt it did the same things to the mind. He was
seventy-three. That was a warning in itself. He rose and walked to the
window, sniffed the dusty May air. He was sorry he didn’t get on better
with Rodenbaugh. It was hard, at first, to like any one who had taken
Langdon’s place on the bench.
There was a difference now, a very great difference. He shook his
head, turned and walked stiffly to his chair. The fact that he felt
the difference so keenly was a sign of his age. In his youth the old
lawyers had always complained about the decay of the bar. And he had
laughed at them just as Rodenbaugh would laugh at him now if he heard
him. Only Rodenbaugh didn’t laugh, that was the trouble. He only
smiled--a slow spreading of unparted lips, a narrowing of his eyes,
which--the judge sighed--was intensely distasteful. But--maybe it was
just as well. If Rodenbaugh once began to laugh he might laugh at
himself all day.
A step sounded on the marble outside, and the curtain was pushed
tentatively back. Old Walrath appeared, his watery blue eyes searching
the chamber with vague apology. ‘Judge Rodenbaugh been here, Judge?’
he asked. He moved forward, then hobbled down the steps. ‘I looked in
his room and he wasn’t there. He said he wanted to see Mr. Mercer at
half-past three. Mr. Mercer’s in the courtroom now.’
‘He’s still trying the Minturn case, Enoch. He’s coming here, though,
before he goes home. I don’t know what he wants with Mercer. If he’s
been waiting long I think you’d better let him go. You can call him
when the judge gets back.’
‘All right, sir.’ The old man paused, and a look of doubt crept into
his mildly truculent face. ‘You think he won’t mind? I shouldn’t like
to get him mad just after he’s come off the bench. You know, Judge,
he’s got a way, when he’s mad, of smiling just like a Chessy cat, and
passing that tongue of his over you fit to take off your skin!’ He
pulled at his long white walrus moustache and gazed at the judge. ‘I’ve
been thinking he acts pretty fiery for a young man that ain’t seen
too much of court before he become a judge. I reckon’--his eyes moved
solemnly to and fro--‘I reckon that’s why.’
Judge Avery looked at his knees; it was difficult to conceal his smile.
Of course, he oughtn’t to let Walrath talk to him that way. He ought
to reprove him sharply, and the fact that he couldn’t was clearly just
another sign of his age. He straightened his face, looked up. Walrath
was smiling at him in a curious way. Yes, by George, he was actually
smiling at him paternally underneath that white walrus moustache. The
old beggar! Really, he’d have to say something! ‘Enoch!’ He stroked his
chin, gazed through his spectacles at the bent figure standing in the
doorway. ‘You’re becoming too philosophical, I’m afraid, in your later
years. I have a suspicion you’ve taken to psycho-analysis.’
‘No, sir!’ Walrath grunted. ‘I never yet heard of it. Them experts
talks of electrolysis in the accident cases, but I never yet heard of
the sister you speak of. No, Judge--it ain’t science--you know that.’
He shook his head and began climbing the steps. ‘It’s just putting a
long time in the courtroom, the same as you and me’s both done--that,
and a little looking round, as Judge Langdon used to say.’ He paused,
the curtain clasped in his big bony hand. ‘I’m going out now and tell
Mr. Mercer he can leave, and then I’ll come back and get what papers
you want for your bag.’
Judge Avery watched the curtain settle behind him, heard the slow
stump of his footsteps across the marble. Old Walrath had stumped up
and down those steps and across that marble for nearly fifty years; he
had been a tipstaff when the judge first came to the bar. A gay ribald
young fellow, then, with a rough tongue and a surprising knowledge
of human nature, but good company, sitting on a table in the clerk’s
office, swinging his legs and imitating Melchior Van Zandt blowing his
nose at a jury. There was time to linger in the clerk’s office, in
those days; time to do many things that were forgotten now. Law was a
profession then, not a business; the lawyer reached out toward art and
letters rather than toward certified public accounting. Then Bricknell
translated Demosthenes and Judge Haynes wrote Horatian Echoes. Very
faint but quite scholarly. And every one, strangely enough, spoke and
wrote English. It seemed to be the mother tongue. He sighed. Even the
law had changed; it had lost its pattern, its design; the fine threads
of continuity were gone. Nowadays you matched facts as you matched
silk, and extracted legal principles like a dentist pulling teeth. He
rose, straightened his coat across his slender shoulders. He was old,
quite out of date. In the hurry and press of modern life there is no
time, and so forth---- Any young man could finish the sentence.
He gathered the papers from the chair, slipped an elastic about them,
and thrust them into a green-baize bag. There was no use in waiting
any longer for Rodenbaugh; he might as well take his walk and go home.
The evening dreariness was coming over him; it made him peevish and
irritable; he was likely to bite, to say something he didn’t mean, if
Rodenbaugh provoked him. He glanced at the table to see whether he had
left any papers, then at the desk. For an instant he paused, a bent
delicate figure, very clear against the square of ruddy light. The
evening dreariness was, after all, a little more than age. He gazed
at the pictures standing in leather frames within a shadowy recess
of the desk. The bright knife-like sorrow of the past was gone, but
in its place was a numb loneliness, a darkening vision, a dim sense
of drifting with blurred, loosened feeling toward some unfathomable
end. It would have been different if they had lived. He would have
understood these youngsters better then. Old age had always to look
through others’ eyes; the vistas of its own past were overwhelming.
A sharp footstep sounded outside and the curtain rings jangled angrily.
