CHAPTER IX

The next morning McNiven found Charity at his office when he arrived. She had evidently been awake all night.

She told McNiven a story that agreed in the essentials with Jim's except that she made herself out the fool where he had blamed himself. McNiven had no success in trying to quiet her with soothing promises of a tame conclusion. She dreaded Kedzie.

“If it were just an outburst of jealousy,” she said, “you might talk to the woman. But she's not jealous of her husband. She was as cool as a cucumber when she found us together. She was glad of it, because she had got a way to get her Marquess now. She's ambitious and Lady Macbeth couldn't outdo her.”

She told McNiven what she had not had the heart to tell Jim about Strathdene. It worried him more than he admitted. While he meditated on a measure to meet this sort of attack, Charity suggested one. It was drastic, but she was desperate. She proposed the threat of a countercharge against Kedzie.

McNiven shook his head and made strange noises in his pipe. He asked for evidence against Kedzie. Charity could only quote the general opinion.

McNiven said: “No. You allege innocence on your part in spite of appearances which you admit are almost conclusive. You can hardly claim that more innocent appearances on her part prove that she is guilty. Besides, we don't want to stir up any more sediment. We'll do everything on the Q. T. Money talks, and the little lady is not deaf. My legal advice to you is, 'Don't fret,' and my medical advice is, 'Go to bed and stay there till I send you word that it's all over.' Remember one thing, there never was a storm so big that it didn't blow over.”

Charity was not in the least quieted. His sedative only annoyed her ragged nerves.

“Keep my name clean,” she whispered.

As she rode home in a taxicab that was like a refrigerator she passed in the Fifth Avenue mêlée Zada L'Etoile, now Mrs. Cheever, with the tiny little Cheever like a princelet asleep at her breast, hiding with its pink head the letter “A” that had grown there.

People of cautious respectability spoke to Zada now with amiable respect, and murmured:

“Funny thing! She's made a man of that good-for-nothing Peter Cheever. They're as happy and as thick as thieves.”

Charity had heard this saying, and she dreaded to realize that perhaps in a few days respectable people would be turning from herself, not seeing her, or storing up credit by snubbing her and muttering:

“No wonder poor Cheever couldn't get along with her. He took the blame like a gentleman, and now she's found out. She was a sly one, but you can't fool all the people all the time.”

Charity had not been gone from McNiven's office long before a lawyer's clerk arrived bearing the papers for a divorce on statutory grounds in the case of Dyckman versus Dyckman, Mrs. Charity C. Cheever, co-respondent, Anson Beattie counsel for plaintiff.

McNiven went after Beattie at once and proposed a quiet treaty and a settlement out of court. Beattie grinned so odiously that McNiven had to say:

“Oh, I remember you. You used to be an ambulance-chaser. What are you after now—a little dirty advertising?” “What are you after?” said Beattie. “A little collusive juggling with the Seventh Commandment?”

“The one against false witness is the Ninth,” said McNiven, “But let's have a conference. This war in Europe might have been avoided by a little heart-to-heart talk beforehand. Let's profit by the lesson.”

Beattie consented to this, and promised to arrange it on condition that in the mean while McNiven would accept service for his client. This was done, and Beattie left.

He saw his great publicity campaign being thwarted, and changed his mind. He hankered for fame more than gold. He filed the papers and meditated. He did not know how much or how little Kedzie loved her husband, and she had told him nothing of Strathdene. He feared that a compromise might be patched up and perhaps a reconciliation effected. He had had women come to him imploring a divorce from their abominable husbands only to see the couple link up again, kiss and make up, and call him an abominable villain for trying to part them.

After some earnest consideration of the right of his own career and his family to the full profit of this windfall, he looked up a reporter and through him a group of reporters and promised them a peep at something interesting.

He had the privilege of calling for the papers from the clerk of the court, so he took them out and permitted the reporters to glance within and make note of the contents.

Late editions of the evening papers gave the Dyckman divorce a fanfare rivaling the evidence that the Germans were about to resume their unrestricted submarineSchrecklichkeit.

If the spoken word is impossible to recall, how much more irretrievable the word that is printed in millions of newspapers. The name of Dyckman was a household word. It resounded now in every household throughout the country, and across the sea, where the name had become familiar in all the nations from the big financial dealings of the elder Dyckman as a banker for the Allies.

