HORACE BROOKS, ATTORNEY AT LAW
As for Aurora Lane, at about the time Miss Julia was leaving Judge
Henderson's office, she herself was in the office of another lawyer upon
the opposite side of the square--the man Henderson hated and feared more
than any other human being.
Horace Brooks, after his usual fashion, was spending his Sunday
afternoon in his legal chambers. He lived as a bachelor, the sole
boarder of a family far out toward the edge of town--a family that had
no social standing, but that never became accustomed to the ways of Mr.
Brooks, who came and went, ate, slept, and acted, as one largely in a
trance, so occupied was he with thoughts of his business affairs. Never
was a soul less concerned with conventions or formalities than he; nor
one more absorbed, more concentrated of purpose in large things.
He was sitting now, as often he might have been seen to sit, tilted back
in his chair, with his feet on his table, where rested in extreme
disorder many volumes of the law, some opened, face-down, others piled
in untidy masses here and there. Mr. Brooks had no clerk and no partner.
When he cited an authority in his library he left the book where last
it was used, and searched for it pellmell if later need arose. This same
system applied to every other article of use in the entire office--it
was all chance medley, and the pursuit of the desired article was short
or long in accordance with the luck of the searcher.
Around him on the floor lay countless burned matches, a pipe or two
which scattered tobacco. The floor itself was covered layers deep with
the ruins of two Sunday papers--at which form of journalism Horace
Brooks openly scoffed, but none the less ruthlessly devoured after his
own fashion each Sabbath afternoon.
He sat with his bearded chin sunk in his shirt bosom, his mild blue eye
seeing nothing at all, his hands idle in his lap. He was concluding his
Sabbath as usually he did, in the midst of the scenes surrounding his
daily toil throughout the week. He started at the sound of Aurora Lane's
knock on the door.
"Come in!" he called.
He supposed it was some young lawyer from one of the offices down the
hall, where struggling students, or clerks from the abstract offices,
sometimes brought knotty problems for him to solve. These folk still
lived in the rear of their offices--as indeed Horace Brooks but recently
had done himself. A disorderly couch still might have been found in the
room beyond, fragments of soap, a soiled towel or so, a broken comb, a
sidelong mirror--traces of his own humble and arduous beginnings in the
law.
But he turned half about now, and dropped his feet to the floor as he
heard the rustle of a gown. He sat half leaning forward as Aurora Lane
entered. He had small training in the social usages--he did not always
rise when a woman entered the room, unless some special reason for that
act existed. So he sat for just a time, and looked at her, the fact of
her presence seeming slowly to filter into his brain. Then quickly he
stood and went forward to her, his rare smile illuminating his homely
features.
"Come in," said he. "Will you be seated? Why have you come here?" He was
simple and direct of habit.
Aurora Lane looked at him not only with the eyes of a client, but with
the eyes of a woman. She saw plainly the quick look of eagerness, the
swift hopefulness which came into his eyes.
But she must forestall all that. "Mr. Brooks," said she, "I've come to
you for help--I need your professional services."
He sat looking at her gravely for some time, the light in his face
slowly fading away. "Help?" said he. "As how?" He was of the plain
people, and at times lapsed into the colloquial inelegancies of his
early life. But he needed little divination now to know that Aurora
Lane came to him for no personal reasons that offered him any hope.
"It's about my boy," said Aurora. "You know--Don."
He nodded slowly. "Yes, I know--the coroner's jury has held him over."
"But he's in jail."
"Yes, they had that right--to hold him for the investigation of the
grand jury. And this is a grand jury matter, as you must know. Court
opens tomorrow. The grand jury sits tomorrow morning. At least the
preliminaries won't take long. But the outlook is bad, Aurora--they mean
to get him if they can."
Aurora Lane for a third time that day produced from her shabby pocket
book the little worn bill which represented her sole worldly fortune. A
flush rose to her temples now as she held it hesitatingly between her
fingers.
He saw it very plainly, and caught something of her meaning in the
pause. A slow red came also into his own face.
"You'd better keep that for the present," said he slowly after a time.
He pushed her fingers back with the bill. "I know this is professional,
but I can't take money from you now--not that money--because I know very
well you've got none you can afford to spend. Aurora, there's no use
trying to have secrets from me--we know each other too well."
"But what right do you leave me then to come to you?"
"I don't know that you have any right to come to me at all," said he
slowly. "I've my own right to decline to deal with you at all in
business matters. And you come here on business."
Aurora sank back into her chair. "Then what could I do?" she said
faintly.
"Have you tried Henderson?"
"Yes," she said, faintly, and with much reluctance, "I did."
