CHAPTER XVII
THE BLOW OF A FRIEND
Progress was swifter the next day. The prosecuting attorney, apparentlybelieving that he had made his case, dismissed many of his remainingwitnesses who had nothing to testify to in fact. When he announced thatthe state rested, there was a murmur and rustling in the room, andaudibly expressed wonderment over what the public thought to be a graveblunder on Sam Lucas's part.
The state had not called the widow of Isom Chase to the stand to givetestimony against the man accused of her husband's murder. The publiccould not make it out. What did it mean? Did the prosecutor hold hermore of an enemy than a friend to his efforts to convict the man whosehand had made her a widow? Whispers went around, grave faces were drawn,wise heads wagged. Public charity for Ollie began to falter.
"Him and that woman," men said, nodding toward Joe, sitting pale andinscrutable beside his blustering lawyer.
The feeling of impending sensation became more acute when it circulatedthrough the room, starting from Captain Taylor at the inner door, thatOllie had been summoned as a witness for the defense; Captain Taylor hadserved the subpoena himself.
"Well, in that case, Sam Lucas knew what he was doing," people allowed."Just wait!" It was as good as a spirituous stimulant to their lagginginterest. "Just you wait till Sam Lucas gets hold of her," they said.
Hammer began the defense by calling his character witnesses andestablishing Joe's past reputation for "truth and veracity and generaluprightness."
There was no question in the character which Joe's neighbors gave him.They spoke warmly of his past record among them, of his fidelity to hisword and obligation, and of the family record, which Hammer went intowith free and unhampered hand.
The prosecutor passed these witnesses with serene confidence. Heprobably believed that his case was already made, people said, or elsehe was reserving his fire for Isom's widow, who, it seemed to everybody,had turned against nature and her own interests in allying herself withthe accused.
The morning was consumed in the examination of these characterwitnesses, Hammer finishing with the last of them just before the middayadjournment. The sheriff was preparing to remove the prisoner. Joe'shand had been released from the arm of the chair, and the officer hadfastened the iron around his wrist. The proceeding always struck Joewith an overwhelming wave of degradation and now he stood with bowedhead and averted face.
"Come on," said the sheriff, goggling down at him with froggish eyesfrom his vantage on the dais where the witness-chair stood, his longneck on a slant like a giraffe's. The sheriff took great pleasure in theproceeding of attaching the irons. It was his one central moment in theeyes of the throng.
Joe looked up to march ahead of the sheriff out of the room, and hiseyes met the eyes of Alice. She was not far away, and the cheer of theirquick message was like a spoken word. She was wearing the same graydress that she had worn on that day of days, with the one bright featherin her bonnet, and she smiled, nodding to him. And then the swirl ofbobbing heads and moving bodies came between them and she was lost.
He looked for her again as the sheriff pushed him along toward the door,but the room was in such confusion that he could not single her out. Thejudge had gone out through his tall, dark door, and the court-room wasno longer an awesome place to those who had gathered for the trial. Menput their hats on their heads and lit their pipes, and bit into theirtwists and plugs of tobacco and emptied their mouths of the juices asthey went slowly toward the door.
Mrs. Greening was the first witness called by Hammer after the noonrecess. Hammer quickly discovered his purpose in calling her as beingnothing less than that of proving by her own mouth that her husband,Sol, was a gross and irresponsible liar.
Hammer went over the whole story of the tragedy--Mrs. Greening havingpreviously testified to all these facts as a witness for the state--fromthe moment that Sol had called her out of bed and taken her to the Chasehome to support the young widow in her hour of distraction and fear. Byslow and lumbering ways he led her, like a blind horse floundering alonga heavy road, through the front door, up the stairs into Ollie's room,and then, in his own time and fashion, he arrived at what he wanted toask.
"Now I want you to tell this jury, Mrs. Greening, if at any time, duringthat night or thereafter, you discussed or talked of or chatted aboutthe killing of Isom Chase with your husband?" asked Hammer.
"Oh laws, yes," said Mrs. Greening.
The prosecuting attorney was rising slowly to his feet. He seemedconcentrated on something; a frown knotted his brow, and he stood withhis open hand poised as if to reach out quickly and check the flight ofsomething which he expected to wing in and assail the jury.