Reporters played about Jim Dyckman that night as if they werebanderillerosand he a raging bull. He fought them with the same success.

They tried to find Charity, but she was in the doctor's care—actually. The doctor himself dismissed the reporters. He called them “ghouls,” which did not sweeten their hearts toward his patient.

The next day there was probably not a morning paper in the United States in any language that failed to star the news that Mrs. Dyckman had found her husband's relations with Mrs. Cheever intolerable.

That morning saw the conference in McNiven's office, as promised by Beattie. But Kedzie did not appear; she had vanished to some place where she could not be found by anybody except the man who wrote her highly imaginative affidavits for her and the notary public who attested her signature.

At the conference with Jim, Kedzie was represented by counsel, also by father. Jim called the lawyer Beattie some hard old Anglo-Saxon names, and told him that if he were a little bigger he would give him the beating that was coming to him. Then he turned to Kedzie's father.

“Mr. Thropp,” he pleaded, “you and I have always got along all right. You know I've tried to do the right thing by your daughter. I'm ready to now. She's too decent a girl to have done this thing on her own. This is the work of that rotten skunk of a lawyer—I apologize to the other skunks and the real lawyers. She has done a frightful injustice to the best woman on earth. She can never undo it, but surely she doesn't want to do any more. She's through with me, I suppose, but we ought to be able to clean up this affair respectably and quietly and not in the front show-window of all the damned newspapers in the world.

“Can't you and I make a little quiet gentleman's agreement to withdraw the charge and let the divorce go through decently? I'll make any settlement on your daughter that she wants.”

Adna pondered aloud, his claim-agent instincts alert: “Settlement, eh? What might you call settlement?”

“Whatever you'd consider fair. How much would you say was right?”

Adna filled his lungs and mouthed the deliciously liquid word as if it were a veritableaurum potabile:

“Millions!”

“What!” Jim gasped.

Adna fairly gargled it again:

“Millillions!”

The greed in the old man's eyes shot Dyckman's eyes with blood. He snarled:

“So it's the plain old blackmail, eh? Well, you can go plumb to hell!”

“All right,” said Adna, felicitously, “but we won't go alone. I and daughter will have comp'ny. Come on, Mr. Beattie.”

After they had gone Jim realized that his hatred of being gouged had involved Charity's priceless reputation. He told McNiven to recall Beattie, but Charity herself appeared in a new and militant humor.

The first realization that her good name was gone had crushed her. She had built it up like a mansion, adding a white stone day by day. When it fell about her in ruins her soul had swooned with the disaster.

After a night and a day of groveling terror she had recaptured the valor that makes and keeps a woman good, and she leaped from her sick bed and her sick soul into an armor of rage.

She burst in on McNiven and Jim and demanded a share in the battle. When Jim told her of his latest blunder she spoke up, stoutly:

“You did the right thing. To try to buy them off would be to confess guilt. The damage is done. The whole world has read the lie. Now we'll make it read the truth. There must be some way for me to defend my name, and I want to know what it is.”

McNiven told her that the law allowed her to enter the case and seek vindication, but he advised her against it. She thanked him for the information and rejected the advice. She was gray with battle-ardor and her very nostrils were fierce.

“I'm sorry to do anything to interfere with your welfare, Jim, for if I win she wins you; but you can get rid of her some other way. The little beast! She thinks she can make use of me as a bridge to cross over to her Marquess, but she can't!”

“Her Marquess?” Jim mumbled. “What does that mean?”

Charity regretted her impetuous speech, but McNiven explained it.

Jim was pretty well deadened to shocks by this time, but the news that his wife had been disloyal found an untouched spot in his heart to stab. It gave him a needed resentment, however, and a much-needed something to feel wronged about.

He caught a spark of Charity's blazing anger, and they resolved to fight the case to the limit. And that was where it took them.

Once the battle was joined, a fierce desire for haste impelled all of these people. Kedzie dreaded every hour's delay as a new risk of losing Strathdene, who was showing an increasing rage at having the name of his wife-to-be bandied about in the press, with her portraits in formal pose or snapped by batteries of reporters.

Her lawyer emphasized the heartbreak it was to her to learn that her adored husband had been led astray by her trusted friend. This did not make pleasant reading for the jealous Strathdene, and he wished himself jolly well out of the whole affair.

