Time Will Darken It (10 page)

After seven years of practising in his father’s office, he still did not feel that it was his own. But when he arrived in the morning, there was usually someone waiting to see him. He was not consulted about political appointments or asked to serve on honorary committees, but men who wanted to be
sure that, in the event of their death, their families would not be taken advantage of had Austin King draw up their wills and appointed him sole executor. He could spot a trick clause in a contract far more quickly than his father ever could. He had read more widely and was better at preparing briefs. On the other hand, there were things that Judge King had learned as a lean and hungry young man in the offices of Whitman, James, and Whitlaw in Cincinnati that no law school has ever learned how to teach. Judge King had been a brilliant trial lawyer of the old school. Austin settled cases, whenever he could, out of court; settled them ably and without fanfare. This was not wholly the difference between father and son. The times were changing.

During the period between 1850 and 1900, when Draperville was still a pioneering community, the ownership of land was continually and expensively disputed. The Government extinguished the Indian title to the prairie, and the land was subject to settlement either before or after it was surveyed. The settler had no paper title—merely the right to possession, which he got by moving onto the land and raising a crop. The amount of the crop was not legally specified. A rail fence of four lengths was often seen on the prairie, with the enclosed ground spaded over and sown with wheat. This gave the settler the right to hold his land against all others until he had purchased it from the Government (or until, through some unfortunate clerical mistake, someone else had) and it also left a chaos of overlapping claims. Laws were passed but they were full of loopholes, and consequently for the next two generations able lawyers were held in the highest respect. In the eyes of simple and uneducated men, the Law assumed the status, dignity, and mystical content of a religion. The local lawyers, even though they were the heirs of Moses, sometimes charged very high fees. A farmer accused of having improper relations with his daughter would have to hand over his farm to the Honourable Stephen A. Finch before that eminent
swayer of juries would take his case. But the older lawyers also took on a great many cases where there was no possibility of remuneration, merely so they could argue in court. They were dramatic figures and people attended their trials as they would a play, for the emotional excitement, the spectacle, the glimpses of truth behind the barn-burning, the murderous assault, the boundary dispute, or the question of right of way.

By 1912, the older generation, the great legal actors with their overblown rhetoric, their long white hair and leonine heads, their tricks in cross-examination, their departures from good taste, had one after another died or lapsed into the frailty of old men. There was also, throughout the country, an abrupt change in the legal profession. The older Illinois lawyers were trained on and continued to read assiduously certain books. Their bible was Chitty’s
Pleadings
, which Abraham Lincoln carried in his saddlebags when he went on circuit in the forties and fifties; they also read Blackstone’s
Commentaries
, Kent’s
Commentaries
, and Starkie on
Evidence
. The broad abstract principles set forth in these books were applied to any single stolen will or perjured testimony, and on these principles, the issue was decided. With the establishment of the Harvard Law School case system, the attention of lawyers generally was directed away from statements of principle and towards the facts in the particular case. They preferred more and more to argue before a judge, to let the court decide on the basis of legal precedent, to keep the case away from a jury, and to close the doors of the theatre on the audience who hoped to hear about the murder of Agamemnon and see Medea’s chariot drawn by dragons. The result was that the Law lost much of its moral and philosophic dignity, and required a different talent of those who practised it. The younger men regarded themselves as businessmen, and Miss Ewing (never quite respectful, never openly disrespectful) considered them one and all as schoolboys slip-slopping around in the shoes of giants.

Through the old-fashioned oratory in Mr. Holby’s office she heard the measured tread which meant that Austin King was walking the floor. So far as Miss Ewing could see, it was the only trait that he had inherited from his father. More times than she could remember she had heard Judge King pacing the length and breadth of his inner office. At such times he did not suffer himself to be interrupted. The governor of the State had been kept waiting for forty-five minutes until the pacing stopped.

When she had finished typing the abstract, she arranged all five copies neatly in a pile, got up from her desk, and took them into Austin’s office. He stopped pacing and looked at her, but the expression in his eyes was remote, and she was not at all sure that he knew she was in the room.

“Mrs. Jouette called,” she said. “I made an appointment for her to see you at ten o’clock on Tuesday.”

The thread of his thought broken, he nodded and (judging by the shade of annoyance in his voice) sufficiently aware of her presence, said, “Thank you, Miss Ewing.”

If he doesn’t want to be interrupted, she said to herself as she sat down at her desk in the outer office, all he has to do is say so.

She knew perfectly well that he would never tell her not to come in when the door was closed, and so long as he didn’t tell her, some perverse impulse drove her to break in upon him with details that could just as well wait. At times, when Miss Ewing was overtired, she considered the possibility of getting a position elsewhere, though she knew that there was no office in Draperville where she would receive as much consideration or be paid anything like her present salary.

The outer door opened and Herb Rogers came in. Miss Ewing did not waste on him the smile that was reserved for clients.

“I’m selling tickets for a benefit at the opera house,” he said hesitantly.

“Mr. Holby has someone in his office,” Miss Ewing said, “but if you’d like to see Mr. King——”

“I don’t want to bother him if he’s busy. I can come back later.”