Said Hammer, after wiping his glistening forehead with a yellow silkhandkerchief:
"Yes. And now, Mrs. Greening, I will ask you if at any time your husbandever told you what was said, if anything, by any party inside of thathouse when he run up to the kitchen door that night and knocked?"
"I object!" said the prosecutor sharply, flinging out his ready hand.
"Don't answer that question!" warned the judge.
Mrs. Greening had it on her lips; anybody who could read print on asignboard could have told what they were shaped to say. She held themthere in their preliminary position of enunciation, pursed and wrinkled,like the tied end of a sausage-link.
"I will frame the question in another manner," said Hammer, againfeeling the need of his large handkerchief.
"There is no form that would be admissible, your honor," protested theprosecutor. "It is merely hearsay that the counsel for the defense isattempting to bring out and get before the jury. I object!"
"Your course of questioning, Mr. Hammer, is highly improper, and inflagrant violation to the established rules of evidence," said thejudge. "You must confine yourself to proof by this witness of what she,of her own knowledge and experience, is cognizant of. Nothing else ispermissible."
"But, your honor, I intend to show by this witness that when SolGreening knocked on that door----"
"I object! She wasn't present; she has testified that she was at home atthat time, and in bed."
This from the prosecutor, in great heat.
"Your honor, I intend to prove--" began Hammer.
"This line of questioning is not permissible, as I told you before,"said the judge in stern reproof.
But Hammer was obdurate. He was for arguing it, and the judge orderedthe sheriff to conduct the jury from the room. Mrs. Greening, red anduncomfortable, and all at sea over it, continued sitting in thewitness-chair while Hammer laid it off according to his view of it, andthe prosecutor came back and tore his contentions to pieces.
The judge, for no other purpose, evidently, than to prove to thedefendant and public alike that he was unbiased and fair--knowingbeforehand what his ruling must be--indulged Hammer until he expendedhis argument. Then he laid the matter down in few words.
Mrs. Greening had not been present when her husband knocked on the doorof Isom Chase's kitchen that night; she did not know, therefore, of herown experience what was spoken. No matter what her husband told her hesaid, or anybody else said, she could not repeat the words there underoath. It would be hearsay evidence, and such evidence was not admissiblein any court of law. No matter how important such testimony might appearto one seeking the truth, the rules of evidence in civilized courtsbarred it. Mrs. Greening's lips must remain sealed on what Sol said Joesaid, or anybody said to someone else.
So the jury was called back, and Mrs. Greening was excused, and Hammerwiped off the sweat and pushed back his cuffs. And the people who hadcome in from their farmsteads to hear this trial by jury--all innocentof the traditions and precedents of practice of the law--marveled how itcould be. Why, nine people out of nine, all over the township where SolGreening lived, would take his wife's word for anything where she andSol had different versions of a story.
It looked to them like Sol had told the truth in the first place to hiswife, and lied on the witness-st
and. And here she was, all ready to showthe windy old rascal up, and they wouldn't let her. Well, it beat alltwo o'clock!
Of course, being simple people who had never been at a university intheir lives, they did not know that Form and Precedent are the twopillars of Strength and Beauty, the Jachin and Boaz at the entrance ofthe temple of the law. Or that the proper genuflections before them areof more importance than the mere bringing out of a bit of truth whichmight save an accused man's life.
And so it stood before the jury that Sol Greening had knocked on thedoor of Isom Chase's kitchen that night and had not been bidden toenter, when everybody in the room, save the jury of twelve intelligentmen--who had been taken out to keep their innocence untainted and theirjudgment unbiased by a gleam of the truth--knew that he had sat up thereand lied.
Hammer cooled himself off after a few minutes of mopping, and calledOllie Chase to the witness-chair. Ollie seemed nervous and full of dreadas she stood for a moment stowing her cloak and handbag in her mother'slap. She turned back for her handkerchief when she had almost reachedthe little gate in the railing through which she must pass to thewitness-chair. Hammer held it open for her and gave her the comfort ofhis hand under her elbow as she went forward to take her place.
A stir and a whispering, like a quick wind in a cornfield, moved overthe room when Ollie's name was called. Then silence ensued. It was morethan a mere listening silence; it was impertinent. Everybody looked fora scandal, and most of them hoped that they should not depart that daywith their long-growing hunger unsatisfied.