It was not long before his own name began to slip into the case by innuendo. Once he was in, he could not decently abandon his Kedzie, though he had to prove his devotion by denying it and threatening to shoot anybody who implied that his interest in Mrs. Dyckman was anything more than formal.

Jim Dyckman was impatient to have done with the suit, however it ended. He was tossed on both horns of the dilemma. He was compelled to fight one woman to save another. He could not defend Charity without striking Kedzie and he could not spare Kedzie without destroying Charity.

In a situation that would have overwhelmed the greatest tacticians he floundered miserably. He vowed that whatever the outcome of the case might be, he would never look at a woman again. Men find it very easy to condemn womankinden bloc, and they are forever forswearing the sex as if it were a unit or a bad habit.

During the necessary delay in reaching trial Jim asked and received an extension of his leave of absence; then his regiment came home from the Border and was mustered out of the Federal service and received again into the State control. Jim felt almost as much ashamed of involving his regiment in his scandal as Charity.

He had suffered so greatly from the embarrassment of the publicity that he could hardly endure to face his regiment and drill with his company. He offered his resignation again, but it was not accepted.

In fact, under the new condition of the National Guard service, his immediate officers had nothing to do with his resignation.

The probability of a call to arms, not against Mexico, but against the almost almighty German Empire, was so great that it looked like slackery or cowardice to ask to be excused. His next dread was that the regiment would be mustered in before the case was finished, compelling its postponement and leaving Charity to languish unrevenged.

For his inclusive anger at Everywoman soon changed back to deeper affection than ever. The first sight of her on the witness-stand at the mercy of the inquisition of the unscrupulous Beattie brought back all his old emotions for her and unnumbered new.

He had seen a picture of one of the Christian martyrs whose torture was inflicted on her by a man armed with steel pincers to pluck off her flesh from her shuddering soul bit by bit. It seemed to him that his sainted Charity was condemned to like atrocity. Her hands were bound by the thongs of the law, her body was stripped to the eyes of the crowd, and the tormentor went here and there, nipping at the quick with intolerable cruelty.

And Jim must not go to her rescue. He must not protest or lift a hand in her behalf. He must sit and suffer with her while the anguish squeezed the big sweat out of his knotted brows.

It had been hard enough to await the appearance of the case on the docket, to sit through the selection of the jury, and to study the gradual recruitment of that squad of twelve sphinxes, all commonplace, yet mysterious, lacking in all divinity of comprehension and eager to be entertained with an exciting conflict.

The fact that a woman was the plaintiff was a tremendous handicap for Jim, even though a woman was allied with him in the defense. The very name “co-respondent” condemned her in advance in the public mind. And then she was rich and therefore dissipated in the minds of those who cannot imagine wealth as providing other fascinating businesses besides vice. And Jim was wealthy and therefore a proper object for punishment. If he had earned his millions it must have been by tyrannous corruption; if he had only inherited them that was worse yet.

Beattie lost no chance to play on the baser phases of the noble and essential suspicions of the democratic soul and also on Kedzie's humble origin, her child-like prettiness proving absolutely a child-like innocence and trust, and the homely simplicity of her parents, who, being poor and ignorant, were therefore inevitably virtuous and sincere.

Jim had realized from the first what a guilty aspect his unfortunate excursion with Charity must wear in the eyes of any one but her and him. Even the waiter who was on the ground had unwittingly conspired with their delicacy to put them in a most indelicate situation. Skip went on the stand, reveling in his first experience of fame, basking in the spot-light like a cheap actor, and acting very badly, yet well enough for the groundlings he amused.

Jim and Charity underwent a martyrdom of ridicule during his testimony. A man and woman riding backward on a mule through a jeering mob might seem pathetic enough if one had the heart to deny himself the laughter, but Jim and Charity made their grotesque pilgrimage without exciting sympathy.

Beattie had tried to get Mrs. Noxon on the stand to confirm the proof that Charity had spent the night away, but the old lady showed her contempt of the court and of the submarines by sailing for Europe to escape the ordeal. The chauffeur, the valet, and the Viewcrest servants were enough, however, to corroborate Skip Magruder's story beyond any assailing, and handwriting experts had no difficulty in convincing the jury that Jim's signature on the hotel register was in his own handwriting. He had made no effort to disguise it or even to change his name till the last of it was well begun.

