Lightnin Part 23

Millie turned her back on Marvin as she dropped into the chair again. A smile played on Marvin's lips, but it was a rueful one. To come thus face to face with her in a situation where he was compelled to be her antagonist in order to see that justice was done to his old friend was not a happy ordeal for him.

Townsend knew what was going on between the young people and he felt keenly for them, but it was a part of him to hold to his duty always and not to his own personal biases. His severity did not relax even when Millie pouted: "I don't want to answer _his_ questions! Must I?"

The people in the court-room, interested and amused at the unusual denouement, went into a peal of laughter which received swift check from the sheriff's gavel. She flushed violently and obeyed Judge Townsend's admonishment that she must answer all of Marvin's questions.

Marvin's first inquiry did not tend to make things any easier for her.

"Who employed you as a stenographer?" he asked. His back was turned to Thomas, but he could feel the latter s.h.i.+fting in his chair.

Finding no mercy in Townsend's manner, she succ.u.mbed to the inevitable, snapping, with a toss of her head, "Mr. Thomas!"

"_This_ Mr. Thomas?" Marvin asked.

"Yes," said Millie. There had been nothing in her heart but deepest misery and shame at having to testify against Bill during her examination by Thomas. Now she was fired by a resentment against Marvin, Bill being forced out of the equation. Her answers came in a swift defiance that bespoke a determination to make it as difficult for him as possible. Marvin, seeing at once that she and Mrs. Jones were still plastic in the hands of Thomas and Hammond, was tempted into battle.

"Did Mr. Thomas," he asked, "give you this position because you told him you wanted to be of financial a.s.sistance to the Jones family?"

Millie opened her mouth to reply, but Thomas was on his feet at once, objecting to the question.

Facing the judge, Marvin ignored Thomas, saying, "I am quite willing to withdraw it if it is found objectionable, your Honor."

Thomas stepped quickly to Marvin's side. He was a few inches the taller and he glared down at Marvin, who stared back, his jaw set in the resolution to stand firm against the man he knew to be a fraud.

That he was standing on thin ice Thomas knew, and he knew also that bluff was the only feasible strategy to employ against the unforeseen crisis wrought by Bill's sudden and unexpected arrival. "Don't flatter yourself that I mind any question you might ask," he emphasized, "only this one has no bearing on the case."

At this, Townsend sustained the objection. Marvin, resorting to a legal trick, changed the form of the question, for he was bound to prove his point. "Well, Miss Buckley," he asked, "Mr. Thomas has taken an interest in your affairs and given you advice?"

The insinuation was more than Millie could bear calmly. She turned quickly, meeting his eyes in anger as she flashed a significant smile toward Thomas.

"Mr. Thomas has been more than kind to me always. He has given me advice when I had no one else to turn to."

"And you have always followed his advice?"

Following his key, Millie replied, "Always, implicitly, in spite of what _others_--" and she paused long enough to send a pointed shaft Marvin's way--"have said against him."

Marvin grinned and continued, "Miss Buckley, you have never known Mr.

Jones to be cruel or even unkind to his wife, have you?"

An objection from Thomas was overruled, the judge contending that cruelty was one of the grounds in the complaint. As he had forgotten how the question read, he asked the stenographer to repeat it. Millie answered in the negative and Marvin prodded her further, "You have never seen him unkind to any one or anything, have you?"

Gentleness had always been such an ever-present quality in Bill's treatment of Millie that she forgot her anger for the moment and hastened to reply, as she smiled sweetly at Bill, "Daddy has always been most kind to me and every one else."

This was an opportunity to lead her into an admission which might immediately quash all of the grounds of the complaint. Marvin saw it at once and took advantage of it. "Now, Miss Buckley," he argued, "the complaint asks for a divorce on the grounds of drunkenness, failure to provide and cruelty. In all honesty you know that not one of these is the real reason that Mrs. Jones has asked for a divorce, don't you?"

Unused to the ways of the law and its peculiar methods of arriving at conclusions, Millie was perplexed. The only excuse in her mind for the divorce had been that it would bring about the sale of the property and that Mrs. Jones would thereby have sufficient money with which to find Bill, which would mean happiness for the three of them. Had Thomas not intervened with an objection which the judge sustained, she would have given her answer, but as it was she remained silent.

Marvin, determined to prove Bill Jones's simple sweetness, so that he would at least be understood by the world, went to his purpose again.

"Miss Buckley, you know that Mr. Jones loved his wife, loved her devotedly, don't you?" he asked.

