Carlin walked with a quick firm step across the square from the courthouse to his office in the bank building. His usually ruddy face was pale, his eyes gleamed with excitement under the brim of his soft felt hat. He made his way through the crowd that filled the street before the jail without halting, shaking off impatiently some attempts to stop him, nodding or shaking his head for all answer to questions shouted at him.
It was a bright spring day. For the second time since his marriage the maples round the square were putting out their brilliant young leaves. But there was no brightness in the throng under the maples. A sombre excitement moved them, a low-toned angry murmur followed Carlin's progress. It was hardly personal to him, however, or only faintly, doubtfully so. He was recognized respectfully, and responded with curt nods, or sometimes a quick lifting of his hand, like a military salute.
He ran up the steps into his own office, and through this to Judge Baxter's, entering with a quick rap on the glass, closing the door sharply behind him. The Judge was alone, writing at his desk, and looked round rather absently, pushing his spectacles up on his forehead. Carlin flung his hat on the rickety sofa in the corner and standing by the desk, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, frowning, he said firmly:
"Judge, we must take this case."
The Judge looked at him now with attention, but without answering. Resistance showed in his face, but he put out his lower lip and thoughtfully shifted his quid of tobacco from one cheek to the other.
"He sent for me and I was admitted to see him, as his counsel," Laurence went on in the same quick urgent tone. "And then—we must do it, that's all."
The Judge looked at the sheet of paper before him, half-filled with his crabbed painstaking writing, laid down his pen, and leaned back in his chair.
"Why?" he demanded coolly.
"My God, Judge!" Carlin burst out.
With an effort to master himself, he turned away and walked several times across the floor.
"If you'd seen the man—if you'd heard him!... I'm all smashed up by it," he confessed huskily, stopping and staring out of the window.
"I see you are," said the Judge. "Have a drink?"
Carlin shook his head. But the Judge, opening a cupboard in his desk, took out a bottle and one glass, poured a stiff allowance of whiskey and tossed it off neat.
"I'm glad you don't drink much, Laurence," he remarked as he put away the glass. "With your excitable temperament you couldn't stand it."
As Carlin stood silent, staring out, the Judge addressed his back.
"I don't like murder cases—never did. Never could do anything with 'em. My clients were hanged, every time—that was long ago.... I haven't touched a criminal case for—well, years. I'm no jury lawyer. Wedon't want to go into that, Laurence ... and then, the fellow's a brute."
"No—no!... Wait until I tell you about it...."
Laurence turned round. His tone was calmer but he still looked deeply agitated, and began to pace the floor again.
"Well, take your time.... But I can't see what it is to you," said Judge Baxter curiously.
His genial shrewd old face expressed a somewhat cynical perplexity. If he had ever been deeply moved by human passion and folly, he had forgotten it—for many years it had been only a spectacle to him. All crimes spring from love, so-called, or money. One of these two great mainsprings the Judge understood thoroughly. He knew all about human cupidity. He had made his own fortune out of the desire of some of his fellow-beings to over-reach others, and this golden fountain would never run dry. The Judge had all the law of property at his fingers' ends. His ability to help a corporation to use the law was abundantly recognized and recompensed. He was a noted railroad counsel. Why turn aside from this safe and profitable concern with people's purses, to meddle with the wild impulses of their hearts, so-called?
"You say you don't see what it is to me," Carlin began, turning abruptly. "But I know the man, if you remember. He was in my company—one of the best in it too—I knew him well—that's why he thought of me, I suppose.... But even if I hadn't known him, if I'd seen any man as he was this morning, if any man talked to me as he did.... I never heard anything like it—I never saw anything so friendless, forlorn.... He's likea lost beaten dog—there isn't a soul in the world that isn't against him...."
"Well, that's right, I guess," said the Judge cautiously. "He's worse than friendless." He turned his head toward the window, giving ear to the noise from the street—a low continuous murmur. "That crowd means trouble.... When do they take him out?"
"By the afternoon train. The Sheriff thinks he can do it—he's got thirty deputies sworn in."
"I've never seen a lynching here," said the Judge, getting up and going to the window. "But—we came pretty near it once or twice during the war. It looked a good deal like this, too.... You see, our people don't make an awful lot of noise about a thing—when they mean business, they're quiet."
The two men stood side by side, looking down on the square, which was by now closely packed.
"Well, I guess we'll get him out just the same," said Carlin grimly.
"'We'?"
"They won't get him if I can help it.... But I'd like to know why theywantto—don't understand a mob getting up like this about it—"
"It runs like wildfire, once it starts.... Perhaps the boys want some excitement, we haven't had much lately. And then," said the Judge emphatically, "they don'tlikeit. It was an unprovoked brutal murder of a woman—a good hardworking woman, with little children to look after—and this fellow comes back, takes to drinking, quarrels with his wife and smashes her head with an ax—by God, if they want to string him up, I don't blame them!"