Mr. and Mrs. Thropp made splendid witnesses for their child and the old mother's tears melted a jury that had never seen her weep for meaner reasons.

When Charity reached the stand the case against her was so complete that all her bravery was gone. She felt herself a fool for having brought the ordeal on herself. She took not even self-respect with her to the chair of torture.

In the good old days of Hester Prynne they published a faithless wife by sewing a scarlet “A” upon the bosom of her dress. Nowadays the word is pronounced “co-respondent,” and it may be affixed to any woman's name by any newspaper, or any plaintiff in a divorce case.

So fearful a power was so much abused that since 1911 in New York the co-respondent has been permitted to come into the court and oppose the label. It is in sort a revival of the ancient right to trial by ordeal. This hideous privilege of proving innocence by walking unshod over hot plowshares is most frigidly set forth in the statute where the lawyer's gift for putting terrible things in desiccated phrases was never better shown than in Section 1757.

In an action brought to obtain a divorce on the ground of adultery, the plaintiff or defendant may serve a copy of his pleading on the co-respondent named therein. At any time within twenty days after such service on said co-respondent he may appear to defend such action, so far as the issues affect such co-respondent. If no such service be made, then at any time before the entry of judgment any co-respondent named in any of the pleadings shall have the right, at any time before the entry of judgment, to appear either in person or by attorney in said action and demand of plaintiff's attorney a copy of the summons and complaint, which must be served within ten days thereafter, and he may appear to defend such action, so far as the issues affect such co-respondent. In case no one of the allegations of adultery controverted by such co-respondent shall be proved, such co-respondent shall be entitled to a bill of costs against the person naming him as such co-respondent, which bill of costs shall consist only of the sum now allowed by law as a trial fee, and disbursements, and such co-respondent shall be entitled to have an execution issue for the collection of the same.

The exact amount of money was set forth in another place, in Section 3251, where it is stated that the sums obtainable are “for trial of an issue of fact, $30, and when the trial necessarily occupies more than two days, $10 in addition thereto.”

In other words, Mrs. Charity Coe Cheever, finding her life of good works and pure deeds crowned with the infamy which Mrs. Kedzie Dyckman in her anger and her haste pressed on her brow, had the full permission of the law to come into the public court, face a vitriolic lawyer, and deny her guilt.

If she survived the trip through hell she could collect from her accuser forty dollars to pay her lawyer with. The priceless boon of such a vindication she could keep for herself. And that ended her.

This is only one of the numberless vicious and filthy and merciless consequences of the things done in the name of virtue by those who believe divorce to be so great an evil that they will commit every other evil in order to oppose it.

In no other realm of law and punishment has severity had more need of hypocrisy to justify itself than in the realm of wedlock. What grosser burlesque could there be than the conflict between the theory and the practice? The law and the Church, claiming what few people will deny, that marriage is an immensely solemn, even a sacred, condition, have made entrance into it as easy as possible and the escape from it as difficult. It is as if one were to say, “Revolvers are very dangerous weapons, therefore they shall be placed within the reach of infants, but they must on no account be taken away from them, and once grasped they must never be laid down.”

The most stringent rules have been formulated to prevent those people from marrying each other who are least likely to want to—namely, blood relations. But there is no law against total strangers meeting at the altar for the first time, and the marriage by proxy of people who have never seen each other has had the frequent blessing of ecclesiastic pomp.

At a time when legal divorce was too horrible to contemplate they made very pretty festivals of betrothing little children who could not understand the ceremony or even parrot the pledge. Who indeed can understand the pledge before its meaning is made clear by life?

And why should people be forced to make an eternal pledge whose keeping is beyond their power or prophecy and from which there is no release? What is it but a subornation of perjury?

Those who so blithely scatter flowers before bridal couples and old shoes after them are perfectly benevolent, of course, in their abhorrence of separating the twain if they begin to throw their old shoes at each other; for they are sincerely convinced that if people were permitted to do as they pleased, nothing on earth would please them but vice. And so those who have the lawmaking itch set about saving humanity from itself by making inhuman laws, which the clever and the criminal evade or break through, leaving the gentle and the timid in the net.

