Читать книгу: «Counsel for the Defense», страница 19
Blake moved forward to her side.
“I should like to speak to them, if I can,” he said quietly.
Katherine held up her hand for silence. The mob hissed and cursed him, and tried to break through the human fortification of the front ranks. Through it all Blake stood silent, pale, without motion. Katherine, her hand still upraised, continued to cry out for silence; and after a time the uproar began in a measure to diminish.
Katherine took quick advantage of the lull.
“Gentlemen,” she called out, “won’t you please give Mr. Blake just a word!”
Cries that they should give him a chance to speak ran through the crowd, and thus abjured by its own members the mob quieted yet further. While they were subsiding into order Blake looked steadily out upon this sea of hostile faces. Katherine watched him breathlessly, wondering what he was about to say. It swept in upon her, with a sudden catching of the throat, that he made a fine figure standing there so straight, so white, with so little sign of fear; and despite what the man had done, again some of her old admiration for him thrilled through her, and with it an infinite pang of regret for what he might have been.
At length there was moderate order, and Blake began to speak. “Gentlemen, I do not wish to plead for myself,” he said quietly, yet in his far-carrying voice. “What I have done is beyond your forgiveness. I merely desire to say that I am guilty; to say that I am here to give myself into your hands. Do with me as you think best. If you prefer immediate action, I shall go with you without resistance. If you wish to let the law take its course, then” – here he made a slight gesture toward Jim Nichols, who stood beside him – “then I shall give myself into the hands of the sheriff. I await your choice.”
With that he paused. A perfect hush had fallen on the crowd. This man who had dominated them in the days of his glory, dominated them for at least a flickering moment in this the hour of his fall. For that brief moment all were under the spell of their habit to honour him, the spell of his natural dignity, the spell of his direct words.
Then the spell was over. The storm broke loose again. There were cries for immediate action, and counter cries in favour of the law. The two cries battled with each other. For a space there was doubt as to which was the stronger. Then that for the law rose louder and louder and drowned the other out.
Sheriff Nichols slipped his arm through Blake’s.
“I guess you’re going to come with me,” he said.
“I am ready,” was Blake’s response.
He turned about to Katherine.
“You deserved to win,” he said quietly. “Thank you. Good-by.”
“Good-by,” said she.
The sheriff drew him away. Katherine, panting, leaning heavily against a pillar of the porch, watched the pair go down the steps – watched the great crowd part before them – watched them march through this human alley-way, lighted by smoking campaign torches – watched them till they had passed into the darkness in the direction of the jail. Then she dizzily reached out and caught Old Hosie’s arm.
“Help me home,” she said weakly. “I – I feel sick.”
CHAPTER XXVII
THE END OF THE BEGINNING
It was the following night, and the hour was nine. Old Hosie stood in the sheriff’s office in Galloway County jail, while Jim Nichols scrutinized a formal looking document his visitor had just delivered into his hands.
“It’s all right, isn’t it?” said the old lawyer.
“Yep.” The sheriff thrust the paper into a drawer. “I’ll fetch him right down.”
“Remember, don’t give him a hint!” Old Hosie warned again. “You’re sure,” he added anxiously, “he hasn’t got on to anything?”
“How many more times have I got to tell you,” returned the sheriff, a little irritated, “that I ain’t said a word to him – just as you told me! He heard some of the racket last night, sure. But he thought it was just part of the regular campaign row.”
“All right! All right! Hurry him along then!”
Left alone, Old Hosie walked excitedly up and down the dingy room, whose sole pretension in an æsthetic way was the breeze-blown “yachting girl” of a soap company’s calendar, sailing her bounding craft above the office cuspidor.
The old man grinned widely, rubbed his bony hands together, and a concatenation of low chuckles issued from his lean throat. But when Sheriff Nichols reappeared, ushering in Arnold Bruce, all these outward manifestations of satisfaction abruptly terminated, and his manner became his usual dry and sarcastic one with his nephew.
“Hello, Arn!” he said. “H’are you?”
“Hello!” Bruce returned, rather gruffly, shaking the hand his uncle held out. “What’s this the sheriff has just told me about a new trial?”
