IN the year 1825 certain leading citizens of Childerstown — the Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, several lawyers, the doctor, the master of the Childerstown Academy — joined together to form for their self-improvement a reading circle or society, which they called the Calumet Club, They accumulated a library and they kept it first in a rented room, and then in a house on East Court Street purchased with a bequest. Other bequests gave them a small endowment. Women were admitted in the '60s, and the female members devoted themselves to charitable enterprises, particularly the care of unmarried mothers.
Some of the charitable work was still carried on; but as time passed, the library was given to the Public Library, and the self-improvement part of it was limited to sponsoring an occasional lecture or concert, and the club's real function became the social one of giving two dances during the winter. These were called cotillions; and though the idea was found too pretentious to be put in plain terms, and anyone (a reporter for the Examiner, for instance) who did put it in plain terms caused a laugh, the cotillions were, in fact, coming-out parties. When the daughters of members were old enough to go to them, they were old enough to be married.
Of the four thousand odd inhabitants of Childerstown, about a hundred belonged to the Calumet Club. About thirty-eight hundred had not the least desire to belong, and if they thought about it at all, laughed not merely at the pretentious sound of calling the dances coming-out parties, but at the idea itself, with its suggestion that the course of nature waited on formal Calumet Club recognition. That left a few people who did have a desire to belong, but had not been asked. Since they considered themselves plenty good enough in all basic or important qualifications they spoke bitterly of those hoity-toity snobs. Calumet Club members thought the accusation of snobbishness absurd. Qualifications for membership were ordinary respectability and education, and some interest in the avowed objects of the club. You did not have to have money, and your grandfather did not have to have been a member. It was not their fault that most of the members were in fact children or grandchildren of former members. It was not their fault that respectability and education so often went with an adequate income. If people with means but no grandparents were congenial they were invited to join; if people with grandparents unfortunately lost their means they would certainly not be invited to resign. Since giving parties was now the club's principal activity it would be silly to have members who did not fit in. That was all there was to it.
The Calumet Club had always held dances in the winter, meaning that the dances dated from the 1890s; and it had always held barge parties in the summer, meaning that the barge parties dated from the 1920s. At that time the canal, eighty-five years after its triumphal opening with speeches and the firing-off of cannon, was abandoned. The bankrupt operating company had at last been allowed to discharge its lock keepers and bridge tenders. From the shells of the stone warehouses and the barge basin at what was called Port Childerstown six miles of waterway, though silting up, remained navigable. An old deck barge had been recaulked, painted white and green, and fitted with benches and bails for an awning. Teams of mules could tow it up and back in four or five hours while the passengers ate a picnic supper. It was a pleasant way to spend a summer evening.
The barge parties left at six o'clock. It was ten minutes past six when Bunting finished with Mr. Foulke; and Abner went home then to change his clothes. They had arranged that Abner would drive by and pick Bunting up in half an hour. The Buntings lived in one of the new houses out near the golf course on the extension of the hill on which Childerstown was mostly built. From the road in front there was a good view of the lower country and the course of the canal, much of it tree-lined, bending away east through the fields and woods to the gathering horizon haze. The effect was spacious; a burst of calm and pleasant landscape filled with the evening sun, the summer foliage full but still fresh, the fields in a pattern of blocks of different greens. Through gaps in the trees the narrow water of the canal could be seen; and, studying it carefully, Abner was able at last to catch a glimpse of the barge hardly moving, a mile or two away. He pointed it out to Bunting. 'We can pick it up at Waltons,' he said.
Bunting called to the maid, 'All right, Pauline!'
Hearing him, his two little girls came running down the lawn from where they had been playing croquet. 'Daddy, could we —'
'Nope!' said Bunting.
Abner said, 'Hello, Jenny. Hello, Sarah.'
They said, 'Hello, Mr. Coates. Daddy —'
'No, sir!' said Bunting. 'Not on your life! I have to go. Mother's going to be plenty mad, already.' He got into the car while they climbed on the gate, their serious faces and dark heads swaying above the white pickets. 'Good-bye, Daddy! Good-bye, Mr. Coates!' they yelled.
Abner let his clutch in and slid away down the hill. In court, or in the office, it was hard to think of Marty playing with children, or of children being so attached to him — or, for that matter, of Marty bowing meekly to Muriel Bunting's efficient and sensible direction of his household, his children, and himself. The children looked like Muriel, a handsome dark girl, a little taller than Marty. She had sharp ironic ways of checking and correcting Marty; of complaining about the hours he was often obliged to keep; even, of jeering gently at his position and powers. While she did it, she gazed at her husband with an intent, intense devotion that made nonsense of everything she had just said of his unreasonableness or his other failings. Like his daughters, Muriel was, in a word, crazy about him. Thinking of the simple pleasant house, the devoted wife, the agreeable children, Abner said, 'Nice kids. You must have lots of fun with them.'
Bunting said, 'They have their moments. And then they have their other moments. You know, I've been thinking about Earl Foulke. It's definitely second childhood. He can't keep anything in his head. That Williams thing is just an example. Did I tell you, it was last month, I guess, he issued another one of his suspicious character warrants? He's been told half a dozen times there's no such offence! Why do you think they go on electing him?'
'They think this a free country,' Abner said, not quite easy. 'Nobody in Childerstown is going to tell them their business. He's been good enough for Kingstown Township for twenty years; and so he's good enough for us.'
'Well, sooner or later,' Bunting said, 'he's going to do something we can get him for — I don't mean prosecute him, though he's as likely as not to do something he could be prosecuted for, but something we could use to make him resign.'
Abner said, 'I don't know how much harm he does down there. I sort of feel sorry for him.'
'I feel sorry for him myself,' Bunting said, 'but that isn't the point. It's not fair to the people who come before him. There are lots of them, and there's only one of him — thank God! It isn't right to let him off.'
'Speaking of that,' Abner said, 'did John Costigan tell you that he thought he was going to get some evidence this week to show that McCook has been buying junk from minors again? There's a man that never should have been let off.'
'Been Vredenburgh, he never would have been let off. If it comes up again, we'll try and see if we can't make sure Vredenburgh hears it. Judge Irwin's trouble is, he always thinks maybe the defendant didn't really mean to do what he did.'
'Unless it has liquor in it,' Abner said.
'I'm not even sure of that any more,' Bunting said. 'You didn't hear that Eustis non-support case. I guess you were upstairs. Eustis admitted what the trouble was — he'd go on these bats and spend all his money, or at least forget to make the weekly payments for his wife to Bill's office. Irwin said, "Well, if that's the only reason — " and I would have bet Eustis was going right to jail; but Irwin goes on, "it is plain that a simple change in your habits will enable you to make your remittances to the probation officer regularly. Now, we can't close all the saloons; and the saloons can't, or won't, stop you at the door, or refuse to sell you a drink. And then one drink leads to another. You know that." Irwin looks at him and smiles and says, "Now I know of a system that works very well if you care to apply it. I've seen it work successfully for more than sixty years because I use it myself. I make sure that I will not take that second drink, or those successive drinks, by not taking the first drink; and I make sure that I will not take the first drink by walking right on by every saloon I see. You might like to try that." So Eustis is out on his own recognizance. Only thing is, in about three months or less he'll be in again.'