Ollie took the witness-chair with an air of extreme nervousness. As shesettled down in her cloud of black skirt, black veil, and shadow ofblack sailor hat, she cast about the room a look of timid appeal. Sheseemed to be sounding the depths of the listening crowd's sympathy, andto find it shallow and in shoals.
Hammer was kind, with an unctuous, patronizing gentleness. He seemed toapproach her with the feeling that she might say a great deal that wouldbe damaging to the defendant if she had a mind to do it, but with gentleadroitness she could be managed to his advantage. Led by a questionhere, a helping reminder there, Ollie went over her story, in allparticulars the same as she had related at the inquest.
Hammer brought out, with many confidential glances at the jury, thedistance between Ollie's room and the kitchen; the fact that she had herdoor closed, that she had gone to bed heavy with weariness, and wasasleep long before midnight; that she had been startled by a sound, astrange and mysterious sound for that quiet house, and had sat up in herbed listening. Sol Greening had called her next, in a little while, evenbefore she could master her fright and confusion and muster courage torun down the hall and call Joe.
Hammer did well with the witness; that was the general opinion, drawingfrom her a great deal about Joe's habit of life in Isom's house, a greatdeal about Isom's temper, hard ways, and readiness to give a blow.
She seemed reluctant to discuss Isom's faults, anxious, rather, to easethem over after the manner of one whose judgment has grown less severewith the lapse of time.
Had he ever laid hands on her in temper? Hammer wanted to know.
"Yes." Her reply was a little more than a whisper, with head bent, withtears in her sad eyes. Under Hammer's pressure she told about thepurchase of the ribbon, of Isom's iron hand upon her throat.
The women all over the room made little sounds of pitying deprecation ofold Isom's penury, and when Hammer drew from her, with evidentreluctance on her part to yield it up, the story of her hard-driven,starved, and stingy life under Isom's roof, they put their handkerchiefsto their eyes.
All the time Ollie was following Hammer's kind leading, the prosecutingattorney was sitting with his hands clasped behind his head, balancinghis weight on the hinder legs of his chair, his foot thrown over hisknee. Apparently he was bored, even worried, by Hammer's poundingattempts to make Isom out a man who deserved something slower and lessmerciful than a bullet, years before he came to his violent end.
Through it all Joe sat looking at Ollie, great pity for her forlorncondition and broken spirit in his honest eyes. She did not meet hisglance, not for one wavering second. When she went to the stand shepassed him with bent head; in the chair she looked in every directionbut his, mainly at her hands, clasped in her lap.
At last Hammer seemed skirmishing in his mind in search of some strayquestion which might have escaped him, which he appeared unable to find.He turned his papers, he made a show of considering something, while thewitness sat with her head bowed, her half-closed eyelids purple frommuch weeping, worrying, and watching for the coming of one who had takenthe key to her poor, simple heart and gone his careless way.
"That's all, Missis Chase," said Hammer.
Ollie leaned over, picked up one of her gloves that had fallen to thefloor, and started to leave the chair. Her relief was evident in herface. The prosecutor, suddenly alive, was on his feet. He stretched outhis arm, staying her with a commanding gesture.
"Wait a minute, Mrs. Chase," said he.
A stir of expectation rustled through the room again as Ollie resumedher seat. People moistened their lips, suddenly grown hot and dry.
"Now, just watch Sam Lucas!" they said.
"Now, Mrs. Chase," began the prosecutor, assuming the polemical attitudecommon to small lawyers when cross-examining a witness; "I'll ask you totell this jury whether you were alone in your house with Joe Newbolt onthe night of October twelfth, when Isom Chase, your husband, waskilled?"
"Yes, sir."
"This man Morgan, the book-agent, who had been boarding with you, hadpaid his bill and gone away?"
"Yes, sir."
"And there was absolutely nobody in the house that night but yourselfand Joe Newbolt?"
"Nobody else."
"And you have testified, here on this witness-stand, before this courtand this jury"--that being another small lawyer's trick to impress thewitness with a sense of his own unworthiness--"that you went to bedearly that night. Now, where was Joe Newbolt?"
"I guess he was in bed," answered Ollie, her lips white; "I didn't go tosee."
