A TRUE BILL
Now it was nine o'clock of the Monday morning. The grand jury was in
session thus early, and it had thus early brought in a true bill against
one Dieudonne Lane for murder in the first degree. The session of the
jury had just begun. None of the jury knew of these late events at the
house of Aurora Lane.
In his office Judge Henderson was pacing up and down all that morning.
He had failed in every attempt to stop the progress of the law. He could
not on Sunday afternoon reach by telephone or otherwise the men he
wished to see; on Sunday night had seen this horror; and now, early on
Monday, there was no way by which even he could arrest the procedure of
the grand jury, made up of men who lived here, and who before this had
made up their minds on the bill which Slattery, state's attorney,
zealous as they, had rushed through at a late session with his own
clerks on Sunday night after he had ended his Sabbath motor ride to an
adjoining town.
Fate conspired against Judge Henderson and his shrewd plan for delay
which was to have left him secure in his ambition and saved in his own
conceit. These things now seemed shrunk, faded, unimportant.
He had not slept at all that night. Before him now swept such a panorama
as it seemed to him would never let him sleep again. He was indeed
facing now the crisis of his life--a crisis not in his material affairs
alone, but a crisis of his moral nature. He had learned in one swift
lesson what others sometimes learn more deliberately--that the world is
not for the use of any one man alone, but for the use of all men who
dwell in it. It is the world of human beings who are partners in its
use. They stand alike on its soil, they fight there for the same end.
They are brothers, even though savage brothers, after all.
And among these are fathers, too. It was his own son who lay in yonder
jail. Now at last some thought, a new, stirring and compelling emotion
came into his soul. It was not her boy, but his--it was his son! And now
he knew he had been indeed a Judas and a coward.
Judge Henderson's dulled senses heard a sound, a distinct and unusual
sound. He stepped out into the hall and spoke to a neighbor who also was
looking out of his office door.
"What was that shot?" he asked.
"I don't know," said the other. "Where was it at--around that corner?
Oh, I reckon it was probably a tire blew out at Nels Jorgen's wagon
shop--he has automobiles there sometimes."
Henderson turned back to his own office, his nerves twitching. He was
obliged to face the duties of this day.
What was to happen now to William Henderson, the leading citizen of
Spring Valley? Actually, he now did not so much care. It was his
son--his own son--in yonder jail! The heart of a father began to be born
in him, thus late, thus very, very late.... He had seen her face, last
night.
He walked slowly down his stair and across the street to the courthouse.
His course was such that he could not see into Mulberry Street. Some
persons were hurrying in that direction, but he did not join them. He
was too preoccupied to pay much attention to the sounds which came to
his ears. As for himself, he could have gone anywhere rather than near
to the house of Aurora Lane that morning. A great terror filled his
soul, a terror largely of these people among whom he had lived thus
long. They had wrecked her home. They might have done worse in their
savagery. But it was he himself who was the real cause of that. Would
she still keep her oath now, after this? Could she be silent now?
He walked on now into the courthouse and down the long hall. He was
about to step into the county clerk's office, when he came face to face
with a tall man just stepping out. It was Horace Brooks.
"Well, Judge," said the latter, "how is it with you today?"
He spoke not unkindly, although his own face was haggard and gray.
Neither had he slept that night.
"It goes badly enough," said Henderson. "Nothing could be much worse.
Well?"
"You want to know if the grand jury has voted that bill? They have--I
have just heard. Of course you know I am counsel of record for the
defense."
"I didn't know it."
"Yes, Judge, there's going to be a fight on this case," said Hod Brooks
grimly. "That is, if you really want to fight. I've got nothing left to
trade--but, Judge, do you think you and I really ought to fight--over
this particular case?"
"I can't forswear my own professional duties," began Judge Henderson,
his mouth dry in his dull dread, his heart wrenched. He wondered what
Hod Brooks knew, what he was going to do. He knew what must come, but he
was not ready for the hour.
"Come into this room," said Horace Brooks suddenly. "I won't go to your
office, and I won't ask you to come to mine. But come in here, and let's
have a little talk."
They stepped over to the door of the county treasurer's office, across
the hall. It was a room of the sort usual in a country courthouse, with
its high stools and desks, its map-hung walls, its scattered chairs, its
great red record books lying here and there upon the desk top.