Abner said, 'Irwin's a good man.'
'I don't think anyone would ever argue with you about that,' Bunting said, 'and he knows more law than anybody in the county, except maybe your father. But he shouldn't have let Eustis off. I was afraid for a while he was going to sit in this Zollicoffer case. I know Harry was praying that he would. I think we have that pretty well in hand. Mrs. Z. wasn't too bad; and I think Leming is going to be all right. Doctor Janvier says he's much better. You never know what will happen when these dopers lay off. The jury won't like him because of his turning state's evidence; but they don't like Basso standing mute, either. Probably about cancels out —' He fell silent, absorbed and reflective.
Warm air sang by. The new grey concrete road rolled smoothly in long gradients, bent gently right and left between its cable-strung fences. At the white church and stone store at Waltons Corners, Abner put out a hand and swept into the dirt lane that went down through an orchard of rotting apple trees to cross the canal. He parked the car below the old fan-trussed bridge, and they got out.
The barge was approaching on a mile-long straightaway of tranquil water. Between the low green banks, beneath the green arch of overhanging trees, it moved at a snail's pace, fanning out slow smooth ripples from its bow. Hoots and cheers came from it to show that Bunting and Abner had been observed. Ben Wister cried to his mules and aimlessly cracked his whip. On board somebody had a portable radio, and the beat of music grew louder, approaching. Thickets of underbrush shadowed most of the canal, but level sun here and there broke across the tow path. Suddenly the mules would amble into shafts of splendour. Immaculate and glowing, the barge's new paint lit up; on deck, the dazzling gold light gilded women's dresses and men's white flannels. Waiting where the tow path, revetted with stone, passed under the hump of the little bridge, Abner could hear ice clatter in a cocktail shaker; and, regardless of the radio, Harry Wurts' unmistakable voice, loudly lifted, singing: 'I wish I was single! Oh, then, oh, then...'
The mules came up, ducking their stubborn heads, twitching their big ears. Bunting said, 'Hello, Ben. Don't you get tired walking?'
Ben winked. 'Slipped me a little that snakes' milk they got there. Some of that, and you can walk to China.'
The long tow line went by, the barge drew abreast. Mark Irwin, who had evidently been at the snakes' milk, too, said, 'Stand by to repel boarders, men!'
Muriel Bunting called out, 'Marty, where on earth have you been? Honestly, you might have —'
Abner stepped on to the moving deck. He nodded to Doctor Mosher, who said, 'Want to speak to you later, Ab.' Abner made his way through the crowd along the board table where hampers were being unpacked and supper laid out. Harry Wurts, filling cocktail glasses from a huge silver shaker with two crossed calumets on it, said, 'I admit the law, but deny its applicability to the case in hand. Wake up, Bonnie! Here's the boy friend.'
Abner took the glass held out to him and looked at Bonnie and laughed. She had both hands full of knives and forks. Pushing him gently with her elbow, she said, 'Get out of my way. I have to —'
'Let them grab their own,' Abner said. He took a swallow of the mixed whisky and vermouth. Bonnie pushed on by him. 'Hello,' she said. 'Don't you get tight.'
'The thing I like about her,' said Harry, 'is that she looks so damn Scotch —Oh, wad,' he said, with dramatic expression, 'some power the giftie gie us —' He laughed and laughed, pouring himself another drink.
Abner was obliged to laugh, too; for though he wished that a way could be found to make Harry mind his own business, Abner knew what Harry meant. Bonnie was well-made, but long in the leg, with narrow hips and square thin shoulders. Her hair was a light curly brown. The shape of her face was delicate, thin-skinned, with a fresh but faint colouring; yet it was the same shape that, seen in a man with a man's coarse complexion and heavier features, is generally called raw-boned — the wide forehead; the spaced brown eyes; the outstanding cheekbones and the cheeks sloping to the straight jaw and neat, expressive but controlled mouth. It was attractive rather than pretty. More noticeable than the features was her candid mien, her spirited carriage of the head, her air of knowing her own mind. The resulting expression was an odd, and to Abner, appealing blend of the lightheadedness that came from physical well-being with the sobriety that came from her thoughts, which must have been anxious during most of her twenty-five years.
Abner knew a good deal about it. He and Bonnie were relatives in one of those involved patterns of consanguinity that have no actual meaning and could hardly have been kept straight except in a small town. Her mother, Mary Coates, was Cousin Mary to Abner's father; but she was actually the Judge's great-grand-uncle's son's daughter; which meant, as nearly as Abner could figure it out, that Bonnie and he had a great-great-grandfather in common, and so were either third or fourth (he was never quite sure which) cousins. Mary Coates was, however, a closer connection of the Judge's by affinity than by blood. Her mother's sister was the wife of Judge Coates' Uncle Nate, who thus became also Cousin Mary's Uncle Nate. Furthermore, Mary had married Robert Drummond, for years Philander Coates' most intimate friend. There were thus three grounds on which Cousin Mary's affairs concerned the Judge.
When Mary and Robert Drummond had been married nine or ten years — the summer that Bonnie—(she had been christened Janet, but nobody who knew her ever called her that) was seven — a grotesque and unforeseeable accident occurred. It was the sort of thing that often gets a paragraph in the papers, but for practical purposes may be said never to happen. Robert Drummond, recently making a good deal of money out of the Childerstown Building & Loan Society, decided to buy a farm on which he thought he would breed Aberdeen Angus cattle. Late one July afternoon he went out to the farm he had bought to look at the work in progress. While he stood talking to the builder in the uncompleted barn, a thunderstorm came up. He had left the windows open in his car, and seeing what was coming, he ran to close them. It had not yet begun to rain, so Robert Drummond turned to walk back to shelter. The builder, half blinded by the flash, saw him struck down in the barnyard and instantly killed by a lightning bolt.
Though it would be hard to devise a better way to die, everyone found it appalling. The loss had not been made easier by those thoughts, consolation of long preparatory illness, or senile decline, that all was for the best, that the dead now suffered no more, that a term was put to the uncertainty and expense of the living.
Judge Coates was very much upset. He regarded Cousin Mary with the tenderest sympathy. He felt deep compassion for a woman, still young, who had lost so suddenly and tragically one of the finest men who ever lived. He knew that she suffered a grief time could not cure. She must never be expected to take much further interest in life; and Judge Coates, though he did all he could to cheer her, and even reminded her of what she owed her child, never seriously expected her to get over it, and could not blame her if she wished that she were dead, too. Therefore it was a great surprise to Judge Coates when, about two years later, Cousin Mary told him, saying that she wanted him to be the first to know, that she had gone to a town in the next state with Jared Wacker and married him.
It was not in itself an objectionable match. The Wackers were good Childerstown people, as good as the Coateses. Moreover, Jared was a lawyer, which, in a legal family, was a point in his favour. It was true that Jared was not popular with the rest of the bar; but sometimes this could be expected when a man won, as Jared did, most of his cases. It might or might not be true that Jared was sarcastic, secretive, oversmart, and disobliging to his colleagues. It was certainly true that for one reason or another plenty of local lawyers would say that, if you wanted their private opinion, they didn't trust Wacker any farther than they could throw the jail.
