Counsel for the Defense Part 7

"I have no lawyer," he said slowly.

"I see. You were waiting to consult me about whom to retain."

He shook his head.

"Then you have approached some one?"

"I have spoken to Hopkins, and Williams, and Freeman. They all----" He hesitated.

"Yes?"

"They all said they could not take my case."

"Could not take your case!" she cried. "Why not?"

"They made different excuses. But their excuses were not their real reason."

"And what was that?"

The old man flushed yet more painfully.

"I guess you do not fully realize the situation, Katherine. I don't need to tell you that a wave of popular feeling against political corruption is sweeping across the country. This is the first big case that has come out in Westville, and the city is stirred up over this as it hasn't been stirred in years. The way the _Express_----You saw the _Express_?"

Her hands instinctively clenched.

"It was awful! Awful!"

"The way the _Express_ has handled it has especially--well, you see----"

"You mean those lawyers are afraid to take the case?"

Doctor West nodded.

Katherine's dark eyes glowed with wrath.

"Did you try any one else?"

"Mr. Green came to see me. But----"

"Of course not! It would kill your case to have a shyster represent you." She gripped his hand, and her voice rang out: "Father, I'm glad those men refused you. We're going to get for you the biggest man, the biggest lawyer, in Westville."

"You mean Mr. Blake?"

"Yes, Mr. Blake."

"I thought of him at first, of course. But I--well, I hesitated to approach him."

"Hesitated? Why?"

"Well, you see," he stammered, "I remembered about your refusing him, and I felt----"

"That would never make any difference to him," she cried. "He's too much of a gentleman. Besides, that was five years ago, and he has forgotten it."

"Then you think he'll take the case?"

"Of course, he'll take it! He'll take it because he's a big man, and because you need him, and because he's no coward. And with the biggest man in Westville on your side, you'll see how public opinion will right-about face!"

She sprang up, aglow with energy. "I'm going to see him this minute!

With his help, we'll have this matter cleared up before you know it, and"--smiling lightly--"just you see, daddy, all Westville will be out there in the front yard, tramping over Aunt Rachel's sweet williams, begging to be allowed to come and kiss your hand!"

He kissed her own. He rose, and a smile broke through the clouds of his face.

"You've been home only an hour, and I feel that a thousand years have been lifted off me."

"That's right--and just keep on feeling a thousand years younger."

She smiled caressingly, and began to twist a finger in a b.u.t.tonhole of his coat. "U'm--don't you think, daddy, that such a very young gentleman as you are, such a regular roaring young blade, might--u'm--might----"

"Might what, my dear?"

"Might----" She leaned forward and whispered in his ear.

A hand went to his throat.

"Eh, why, is this one----"

"I'm afraid it is, daddy--very!"

"We've been so upset I guess your aunt must have forgotten to put out a clean one for me."

"And I suppose it never occurred to the profound scientific intellect that it was possible for one to pull out a drawer and take out a collar for one's self." She crossed to the bureau and came back with a clean collar. "Now, sir--up with your chin!" With quick hands she replaced the offending collar with the fresh one, tied the tie and gave it a perfecting little pat. "There--that's better! And now I must be off. I'll send around a few policemen to keep the crowds off Aunt Rachel's flower-beds."

And pressing on his pale cheek another kiss, and smiling at him from the door, she hurried out.

CHAPTER IV

DOCTOR WEST'S LAWYER

Katherine's refusal of Harrison Blake's unforeseen proposal, during the summer she had graduated from Va.s.sar, had, until the present hour, been the most painful experience of her life.

Ever since that far-away autumn of her fourteenth year when Blake had led an at-first forlorn crusade against "Blind Charlie" Peck and swept that apparently unconquerable autocrat and his corrupt machine from power, she had admired Blake as the ideal public man. He had seemed so fine, so big already, and loomed so large in promise--it was the fall following his proposal that he was elected lieutenant-governor--that it had been a humiliation to her that she, so insignificant, so unworthy, could not give him that intractable pa.s.sion, love. But though he had gone very pale at her stammered answer, he had borne his disappointment like a gallant gentleman; and in the years since then he had acquitted himself to perfection in that most difficult of roles, the lover who must be content to be mere friend.

Katherine still retained her girlish admiration of Mr. Blake. Despite his having been so conspicuous at the forefront of public affairs, no scandal had ever soiled his name. His rect.i.tude, so said people whose memories ran back a generation, was due mainly to fine qualities inherited from his mother, for his father had been a good-natured, hearty, popular politician with no discoverable bias toward over-scrupulosity. In fact, twenty years ago there had been a great to-do touching the voting, through a plan of the elder Blake's devising, of a gang of negroes half a dozen times down in a river-front ward. But his party had rushed loyally to his rescue, and had vindicated him by sending him to Congress; and his sudden death on the day after taking his seat had at the time abashed all accusation, and had suffused his memory with a romantic afterglow of sentiment.

Blake lived alone with his mother in a house adjoining the Wests', and a few moments after Katherine had left her father she turned into the Blakes' yard. The house stood far back in a s.p.a.cious lawn, shady with broad maples and aspiring pines, and set here and there with shrubs and flower-beds and a fountain whose misty spray hung a golden aureole upon the sunlight. It was quite worthy of Westville's most distinguished citizen--a big, roomy house of brick, its sterner lines all softened with cool ivy, and with a wide piazza crossing its entire front and embracing its two sides.