A young woman sat making some entry in a book. "Miss Carrie," said
Horace Brooks to her, "Judge Henderson and I want to talk a little
together privately. Please keep us from being disturbed. You run
away--we won't steal the county funds."
Smilingly the clerk obeyed. Brooks turned to Judge Henderson abruptly.
"Look here, Judge," said he.
He pointed to a large framed lithograph which hung on the wall--the same
which had hung on the wall in the library at the exercises of Saturday
night. It was a portrait of the candidate for the United States
Senate--Judge Henderson himself. The latter looked at it for a moment
without comment, and turned back with an inquiring eye.
Brooks was fumbling in the side pocket of his alpaca coat, and now he
drew out from it a good-sized photograph, which he placed face upward on
the desk beside them. It was done in half-profile, as was the portrait
upon the wall.
"Look at this picture too, Judge, if you please," said he, "and then
look back again at the lithograph. That was taken some years ago, when
you were young, wasn't it?"
Judge Henderson flushed lividly. "I leave all those things to the
committee," croaked he.
"--But this one here," said Horace Brooks slowly, "was taken when you
were still younger, _say, when you were twenty-two_, wasn't it?" He
moved back so that Judge Henderson might look at the photograph. He saw
the face of the great man grow yellow pale.
"Where did you get this?" he whispered. "How?"
"I got it of Miss Julia Delafield, at the library, early this morning,"
said Horace Brooks. "I told Miss Julia, whatever she did, to stay in the
library and not to go over to Aurora Lane's house. I--I didn't want her
to see what had happened there. She was busy, but she found this picture
for me. And we both know that really it is a photograph of the young man
against whom the grand jury have just brought a true bill--within the
last ten minutes."
There was silence in the dusty little room. The large white hand on the
desk top was visibly trembling. Hod Brooks' voice was low as he went on:
"Now, as to trying this case, Judge, I brought you in here to ask you
what you really want to do? I don't my own self very often try cases out
of court--although I have sometimes--sometimes. Yes, sometimes that's
the way to serve the ends of substantial justice."
Henderson made no reply--he scarcely could have spoken. He could feel
the net tightening; he knew what he was to expect now.
"Now, here are these two pictures," resumed Brooks. "Suppose I _were_
trying this case _in_ court. I'm not sure, but I think I could get them
both introduced in evidence, these two pictures. I think they are both
germane to this case--don't you? You've been on the bench--we've both
read law. Do you think as a judge you could keep a good lawyer from
getting these two pictures introduced in evidence in that case?"
"I don't see how you could," said the hoarse voice of Judge Henderson.
"It would be altogether immaterial and incompetent."
"Perhaps, perhaps," said Hod Brooks. "That's another good reason why I'd
rather try the case here, if it suits you! But just suppose I enlarged
this photograph to the exact size of the lithograph on the wall, and
suppose I did get them both into evidence, and suppose I unveiled the
two at just the psychological moment--I presume you would trust me to do
that?
"Now if I hadn't seen you last night just where you were, if I hadn't
hoped, from what I saw of you, that you were part man at least--_that's
how I would try this case_! What do you think about it?"
"I think you are practising politics again, and not law," sneered
Henderson. But his face was white.
"Yes? Well, I'll tell you, I don't want to see you go to the United
States Senate. In the first place, though I agreed not to run at all, I
never agreed to help you run. In the second place, I never did think you
were a good enough man to go there, and now I think it less than ever.
And since you ask me a direct question of political bearing, I'll say
that, if the public records--that is to say, the court records and all
the newspapers--showed the similarity of these two pictures side by
side, the effect on your political future might be very considerable!
What do you think?
"Now, if you take you and that boy side by side today," he went on,
having had no reply, "the resemblance between you two might not be
noticed. But get the _ages_ together--get the view of the face the same
in each case--take him at his age and you at something near the same
age--and don't you think there is much truth in what I said? The boy has
red hair, like me! But in black and white he looks like you!"
Judge Henderson, unable to make reply, had turned away. He was staring
out from the window over the courthouse yard.
"Some excitement over there," he said. Hod Brooks did not hear him.