Here was reasonable doubt; and Judge Coates had little personal knowledge of Jared. Before Jared was admitted to the bar, Judge Coates had gone to the Superior Court, and so he lacked the basis of appraisal he got, or thought he got, from hearing a man plead. He gave Jared the benefit of that particular doubt. Judge Coates never listened to such talk until something tangible was brought before the Bar Association. Judge Coates objected to the match on other grounds. An injury had been done to his idea of the fitness of things by Cousin Mary's unaccountable resumption of interest in mundane, and even (the idea was highly distasteful, but elopement hinted impatience, a posting with-dexterity) in carnal matters. This he could not mention; but another thing Judge Coates didn't like was the difference in the newly-weds' ages. Jared Wacker was five or six years younger than Mary. Judge Coates wondered — in fact, he wondered out loud, and to Mary — just how anxious Jared would have been to marry a woman older than himself, a widow with a daughter almost ten years old, if she hadn't been, at least by Childerstown standards, very well-off.
After that Mary did not speak to Cousin Philander for three years. In the course of them she became, with a dispatch many people thought indelicate, the mother of a son, and then of twins. Though nobody knew it, nor even (for Jared's business seemed good) thought of suspecting it, Jared had been applying himself to her fortune with similar dispatch. That came out when, in a scandal unexampled locally, Jared Wacker walked one morning across the courthouse square to his office and was never seen again. He took along whatever remained of his wife's money, and several trust funds to which he had access. Presumably he also took along his stenographer, a girl of bad reputation; for she, too, was seen no more.
Judge Coates forced Mary to abandon the not-speaking nonsense and devoted his considerable influence and experience to having Jared tracked down. While this went on, and it went on several years without the least success before the Judge was willing to drop it, Mary and Bonnie, and Jared junior, and the six months old twins, Philip and Harold, lived at the Judge's. That was before Abner's mother died; and there was increasing friction. It finally reached such a point that Mary, in the heat of a quarrel with her hostess, blamed Cousin Philander for the loss of her money, or at least, for the failure to recover it. The row, though about the Judge, was strictly between Mary and Mrs. Coates. Abner, away at college at the time, was told very little of what happened. Perhaps Cousin Mary had not been entirely to blame, for Mrs. Coates was a sick woman and died before the next spring.
Moved, no doubt genuinely, by this sad circumstance, Cousin Mary faced about again. She took to herself all the blame. She was filled with despair to think of her inexcusable conduct towards Edith Coates, whom she had always loved, and who had done everything for her. She did not know what to say to Cousin Philander, who had also done everything for her; and this was no more than the truth. When his wife ordered Cousin Mary out of her house, the Judge necessarily arranged for another house for them to go to, and since Cousin Mary had none of her own, he provided her with money. This he continued to do; and later he also supplied the money for Bonnie to take a secretarial course, so that she could get a job; and then, by speaking to appropriate people, got Bonnie a job as secretary to the principal of the high school.
Abner could see Cousin Mary busily unpacking hampers. Cousin Mary sometimes said that what she had been through was more than mortal woman could bear; but the truth was, she looked considerably less than her fifty years, and her manner, at least in public, was unsubdued, almost gay. A person who knew her history met her for the first time with surprise and admiration. Most people did admire her; and, in a way, Abner admired her, too; but with a good many reservations. Her gaiety, her habit of not troubling about her troubles, was all right up to a point. After that it was better described as wilful and exasperating irresponsibility. The job of managing her affairs was not easy, and when she had done as much as she felt like doing, Cousin Mary lay down on it with a shrug. She implied that the whole business bored her; and, anyway, she was above niggling economies and petty calculations. You got the impression that she was improvident on purpose and careless by design because she liked the air of pretty negligence she thought it gave her. Abner had sometimes wanted to ask her why, when she didn't care herself, anyone else should be expected to care. He had sometimes wanted to ask how she had the cheek to expect Bonnie to spend her life supporting her mother and Jared Wacker's children.
Abner stood aside, still watching Cousin Mary, while people, mostly men, came up to get a drink. Mr. Schaeffer, the Burgess, said to him, 'Quite a case, Ab. What do you think about those fellows?'
Abner said, 'Personally, I think they ought to be convicted.' He found himself awkward; not because of Mr. Schaeffer, who was a harmless and agreeable old man; but because, behind Mr. Schaeffer, was Jesse Gearhart. Jesse would not be coming up to get a drink, for Jesse did not drink; so he was probably coming to speak to Abner.
Mr. Schaeffer said, 'Well, I guess you're right. Don't like their looks much.'
Jesse stood calm and grave, waiting without impatience, without choosing to intrude himself, for the exchange to end. Abner said, 'We don't like them much.'
'No,' said Mr. Schaeffer. 'That fellow they killed wasn't any good, either, I hear. Dope dealer, or something, wasn't he?'
'The Federal Bureau of Investigation thinks so.'
'That's what I heard,' Mr. Schaeffer said. He put his glass down. 'No, no,' he said to Harry Wurts. 'One's my limit.'
Abner said, 'Hello, Jesse.'
Jesse Gearhart's thin grey hair lay flat and damp on his wide head. Jesse nodded in reply. His large, tired-looking grey eyes, pensive in his somewhat grey face, brightened a little as he left whatever his thoughts were and gave his attention to Abner. Abner had never liked Jesse, but he had not always disliked him. As Republican county chairman, Jesse was for years accustomed to consult with Judge Coates; and Abner had early taken Jesse, and Jesse's relative or local importance, for granted. The county had been Republican for almost a generation. This meant that the Republicans were entrenched in power; they had all the jobs. Having all the jobs meant having also an increasing monopoly of the ambitious, able and experienced men. Ambitious men could see the situation; able men could not expect to get anywhere with the Democrats; and as for experience, a Democrat could never be elected, and so could never get any experience.
Abner had seen how this worked. He had done a good deal of speaking for the party ticket at elections since he had been in office on Marty's appointment. The Republican candidates for whom he spoke, though no great shakes perhaps, were invariably and obviously better fitted for the office they sought than their Democratic opponents. It was simple enough to say so; and to point out why; and Abner was glad to do it, when some Lodge, or Loyal Republican Club, wanted a speaker. Few of these gatherings were so small or so insignificant that Jesse Gearhart did not manage to be on hand, if only briefly; and when Jesse was there, he was at pains afterward to thank Abner and to congratulate him.
It seemed an odd thing to dislike a man for; but Abner knew that was how and when he had begun to dislike Jesse. At college, where he had done some debating, and at law school, Abner had learned that he was not a gifted speaker, just as he had learned that he did not have to be gifted in order to make a sensible and adequate speech. When Jesse told him he was wonderful, Abner did not know what to reply. If Jesse really thought so, Jesse was a fool; if Jesse did not really think so, he must imagine Abner was a fool. Furthermore, Abner did not like Jesse's — well, the word was presumption, in acting as though Abner worked fbr Jesse, when in fact Abner did what he did because Marty asked him to; and because he himself believed that the public interest would be better served by the Republican candidates.
