The Just And The Unjust Read online

  He hesitated. 'We aren't going to be rich,' he said. 'Maybe you ought to reconsider Mr. Harper's offer.' The joke, he saw, was not a success. His impulse, a natural forthrightness, was to tell her how things stood; but that was a job for somebody better with words than he was. He could not think of any way to explain his situation which would not amount to qualifying his proposal, now that she had accepted it.

  'Don't tease me,' Bonnie said. She spoke with constraint, and the insight of long acquaintance told Abner what the tone meant. She had felt the hesitation, and her spirits fell again. Her feeling for him was strong enough to survive, and even to encompass, what to her must seem his hopeless, his maddening ineptitude. She had made her choice; she had made it with the knowledge that he had none of those gifts of intuition by which her feelings would be conveyed to him and — how wonderful a pleasure, how enchanting a release! — her wish could hardly form before he was doing or saying the thing she longed for. She sadly accepted the fact that he would always manage to disappoint her a little; and could put against it only the poor consolation of knowing that when he did he probably wouldn't mean to.

  Abner was so sure that these were her thoughts that he felt like telling her, describing them to her, giving her proof that he was not so dumb as he looked, that he understood perfectly. To comfort her, he would like her to know that he was not, with inept naiveté, showing alarm when he realized that he had committed himself ('Poor Ab!' she was probably thinking, 'Poor Ab! But why does he have to let me see it?'). If she only knew, what he was trying not to show was his consternation, a sort of anger and dismay, that marrying her, now that he had made up his mind that he wanted to at once, not some time in the future, was going to be, through his own act, difficult to manage. Instead of that vaguely counted on increase in salary, he had arranged to lose the too-little he already had.

  No explanation offered any way out; and, this time, Abner did remember that when you don't know what to say, you'd better keep still. 'I'm sorry,' he said to Bonnie; and that was the truth.

  3

  Abner turned in at the end of the line of cars parked on the dreary stretch of cinders before the Black Cat, a sprawling frame building meant to simulate a Swiss chalet. Jutting up, a little brighter than the clear evening sky above the roof, a neon sign showed in vermilion outline the figure of a cat playing a violin. Through the tree trunks beyond, sunset coloured the still water of the creek.

  From the running board of the last car — there were about a dozen, including Harry Wurts' red one — a Negro boy got up. His old chauffeur's cap showed that he was allowed the office of harassing patrons as they left with intimations that he had somehow served them and should be rewarded; but he had other uses. He looked carefully at Abner; and then, with an unconvincing, casual walk, crossed to the side door under the electric sign : Bar.

  Watching him go, Abner thought, amused, yet somewhat put out, too, 'The tip-off!' Howard Bessie was going to be warned to look out, the assistant district attorney had just arrived. Abner said, 'Well, we'll spare Howard some anxiety. We can get you a drink out on the porch just as well.'

  'What's he anxious about?' Bonnie said.

  'You'd have to ask him,' Abner said. The pressure of his own anxieties made Howard Bessie's seem of little interest or importance. 'Maybe, nothing. On the other hand, he may have something in the bar. I mean, what we describe as gambling devices.'

  'Those pin ball machines?' Bonnie was making a great effort. She could not feel much interest in the matter, either; but she was doing all she could to act as though nothing had happened.

  Abner responded to the effort. He said, 'It has been held that those aren't gambling devices, per se. But the customers might be using them to gamble. Then, there are several syndicates that distribute real slot machines. Marty's pretty well cleaned them out; but Fosher's Creek, there, is the county line; and they may have slipped one or two across.'

  He shrugged. 'If they have, I don't want to know it. Not to-night'

  Bonnie looked at him curiously. 'What would you have to do if you did know it?'

  'Oh, well, I suppose I'd have to take steps.' They went up on the long screened porch over the water and he drew out a chair for her at the table in the corner. 'As a matter of fact,' he said, 'I get pretty tired of having to take steps. What do I care if people want to lose their money? Marty doesn't care either, really. He just doesn't like Howard —'

  Through the big room, empty now and shadowed; where, later, they had dancing and the supposedly scandalous floor shows, Howard Bessie himself moved quickly, coming to the wide doors and stepping out on the porch. He nodded to some of the other guests — several couples at tables along the rail — and came right down toward Abner. He was a quiet, sober, round-headed little man neatly dressed in white linen.