"Look here, Judge, you're just like the rest of them, you don't understand, you don't know! A man doesn't smash his wife with an ax fornothing—"
"If you're going to try to justify him—"
"No, he doesn't want that, neither do I. He's a lost man and he knows it.... All he seemed to want of me was to have one human being understand it—just to tell me about it. He doesn't want to get off, he wants to die."
Carlin's intense blue eyes held the Judge's unwilling gaze; they both forgot the crowd outside, turned from the window. The Judge sat down again at his desk.
"Well, tell me about it," he said reluctantly. "But I'm sorry to see you so worked up.... I really don't see how we could handle a case like this, even if we had a chance to do anything with it. I tell you it isn't the thing, it's all off my beat—you know it. And you're just getting your start, and to handicap yourself right off with an unpopular case where you haven't the ghost of a show, where feeling's dead against you—no, Laurence, my boy, I oughtn't to let you—we can't do it!"
Laurence drew a chair to the other side of the desk, facing the Judge.
"Ifwecan't, I'll try it alone," he said quietly. "All I want for Barclay is a hearing—just to have his side of it known, that's all. He'll have to pay the penalty, of course—he'll get life imprisonment at least and I'm not sure he wouldn't rather be hanged, in fact I'm sure he would,now.... But he did have provocation—if you could get anybody to see it."
"Well, see if you can get me to see it. I guess that's a good test," said the Judge coolly. "I'm as prejudicedagainst him as anybody. I wouldn't lynch him, maybe—but I don't want you to lose your first important case."
He leaned back in his chair and fixed his old, wise, wary eyes on Carlin, who, quite calm now, had an abstracted look.
"Well, to begin I'd have to tell you what I knew about Barclay before this.... He was in the first company to go from here—enlisted for three months, you know. Just dropped his tools and went—he was a machinist, making good wages, had a nice little home here, wife and two children. They were dependent on him, but the wife was sturdy and said she guessed they could get along somehow—and they did. She got work and people helped them, and she kept up the home. Barclay was awfully proud of her and the youngsters—another one was born after he went. He used to show me their pictures and talk about them. He was good at machinery—it was the only thing hedidknow—he was a gunner in my battery later and a good one. Strong as a horse and he'd fight like the devil when things got hot. A big fellow, good-natured too and kind of simple-minded—soft, you might say, except when he was fighting or drunk. He didn't seem to have but two ideas in his head—one was the war and the other was his family. He re-enlisted, of course, and went through the whole thing, but he was homesick all the time. He used to write home whenever he could, and when he didn't get letters as often as he thought he ought to, he'd come to me and worry, and ask if I'd heard and so on.... I'm telling you this, Judge," Carlin looked earnestly at the Judge's impassive face, "so you can understand whatsort of a man he was and what his home meant to him—just everything, outside of what he was fighting for. That man made a real sacrifice, because he thought it his duty. He felt it all the time, but he thought the country needed him, and he had to do it, and he had a pride in it too—he didn't look for any reward, but I suppose he thought what he did would be appreciated somehow—anyhow he didn't expect to lose out altogether by it...."
Carlin stopped for a moment, frowning till his eyes showed only a blue glint.
"Lots of us that went were remembered," he said slowly, "and some—were forgotten."
He picked up a pencil and began scoring deep lines on a sheet of paper.
"Four years is a good slice out of a man's life. He loses a lot—in his life, his work—other men get the start of him—he's far away, and perhaps will never come back, and they'rehere.... When a man gives that much, and risks everything, in what seems a holy cause to him, it seems as if—it seems as if—"
His voice trembled. The Judge was watching him now intently. He got up and began to walk the floor again.
"You see, Judge, that's natural—to want to have some recognition of what you've done. And I know a lot of our fellows felt that the people at homedidn'trecognize it. They made a lot of fuss about us when we went away, but when we came back—those of us that did come back—they didn't get excited much about us.
"They were busy—they'd been living their lives inpeace while we were fighting and protecting them—westood between them and the enemy and most of them never felt what war is. They might know about it, but they didn'tfeelit, we saved them from that.... Then when we came back, sometimes they were glad to see us, sometimes not. Anyhow, we had to scramble around and see what we could do, to make a living, to get back the place we'd lost. Lots of us found it hard. It wasn't only the time lost, but those four years of war made a difference in us, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse...."
"Surely," said Judge Baxter, nodding.
"You see, Judge, it upsets all a man's habits and way of living. You can't make a good soldier of a man without loosening up some things in him that are usually kept down. He faces violent death every day, and hekills. It's a primitive thing, war is, and men get back to where they were. They suffer and they try to make the other fellow suffer more, they get callous, savage, lots of them. Then when they come back to civilized life, it's hard for them to fit in. I wonder there wasn't more trouble than there was, I wonder that that great army, nearly a million men, melted away as quietly as it did.... Judge, it was a great thing that we did—"
Carlin stopped and fixed his eyes on the Judge, who nodded gravely.