“It’s all right,” returned Old Hosie. “We’ve fought on till we’ve made ’em give it to us.”
“What’s the use of it?” Bruce growled. “The cards will be stacked the same as at the other trial.”
“Well, whatever happens, you’re free till then. I’ve got you out on bail, and I’m here to take you home with me. So come along with you.”
Old Hosie pushed him out and down the jail steps and into a closed carriage that was waiting at the curb. Bruce was in a glowering, embittered mood, as was but natural in a man who keenly feels that he has suffered without justice and has lost all for which he fought.
“You know I appreciate your working for the new trial,” he remarked dully, as the carriage rattled slowly on. “How did you manage it?”
“It’s too long a story for now. I’ll tell you when we get home.”
Bruce was gloomily silent for a moment.
“Of course the Blake crowd swept everything at the election to-day?”
“Well, on the whole, their majority wasn’t as big as they’d counted on,” returned Old Hosie.
They rode on, Bruce sunk in his bitter, rebellious dejection. The carriage turned into the street that ran behind the Court House, then after rattling over the brick pavement for a few moments came to a pause. Hosie opened the door and stepped out.
“Hello! what are we stopping here for?” demanded Bruce. “This is the Court House. I thought you said we were going home?”
“So we are, so we are,” Old Hosie rapidly returned, an agitation in his manner that he could not wholly repress. “But first we’ve got to go into the Court House. Judge Kellog is waiting for us; there’s a little formality or two about your release we’ve got to settle with him. Come along.” And taking his arm Old Hosie hurried him into the Court House yard, allowing no time for questioning the plausibility of this explanation.
But suddenly Bruce stopped short.
“Look at that, won’t you!” he cried in amazement. “See how the front of the yard is lighted up, and see how it’s jammed with people! And there goes the band! What the dickens – ”
At that moment some one on the outskirts of the crowd sighted the pair. “There’s Bruce!” he shouted.
Immediately there was an uproar. “Hurrah for Bruce! Hurrah for Bruce!” yelled the crowd, and began to rush to the rear of the yard, cheering as they ran.
Bruce gripped Old Hosie’s arm.
“What’s this mean?”
“It means we’ve got to run for it!” And so saying the old man, with a surprising burst of speed left over from his younger years, dragged his nephew up the walk and through the rear door of the Court House, which he quickly locked upon their clamorous pursuers.
Bruce stared at his uncle in bewilderment.
“Hosie – Hosie – what’s this mean?”
The old man’s leathery face was twitching in a manner remarkable to behold.
“Drat it,” he grumbled, with a quaver in his voice, “why don’t you read the Express and keep up with the news!”
“What’s this mean?” demanded Bruce.
“Well, here’s a copy of your old rag. Read it and see for yourself.”
Bruce seized the Express the old man held out to him. Up in one corner were the words “Election Extra,” and across the top of the page ran the great headline:
“BRUCE TICKET SWEEPS CITY”
Bruce looked slowly up, stupefied, and steadied himself with a hand against the door.
“Is – is that true?”
“For my part,” declared Old Hosie, the quaver in his voice growing more prominent, “I don’t believe more’n half I see in that dirty sheet!”
“Then – it’s true?”
“Don’t you hear them wild Indians yelling for Mayor Bruce?”
Bruce was too dazed to speak for a moment.
“Tell me – how did it happen?”
“Oh, read your old rag and see!”
“For God’s sake, Hosie, don’t fool with me!” he cried. “How did it happen? Somebody has been at work. Who did it?”
“Eh! You really want to know that?”
“Yes, yes! Who did it?”
“It was done,” said Old Hosie, looking at him very straight and blinking his eyes, “by a party that I understand you thought couldn’t do much of anything.”
“But who? Who?”
“If you really want to know, the party’s name is Miss Katherine West.”
Bruce’s stupefaction outdid itself.
“Katherine West!” he repeated.
Old Hosie could maintain his rôle no longer.
“Yes, Katherine West!” he burst out in triumphant joy, his words tumbling over one another. “She did it all – every bit of it! And that mob out in front is there to celebrate your election. We knew how things were going to turn out, so we were safe in getting this thing ready in advance. And I don’t mind telling you, young fellow, that this celebration is just as much for her as it is for you. The town has simply gone crazy about her and is looking for a chance to kiss her feet. She said she wouldn’t come to-night, but we all insisted. I promised to bring her, and I’ve got to be off. So good-by!”
Bruce caught his arm.
“Wait, Hosie! Tell me what she did! Tell me the rest!”
“Read that paper I gave you! And here, I brought this for you, too.” He took from his inside pocket a copy of the extra Katherine and Billy Harper had got out the night before. “Those two papers will tell you all there is to tell. And now,” he continued, opening a door and pushing Bruce through it, “you just wait in there so I’ll know where to find you when I want you. I’ve got to hustle for a while, for I’m master of ceremonies of this show. How’s that for your old uncle? It’s the first time I’ve ever been connected with a popular movement in my life except to throw bricks at it, and I ain’t so sure I can stand popularity for one whole night.”
With that he was gone. Bruce recognized the room into which he had been thrust as the court room in which he had been tried and sentenced, in which Katherine had pleaded her father’s case. Over the judge’s desk, as though in expectation of his coming, a green-shaded drop lamp shed its cone of light. Bruce stumbled forward to the desk, sank into the judge’s chair, and began feverishly to devour the two copies of his paper.
Billy Harper, penitently sober and sworn to sobriety for all his days, had outdone himself on that day’s issue. He told how the voters crowded to the polls in their eagerness to vote for Bruce, and he gave with a tremendous exultation an estimate of Bruce’s majority, which was so great as to be an almost unanimous election. Also he told how Blind Charlie Peck had prudently caught last night’s eleven o’clock express and was now believed to be repairing his health down at Hot Springs, Arkansas. Also he gave a deal of inside history: told how the extra had been gotten out the night before, with the Blake mass-meeting going on beneath the Express’s windows; told of the scene at the home of Blake, and Blake’s strange march to jail; and, freed from the restraint of Katherine’s presence, who would have forbidden him, he told with a world of praise the story of how she had worked up the case.
The election extra finished, Bruce spread open the extra of the night before, the paper that had transferred him from a prison cell to the mayor’s office, and read the mass of Katherine’s evidence that Billy had so stirringly set forth. Then the head of the editor of the Express, of the mayor of Westville, sank forward into his folded arms and he sat bowed, motionless, upon the judge’s desk.
A great outburst of cheering from the crowd, though louder far than those that had preceded it, did not disturb him; and he did not look up until he heard the door of the court room open. Then he saw that Old Hosie had entered, and with him Katherine.
“I’ll just leave you two for a minute,” Old Hosie said rapidly, “while I go out and start things going by introducing the Honourable Hiram Cogshell.”
With that the old man took the arm of Katherine’s father, who had been standing just behind, slipped through the door and was gone. A moment later, from in front, there arose a succession of cheers for Doctor West.
Bruce came slowly down from behind the railing of Judge Kellog’s desk and paused before Katherine. She was very white, her breath came with a tremulous irregularity, and she looked at him with wide, wondering, half-fearful eyes.
At first Bruce could not get out a word, such a choking was there in his throat, such a throbbing and whirling through all his being. He dizzily supported himself with a hand upon the back of a bench, and stood and gazed at her.
It was she that broke the silence.
“Mr. Hollingsworth did not tell me – you were here. I’d better go.” And she started for the door.
“No – no – don’t!” he said. He drew a step nearer her. “I’ve just read” – holding up the two papers – “what you have done.”
“Mr. Harper has – has exaggerated it very much,” she returned. Her voice seemed to come with as great a difficulty as his own.
“And I have read,” he continued, “how much I owe you.”
“It’s – it’s – ” She did not finish in words, but a gesture disclaimed all credit.
“It has made me. And I want to thank you, and I do thank you. And I do thank you,” he repeated lamely.
She acknowledged his gratitude with an inclination of her head. Motions came easier than words.
“And since I owe it all to you, since I owe nothing to any political party, I want to tell you that I am going to try to make the very best mayor that I can!”
“I am sure of that,” she said.