"No, you didn't go to see," repeated the prosecutor with significantstress. "Very well. Where did your husband keep his money in thehouse?"
"I don't know; I never saw any of it," Ollie answered.
The reply drew a little jiggling laugh from the crowd. It rose and diedeven while Captain Taylor's knuckles were poised over the panel of thedoor, and his loud rap fell too late for all, save one deep-chestedfarmer in a far corner, who must have been a neighbor of old Isom. Thisman's raucous mirth seemed a roar above the quiet of the packed room.The prosecutor looked in his direction with a frown. The sheriff stoodup and peered over that way threateningly.
"Preserve order, Mr. Sheriff," said the judge severely.
The sheriff pounded the table with his hairy fist. "Now, I tell you Idon't want to hear no more of this!" said he.
The prosecutor was shaken out of his pose a bit by the court-room laugh.There is nothing equal to a laugh for that, to one who is laboring toimpress his importance upon the world. It took him some time to get backto his former degree of heat, skirmishing around with incidentalquestioning. He looked over his notes, pausing. Then he faced Ollieagain quickly, leveling his finger like a pointer of direct accusation.
"Did Joe Newbolt ever make love to you?" he asked.
Joe's face flushed with resentful fire; but Ollie's white calm, forcedand strained that it was, remained unchanged.
"No, sir; he never did."
"Did he ever kiss you?"
"No, I tell you, he didn't!" Ollie answered, with a little show ofspirit.
Hammer rose with loud and voluble objections, which had, for the firsttime during the proceedings, Joe's hearty indorsement. But the judgewaved him down, and the prosecutor pressed his new line of inquisition.
"You and Joe Newbolt were thrown together a good deal, weren't you, Mrs.Chase--you were left there alone in the house while your husband wasaway in the fiel
d, and other places, frequently?"
"No, not very much," said Ollie, shaking her head.
"But you had various opportunities for talking together alone, hadn'tyou?"
"I never had a chance for anything but work," said Ollie wearily.
Unawed by the sheriff's warning, the assembly laughed again. The soundran over the room like a scudding cloud across a meadow, and when thesheriff stood again to set his censorious eye upon someone responsible,the last ripple was on the farther rows. Nobody can catch a laugh in acrowd; it is as evasive as a pickpocket. Nobody can turn with watchfuleye upon it and tell in what face the ribald gleam first breaks. It isas impossible as the identification of the first stalk shaken when abreeze assails a field of grain.
The sheriff, not being deeper than another man, saw the fatuity of hislabor. He turned to the court with a clownish gesture of the hands,expressive of his utter inability to stop this thing.
"Proceed with the case," said the judge, understanding the situationbetter than the sheriff knew.
The prosecuting attorney labored away with Ollie, full of the feelingthat something masked lay behind her pale reticence, some guiltyconspiracy between her and the bound boy, which would show the lackingmotive for the crime. He asked her again about Morgan, how long she hadknown him, where he came from, and where he went--a question to whichOllie would have been glad enough to have had the answer herself.
He hung on to the subject of Morgan so persistently that Joe began tofeel his throat drying out with a closing sensation which he could notswallow. He trembled for Ollie, fearing that she would be forced intotelling it all. That was not a woman's story, thought he, with a heartfull of resentment for the prosecutor. Let him wait till Morgan came,and then----
But what grounds had he now for believing Morgan might come? Unless hecame within the next hour, his coming might be too late.
"You were in bed and asleep when the shot that killed your husband wasfired, you have told the jury, Mrs. Chase?" questioned the prosecutor,dropping Morgan at last.
"Yes, sir."
"Then how did it come that when Mrs. Greening and her daughter-in-lawarrived a few minutes later you were all dressed up in a white dress?"
"I just slipped it on," said she.
"You just slipped it on," repeated the prosecutor, turning his eyes tothe jury, and not even facing Mrs. Chase as he spoke, but reading intoher words discredit, suspicion, and a guilty knowledge.
"It was the only one I had besides two old wrappers. It was the one Iwas married in, and the only one I could put on to look decent in beforepeople," said she.