Judge Rodenbaugh’s body filled the doorway, descended with an abrupt
heaviness into the room. ‘I hope you haven’t waited, Judge,’ he said.
His small eyes moved obscurely beneath his thin eyebrows, his tall
clumsy presence seemed to permeate the place, to pervade it like a
harsh dominating breath. ‘I wanted counsel to finish their speeches
this afternoon, so I could charge the jury the first thing in the
morning.’ He seated himself in the chair by the table, his thick
shoulders thrown forward, his legs stretched out. ‘That little Kardos
is a pitiful apology,’ he said.
‘Was he trying for the plaintiff?’
‘Yes. He tries a case as if he were selling shoestrings on State
Street. He’s all tongue and no head. I’ve had to listen to him now for
two days, fumbling and backing and filling, encumbering the record with
all sorts of useless questions. Moran is against him--you know what a
good one he is! I think he was saying things to Kardos under his breath
all through the trial. I wasn’t sure. Every now and then Kardos would
stop and get sort of gray and ask his questions again. Each time he
repeated he got worse, and then Moran would get up with that suave easy
manner of his, and suggest that his friend first make known to himself
what he wanted to ask, and, after a moment’s silent communion, make it
known to the witness, who, in spite of his lawyer, seemed like quite an
intelligent man. He’s a quick one, Moran.’ The judge shook his head. ‘I
like him. He gives a case something--color, I guess you’d call it.’
‘That, or atmosphere,’ answered Judge Avery. ‘It’s sometimes fatal to
litigants, although we lawyers survive it. Well--what did Kardos do?’
‘Oh, he’d just smile that sickly smile of his, and move his hands to
and fro and wipe his face, and begin again. He’d have been funny if he
hadn’t taken up so much time. You know--that fellow Moran is a great
trial-lawyer! I never realized it so completely until today. I’d never
tried against him--I didn’t try cases, the way you did, before I came
on the bench. It doesn’t bother me, though.’ He smiled and his dark
heavy face seemed to widen slowly. ‘It’s easy to handle things from
back here, isn’t it, Judge?’
‘Yes,’ said Judge Avery. His thin mouth closed, he leaned forward a
little, his elbow upon the table, and surveyed his companion with still
luminous eyes.
‘Well!’ Rodenbaugh stretched back his shoulders, ran his hand through
the unparted hair that lay like a wig above his forehead. ‘I put an
oar in myself now and then. Yesterday, after Kardos had floundered
about for a while, I told him he ought to get a lawyer to try his case.
Up jumped Moran with that friendly manner of his and said he’d be
delighted to furnish his learned friend with a list in case he were not
acquainted with the bar. The jury laughed and Kardos stood there wiping
his face and moving his lips like a fish and then sat down. I told him
to go ahead and he pulled up his chair and began shooting questions at
the witness as if he were crying a sale. It was awful!’ He leaned back,
took some cigars from his pocket and pushed one across the table. ‘I
don’t know what we’re going to do with these fellows, Judge.’
‘Neither do I.’ Judge Avery ignored the cigar. ‘Was there something you
wanted to discuss with me? If not, I think I’ll go home.’
‘Yes, there was. I wanted to see Mercer too.’ He rose, thrust his head
through the curtains. ‘Walrath!’ he called.
‘Yes, sir!’
‘Did you get Mr. Mercer?’
‘Yes, sir. He was here. He waited till half-past four.’ Judge Avery
heard the clump of Walrath’s feet on the marble. ‘Then I let him go,
Judge. I told him I’d call him tomorrow morning.’
‘You did! What did you do that for?’
‘Judge----’
‘Well, get him now if you’re able to handle the phone! And remember,
when I send for a man I want him to wait! Exercise the authority of
your age and position, Walrath, but don’t exercise discretion. When
the vessels of the law become old crockery, they shouldn’t go to the
well too often. Move along now--don’t stand there, looking at me like a
fool.’ He turned and descended the steps. ‘Doddering old ass, Walrath,’
he said.
‘I told him to let Mercer go,’ said Judge Avery. ‘I thought you
wouldn’t want him to wait.’
‘Oh!’ The judge paused, a sulky look on his face. ‘I see. I don’t
believe Mercer’s so busy that an hour’s wait would injure his
practice.’ He sat down heavily in the chair. ‘What I wanted to talk to
you about was this--’
‘Do you mind’--Judge Avery’s voice had a curious lingering drawl--‘if
we wait a minute? There’s something I want to tell you, first.’
‘No,’ said Rodenbaugh shortly, ‘go on.’ He drummed on the table
impatiently. ‘Old Walrath’s an ass,’ he muttered under his breath.
Judge Avery smiled, a still frosty look in his clear blue eyes.
Yes. Rodenbaugh deserved something. With the exercise of a little
imagination he could give it to him completely in a way that he would
thoroughly understand. He paused, his mind penetrating--invading the
man before him. Then he leaned back, put his finger tips together, and
the little smile on his lips grew sharp. There was a certain pleasure
in the exercise of the imagination. Quite justifiable in this case. He
would tell Rodenbaugh exactly what he was.
‘It’s about myself,’ he said slowly. ‘Old men are given to telling
stories about themselves. I suppose that’s the reason they’re bores.
But I think this will interest you as a younger man. Do you mind?’
Judge Rodenbaugh turned and stared at him. ‘Not at all,’ he said.
‘That’s very kind!’ The words dropped like acid from the sardonic
lips. ‘I’ve been in a reminiscent mood all afternoon. As you’re my
defenseless colleague--brother, as the Reports call us--I’m afraid I’ll
have to impose on you.’