Part 45 (1/2)

Unawed by the sheriff's warning, the a.s.sembly laughed again. The sound ran over the room like a scudding cloud across a meadow, and when the sheriff stood again to set his censorious eye upon someone responsible, the last ripple was on the farther rows. n.o.body can catch a laugh in a crowd; it is as evasive as a pickpocket. n.o.body can turn with watchful eye upon it and tell in what face the ribald gleam first breaks. It is as impossible as the identification of the first stalk shaken when a breeze a.s.sails a field of grain.

The sheriff, not being deeper than another man, saw the fatuity of his labor. He turned to the court with a clownish gesture of the hands, expressive of his utter inability to stop this thing.

”Proceed with the case,” said the judge, understanding the situation better than the sheriff knew.

The prosecuting attorney labored away with Ollie, full of the feeling that something masked lay behind her pale reticence, some guilty conspiracy between her and the bound boy, which would show the lacking motive for the crime. He asked her again about Morgan, how long she had known him, where he came from, and where he went--a question to which Ollie would have been glad enough to have had the answer herself.

He hung on to the subject of Morgan so persistently that Joe began to feel his throat drying out with a closing sensation which he could not swallow. He trembled for Ollie, fearing that she would be forced into telling it all. That was not a woman's story, thought he, with a heart full of resentment for the prosecutor. Let him wait till Morgan came, and then----

But what grounds had he now for believing Morgan might come? Unless he came within the next hour, his coming might be too late.

”You were in bed and asleep when the shot that killed your husband was fired, you have told the jury, Mrs. Chase?” questioned the prosecutor, dropping Morgan at last.

”Yes, sir.”

”Then how did it come that when Mrs. Greening and her daughter-in-law arrived a few minutes later you were all dressed up in a white dress?”

”I just slipped it on,” said she.

”You just slipped it on,” repeated the prosecutor, turning his eyes to the jury, and not even facing Mrs. Chase as he spoke, but reading into her words discredit, suspicion, and a guilty knowledge.

”It was the only one I had besides two old wrappers. It was the one I was married in, and the only one I could put on to look decent in before people,” said she.

A crowd is the most volatile thing in the world. It can laugh and sigh and groan and weep, as well as shout and storm, with the ease of an infant, and then immediately regain its immobility and fixed attention.

With Ollie's simple statement a sound rose from it which was a denunciation and a curse upon the ashes of old Isom Chase. It was as if a sympathetic old lady had shaken her head and groaned:

”Oh, shame on you--shame!”

Hammer gave the jury a wide-sweeping look of satisfaction, and made a note on the tumbled pile of paper which lay in front of him.

The prosecutor was a man with congressional aspirations, and he did not care to prejudice his popularity by going too far in baiting a woman, especially one who had public sympathy in the measure that it was plainly extended to Ollie. He eased up, descending from his heights of severity, and began to address her respectfully in a manner that was little short of apology for what his stern duty compelled him to do.

”Now I will ask you, Mrs. Chase, whether your husband and this defendant, Joe Newbolt, ever had words in your hearing?”

”Once,” Ollie replied.

”Do you recall the day?”

”It was the morning after Joe came to our house to work,” said she.

”Do you remember what the trouble was about and what said?”

”Well, they said a good deal,” Ollie answered. ”They fussed because Joe didn't get up when Isom called him.”

Joe felt his heart contract. It seemed to him that Ollie need not have gone into that; it looked as if she was bent not alone on protecting herself, but on fastening the crime on him. It gave him a feeling of uneasiness. Sweat came out on his forehead; his palms grew moist. He had looked for Ollie to stand by him at least, and now she seemed running away, eager to tell something that would sound to his discredit.

”You may tell the jury what happened that morning, Mrs. Chase.”

Hammer's objection fell on barren ground, and Ollie told the story under the directions of the judge.