"SHE COMETH NOT," HE SAID
Joe, his face as white as some plant that has sprung in a dungeon, bent
his head toward his mother, and placed his free hand on hers where it
lay on the arm of her chair.
"It will soon be over with now, Mother," he encouraged, with the hope in
his heart that it would, indeed, be so.
With an underling in his place at the door, Captain Taylor advanced to
take charge of the marshaling of the jury panel. There ensued a great
bustling and tramping as the clerk called off the names of those drawn.
While this was proceeding, Joe cast his eyes about the room, animated by
a double hope: that Alice would be there to hear him tell his story;
that Morgan had come and was in waiting to supply the facts which honor
sealed upon his own tongue. He could see only the first few rows of
benches with the certainty of individual identification; they were
filled with strangers. Beyond them it was conglomerate, that fused and
merged thing which seemed a thousand faces, yet one; that blended and
commingled mass which we call the public. Out of the mass Joe Newbolt
could not sift the lean, shrewd face of Curtis Morgan, nor glean from it
the brown hair of Alice Price.
The discovery that Alice was not there smote him with a feeling of
sudden hopelessness and abandonment; the reproaches which he had kindled
against himself in his solitary days in jail rose up in redoubled
torture. He blamed the rashness of an unreasoning moment in which he had
forgotten time and circumstance. Her interest was gone from him now,
where, if he had waited for vindication, he might have won her heart.
But it was a dream, at the best, he confessed, turning away from his
hungry search of the crowd, his head drooping forward in dejection. What
did it matter for the world's final exculpation, if Alice were not there
to hear?
His mother nodded to somebody, and touched his hand. Ollie it was, whom
she greeted. She was seated near at hand, beside a fat woman with a red
and greasy face, whose air of protection and large interest proclaimed
her a relative. Joe thought that she filled pretty well the bill that
Ollie had made out of her mother, on that day when she had scorned her
for having urged her into marriage with Isom.
Ollie was very white in her black mourning dress, and thinner of
features than when he had seen her last. She smiled, and nodded to him,
with an air of timid questioning, as if doubtful whether he had expected
it, and uncertain how it would be received. Joe bowed his head,
respectfully.
What a wayside flower she seemed, thought he; how common beside Alice!
Yet, she had been bright and refreshing in the dusty way where he had
found her. He wondered why she was not within the rail also, near
Hammer, if she was for him; or near the prosecutor, if she was on the
other side.
He was not alone in this speculation. Many others wondered over that
point also. It was the public expectation that she naturally would
assist the state in the punishment of her husband's slayer; but Sam
Lucas was not paying the slightest attention to her, and it was not
known whether he even had summoned her as a witness.
And now Captain Taylor began to create a fresh commotion by clearing the
spectators from the first row of benches to make seats for the jury
panel. Judge Maxwell was waiting the restoration of order, leaning back
in his chair. Joe scanned his face.
Judge Maxwell was tall and large of frame, from which the study and
abstemiousness of his life had worn all superfluous flesh. His face,
cleanly shaved, was expressive of the scholarly attainments which made
his decisions a national standard. The judge's eyes were bushed over
with great, gray brows, the one forbidding cast in his countenance; they
looked out upon those who came for judgment before him through a pair of
spring-clamp spectacles which seemed to ride precariously upon his
large, bony nose. The glasses were tied to a slender black braid, which
he wore looped about his neck.
His hair was long, iron-gray, and thick; he wore it brushed straight
back from his brow, without a parting or a break. It lay in place so
smoothly and persistently through all the labor of his long days, that
strangers were sometimes misled into the belief that it was not his own.
This peculiar fashion of dressing his hair, taken with the length and
leanness of his jaw, gave the judge a cast of aquiline severeness which
his gray eyes belied when they beamed over the tops of his glasses at
floundering young counsel or timid witness.
Yet they could shoot darts of fire, as many a rash lawyer who had fallen
under their censure could bear witness. At such moments the judge had a
peculiar habit of drawing up his long back and seemingly to distend
himself with all the dignity which his cumulative years and honors had
endured, and of bowing his neck to make the focus of his eyes more
direct as he peered above his rimless glasses. He did not find it
necessary to reprimand an attorney often, never more than once, but
these occasions never were forgotten. In his twenty-five years' service
on the bench, he never had been reversed.
Joe felt a revival of hope again under the influence of these
preparations for the trial. Perhaps Alice was there, somewhere among the
people back in the room, he thought. And the colonel, also, and maybe
Morgan. Who could tell? There was no use in abandoning hope when he was
just where he could see a little daylight.
Joe sat up again, and lifted his head with new confidence. His mother
sat beside him, watching everything with a sharpness which seemed
especially bent on seeing that Joe was given all his rights, and that
nothing was omitted nor slighted that might count in his favor.
She watched Hammer, and Captain Taylor; she measured Sam Lucas, the
prosecutor, and she weighed the judge. When Hammer did something that
pleased her, she nodded; when the prosecutor interposed, or seemed to be
blocking the progress of the case, she shook her head in severe
censure.