"That face on the wall there, Judge Henderson," said he, "is the face of
a murderer! The face of this boy is not that of a murderer. But _you_
murdered a woman twenty years ago--not a man, but a woman--and damn
you, you know it, absolutely well! I saw last night that at last you
realized your own crime, that crime--you had _guilt_ on your face. I am
going to charge you--just as you maybe were planning to charge that
boy--with murder, worse than murder in the first degree, if that be
possible--worse even than prosecuting your own son for murder when you
know he's innocent!
"_You_ murdered that woman whom we two saw last night! _You_ made that
beastly mob a possible thing--not now, but years ago. Do you think the
people of this community will want to send you to the United States
Senate if they ever get a look at that act? Do you think they would
relish the thought that _you're_ the special prosecutor where _your son_
is on trial for his life? I say it--_your son_! You know it, and I know
it. You'd jeopardize the life that you yourself gave to him and were too
cowardly to acknowledge! Do you think you'd have a chance on earth here
if those things were known--if they knew you'd refused to defend
him--that you'd denied your own son? And do you think for a moment these
things will _not_ be known if I take this case?"
"This is blackmail!" exclaimed Judge Henderson, swinging around. "I'll
not stand for this."
"Of course, it's blackmail, Judge. I know that. But it's justice. And
you will stand for it! I didn't take this boy's case to get him hanged,
but to get him clear. I don't care a damn how I do it, but I'm going to
do it. I'd fight a man like you with anything I could get my hands on.
This is blackmail, yes; and it's politics--but it's justice."
"I didn't think this was possible," began Henderson, his voice shaking.
"I didn't think this of you."
"There's a lot of things people never thought of me," smiled Hod Brooks.
"I'm something of a trader my own self. Here's where we trade again.
"Listen. I didn't have the start that you had. I started far back beyond
the flag, and I have had to run hard to get into any place. Maybe I'll
lose all my place through this, I don't know. But I never got anywhere
in my life by shirking or sidestepping."
"You have some hidden interest in this."
"Yes! Now you have come to it! I'm not so much thinking of myself, not
so much thinking of you. I'm thinking of that woman."
He could not find Henderson's eyes now, for Henderson's face was buried
in his hands.
"I was thinking of something of the sort," Brooks went on slowly, "in
that other case, in Blackman's court last Saturday. Why didn't you try
that case, Judge? Didn't you know then he was your boy?"
The suddenly aged man before him did not make any reply. His full eyes
seemed to protrude yet more. "I felt something--I wasn't sure. She'd
told me years ago the boy was dead. How could I believe I was his
father? Don't ask me."
"I wish to God _I_ could have been the father of that boy!" said Hod
Brooks deliberately.
"We seem to be talking freely enough!" said Henderson. The perspiration
was breaking out on his forehead. But Horace Brooks took no shame to
himself for what he had said.
"The mother of that boy," he went on, "is the one woman I ever cared
for, Judge. I'll admit that to you. If there were any way in the world
so that I could take that woman's troubles on my own shoulders, I'd do
it.... So, you see, this wasn't blackmail after all, Judge. It wasn't
really politics after all. I was doing this for _her_."
"For her?"
"Yes. Now listen. You met her as a girl, when she didn't know much. I
never met her really to know much about her until she was a grown woman,
with a character--a splendid character whose like you'll not find
anywhere in this town, nor in many another town. You never had the
courage to come out and say that she was your wife--you never had the
courage to make her your wife. You thought you could last her out in
this town, because she was a person of no consequence--because she was a
woman. And all the time she was the grandest woman in this town. But she
didn't have any friends. Now, it seemed to me, she ought to have a
friend.
"Do you call it blackmail now, Judge?" he asked presently. "Is this
politics?"
But he ceased in his assault as he saw the pallor of the face of his
antagonist.
"You've got me, Hod!" said Judge William Henderson, gasping. "I confess!
It's over. You've got me!"
"Yes, I've got you, but I don't want you," said Hod Brooks. "I'm not
after you socially, legally, politically, or any other way. I tell you,
I'm thinking of those two women who put your son through college--who
had all they could do to keep their souls in their bodies, while you
lived the way you have lived here. They paid your debts for you--they
advanced cash and character _both_ for you--just two poor women. The
question now is, How are you going to pay any of your debts? There'll be
considerable accrued interest."