"Why, if you wanted me?"
"I can't tell you that. But I did. He refused to have anything to do
with the defense for my boy."
"Very naturally--very naturally. Didn't you know he would before you
went to ask him? Couldn't you guess that?--couldn't you have figured out
that much for your own self? Didn't you know that man? He's not with the
under dog."
"It seems not," said Aurora Lane, wearily. "So I came to you."
"Even after last night?"
"Yes, after last night. At first it was hard to think of it."
"Aurora," said he, "I reckon I'm not a very practical sort of man. If I
were--if I were a man like Judge Henderson, say, I'd clamp on the screws
right now. I'd try to get you to alter what you said to me last night."
"It wouldn't be like you. You've never yet--in all our lives--done
anything like that."
"No? I'm second choice--that's my fate, is it--that's as high as I get?
Yes, I reckon that's about a fair estimate of me--I'm a typical second
choice man. I suppose I'll have to accept that fact." And now he laughed
uproariously, though none too happily.
"Well, Aurora," said he after a time, "you have broken in here,
anyway--just as I broke down your gate last night in my own clumsiness.
Suppose we call it quits. Let's not figure too close on the moving
consideration. There's nothing you can give Horace Brooks, attorney at
law, in the way of pay. And you need Horace Brooks--_only_ as attorney
at law. What can I do for you?'
"I don't know, but all that can be done now for him you can do. I've
nowhere else to go. It wasn't easy for me to come here, but I'd make any
sacrifice for my boy."
"Sacrifices are at a discount in a lawyer's office. I don't ask you to
reconsider your decision, as to me--as to me as your husband. But
speaking of sacrifices, I only point out to you that so far as I'm
concerned as a lawyer in this town, I might as well be your husband or
your lover as your lawyer of record in this case! Since the trial
yesterday, and my walk home with you last night, there'll be plenty
who'll think so anyway. I may be held as a man worse than I ever
was--and neither of us gain by that."
"That may be so," said she, bending her face forward in her hands. "God!
What a trial, what a risk, what a peril I am to myself and everyone I
meet! I've brought loss, suspicion, wrong on you--you who're noble! And
after twenty years----"
"Yes, Aurora. Twenty years outlaws a claim in the law--for men--but not
for women. Now, I take on those twenty years of yours when I take on
this case. I'm clear about that. I can see this thing straight enough.
This town will go into two camps. Ours is the hopeless one, as things
stand now. We are the under dog. If I took this case--maybe even if I
won it--I'd be hated by the men and snubbed by the women of this town.
Now, I see all that clearly. And speaking of pay----"
"Oh, if you would," she exclaimed, leaning toward him, her hands
extended, "I'd do anything you asked me. Do you understand
that--_anything_!"
She paused. In the silence the little clock on the mantel ticked so loud
it seemed almost to burst the walls. He sat for a long time motionless,
and she went on, leaning yet more toward him.
"I've thought it all over again," she said desperately. "I'd--I'd begin
it again--I'd do anything--I'd do _anything_ you asked me----Why, I've
nothing--nothing--oh, so little to give! But--as to what you said last
night--I've thought of that. I'm ready--what is it that you wish?"
He looked at her dumbly for a long time, and she thought it was in
condemnation. For almost the first time she voiced in her
life--continually on the defensive.
"I don't understand it all," said she. "I've tried very hard since then.
I was so young. I didn't know much at first--I didn't feel that it was
all so wrong--I didn't know much of anything at all, don't you see?"
Now he raised his great hand, his lips trembling. "Just wait a bit, my
dear," said he. "We'll take what you've said as proof of your love for
your own son. We'll let it stop right there, please. We'll forget what
happened last night at your broken gate--we'll forget what's happened
just now inside my broken gate. I told you if I ever married you I'd do
it on such a basis that I could look you in the face, and you could me.
That's the only way, Aurora. There's not any other way. I reckon I'll
always love you--but only on the square."
"But what can we do--you refuse to help us--and the boy's innocent!"
"Wait, my dear," said he slowly. "I've not a woman's wit, so I can't
leap on quite so fast as you do. A lawyer reads word by word. I'm still
in the preliminaries, not even into the argument of this case yet."
"But you have refused--you have said it meant ruin to you--I know--I
mean that to everyone."
"You've meant a great deal more than that to me, my dear," said Horace
Brooks, "and no matter what you mean--no matter what my decision may do
to my future--no matter what it may cost me in my larger ambitions,
which I entertain, or once did, the same as any other man here in
America--why, let it go."
"But what are you going to do? I'm costing you everything,
everything--and I can give you nothing, nothing--and I'm asking still of
you everything, everything."
"Tut, tut! Aurora," said Horace Brooks, "I'm going to take this
case--for better or for worse! Didn't I tell you I wanted to stand
between you and trouble--any trouble? A man likes to do things for a
woman--for the woman he loves."
She sat for a long time, white, motionless, looking at him.
"The pay----" she began stumblingly.
"I'd rather not hear you say anything about that," he replied simply.
"You did not say anything at all. This is the _office_ of Horace Brooks,
attorney at law. As I understand it, I'm duly retained for the defense
in the case of the state against Dieudonne Lane, charged with murder."
The blood came pouring back into Aurora Lane's face as she straightened.
"You are a good man," said she. "I always knew it. I----"
He raised a hand once more. "These are business hours," said he, "and
believe me, no time is left for anyone to do anything but work on this
case."
"He's innocent, of course. He couldn't have done this--who was it, do
you think?"
"Oh, now, I don't _know_ who it was. It may have been Don himself. All
men are human. A lawyer has to look all the facts in any case square in
the face."
"But, my God! You can't think--you don't believe----"
"Please let me act as attorney. Now, I'm to blame in a sort of way in
this case. I started a good deal of this trouble. I gave your boy the
advice which threw him in jail--when I told him to thrash any man who
said a word against his mother--you. He's made a certain threat or two.
He's been found in very compromising circumstances indeed. The case
looks bad against him. Yes, he needs a lawyer--but he's got one! We'll
fight it through. You see," and he smiled again his wide and winning
smile, "all my life, I've had a sort of leaning for the under dog.
"Now," said he, abruptly rising, "I'm in this case, and I'm going to
take my chances. I've lost my chances on the Senatorship of the United
States. I've kept my promise to Henderson and I've sent word to our
central committee. I'm the under dog. But before all this is over, the
people of Spring Valley are going to know there are two sides to this
fight--and all these fights!
"Now, listen, Aurora," he went on in his careless paternal fashion, as
he walked, his great head drooped, his hands thrust into his pockets.
"Figure it over. Last night we three walked home together--before them
all. Everybody saw us. Everybody saw Tarbush. It can be proved that Don
left us and went over, following after Tarbush. It can be proved that he
was seen running away from that place--at just the wrong time--in just
the wrong way."
"But it was someone else who killed him--it wasn't my boy----"
"You can't convince a jury by assertions. If it was not this man, they
will ask, Who was it? Who was the other man, and why do you think so?
Now, who _was_ that other man, Aurora?"
"I don't know."
"Neither do I. But we've got to find him. There's no trace of him. But
as for Don, the boy, it's a trail, a plain one, and it leads----" He
threw out his hands widely, as though reluctant to name the truth.
"But," he went on, "if he isn't guilty someone else is guilty. Under
this criminal act in all its phases there lies some cause, of
course--there is some criminal, of course. There has been crime
committed, a very beastly, brutal sort of crime, almost inhuman--and
that was done by some man. If I could put my hand on that man, why
then----"
"It would mean life and happiness to me. It would mean satisfaction to
you?"
"More than that," he smiled. "It would mean the life of your boy--many
years yet for you and him together--once I'd have said maybe it might
mean six years in the United States Senate for me. I don't know--I can't
tell. The chances now are rather that even if I clear the boy, it means
I'll have to close up this office and go somewhere else to hunt a law
practice. But we'll take our chances."
"You are a great man, Horace Brooks," said Aurora Lane; and there was a
sort of reverence in her tone. "Even after what has been between us, I
can say that. Oh, I so much like--I so much admire a man who is not
afraid, and who doesn't parley and weigh and dicker with himself when it
comes to any hard decision. I like a brave man, a good man. You'll
understand."
He raised a hand, a large hand, nervous, full-veined, gnarled, awkward,
a hand never in all his life to be freed from toil's indelible imprint.
"Please don't," said he.
"But how can I say what I want?" said she. "I've always wanted to pay
all my debts--that's to make up for all my faults, don't you see? I must
be scrupulous--because----"
"Yes," said he, "I see. I've seen that for more than twenty years, ever
since I've known you. Because that's true of you, and is true of so few
women, so very few, is why I wished last night--that you were a widow!
"Now, that's about all. When you _wish_ that you could pay this
debt--which isn't any debt so far--you've paid it, so far as I'm
concerned. It is the _wish_ to pay your debts that amounts to moral
principle--and to business success too--in this world.
"And so," he laughed again his great resounding laugh, and thrust out
his hand toward her, "I reckon you can call yourself something of a
business success tonight after all. Now go home, and see that you
sleep."