Townsend beamed in judicial humor upon Marvin and laughed. "How can she know that? That's not an astute question for a lawyer to ask, and I don't sanction such methods."

The question, however, had brought back a certain softness in Millie's att.i.tude. Forgetting for the moment her dislike of Marvin, she smiled, but to regret it and to efface the smile with a frown.

His examination of Millie had been difficult for Marvin. Into his mind had crowded old memories--happy walks along the cliff in San Francisco, afternoons in Golden Gate Park, and days in the office when he had dared to hope that some day she might learn to care. His heart leaped at the thought of moonlight strolls in the mountain woods and along the sh.o.r.es of the lake. Those were days when she had interested herself in his plans and it all came back to him with desperate force as her unintentional smile awakened a poignant longing within him. A whirlwind of reminiscent emotion caught him in its teeth.

"If it please your Honor," he said, his eyes s.h.i.+ning, "there is one thing that a woman does know, and that is whether a man loves her or not! She may believe a man to be a contemptible liar. She may say that she will hate and despise him always, but somehow down in her heart, if he really loves her, she knows it!"

Forgetting that there was such a place as a court-room, or that he was defending a divorce suit against Bill Jones, all he saw was the scorn in the eyes of the girl he loved. All he felt was that he was fighting single-handed against overwhelming odds for his own happiness. He leaned close to the witness-chair and looked into the girl's eyes, and she, seeing in his eyes the thing that she had tried to forget through all the long and sorrowful months, turned away from him, lest she should betray the longing that lurked in her own heart. But Marvin's fervid plea flamed higher and higher and he went on:

"If a woman is a man's ideal--if he would gladly lay down his life for her--she knows it and no matter what she says about him or what anybody else says about him the knowledge that he cares more for her than for anything else in the entire universe must count for something, and I contend, your Honor--"

He got no farther. The whole court-room was in roars of laughter and the sheriff's gavel was knocking loudly on his table. Millie, unable to bear the situation any longer, was sobbing aloud. Townsend arose quickly and, leaning over his desk, shook a warning finger at Marvin.

"Hold on there!" he called, half in humor and half in anger. "Are you trying a divorce case or are you making love?"

The laughter in the court-room began again, but subsided, for there was something in the situation that struck deep into the hearts of the spectators and they knew that, grotesque as it might appear, shattered romance was stalking before them.

Marvin, himself once again, lowered his voice and pleaded, apologetically: "I beg your pardon, your Honor. I did not mean to go so far." Smiling sadly at Millie, he added, "That is all, Miss Buckley."

"I should say it is quite enough!" satirized the judge. "I think we had better get back to business."

Without looking at Marvin, Millie left the stand and took her seat beside her mother. Thomas called Everett Hammond as the next witness.

Hammond, although outwardly nonchalant, was inwardly ill at ease.

Marvin's appearance in court followed so closely by Bill's arrival was a contact that puzzled him. Millie's hesitancy as a witness was another feature which he felt was not altogether in favor of the cause of the Golden Gate Land Company. During her testimony he had kept close watch of her mother, who several times wept audibly, burying her face in her handkerchief. He knew that he and Thomas were playing a close game and that the slightest contradiction in his testimony might set Mrs. Jones to thinking in the wrong direction; especially with Bill Jones in the court-room, his eyes divided between the witness-stand and his wife. He a.s.sumed an air of bravado as he took the stand, glaring down at Marvin, who was seated not far from him and who was smiling blandly upon him.

Preliminaries over, Thomas launched into Hammond's direct examination.

"How long have you known Mr. and Mrs. Jones?" he asked.

"I met them first," Hammond answered, pausing to think, "about seven months ago."

"Kindly tell the court how you happened to meet them."

Hammond, looking at the judge, answered: "I was asked to consider the purchase of a piece of property belonging to Mrs. Jones. I had some other business near by and stopped off at the Joneses' place."

"What was the other business?" was Thomas's next question. He glanced at Marvin, who met his look with straightforward, unswerving eyes, which turned Thomas's attention to his witness.

"The Pacific Railroad," said Hammond, scowling at Marvin, "was being robbed of timber in that locality and they sent me with the sheriff," he nodded toward Blodgett, who flushed at the memory of that embarra.s.sing incident, "to arrest the thief."

"Who was the thief?" There was triumph in Thomas's voice as he asked the question.

"His name is John Marvin."

"Since that time, you have had dealings with Mrs. Jones, have you not?"

"I have, and I have always found her to be an honest and splendid woman." Hammond smiled over at her.