  'How you, Abner? Miss Drummond?' he said, bowing. His full face was grave and polite, but he did not smile, nor speak with any false warmth of cordiality or conviction. Though he doubtless wished that Abner would not come around, a certain saving matter-of-factness, a sort of infinite disillusion about human motives and purposes, often seen in those who cater as a matter of business to the dissipations of the public, made him perfectly reconciled not only to the advisability of being civil, but to the inadvisability of trying to be friendly.

  Abner nodded. He had known Howard for a number of years; and, in fact, Howard happened to be either the first, or very close to the first, person who came to consult Abner when Abner began practise. Appropriately enough, Howard's trouble was with the Liquor Control Board, which had discovered a misstatement in Howard's licence application. To the question whether he was ever arrested, indicted, or convicted for violation of the Volstead Act when it was in effect, Howard had answered no. He had not realized that they meant, as well as convicted, indicted or arrested. Why Howard did not understand that they meant what they said was hard to explain; but Abner thought it possible that Howard really didn't. The hitch was that the Board, checking up, had found a case in which Howard was arrested and indicted. It had been nolle prossed; and Howard seemed to think that his release cancelled the whole proceeding. Abner explained to him what nolle prossed meant, and told him that even if he had been acquitted, he should have answered yes: a piece of legal advice Abner made no charge for. The next time they met over a matter of law, the Commonwealth was trying to have Quarter Sessions revoke Howard's licence; and though they failed on a technicality, Howard could hardly have considered the attempt a friendly one.

  Thinking perhaps of this, and of some subsequent brushes, Howard said remotely, his voice tired, 'Your order taken yet?' He beckoned a waiter who had followed him through the doors. 'Nice lobster? Nice steak? Nice young duckling? Something to drink first? Yes, sir. Dominic, you take good care of Mr. Coates and the lady.' He dropped his chin, bowed faintly, and moved away.

  When the waiter had gone, Bonnie said, 'He's such a funny little man! I don't see what you have against him.'

  Abner said, 'Oh, we call it keeping a disorderly house —'

  Steps had been approaching from behind, and now a voice said over Abner's head, 'But not, I hope, a bawdy house, Mr. Coates! Perish the thought!'

  Abner did not have to turn to know who that was, and exasperation filled him. By not going into the bar he had hoped to avoid (as well as any sight of new slot machines) an encounter with Harry. It seemed to Abner that he had troubles enough.

  Harry said, 'Hello, Bonnie.' He gave her a kindly smirk. He held Margaret Coulter informally by the arm, and Abner was obliged to rise. 'Have tyre trouble on the way down?' Harry said archly.

  'Hello, Bonnie,' Margaret said. 'Hello, Ab. Don't pay any attention to him. He's tight.' From her tone and appearance it was plain that if anyone were tight, it was she and not Harry.

  Harry said, beaming, 'You weren't about to asseverate that this establishment is one that encourages idleness, gaming, and misbehaviour by dissolute persons contrary to law and subversive of public morals? Well, why don't they sta
rt? I'm ready!' Lifting a hand above his head, he brought it down dramatically, pointing over the rail, 'From that water there, my love,' he said to Margaret Coulter, 'was fished by Messrs. Coates, Bunting and their catchpoles the dilapidated cadaver of the late Frederick Zollicoffer. That ought to give your dinner a new taste thrill!'

  'Oh, it was not!' said Margaret.

  'Indeed, it was! A mere mile or two down. I call on Mr. Coates to bear me out. Zollicoffer is thicker than water.'

  'Look, Harry,' said Abner. 'I don't know whether you're tight or not. But don't come out here and talk to me about a case the Commonwealth's prosecuting. I don't care if you are kidding. Everyone can hear you —'

  Harry, flushed already with liquor and good humour, flushed deeper, wounded in his own particular way, and tightened his lips. The look on Harry's face reminded Abner suddenly of a falling-out like this in Cambridge and for almost exactly the same reason. He and Harry were leaving Langdell late one spring night, their coats off, their arms full of those thick law school notebooks marked in coloured inks. They were worn with work and anxiety; and Harry, by way of relaxation, was baiting Abner.