For there was never no divorce. No amount of law has ever availed to keep those together who had the courage or the cruelty to break the bonds. By hook or by crook, if not by book, they will be free.

The question of the children is often used to cloud the issue, as if all that children needed for their welfare were the formal alliance of their parents, and as if a home where hatred rages or complacent vice is serene were the ideal rearing-ground for the young. When love of their children is enough to keep two incompatible souls together there is no need of the law. When that love is insufficient what can the law accomplish? And what of the innumerable families where there have been no children, or where they are dead or grown-up?

The experiment of forbidding what cannot be prevented and of refusing legal sanction to what human nature demands has been given centuries of trial with no success.

Marriage is among the last of the institutions to have the daylight let in and the windows thrown open. For the home is no more threatened by liberty than the State is, and that pair which is kept together only by the shackles of the law is already divorced; its cohabitation is a scandal. Free love in the promiscuous sense is no uglier than coupled loathing. The social life of that community where divorce is least free is no purer than that where divorce is not difficult. Otherwise South Carolina, which alone of the States permits no divorce on any ground, should be an incomparable Eden of marital innocence. Is it? And New York, which has only one ground, and that the scriptural, should be the next most innocent. Is it?

Meanwhile the mismated of our day who are struggling through the transition period between the despotism of matrimony and its republic can be sure that the righteous will omit no abuse that they can inflict. Those who would free Russias must face Siberias.

The worst phase of it is that some of those who are determined to be free and cannot otherwise get free will not hesitate to destroy innocent persons who may be useful to their escape.

Mrs. Kedzie Dyckman had her heart set on releasing herself from the husband she had in order that she might try another who promised her more happiness, more love, and more prestige. The husband she had would have been willing enough to set her free, both because he liked to give her whatever she wanted and because he was not in love with their marriage himself.

But the law of New York State says that married couples shall not uncouple amicably and intelligently. If they will part it must be with bitterness and laceration. One of the two must be driven out through the ugly gate of adultery. They must part as enemies and they must sacrifice some third person as a blood-offering on the altar.

It is a strange thing that the lamb, which is the symbol of innocence and harmlessness, should have always been the favorite for sacrifice.

Charity Coe had happened along at the convenient moment.

“Ju swear tell tru thole tru noth buth tru thelpugod?”

“I do.”

McNiven, in the direct examination, asked only such questions as Charity easily answered with proud denials of guilt. Beattie began the cross-examination with a sneering scorn of her good faith.

“Mrs. Cheever, you are the co-respondent in this case of DyckmanversusDyckman?”

“I am.”

“And on this night you went motoring with defendant?”

“Yes.”

“Was his wife with you?”

“No; you see—”

“Was any other person with you?”

“You see, it was a new car and it was only our intention to—”

“Was any other person with you?”

“No.”

“And you spent the night with the defendant in the Viewcrest Inn?”

“That is hardly the way I should put it.”

“Answer the question, please.”

“I will not answer such an insulting question.”

“I beg your pardon most humbly. Were you registered as the defendant's wife?”

McNiven's voice: “I 'bject. There is no evidence witness even saw the book.”

The judge: “Objection s'tained.”

“Well, then, Mrs. Cheever, did you see the defendant write in the book?”

“I—I—perhaps I did—”

“Perhaps you did. You heard the waiter Magruder testify here awhile ago that he insisted on defendant registering, and defendant reluctantly complied. Do you remember that?”

“I—I—I believe I do. But I didn't see what he wrote.”

“You didn't see what he wrote. Exhibit A shows that he wrote 'Mr. and Mrs. James Dysart.' You heard the handwriting experts testify that the writing was Dyckman's. But you did not see the writing. Did you not, however, hear the waiter speak of you as the defendant's wife?”

“Well—I may have heard him.”

“You didn't tell him that you were not the defendant's wife?”

“I didn't speak to the waiter at all. It was a very embarrassing situation.”

“It must have been. So you did not deny that you were the defendant's wife?”

“You see, it was like this. When Mr. Dyckman asked me to try his new car—”

“You did not deny that you were the defendant's wife?”

“I hadn't the faintest idea that we could have gone so far—”

“Answer the question!”

“But I'm coming to that—”

The judge: “Witness will answer question.”

