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Page 106
"To-morrow," the heavenly creature had said softly, like a
caress, in the woman's ear when an attendant had taken her
through the little door into the empty box. But the to-morrow
broke with every illusion vanished.
The woman sat beside her husband in the dismal court-room when
the court convened. The judge, old and tired, was on the bench.
A sulphurous, depressing fog entered from the city. The
court-room smelled of a cleaner's mop. The jury entered; and a
few spectators, who looked as though they might have spent the
night on the benches of the park out, side, drifted in. The
attorneys and the officials of the court were present and the
trial resumed.
Every detail of the departed, evening was, to the woman, a mirage
except the brutal threat of the attorney, uttered before she had
gone down into the street. This threat, with that power of
reality which evil things seem always to possess, now
materialized. After the court had opened, but before the trial
could proceed, the attorney for the defendant rose and addressed
the court.
He spoke for some moments, handling his innuendoes with skill.
His intent was to withdraw from the case. He realized that this
was an unusual procedure and that the course must be justified
upon a high ethical plane. He was a person of acumen and of no
inconsiderable skill and he succeeded. Without making any direct
charge, and disclaiming any intent to prejudice the prisoner and
his defense, or to deprive him of any safeguard of the law, he
was able to convey the impression that he had been misled in
undertaking the defense of the case; that his confidence in the
innocence of the accused had been removed by unquestionable
evidence which he had been led to believe did not exist.
He made this explanation with profound regret. But he felt that,
having been induced to undertake the defense by representations
not justified in fact, and by an impression of the nature of the
case which developments in the court-room had not confirmed, he
had the right to step aside out of an equivocal position. He
wished to do this without injury to the prisoner and while there
was yet an opportunity for him to obtain other counsel. The
whole tenor of the speech was the right to be relieved from the
obligation of an error; an error that had involved him
unwittingly by reason of assurances which the developments of the
case had now set aside. And through it all there was the
manifest wish to do the prisoner no vestige of injury.
After this speech of his attorney the conviction of the man was
inevitable. He sat stooped over, his back bent, his head down,
his thin hands aimlessly in his lap like one who has come to the
end of all things; like one who no longer makes any effort
against a destiny determined on his ruin.
The thing had the overpowering vitality which evil things seem
always to possess, and the woman felt helpless against it; so
utterly, so completely helpless that it was useless to protest by
any word or gesture. She could have gotten up and explained the
true motive behind this man's speech; she could have repeated the
dialogue in his office; she could have asserted his unspeakable
treachery; but she saw with an unerring instinct that against the
skill of the man her effort would be wholly useless. With his
resources and his dominating cunning he would not only make her
words appear obviously false, but he would make them fasten upon
her a malicious intent to injure the man who had undertaken her
husband's defense; and somehow he would be able, she felt, to
divert the obliquity and cause it to react upon herself.
This was all clear to her, and like some little trapped creature
of the wood that finds escape closed on every side and no longer
makes any effort, she remained motionless.
The judge was an honorable man, concerned to accomplish justice
and not always misled by an obvious intent. The proceeding did
not please him, but he knew that no benefit, rather a continued
injury, would result to the prisoner by forcing the attorney to
go on with a case which it was evident that he no longer cared to
make any effort to support. He permitted the man to withdraw.
Then he spoke to the prisoner.
"Have you any other counsel?" he asked.
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