"I shouldn't think you would find charity ridiculous. A hard-hearted and cruel being like me might--but you--oh, Miss Ward! To think that helping the poor was ridiculous!"
"But it isn't to help the poor at all."
He was still more perplexed.
"It's to help the rich. Can't you see that?"
She turned and faced him with clear, sober gray eyes.
"Can't you see that?" she asked again. "If you can't, I wish I knew how to make you.
"'The organized charity, scrimped and iced, In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ'--
"Do you know Boyle O'Reilly's poetry?"
Eades showed the embarrassment of one who has not the habit of reading, and she saw that the words had no meaning for him.
"Don't take it all so seriously," he said, leaning over as if he might plead with her. "'The poor,' you know, 'we have always with us.'" He settled back then as one who has said the thing proper to the occasion.
XVIII
Although Marriott had promised Koerner early in the fall that his action against the railroad would be tried at once, he was unable to bring the event to pass. In the first place, Bradford Ford, the attorney for the railroad, had to go east in his private car, then in the winter he had to go to Florida to rest and play golf, and because of these and other postponements it was March before the case was finally assigned for trial.
"So that's your client back there, is it?" said Ford, the morning of the trial, turning from the window and the lingering winter outdoors to look at Koerner.
Koerner was sitting by the trial table, his old wife by his side. He was pale and thin from his long winter indoors; his yellow, wrinkled skin stretched over his jaw-bones, hung flabby at his throat. As Ford and Marriott looked at him, a troubled expression appeared in Koerner's face; he did not like to see Marriott so companionable with Ford; he had ugly suspicions; he felt that Marriott should treat his opponent coldly and with the enmity such a contest deserved. But just at that minute Judge Sharlow came in and court was opened.
The trial lasted three days. The benches behind the bar were empty, the bailiff slept with his gray chin on his breast, the clerk copied pleadings in the record, pausing now and then to look out at the flurries of snow. Sharlow sat on the bench, trying to write an opinion he had been working on for weeks. The jury sat in the jury-box, their eyes heavy with drowsiness, breathing grossly. Long ago life had paused in these men; they had certain fixed opinions, one of which was that any man who sued a corporation was entitled to damages; and after they had seen Koerner, with the stump of his leg sticking out from his chair, they were ready to render a verdict.
Marriott knew this, and Ford knew it, and consequently they gave attention, not to the jury, but to the stenographer bending over the tablet on which he transcribed the testimony with his fountain pen.
Marriott and Ford were concerned about the record; they saw not so much this trial, as a hearing months or possibly years hence in the Appellate Court, and still another hearing months or years hence in the Supreme Court. They knew that just as the jurymen were in sympathy with Koerner, and by any possible means would give a verdict in his favor, so the judges in the higher courts would be in sympathy with the railroad company, and by any possible means give judgment in its favor; and, therefore, while Marriott's efforts were directed toward trying the case in such a way that the record should be free from error, Ford's efforts were directed toward trying the case in such a way that the record should be full of error. Ford was continually objecting to the questions Marriott asked his witnesses, and compelling Sharlow to drop his work and pass on these objections. One of Marriott's witnesses, a stalwart young mechanic, unmarried and with no responsibilities, testified positively that the frog in which Koerner had caught his foot had no block in it; he had examined it carefully at the time. Another, a man of middle age with a large family, an employe of the railroad company, had the most unreliable memory--he could remember nothing at all about the frog; he could not say whether it had been blocked or not; he had not examined it; he had not considered it any of his business.
While giving his testimony, he cast fearful and appealing glances at Ford, who smiled complacently, and for a while made no objections.
Another witness was Gergen, the surgeon, a young man with eye-glasses, a tiny gold chain, and a scant black beard trimmed closely to his pale skin and pointed after the French fashion. He retained his overcoat and kept on his glasses while he testified, as if he must get through with this business and return to his practice as quickly as possible. With the greatest care he couched all his testimony in scientific phrases.
"I was summoned to the hospital," he said, "at seven-sixteen on that evening and found the patient prostrated by hemorrhage and shock. I supplemented the superficial examination of the internes and found that there were contusions on the left hip, and severe bruises on the entire left side. The most severe injury, however, developed in the right foot. The tibiotarsal articulation was destroyed, the calcaneum and astragalus were crushed and inoperable, the metatarsus and phalanges, and the internal and external malleolus were also crushed, and the fibula and tibia were splintered to the knee."
"Well, what then?"
"I gave orders to have the patient prepared, and proceeded to operate.
My assistant, Doctor Remack, administered the anesthetic, and I amputated at the lower third."
Doctor Gergen then explained that what he had said meant that he had found Koerner's foot, ankle and knee crushed, and that he had cut off his leg above the knee. After this he told what fee he had charged; he did this in plain terms, calling dollars dollars, and cents cents.
But Koerner himself was a sufficient witness in his own behalf. Sitting on the stand, his crutches in the hollow of his arm, the stump of his leg thrust straight out before him and twitching now and then, he told of his long service with the railroad, pictured the blinding snow-storm, described how he had slipped and caught his foot in the unblocked frog--then the switch-engine noiselessly stealing down upon him. The jurymen roused from their lethargy as he turned his white and bony face toward them; the atmosphere was suddenly charged with the sympathy these aged men felt for him. Sharlow paused in his writing, the clerk ceased from his monotonous work, and Mrs. Koerner, whose expression had not changed, wiped her eyes with the handkerchief which, fresh from the iron, she had held all day without unfolding.
When Ford began his cross-examination, Koerner twisted about with difficulty in his chair, threw back his head, and his face became hard and obdurate. He ran his stiff and calloused hand through his white hair, which seemed to bristle with leonine defiance. Ford conducted his cross-examination in soft, pleasant tones, spoke to Koerner kindly and with consideration, scrupulously addressed him as "Mr. Koerner," and had him repeat all he had said about his injury.
"As I understand it, then, Mr. Koerner," said Ford, "you were walking homeward at the end of the day through the railroad yards."
"Yes, sir, dot's right."
"You'd always gone home that way?"
"Sure; I go dot vay for twenty year, right t'rough dose yards dere."
"Yes. Was that a public highway, Mr. Koerner?"
"Vell, everybody go dot vay home all right; dot's so."
"But it wasn't a street?"
"No."
"Nor a sidewalk?"
"You know dot alreadty yourself," said Koerner, leaning forward, contracting his bushy white eyebrows and glaring at Ford. "Vot you vant to boder me mit such a damn-fool question for?"
The jurymen laughed and Ford smiled.
"I know, of course, Mr. Koerner; you will pardon me--but what I wish to know is whether or not you know. You had passed through those yards frequently?"
"Yah, undt I knows a damn-sight more about dose yards dan you, you bet."
Again the jurymen laughed in vicarious pleasure at another's profanity.
"I yield to you there, Mr. Koerner," said Ford in his suave manner.
"But let us go on. You say your foot slipped?"
"Yah, dot's right."
"Slipped on the frozen snow?"
"Yah. I bedt you shlip on such a place as dot."
"No doubt," said Ford, who suddenly ceased to smile. He now leaned forward; the faces of the two protagonists seemed to be close together.
"And, as a result, your foot slid into the frog, and was wedged there so that you could not get it out?"
"Yah."
"And the engine came along just then and ran over it?"
"Yah."