"I'm glad of that," the girl said. "He has a good case, hasn't he?"
"I think so," said Marriott, and then he hastened to add the qualification that is always necessary in so unexact and whimsical a science as the law, "that is, it seems so now; I'll have to study it somewhat before I can give you a definite opinion."
"I think he ought to have big damages," said Gusta. "Why, just think!
He's worked for that railroad all his life, and now to lose his foot!"
She looked at her father, her affection and sympathy showing in her expression. Marriott glanced at Dick, whose eyes were fixed on the girl. His lips were slightly parted; he gazed at her boldly, his eyes following every curve of her figure. Her yellow hair was bright in the light, and the flush of her cheeks spread to her white neck. And Marriott, in the one moment he glanced at Dick, saw in his face another expression--an expression that displeased him; and as he recalled the resemblance to Elizabeth he thought he had noted, he impatiently put it away, and became angry with himself for ever imagining such a resemblance; he felt as if he had somehow done Elizabeth a wrong. All the while they were there Dick kept his bold gaze on Gusta, and presently Gusta seemed to feel it; the flush of her face and neck deepened, she grew ill at ease, and presently she rose and left the room.
When they were in the street Marriott said to Dick:
"I don't know about that poor old fellow's case--I'm afraid--"
"Gad!" said Dick. "Isn't Gusta a corker! I never saw a prettier girl."
"And you never noticed it before?" said Marriott.
"Why, I always knew she was good-looking, yes," said Dick; "but I never paid much attention to her when she worked for us. I suppose it was because she was a servant, don't you know? A man never notices the servants, someway."
VI
Ward had not been in the court-house for years, and, as he entered the building that morning, he hoped he might never be called there again if his mission were to be as sad as the one on which he then was bent.
Eades had asked him to be there at ten o'clock; it was now within a quarter of the hour. With a layman's difficulty he found the criminal court, and as he glanced about the high-ceiled room, and saw that the boy had not yet been brought in, he felt the relief that comes from the postponement of an ordeal. With an effect of effacing himself, he shrank into one of the seats behind the bar, and as he waited his mind ran back over the events of the past four weeks. He calculated--yes, the flurry in the market had occurred on the day of the big snow-storm; and now, so soon, it had come to this! Ward marveled; he had always heard that the courts were slow, but this--this was quick work indeed!
The court-room was almost empty. The judge's chair, cushioned in leather, was standing empty behind the high oaken desk. The two trial tables, across which day after day lawyers bandied the fate of human beings, were set with geometric exactness side by side, as if the janitors had fixed them with an eye to the impartiality of the law, resolved to give the next comers an even start. A clerk was writing in a big journal; the bailiff had taken a chair in the fading light of one of the tall southern windows, and in the leisure he could so well afford in a life that was all leisure, was reading a newspaper. His spectacles failed to lend any glisten of interest to his eyes; he read impersonally, almost officially; all interest seemed to have died out of his life, and he could be stirred to physical, though never to mental activity, only by the judge himself, to whom he owed his sinecure. The life had long ago died out of this man, and he had a mild, passive interest in but one or two things, like the Civil War, and the judge's thirst, which he regularly slaked with drafts of ice-water.
Presently two or three young men entered briskly, importantly, and went at once unhesitatingly within the bar. They entered with an assertive air that marked them indubitably as young lawyers still conscious of the privileges so lately conferred. Then some of the loafers came in from the corridor and sidled into the benches behind the bar. Their conversation in low tones, and that of the young lawyers in the higher tones their official quality permitted them, filled the room with a busy interest. From time to time the loafers were joined by other loafers, and they all patiently waited for the sensation the criminal court could dependably provide.
It was not long before there was a scrape and shuffle of feet and a rattle of steel, and then a broad-shouldered man edged through the door.
With his right hand he seized a Scotch cap from a head that bristled with a stubble of red hair. His left hand hung by his side, and when he had got into the court-room, Ward saw, that a white-haired man walked close beside him, his right hand manacled to the left hand of the red-haired man. The red-haired man was Danner, the jailer. Behind him in sets of twos marched half a dozen other men, each set chained together. The rear of the little procession was brought up by Utter, a stalwart young man who was one of Danner's assistants.
