Criminals -- Fiction; Social problems -- Fiction; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918 -- Fiction
Yes, Marriott knew that he had lost and he felt himself sinking into the
lethargy of despair. The atmosphere of the trial had become more
inimical; he found it hard to contain himself, hard to maintain that air
of unconcern a lawyer must constantly affect. He found it hard to look
at Eades, who seemed suddenly to have a new buoyancy of voice and
manner. In truth, Eades had been uncertain about Griscom, but now that
the convict had given his testimony and all had gone well for Eades and
his side, Eades was immensely relieved. He felt that the turning point
in the great game had been passed. But it would not do to display any
elation; he must take it all quite impersonally, and in every way
conduct himself as a fearless, disinterested official, and not as a
human being at all. Eades felt, of course, that this result was due to
his own sagacity, his own skill as a lawyer, his generalship in
marshaling his evidence; he felt the crowd behind him to be mere
spectators, whose part it was to look on and applaud; he did not know
that this result was attributable to those mysterious, transcendental
impulses of the human passions, moving in an irresistible current,
sweeping him along and the jury and the judge, and bearing Archie to his
doom. But Eades was so encouraged that he decided to call another
witness he had been uncertainly holding in reserve. He had had his
doubts about this witness as he had had them about Griscom, but now
these doubts were swept away by that same occult force.
"Swear Uri Marsh."
There was the usual wait, the stillness, the suspended curiosity, and
then Bentley came in, leading an old man. This old man was cleanly
shaven, his hair was white, and he wore a new suit of ready-made
clothes. The cheap and paltry garments seemed to shrink away from the
wasted form they fitted so imperfectly, grudgingly lending themselves,
as for this occasion only, to the purpose of restoring and disguising
their disreputable wearer. Beneath them it was quite easy to detect the
figure of dishonorable poverty that in another hour or another day would
step out of them and resume its appropriate rags and tatters, to flutter
on and lose itself in the squalid streets of the city where it would
wander alone, abandoned by all, even by the police.
As Archie recognized this man, his face went white even to the lips.
Marriott looked at him, but the only other sign of feeling Archie gave
was in the swelling and tightening of the cords of his neck. He
swallowed as if in pain, and seemed about to choke. Marriott spoke, but
he did not hear. Strangely enough, it did not seem to Marriott to
matter.
This witness, like Griscom, had been a convict, like Griscom he had
known Archie in prison; he and Archie had been released the same day,
and he had come back to town with Archie.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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