“I realize that it’s not going to be easy,” he went on. “The people seem to be with me now, thanks to you – but as soon as I try to carry out my ideas, I know that both parties will rise up and unite against me. The big fight is still ahead. But since – since you have done it all – I want you to know that I am going to fight straight ahead for the people, no matter what happens to me.”
“I know,” she said.
“My eyes have been opened to many things about politics,” he added.
She did not speak.
Silence fell between them; the room was infiltered by a multitudinous hum from without. Presently the thought, and with it the fear, that had been rising up stronger and stronger in Bruce for the last half hour, forced itself through his lips.
“I suppose that now – you’ll be going back to New York?”
“No. I have had several cases offered me to-day. I am going to stay in Westville.”
“Oh!” he said – and was conscious of a dizzy relief. Then, “I wish you success.”
“Thank you.”
Again there was a brief silence, both standing and looking in constraint at one another.
“This celebration is very trying, isn’t it?” she said. “I suppose we might sit down while we wait.”
“Yes.”
They each took the end of a different bench, and rather stiffly sat gazing into the shadowy severity of the big room. Sounding from the front of the Court House they heard rather vaguely the deep-chested, sonorous rhetoric of the Honourable Hiram.
But they heard it for but an instant. Suddenly the court room door flew open and Old Hosie marched straight up before them.
“You’re the dad-blastedest pair of idiots I ever saw!” he burst out, with an exasperation that was not an entire success, for it was betrayed by a little quaver.
They stood up.
“What’s the matter?” stammered Bruce.
“Matter?” cried Old Hosie. “What d’you suppose I left you two people here together for?”
“You said you had to start – ”
“Well, couldn’t I have another and a bigger reason? I’ve been listening outside the door here, and the way you people have acted! See here, you two know you love one another, and yet you act toward each other like a pair of tame icebergs that have just been introduced!”
He turned in a fury upon his nephew, blinking to keep the moisture from his eyes.
“Don’t you love her?” he demanded, pointing to Katherine, who had suddenly grown yet more pale.
“Why – yes – yes – ”
“Then why in the name of God don’t you tell her so?”
“I’m – I’m afraid she won’t care to hear it,” stammered Bruce, not daring to look at Katherine.
“Tell her so, and see what she says,” shouted Old Hosie. “How else are you going to find out? Tell her what a fool you’ve been. Tell her she’s proved to you you’re all wrong about what you thought she ought to do. Tell her unless you get some one of sense to help run you, you’re going to make an all-fired mess of this mayor’s job. Tell her” – there was a choking in his voice – “oh, boy, just tell her what you feel!
“And now,” he added quickly, and again sharply, “that mob outside won’t listen to the Honourable Hiram much longer. They want you folks. I give you just two minutes to fix things up. Two minutes – no more!”
And pulling his high hat down upon his forehead, Old Hosie turned abruptly and again left the room.
Bruce looked slowly about upon Katherine. His rugged, powerful face was working with emotion.
“What Uncle Hosie has said is all true,” he stammered fearfully. “You know I love you, Katherine. And there isn’t anything you’ll want to do that I’ll not be glad to have you do. Won’t you forget, Katherine, and won’t you – won’t you – ”
He stretched out his arms to her. “Oh, Katherine!” he cried. “I love you! I want you! I need you!”
While he spoke her face had grown radiant. “And I – and I” – she choked, then her voice went on with an uprush of happiness – “and I – oh, Arnold, I need you!”
When Old Hosie reëentered a minute later and saw what there was to be seen, he let out a little cry of joy and swooped down upon them.
“Look out, Katherine,” he warned, quaveringly, “for I’m going to kiss you!” But despite this warning the old man succeeded in his enterprise. “This is great! – great!” he cried, shaking a hand of each. “But we’ll have to cut this hallelujah business short till that little picnic outside is over. I just pulled the Honourable Hiram down – and, say, just listen to that roar!”
A roar it was indeed. Of a bursting brass band, of thousands of eager people.
“And who do you suppose they’re shouting for?” inquired the joyous Hosie.
Katherine smiled a tear-bright smile at Bruce.
“For the new mayor,” she said.
“No, no! All for you!” said he.
“Well, come on and we’ll see who it’s for!” cried Old Hosie.
And taking an arm of each he led them out to face the cheering multitude.
