ARTHUR FALLS AMONG LAWYERS
Arthur ended his far from orderly retreat at the Auditorium, and in the
sitting room of his suite there set about re-forming his lines, with some
vague idea of making another attack later in the day--one less timid and
blundering. "I'd better not have gone near her," said he disgustedly.
"How could a man win when he feels beaten before he begins?" He was not
now hazed by Janet's beauty and her voice like bells in evening quiet,
and her mystic ideas. Youth, rarely wise in action, is often wise in
thought; and Arthur, having a reasoning apparatus that worked uncommonly
well when he set it in motion and did not interfere with it, was soon
seeing his situation as a whole much as it was--ugly, mocking, hopeless.
"Maybe Janet knows the real reason why she's acting this way, maybe she
don't," thought he, with the disposition of the inexperienced to give the
benefit of even imaginary doubt. "No matter; the fact is, it's all up
between us." This finality, unexpectedly staring at him, gave him a
shock. "Why," he muttered, "she really has thrown me over! All her talk
was a blind--a trick." And, further exhibiting his youth in holding the
individual responsible for the system of which the individual is merely a
victim, usually a pitiable victim, he went to the opposite extreme and
fell to denouncing her--cold-hearted and mercenary like her mother, a
coward as well as a hypocrite--for, if she had had any of the bravery of
self-respect, wouldn't she have been frank with him? He reviewed her in
the flooding new light upon her character, this light that revealed her
as mercilessly as flash of night-watchman's lantern on guilty, shrinking
form. "She--Why, she always _was_ a fakir!" he exclaimed, stupefied by
the revelation of his own lack of discernment, he who had prided himself
on his acuteness, especially as to women. "From childhood up, she has
always made herself comfortable, no matter who was put out; she has
gotten whatever she wanted, always pretending to be unselfish, always
making it look as if the other person were in the wrong." There he
started up in the rate of the hoodwinked, at the recollection of an
incident of the previous summer--how she had been most gracious to a
young French nobleman, in America in search of a wife; how anybody but
"spiritual" Janet would have been accused of outrageous flirting--no, not
accused, but convicted. He recalled a vague story which he had set down
to envious gossip--a story that the Frenchman had departed on learning
that Charles Whitney had not yet reached the stage of fashionable
education at which the American father appreciates titles and begins to
listen without losing his temper when the subject of settlements is
broached. He remembered now that Janet had been low-spirited for some
time after the Frenchman took himself and title and eloquent eyes and
"soulful, stimulating conversation" to another market. "What a damn fool
I've been!" Arthur all but shouted at his own image in a mirror which by
chance was opposite him. A glance, and his eyes shifted; somehow, it gave
him no pleasure, but the reverse, to see that handsome face and
well-set-up, well-dressed figure.
"She was marrying me for money," he went on, when he had once more seated
himself, legs crossed and cigarette going reflectively. The idea seemed
new to him--that people with money could marry for money, just as a
capitalist goes only where he hopes to increase his capital. But on
examining it more closely, he was surprised to find that it was not new
at all. "What am I so virtuous about?" said he. "Wasn't _I_ after money,
too? If our circumstances were reversed, what would _I_ be doing?" He
could find but one honest answer. "No doubt I'd be trying to get out of
it, and if I didn't, it'd be because I couldn't see or make a way." To
his abnormally sensitized nerves the whole business began to exude a
distinct, nauseating odor. "Rotten--that's the God's truth," thought he.
"Father was right!"
But there he drew back; he must be careful not to let anger sweep him
into conceding too much. "No--life's got to be lived as the world
dictates," he hastened to add. "I see now why father did it, but he went
too far. He forgot my rights. The money is mine. And, by God, I'll get
it!" And again he started up; and again he was caught and put out of
countenance by his own image in the mirror. He turned away, shamefaced,
but sullenly resolute.
Base? He couldn't deny it. But he was desperate; also, he had been too
long accustomed to grabbing things to which his conscience told him he
had doubtful right or none. "It's mine. I've been cheated out of it. I'll
get it. Besides--" His mind suddenly cleared of the shadow of shame--"I
owe it to mother and Del to make the fight. They've been cheated, too.