“But, your Honor, can't I explain? Has he a right to ask these horrible things in that horrible way?”

The lawyer: “We are trying to get at the horrible truth. But if you prefer not to answer I will not press the point. The waiter showed you to the parlor, saying that the rest of the hotel was occupied?”

“Yes.”

“He left you there together, you and the defendant?”

“Well, he went away, but—”

“And left you together. He so testified. He also testified that he found you together the next morning. Is that true?”

“Oh, that's outrageous. I refuse to answer.”

Jim Dyckman rose from his chair in a frenzy of wrath. His lawyer, McNiven, pressed him back and pleaded with him in a whisper to remember the court. He yielded helplessly, cursing himself for his disgraceful lack of chivalry.

The judge spoke sternly. “Witness will answer questions of counsel or—”

“But, your Honor, he is trying to make me say that I—Oh, it's loathsome. I didn't. I didn't. He has no right!”

When a woman's hair is caught in a traveling belt and she is drawn backward, screaming, into the wheels of a great machinery that will mangle her beauty if it does not helplessly murder her there are not many people whose hearts are hard enough to withhold pity until they learn whether or not her plight was due to carelessness.

There are always a few, however, who will add their blame to her burden, and they usually invoke the name of justice for their lethargy of spirit.

Yet even the cruelty of that severity is a form of self-protection against a shattering grief; and a perfect heart would have pity even for the pitiless, since they, too, are the victims of their own carelessness; they, too, are drawn backward into the soul-crushing cogs of the world.

Mrs. Charity Coe Cheever, as good a woman as ever was, was being dragged to the meeting-point of great wheels, but she had turned about and was fighting to escape, at least with what was dearer than her life. The pain and the terror were supreme, and even if she wrenched free from destruction it would be at the cost of lasting scars. Yet she fought.

It had been all too easy for the infuriated Kedzie Dyckman to entangle Charity in the machinery. Kedzie was a little terrified at the consequences of her own act, though she would have said that she did it in self-defense and to punish an outrage upon her rights. But when persons set out to punish other persons, it is not often that their own hands are altogether innocent.

If the Christly edict, “Let him that is without sin cast the first stone,” had been followed out there would never have been another stone cast. And one might ask if the world would have been, or could have been, the worse for that abstention. For, whatever else may be true, the venerable practices of justice have been false and futile.

And now, nearly two thousand years later, after two thousand years more of heartbreaking history, an increasing few are asking bitterly if punishment has ever paid.

Vaguely imagining on one side the infinite misery and ugliness of the dungeons and tortures, the disgraces and executions of the ages with their counter-punishment on the inquisitors and the executioners, and setting against them that uninterrupted stream of deeds we call crimes, what is the picture but a ghastly vanity—an eternal process of trying to dam the floods of old Nile by flinging in forever poor wretch after poor wretch to drown unredeemed and unavailing?

Charity was the latest sacrifice. If she had been guilty of loving too wildly well, or of drifting unconsciously into a situation where opportunity made temptation irresistible, there would be a certain reaction to pity after she had been definitely condemned. There are at times advantages in weakness, as women well know, though Charity despised them now.

Kedzie's lawyer, however, felt it good tactics to assume now the pose of benevolent patience with an erring one. Seeing that Charity was in danger of stirring the hearts of the jurors by her suffering, he forestalled their sympathy and murmured:

“I will wait till Mrs. Cheever has regained control of herself.”

Instantly Charity's pride quickened in her. She wanted none of that beast's pity. She responded to the strange sense of discipline before fate that makes a man walk soldierly to the electric chair; inspires a caught spy to stand placidly before his own coffin and face the firing-squad; led Joan of Arc after one panic of terror to wait serene among the crackling fagots.

The lawyer was relieved. He had been afraid that Charity would weep. He resumed the probe:

“And now, Mrs. Cheever, if you are quite calm I will proceed. I regret the necessity of asking these questions, but you were not compelled to come into court. You came of your own volition, did you not?”

“Yes.”

“Witnesses have testified and you have not denied that you arrived at the Viewcrest Inn late at night; that you saw the defendant register; that you and he went to the only room left; that the waiter left you together and found you together the next morning. You have heard that testimony, have you not?”

“Yes.”

“Knowing all this, do you still claim that your conduct was above reproach?”

