I
Carlin walked with a quick firm step across the square from the
courthouse to his office in the bank building. His usually ruddy face
was pale, his eyes gleamed with excitement under the brim of his soft
felt hat. He made his way through the crowd that filled the street
before the jail without halting, shaking off impatiently some attempts
to stop him, nodding or shaking his head for all answer to questions
shouted at him.
It was a bright spring day. For the second time since his marriage the
maples round the square were putting out their brilliant young leaves.
But there was no brightness in the throng under the maples. A sombre
excitement moved them, a low-toned angry murmur followed Carlin's
progress. It was hardly personal to him, however, or only faintly,
doubtfully so. He was recognized respectfully, and responded with curt
nods, or sometimes a quick lifting of his hand, like a military salute.
He ran up the steps into his own office, and through this to Judge
Baxter's, entering with a quick rap on the glass, closing the door
sharply behind him. The Judge was alone, writing at his desk, and
looked round rather absently, pushing his spectacles up on his
forehead. Carlin flung his hat on the rickety sofa in the corner and
standing by the desk, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, frowning,
he said firmly:
"Judge, we must take this case."
The Judge looked at him now with attention, but without answering.
Resistance showed in his face, but he put out his lower lip and
thoughtfully shifted his quid of tobacco from one cheek to the other.
"He sent for me and I was admitted to see him, as his counsel,"
Laurence went on in the same quick urgent tone. "And then--we must do
it, that's all."
The Judge looked at the sheet of paper before him, half-filled with his
crabbed painstaking writing, laid down his pen, and leaned back in his
chair.
"Why?" he demanded coolly.
"My God, Judge!" Carlin burst out.
With an effort to master himself, he turned away and walked several
times across the floor.
"If you'd seen the man--if you'd heard him!... I'm all smashed up by
it," he confessed huskily, stopping and staring out of the window.
"I see you are," said the Judge. "Have a drink?"
Carlin shook his head. But the Judge, opening a cupboard in his desk,
took out a bottle and one glass, poured a stiff allowance of whiskey
and tossed it off neat.
"I'm glad you don't drink much, Laurence," he remarked as he put away
the glass. "With your excitable temperament you couldn't stand it."
As Carlin stood silent, staring out, the Judge addressed his back.
"I don't like murder cases--never did. Never could do anything with
'em. My clients were hanged, every time--that was long ago.... I
haven't touched a criminal case for--well, years. I'm no jury lawyer.
We don't want to go into that, Laurence ... and then, the fellow's a
brute."
"No--no!... Wait until I tell you about it...."
Laurence turned round. His tone was calmer but he still looked deeply
agitated, and began to pace the floor again.
"Well, take your time.... But I can't see what it is to you," said
Judge Baxter curiously.
His genial shrewd old face expressed a somewhat cynical perplexity.
If he had ever been deeply moved by human passion and folly, he had
forgotten it--for many years it had been only a spectacle to him. All
crimes spring from love, so-called, or money. One of these two great
mainsprings the Judge understood thoroughly. He knew all about human
cupidity. He had made his own fortune out of the desire of some of his
fellow-beings to over-reach others, and this golden fountain would
never run dry. The Judge had all the law of property at his fingers'
ends. His ability to help a corporation to use the law was abundantly
recognized and recompensed. He was a noted railroad counsel. Why turn
aside from this safe and profitable concern with people's purses, to
meddle with the wild impulses of their hearts, so-called?
"You say you don't see what it is to me," Carlin began, turning
abruptly. "But I know the man, if you remember. He was in my
company--one of the best in it too--I knew him well--that's why he
thought of me, I suppose.... But even if I hadn't known him, if I'd
seen any man as he was this morning, if any man talked to me as he
did.... I never heard anything like it--I never saw anything so
friendless, forlorn.... He's like a lost beaten dog--there isn't a
soul in the world that isn't against him...."
"Well, that's right, I guess," said the Judge cautiously. "He's worse
than friendless." He turned his head toward the window, giving ear to
the noise from the street--a low continuous murmur. "That crowd means
trouble.... When do they take him out?"
"By the afternoon train. The Sheriff thinks he can do it--he's got
thirty deputies sworn in."
"I've never seen a lynching here," said the Judge, getting up and going
to the window. "But--we came pretty near it once or twice during the
war. It looked a good deal like this, too.... You see, our people don't
make an awful lot of noise about a thing--when they mean business,
they're quiet."
The two men stood side by side, looking down on the square, which was
by now closely packed.
"Well, I guess we'll get him out just the same," said Carlin grimly.
"'We'?"
"They won't get him if I can help it.... But I'd like to know why they
_want_ to--don't understand a mob getting up like this about it--"
"It runs like wildfire, once it starts.... Perhaps the boys want some
excitement, we haven't had much lately. And then," said the Judge
emphatically, "they don't _like_ it. It was an unprovoked brutal murder
of a woman--a good hardworking woman, with little children to look
after--and this fellow comes back, takes to drinking, quarrels with his
wife and smashes her head with an ax--by God, if they want to string
him up, I don't blame them!"
