THE SECOND DAY IN COURT
As father and I crossed the lower hall, "Do you believe all these
stories about the Spanish Woman are true?" I asked.
He looked at me quickly. "What stories?"
"Why, I heard them talking in court to-day; and last night,--I didn't
mean to,--I overheard you and Mr. Dingley as you came out of the study."
Father looked grim. "It is with those stories they will try to convict
him." He took a few more strides before he added, "If they can prove
that Montgomery wanted to cut out Rood they'll have a bad case against
him." He didn't speak again until he put me in the carriage. Then he
said, "I hope that you will get this matter out of your mind. I hate
to have you think about it."
I said I would try. Indeed, after that last remark of father's about
Montgomery wanting to cut out Rood it seemed to me that, if I didn't
quickly get something else into my mind, I should go crazy. So while
the carriage bounded over the cobblestones, I was busy planning--the
menu for dinner to-morrow, where to leave my ear-rings to be mended,
how to do over my blue silk gown, and where had been the error in the
butcher's bill. My thoughts rushed from one little thing to another,
afraid for an instant to let go.
Upon arriving home, Abby hanging over the banisters, wanted to hear
about the court proceedings; but I called out to her that my testimony
hadn't been required--and would she please get out the apricots, and
after luncheon I would make that sauce she had been after me to do for
the last week.
She seemed astonished, but gratified, at my unwonted energy. I had
been an absolutely useless creature about the house for so long. Now I
hurried through luncheon, and attacked the apricots as if my life were
staked on getting them halved, stoned, and boiling.
"Good Heavens, child, how you rush!" Abby protested. "There's no such
great haste." But she did not know that I was trying to run away from
an idea.
In the intervals of preserving I dived into the cellar and brought up
my rose and lilac plants; and the afternoon was spent in running
hot-cheeked from the stove to the garden, digging, carefully
sprinkling, while Abby lowered the roots; then packing the earth and
patting with all my might; darting back to the kitchen again to ladle
out the steaming stuff into jars and strenuously to screw on their
covers.
But for all my wearing of myself out, through the steam of the cooking
pots, between the leaves of the rose-bushes, the pursuing idea would
lift its head. The picture of the Spanish Woman as she stood in the
witness room, the golden glimmer of her hair, her wonderful white waxy
face, and the way her eyes had sparkled at me through her lashes,
returned to my memory, powerful as the odor of her flower. I compared
her with that flower--luxurious and perfect looking, as if she had
grown in a hothouse; and with that strange overwhelming characteristic
which drew, in spite of all disliking. It was useless to cry, "I do
not like you and I will not believe in you." There were two things I
had to acknowledge--her will, and her power of seduction. Hadn't I
felt the light of it as she had stood looking at me?
Finally, when wearied out, I lay in bed that night, the idea I had been
fleeing overtook me; and I gave up and looked it in the face. "Well,
yes, and suppose he does love her? Should that surprise me so much?
How should he help it? She is so beautiful!"
Still that admission had been forced out of me in a moment of weakness,
between my pillow and the dark; and I was determined it should not get
hold of me with its swarm of attendant tormenting thoughts. I was
resolved to go into court, thinking of nothing but just that small
measure of evidence which was mine to give; and to come away again,
turning my back upon the whole matter, and taking up again the round of
my daily employments.
This heroic resolution was knocked on the head the next morning by
father's announcing that I was not summoned for the opening of the
court,--and he added parenthetically Lord knew when!--but might be
called for any time that afternoon, so I was to hold myself in
readiness. This left me in a miserable state of uncertainty, which was
not improved by seeing my name in the _Alta_, as witness, just above an
exhortation to the people of San Francisco to see that justice was
done, even if the law failed in its work.