The scrape of the feet that were so soon to shuffle into the penitentiary, and leave scarce an echo of their hopeless fall behind, roused every one in the court-room. Even the bailiff got to his rheumatic feet and hastily arranged a row of chairs in front of the trial tables. The prisoners sat down and tried to hide their manacles by dropping their hands between their chairs.
There were seven of these prisoners, the oldest the man whom Danner had conducted. He sat with his white head cast down, but his blue eyes roamed here and there, taking in the whole court-room. The other prisoners were young men, one of them a negro; and in the appearance of all there was some pathetic suggestion of a toilet. All of them had their hair combed carefully, except the negro, whose hair could give no perceptible evidence of the comb, unless it were the slight, almost invisible part that bisected his head. But he gave the same air of trying somehow to make the best appearance he was capable of on this eventful day.
Ward's eyes ran rapidly along the row, and rested on the brown-haired, well-formed head of the youngest of the group. He was scarcely more than a boy indeed, and he alone, of all the line, was well dressed. His linen was white, and he wore his well-fitting clothes with a certain vanity and air of style that even his predicament could not divest him of. As Ward glanced at him, an expression of pain came to his face; the color left it for an instant, and then it grew redder than it had been before.
These prisoners were about to be sentenced for various felonies. Two of them, the old man with the white hair and the negro, had been tried, the one for pocket-picking, the other for burglary. The others were to change their pleas from not guilty to guilty and throw themselves on the mercy of the court. They sat there, whispering with one another, gazing about the room, and speculating on what fate awaited them, or, as they would have phrased it, what sentences they would draw. Like most prisoners they were what the laws define as "indigent," that is, so poor that they could not employ lawyers. The court in consequence had appointed counsel, and the young lawyers who now stood and joked about the fates that were presently to issue from the judge's chambers, were the counsel thus appointed. Now and then the prisoners looked at the lawyers, and some of them may have indulged speculations as to how that fate might have been changed--perhaps altogether avoided--had they been able to employ more capable attorneys. Those among them who had been induced by their young attorneys to plead guilty--under assurances that they would thus fare better than they would if they resisted the law by insisting on their rights under it--probably had not the imagination to divine that they might have fared otherwise at the hands of the law if these lawyers had not dreaded the trial as an ordeal almost as great to them as to their appointed clients, or if they had not been so indigent themselves as to desire speedily to draw the fee the State would allow them for their services. Most of the prisoners, indeed, treated these young lawyers with a certain patience, if not forbearance, and now they relied on them for such mercy as the law might find in its heart to bestow. Most of them might have reflected, had they been given to the practice, that on former experiences they had found the breast of the law, as to this divine quality, withered and dry. They sat and glanced about, and now and then whispered, but for the most part they were still and dumb and hopeless. Meanwhile their lawyers discussed and compared them, declaring their faces to be hard and criminal; one of the young men thought a certain face showed particularly the marks of crime, and when his fellows discovered that he meant the face of Danner, they laughed aloud and had a good joke on the young man. The young man became very red, almost as red as Danner himself, whom, he begged, they would not tell of his mistake.
At that moment the door of the judge's chambers opened, and instant silence fell. McWhorter, the judge, appeared. He was a man of middle size, with black curly hair, smooth-shaven face, and black eyes that caught in the swiftest glance the row of prisoners, who now straightened and fixed their eyes on him. McWhorter advanced with a brisk step to the bench, mounted it, and nodding, said:
"You may open court, Mr. Bailiff."
The bailiff let his gavel fall on the marble slab, and then with his head hanging, his eyes roving in a self-conscious, almost silly way, he said:
"Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye, this honorable court is now in session."
The bailiff sat down as in relief, but immediately got up again when the judge said:
"Bring me the criminal docket, Mr. Bailiff."
The bailiff's bent figure tottered out of the court-room. The court-room was very still; the ticking of the clock on the wall could be heard. The judge swung his chair about and glanced out of the windows.
Never once did he permit his eyes to rest on the prisoners.
There was silence and waiting, and after a while the bailiff came with the docket. The judge opened the book, put on a pair of gold glasses, and, after a time, reading slowly, said:
"The State _versus_ Patrick Delaney."