These grounds for disliking Jesse were not good nor reasonable; and Abner made every effort to conceal his feelings. To conceal them was not, however, to be rid of them. Abner supposed that his mental process was the ordinary one; but, just as concealing dislike did not cure dislike, recognizing a shifty piece of rationalization did not end the process of rationalizing. If a man felt hostility and aversion, but saw that he had poor or no grounds for his feeling, the remedy was to look for good or at least better grounds — a search his predisposing thoughts would help him in. Abner could say that he did not like politics; nor Jesse's function in them, a function clearly at variance with avowed principles. In theory, the people could, and surely ought to, enounce the nominations at the primaries; but in practice what they did at the primaries was accept the men Jesse designated. At the election, which the Republicans were sure to win, the people then elected those men to office. If this did not mean that Jesse had the whole say about who was to fill every elective public office, what did it mean? If it meant that, Abner, in spite of his speeches, and notwithstanding Jesse's men were the better men, did not like it.
Jesse said, 'Have a hard day, Ab?'
'So-so,' said Abner. 'It gets pretty long.'
'Such a crowd, I didn't come over.'
With an effort of will, Abner said, 'If you want to hear any of it, Marty could get you a seat all right. I don't know that it's very interesting.'
'Have a lot of newspaper men?'
'Quite a few, this morning. I noticed most of them weren't there this afternoon.'
'One of their editors, a friend of mine — Ed Robertson, as a matter of fact, maybe you know him — called me up. He was trying to find out when the defendants were going to be on the stand.'
'I couldn't tell you that,' Abner said. 'Basso refused to plead, so I don't suppose he's likely to testify. I guess Harry will put Howell on, all right. I think the Commonwealth ought to finish to-morrow. So, maybe Thursday. There's no reason why your friend shouldn't ask Harry, if he wants to.'
'Marty's not going to call them?'
'How could he?' Abner asked, taken aback. Jesse Gearhart often showed a good knowledge of law as it applied to county and municipal business; but presumably his knowledge stopped short where it ceased to have practical value. Abner said, 'That's up to the defence. You can be pretty sure it won't be to-morrow. We have this Leming fellow — well, of course he's technically one of the defendants, but we can call him because he's turning state's evidence.'
'Are you going to have him to-morrow?'
'I think so, sometime to-morrow,' Abner said, 'but I can't really say, Jesse. Marty decides. You'd better ask him.' Abner spoke earnestly and as cordially as he could — perhaps too cordially; and he was aware that he did not like Jesse any better for causing him this discomfort; for making Abner sound artificial and feel insincere; maybe for thinking (and why shouldn't Jesse think it?) that Abner was awkwardly making up to him with the ignoble hope (what other?) that some day, when Marty resigned, Jesse might condescend to pick him as the candidate for district attorney.
Jesse nodded and moved on. Like most of Jesse's acts and gestures, and, for that matter, many of his remarks, the nod and the moving-on were not informative. There was no way of knowing whether Jesse resented Abner's exclamation at what Abner considered Jesse's amazing ignorance; whether Jesse thought Abner was currying favour at the last there, and if he thought so, whether he was delighted or disgusted. The nod could be either thanks or dismissal, the walking-away could be either because he was satisfied, or because he had wasted enough time. Abner moved, too; and with some discomfort of mind, sat down at the long, disordered supper table. He had seated himself, saving a place next to him for Bonnie, but she did not immediately come to take it. Abner could see her talking to her mother while they were busy with the coffee over an oil stove. About thirty-five people were at the table under the awning, and there was not much room, so when Annette Vredenburgh, the Judge's daughter, appeared at his elbow and said, 'Can I sit here, Ab?' he was obliged to say, 'Sure'.
Annette was not more than eighteen. Privately, Abner was surprised that her parents let her come on these parties; and also that she wanted to come, since everybody else was older. She was a plain girl, but popular with her contemporaries. Because she did not have a pretty face, her confident, presuming air of a sought-after woman must almost inevitably be due to liberties she was ready to allow when boys took her out. Annette was one of the kids who went to the Black Cat, a road house Bunting kept his eye on. Abner did not think she was aware that the district attorney's office had obtained her name, along with several others, as a frequent patron; and it made him impatient with her — silly little fool! — to know that she probably imagined her father could never find out. She said to him, 'Father didn't think it was suitable for him to come. Because of the trial. It didn't stop you, I see.'
'Why should it stop me?' said Abner. Her manner of a fascinating woman — the glances through her eyelashes, the little capricious jerks of her chin, the tone, which perhaps she considered coolly ironic — was so patently supposititious, so plainly an imitation of something she had seen, or read, that Abner could not help smiling.
Annette said, 'Oh, you know! Father's so solemn. He told mother he thought it would be very improper, when he was sitting in a capital case, for him to attend parties or entertainments. I suppose he has to be that way. Would you like to be a judge?'
She was a fresh brat; but she was also a young woman, and it was awkward to tell her off, so Abner said, 'Don't you think I'd make a good one?'
'Maybe you would,' she said. She gave him the look she probably thought of as enigmatic; veiled but searching. 'It depends upon what you're really like, I suppose. It's hard to tell about people, isn't it?'
'I generally don't find it hard,' Abner said indifferently.
'That's because you have an analytical mind,' Annette said. 'I wish I had. It isn't easy to be a woman in a man's world. You think I'm just a silly little fool —'
Since that was exactly, to the word, his thought of a few minutes ago, Abner nearly laughed, and so nearly choked. He swallowed and said, 'But, you mean, you aren't.'
'Oh!' said Annette. She had her father's blue eyes, and bridling, they took that same glinting cast that Abner had seen a hundred times directed from the bench on counsel or a witness. 'Men are all alike!' she said. 'You don't think I could possibly be serious, do you? It's so tiresome! That's what I mean. I keep hoping that maybe the reason boys are so boring is that they aren't grown-up —you can't imagine how tired I get of them. All they want to do is go dancing in stupid dives, or drink too much, or paw you —'
'You don't mean out at the Black Cat, do you?' Abner said.
She looked at him, surprised, very wide eyed (her tragic look, no doubt). 'Yes,' she said, lowering her voice. 'I don't know how you knew. I went once or twice because I thought it might be amusing.' She lifted her shoulders and looked away past him toward the canal bank in the twilight. 'Well, what can you do? Don't imagine I like it.'
'Then you ought not to do it,' Abner said.
She said reproachfully, 'Don't you ever do anything you shouldn't?' She managed to imply that, beset with temptations, her sensual nature often betrayed her; and so, if you wanted to tempt her, too, you would not necessarily be wasting your time.
Abner said, 'It wouldn't be very nice for your father if something happened out there and you got subpoenaed.'
She was disconcerted; but she said lightly, 'Oh, surely father would fix that! What's the use of being the Judge's daughter if you can't get away with anything?'
Abner was inclined to answer, 'You don't know your father very well.' But, of course, she was right; except that it wouldn't be her father. The use of being the Judge's daughter was that the district attorney's office would make sure before any officers were sent to the Black Cat, that Annette was not there; or if she were, that she got out first.
Annette said, 'Anyway, how thrilling! Think of the scandal! Is Mr. Bunting going to raid it — like the movies? If I were Mrs. Bunting, I'd go, too. I wouldn't let him get that Dagmar, that fan dancer, alone for a good grilling. I mean that as a joke. She is the most revolting creature, in case you haven't seen her.'
From across the board table, Dorothy Nyce said, 'What are you two so absorbed in?'
