THE BLOW OF A FRIEND
Progress was swifter the next day. The prosecuting attorney, apparently
believing that he had made his case, dismissed many of his remaining
witnesses who had nothing to testify to in fact. When he announced that
the state rested, there was a murmur and rustling in the room, and
audibly expressed wonderment over what the public thought to be a grave
blunder on Sam Lucas's part.
The state had not called the widow of Isom Chase to the stand to give
testimony against the man accused of her husband's murder. The public
could not make it out. What did it mean? Did the prosecutor hold her
more of an enemy than a friend to his efforts to convict the man whose
hand had made her a widow? Whispers went around, grave faces were drawn,
wise heads wagged. Public charity for Ollie began to falter.
"Him and that woman," men said, nodding toward Joe, sitting pale and
inscrutable beside his blustering lawyer.
The feeling of impending sensation became more acute when it circulated
through the room, starting from Captain Taylor at the inner door, that
Ollie had been summoned as a witness for the defense; Captain Taylor had
served the subpoena himself.
"Well, in that case, Sam Lucas knew what he was doing," people allowed.
"Just wait!" It was as good as a spirituous stimulant to their lagging
interest. "Just you wait till Sam Lucas gets hold of her," they said.
Hammer began the defense by calling his character witnesses and
establishing Joe's past reputation for "truth and veracity and general
uprightness."
There was no question in the character which Joe's neighbors gave him.
They spoke warmly of his past record among them, of his fidelity to his
word and obligation, and of the family record, which Hammer went into
with free and unhampered hand.
The prosecutor passed these witnesses with serene confidence. He
probably believed that his case was already made, people said, or else
he was reserving his fire for Isom's widow, who, it seemed to everybody,
had turned against nature and her own interests in allying herself with
the accused.
The morning was consumed in the examination of these character
witnesses, Hammer finishing with the last of them just before the midday
adjournment. The sheriff was preparing to remove the prisoner. Joe's
hand had been released from the arm of the chair, and the officer had
fastened the iron around his wrist. The proceeding always struck Joe
with an overwhelming wave of degradation and now he stood with bowed
head and averted face.
"Come on," said the sheriff, goggling down at him with froggish eyes
from his vantage on the dais where the witness-chair stood, his long
neck on a slant like a giraffe's. The sheriff took great pleasure in the
proceeding of attaching the irons. It was his one central moment in the
eyes of the throng.
Joe looked up to march ahead of the sheriff out of the room, and his
eyes met the eyes of Alice. She was not far away, and the cheer of their
quick message was like a spoken word. She was wearing the same gray
dress that she had worn on that day of days, with the one bright feather
in her bonnet, and she smiled, nodding to him. And then the swirl of
bobbing heads and moving bodies came between them and she was lost.
He looked for her again as the sheriff pushed him along toward the door,
but the room was in such confusion that he could not single her out. The
judge had gone out through his tall, dark door, and the court-room was
no longer an awesome place to those who had gathered for the trial. Men
put their hats on their heads and lit their pipes, and bit into their
twists and plugs of tobacco and emptied their mouths of the juices as
they went slowly toward the door.
Mrs. Greening was the first witness called by Hammer after the noon
recess. Hammer quickly discovered his purpose in calling her as being
nothing less than that of proving by her own mouth that her husband,
Sol, was a gross and irresponsible liar.
Hammer went over the whole story of the tragedy--Mrs. Greening having
previously testified to all these facts as a witness for the state--from
the moment that Sol had called her out of bed and taken her to the Chase
home to support the young widow in her hour of distraction and fear. By
slow and lumbering ways he led her, like a blind horse floundering along
a heavy road, through the front door, up the stairs into Ollie's room,
and then, in his own time and fashion, he arrived at what he wanted to
ask.
"Now I want you to tell this jury, Mrs. Greening, if at any time, during
that night or thereafter, you discussed or talked of or chatted about
the killing of Isom Chase with your husband?" asked Hammer.
"Oh laws, yes," said Mrs. Greening.
The prosecuting attorney was rising slowly to his feet. He seemed
concentrated on something; a frown knotted his brow, and he stood with
his open hand poised as if to reach out quickly and check the flight of
something which he expected to wing in and assail the jury.