Because they're too soft-hearted and too reverent of father's memory, is
that any reason, any excuse, for my shirking my duty by them? If father
were here to speak, I know he'd approve." Before him rose the frightful
look in his father's eyes in the earlier stage of that second and last
illness. "_That's_ what the look meant!" he cried, now completely
justified. "He recovered his reason. He wanted to undo the mischief that
old sneak Hargrave had drawn him into!"
The case was complete: His father had been insane when he made the will,
had repented afterward, but had been unable to unmake it; his only son
Arthur Ranger, now head of the family, owed it to the family's future and
to its two helpless and oversentimental women to right the wrong. A
complete case, a clear case, a solemn mandate. Interest and duty were
synonymous--as always to ingenious minds.
He lost no time in setting about this newly discovered high task of love
and justice. Within twenty minutes he was closeted with Dawson of the
great law firm, Mitchell, Dawson, Vance & Bischoffsheimer, who had had
the best seats on all the fattest stranded carcasses of the Middle West
for a decade--that is, ever since Bischoffsheimer joined the firm and
taught its intellects how on a vast scale to transubstantiate technically
legal knowledge into technically legal wealth. Dawson--lean and keen,
tough and brown of skin, and so carelessly dressed that he looked as if
he slept in his clothes--listened with the sympathetic, unwandering
attention which men give only him who comes telling where and how they
can make money. The young man ended his story, all in a glow of
enthusiasm for his exalted motives and of satisfaction with his eloquence
in presenting them; then came the shrewd and thorough cross-examination
which, he believed, strengthened every point he had made.
"On your showing," was Dawson's cautious verdict, "you seem to have a
case. But you must not forget that judges and juries have a deep
prejudice against breaking wills. They're usually fathers themselves, and
guard the will as the parent's strongest weapon in keeping the children
in order after they're too old for the strap or the bed slat, as the case
may be. Undue influence or mental infirmity must be mighty clearly
proven. Even then the court may decide to let the will stand, on general
principles. Your mother and sister, of course, join you?"
"I--I hope so," hesitated Arthur. "I'm not sure." More self-possessedly:
"You know how it is with women--with _ladies_--how they shrink from
notoriety."
"No, I can't say I do," said Dawson dryly. "Ladies need money even more
than women do, and so they'll usually go the limit, and beyond, to get
it. However, assuming that for some reason or other, your mother and
sister won't help, at least they won't oppose?"
"My sister is engaged to the son of Dr. Hargrave," said Arthur uneasily.
"That's good--excellent!" exclaimed Dawson, rubbing his gaunt,
beard-discolored jaw vigorously.
"But--he--Theodore Hargrave is a sentimental, unpractical chap."
"So are we all--but not in money matters."
"He's an exception, I'm afraid," said Arthur. "Really--I think it's
almost certain he'll try to influence her to take sides against me. And
my mother was very bitter when I spoke of contest. But, as I've shown
you, my case is quite apart from what they may or may not do."
"Um--um," grunted Dawson. He threw himself back in his chair; to aid him
in thinking, he twisted the only remaining crown-lock of his gray-black
hair, and slowly drew his thin lips from his big sallow teeth, and as
slowly returned them to place. "Obviously," he said at length, "the
doctor is the crucial witness. We must see to it that"--a significant
grin--"that the other side does not attach him. We must anticipate them
by attaching him to us. I'll see what can be done--legitimately, you
understand. Perhaps you may have to engage additional counsel--some such
firm as, say, Humperdink & Grafter. Often, in cases nowadays, there is
detail work of an important character that lawyers of our standing
couldn't think of undertaking. But, of course, we work in harmony with
such other counsel as our client sees fit to engage."
"Certainly; I understand," said Arthur, with a knowing,
"man-of-the-world" nod. His cause being good and its triumph necessary,
he must not be squeamish about any alliances it might be necessary to
make as a means to that triumph, where the world was so wicked. "Then,
you undertake the case."
"We will look into it," Dawson corrected. "You appreciate that the
litigation will be somewhat expensive?"
Arthur reddened. No, he hadn't thought of that! Whenever he had wanted
anything, he had ordered it, and had let the bill go to his father;
whenever he had wanted money, he had sent to his father for it, and had
got it. Dawson's question made the reality of his position--moneyless,
resourceless, friendless--burst over him like a waterspout. Dawson saw
and understood; but it was not his cue to lessen that sense of
helplessness.