"We felt it so at the time, at least very many of us did, and looking back, we can see how big a thing it was. We fought the good fight, we crushed something evil, that would have destroyed our country. Everyman in our army has a right to be proud of it, proud of himself, if he did his best ... he has a right to be remembered...."
"Yes, surely," said Judge Baxter, with the same grave intentness, his keen eyes watching Carlin's every look and motion.
There was a brief silence.
"Well," said Carlin, drawing a deep breath. "Barclay was forgotten.... The last year, letters were scarce. We were on the jump and then we went down into Georgia.... I don't know just what happened here. He doesn't make any accusation against his wife, though it seems there was somebody else she liked. But she'd settled her life without him. She could support the family and she'd got used to doing without him. Perhaps she never cared so much for him as he thought. But yet if he'd been here, probably it would have gone along all right. But he wasn't, you see.... And she heard things about him too. He was in the guardhouse a few times for drinking, and somebody else would mention it in writing home.... All that came out after he got back."
Carlin was still walking about restlessly under the Judge's watchful gaze.
"When he got back he found he wasn't wanted—that's all. His wife could do without him, and preferred to. His children were little—they'd forgotten him. There was a baby he'd never seen. He felt like a stranger in the house. And she made him feel it! At first he couldn't realize it, and tried to have it all as it was before—but it was no use. She didn't wanthim there.... Well, I suppose you can't see what that meant to him—"
"Yes, I can," said the Judge.
"It was all he had, you know. And she'd taken it away from him—the children and all. He could see that if he'd never come back, if he'd been killed, she would have married this other man, and never missed him. He saw that she wished he hadn't come back. In fact—she told him so, after they got to quarrelling...."
"That was pretty bad," muttered the Judge.
"And he still loved her, you see. Otherwise he'd have gone away again. But he wanted her and the children. So he took to drinking—"
"Why, naturally."
"He took to drinking hard and didn't work—couldn't. And he made the house miserable, of course. They quarrelled terribly, he beat her.... She reproached him for being a useless drunken loafer, spoiling her life and the children's—then she told him she wished he'd died.... It was after that...."
Carlin was silent. The Judge nodded his white head and said abruptly: "Yes, the poor simpleton—lost his head."
"He doesn't remember how it happened—he was drunk. But he doesn't deny it—can't, of course," said Carlin in a low voice. "He said to me that he could hardly believe it ... he'd always loved her ... he said it didn't seem possible he could have hurt her ... he thought he must have been crazy ... he wished he had been killed down south, then it wouldn't have happened and she would have been happy, and thechildren taken care of, while now.... And then he cried...."
Carlin's voice broke, and he turned away to the window. The Judge's eyes followed him eagerly, dwelt on his bent head, his bowed shoulders for some moments.
"The poor fool," he said, taking off his spectacles and looking at them critically.
"Judge, it was an awful thing to see—that big fellow, all crumpled up like a wet rag—broken, crushed—helpless as a baby,—not a soul to put out a hand to him—and he was sinking, lost—lost forever.... And a good man too, that's the mystery ... why, Judge, anybody might have acted that way—mighthave ... if people could only see that, feel it...."
The Judge had polished his spectacles to a nicety and now put them on and stood up.
"Well, Laurence, I guess you can make them feel it—I guess you can, my boy!" he burst out.
His broad face lighted up with enthusiasm, with professional ardour.
"Laurence, you were right and I was wrong. If you feel the thing as much as this, it's a chance for you. Nothing counts so much with a jury as feeling—real feeling—and you've got it. We'll take that case and you shall make the address—I'm not a jury lawyer myself, but I know one when I see him! You won't save your man, Laurence, but many a reputation has been made in a lost cause!"
And the Judge, advancing, took Carlin's hand and shook it warmly. Carlin looked at him with troubled, bewildered eyes, and the Judge clapped him on the shoulder briskly.
"Laurence, my boy, I knew you had it in you!" he cried.
"I'm not taking this case to distinguish myself," Carlin said angrily.
"No, no, of course not—that makes it all the better!" the Judge assured him, with the utmost cheerfulness.
But suddenly he became grave again and pondered.
"If the boys try anything it will be when they take him to the train," he reflected.
"I'm going home now to get a bite of dinner—then I'll be on hand if there's trouble. You coming, Judge?" Carlin took up his hat.
"I've got a letter to finish—then I'll be along. But, say, Laurence—"
The Judge stopped on the way to his desk.
"Mary—she won't like this."
Laurence was at the door, and turned a disturbed look on the Judge.
"No, she won't. She liked Mrs. Barclay."
"She won't like our defending him."
"I'll explain—there's a lot she doesn't know—I'll tell her and she'll understand." Carlin's tone had not much conviction.
"Well, perhaps," said the Judge dubiously.