A crowd is the most volatile thing in the world. It can laugh and sighand groan and weep, as well as shout and storm, with the ease of aninfant, and then immediately regain its immobility and fixed attention.With Ollie's simple statement a sound rose from it which was adenunciation and a curse upon the ashes of old Isom Chase. It was as ifa sympathetic old lady had shaken her head and groaned:
"Oh, shame on you--shame!"
Hammer gave the jury a wide-sweeping look of satisfaction, and made anote on the tumbled pile of paper which lay in front of him.
The prosecutor was a man with congressional aspirations, and he did notcare to prejudice his popularity by going too far in baiting a woman,especially one who had public sympathy in the measure that it wasplainly extended to Ollie. He eased up, descending from his heights ofseverity, and began to address her respectfully in a manner that waslittle short of apology for what his stern duty compelled him to do.
"Now I will ask you, Mrs. Chase, whether your husband and thisdefendant, Joe Newbolt, ever had words in your hearing?"
"Once," Ollie replied.
"Do you recall the day?"
"It was the morning after Joe came to our house to work," said she.
"Do you remember what the trouble was about and what said?"
"Well, they said a good deal," Ollie answered. "They fussed because Joedidn't get up when Isom called him."
Joe felt his heart contract. It seemed to him that Ollie need not havegone into that; it looked as if she was bent not alone on protectingherself, but on fastening the crime on him. It gave him a feeling ofuneasiness. Sweat came out on his forehead; his palms grew moist. He hadlooked for Ollie to stand by him at least, and now she seemed runningaway, eager to tell something that would sound to his discredit.
"You may tell the jury what happened that morning, Mrs. Chase."
Hammer's objection fell on barren ground, and Ollie told the story underthe directions of the judge.
"You say there was a sound of scuffling after Isom called him?" askedthe prosecutor.
"Yes, it sounded like Isom shook him and Joe jumped out of bed."
"And what did Joe Newbolt say?"
"He said, 'Put that down! I warned you never to lift your hand againstme. If you hit me, I'll kill you in your tracks!'"
"That's what you heard Joe Newbolt say to your husband up there in theloft over your head?"
The prosecutor was eager. He leaned forward, both hands on the table,and looked at her almost hungrily. The jurymen shuffled their feet andsat up in their chairs with renewed interest. A hush fell over the room.Here was the motive at the prosecutor's hand.
"That's what he said," Ollie affirmed, her gaze bent downward.
She told how Isom had come down after that, followed by Joe. And theprosecutor asked her to repeat what she had heard Joe say once more forthe benefit of the jury. He spoke with the air of a man who already hasthe game in the bag.
When the prosecutor was through with his profitable cross-examination,Hammer tried to lessen the effect of Ollie's damaging disclosure, butfailed. He was a depressed and crestfallen man when he gave it up.
Ollie stepped down from the place of inquisition with the color of lifecoming again into her drained lips and cheeks, the breath freer in herthroat. Her secret had not been torn from her fearful heart; she haddeepened the cloud that hung over Joe Newbolt's head. "Let him blabnow," said she in her inner satisfaction. A man might say anythingagainst a woman to save his neck; she was wise enough and deep enough,for all her shallowness, to know that people were quick to understand athing like that.
In passing back to her place beside her mother she had not looked atJoe. So she did not see the perplexity, anxiety, even reproach, whichhad grown in Joe's eyes when she testified against him.
"She had no need to do that," thought Joe, sitting there in the glow ofthe prosecutor's triumphant face. He had trusted Ollie to remain hisfriend, and, although she had told nothing but the truth concerning hisrash threat against Isom, it seemed to him that she had done so with astudied intent of working him harm.
His resentment rose against Ollie, urging him to betray her guiltyrelations with Morgan and strip her of the protecting mantle which hehad wrapped about her at the first. He wondered whether Morgan had notcome and entered into a conspiracy with her to shield themselves. Insuch case what would his unfolding of the whole truth amount to,discredited as he already was in the minds of the jurors by that foolishthreat which he had uttered against Isom in the thin dawn of thatdistant day?
Perhaps Alice had gone away, also, after hearing Ollie's testimony, inthe belief that he was altogether unworthy, and already branded with theresponsibility for that old man's death. He longed to look behind himand search the throng for her, but he dared not.