  In the light that fell down from the reading room windows past the great Ionic columns, Abner, losing his temper, stopped short on the steps and answered back. Except for the armful of books, he would probably have punched Harry's jaw. He told Harry what he thought of him, and said it was an opinion everybody else shared; and Harry did not like it. Harry had been only fooling; he hadn't done a thing. Abner's stinging words caught him with his guard down, innocent and defenceless. His sensibilities smarting, the sulky colour coming up his cheeks, Harry turned on his heel and left. He did not speak to Abner again for some time.

  Though no longer the loud but sensitive boy of those days, Harry had feelings as tender as ever. The change was in his tactics and in the degree of his self-control. Staggering back in ludicrous caricature of a man mortally stricken, Harry clasped his hands to his breast. 'Laws-a-mercy!' he cried, mingling a variety of low comedy accents, 'I plumb disrecollected you for a spell, Mr. Commonwealth, boss! You all ain't a-going to let that old devil Ethics Committee sell this poor nigger south? I asks your pardon. I craves your grace — get along, gal!' he said to Margaret. 'We-uns better make ourselves scarce!'

  Abner had coloured, too; for those tactics were effective. The imbecile phrases, the grotesque gestures, successfully implied that the grotesque imbecile was really Abner; and that Harry was getting, as best he could, down to Abner's mental level. The attention of everyone on the porch had been attracted; but to Abner, rather than Harry. Harry, openly and blatantly attracting the attention, showed that he did not mind it. The stares of surprise and amusement went to Abner, who offered the always interesting spectacle of a man embarrassed by attention and seeking to avoid it. Left alone now, Bonnie looked at Abner a moment, about to say something, her expression generously indignant. Abner could guess the degree of confusion he must be showing by the tact with which she checked whatever she had thought of saying, and said instead, 'Where do you suppose that waiter's got to? I'm starved.'

  'There he is,' said Abner.

  His troubled mind, reverting to that long-ago row in front of Langell hall — there had been others; but for some reason that was hardest to forget — showed him that then, as now, he had really been the one to blame. He misled Harry by his ordinary stolidity or evenness of temper, Harry was right, not wrong, in expecting Abner to take any amount of raillery in good part. Those times Abner lost his temper with Harry in Cambridge had always been times when everything seemed wrong, his efforts vain, his brain no good, his chance of getting through about on a par with the snowball's in hell. To pretend to-night that an improper reference to the Zollicoffer case — Harry had actually said nothing to which he could except. Harry was too good a lawyer to have been about to say anything exceptionable, either—had made him angry, was absurd.

  His anger gone, his mind cooled, Abner ate his dinner; but with little appetite. Down at the far end of the porch Harry and Margaret were getting their dinner, too; and from Margaret's constant laughter, it could be guessed that Harry was in fine form. Abner certainly felt no remaining interest in Margaret; and that interest he had once felt he remembered now with discomfort. He winced to remember the bedraggled episodes of an affair in which his part seemed to have been that of an importunate, but scared, inexperienced, and rather nasty schoolboy. Margaret could not have a poorer opinion of him than he had of himself; yet he suffered a sort of chagrin to think that Margaret, if she made comparisons, could make them, as she laughed with Harry, at the expense of poor dull old Abner. Abner, even if he repented it, knew well enough what he had seen in Margaret; but Margaret would be utterly unable to imagine what she had ever seen in Abner.

  To change his thought, Abner said, 'You know, I like Harry; but he makes me sore sometimes. It's my own fault —'

  'I don't like him,' Bonnie said. 'I never have. He's always showing off. He's a lot like Jared. He did that on purpose — I mean, speaking about the case. The only way he can be funny is by trying to show that anybody who is serious about anything is a fool. I was glad you said that to him! He wanted to show Margaret how smart he was; and he did.'

  Whether or not Bonnie would really believe that Abner came off best, the loyalty that made her act as if she believed it was grateful to him. He looked at her, feeling the pleasant surprise that comes with the recurring discovery that a woman, as well as always taking, can give; that you may expect to get, as well as a dependant, a confederate, or at least a devoted ally in your contest with the world.