And now Joe came in for his first taste of the musty and ancient savor
of the law. He had hoped that morning to walk away free at evening, or
at least to have met the worst that was to come, chancing it that Morgan
failed to appear and give him a hand. But he saw the hours waste away
with the most exasperating fiddling, fussing and scratching over
unprofitable straw.
What Hammer desired in a juryman, the prosecuting attorney was hotly
against, and what pleased the state's attorney seemed to give Hammer a
spasmodic chill. Instead of selecting twelve intelligent men, the most
intelligent of the sixty empaneled, both Hammer and the prosecutor
seemed determined to choose the most dense.
That day's sweating labor resulted in the selection of four jurymen.
Hammer seemed cheered. He said he had expected to exhaust the panel and
get no more than two, at the best. Now it seemed as if they might secure
the full complement without drawing another panel, and that would save
them at least four days. That must have been an exceedingly lucky haul
of empty heads, indeed.
Joe could not see any reason for elation. The prospect of freedom--or
the worst--had withdrawn so far that there was not even a pin-point of
daylight in the gloom. Alice had not shown her face. If she had come at
all, she had withheld herself from his hungry eyes. His heart was as
bleak that night as the mind of the densest juryman agreed upon between
Hammer and the attorney for the state.
Next day, to the surprise of everybody, the jury was completed. And then
there followed, on the succeeding morning, a recital by the prosecuting
attorney of what he proposed and expected to prove in substantiation of
the charge that Joe Newbolt had shot and killed Isom Chase; and Hammer's
no shorter statement of what he was prepared to show to the contrary.
Owing to the unprecedented interest, and the large number of people who
had driven in from the country, Judge Maxwell unbent from his hard
conditions on that day. He instructed Captain Taylor to admit spectators
to standing-room along the walls, but to keep the aisles between the
benches clear.
This concession provided for at least a hundred more onlookers and
listeners, who stood forgetful of any ache in their shanks throughout
the long and dragging proceedings well satisfied, believing that the
coming sensations would repay them for any pangs of inconvenience they
might suffer.
It was on the afternoon of the third day of the trial that Sol Greening,
first witness for the state, was called.
Sol retailed again, in his gossipy way, and with immense enjoyment of
his importance, the story of the tragedy as he had related it at the
inquest. Sam Lucas gave him all the rope he wanted, even led him into
greater excursions than Sol had planned. Round-about excursions, to be
sure, and inconsequential in effect, but they all led back to the tragic
picture of Joe Newbolt standing beside the dead body of Isom Chase, his
hat in his hand, as if he had been interrupted on the point of escape.
Sol seemed a wonderfully acute man for the recollection of details, but
there was one thing that had escaped his memory. He said he did not
remember whether, when he knocked on the kitchen door, anybody told him
to come in or not. He was of the opinion, to the best of his knowledge
and belief--the words being supplied by the prosecutor--that he just
knocked, and stood there blowing a second or two, like a horse that had
been put to a hard run, and then went in without being bidden. Sol
believed that was the way of it; he had no recollection of anybody
telling him to come in.
When it came Hammer's turn to question the witness, he rose with an air
of patronizing assurance. He called Sol by his first name, in easy
familiarity, although he never had spoken to him before that day. He
proceeded as if he intended to establish himself in the man's confidence
by gentle handling, and in that manner cause him to confound, refute and
entangle himself by admissions made in gratitude.
But Sol was a suspicious customer. He hesitated and he hummed, backed
and sidled, and didn't know anything more than he had related. The bag
of money which had been found with Isom's body had been introduced by
the state for identification by Sol. Hammer took up the matter with a
sudden turn toward sharpness and belligerency.
"You say that this is the same sack of money that was there on the floor
with Isom Chase's body when you entered the room?" he asked.
"That's it," nodded Sol.
"Tell this jury how you know it's the same one!" ordered Hammer, in
stern voice.
"Well, I seen it," said Sol.
"Oh, yes, you saw it. Well, did you go over to it and make a mark on it
so you'd know it again?"
"No, I never done that," admitted Sol.
"Don't you know the banks are full of little sacks of money like that?"
Hammer wanted to know.
"I reckon maybe they air," Sol replied.
"And this one might be any one of a thousand like it, mightn't it,
Sol?"
"Well, I don't reckon it could. That's the one Isom had."
"Did you step over where the dead body was at and heft it?"
"'Course I never," said Sol.
"Did you open it and count the money in it, or tie a string or something
onto it so you'd know it when you saw it again?"
"No, I never," said Sol sulkily.
"Then how do you know this is it?"
"I tell you I seen it," persisted Sol.
"Oh, you seen it!" repeated Hammer, sweeping the jury a cunning look as
if to apprise them that he had found out just what he wanted to know,
and that upon that simple admission he was about to turn the villainy of
Sol Greening inside out for them to see with their own intelligent
eyes.
"Yes, I said I seen it," maintained Sol, bristling up a little.
"Yes, I heard you say it, and now I want you to tell this jury how you
_know_!"