Abner said, 'Miss Vredenburgh is discussing local conditions with me.' Dorothy Nyce, known then as Dotty Wellman, had been at school with him; and, now Abner thought about it, had enjoyed a popularity probably not unlike Annette's. That had been, say, fifteen years ago, when Annette was an infant. Now that Abner thought further about it, he could remember, excited by what other boys told him, himself pursuing Dotty. He had not got much for his pains; but he wondered if Dotty ever thought of things like that; and whether it embarrassed her to be able to guess — she must be able to, by now — what her 'admirers' had really thought of her; in short, whether she despised herself, or just despised them. Abner guessed it was the latter. She had had several drinks, and she said with an intentional leer, 'And how are conditions, fair and warmer? Dick's having a birthday party to-morrow night. Come?'
'Try to,' said Abner, who had no such intention. He saw Dick Nyce, her husband, down at the table's end where he and Harry Wurts and Mark Irwin had their heads together over the littered table, singing softly against the babble of voices and the continuing radio music: '... but his mind was weak and low; he was wild and woolly and full of fleas —'
Adelaide Maurer brought up a chocolate layer cake. Annette took a piece; but Abner shook his head. 'How'd your story go?' he said.
'Oh, they only wanted half a column! I think they're mean! I tried to give them your speech; but they didn't want it.'
'They've got a nerve!' Abner said.
He heard Cousin Mary's raised voice crying, 'Why don't some of you men light the lanterns? Harry Wurts, why don't you stop singing that disgusting song and — where's Ab? I saw him just sitting there, stuffing himself.'
'I'll do it,' Abner called back, getting up with relief.
Farther down the table, Joe Jackman got up, too. While Abner lifted down the coloured paper lanterns and held them collapsed, Joe struck matches and lit the candles inside. He said, 'What are you trying to do, rob the cradle?'
Abner said, 'Robbery is the felonious and forcible taking from the person of another, goods or money to any value, by violence or putting in fear. It won't stick.'
'Somebody ought to put her in fear,' Joe said. 'If I were her father, I'd warm her little bottom.'
The Chinese lanterns, replaced one after another along the frame of the awning support, brightened softly as the candle flames increased and steadied. The fragile shapes glowed pink and yellow and green in the dusk under the dark masses of the canal-side elms. Surrounded, half overhung and canopied by these tree shadows, the gliding barge, its coloured lanterns, its sounds of music and voices, seemed to float in pure twilight, midway between the water and the sky.
Doctor Mosher had been sitting near the bow with Mr. Schaeffer, their red cigar ends burning together. He got up and came over to Abner as the last lantern was lighted. Doctor Mosher's stocky figure with its firm little belly was clothed in a white linen suit. His short grey hair was mussed up, his square pugnacious face down in the mouth. 'Ab,' he said, drawing him aside, 'why the devil don't you do something about your father? Can't you see what he needs? He says you don't tell him things.'
'Well,' said Abner, surprised, 'there's nothing much to tell him.'
'It doesn't have to be much,' Doctor Mosher said. 'God Almighty, boy, what do you suppose a man thinks of, sitting there all day? Well, maybe you aren't old enough to know.'
'I can see he'd naturally get pretty low in his mind,' Abner said, 'but —'
'Pretty low in his mind!' said Doctor Mosher. He shook overboard ashes from the cigar between his blunt fingers, 'Well, that'll do, that'll do; until you find out for yourself. Get after him, Ab! Don't do it so any fool can see what you're doing; but tell him about what's going on in court, ask him things, make him talk. When you see him sitting there, not saying anything, do you know what he's thinking about half the time? He's thinking about dying. The human mind doesn't like that. Pitch in and break it up!' He put a hand against Abner's shoulder, half patting him, half pushing him away, turned and went back to the camp stool next to Mr. Schaeffer.
Silently rounding a long bend, the barge rounded a rise of ground, too; and there, just on the treetops, above the humped frame of an approaching wagon bridge, the vast dusky full moon floated clear, floated mirrored in the unstirred lane of silent water. 'Hurray!' shouted Harry Wurts. 'Soft o'er the fountain —' He swept out an arm, clasping the first female within reach, who happened to be Bonnie, and seated her on his knee. 'What beauty!' he said, 'what romance! What-'
Bonnie said, 'Unhand me, you souse!' and got up.
Abner walked down and said, 'You don't need protection, do you?'
'A lot I'd get from you!' Bonnie said. She undid a flowered apron she had been wearing and tossed it folded into a hamper. 'Now, maybe I can eat,' she said. 'Ab, get some coffee for me, will you? Mother has a pot over there.'
Abner brought the cup down to her and sat at the corner of the table. 'Haven't you had anything to eat?' he said. 'I tried to save a place for you —'
'I saw you trying.'
'You mean my new girl-friend?' Abner murmured. 'Don't you like her?'
'She isn't such a fool as you think,' Bonnie said. 'She isn't after you.'
'Well, who is she after? You wound me.'
'I could tell you that, too. If you weren't so wrapped up in yourself, you could see.'
'Say, are you mad?' said Abner, advancing his elbow to slouch across the corner of the table. 'Say, who made that chicken salad? It's good.'
'I made it,' said Bonnie.'
'I knew you did. That's why I said it. You mustn't be mad because all the girls like me. I can't help it.'
Bonnie's clear face had clouded, and she looked at her plate, entirely engaged in eating, Abner took a drinking straw from the package beside the iced tea pitcher and poked her cheek with it. 'Don't be such a clown, Ab,' she said; 'it doesn't suit you.'
'Now, wait a minute,' Abner said, 'you were all right before supper. What don't you like? My elbow on the table?'
'You thought I was all right. You always think I am.'
'No, I don't,' said Abner. 'I'll tell you how I tell. There is your all-right voice, and your not-all-right voice, if you follow me — O.K. I'm sorry. But tell me sometime, will you?'
He stood up. Harry Wurts dropped an arm over his shoulder and affected to hang on him. 'Let her eat!' he said. 'Never argue with women on an empty stomach. You need exercise. I see someone tapping a beer keg. I must prepare. I mean, there is a little tapping — er, excuse me, m'am! It's time we stretched our legs, Counsellor. Carry me ashore!'
At Locktown, in the basin below the old locks, Ben Wister turned the barge around. The whitewashed fieldstone walls of the Locktown Inn, a big place with long sheds and stables built when traffic on the canal was heavy, still stood above the basin. Most of the building had now fallen into disrepair. Nobody had stopped or eaten there for years; but the Inn bar still did business, and it had other accommodations, not all that could be desired, but, by arrangement of the Club's secretary with the proprietor's wife, prepared as well as possible, and better than nothing.
While Ben swore at his mules and worked with a pole, a number of women went up for a minute, and a number of men visited the taproom to see whether the beer there was as bad as what they had on board, or worse. Abner, who had stayed with Joe Jackman to give Ben a hand with the boat, thought that he couldn't remember a more beautiful night. The beauty, helped perhaps by beer, seemed to swell the heart and stretch the nerves until they rang with pleasure. Abner sat with Joe Jackman against the low stern bulwark by the tiller while moonlight bright enough to read by fell on them. The tops of the great trees above the locks were frosted grey. On the tow path the waiting mules cast exact black shadows. The Inn's moonlit stone walls were intensely white, a chalky candescence brighter than the yellow squares of the taproom windows. Under the deep shade of the awning Abner could hear the quiet voices, see the moving cigarette ends, of the people still on board. Over the water a delicious breeze stirred. 'Pretty nice,' he said to Joe.