"Look here, Judge, you're just like the rest of them, you don't
understand, you don't know! A man doesn't smash his wife with an ax for
_nothing_--"
"If you're going to try to justify him--"
"No, he doesn't want that, neither do I. He's a lost man and he
knows it.... All he seemed to want of me was to have one human being
understand it--just to tell me about it. He doesn't want to get off, he
wants to die."
Carlin's intense blue eyes held the Judge's unwilling gaze; they both
forgot the crowd outside, turned from the window. The Judge sat down
again at his desk.
"Well, tell me about it," he said reluctantly. "But I'm sorry to see
you so worked up.... I really don't see how we could handle a case
like this, even if we had a chance to do anything with it. I tell you
it isn't the thing, it's all off my beat--you know it. And you're
just getting your start, and to handicap yourself right off with an
unpopular case where you haven't the ghost of a show, where feeling's
dead against you--no, Laurence, my boy, I oughtn't to let you--we can't
do it!"
Laurence drew a chair to the other side of the desk, facing the Judge.
"If _we_ can't, I'll try it alone," he said quietly. "All I want for
Barclay is a hearing--just to have his side of it known, that's all.
He'll have to pay the penalty, of course--he'll get life imprisonment
at least and I'm not sure he wouldn't rather be hanged, in fact I'm
sure he would, _now_.... But he did have provocation--if you could get
anybody to see it."
"Well, see if you can get me to see it. I guess that's a good test,"
said the Judge coolly. "I'm as prejudiced against him as anybody. I
wouldn't lynch him, maybe--but I don't want you to lose your first
important case."
He leaned back in his chair and fixed his old, wise, wary eyes on
Carlin, who, quite calm now, had an abstracted look.
"Well, to begin I'd have to tell you what I knew about Barclay before
this.... He was in the first company to go from here--enlisted for
three months, you know. Just dropped his tools and went--he was a
machinist, making good wages, had a nice little home here, wife and two
children. They were dependent on him, but the wife was sturdy and said
she guessed they could get along somehow--and they did. She got work
and people helped them, and she kept up the home. Barclay was awfully
proud of her and the youngsters--another one was born after he went.
He used to show me their pictures and talk about them. He was good at
machinery--it was the only thing he _did_ know--he was a gunner in my
battery later and a good one. Strong as a horse and he'd fight like
the devil when things got hot. A big fellow, good-natured too and kind
of simple-minded--soft, you might say, except when he was fighting or
drunk. He didn't seem to have but two ideas in his head--one was the
war and the other was his family. He re-enlisted, of course, and went
through the whole thing, but he was homesick all the time. He used
to write home whenever he could, and when he didn't get letters as
often as he thought he ought to, he'd come to me and worry, and ask if
I'd heard and so on.... I'm telling you this, Judge," Carlin looked
earnestly at the Judge's impassive face, "so you can understand what
sort of a man he was and what his home meant to him--just everything,
outside of what he was fighting for. That man made a real sacrifice,
because he thought it his duty. He felt it all the time, but he thought
the country needed him, and he had to do it, and he had a pride in it
too--he didn't look for any reward, but I suppose he thought what he
did would be appreciated somehow--anyhow he didn't expect to lose out
altogether by it...."
Carlin stopped for a moment, frowning till his eyes showed only a blue
glint.
"Lots of us that went were remembered," he said slowly, "and some--were
forgotten."
He picked up a pencil and began scoring deep lines on a sheet of paper.
"Four years is a good slice out of a man's life. He loses a lot--in
his life, his work--other men get the start of him--he's far away, and
perhaps will never come back, and they're _here_.... When a man gives
that much, and risks everything, in what seems a holy cause to him, it
seems as if--it seems as if--"
His voice trembled. The Judge was watching him now intently. He got up
and began to walk the floor again.
"You see, Judge, that's natural--to want to have some recognition of
what you've done. And I know a lot of our fellows felt that the people
at home _didn't_ recognize it. They made a lot of fuss about us when we
went away, but when we came back--those of us that did come back--they
didn't get excited much about us.
"They were busy--they'd been living their lives in peace while we were
fighting and protecting them--_we_ stood between them and the enemy and
most of them never felt what war is. They might know about it, but they
didn't _feel_ it, we saved them from that.... Then when we came back,
sometimes they were glad to see us, sometimes not. Anyhow, we had to
scramble around and see what we could do, to make a living, to get back
the place we'd lost. Lots of us found it hard. It wasn't only the time
lost, but those four years of war made a difference in us, sometimes
for the better, sometimes for the worse...."
"Surely," said Judge Baxter, nodding.
"You see, Judge, it upsets all a man's habits and way of living. You
can't make a good soldier of a man without loosening up some things in
him that are usually kept down. He faces violent death every day, and
he _kills_. It's a primitive thing, war is, and men get back to where
they were. They suffer and they try to make the other fellow suffer
more, they get callous, savage, lots of them. Then when they come back
to civilized life, it's hard for them to fit in. I wonder there wasn't
more trouble than there was, I wonder that that great army, nearly a
million men, melted away as quietly as it did.... Judge, it was a great
thing that we did--"
Carlin stopped and fixed his eyes on the Judge, who nodded gravely.
"We felt it so at the time, at least very many of us did, and looking
back, we can see how big a thing it was. We fought the good fight, we
crushed something evil, that would have destroyed our country. Every
man in our army has a right to be proud of it, proud of himself, if he
did his best ... he has a right to be remembered...."
"Yes, surely," said Judge Baxter, with the same grave intentness, his
keen eyes watching Carlin's every look and motion.
There was a brief silence.
"Well," said Carlin, drawing a deep breath. "Barclay was forgotten....
The last year, letters were scarce. We were on the jump and then we
went down into Georgia.... I don't know just what happened here. He
doesn't make any accusation against his wife, though it seems there
was somebody else she liked. But she'd settled her life without him.
She could support the family and she'd got used to doing without him.
Perhaps she never cared so much for him as he thought. But yet if
he'd been here, probably it would have gone along all right. But he
wasn't, you see.... And she heard things about him too. He was in the
guardhouse a few times for drinking, and somebody else would mention it
in writing home.... All that came out after he got back."
Carlin was still walking about restlessly under the Judge's watchful
gaze.
"When he got back he found he wasn't wanted--that's all. His wife could
do without him, and preferred to. His children were little--they'd
forgotten him. There was a baby he'd never seen. He felt like a
stranger in the house. And she made him feel it! At first he couldn't
realize it, and tried to have it all as it was before--but it was no
use. She didn't want him there.... Well, I suppose you can't see what
that meant to him--"
"Yes, I can," said the Judge.
"It was all he had, you know. And she'd taken it away from him--the
children and all. He could see that if he'd never come back, if he'd
been killed, she would have married this other man, and never missed
him. He saw that she wished he hadn't come back. In fact--she told him
so, after they got to quarrelling...."
"That was pretty bad," muttered the Judge.
"And he still loved her, you see. Otherwise he'd have gone away again.
But he wanted her and the children. So he took to drinking--"
"Why, naturally."
"He took to drinking hard and didn't work--couldn't. And he made the
house miserable, of course. They quarrelled terribly, he beat her....
She reproached him for being a useless drunken loafer, spoiling her
life and the children's--then she told him she wished he'd died.... It
was after that...."
Carlin was silent. The Judge nodded his white head and said abruptly:
"Yes, the poor simpleton--lost his head."
"He doesn't remember how it happened--he was drunk. But he doesn't
deny it--can't, of course," said Carlin in a low voice. "He said to me
that he could hardly believe it ... he'd always loved her ... he said
it didn't seem possible he could have hurt her ... he thought he must
have been crazy ... he wished he had been killed down south, then it
wouldn't have happened and she would have been happy, and the children
taken care of, while now.... And then he cried...."
Carlin's voice broke, and he turned away to the window. The Judge's
eyes followed him eagerly, dwelt on his bent head, his bowed shoulders
for some moments.
"The poor fool," he said, taking off his spectacles and looking at them
critically.
"Judge, it was an awful thing to see--that big fellow, all crumpled up
like a wet rag--broken, crushed--helpless as a baby,--not a soul to
put out a hand to him--and he was sinking, lost--lost forever.... And
a good man too, that's the mystery ... why, Judge, anybody might have
acted that way--_might_ have ... if people could only see that, feel
it...."
The Judge had polished his spectacles to a nicety and now put them on
and stood up.
"Well, Laurence, I guess you can make them feel it--I guess you can, my
boy!" he burst out.
His broad face lighted up with enthusiasm, with professional ardour.
"Laurence, you were right and I was wrong. If you feel the thing as
much as this, it's a chance for you. Nothing counts so much with a
jury as feeling--real feeling--and you've got it. We'll take that case
and you shall make the address--I'm not a jury lawyer myself, but I
know one when I see him! You won't save your man, Laurence, but many a
reputation has been made in a lost cause!"
And the Judge, advancing, took Carlin's hand and shook it warmly.
Carlin looked at him with troubled, bewildered eyes, and the Judge
clapped him on the shoulder briskly.
"Laurence, my boy, I knew you had it in you!" he cried.
"I'm not taking this case to distinguish myself," Carlin said angrily.
"No, no, of course not--that makes it all the better!" the Judge
assured him, with the utmost cheerfulness.
But suddenly he became grave again and pondered.
"If the boys try anything it will be when they take him to the train,"
he reflected.
"I'm going home now to get a bite of dinner--then I'll be on hand if
there's trouble. You coming, Judge?" Carlin took up his hat.
"I've got a letter to finish--then I'll be along. But, say, Laurence--"
The Judge stopped on the way to his desk.
"Mary--she won't like this."
Laurence was at the door, and turned a disturbed look on the Judge.
"No, she won't. She liked Mrs. Barclay."
"She won't like our defending him."
"I'll explain--there's a lot she doesn't know--I'll tell her and she'll
understand." Carlin's tone had not much conviction.
"Well, perhaps," said the Judge dubiously.