“It’s all right,” Miss Ewing said cheerfully. “You can go in.”

4

Sit down, won’t you?
the rubber cousin said.
You’re rocking the boat
.

I never try to make my children mind
, the elephant cousin said.

I wish you’d tell me how you manage
, the rubber cousin said.

Oh I don’t know
, the elephant cousin said.
I give them presents from the ten cent store. They manage the rest
.

I give Humphrey lots of presents
, said the mother.

That’s news to me
, said Humphrey.

Well I don’t know whether it is or not
, said the mother.

Sit down, Edward, before I slap you
, said the rubber cousin.

My name isn’t Edward
, Humphrey said.

“From now on, it is,” Ab said.

Well my advice
, said the father,
would be to go out in the kitchen and see what there is to eat. Wash your hands, everybody
.

The telephone began to ring and Ab made no move to answer it. She didn’t even seem aware of the ringing on the other side of the room, but the doll party on the window seat was suspended when Martha King came into the study and took the receiver off the hook.

“Yes?… Oh yes, Bud … no, we haven’t.…”

Ab always enjoyed listening to her mother on the telephone. Where grown-up conversations were concerned, the half was usually more interesting than the whole.

“Yes …” her mother said several times into the telephone.
“Well I’m afraid it’s going to be very warm, but just let me ask them.…” Martha King put the receiver on the telephone stand and left the study. Ab turned back to her dolls.

Hot cocoa
, said Humphrey, whose name was now Edward.

And crackers with white icing on them
, the father said.

That’s a good idea
, the elephant cousin said.
Whose idea was it?

That was my idea
, said the mother.

Martha King came back and said, “Bud?… We’d like to very much … yes.… All right, I will … good-bye.”

With a brief, absent-minded glance at the dolls lined up in a row on the window-sill, she went through the living-room and out onto the porch. The doll party came to a sudden end.

“… and the terrible part of it was,” Mrs. Potter was saying as Ab opened the screen door, “they seemed so happy!”

She had taken possession, for the rest of the visit, of a wicker armchair that just suited her. The chair commanded a view of the sidewalk and the street, and the right armrest was designed to hold magazines or a knitting bag. Mrs. Potter kept her silk bag with the round raffia base in her lap. The bag contained crocheting and it went everywhere Mrs. Potter went. Mr. Potter kept the swing in motion with his foot. Nora was out in the side yard reading a book, with her head bowed to the white page.

“So Rebecca came home with a six-months-old baby,” Mrs. Potter said, “and she’s been home ever since.… Daughter, you oughtn’t to be out there on the damp ground. Cousin Martha will give you a blanket to sit on.”

“It isn’t damp,” Nora called back, “and I don’t want a blanket to sit on.”

“Nora is a great reader,” Mrs. Potter observed. “She takes after her Great-Aunt Selina, who used to cook with a book in her hand. When Nora was fourteen she started in and read right straight through the historical novels of Harrison Ainsworth. I tried one of them once. It was about the Tower of
London and very interesting. I always meant to go on and read the rest of it. Aunt Selina married a man named …” The crochet needle jabbed in and out, emphasizing this point or that in Mrs. Potter’s family history. When Mr. Potter showed increasing signs of restlessness, she glanced up and said, “You haven’t seen the barn.”

“You don’t have to worry about me,” Mr. Potter said. “I can always look after myself.”

But he didn’t. He sat in the swing, with one leg crossed over the other and his arms folded expectantly, and did nothing whatever to amuse himself. He was waiting for the telephone to ring, for people to arrive, for last night’s party to begin all over again.

“Aren’t there any dogs in this town?” he asked suddenly.

“At home Mr. Potter always has at least three hunting dogs trailing after him,” Mrs. Potter said. “Every chair in the house has dog hairs on it, and we have to barricade the beds to keep Blackie off of them. She comes and goes like a princess.…”

“Blackie’s a good dog but she’s getting old,” Mr. Potter said mournfully. “She can’t see any more. Five years ago I wouldn’t have taken a hundred dollars for her.”

He got up from the swing and announced that he was going to have a look around. He meant the barn; enough time had elapsed so that the idea was his now and not his wife’s. As he disappeared around the corner of the house, she said, “Mr. Potter is not himself this morning. You’ll just have to excuse him. He misses the horses. His whole life revolves around horses and dogs. Raising cotton is just a sideline. But it’s good for him to get away some place where he has to fall back on people for companionship.… Now, my dear, I want to hear all about you. Are your mother and father living? I thought maybe we’d have the pleasure of meeting them last night.”

“My mother died before I was old enough to remember her,” Martha said. “She died of consumption, and my father died shortly afterwards. I was raised by an uncle and aunt.”

Mrs. Potter had reached a crucial turn in her crocheting and didn’t answer for a minute or two. Then she drew a length of thread through her fingers and said, “Was she your mother’s sister?”

“My father’s,” Martha said. “My mother didn’t have any sisters or brothers. She was an actress. I have a picture of her upstairs, in
The Taming of the Shrew
. I can just barely remember my father. From what I’ve heard of him, I don’t think he was much like the rest of the family. They’re all very religious.”