The white-haired prisoner patiently held out two hands, marvelously tatooed, and Danner unlocked the handcuffs. At the same moment one of the young lawyers stood forth from the rest, and Lamborn, an assistant prosecutor, rose.
McWhorter was studying the docket. Presently he said:
"Stand up, Delaney."
Delaney rose, kept his eyes on the floor, clasped a hand about his red wrist. Then, for the first time, the judge looked at him.
"Delaney," he said, "have you anything to say why the sentence of this court should not be passed upon you?"
Delaney looked uneasily at the judge and then let his eyes fall.
"No, Judge, yer Honor," he said, "nothing but that I'm an innocent man.
I didn't do it, yer Honor."
The remark did not seem to impress the judge, who turned toward the lawyer. This young man, with a venturesome air, stepped a little farther from the sheltering company of his associates and, with a face that was very white and lips that faltered, said in a confused, hurried way:
"Your Honor, we hope your Honor'll be as lenient as possible with this man; we hope your Honor will be as--lenient as possible." The youth's voice died away and he faded back, as it were, into the shelter of his companions. The judge did not seem to be more impressed with what the lawyer had said than he had with what the client had said, and twirling his glasses by their cord, he turned toward the assistant prosecutor.
Lamborn, with an affectation of great ease, with one hand in the pocket of his creased trousers, the other supporting a book of memoranda, advanced and said:
"May it please the Court, this man is an habitual criminal; he has already served a term in the penitentiary for this same offense, and we understand that he is wanted in New York State at this present time. We consider him a dangerous criminal, and the State feels that he should be severely punished."
McWhorter studied the ceiling of the court-room a moment, still swinging his eye-glasses by their cord, and then, fixing them on his nose, looked wisely down at Delaney. Presently he spoke:
"It is always an unpleasant duty to sentence a man to prison, no matter how much he may deserve punishment." McWhorter paused as if to let every one realize his pain in this exigency, and then went on: "But it is our duty, and we can not shirk it. A jury, Delaney, after a fair trial, has found you guilty of burglary. It appears from what the prosecutor says that this is not the first time you have been found guilty of this offense; the experience does not seem to have done you any good. You impress the Court as a man who has abandoned himself to a life of crime, and the Court feels that you should receive a sentence in this instance that will serve as a warning to you and to others. The sentence of the Court is--" McWhorter paused as if to balance the scales of justice with all nicety, and then he looked away. He did not know exactly how many years in prison would expiate Delaney's crime; there was, of course, no way for him to tell. He thought first of the number ten, then of the number five; then, as the saying is, he split the difference, inclined the fraction to the prisoner and said:
"The sentence of the Court is that you be confined in the penitentiary at hard labor for the period of seven years, no part of your sentence to be in solitary confinement, and that you pay the costs of this prosecution."
Delaney sat down without changing expression and held out his hands for the handcuffs. The steel clicked, and the scratch of the judge's pen could be heard as he entered the judgment in the docket.
These proceedings were repeated again and again. McWhorter read the title of the case, Danner unshackled the prisoner, who stood up, gazing dumbly at the floor, his lawyer asked the Court to be lenient, Lamborn asked the Court to be severe, McWhorter twirled his gold glasses, looked out of the window, made his little speech, guessed, and pronounced sentence. The culprit sat down, held out his hands for the manacles, then the click of the steel and the scratch of the judicial pen. It grew monotonous.
But just before the last man was called to book, John Eades, the prosecutor, entered the court-room. At sight of him the young lawyers, the loafers on the benches, even the judge looked up.
Eades's tall figure had not yet lost the grace of youth, though it was giving the first evidence that he had reached that period of life when it would begin to gather weight. He was well dressed in the blue clothes of a business man, and he was young enough at thirty-five to belong to what may not too accurately be called the new school of lawyers, growing up in a day when the law is changing from a profession to a business, in distinction from the passing day of long coats of professional black, of a gravity that frequently concealed a certain profligacy, and, wherever it was successful, of native brilliancy that could ignore application. Eades's dark hair was carefully parted above his smooth brow; he had rather heavy eyebrows, a large nose, and thin, tightly-set lips that gave strength and firmness to a clean-shaven face.
He whispered a word to his assistant, and then said: