The Turn of the Balance. Brand Whitlock
all aboudt it; he seen it–he knows. He say to me, 'Reinhold, you get damage all right; dot frog haind't blocked dot time.'"
Just then the kitchen door opened and Gusta came in. When she saw Marriott and Ward, she stopped and leaned against the door; her face, ruddy from the cool air, suddenly turned a deeper red.
"Oh, Mr. Dick!" she said, and then she looked at Marriott, whom she had seen and served so often at the Wards'.
"How do you do, Gusta?" said Marriott, getting up and taking her hand. She flushed deeper than ever as she came forward, and her blue eyes sparkled with pleasure. Dick, too, rose and took her hand.
"Hello, Gusta," he said, "how are you?"
"Oh, pretty well, Mr. Dick," she answered. She stood a moment, and then quietly began to unbutton her jacket and to draw the pins from her hat. Marriott, who had seen her so often at the Wards', concluded as she stood there before him that he had never realized how beautiful she was. She removed her wraps, then drew up a chair by her father and sat down, lifting her hands and smoothing the coils of her golden hair, touching them gently.
"You've come to talk over pa's case, haven't you, Mr. Marriott?"
"Yes," said Marriott.
"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