Hammer threw the last word into Sol's face with a slam that made him
jump. Sol turned red under the whiskers, around the whiskers, and all
over the uncovered part of him. He shifted in his chair; he swallowed.
"Well, I don't just know," said he.
"No, you don't--just--know!" sneered Hammer, glowing in oily triumph. He
looked at the jury confidentially, as on the footing of a shrewd man
with his equally shrewd audience.
Then he took up the old rifle, and Isom's bloody coat and shirt, which
were also there as exhibits, and dressed Sol down on all of them,
working hard to create the impression in the minds of the jurors that
Sol Greening was a born liar, and not to be depended on in the most
trivial particular.
Hammer worked himself up into a sweat and emitted a great deal of
perfume of barberish--and barbarous--character, and glanced around the
court-room with triumph in his eyes and satisfaction at the corners of
his mouth.
He came now to the uncertainty of Sol's memory on the matter of being
bidden to enter the kitchen when he knocked. Sol had now passed from
doubt to certainty. Come to think it over, said he, nobody had said a
word when he knocked at that door. He remembered now that it was as
still inside the house as if everybody was away.
Mrs. Greening was standing against the wall, having that moment returned
to the room from ministering to her daughter's baby. She held the infant
in her arms, waiting Sol's descent from the witness-chair so she might
settle down in her place without disturbing the proceedings. When she
heard her husband make this positive declaration, her mouth fell open
and her eyes widened in surprise.
"Why Sol," she spoke up reprovingly, "you told me Joe----"
It had taken the prosecuting attorney that long to glance around and
spring to his feet. There his voice, in a loud appeal to the court for
the protection of his sacred rights, drowned that of mild Mrs. Greening.
The judge rapped, the sheriff rapped; Captain Taylor, from his post at
the door, echoed the authoritative sound.
Hammer abruptly ceased his questioning of Sol, after the judge had
spoken a few crisp words of admonishment, not directed in particular at
Mrs. Greening, but more to the public at large, regarding the decorum of
the court. Sam Lucas thereupon took Sol in hand again, and drew him on
to replace his former doubtful statement by his later conclusion. As Sol
left the witness-chair Hammer smiled. He handed Mrs. Greening's name to
the clerk, and requested a subpoena for her as a witness for the
defense.
Sol's son Dan was the next witness, and Hammer put him through a similar
course of sprouts. Judge Maxwell allowed Hammer to disport uncurbed
until it became evident that, if given his way, the barber-lawyer would
drag the trial out until Joe was well along in middle life. He then
admonished Hammer that there were bounds fixed for human existence, and
that the case must get on.
Hammer was a bit uppish and resentful. He stood on his rights; he
invoked the sacred constitution; he referred to the revised statutes; he
put his hand into his coat and spread his legs to make a memorable
protest.
Judge Maxwell took him in hand very kindly and led safely past the point
of explosion with a smile of indulgence. With that done, the state came
to Constable Bill Frost and his branching mustaches, which he had
trimmed up and soaped back quite handsomely.
To his own credit and the surprise of the lawyers who were watching the
case, Hammer made a great deal of the point of Joe having gone to Frost,
voluntarily and alone, to summon him to the scene of the tragedy. Frost
admitted that he had believed Joe's story until Sol Greening had pointed
out to him the suspicious circumstances.
"So you have to have somebody else to do your thinkin' for you, do you?"
said Hammer. "Well, you're a fine officer of the law and a credit to
this state!"
"I object!" said the prosecuting attorney, standing up in his place,
very red around the eyes.
The judge smiled, and the court-room tittered. The sheriff looked back
over his shoulder and rapped the table for order.
"Comment is unnecessary, Mr. Hammer," said the judge. "Proceed with the
case."
And so that weary day passed in trivial questioning on both sides,
trivial bickerings, and waste of time, to the great edifications of
everybody but Joe and his mother, and probably the judge. Ten of the
state's forty witnesses were disposed of, and Hammer was as moist as a
jug of cold water in a shock of wheat.
When the sheriff started to take Joe back to jail, the lad stood for a
moment searching the breaking-up and moving assembly with longing eyes.
All day he had sat with his back to the people, not having the heart to
look around with that shameful handcuff and chain binding his arm to the
chair. If Alice had been there, or Colonel Price, neither had come
forward to wish him well.
There were Ollie and her mother, standing as they had risen from their
bench, waiting for the crowd ahead of them to set in motion toward the
door, and here and there a face from his own neighborhood. But Alice was
not among them. She had withdrawn her friendship from him in his darkest
hour.
Neither had Morgan appeared to put his shoulder under the hard-pressing
load and relieve him of its weight. Day by day it was growing heavier;
but a little while remained until it must crush out his hope forever.
Certainly, there was a way out without Morgan; there was a way open to
him leading back into the freedom of the world, where he might walk
again with the sunlight on his face. A word would make it clear.
But the sun would never strike again into his heart if he should go back
to it under that coward's reprieve, and Alice--Alice would scorn his
memory.