'Yeah,' said Joe, 'and not even any mosquitoes.' He got up. 'Want some beer?' he said.
'If you get it.'
Sitting alone, Abner looked at the moon. Up in the awning shadow someone picked the strings of a musical instrument — Adelaide Maurer, since the instrument was a mandolin — and the thin, tinkling notes began to arrange themselves, trying for a tune, while one or two voices helped, singing tentatively: 'Every time my honey leaves me, I get the blues —' Then, dissatisfied, they broke off, arguing about how it really went.
Abner listened, surprised, not sure how old that song was, but remembering it perfectly. During his childhood there had been a phonograph record of it, among a number of records which, with pleasure in the noise but little interest, he often played, trying to kill some of the endless time of those days —vacant hours of a rainy morning or a winter afternoon, or the too long pause after supper on a summer evening before it finally got dark. From the corner of the living-room the mahogany veneer victrola, almost as tall as, and bigger than, Abner, poured out the rapid tinny music, against which a voice, rapid and tinny, too, suddenly sang; while Abner fidgeted, looking around the room in the greyness of the rainy day, or watching the light reflected on the ceiling from the snowy lawn, or staring through the screened windows at the June dusk. Adelaide, who was older, might remember the tune as one they played at the first dances she went to; and, recalling it, she thought of — what?
Bill Maurer, if he had been Adelaide's honey, left her, all right; but, by then, Bill's leaving was a relief and even a joy; and Adelaide wanted nothing so much as the divorce that would finally rid her of him. As counsel Abner had handled one or two divorces; and sat as Master in one or two more, so patterns of the change from wanting to not wanting, from attraction to revulsion, and the budget of sorrows — first quarrels, disappointments, humiliations, idle tears, bitter speeches — implicit in the change, were known to him. The primary trouble was the same. Differences were only in detail. When Adelaide married Bill Maurer, when Cousin Mary married Jared Wacker, when what was to be the petitioner in any action sub sur divorce married what was to be the respondent, someone had married someone that he or she (usually she) did not really know. Ruling out occasional cool moves to get money or deliberate resolves to take a last or only chance, it would seem that those about to marry avoided rather than sought real knowledge; and were content to investigate nothing but their own feelings; and were satisfied if, among their feelings, they discovered some truth, such as: every time my honey leaves me, I get the blues.
Abner did not mean to make fun of such truths. He had experienced thuir impact. Long ago at law school when he tried — how callowly, how fervently! — to work into the hard schedule of his last year time enough for a Boston girl named Eunice Stockton, the incontinent force of those truths had surprised and tormented him; and their irremediable ache had filled him with despair when he began to realize that it was all coming to nothing.
Of course, all having come to nothing, and a nothing so absolute, and reached so long ago that Eunice Stockton's name, out of mind since he did not know when, made him start, Abner could be sure now that those forces would spend themselves and that those aches could be remedied. This was wisdom, the eschatology of what is true in the long run, and better than rubies; but things Abner knew now could not affect what Abner had felt then, and the feeling made it no thanks to him, nor to his prudence, nor to his common sense, that he was not to-day married to Eunice Stockton.
The thought of Eunice dismissed itself, being without present interest for him; but a melancholy remained. From the thought of Eunice — though no more than from the disinterested thought of Adelaide Maurer's unhappy marriage; perhaps, no more than from the tune on the mandolin with its same assurance that everything could be counted on to die —the moonlight took a superinduced sadness. Abner found himself thinking, still at random, of Howell and Basso and Leming in their cells at the jail, with the same moonlight through the bars. It was no night to be in jail. Probably it was no night, either, to sit, like his father, alone trying to read, or, little better, playing cribbage with Aunt Myrt. Abner thought of Earl Foulke, and of how he had not been entirely above board with Marty; and how it would have been better if he had been. He thought of the talk with Jesse Gearhart; and he did not actually care what Jesse thought, or whether Jesse was pleased or displeased, or liked him or didn't like him; yet he could see the difficulty or misunderstanding waiting there in plain view, a sort of ox in the road, which Abner on his way to the future would have to deal with — and perhaps deal with very soon, if Marty were really getting ready to go to the Attorney General's office.
From the barge-side a couple of planks had been laid to the bank. Hearing steps, Abner turned his head and saw Bonnie. She was just coming down from the Inn. She walked with easy light erectness, not looking at him; but something, he did not know what, told him that she had been looking at him until a moment ago, and his spirits lifted. The end of the plank was hardly a yard away, and when she reached it, he said, 'Feel better?'
'Don't be coarse!' she answered.
He patted the deck beside him, and she poised a moment, hesitating. Then she stepped off the bulwark and came up. Holding her skirt in under her pretty knees she seated herself, not too close to him. Joe Jackman, by the beer keg, saw her, and called, 'Have some suds, Mis' Drummond?'
'No, thanks, Joe,' she said. 'Yes. 'I will.'
Abner said, 'I have to get off at Waltons to pick my car up. Suppose you get off, too; and I'll take you home.'
'No. I have to take mother home.'
'She could hitch-hike, couldn't she?' Abner said. 'Not, of course, that I object to her company; but —'
'No. I can't. I drove the Ormsbees' station wagon down.'
'You mean you're still mad?' said Abner contentedly.
'Yes,' she said. She gazed at him with defiance, her lips pressed tight together. 'Oh!' she said. She gave way and laughed. 'How can anyone stay mad at you, you dope!'
'What you need,' said Abner, picking up her left hand and inspecting it, 'is a ring. You know. Not too expensive. Then when you felt mad, you'd have something to give back to me.'
'No. And I'm not engaged to you. Did you tell Cousin Philander I was?'
'On the contrary,' Abner said, 'he told me. He asked me if we'd had a row. He said it was high time I got married. Wait!' She tried to pull her hand away; but he held it. 'Is that what you're — you were mad about?'
'No. Not that I don't mind what Cousin Philander thinks. He's sweet. I mind what you think.' With a quick motion she got her hand away.
'And what do I think?' said Abner.
'You think you can just —'
'Do I intrude?' said Joe Jackman. He stood over them, holding the beer mugs. His shadow fell on Bonnie's linen skirt.
'Yes,' said Abner.
'No, you don't!' Bonnie said. 'Thanks, Joe.'
She took the mug in both hands and brought it to her lips. It was not a gesture that might be expected to stir the heart; but, like the ordinary tones of Bonnie's voice, her ordinary gestures were moving to Abner. Perpetually fresh, they were familiar, too. They were the tones and gestures of the thin quiet child who had lived several years in the same house with him, long ago. Bonnie had been too young — almost six years younger —to deserve actual notice; and he had little occasion to notice her, for she was shy and retiring and never bothered him. He saw her at meals, and sometimes, distantly, playing with her dolls in the summer house, or pedalling a bicycle on the curved paths through the shrubbery. He had not needed to be told (though he was told) never to do or say anything that would make Bonnie feel that he wasn't glad to have her there, or that it wasn't just as much her home as his.