Said Hammer, after wiping his glistening forehead with a yellow silk
handkerchief:
"Yes. And now, Mrs. Greening, I will ask you if at any time your husband
ever told you what was said, if anything, by any party inside of that
house when he run up to the kitchen door that night and knocked?"
"I object!" said the prosecutor sharply, flinging out his ready hand.
"Don't answer that question!" warned the judge.
Mrs. Greening had it on her lips; anybody who could read print on a
signboard could have told what they were shaped to say. She held them
there in their preliminary position of enunciation, pursed and wrinkled,
like the tied end of a sausage-link.
"I will frame the question in another manner," said Hammer, again
feeling the need of his large handkerchief.
"There is no form that would be admissible, your honor," protested the
prosecutor. "It is merely hearsay that the counsel for the defense is
attempting to bring out and get before the jury. I object!"
"Your course of questioning, Mr. Hammer, is highly improper, and in
flagrant violation to the established rules of evidence," said the
judge. "You must confine yourself to proof by this witness of what she,
of her own knowledge and experience, is cognizant of. Nothing else is
permissible."
"But, your honor, I intend to show by this witness that when Sol
Greening knocked on that door----"
"I object! She wasn't present; she has testified that she was at home at
that time, and in bed."
This from the prosecutor, in great heat.
"Your honor, I intend to prove--" began Hammer.
"This line of questioning is not permissible, as I told you before,"
said the judge in stern reproof.
But Hammer was obdurate. He was for arguing it, and the judge ordered
the sheriff to conduct the jury from the room. Mrs. Greening, red and
uncomfortable, and all at sea over it, continued sitting in the
witness-chair while Hammer laid it off according to his view of it, and
the prosecutor came back and tore his contentions to pieces.
The judge, for no other purpose, evidently, than to prove to the
defendant and public alike that he was unbiased and fair--knowing
beforehand what his ruling must be--indulged Hammer until he expended
his argument. Then he laid the matter down in few words.
Mrs. Greening had not been present when her husband knocked on the door
of Isom Chase's kitchen that night; she did not know, therefore, of her
own experience what was spoken. No matter what her husband told her he
said, or anybody else said, she could not repeat the words there under
oath. It would be hearsay evidence, and such evidence was not admissible
in any court of law. No matter how important such testimony might appear
to one seeking the truth, the rules of evidence in civilized courts
barred it. Mrs. Greening's lips must remain sealed on what Sol said Joe
said, or anybody said to someone else.
So the jury was called back, and Mrs. Greening was excused, and Hammer
wiped off the sweat and pushed back his cuffs. And the people who had
come in from their farmsteads to hear this trial by jury--all innocent
of the traditions and precedents of practice of the law--marveled how it
could be. Why, nine people out of nine, all over the township where Sol
Greening lived, would take his wife's word for anything where she and
Sol had different versions of a story.
It looked to them like Sol had told the truth in the first place to his
wife, and lied on the witness-stand. And here she was, all ready to show
the windy old rascal up, and they wouldn't let her. Well, it beat all
two o'clock!
Of course, being simple people who had never been at a university in
their lives, they did not know that Form and Precedent are the two
pillars of Strength and Beauty, the Jachin and Boaz at the entrance of
the temple of the law. Or that the proper genuflections before them are
of more importance than the mere bringing out of a bit of truth which
might save an accused man's life.
And so it stood before the jury that Sol Greening had knocked on the
door of Isom Chase's kitchen that night and had not been bidden to
enter, when everybody in the room, save the jury of twelve intelligent
men--who had been taken out to keep their innocence untainted and their
judgment unbiased by a gleam of the truth--knew that he had sat up there
and lied.
Hammer cooled himself off after a few minutes of mopping, and called
Ollie Chase to the witness-chair. Ollie seemed nervous and full of dread
as she stood for a moment stowing her cloak and handbag in her mother's
lap. She turned back for her handkerchief when she had almost reached
the little gate in the railing through which she must pass to the
witness-chair. Hammer held it open for her and gave her the comfort of
his hand under her elbow as she went forward to take her place.
A stir and a whispering, like a quick wind in a cornfield, moved over
the room when Ollie's name was called. Then silence ensued. It was more
than a mere listening silence; it was impertinent. Everybody looked for
a scandal, and most of them hoped that they should not depart that day
with their long-growing hunger unsatisfied.