Joe bowed his head, as one overwhelmed by a sense of guilt and shame,yet never doubting that he had acted for the best when he assumed therisk on that sad night to shield his master's wife. It was a thing thata man must do, that a man would do again.
He did not know that Alice Price, doubting not him, but the woman whohad just left the witness-stand and resumed her place among the people,was that moment searching out the shallow soul of Ollie Chase with heraccusing eyes. She sat only a little way from Ollie, in the same row ofbenches, beside the colonel. She turned a little in her place so shecould see the young widow's face when she came down from the stand with
that new light in her eyes. Now she whispered to her father, and lookedagain, bending forward a little in a way that seemed impertinent,considering that it was Alice Price.
Ollie was disconcerted by this attention, which drew other curious eyesupon her. She moved uneasily, making a bustle of arranging herself andher belongings in the seat, her heart troubled with the shadow of somevague fear.
Why did Alice Price look at her so accusingly? Why did she turn to herfather and nod and whisper that way? What did she know? What could sheknow? What was Joe Newbolt and his obscure life to Colonel Price's finedaughter, sitting there dressed better than any other woman in the room?Or what was Isom Chase, his life, his death, or his widow, to her?
Yet she had some interest beyond a passing curiosity, for Ollie couldfeel the concentration of these sober brown eyes upon her, even when sheturned to avoid them. She recalled the interest that Colonel Price andhis daughter had taken in Joe. People had talked of it at first. Theycouldn't understand it any more than she could. The colonel and hisdaughter had visited Joe in jail, and carried books to him, and treatedhim as one upon their own level.
What had Joe told them? Had the coward betrayed her?
Ollie was assailed again by all her old, dread fears. What if theyshould get up and denounce her? With all of Colonel Price's politicaland social influence, would not the public, and the judge and jury,believe Joe's story if he should say it was true? She believed now thatit was all arranged for Joe to denounce her, and that timid invasion ofcolor was stemmed in her cheeks again.
It was a lowering day, with a threat of unseasonable darkness in thewaning afternoon. The judge looked at his watch; Captain Taylor stirredhimself and pushed the shutters back from the two windows farthest fromthe bench, and let in more light.
People did not know just what was coming next, but the atmosphere of theroom was charged with a foreboding of something big. No man would riskmissing it by leaving, although rain was threatening, and long drivesover dark roads lay ahead of many of the anxious listeners.
Hammer was in consultation with Joe and his mother. He seemed to beprotesting and arguing, with a mighty spreading of the hands and shakingof the head. The judge was writing busily, making notes on his charge tothe jury, it was supposed.
The prosecuting attorney took advantage of the momentary lull to get upand stretch his legs, which he did literally, one after the other,shaking his shanks to send down his crumpled pantaloons. He went to thewindow with lounging stride, hands in pockets, and pushed the sash afoot higher. There he stood, looking out into the mists which hung grayin the maple trees.
The jurymen, tired and unshaved, and over the momentary thrill ofOllie's disclosure, lolled and sprawled in the box. It seemed that theynow accepted the thing as settled, and the prospect of further waitingwas boresome. The people set up a little whisper of talk, a clearing ofthroats, a blowing of noses, a shifting of feet, a general preparationand readjustment for settling down again to absorb all that might fall.
The country folk seated in the vicinity of Alice Price, among whom herfame had traveled far, whom many of their sons had loved, and languishedfor, and gone off to run streetcars on her account, turned their freedattention upon her, nudging, gazing, gossiping.
"Purty as a picture, ain't she?"
"Oh, I don't know. You set her 'longside of Bessie Craver over at PinkHill"--and so on.
The judge looked up from his paper suddenly, as if the growing soundwithin the room had startled him out of his thought. His face wore afleeting expression of surprise. He looked at the prosecutor, at thelittle group in conference at the end of the table below him, as if hedid not understand. Then his judicial poise returned. He tapped with hispen on the inkstand.
"Gentlemen, proceed with the case," said he.
The prosecuting attorney turned from the window with alacrity, andHammer, sweating and shaking his head in one last gesture of protest tohis client--who leaned back and folded his arms, with set and stubbornface--rose ponderously. He wiped his forehead with his great, broadhandkerchief, and squared himself as if about to try a high hurdle orplunge away in a race.
"Joseph Newbolt, take the witness-chair," said he.