Leroy Scott - Counsel for the Defense

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 passion, 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 rôles, 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 rectitude, 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 spacious 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.

The hour was that at which Westville arose from its accustomed mid-day dinner – which was the reason Katherine was calling at Blake’s home instead of going downtown to his office. She was informed that he was in. Telling the maid she would await him in his library, where she knew he received all clients who called on business at his home, she ascended the well-remembered stairway and entered a large, light room with walls booked to the ceiling.

Despite her declaration to her father that that old love episode had been long forgotten by Mr. Blake, at this moment it was not forgotten by her. She could not subdue a fluttering agitation over the circumstance that she was about to appeal for succour to a man she had once refused.

She had but a moment to wait. Blake’s tall, straight figure entered and strode rapidly across the room, his right hand outstretched.

“What – you, Katherine! I’m so glad to see you!”

She had risen. “And I to see you, Mr. Blake.” For all he had once vowed himself her lover, she had never overcome her girlhood awe of him sufficiently to use the more familiar “Harrison.”

“I knew you were coming home, but I had not expected to see you so soon. Please sit down again.”

She resumed her soft leather-covered chair, and he took the swivel chair at his great flat-topped library desk. His manner was most cordial, but lurking beneath it Katherine sensed a certain constraint – due perhaps, to their old relationship – perhaps due to meeting a friend involved in a family disgrace.

Blake was close upon forty, with a dark, strong, handsome face, penetrating but pleasant eyes, and black hair slightly marked with gray. He was well dressed but not too well dressed, as became a public man whose following was largely of the country. His person gave an immediate impression of a polished but not over-polished gentleman – of a man who in acquiring a large grace of manner, has lost nothing of virility and bigness and purpose.

“It seems quite natural,” Katherine began, smiling, and trying to speak lightly, “that each time I come home it is to congratulate you upon some new honour.”

“New honour?” queried he.

“Oh, your name reaches even to New York! We hear that you are spoken of to succeed Senator Grayson when he retires next year.”

“Oh, that!” He smiled – still with some constraint. “I won’t try to make you believe that I’m indifferent about the matter. But I don’t need to tell you that there’s many a slip betwixt being ‘spoken of’ and actually being chosen.”

There was an instant of awkward silence. Then Katherine went straight to the business of her visit.

“Of course you know about father.”

He nodded. “And I do not need to say, Katherine, how very, very sorry I am.”

“I was certain of your sympathy. Things look black on the surface for him, but I want you to know that he is innocent.”

“I am relieved to be assured of that,” he said, hesitatingly. “For, frankly, as you say, things do look black.”

She leaned forward and spoke rapidly, her hands tightly clasped.

“I have come to see you, Mr. Blake, because you have always been our friend – my friend, and a kinder friend than a young girl had any right to expect – because I know you have the ability to bring out the truth no matter how dark the circumstantial evidence may seem. I have come, Mr. Blake, to ask you, to beg you, to be my father’s lawyer.”

He stared at her, and his face grew pale.

“To be your father’s lawyer?” he repeated.

“Yes, yes – to be my father’s lawyer.”

He turned in his chair and looked out to where the fountain was flinging its iridescent drapery to the wind. She gazed at his strong, clean-cut profile in breathless expectation.

“I again assure you he is innocent,” she urged pleadingly. “I know you can clear him.”

“You have evidence to prove his innocence?” asked Blake.

“That you can easily uncover.”

He slowly swung about. Though with all his powerful will he strove to control himself, he was profoundly agitated, and he spoke with a very great effort.

“You have put me in a most embarrassing situation, Katherine.”

She caught her breath.

“You mean?”

“I mean that I should like to help you, but – but – ”

“Yes? Yes?”

“But I cannot.”

“Cannot! You mean – you refuse his case?”

“It pains me, but I must.”

She grew as white as death.

“Oh!” she breathed. “Oh!” She gazed at him, lips wide, in utter dismay.

Suddenly she seized his arm. “But you have not yet thought it over – you have not considered,” she cried rapidly. “I cannot take no for your answer. I beg you, I implore you, to take the case.”

He seemed to be struggling between two desires. A slender, well-knit hand stretched out and clutched a ruler; his brow was moist; but he kept silent.

“Mr. Blake, I beg you, I implore you, to reconsider,” she feverishly pursued. “Do you not see what it will mean to my father? If you take the case, he is as good as cleared!”

His voice came forth low and husky. “It is because it is beyond my power to clear him that I refuse.”

“Beyond your power?”

“Listen, Katherine,” he answered. “I am glad you believe your father innocent. The faith you have is the faith a daughter ought to have. I do not want to hurt you, but I must tell you the truth – I do not share your faith.”

“You refuse, then, because you think him guilty?”