Ollie took the witness-chair with an air of extreme nervousness. As she
settled down in her cloud of black skirt, black veil, and shadow of
black sailor hat, she cast about the room a look of timid appeal. She
seemed to be sounding the depths of the listening crowd's sympathy, and
to find it shallow and in shoals.
Hammer was kind, with an unctuous, patronizing gentleness. He seemed to
approach her with the feeling that she might say a great deal that would
be damaging to the defendant if she had a mind to do it, but with gentle
adroitness she could be managed to his advantage. Led by a question
here, a helping reminder there, Ollie went over her story, in all
particulars the same as she had related at the inquest.
Hammer brought out, with many confidential glances at the jury, the
distance between Ollie's room and the kitchen; the fact that she had her
door closed, that she had gone to bed heavy with weariness, and was
asleep long before midnight; that she had been startled by a sound, a
strange and mysterious sound for that quiet house, and had sat up in her
bed listening. Sol Greening had called her next, in a little while, even
before she could master her fright and confusion and muster courage to
run down the hall and call Joe.
Hammer did well with the witness; that was the general opinion, drawing
from her a great deal about Joe's habit of life in Isom's house, a great
deal about Isom's temper, hard ways, and readiness to give a blow.
She seemed reluctant to discuss Isom's faults, anxious, rather, to ease
them over after the manner of one whose judgment has grown less severe
with the lapse of time.
Had he ever laid hands on her in temper? Hammer wanted to know.
"Yes." Her reply was a little more than a whisper, with head bent, with
tears in her sad eyes. Under Hammer's pressure she told about the
purchase of the ribbon, of Isom's iron hand upon her throat.
The women all over the room made little sounds of pitying deprecation of
old Isom's penury, and when Hammer drew from her, with evident
reluctance on her part to yield it up, the story of her hard-driven,
starved, and stingy life under Isom's roof, they put their handkerchiefs
to their eyes.
All the time Ollie was following Hammer's kind leading, the prosecuting
attorney was sitting with his hands clasped behind his head, balancing
his weight on the hinder legs of his chair, his foot thrown over his
knee. Apparently he was bored, even worried, by Hammer's pounding
attempts to make Isom out a man who deserved something slower and less
merciful than a bullet, years before he came to his violent end.
Through it all Joe sat looking at Ollie, great pity for her forlorn
condition and broken spirit in his honest eyes. She did not meet his
glance, not for one wavering second. When she went to the stand she
passed him with bent head; in the chair she looked in every direction
but his, mainly at her hands, clasped in her lap.
At last Hammer seemed skirmishing in his mind in search of some stray
question which might have escaped him, which he appeared unable to find.
He turned his papers, he made a show of considering something, while the
witness sat with her head bowed, her half-closed eyelids purple from
much weeping, worrying, and watching for the coming of one who had taken
the key to her poor, simple heart and gone his careless way.
"That's all, Missis Chase," said Hammer.
Ollie leaned over, picked up one of her gloves that had fallen to the
floor, and started to leave the chair. Her relief was evident in her
face. The prosecutor, suddenly alive, was on his feet. He stretched out
his arm, staying her with a commanding gesture.
"Wait a minute, Mrs. Chase," said he.
A stir of expectation rustled through the room again as Ollie resumed
her seat. People moistened their lips, suddenly grown hot and dry.
"Now, just watch Sam Lucas!" they said.
"Now, Mrs. Chase," began the prosecutor, assuming the polemical attitude
common to small lawyers when cross-examining a witness; "I'll ask you to
tell this jury whether you were alone in your house with Joe Newbolt on
the night of October twelfth, when Isom Chase, your husband, was
killed?"
"Yes, sir."
"This man Morgan, the book-agent, who had been boarding with you, had
paid his bill and gone away?"
"Yes, sir."
"And there was absolutely nobody in the house that night but yourself
and Joe Newbolt?"
"Nobody else."
"And you have testified, here on this witness-stand, before this court
and this jury"--that being another small lawyer's trick to impress the
witness with a sense of his own unworthiness--"that you went to bed
early that night. Now, where was Joe Newbolt?"
"I guess he was in bed," answered Ollie, her lips white; "I didn't go to
see."
"No, you didn't go to see," repeated the prosecutor with significant
stress. "Very well. Where did your husband keep his money in the
house?"
"I don't know; I never saw any of it," Ollie answered.
The reply drew a little jiggling laugh from the crowd. It rose and died
even while Captain Taylor's knuckles were poised over the panel of the
door, and his loud rap fell too late for all, save one deep-chested
farmer in a far corner, who must have been a neighbor of old Isom. This
man's raucous mirth seemed a roar above the quiet of the packed room.
The prosecutor looked in his direction with a frown. The sheriff stood
up and peered over that way threateningly.
"Preserve order, Mr. Sheriff," said the judge severely.
The sheriff pounded the table with his hairy fist. "Now, I tell you I
don't want to hear no more of this!" said he.
The prosecutor was shaken out of his pose a bit by the court-room laugh.
There is nothing equal to a laugh for that, to one who is laboring to
impress his importance upon the world. It took him some time to get back
to his former degree of heat, skirmishing around with incidental
questioning. He looked over his notes, pausing. Then he faced Ollie
again quickly, leveling his finger like a pointer of direct accusation.
"Did Joe Newbolt ever make love to you?" he asked.
Joe's face flushed with resentful fire; but Ollie's white calm, forced
and strained that it was, remained unchanged.
"No, sir; he never did."
"Did he ever kiss you?"
"No, I tell you, he didn't!" Ollie answered, with a little show of
spirit.
Hammer rose with loud and voluble objections, which had, for the first
time during the proceedings, Joe's hearty indorsement. But the judge
waved him down, and the prosecutor pressed his new line of inquisition.
"You and Joe Newbolt were thrown together a good deal, weren't you, Mrs.
Chase--you were left there alone in the house while your husband was
away in the field, and other places, frequently?"
"No, not very much," said Ollie, shaking her head.
"But you had various opportunities for talking together alone, hadn't
you?"
"I never had a chance for anything but work," said Ollie wearily.
Unawed by the sheriff's warning, the assembly laughed again. The sound
ran over the room like a scudding cloud across a meadow, and when the
sheriff stood again to set his censorious eye upon someone responsible,
the last ripple was on the farther rows. Nobody can catch a laugh in a
crowd; it is as evasive as a pickpocket. Nobody can turn with watchful
eye upon it and tell in what face the ribald gleam first breaks. It is
as impossible as the identification of the first stalk shaken when a
breeze assails a field of grain.
The sheriff, not being deeper than another man, saw the fatuity of his
labor. He turned to the court with a clownish gesture of the hands,
expressive of his utter inability to stop this thing.
"Proceed with the case," said the judge, understanding the situation
better than the sheriff knew.
The prosecuting attorney labored away with Ollie, full of the feeling
that something masked lay behind her pale reticence, some guilty
conspiracy between her and the bound boy, which would show the lacking
motive for the crime. He asked her again about Morgan, how long she had
known him, where he came from, and where he went--a question to which
Ollie would have been glad enough to have had the answer herself.
He hung on to the subject of Morgan so persistently that Joe began to
feel his throat drying out with a closing sensation which he could not
swallow. He trembled for Ollie, fearing that she would be forced into
telling it all. That was not a woman's story, thought he, with a heart
full of resentment for the prosecutor. Let him wait till Morgan came,
and then----
But what grounds had he now for believing Morgan might come? Unless he
came within the next hour, his coming might be too late.
"You were in bed and asleep when the shot that killed your husband was
fired, you have told the jury, Mrs. Chase?" questioned the prosecutor,
dropping Morgan at last.
"Yes, sir."
"Then how did it come that when Mrs. Greening and her daughter-in-law
arrived a few minutes later you were all dressed up in a white dress?"
"I just slipped it on," said she.
"You just slipped it on," repeated the prosecutor, turning his eyes to
the jury, and not even facing Mrs. Chase as he spoke, but reading into
her words discredit, suspicion, and a guilty knowledge.
"It was the only one I had besides two old wrappers. It was the one I
was married in, and the only one I could put on to look decent in before
people," said she.
A crowd is the most volatile thing in the world. It can laugh and sigh
and groan and weep, as well as shout and storm, with the ease of an
infant, and then immediately regain its immobility and fixed attention.
With Ollie's simple statement a sound rose from it which was a
denunciation and a curse upon the ashes of old Isom Chase. It was as if
a sympathetic old lady had shaken her head and groaned:
"Oh, shame on you--shame!"
Hammer gave the jury a wide-sweeping look of satisfaction, and made a
note on the tumbled pile of paper which lay in front of him.
The prosecutor was a man with congressional aspirations, and he did not
care to prejudice his popularity by going too far in baiting a woman,
especially one who had public sympathy in the measure that it was
plainly extended to Ollie. He eased up, descending from his heights of
severity, and began to address her respectfully in a manner that was
little short of apology for what his stern duty compelled him to do.
"Now I will ask you, Mrs. Chase, whether your husband and this
defendant, Joe Newbolt, ever had words in your hearing?"
"Once," Ollie replied.
"Do you recall the day?"
"It was the morning after Joe came to our house to work," said she.
"Do you remember what the trouble was about and what said?"
"Well, they said a good deal," Ollie answered. "They fussed because Joe
didn't get up when Isom called him."
Joe felt his heart contract. It seemed to him that Ollie need not have
gone into that; it looked as if she was bent not alone on protecting
herself, but on fastening the crime on him. It gave him a feeling of
uneasiness. Sweat came out on his forehead; his palms grew moist. He had
looked for Ollie to stand by him at least, and now she seemed running
away, eager to tell something that would sound to his discredit.
"You may tell the jury what happened that morning, Mrs. Chase."
Hammer's objection fell on barren ground, and Ollie told the story under
the directions of the judge.
"You say there was a sound of scuffling after Isom called him?" asked
the prosecutor.
"Yes, it sounded like Isom shook him and Joe jumped out of bed."
"And what did Joe Newbolt say?"
"He said, 'Put that down! I warned you never to lift your hand against
me. If you hit me, I'll kill you in your tracks!'"
"That's what you heard Joe Newbolt say to your husband up there in the
loft over your head?"
The prosecutor was eager. He leaned forward, both hands on the table,
and looked at her almost hungrily. The jurymen shuffled their feet and
sat up in their chairs with renewed interest. A hush fell over the room.
Here was the motive at the prosecutor's hand.
"That's what he said," Ollie affirmed, her gaze bent downward.
She told how Isom had come down after that, followed by Joe. And the
prosecutor asked her to repeat what she had heard Joe say once more for
the benefit of the jury. He spoke with the air of a man who already has
the game in the bag.
When the prosecutor was through with his profitable cross-examination,
Hammer tried to lessen the effect of Ollie's damaging disclosure, but
failed. He was a depressed and crestfallen man when he gave it up.
Ollie stepped down from the place of inquisition with the color of life
coming again into her drained lips and cheeks, the breath freer in her
throat. Her secret had not been torn from her fearful heart; she had
deepened the cloud that hung over Joe Newbolt's head. "Let him blab
now," said she in her inner satisfaction. A man might say anything
against a woman to save his neck; she was wise enough and deep enough,
for all her shallowness, to know that people were quick to understand a
thing like that.
In passing back to her place beside her mother she had not looked at
Joe. So she did not see the perplexity, anxiety, even reproach, which
had grown in Joe's eyes when she testified against him.
"She had no need to do that," thought Joe, sitting there in the glow of
the prosecutor's triumphant face. He had trusted Ollie to remain his
friend, and, although she had told nothing but the truth concerning his
rash threat against Isom, it seemed to him that she had done so with a
studied intent of working him harm.
His resentment rose against Ollie, urging him to betray her guilty
relations with Morgan and strip her of the protecting mantle which he
had wrapped about her at the first. He wondered whether Morgan had not
come and entered into a conspiracy with her to shield themselves. In
such case what would his unfolding of the whole truth amount to,
discredited as he already was in the minds of the jurors by that foolish
threat which he had uttered against Isom in the thin dawn of that
distant day?
Perhaps Alice had gone away, also, after hearing Ollie's testimony, in
the belief that he was altogether unworthy, and already branded with the
responsibility for that old man's death. He longed to look behind him
and search the throng for her, but he dared not.