The best course seemed to be the immolation of myself in the long
neglected house work. A vigorous sweeping of my room, the preparation
of an elaborate luncheon salad, and the total rearrangement of the
parlor furniture might help to get rid of that heart-beating
expectation--soothing, and bulwarking me around with domesticity. But
the excitement of the city kept invading my retreat, as if it were so
full of that great matter that it had to spill over even into houses
where it wasn't wanted. The first ripple had been the sight of my name
in the paper that morning; but the wave went quite over me when, just
before luncheon, Hallie rushed in. She had been at the trial all the
morning, and had only just seen the _Alta_ with my name.
She hugged me a number of times, with exclamations of how awful but
fascinating it must be, to be a witness, and what was it I knew--why
hadn't I told her--she would never have divulged one word of it--though
of course if I was under oath! Still, couldn't I tell her all about it
now?
I believe that Hallie's respect for me had taken a leap with the news
of my position, and when I explained that I was still under oath, and
couldn't tell anybody anything until I told it from the witness-stand,
she looked at me with positive awe.
She stayed to luncheon, and it was a trying but most exciting meal.
Alas for my elaborate salad! We might have been eating india-rubber
for all we knew or cared. For Hallie poured forth all the history of
the trial, from the time I left the court room, and I would not have
stopped her had it been possible to do so.
It seemed that the afternoon of the opening day a man who was a waiter
at the Poodle Dog was put on the stand. This was the new witness Mr.
Dingley had spoken of. He told how Mr. Rood had been at supper in the
restaurant at about midnight, how Mr. Montgomery had come in with
another gentleman, and gone up to the table where Rood was sitting.
While he did so the other gentleman sat at a table near the door. Mr.
Rood and Mr. Montgomery did not have supper together, the waiter said;
did not even drink together. They talked only for a few minutes, and
he thought they were disagreeing because, though their voices were not
loud, they sounded angry. Then Mr. Rood got up suddenly, overturning
his chair, and said, "I won't hear anything from you," and though he
had not finished supper, paid his bill and went out of the restaurant.
Mr. Montgomery had waited a few moments before he followed him. The
gentleman who had sat near the door had been the last to leave the
restaurant.
"And then," said Hallie, warming to her narrative, "they called the man
who had come into the Poodle Dog with Johnny, and what do you think! it
was Willie Felton."
"Not the one who went to dancing-school with us, and had such red
cheeks?" I wondered.
"His cheeks aren't red now," said Hallie; "and he has wrinkles all
around his eyes, just like an old man. He has been awfully dissipated.
And, oh Ellie, you should have seen him sitting up there looking at Mr.
Dingley and looking at Mr. Jackson, and biting his nails, and never
daring to look at Johnny Montgomery. He said he had met Johnny about
twelve o'clock that night, by chance on Montgomery Street. They had
walked a little way together, and Johnny had said, 'I am going away
to-morrow,' and Willie Felton asked was he going to the races. Johnny
laughed and said, 'No. I am going to some place I've never seen
before, and I'm not coming back until everybody has forgotten me.' He
behaved queerly, seemed to be very much excited; although, Willie said,
he was sure he hadn't been drinking.
"As they came to the Poodle Dog Johnny said, 'There is some one here I
want to speak to.' And after they were inside he said, 'Excuse me a
moment,' so Willie Felton took a table near the door, saw Johnny talk
with Rood, saw Rood upset his chair as he went out, and Johnny follow
him out of the door. When he himself got outside, he said that Rood
was nowhere in sight and that Johnny was standing looking up Montgomery
Street. He seemed to be very angry. Willie said, 'Where are you
going?' and Johnny turned on him and said, 'I'll tell you where I'm
going--I am going about my business!' and then he walked quickly away
up the street in the same direction that Rood had taken.
"While he was telling about it," Hallie went on, "Mr. Jackson kept
interrupting, saying, 'Object, your Honor,' and making it awfully hard
to follow the testimony. Then another young man was called, and he
didn't tell any story. They had a hard time even making him answer
questions. But he did tell that he knew the quarrel between Rood and
Johnny began three years ago at the time of the California Bank
shortage, when Johnny said that Rood had lied himself out of prison and
an innocent man in.
"Oh," I cried, "I'm so glad!"
