The Bondboy Part 46

Hammer was in consultation with Joe and his mother. He seemed to be protesting and arguing, with a mighty spreading of the hands and shaking of the head. The judge was writing busily, making notes on his charge to the jury, it was supposed.

The prosecuting attorney took advantage of the momentary lull to get up and stretch his legs, which he did literally, one after the other, shaking his shanks to send down his crumpled pantaloons. He went to the window with lounging stride, hands in pockets, and pushed the sash a foot higher. There he stood, looking out into the mists which hung gray in the maple trees.

The jurymen, tired and unshaved, and over the momentary thrill of Ollie's disclosure, lolled and sprawled in the box. It seemed that they now accepted the thing as settled, and the prospect of further waiting was boresome. The people set up a little whisper of talk, a clearing of throats, a blowing of noses, a s.h.i.+fting of feet, a general preparation and readjustment for settling down again to absorb all that might fall.

The country folk seated in the vicinity of Alice Price, among whom her fame had traveled far, whom many of their sons had loved, and languished for, and gone off to run streetcars on her account, turned their freed attention 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 Pink Hill"--and so on.

The judge looked up from his paper suddenly, as if the growing sound within the room had startled him out of his thought. His face wore a fleeting expression of surprise. He looked at the prosecutor, at the little group in conference at the end of the table below him, as if he did not understand. Then his judicial poise returned. He tapped with his pen on the inkstand.

"Gentlemen, proceed with the case," said he.

The prosecuting attorney turned from the window with alacrity, and Hammer, sweating and shaking his head in one last gesture of protest to his client--who leaned back and folded his arms, with set and stubborn face--rose ponderously. He wiped his forehead with his great, broad handkerchief, and squared himself as if about to try a high hurdle or plunge away in a race.

"Joseph Newbolt, take the witness-chair," said he.

CHAPTER XVIII

A NAME AND A MESSAGE

When Hammer called his name, Joe felt a revival of his old desire to go to the witness-chair and tell Judge Maxwell all about it in his own way, untenable and dangerous as his position had appeared to him in his hours of depression. Now the sheriff released his arm, and he went forward eagerly. He held up his hand solemnly while the clerk administered the oath, then took his place in the witness-chair. Ollie's face was the first one that his eyes found in the crowd.

It seemed as if a strong light had been focused upon it, leaving the rest of the house in gloom. The shrinking appeal which lay in her eyes moved him to pity. He strove to make her understand that the cunning of the sharpest lawyer could set no trap which would surprise her secret from him, nor death itself display terrors to frighten it out of his heart.

It seemed that a sunbeam broke in the room then, but perhaps it was only the clearing away of doubt and vacillation from his mind, with the respectable feeling that he had regained all the n.o.bility which was slipping from him, and had come back to a firm understanding with himself.

And there was Alice, a little nearer to the bar than he had expected to see her. Her face seemed strained and anxious, but he could not tell whether her sympathy was dearer, her feeling softer for him in that hour than it would have been for any other man. Colonel Price had yielded his seat to a woman, and now he stood at the back of the room in front of the inner door as a privileged person, beside Captain Taylor.

Mrs. Newbolt sat straight-backed and expectant, her hand on the back of Joe's empty chair, while the eager people strained forward to possess themselves of the sensation which they felt must soon be loosed among them.

Joe's hair had grown long during his confinement. He had smoothed it back from his forehead and tucked it behind his ears. The length of it, the profusion, sharpened the thinness of his face; the depth of its blackness drew out his pallor until he seemed all bloodless and cold.

Three inches of great, bony arm showed below his coat sleeves; that spare garment b.u.t.toned across his chest, strained at its seams. Joe wore the boots which he had on when they arrested him, scarred and work-worn by the stubble and thorns of Isom Chase's fields and pastures. His trousers were tucked into their wrinkled tops, which sagged half-way down his long calves.

Taken in the figure alone, he was uncouth and oversized in his common and scant gear. But the lofty n.o.bility of his severe young face and the high-lifting forehead, proclaimed to all who were competent in such matters that it was only his body that was meanly clad.

Hammer began by asking the usual questions regarding nativity and age, and led on with the history of Joe's apprentices.h.i.+p to Chase, the terms of it, its duration, compensation; of his treatment at his master's hands, their relations of friendliness, and all that. There was a little tremor and unsteadiness in Joe's voice at first, as of fright, but this soon cleared away, and he answered in steady tones.