Joe bowed his head, as one overwhelmed by a sense of guilt and shame,
yet never doubting that he had acted for the best when he assumed the
risk on that sad night to shield his master's wife. It was a thing that
a man must do, that a man would do again.
He did not know that Alice Price, doubting not him, but the woman who
had just left the witness-stand and resumed her place among the people,
was that moment searching out the shallow soul of Ollie Chase with her
accusing eyes. She sat only a little way from Ollie, in the same row of
benches, beside the colonel. She turned a little in her place so she
could see the young widow's face when she came down from the stand with
that new light in her eyes. Now she whispered to her father, and looked
again, bending forward a little in a way that seemed impertinent,
considering that it was Alice Price.
Ollie was disconcerted by this attention, which drew other curious eyes
upon her. She moved uneasily, making a bustle of arranging herself and
her belongings in the seat, her heart troubled with the shadow of some
vague fear.
Why did Alice Price look at her so accusingly? Why did she turn to her
father and nod and whisper that way? What did she know? What could she
know? What was Joe Newbolt and his obscure life to Colonel Price's fine
daughter, sitting there dressed better than any other woman in the room?
Or what was Isom Chase, his life, his death, or his widow, to her?
Yet she had some interest beyond a passing curiosity, for Ollie could
feel the concentration of these sober brown eyes upon her, even when she
turned to avoid them. She recalled the interest that Colonel Price and
his daughter had taken in Joe. People had talked of it at first. They
couldn't understand it any more than she could. The colonel and his
daughter had visited Joe in jail, and carried books to him, and treated
him as one upon their own level.
What had Joe told them? Had the coward betrayed her?
Ollie was assailed again by all her old, dread fears. What if they
should get up and denounce her? With all of Colonel Price's political
and social influence, would not the public, and the judge and jury,
believe Joe's story if he should say it was true? She believed now that
it was all arranged for Joe to denounce her, and that timid invasion of
color was stemmed in her cheeks again.
It was a lowering day, with a threat of unseasonable darkness in the
waning afternoon. The judge looked at his watch; Captain Taylor stirred
himself and pushed the shutters back from the two windows farthest from
the bench, and let in more light.
People did not know just what was coming next, but the atmosphere of the
room was charged with a foreboding of something big. No man would risk
missing it by leaving, although rain was threatening, and long drives
over dark roads lay ahead of many of the anxious listeners.
Hammer was in consultation with Joe and his mother. He seemed to be
protesting and arguing, with a mighty spreading of the hands and shaking
of the head. The judge was writing busily, making notes on his charge to
the jury, it was supposed.
The prosecuting attorney took advantage of the momentary lull to get up
and stretch his legs, which he did literally, one after the other,
shaking his shanks to send down his crumpled pantaloons. He went to the
window with lounging stride, hands in pockets, and pushed the sash a
foot higher. There he stood, looking out into the mists which hung gray
in the maple trees.
The jurymen, tired and unshaved, and over the momentary thrill of
Ollie's disclosure, lolled and sprawled in the box. It seemed that they
now accepted the thing as settled, and the prospect of further waiting
was boresome. The people set up a little whisper of talk, a clearing of
throats, a blowing of noses, a shifting of feet, a general preparation
and readjustment for settling down again to absorb all that might fall.
The country folk seated in the vicinity of Alice Price, among whom her
fame had traveled far, whom many of their sons had loved, and languished
for, and gone off to run streetcars on her account, turned their freed
attention upon her, nudging, gazing, gossiping.
"Purty as a picture, ain't she?"
"Oh, I don't know. You set her 'longside of Bessie Craver over at Pink
Hill"--and so on.
The judge looked up from his paper suddenly, as if the growing sound
within the room had startled him out of his thought. His face wore a
fleeting expression of surprise. He looked at the prosecutor, at the
little group in conference at the end of the table below him, as if he
did not understand. Then his judicial poise returned. He tapped with his
pen on the inkstand.
"Gentlemen, proceed with the case," said he.
The prosecuting attorney turned from the window with alacrity, and
Hammer, sweating and shaking his head in one last gesture of protest to
his client--who leaned back and folded his arms, with set and stubborn
face--rose ponderously. He wiped his forehead with his great, broad
handkerchief, and squared himself as if about to try a high hurdle or
plunge away in a race.
"Joseph Newbolt, take the witness-chair," said he.