  The waiter said, 'Mr. Coates, they want you on the telephone, please.'

  'Who is it?' Abner said, startled; for as far as he knew nobody could have known that he was going to be here; he hadn't even known that he was going to be here himself. If a search had been made, trying different places until he was found, the occasion must be urgent; and with a falling sense of alarm, Abner admitted that it was just what Aunt Myrt might do if something had happened at home.

  'I'll have to see,' he said, standing up. 'Do you mind?'

  'No. Of course not,' Bonnie said.

  There was only one thing that could happen at home. Walking quickly after the waiter, Abner thought of the morning when his father had his first stroke. Judge Coates had fallen in the bathroom, and Abner remembered the muffled sound — a peculiar jarring thud. It was not loud, yet it could not be mistaken for any ordinary or harmless sound. Abner, dressing in his own room, had rushed into the hall, saying loudly, 'Father! Father! Was that you?'

  It was he, all right.

  Judge Coates lay on the tiled floor. His face was a ghastly pallid grey, his cheeks blown out by his slow, loud breathing. His eyelids were not quite closed and through the slits he seemed to peer slyly but blindly to the side. His big, awkward, old man's bulk under a flannel nightshirt with faded stripes was limp in a twisted, somehow shrunken mound. Apparently he had been on the point of shaving, for his pigskin razor case lay beside him with half a dozen old-fashioned straight razors spilling out of it. Some had fallen open, and even in the shock of the moment Abner remembered thinking how dangerous they were. It seemed a miracle that the Judge had fallen without cutting himself.

  Though Abner had never seen a stroke before, the actuality was so close to what the word meant to the imagination that he recognized it instantly. It seemed to him that he had read somewhere that the head should be lowered —but immediately doubt assailed him; it would seem more sensible to raise it. Since he did not know which, he at least knew enough to do nothing. Automatically he gathered up the razors, dumping them with frantic haste into the wash-basin. Even in that crowded moment he had time to start when he saw what he had done; for he could imagine his father roaring with indignation to see those razors, a pride and joy of his, the finest that could be obtained, and under no circumstances was anybody to touch them, treated like that. Abner in shirt and shorts with one sock on and one off ran downstairs into
the cold morning gloom of the hall and seized the telephone. Doctor Mosher answered at last, incredibly calm and mild; and, in spite of Abner's agitated stutterings, in spite of an intelligence he must have found grim (he and the Judge had grown up together and been friends for fifty years), still calm and mild, his voice graver as he went on, and more decisive, but unhasty, 'All right, Ab. I'll be there. Now, take it easy. Just get a blanket —'

  The horror of the moment — it seemed worse for being in the morning, before breakfast, with the whole day ahead — returned to Abner; but he could never again be so unprepared in heart and nerves. The waiter indicated a telephone booth in the hall, a modernistic cubby-hole in scarlet enamel and stainless steel and glass to match the decoration, and Abner, bracing himself, stepped into it and took up the receiver with little outward tremor. 'Yes?' he said.

  The answering voice, he heard with a shock of relief, was Marty's, Strained and irritable, Bunting said, 'I had plenty of trouble finding you.'

  'I'm surprised you did find me,' Abner said. 'I didn't know you wanted me.' In his relief he felt irritable himself. His instant anticipation was that Jesse had spoken to Marty, and Marty could not wait a minute to tell Abner what a fool he was. 'What do you want?' he said. 'I'm having dinner.'

  'Yes,' said Bunting. 'I know. I'm sorry; but this is important.'

  'Well, what is it?'

  'I can't tell you on the phone. I want you to come up as soon as you can. I'm at the office.'

  'Oh, hell, Marty!' Abner said. 'No, I can't come up! Is it something about Jesse?'

  'No, it's not about Jesse,' Bunting said. 'I have some people outside. A constable came to see me at home with a story some people told him. I don't want to mention any names. It involves somebody I don't know much about; but you do, I think. I don't mean any particular friend. I want to try and see if there's any mistake, whether it's true or not, before I let it go to a justice's hearing. There's no warrant out yet, because I told the constable to bring the people to me first. So we've got to work fast —'