The Greatest Works of Melville Davisson Post: 40+ Titles in One Edition. Melville Davisson Post
Robert Dalton looked up anxiously. "In what cases?" he stammered.
"What cases!" almost shouted the elder counsellor, for he had now lost his temper completely. "What cases, you bungler! Ask the veriest pettyfogger; ask the commonest justice of the peace, but do not catechise me." And after having delivered himself of this venom, he seized his hat and cane and stalked out of the house. He was greatly enraged to think that a man of Dalton's learning, a member of a firm of high standing, should make such a stupendous blunder.
Later in the day Robert Dalton came to the office and requested Carpenter and Lomax to join him in his private room. His face showed plainly the evidences of a great mental strain. When they were together he closed the door, and, turning to them, said that he had examined the question which they had raised, in regard to Mrs. Van Bartan's will, and he was now satisfied that he had made a prodigious error in drafting the instrument; that as his mistake would deprive a powerful church of a vast estate, endless criticism of a most acrimonious character would follow; that it was not just for any part of this criticism to fall upon the shoulders of either Carpenter or Lomax, and, therefore, he had determined to publicly withdraw from the firm. To this they made scarcely a courteous objection, and Dalton accordingly withdrew, publishing an announcement thereof in the daily papers.
The report of a great error in Mrs. Van Bartan's will spread through the city with the marvellous rapidity of an evil rumor. The vials of bitter criticism were poured out upon the head of Robert Dalton. Men declared that they had long suspected that he was a sham, a posing ignoramus, a dangerous blunderer.
The executor, Harrison, as was his duty, attempted to execute the charitable bequest, but, of course, failed. Whereupon the press of the city stood up in the market-place like the selfcomplacent Pharisee and declared that in this day mistakes were crimes; that it was not enough for an attorney to do the best he knew,—it was his duty to know; it was not enough for an attorney to be honest, he must he likewise competent; that the law was a learned profession in which the bungler was equally as dangerous as the knave; that vast estates were conveyed by will, and how easily by mistake or design a lawyer could destroy the testator's most sacred wish; he could rob the helpless of his right, the dependent of his inheritance, or the charitable institution of its patron's aid, and all this without color of criminal wrong. The law, it asserted, punished with relentless hand the man who blundered in positions of trust; it punished with awful penalties the man who blundered in the heat of passion, but it had no censure, no sting, no scourge for the man who blundered at the bedside of the dying.
Thus was Robert Dalton's fame as a lawyer damned into the veriest blackness.
III
On a certain bleak Thursday of January, Randolph Mason sat in his office, absorbed in the study of a great map which was spread out on his table. The day was so dark and lowering that the electric light above the table had been turned on. Presently the door opened and the little clerk Parks looked in. He watched the lawyer for a few moments intently; then he withdrew his head. A few minutes later, the door again opened and a woman entered, and closed it behind her. She stopped and looked at the counsellor, bending over his map. The picture was not a pleasant one. The man's streaked, gray hair was rumpled, and his heavy-muscled face under the glare of the light was rather more brutal than otherwise. Then she crossed to the table and threw a newspaper down on the map.
"Will you kindly read that marked paragraph?" she said.
Randolph Mason looked up. For a moment he did not recall the woman, her face was so very white. Then he recognized his client, Mrs. Van Bartan.
"You will pardon me, madam," he said. "I am deeply engaged. Kindly come here tomorrow."
"I have to regret," said the woman, "that I ever came here at all. Will you please read that paragraph?" And she put her finger down on the newspaper.
The counsellor looked at the paper.
"We notice by to-day's Herald," it ran, "that Robert Dalton, Esq., has sailed for Japan, where it is said he will become a legal instructor in one of the national universities. Mr. Dalton, it will be remembered, is the attorney whose stupid blunder invalidated the Van Bartan will, and it is to be hoped that he will prove more efficient in the service of the Mikado. The bar of the Virginias cannot be said to regret Mr. Dalton's departure. He was grossly incompetent, and just such men bring the legal profession into disrepute."
"What of all this?" said Mason. "You obtained what you desired. Why do you harass me with this nonsense?"
"I obtained it," repeated the woman, bitterly. "Yes, thanks to your devilish ingenuity, I obtained it, but at what a cost! I have the money, but it is daubed over with the blood of a man's heart It has the price of a man's honor stamped on the face of every coin. I hate it all. Everything I see, every thread that touches me, taunts me with the shame of such a sacrifice."
The woman's voice was firm, but her figure trembled like a tense wire.
"Madam." said Randolph Mason, "you annoy me. I have no interest in this drivel."
"No interest in it?" cried the woman. "You, you have no interest in it? Was it not you who did it? You and the devil himself? You concocted this plan. You said go to him, and tell him, and he would know what to do. Your fiendish ingenuity saw what would result, but you did not tell me. You did not tell me that this man would be compelled to rip his life in two like a cloth to save me, and that he would do it. If I had known this, do you suppose that I would have gone on for a moment? Do you suppose that I wanted wealth, or ease, or luxury, at the cost of a man's hope and fame and honor? I tell you, you miserable blunderer, this thing cost too much."
"Chatter," said Mason, rising.
"Chatter!" cried the woman, beating her hards on the table. "Do you call this chatter? I charge you,—do you hear me, I charge you with the ruin of this man's life."
"Madam," said Randolph Mason, "the vice of your error lies in the fact that you should have consulted a priest. I am not concerned with the nonsense of emotion."
Then he turned abruptly and walked out of the room.
Once in Jeopardy
I
The sheriff stopped on the steps of the court-house, pushed his straw hat back from his forehead, moved his eyeglasses up a little closer to his fat face, and began to contemplate the limits of his official jurisdiction, with the air of one about to deduce a law.
The little county seat on Tug River slept in a pocket. Behind it and on every side except the river were great mountains, half-hidden by a gigantic cloak of fog. On the opposite side, from the great coal plants of the Norfolk and Western Railroad a counter-canopy of smoke arose, dense and voluminous, and stretched itself like a black hand out over the town and across to the fog of the mountain. Man, it seemed, had conspired with nature to cover up and hide the town of Welch.
"Strange," drawled the sheriff, "strange, that a white man should be willing to leave a paradise like this, and with river water in his stomach too." Then he chuckled comfortably.
The sheriff of the county of McDowell was all right. He represented the entire machinery of the law obtaining south of Tug River, and he carried the momentous responsibility with the languid grace of a bank clerk at a charity german.
The sheriff was a Virginian. But, marvel of marvels, he was a Virginian without a title. He was plain W. M. Carter. The statement is not quite accurate. Among the boys he was "White" Carter. But he was no "colonel" and