At last Arthur sufficiently shook off his stupor to say: "Unless I win
the contest, I shan't have any resources beyond the five thousand I get
under the will, and a thousand or so I have in bank at Saint X--and what
little I could realize from my personal odds and ends. Isn't there some
way the thing could be arranged?"
"There is the method of getting a lawyer to take a case on contingent
fee," said Dawson. "That is, the lawyer gets a certain per cent of what
he wins, and nothing if he loses. But _we_ don't make such arrangements.
They are regarded as almost unprofessional; I couldn't honestly recommend
any lawyer who would. But, let me see--um--urn--" Dawson was reflecting
again, with an ostentation which might have roused the suspicions of a
less guileless person than Arthur Ranger at twenty-five. "You could,
perhaps, give us a retainer of say, a thousand in cash?"
"Yes," said Arthur, relieved. He thought he saw light ahead.
"Then we could take your note for say, five thousand--due in eighteen
months. You could renew it, if your victory was by any chance delayed
beyond that time."
"Your victory" was not very adroit, but it was adroit enough to bedazzle
Arthur. "Certainly," said he gratefully.
Dawson shut his long, wild-looking teeth and gently drew back his dry,
beard-discolored lips, while his keen eyes glinted behind his spectacles.
The fly had a leg in the web!
Business being thus got into a smooth way, Dawson and Arthur became great
friends. Nothing that Dawson said was a specific statement of belief in
the ultimate success of the suit; but his every look and tone implied
confidence. Arthur went away with face radiant and spirit erect. He felt
that he was a man of affairs, a man of consequence, he had lawyers, and a
big suit pending; and soon he would be rich. He thought of Janet, and
audibly sneered. "I'll make the Whitneys sick of their treachery!" said
he. Back had come his sense of strength and superiority; and once more he
was "gracious" with servants and with such others of the "peasantry" as
happened into or near his homeward path.
Toward three o'clock that afternoon, as he was being whirled toward Saint
X in the Eastern Express, his lawyer was in the offices of Ramsay &
Vanorden, a rival firm of wreckers and pirate outfitters on the third
floor of the same building. When Dawson had despatched his immediate
business with Vanorden, he lingered to say: "Well, I reckon we'll soon be
lined up on opposite sides in another big suit."
Confidences between the two firms were frequent and natural--not only
because Vanorden and Dawson were intimate friends and of the greatest
assistance each to the other socially and politically; not only because
Ramsay and Bischoffsheimer had married sisters; but also, and chiefly,
because big lawyers like to have big lawyers opposed to them in a big
suit. For several reasons; for instance, ingenuity on each side prolongs
the litigation and makes it intricate, and therefore highly expensive,
and so multiplies the extent of the banquet.
"How so?" inquired Vanorden, put on the alert by the significant
intonation of his friend.
"The whole Ranger-Whitney business is coming into court. Ranger, you
know, passed over the other day. He cut his family off with almost
nothing--gave his money to Tecumseh College. The son's engaged us to
attack the will."
"Where do _we_ come in?" asked Vanorden.
Dawson laughed and winked. "I guess your client, old Charley Whitney,
won't miss the chance to intervene in the suit and annex the whole
business, in the scrimmage."
Vanorden nodded. "Oh, I see," said he. "I see! Yes, we'll take a
hand--sure!"
"There won't be much in it for us," continued Dawson. "The boy's got
nothing, and between you and me, Len, the chances are against him. But
you fellows and whoever gets the job of defending the college's rights--"
Dawson opened his arms and made a humorous, huge, in-sweeping gesture.
"And," he added, "Whitney's one of the trustees under the will. See?"
"Thanks, old man." Vanorden was laughing like a shrewd and mischievous
but through-and-through good-natured boy. The two brilliant young leaders
of the Illinois bar shook hands warmly.
And so it came about that Charles Whitney was soon indorsing a plan to
cause, and to profit by, sly confusion--the plan of his able lawyers.
They had for years steered his hardy craft, now under the flag of
peaceful commerce and now under the black banner of the buccaneer. The
best of pilots, they had enabled him to clear many a shoal of bankruptcy,
many a reef of indictment. They served well, for he paid well.