When Abner returned on a vacation from college and found Bonnie gone, after that last row of Cousin Mary's, it would be too much to say that he missed her; but, on the other hand, he had noticed her more than he realized. He remembered her in the press and hush of his mother's funeral, looking like a child with her child's dark blue hat and curls on her coat collar, coming up to him. In an agony of constraint, her lifted face scarlet, her voice insecure, she said how sorry she was.
When Abner returned on vacations from law school he found that Bonnie had unexpectedly grown up. He took her to a couple of dances; because he liked her, and because she did not seem to have much fun; and most of all because it was easier to take her than any other girl. Any other girl might think he meant something that he did not mean, since, during that last year when he was home for the holidays, and during the year or so following when he was home all the time, he was busy being true to Eunice Stockton in Boston. When all was over with Eunice, Abner felt less inclined than ever to start anything serious with local girls his own age; and the simplest way to avoid it was to continue taking Bonnie around. As time went on, and he heard indirectly that Bonnie had more than once turned down boys who asked her to parties because he always took her, Abner saw that, however easy and agreeable for him, it was very unfair to her; and finally he spoke to her about it, driving her home early one morning after the spring cotillion at the Calumet Club. She said, 'I like going with you.' After a moment, she added,' Are you getting tired of taking me?'
'No,' he said, 'but I thought —'
'No,' she said, her voice suddenly strangled, 'no, you're wrong. You don't think. You don't use your head at all. Why do you think I'm here? Do you think it's because nobody else ever asked me? Do you think —'
'I thought,' he said, 'that you thought I was the next thing to your grandfather.'
It was not however possible to do anything about it immediately. Abner had just been appointed assistant district attorney, and it meant, while he learned his job, that he had less time for his own practice and temporarily earned less money. Bonnie had her position at the school and because of her mother, needed it. Their relationship, though fundamentally changed, did not change very much outwardly. It was simply recognized that, in the local usage, they were going together; a status that could subsist, if necessary, a long time without prejudice to the general assumption that they would be married. They took it for granted, and everyone who knew them, like Joe Jackman, took it for granted.
It was what Joe meant when, still standing, he said, 'I suppose I can sit somewhere else if you have a private fight you want to finish.'
'It's finished,' Abner said. 'I won.'
'Did he?' said Joe to Bonnie.
'He has the hide of a rhinoceros,' Bonnie said. 'He just goes lumbering along without a care in the world —' She set down her beer mug, looked vainly about, and then wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. Laughing, Abner brought a handkerchief from his breast pocket, took the hand, and wiped it. 'You blow it off,' he said. 'What would you do without me?.'
Ben Wister yelled at his mules, and the barge began to move.
In immediate response came other yells, wilder and louder. Down the slope from the Inn, gambolling in the moonlight, rushed Harry Wurts, his head decorated with maple leaves. He had somehow possessed himself of a harmonica, which he blew rather than played. Reaching the tow path, he jumped on board safely.
After him, pell-mell, hallooing and whooping, came Dick Nyce and Mark Irwin. Mark flung himself, plainly with intention, short of the stern and struck the water with a prodigious splash.
'Throw him the anchor!' shouted Harry. 'Blow the man down!'
Mark came to the surface, gave a roar and struck out, swimming after the barge; but he made little progress and soon he touched bottom and clambered streaming up the bank. Dick Nyce, on the tow path, was doubled up helplessly, convulsed with laughter, so Mark rushed at him and pushed him in.
'The damn fools!' said Joe Jackman. 'Boy, are they going to feel good to-morrow!'
It could be seen that his sentiment was generally shared; but Harry Wurts, throwing his maple leaves overboard, said, 'That's what I say! Only, why wait till to-morrow? Sit near Joe, and feel bad right now!' By way of dismissing these monkey-shines, the mandolin sounded under the awning and several voices began to sing: 'Last night I was dreaming of thee, Love, was dreaming ...'
Harry Wurts, hearing it, groaned and covered his ears; but the older people liked it, and the volume increased. The barge glided on, the bow ripples running silver, the moon behind lifting higher above the narrow water. At farm-houses across the fields the aroused dogs barked and barked as the singing floated to them faintly, moving back toward Childerstown.
On its hill Childerstown extended indistinctly, a dull shine of moonlight on the ranges of slate roofs, the few towers and many treetops bathed in pale radiance. Abner, driving up the Broad Street pike, cut off by the great shaded park of Beulah Cemetery to go home a shorter way. In Beulah were graves whose denizens had been laid there in the seventeenth century; but about 1850 the bounds were much enlarged by avenues extended across the neighbouring fields and planted with hard maples. These trees now made a fine show, serenely quartering the jumble of plinths and monoliths, of mean little temple-shaped mausoleums, or crosses and urns and angels, that seemed to show how all the dead had been in life vain and pretentious, and in death left a memory cherished by imbeciles and vulgarians. Abner thought that he would rather be buried, if he had any say about it, down in the yard of the old Friends Meeting House; but since the Coateses were Presbyterians this was unlikely; and furthermore he was amply provided for in Beulah, where the Coates plots, purchased with economical foresight at the time of the enlargement, had room for a dozen more ready — even, as in the case of the four-ton granite block over Abner's mother, waiting. Balancing her name, the Judge's was cut, and when Abner's father died all they had to do was fill in the second date.
Abner drove by the silent, mostly dark brick houses of North Court Street. The square stone facade of the courthouse lifted above the street lights and the dark trees. At the corner before the county administration building Abner saw the uniformed figure of Bill Ortt, the chief of the three Childerstown policemen, crossing toward the obelisk of the Civil War monument on which moonlight fell so bright that the names of battles, raised in relief on the surfaces of the shaft, could be read—Spottsylvania, Brandy Station, Cold Harbor. Bill Ortt recognized the car and lifted a hand to Abner. Moonlight glinted on the big slate roof of the courtroom and a few lights burned in the jail behind.
Abner drove out West Court Street, past the less frequent houses, with not a car on the road nor a person in sight. Turning between the stone gateposts he could see one light at home, in the lower hall; but the house, big, blocky in the shadows, was dark everywhere else. He tiptoed up into the cavern of the veranda and slid his key into the lock.
As he opened the door, the telephone rang suddenly, like a signal; and he jumped to catch it before it woke everyone up. In the dark corner under the stairs he bent and said 'Hello'.
'That you, Ab? Hope I didn't wake you up.'
'I was out. I just got in. Who is it?'
'Pete Wiener. Look, Ab; there's just been a honey of an accident on route sixteen. One driver killed, and the other one I have here, charged with manslaughter. I don't really think it was so much his fault, what they say —'
As justices of the peace went, Pete Wiener at Newmarket was a good one, and when he didn't know what to do you could depend on him to find out before he proceeded. Abner said, 'But the other fellow's dead?'
'Cut his head right clean off,' Wiener said. 'You never saw such a mess. Now, what I want to know is, I have to hold my man for the coroner, don't I? He thinks he can put up bail. He's got an auto club card —'
'No. You can't take recognizance in manslaughter, Pete.'
'Well, what'll he have to do to get out? He wants to know, naturally.'
'There's nothing he can do to-night. He'll have to go to jail. If he wants to get out before the inquest, what he'll have to do is petition for a writ of habeas corpus in order to be admitted to bail. Understand? You can draw one up for him and send it over to Judge Irwin tomorrow.'