"I didn't know it all, I tell you," broke out Judge Henderson. "She
hasn't spoken to me for years, you might say--we never met. I didn't
know the boy was alive--she told me twenty years ago that he'd died, a
baby. This has all come up in a day--I've not had time to learn, to
think, to plan, to adjust----God! don't you think it's terrible enough,
with him there in jail?"
"She never asked you for help?"
"No, not till yesterday."
"She was game. I was sure. That was one reason why I went to that woman
night before last and asked her if she'd marry me."
"What--you did that?"
"I did that! I told her _I_ would take the boy and give him a father. I
said I'd even call him my own--I'd come that close to losing my own
self-respect in just this one case in the world. But, I told her, of
course I couldn't do that unless she was a widow. And, Judge, I
learned--from her--that she wasn't a widow. Oh, no, she didn't tell me
about you--and I never figured it out all clean till just now--that the
late District Judge of this county, and the Senatorial candidate for
this State--was the father of the boy, Don Lane. Huh? Oh, stand up to
it--you've got to take it.
"Now, this boy of yours had no father and two mothers--it's an odd case.
But how did I learn who was the father of that boy? Not from Aurora
Lane. No, I learned that from the other mother--this morning--Miss
Julia. And as soon as I did--as soon as I was convinced I had proofs--I
started over to find you."
"My God! man, what could you have meant?--You told her you would marry
her?" Judge Henderson's sheer astonishment overcame all other emotions.
"I meant every word I said. If it could have been humanly possible for
me to marry her, I'd have done that. Yes--I wanted to give her her
chance. I couldn't give her her chance. It looks as though she didn't
have one, never has had, never can have.
"Now, if I hadn't seen you last night right where I did--if I didn't
believe that somewhere inside of you there was just a trace of
manhood--it's not very much--it's damned little--I wouldn't have asked
you to come in here to talk. I'd have waited until I got you in the
courtroom. I'd have waited until I got you on the platform, and then I'd
have taken your heart out in public. I'd have broken you before the
people of this town. I'd have flayed you alive and prayed your hide to
grow so I could take it off again, and I'd have hung it on the public
fence. But, you see--last night----My God!
"I wouldn't trade places with you now, Judge Henderson," said Hod
Brooks, after a time. "If I knew I had been responsible for what we saw
last night, as you were responsible--I'd never raise my head again.
"As for the United States Senate, Judge, do you think you're fit to go
there? Do you think this is blackmail now? Do you think you want to try
this murder case? Do you think you want to try this case against this
boy--your son--her son? There may be men worse than you in the United
States Senate, but I will say it might be full of better. You're never
going there, Judge. And you're never going to try this case."
"You've got me, Hod," croaked the ashy-faced man.
"Yeh, Judge, I have! But that's not the question."
"What do you mean?"
"You swore the oath of justice and support of the law when you were
admitted to this bar. You've broken your oath--all your oaths. Are you
going to throw yourself on the court now and ask for forgiveness?"
Henderson stood weakly, half supporting himself against the desk edge.
He seemed shrunken all at once, his clothing fitted him less snugly. A
roughened place showed on the side of his shining top hat--the only top
hat in Spring Valley.
"I've tried this case," said Hod Brooks sharply. "I've tried it before
your own conscience. It took twenty years for a woman to square herself.
I'm going to ask the court to send you up for twenty years. You murdered
a good woman. That's a light sentence."
A large fly was buzzing on the window-pane in the sunlight, and the
sound was distinctly audible in the silence that now fell in the little
room. It might indeed have been twenty years that had passed here in as
many minutes, so swift a revolution had taken place. The making over of
a soul; the cleansing of a life; the changing of an entire creed of
conduct; the surrender of a dominating inborn trait; the tearing down
and building over a vain and wholly selfish man.
"I think she's a good woman," said Hod Brooks simply, after a time.
"So do I!" broke out Judge Henderson at length, with a sudden gasp. "So
do I! She's a good woman. I knew it last night. I've known it all along,
in a way. It all came over me last night--I saw it all plain for the
first time in all these years. Hod! You're right. I don't deserve mercy.
I don't ask it--I'd be ashamed to."
"Religion," said Hod Brooks, quite irrelevantly, "is not altogether
confined to churches, you know. A man's conviction may hit him
anywhere--even in the office of the county treasurer of Jackson County.
But if I was a preacher, Judge Henderson, I'd be mighty glad to hear you
say what you have said."
