The Long Lane's Turning Part 7

"I do," replied the rector with emphasis. "And not only lowered. They would be practically wiped out. There wouldn't be enough left to const.i.tute an item in the appropriation for public printing."

"Naturally, however," Craig observed, "as the state has always been 'wet,' exact data is lacking to a.s.sist one's speculations."

"On the contrary," said the other. "Every jail furnishes them. I think," he went on, turning now to Treadwell, "that it is the experience of every criminal lawyer that liquor, in some phase or other, has been back of the larger proportion of cases he is called on to defend."

The young man nodded. "I never had any experience in criminal cases,"

he said, "but I should think you were not far wrong. What do you say, Brent?"

"I agree with you," the journalist answered, "but my view of course is a superficial one. It is a pity that Harry Sevier isn't here; we should have got a valuable opinion."

"You may be gratified then," said the hostess. "Though Mr. Sevier couldn't come to dinner, he will be here for the dancing."

The senator spoke. "Sevier! I heard him in court yesterday."

"So did I," commented Nancy, aside. "I gave up an auction-bridge for it, and I wish I hadn't. It wasn't exciting at all."

Mrs. Spottiswoode looked relief--at last the talk had s.h.i.+fted to safe ground. "He lost the case, I hear," she said. "I wonder what was the matter. Wasn't he in good form?"

The senator looked thoughtful. "In one way, yes," he replied judicially. "I confess, though, I had rather expected something different, but just what I scarcely know."

Nancy turned her small, piquant face. "_I_ know. We all expected Mr.

Sevier to do what he has done so often--but didn't to-day. Oh," she exclaimed almost angrily, "while he was talking along, like a machine, I could have shaken him!"

"That _would_ have furnished the sensation!" said Treadwell. "And I should think it might have had its effect on the jury, too. Juries _can_ be intimidated. I wish you had tried it."

She made a little face at him across the nodding roses, then turned more earnestly to her partner. "I don't know anything about court matters or criminal trials, but from where I sat I could see the man he was defending. He looked so hopeless and--scared! I wanted to stand up and scream across the room: Can't you _see_? Look at the poor thing there! Make the jury _feel_! You were thinking the same thing too, Echo, I could see it in your face."

Echo lifted her eyes. In the candle-light her cheek held a rising flush. She looked across at the rector. "What do you think, Dr.

Custis?" she asked, evenly.

He responded promptly. "Perhaps the explanation isn't so far afield.

I presume the man had confessed to him and Sevier knew he was guilty."

Echo was conscious of a wave of relief at an explanation so simple and credible. It had never occurred to her to question the accuracy of other verdicts Harry had won in the past. Each had seemed to her the triumph of a just cause over a baleful combination of circ.u.mstance, the brilliant freeing of truth and innocence from entangling error and maleficent scheming. But if this man was guilty and Harry had known it beyond question, what other outcome had been possible? At the moment she saw in that even, cold presentation of the court-room only the conscientious determination of the lawyer, who, as the law prescribed, stood by his client to demand that justice, if she must exact her penalty, prove conclusively every jot and t.i.ttle of her ground.

Craig's eyes had been regarding her steadily. With the spreading of that flush upon her cheeks a covert, laughing allusion that had come to his ear on the court-house steps on the day of the trial darted to his mind. A cool, keen certainty rushed through him. Sevier! Fool that he was not to have thought of him before! This young _flaneur_--and drunkard!--this petty trifler with his profession! Was that white indignation of the garden, this vivid flush, for _him_? He leaned forward, his heavy voice, intense and well modulated, addressed the clergyman:

"An interesting hypothesis, but the implication seems hardly safe. A lawyer's responsibility to his client is a very grave one. He owes none toward the commonwealth--the state's attorney takes care of that.

Any less conventional view should appeal to a lawyer, I think, as dangerous and uncalled-for."

"What do you fancy was responsible for Sevier's method of defence in this case?" asked the rector.

There was an instant of blank silence. The conversation had absorbed the lesser talk and other voices were hushed. Craig's look was set upon the long oval damask with its glistening silver and baskets of brilliant fruit, its leaf thin gla.s.ses with languid beads rising in their liquid amber, its knots of fern and bonbons. His big fingers were twisting the stem of a goblet. When he spoke it was as though he had not heard the question.

"I attended a trial once," he said, "at a frontier town in the far southwest, a border community where procedure is very primitive. The man was charged with murder. He was a school-master, I believe, and in a quarrel with some local bully or other, had killed him. I was in the place on some land-business and went to the trial for mere amus.e.m.e.nt.

The whole neighbourhood was there. Both men, it appeared, had been in their cups, and self-defence seemed an adequate plea. Acquittal was regarded as fairly certain--the more so as the District Attorney was the bosom-friend of the accused man, and everybody knew it. There was almost no attempt at evidence, which didn't seem surprising under the circ.u.mstances, and the state made the baldest farce of its cross-examination. The real interest came after a rather long recess that preceded the final speeches. The prisoner's counsel was a young man with a rough, direct address that caught the people. He had them pretty well with him, too, and when he sat down there seemed very little reason why the jury should even leave the box. The speech had been a fairly long one and as it had grown dark, candles had been brought in and set about--two on the judge's desk and some on the tables."

Echo repressed a start. It had come to her suddenly that there was a significance in what he was saying--a suggestion that a quick clairvoyant sense told her was princ.i.p.ally for her. In the few words he had, with apparent unintention, sketched the actual scene in the court-room of the day before, and while reversing its elements, was picturing, in unfamiliar guise, its identical situation. She felt her face slowly harden, and turned her profile toward him, her hand playing with a spray of fern beside her plate.

"During the whole speech the District Attorney had sat in his chair, with his chin in his collar and his eyes closed, never moving. When his turn came he didn't rise; in fact, it was clear that he had been asleep. A laugh went round and the sheriff put a hand on his shoulder and shook him. He got up, looking confused, and while he blinked at the candles, some one in the audience called out, 'Never mind, old man.

If you can't make a speech, recite a poem.' It was curious, but the remark seemed to give him a clue, and he began to recite Hood's _Eugene Aram_."

Craig paused a moment and sipped from his wine-gla.s.s. All at the table were leaning forward intently. Treadwell was frowning at his plate.

No one spoke; only a fork, dropped from Nancy Langham's fingers, rattled against the cloth.

"It was a strange sight," went on Craig, "and one I have always remembered. You must picture the crowded court-room, the gloom, the flaring candles, and the whole uncanny episode, to realise the effect that was produced. The man was by nature a marvellous actor--he would have made his fortune on any stage. At first it seemed as if he didn't know quite where he was, but then the ballad itself gripped him and he rendered it, acting each line, as I never heard it before or since. I had never realised what was in that poem. Very few there, I suppose, had ever heard it in their lives, and they listened in a fascinated silence while he rolled it out to the last line.

"'Two hard-faced men set out from Lynn, Through the rain and heavy mist, And Eugene Aram walked between With gyves upon his wrist.'"

He paused again. "Oh, finis.h.!.+" gasped Nancy Langham. "I don't like that story. What then?"

"When he ended he walked out of the court-room without waiting for the verdict."

Echo's head turned toward him. "They found him guilty!" exclaimed Mrs.

Spottiswode.

"Yes."

"And you say the District Attorney was his best friend?" asked the artist.

"So I was told."

"And yet wanted to convict him?"

Craig shook his head. "No, I didn't say that."

"Then what," inquired the rector, "do you take it, inspired him to such an extraordinary action?"

"Oh," said Craig, and as he spoke, for the first time he looked full at Echo. "It all came out afterward. He didn't realise what he was doing. He was drunk."

For an instant Echo's breath stopped. In the unexpected denouement she had guessed, as at a lightning-flash, Craig's real purpose. Sharply, baldly introduced, the tale stood forth intrusive and malicious, an implied slur upon a man who was not present to refute it. Her whole being flooded with fierce resentment, mingled with an angry amaze that of all there no one else seemed to have caught the insinuation. To the rest it had been at most a _gaucherie_, a parallel which, if perhaps not felicitous, had been without significance and would be readily forgotten. Therein lay the added sting, that Craig had so accurately judged the outcome. He had guessed how it stood with her and Harry Sevier, and counting on her keener sensitiveness where the latter was concerned, had barbed his shaft for her alone!

The next instant, however, the tension broke with every one talking at once. From this babble the senator emerged with a negro story about a trial with "exterminatin' circ.u.mstances," which brought a ripple of laughter, and presently the hostess gave the rising signal.

The room opened upon the ball-room from whose further end already came the squeak of tuned catgut, and beyond this spread the invitingly cool verandas, now beginning to fill with filmy gowns that showed pallidly against the evening dusk, where the bouquet of masculine segars mingled with the dewed scent of shrubbery. Here in the increasing numbers, un.o.bserved as she thought, Echo stepped down onto the cool dark turf and following one of the little meandering bush-bordered paths, came to a rustic bench over which a paper lantern threw flickering rose-coloured shadows. On this she sat down, struggling to regain her lost composure and grateful for the sense of quiet and the cool inspiration of the water, over whose margin the moonbeams danced in elfish ecstasy.

In another moment, however, the silence was broken. A step sounded on the path, and she looked up to see Craig standing before her.

CHAPTER IX

THE TURN OF THE LONG LANE

Echo came to her feet, all her blood on fire. In her resentment it had seemed to her that by very silence she had made herself party to that slur upon the man she loved, and she had been aching fiercely to repel it.