THE LADY LAWYER
When old Hosie had withdrawn with his expectorative plunder, Katherine
sat down at the desk and gazed thoughtfully out of her window, taking
in the tarnished dome of the Court House that rose lustreless above
the elm tops and the heavy-boned farmhorses that stood about the iron
hitch-racks of the Square, stamping and switching their tails in
dozing warfare against the flies.
Once more, she began to go over the case. Having decided to test all
possible theories, she for the moment pigeon-holed the idea of a
mistake, and began to seek for other explanations. For a space she
vacantly watched the workmen tearing down the speakers' stand. But
presently her eyes began to glow, and she sprang up and excitedly
paced the little office.
Perhaps her father had unwittingly and innocently become involved in
some large system of corruption! Perhaps this case was the first
symptom of the existence of some deep-hidden municipal disease!
It seemed possible--very possible. Her two years with the Municipal
League had taught her how common were astute dishonest practices. The
idea filled her. She began to burn with a feverish hope. But from the
first moment she was sufficiently cool-headed to realize that to
follow up the idea she required intimate knowledge of Westville
political conditions.
Here she felt herself greatly handicapped. Owing to her long residence
away from Westville she was practically in ignorance of public
affairs--and she faced the further difficulty of having no one to whom
she could turn for information. Her father she knew could be of little
service; expert though he was in his specialty, he was blind to evil
in men. As for Blake, she did not care to ask aid from him so soon
after his refusal of assistance. And as for others, she felt that all
who could give her information were either hostile to her father or
critical of herself.
For days the idea possessed her mind. She kept it to herself, and, her
suspicious eyes sweeping in all directions, she studied as best she
could to find some evidence or clue to evidence, that would
corroborate her conjecture. In her excited hope, she strove, while she
thought and worked, to be indifferent to what the town might think
about her. But she was well aware that Old Hosie's prophecy was swift
in coming true--that a storm was raging, a storm of her own sex. It
should be explained, however, in justice to them, that they forgot the
fact, or never really knew it, that she had been forced to take her
father's case. To be sure, there was no open insult, no direct attack,
no face-to-face denunciation; but piazzas buzzed indignantly with her
name, and at the meeting of the Ladies' Aid the poor were forgotten,
as at the Missionary Society were the unbibled heathen upon the
foreign shore.
Fragments of her sisters' pronouncements were wafted to Katherine's
ears. "No self-respecting, womanly woman would ever think of wanting
to be a lawyer"--"A forward, brazen, unwomanly young person"--"A
disgrace to the town, a disgrace to our sex"--"Think of the example
she sets to impressionable young girls; they'll want to break away and
do all sorts of unwomanly things"--"Everybody knows her reason for
being a lawyer is only that it gives her a greater chance to be with
the men."
Katherine heard, her mouth hardened, a certain defiance came into her
manner. But she went straight ahead seeking evidence to support her
suspicion.
Every day made her feel more keenly her need of intimate knowledge
about the city's political affairs; then, unexpectedly, and from an
unexpected quarter, an informant stepped out upon her stage. Several
times Old Hosie Hollingsworth had spoken casually when they had
chanced to pass in the building or on the street. One day his lean,
stooped figure appeared in her office and helped itself to a chair.
"I see you haven't exactly made what Charlie Horn, in his dramatic
criticisms, calls an uproarious and unprecedented success," he
remarked, after a few preliminaries.
"I have not been sufficiently interested to notice," was her crisp
response.
"That's right; keep your back up," said he. "I've been agin about
everything that's popular, and for everything that's unpopular, that
ever happened in this town. I've been an 'agin-er' for fifty years.
They'd have tarred and feathered me long ago if there'd been any
leading citizen unstingy enough to have donated the tar. Then, too,
I've had a little money, and going through the needle's eye is easy
business compared to losing the respect of Westville so long as you've
got money--unless, of course," he added, "you're a female lawyer. I
tell you, there's no more fun than stirring up the animals in this old
town. Any one unpopular in Westville is worth being friends with, and
so if you're willing----"
He held out his thin, bony hand. Katherine, with no very marked
enthusiasm, took it. Then her eyes gleamed with a new light; and
obeying an impulse she asked:
"Are you acquainted with political conditions in Westville?"
"Me acquainted with----" He cackled. "Why, I've been setting at my
office window looking down on the political circus of this town ever
since Noah run aground on Mount Ararat."
She leaned forward eagerly.
"Then you know how things stand?"
"To a T."
"Tell me, is there any rotten politics, any graft or corruption going
on?" She flushed. "Of course, I mean except what's charged against my
father."
"When Blind Charlie Peck was in power, there was more graft and
dirty----"
"Not then, but now?" she interrupted.
"Now? Well, of course you know that since Blake run Blind Charlie out
of business ten years ago, Blake has been the big gun in this town."
"Yes, I know."
"Then you must know that in the last ten years Westville has been
text, sermon, and doxology for all the reformers in the state."
"But could not corruption be going on without Mr. Blake knowing it?
Could not Mr. Peck be secretly carrying out some scheme?"
"Blind Charlie? Blind Charlie ain't dead yet, not by a long sight--and
as long as there's a breath in his carcass, that good-natured old
blackguard is likely to be a dangerous customer. But though Charlie's
still the boss of his party, he controls no offices, and has got no
real power. He's as helpless as Satan was after he'd been kicked out
of heaven and before he'd landed that big job he holds on the floor
below. Nowadays, Charlie just sits in his side office over at the
Tippecanoe House playing seven-up from breakfast till bedtime."
"Then you think there's no corrupt politics in Westville?" she asked
in a sinking voice.
"Not an ounce of 'em!" said Old Hosie with decision.
This agreed with the conviction that had been growing upon Katherine
during the last few days. While she had entertained suspicion of there
being corruption, she had several times considered the advisability of
putting a detective on the case. But this idea she now abandoned.
After this talk with the old lawyer, Katherine was forced back again
upon misunderstanding. She went carefully over the records of her
father's department, on file in the Court House, seeking some item
that would cast light upon the puzzle. She went over and over the
indictment, seeking some loose end, some overlooked inconsistency,
that would yield her at least a clue.
For days she kept doggedly at this work, steeling herself against the
disapprobation of the town. But she found nothing. Then, in a flash,
an overlooked point recurred to her. The trouble, so went her theory,
was all due to a confusion of the bribe with the donation to the
hospital. Where was that donation?
Here was a matter that might at last lead to a solution of the
difficulty. Again on fire with hope, she interviewed her father. He
was certain that a donation had been promised, he had thought the
envelope handed him by Mr. Marcy contained the gift--but of the
donation itself he knew no more. She interviewed Doctor Sherman; he
had heard Mr. Marcy refer to a donation but knew nothing about the
matter. She tried to get in communication with Mr. Marcy, only to
learn that he was in England studying some new filtering plants
recently installed in that country. Undiscouraged, she one day stepped
off the train in St. Louis, the home of the Acme Filter, and appeared
in the office of the company.
The general manager, a gentleman who ran to portliness in his figure,
his jewellery and his courtesy, seemed perfectly acquainted with the
case. In exculpation of himself and his company, he said that they
were constantly being held up by every variety of official from a
county commissioner to a mayor, and they were simply forced to give
"presents" in order to do business.
"But my father's defense," put in Katherine, "was that he thought this
'present' was in reality a donation to the hospital. Was anything said
to my father about a donation?"
"I believe there was."
"That corroborates my father!" Katherine exclaimed eagerly. "Would you
make that statement at the trial--or at least give me an affidavit to
that effect?"
"I'll be glad to give you an affidavit. But I should explain that the
'present' and the donation were two distinctly separate affairs."
"Then what became of the donation?" Katherine cried triumphantly.
"It was sent," said the manager.
"Sent?"
"I sent it myself," was the reply.
Katherine left St. Louis more puzzled than before. What had become of
the check, if it had really been sent? Home again, she ransacked her
father's desk with his aid, and in a bottom drawer they found a heap
of long-neglected mail.
Doctor West at first scratched his head in perplexity. "I remember
now," he said. "I never was much of a hand to keep up with my letters,
and for the few days before that celebration I was so excited that I
just threw everything----"
But Katherine had torn open an envelope and was holding in her hands a
fifty dollar check from the Acme Filter Company.
"What was the date of your arrest?" she asked sharply. "The date Mr.
Marcy gave you that money?"
"The fifteenth of May."
"This check is dated the twelfth of May. The envelope shows it was
received in Westville on the thirteenth."
"Well, what of that?"
"Only this," said Katherine slowly, and with a chill at her heart,
"that the prosecution can charge, and we cannot disprove the charge,
that the real donation was already in your possession at the time you
accepted what you say you believed was the donation."
Then, with a rush, a great temptation assailed Katherine--to destroy
this piece of evidence unfavourable to her father which she held in
her hands. For several moments the struggle continued fiercely. But
she had made a vow with herself when she had entered law that she was
going to keep free from the trickery and dishonourable practices so
common in her profession. She was going to be an honest lawyer, or be
no lawyer at all. And so, at length, she laid the check before her
father.
"Just indorse it, and we'll send it in to the hospital," she said.