In his face there showed some sort of strange emotion of his own, a sort
of yearning for the understanding of his own nature by this other man;
and some sort of rude man's sympathy for the broken man who stood before
him.
"You both were young," said he softly and irrelevantly. "I'm not your
judge."
"Hod," said Judge Henderson--"I'm done! I wouldn't go to the Senate
tomorrow if they'd let me. For twenty years she's taken her fate. She's
never told my name. She's never blamed me. She's paid all her debts. In
the next twenty years--can I live as well as that?"
"Yes, she's paid her debts. We've all got to do that some time--there
doesn't seem to be any good way of getting clear of an honest debt,
does there? It costs considerable, sometimes." Hod Brooks' voice held no
wavering, but it was not unkind.
"But now, Judge," he resumed, "we get around to my profession, which is
that of the practice of the law. There's a true bill against the boy.
State's Attorney Slattery don't amount to much--I know about a lot of
things. You're the real intended prosecutor here. Now, I don't want any
passing over of this case to another term of court--I'm not going to let
that boy lie in jail."
"That was what I meant to do--I wasn't going to try for a conviction--I
was going to try for delay."
"Come into court with me and openly ask the quashing of this
indictment," said Hod Brooks. "And we can beat that delay game a
thousand ways of the deck! But now, now--you _did_ have the heart of a
father, then? So, so--well, well! Say, Judge, we're not opponents--we're
partners in this case."
"Hod----" began the other; but Hod Brooks was the master mind. "I
believe we can show, some time, somehow," said he, "that the boy didn't
do it. I know the boy's _mother_. Of course, his father wasn't so much!"
He broke out into his great laugh, but in the corners of his eyes there
was visible a dampness.
Judge Henderson hesitated for just a moment. "Believe at least this
much, Hod," said he. "I didn't know as much at first as I do now.
She--she told me all--I saw it all--last night. I want to tell the
truth--near as I know. When I saw the boy in Blackman's court--it didn't
seem possible, and yet it did. But who gave you the notion? What made
_you_ suspect it? You didn't suspect it then, in the justice court, did
you?"
"Only vaguely," said Hod Brooks; "not so very much. I'll tell you who
did--a woman."
"Aurora?"
"No--Miss Julia. Miss Julia sat there looking from the face of Don Lane
to your own face. There was something in her face--I can't tell what.
Why, hell! I don't suppose a man ever does know what's going on in a
woman's heart, least of all a crude man like me, that never had any fine
feelings in all his life. But there was something there in Miss Julia's
face--I can't tell what. In some way, in her mind, she was connecting
those two faces that she saw before her. If I hadn't seen her face, I
wouldn't ever have suspected you of being the father of that boy!
"But something stuck in my mind. Now, this morning, getting ready to
prepare my case, defending this boy, I went over to Miss Julia's
library. I still remembered what I had seen. I found this picture
there--she had that other picture there, hanging on her wall, too. She
had them both! One was on the wall and the other on her desk. Now, she
had certainly established some connection in her own mind between those
two pictures, or else she wouldn't have had them there both right
before her."
"Then you, too, know," interrupted Henderson, "the story of those two
women--how they brought him up from babyhood--and kept the secret? Why
did Miss Julia do that?"
"Because she was a woman."
"But why didn't she tell?"
"Because she was a woman."
"But why--what makes you suppose she ever would care in the first place
for this boy when he was a baby?"
"Again, because she was a woman, Judge!"
"She came and told me all about her friendship for Aurora. But she
admitted she didn't know who the father of the boy was. Then why should
she connect me with this?"
"The same reason, Judge--because she was a woman!
"And when you come to that," he added as he turned toward the door,
"that covers our whole talk today. That's why I got you to come here.
That's why I'm interested in this case. That's why I've made you try
this case yourself, here, now, Judge, before the court of your own
conscience. A crime worse than murder has been done here in this town to
Aurora Lane--because she was a woman! She's borne the brunt of it--paid
all her debts--carried all her awful, unspeakable, unbelievable
load--because she was a woman!
"And," he concluded, "if you ask me why I was specially interested in
the boy's case and yours and hers--I'll tell you. I gave up--to you--all
my hope of success and honor and preferment just so as to help her all I
could; to stand between her and the world all I could; to help her and
her boy all I could. It was because she was a woman--the very best I
ever knew."