The jurors had straightened up out of their wearied apathy, and were listening now with all ears. Joe did not appear to comprehend their importance in deciding his fate, people thought, seeing that he turned from them persistently and addressed the judge.

Joe had taken the stand against Hammer's advice and expectation, for he had hoped in the end to be able to make his client see the danger of such a step unless he should go forward in the intention of revealing everything. Now the voluble lawyer was winded. He proceeded with extreme caution in his questioning, like one walking over mined ground, fearing that he might himself lead his client into some fateful admission.

They at length came down to the morning that Isom went away to the county-seat to serve on the jury, and all had progressed handsomely. Now Joe told how Isom had patted him on the shoulder that morning, for it had been the aim of Hammer all along to show that master and man were on the most friendly terms, and how Isom had expressed confidence in him.

He recounted how, in discharge of the trust that Isom had put in him, he had come downstairs on the night of the tragedy to look around the premises, following in all particulars his testimony on this point before the coroner's jury.

Since beginning his story, Joe had not looked at Ollie. His attention had been divided between Hammer and the judge, turning from one to the other. He addressed the jury only when admonished by Hammer to do so, and then he frequently prefaced his reply to Hammer's question with:

"I beg your pardon, gentlemen," as if he feared he might have hurt their feelings by his oversight.

Ollie was cold with apprehension as Joe approached the point in his recital where the danger lay for her. He seemed now to be unaware of her presence, and the fact that he did not seek to a.s.sure her with his eyes gave a somber color to her doubts. She knew Hammer's crafty reputation, and understood his eagerness to bring his client off clear. Perhaps he had worked on Joe to make a clean breast of it. Maybe he was going to tell.

All her confidence of a little while ago dissolved, the ease which followed her descent from the witness-chair vanished. She plucked at her dark vestments with trembling hands, her lips half open, her burning eyes on Joe's unmoved face. If he should tell before all these people, before that stern, solemn judge--if he should tell!

Joe went on with his story, Hammer endeavoring to lead him, to the best of his altogether inadequate ability, around the dangerous shoals. But there was no avoiding them. When it came to relating the particulars of the tragedy, Hammer left it all to Joe, and Joe told the story, in all essentials, just as he had told it under the questioning of the coroner.

"We had some words, and Isom started for the gun," said he.

He went over how he had grappled with Isom in an endeavor to prevent him turning the gun against him; told of the accidental discharge of the weapon; the arrival of Sol Greening.

Judge Maxwell leaned back in his chair and listened, his face a study of perplexity and interest. Now and then he lifted his drooping lids and shot a quick, searching glance at the witness, as if seeking to fathom the thing that he had covered--the motive for Isom Chase's act. It was such an inadequate story, yet what there was of it was undoubtedly true.

After Hammer had asked further questions tending to establish the fact of good feeling and friends.h.i.+p between Joe and Isom, he gave it over, knowing full well that Joe had set back his chances of acquittal further than he had advanced them by his persistency in testifying as he had done.

The jury was now in a fog of doubt, as anybody with half an eye could see, and there was Sam Lucas waiting, his eyes glistening, his hard lips set in antic.i.p.ation of the coming fight.

"Take the witness," said Hammer, with something in his manner like a sigh.

The prosecuting attorney came up to it like a hound on the scent. He had been waiting for that day. He proceeded with Joe in a friendly manner, and went over the whole thing with him again, from the day that he entered Isom's house under bond service to the night of the tragedy. Sam Lucas went with Joe to the gate; he stood with him in the moonlight there; then he accompanied him back to the house, clinging to him like his own garments.

"And when you opened the kitchen door and stepped inside of that room, what did you do?" asked the prosecutor, arranging the transcript of Joe's testimony before the coroner's jury in his hands.

"I lit the lamp," said Joe.

"Yes; you lit the lamp. Now, _why_ did you light the lamp?"

"Because I wanted to see," replied Joe.

"Exactly. You wanted to see."

Here the prosecutor moved his eyes slowly along the two rows of jurors as if he wanted to make certain that none of them had escaped, and as if he desired to see that every one of them was alert and wakeful for what he was about to develop.

"Now, tell the jury _what_ you wanted to see."

"Object!" from Hammer, who rose with his right hand held high, his small finger and thumb doubled in his palm, like a bidder at an auction.

"Now, your honor, am I to be--" began the prosecutor with wearied patience.

"Object!" interrupted Hammer, sweating like a haymaker.

"To _what_ do you object, Mr. Hammer?" asked the court mildly.

"To anything and everything he's about to ask!" said Hammer hotly.