'About what I figured. What'll I do with him meanwhile? I got the state police here, now. Should I give him to them?'
'Better tell them to bring him right up here to jail,' Abner said. 'The Judge doesn't like them holding people at the sub-station; and he'll direct the writ to the sheriff in the morning, so the sheriff'd better have him. Make sure he isn't hurt, Pete. Sometimes they are, but don't know.'
'Yes, I will, Ab. Thanks very much.'
Abner hung up, switched out the hall light, and began quietly to climb the long stairs. The door of his father's bedroom was ajar, and as he turned at the top, Abner heard the low, thickened voice, 'That you, son?'
Abner stepped to the door. 'Yes, sir,' he said. 'Telephone wake you up? Sorry.'
'No. I was awake. Who was it?'
'Pete Wiener. Wanted to know about bail for a fellow.'
'You're home pretty early. Sober?'
'Afraid so.'
'Who was there? Come in; don't stand there or Myrt'll hear you.'
The high bedroom was duskily lighted by slats of bright moonlight on the floor under the shaded south windows, which formed a bay. Abner sat down by the bed.
'Sleepy?' his father said.
'No,' Abner said. 'Schaeffer was there, and Doc Mosher, and Jesse Gearhart —'
About to make a comment on Jesse, he checked it; for that problem was his own. On most subjects it was possible to be open with the Judge; but Abner found himself disinclined always to discuss plans or hopes — very likely, Abner admitted, because they sometimes changed; and his father, who never forgot what you told him, would remark on the change. Judge Coates thought that courses of action ought to be planned slowly and carefully, and then not swerved from. Abner said, 'Cousin Mary was there. By the way, Father, did you say something to Bonnie this morning about us getting married?'
'Why, I don't think so,' the Judge said. He stirred against the pillows. 'Well, I may have said something. Sometimes I think you don't show much sense about women. That foolishness with that girl in Boston! If you could have seen yourself all that time —'
Altogether without malice, indeed with the kindliest anxiety, older people often seemed to feel that, just so long as they implied that you were to-day improved, you would not mind hearing, and might profit by the reminder, that once when you were younger you were everyone's laughing-stock. Abner said, 'Bonnie was feeling a little snappy about it. I think she thinks you and I take too much on ourselves.'
'I think all she wants is for you to ask her a little harder. This business has been going on long enough. A girl likes to see some ardour, sometimes. You can overdo this common-sense attitude. Did I offend you, speaking about Boston?'
'I don't know about you, sir,' Abner said, 'but when somebody tells me I am, or was, an ass, I may grant the truth of the matter alleged; but nobody can stop me wanting to interpose a demurrer to the evidence.'
The Judge grunted and gave his difficult laugh. 'I think in this case the evidence may be prima facie insufficient,' he said. 'I'll sustain you. Don't mind what I say, Ab. Your Boston girl wasn't any of my business. I just never liked her. I don't know why. How did you get on in court this afternoon?'
'All right.' But Abner remembered what Doctor Mosher had said, and continued, 'Actually, it isn't much of a case. Harry and George are out for technicalities, so we have to be careful; but I always remember your saying once that there was never any trouble about the law if you just kept the facts straight. Ex facto oritur jus! How's that. You ought to hear Vredenburgh on maxims, sometime.'
'I have heard him. Tom's not very patient with abstractions. He's got a literal mind; and it's a good thing to have; but he hasn't Horace Irwin's feeling for the law. When you come to the bench, I hope you'll have a feeling for it.'
'When I come to the bench, they'll start a revolution, probably,' Abner said. 'About this case, I know one thing Harry's going to appeal on is the severance — whether this Leming may testify for the Commonwealth while he still stands as a defendant. Do you think Harry has anything?'
In the dusk of the moonlight, Judge Coates rested silent a moment.
'No,' he said finally, 'that's a matter of competency. The act takes care of it, I think. All persons are competent, except the stated exceptions. A convicted perjuror. Husband and wife, except in certain cases —they are not competent on confidential communications. There is a point there, by the way. It has been held in a bastardy case that a married woman is not competent to rebut the presumption of access by testifying that she did not have intercourse with her husband. Well; and counsel is incompetent on confidential matters.'
He took a tissue from the pile on the bedside table and wiped his mouth. 'Now,' he said, more energetically, 'your man either is, or he is not, one of those exceptions. If he is not, he's competent, and that's the end of it — as far as you're concerned. The other sections of the act aren't relevant. One case I remember in this state of a co-defendant being disqualified was under section five, clause E —Burke versus Burke, if you want to look it up.' He closed his eyes a moment. 'Two forty; three seventy-nine. It was the case of an interested party to a contract. Well, I guess you don't want me to write your brief.'
'Don't we, though!' Abner said.
'Well, when Harry gets his together, I'll look at it, if you and Marty Bunting want.' He moved his mouth, biting at the lip. 'I wrote an opinion several years ago that involved the competency point. But the basic theory is put about as well as it can be in Benson versus U. S., one forty-six; three twenty-five.'
Abner shook his head; there was no doubt about it, the old boy knew his stuff. 'I don't know how you do it, sir,' he said sincerely. 'When a case is over, I can never remember any citations.'
'Well, I don't remember much any more,' Judge Coates said. 'I don't know whether you want to hear this or not. Wouldn't blame you if you didn't. I think slowly. Hard to get it out.'
'I want to hear it,' Abner said, 'but I don't know whether I ought to keep you up.'
'Better worry about yourself. You don't sleep much when you lie around all day.'
Abner found and lit a cigarette. 'Want one, sir?' he said.
'All right.'
The light of the match Abner held for him fell golden on the hanging side of the paralysed face, and the Judge moved his head a little to shadow it. 'Well, the general idea,' he said, holding the cigarette up to the corner of his mouth, 'is that the defendant actually on trial is certainly not excluded by his interest, and his being party to the record. How, then, can you reason that a co-defendant is? He's only technically a party to the record. He —'
Smoking, Abner listened, locking his jaw against the little impulses to yawn. 'Seems reasonable,' he said.
Judge Coates jabbed out the cigarette end. 'You can rely on the common law,' he said. 'They say the Catholic Church is like that — I mean, aside from the supernatural side of it. If you do what they tell you, you won't make many mistakes. I never could. There's something about their organization that seems to me to debase a man.' He raised his good hand and yawned behind it.
'My life's about over,' he said. 'I don't know whether I really grasp that when I say it, or not; whether it's a thing you ever can really grasp. Grasp it near enough, I guess. So I can say that I'm glad I spent my life in the law. I don't know how you feel about it — there are disappointments; there are things that seem stupid, or not right. But they don't matter much. It's the stronghold of what reason men ever get around to using. You ought to be proud to hold it. A man can defend himself there. It gives you a groundwork of good sense; you'll never be far wrong —' His voice, getting slower between the spoken sentences, made Abner look sharply at him.
'I don't know anything,' Judge Coates said. 'You can't think everything out for yourself. Lay hold on something —'
With a faint peaceful snoring, it was apparent that Judge Coates had drifted off to sleep. Abner stood up softly. The cigarette smoke had dissipated, the moonlight had moved on the floor. Passing the screen before the open windows Abner could smell the perfume of flowering shrubs scenting the warm silent night, drifting through the silent house.