Afterward it occurred to her that to have destroyed the check would at
the best have helped but little, for the prosecution, if it so
desired, could introduce witnesses to prove that the donation had been
sent. Suspicion of having destroyed or suppressed the check would then
inevitably have rested upon her father.
This discovery of the check was a heavy blow, but Katherine went
doggedly back to the first beginnings; and as the weeks crept slowly
by she continued without remission her desperate search for a clue
which, followed up, would make clear to every one that the whole
affair was merely a mistake. But the only development of the summer
which bore at all upon the case--and that bearing seemed to Katherine
indirect--was that, since early June, the service of the water-works
had steadily been deteriorating. There was frequently a shortage in
the supply, and the filtering plant, the direct cause of Doctor West's
disgrace, had proved so complete a failure that its use had been
discontinued. The water was often murky and unpleasant to the taste.
Moreover, all kinds of other faults began to develop in the plant. The
city complained loudly of the quality of the water and the failure of
the system. It was like one of these new-fangled toys, averred the
street corners, that runs like a miracle while the paint is on it and
then with a whiz and a whir goes all to thunder.
But to this mere by-product of the case Katherine gave little thought.
She had to keep desperately upon the case itself. At times, feeling
herself so alone, making no inch of headway, her spirits sank very low
indeed. What made the case so wearing on the soul was that she was
groping in the dark. She was fighting an invisible enemy, even though
it was no more than a misunderstanding--an enemy whom, strive as she
would, she could not clutch, with whom she could not grapple. Again
and again she prayed for a foe in the open. Had there been a fight, no
matter how bitter, her part would have been far, far easier--for in
fight there is action and excitement and the lifting hope of victory.
It took courage to work as she did, weary week upon weary week, and
discover nothing. It took courage not to slink away at the town's
disapprobation. At times, in the bitterness of her heart, she wished
she were out of it all, and could just rest, and be friends with every
one. In such moods it would creep coldly in upon her that there could
be but one solution to the case--that after all her father must be
guilty. But when she would go home and look into his thoughtful,
unworldy old face, that solution would instantly become impossible;
and she would cast out doubt and despair and renew her determination.
The weeks dragged heavily on--hot and dusty after the first of July,
and so dry that out in the country the caked earth was a fine network
of zigzagging fissures, and the farmers, gazing despondently upon
their shrivelling corn, watched with vain hope for a rescuing cloud to
darken the clear, hard, brilliant heavens. At length the summer burned
to its close; the opening day of the September term of court was close
at hand. But still the case stood just as on the day Katherine had
stepped so joyously from the Limited. The evidence of Sherman was
unshaken. The charges of Bruce had no answer.
One afternoon--her father's case was set for two days later--as
Katherine left her office, desperate, not knowing which way to turn,
her nerves worn fine and thin by the long strain, she saw her father's
name on the front page of the _Express_. She bought a copy. In the
centre of the first page, in a "box" and set in heavy-faced type, was
an editorial in Bruce's most rousing style, trying her father in
advance, declaring him flagrantly guilty, and demanding for him the
law's extremest penalty.
That editorial unloosed her long-collected wrath--wrath that had many
a reason. In Bruce's person Katherine had from the first seen the
summing up, the leader, of the bitterness against her father. All
summer he had continued his sharp attacks, and the virulence of these
had helped keep the town wrought up against Doctor West. Moreover,
Katherine despised Bruce as a powerful, ruthless, demagogic hypocrite.
And to her hostility against him in her father's behalf and to her
contempt for his quack radicalism, was added the bitter implacability
of the woman who feels herself scorned. The town's attitude toward her
she resented. But Bruce she hated, and him she prayed with all her
soul that she might humble.
She crushed the _Express_, flung it from her into the gutter, and
walked home all a-tremble. Her aunt met her in the hall as she was
laying off her hat. A spot burned faintly in either withered cheek of
the old woman.
"Who does thee think is here?" she asked.
"Who?" Katherine repeated mechanically, her wrath too high for
interest in anything else.
"Mr. Bruce. Upstairs with thy father."
"What!" cried Katherine.
Her hat missed the hook and fell to the floor, and she went springing
up the stairway. The next instant she flung open her father's door,
and walked straight up to Bruce, before whom she paused, bosom
heaving, eyes on fire.
"What are you doing here?" she demanded.
His powerful figure rose, and his square-hewn face looked directly
into her own.
"Interviewing your father," he returned with his aggressive calm.
"He was asking me to confess," explained Doctor West.
"Confess?" cried Katherine.
"Just so," replied Bruce. "His guilt is undoubted, so he might as well
confess."
Scorn flamed at him.