“For discretion, no. I was foolish and indiscreet.”

“And that was all?”

“Yes.”

“You are innocent of the charge, then?”

“Yes.”

“Do you ask the jury to believe you?”

“I ask them to—yes! Yes! I ask them to.”

“Do you expect them to?”

“Oh, they ought to.”

“If you had been guilty of misconduct would you admit it?”

“Yes.”

“Do you expect them to believe that?”

“If they knew me they would.”

“Well, we haven't all the privilege of knowing you as well as the defendant does. You may step down, Mrs. Cheever, thank you.”

McNiven rose. “One moment, Mrs. Cheever. You testified on direct examination that the defendant left you immediately after the waiter did?”

“Yes.”

“And that he did not return till the next morning, just before the waiter returned.”

“Yes.”

“That is all, Mrs. Cheever.”

McNiven would have done better to leave things alone. The sturdy last answer of Charity and the unsportsmanlike sneer of Kedzie's lawyer had inclined the jury her way. McNiven's explanation awoke again the skeptic spirit.

Charity descended from her pillory with a feeling that she had said none of the things she had planned to say. The eloquence of her thoughts had seemed incompatible somehow with the witness-stand. At a time when she needed to say so much she had said so little and all of it wrong.

Jim Dyckman's heart was so wrung with pity for Charity when she stepped down and sought her place in a haze of despair that he resolved to make a fight for her himself. He insisted on McNiven's calling him to the stand, though McNiven begged him to let ill enough alone.

He took the oath with a fierce enthusiasm that woke the jury a little, and he answered his own lawyer's questions with a fervor that stirred a hope in the jury's heart, a sorely wrung heart it was, for its pity for Charity was at war with its pity for Kedzie, and its admiration for Jim Dyckman, who was plainly a gentleman and a good sport even if he had gone wrong, could only express itself by punishing Kedzie, whose large eyes and sweet mouth the jury could not ignore or resist.

When his own lawyer had elicited from Jim the story as he wanted it told, which chanced to be the truth, McNiven abandoned him to Beattie with the words:

“Your witness.”

Beattie was in fine fettle. He had become a name talked about transcontinentally, and now he was crossing swords with the famous Dyckman. And Dyckman was at a hideous disadvantage. He could only parry, he could not counter-thrust. There was hardly a trick forbidden to the cross-examiner and hardly a defense permitted to the witness.

And yet that very helplessness gave the witness a certain shadowy aide at his side.

Jim's heart was beating high with his fervor to defend Charity, but it stumbled when Beattie rose and faced him. And Beattie faced him a long while before he spoke.

A slow smile crept over the lawyer's mien as he made an excuse for silence out of the important task of scrubbing his eye-glasses.

Before that alkaline grin Jim felt his faith in himself wavering. He remembered unworthy thoughts he had entertained, graceless things he had done; he felt that his presence here as a knight of unassailable purity was hypocritical. He winced at all points from the uncertainty as to the point to be attacked. His life was like a long frontier and his enemy was mobilized for a sudden offensive. He would know the point selected for the assault when he felt the assault. The first gun was that popular device, a supposititious question.

“Mr. Dyckman, you are accused of—well, we'll say co-respondence with the co-respondent. You have denied your guilt in sundry affidavits and on the witness-stand here. Remembering the classic and royal ideal of the man who 'perjured himself like a gentleman,' and assuming—I say 'assuming' what you deny—that you had been guilty, would you have admitted it?”

“I could not have been guilty.”

“Could not? Really! you astonish me! And why not, please?”

“Because Mrs. Cheever would never have consented. She is a good woman.”

This unexpected answer to the old trick question jolted Beattie perceptibly and brought the jury forward a little. The tears gushed to Charity's eyes and she felt herself unworthy a champion so pious.

Beattie acknowledged the jolt with a wry smile and returned:

“Very gallant, Mr. Dyckman; you want to be a gentleman and avoid the perjury, too. But I must ask you to answer the question. Suppose you had been guilty.”

Silence.

“Answer the question!”

Silence.

“Will his Honor kindly instruct the witness to answer the question?”

Jim broke in, “His Honor cannot compel me to suppose something that is impossible.”