Hallie looked as if she thought I was crazy; but I explained that what
I really was glad of was that the quarrel had been Rood's, and not
Johnny's fault; indeed that it had shown Johnny to be in the right, at
least that once.
"Well," Hallie declared, "he does need a good word, I must say!"
This morning, she informed me, had been awfully stupid,--just
cross-examining, and interrupting; but finally they did call some one
new--a Mexican woman. And she testified that for two years Carlotta
Valencia's friends had known her as Mrs. Rood. "And then mother
wouldn't let me stay any longer," Hallie lamented, "because she said
the woman wasn't a proper person. But I wanted awfully to hear what
else she said!"
Here Abby came in, and remarked that if we were going to talk all day
we would better go somewhere else and give Lee a chance to clear off
the table.
The garden has lovely places in which to sit, so we went out there and
took the rustic bench in the shade of the cypress hedge.
"But what does Johnny Montgomery's lawyer say?" I asked, for that was
really the point of interest for me.
"Why, he claims that Rood committed suicide, because he was despondent
over something--business I guess; and of course they did find a
discharged revolver in the bar. The weak spot in that, father says, is
that the bullet Rood was shot with is much too small for that revolver."
I knew there was a far weaker point in the defense than that, and I
wondered, in the face of it, how I was ever going to drag my unwilling
spirit up into the witness-box. The summons might come at any
moment,--might come now, while we sat talking with our feet in the sun
and the cypress shadow cool upon our foreheads.
At four o'clock father came stepping out of the conservatory, calling
out, "What young person will give a tired man a cup of tea?" Then,
noticing my questioning look, "No summons for us to-day," he said; so I
ran in to fetch the tea-table.
Tea in the garden was a rare event. The few warm spring days gave the
opportunity, and nothing was prettier than the scarlet lacquer tray
with the Nankin cups set out under the heliotrope vines. I asked
whether this was any special celebration, and father said yes; it was a
farewell complimentary to him. He had to go out of town to-night. He
hated to be away over Sunday, he explained, but there was business at
Alma which he must look into sometime during the next five days; and
week days for the present would be out of the question--by which I knew
he meant he must stay on account of the trial. Then he stopped being
sensible, and began teasing Hallie about her latest beau. He loves to
do that, because she takes it all so seriously, and never sees that he
is joking her. Just as she was protesting that she had no serious
intentions toward the person in question, two young men came around the
path from the front of the house. Hallie's beau and Jack Tracy, who
had fluttered my sentiment a short time before by asking me to marry
him. But now he was too bubbling over with importance to remember to
look sentimental.
Had we heard the latest sensation, they wanted to know? Montgomery had
tried to break jail. Came mighty near doing it, too!
I had been holding a cup and saucer when he began speaking, and when he
stopped it was on the brick path in a hundred pieces.
"Poppycock," father said, "the town is full of rumors."
But, no, they said, it was true enough. They had it from good
authority. It seemed that the sheriff had been bribed. Just how and
by whom I couldn't make out, because every one was talking at once.
But the sheriff had been removed, "pending trial," said Jack Tracy, and
the deputy was acting in his place.
"But," I said, "if it wasn't Mr. Montgomery who bribed the sheriff, how
can you tell he really wanted to escape?"
Then every one laughed, and I stooped over and began picking up the
pieces of the Nankin cup, so that no one should see how I was blushing,
but my hands shook so that it was all I could do to hold the pieces.
What in the world was the matter with me lately? There was no reason
in my behaving like this, as if Johnny Montgomery had been an old
friend. I excused myself on the pretext of having father's bag to
pack, and escaped into the house. "All the same," I said to myself, "I
don't believe he tried to get out, or even really wanted to. From the
way he looked in the court I am sure he doesn't care what happens to
him."
But oh, I did wish he cared a little more; how I wished that some one
could show, in his behalf, one contradictory piece of evidence; so that
all the testimony wouldn't seem to be narrowing down to one point where
there would be room for but one thing I could believe him to be!