"I see! You are trying to get a confession out of him, in advance of
the trial, as a big feature for your terrible paper!"
She moved a pace nearer him. All the suppressed anger, all the hidden
anguish, of the last three months burst up volcanically.
"Oh! oh!" she cried breathlessly. "I never dreamt till I met you that
a man could be so low, so heartless, as to hound an old man as you
have hounded my father--and all for the sake of a yellow newspaper
sensation. But he's a safe man for you to attack. Yes, he's safe--old,
unpopular, helpless!"
Bruce's heavy brows lowered. He did not give back a step before her
ireful figure.
"And because he's old and unpopular I should not attack him, eh?" he
demanded. "Because he's down, I should not hit him? That's your
woman's reasoning, is it? Well, let me tell you," and his gray eyes
flashed, and his voice had a crunching tone--"that I believe when
you've got an enemy of society down, don't, because you pity him, let
him up to go and do the same thing again. While you've got him down,
keep on hitting him till you've got him finished!"
"Like the brute that you are!" she cried. "But, like the coward you
are, you first very carefully choose your 'enemy of society.' You were
careful to choose one who could not hit back!"
"I did not choose your father. He thrust himself upon the town's
attention. And I consider neither his weakness nor his strength. I
consider only the fact that your father has done the city a greater
injury than any man who ever lived in Westville."
"It's a lie! I tell you it's a lie!"
"It's the truth!" he declared harshly, dominantly. "His swindling
Westville by giving us a worthless filtering-plant in return for a
bribe--why, that is the smallest evil he has done the town. Before
that time, Westville was on the verge of making great municipal
advances--on the verge of becoming a model and a leader for the small
cities of the Middle West. And now all that grand development is
ruined--and ruined by that man, your father!" He excitedly jerked a
paper from his pocket and held it out to her. "If you want to see
what he has brought us to, read that editorial in the _Clarion_!"
She fixed him with glittering eyes.
"I have read one cowardly editorial to-day in a Westville paper. That
is enough."
"Read that, I say!" he commanded.
For answer she took the _Clarion_ and tossed it into the waste-basket.
She glared at him, quivering all over, in her hands a convulsive itch
for physical vengeance.
"If I thought that in all your fine talk about the city there was one
single word of sincerity, I might respect you," she said with slow and
scathing contempt. "But your words are the words of a mere poseur--of
a man who twists the truth to fit his desires--of a man who deals in
the ideas that seem to him most profitable--of a man who cares not how
poor, how innocent, is the body he uses as a stepping stone for his
clambering greed and ambition. Oh, I know you--I have watched you--I
have read you. You are a mere self-seeker! You are a demagogue! You
are a liar! And, on top of that, you are a coward!"
Whatever Arnold Bruce was, he was a man with a temper. Fury was
blazing behind his heavy spectacles.
"Go on! I care _that_ for the words of a woman who has so little
taste, so little sense, so little modesty, as to leave the sphere----"
"You boor!" gasped Katharine.
"Perhaps I am. At least I am not afraid to speak the truth straight
out even to a woman. You are all wrong. You are unwomanly. You are
unsexed. Your pretensions as a lawyer are utterly preposterous, as the
trial on Thursday will show you. And the condemnation of the town is
not half as severe a rebuke----"
"Stop!" gasped Katherine. A wild defiance surged up and overmastered
her, her nerves broke, and her hot words tumbled out hysterically.
"You think you are a God-anointed critic of humanity, but you are only
a heartless, conceited cad! Just wait--I'll show you what your
judgment of me is worth! I am going to clear my father! I am going to
make this Westville that condemns me kneel at my feet! and as for
you--you can think what you please! But don't you ever dare to speak
to my father again--don't you ever dare speak to me again--don't you
ever dare enter this house again! Now go! Go! I say. Go! Go! Go!"
His face had grown purple; he seemed to be choking. For a space he
gazed at her. Then without answering he bowed slightly and was gone.
She glared a moment at the door. Then suddenly she collapsed upon the
floor, her head and arms on the old haircloth sofa, and her whole body
shook with silent sobs. Doctor West, first gazing at her a little
helplessly, sat down upon the sofa, and softly stroked her hair. For a
time there were no words--only her convulsive breathing, her choking
sobs.
Presently he said gently:
"I'm sure you'll do everything you said."
"No--that's the trouble," she moaned. "What I said--was--was just a
big bluff. I won't do any--of those things. Your trial is two days
off--and, father, I haven't one bit of evidence--I don't know what
we're going to do--and the jury will have to--oh, father, father, that
man was right; I'm just--just a great big failure!"
Again she shook with sobs. The old man continued to sit beside her,
softly stroking her thick brown hair.