The jury rejoiced unwillingly, like the crowd in the bleachers when a man on the opposing team knocks a home run. The jury liked Jim better. But what they liked, after all, was what they falsely imagined. They assumed that Jim had been out on a lark and got caught and was putting up a good scrap for his lady friend. He was a hum-dinger, and no wonder the lady fell for him. Into such slang their souls translated the holiness of his emotions, and they voted him guilty even in awarding him their admiration for his defense.

Beattie paused again, then suddenly asked, “Mr. Dyckman, how long have you loved Mrs. Cheever?”

“What do you mean by 'loved'?”

“It is a familiar word. Answer the question.”

“I have admired Mrs. Cheever since she was a child. We have always been friends.”

“Your 'friendship' was considerably excited when she married Mr. Cheever, wasn't it?”

“I—I thought he was unworthy of her.”

“Was that why you beat him up in a fist fight at your club?”

This startled the entire court. Even reporters who had missed the news were excited. McNiven sprang to his feet, crying:

“I 'bject! There is no evidence before the court that there ever was such a fight. The question is incompirrelvimmaterial.”

“S'tained!” said the judge.

Beattie was satisfied. The arrow had been pulled out, but its poison remained. He made use of another of his tantalizing pauses, then:

“It was shortly afterward that Mrs. Cheever divorced her husband, was it not?”

“I 'bject,” McNiven barked.

“S'tained!” the judge growled.

“Let us get back to the night when you and Mrs. Cheever went a-motoring.” Beattie smiled. “There was a beautiful moon on that occasion, I believe.”

The jury grinned. The word “moon” meant foolishness. Beattie took Jim through the story of that ride and that sojourn at the tavern, and every question he asked condemned Jim to a choice of answers, either alternative making him out ridiculously virtuous or criminal.

Beattie rehearsed the undenied facts, but substituted for the glamour of innocence in bad luck the sickly glare of cynicism. He asked Jim if he had ever heard of the expression, “The time, the place, and the girl.” He had the jury snickering at the thought of a big rich youth like Jim being such a ninny, such a milksop and mollycoddle, as to defy an opportunity so perfect.

The public mind has its dirt as well as its grandeurs; the pool that mirrors the sky is easily roiled and muddied. It was possible for the same people to abhor Jim and Charity for being guilty and to feel that if they were not guilty with such an occasion they were still more contemptible.

Thus ridicule, which shakes down the ancient wrongs and the tyrants' pretenses, shakes down also the ancient virtues and the struggling ideals.

Finally Beattie said, “You say you left the fair corespondent alone in the hotel parlor?”

“I did.”

“All alone?”

“Yes.”

“And you went out into the night, as the saying is?”

“Yes.”

“But you testified that it was raining.”

“It was.”

“You went out into the rain?”

“Yes.”

“To cool your fevered brow?”

Silence from Jim; shrieks of laughter from the silly spectators. The jury was shattered with amusement; the judge wiped a grin from his lips. Beattie resumed:

“Where did you sleep?”

“In the office chair.”

“You paid for the parlor! You registered! And you slept in the chair!” [Gales of laughter. His Honor threatens to clear the court.] “Who saw you asleep in the chair?”

“I don't know—I was asleep.”

“Are you sure that you did not just dream about the chair?”

“I am sure.”

“That's all.”

Jim stepped down, feeling idiotic.

There is a dignity that survives and is illumined by flames of martyrdom, but there is no dignity that is improved by a bladder-buffeting. Jim slunk back to his place and cowered, while the attorneys made their harangues.

McNiven spoke with passion and he had the truth on his side, but it lacked the convincing look. Beattie rocked the jury-box with laughter and showed a gift for parodying seriousness that would carry him far on his career. Then he switched to an ardent defense of the purity of the American home, and ennobled the jury to a knighthood of chivalry and of democracy. As he pointed out, the well-known vices of the rich make every household unsafe unless they are sternly checked by the dread hand of the law.

He called upon the jury to inflict on the Lothario a verdict that would not only insure comfort to the poor little woman whose home had been destroyed, but would also be severe enough to make even a multimillionaire realize and remember that the despoiler of the American home cannot continue on his nefarious path with impunity.

The judge gave a long and solemn charge to the jury. It was fair according to the law and the evidence, but the evidence had been juggled by the fates.

The jury retired and remained a hideous while.


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