It would have been very hard for Yetta to tell any one—even Mabel—what that quarter of an hour meant to her. She was not exactly afraid. In a way she was prepared for it. She had heard Pick-Axe talk before. The girls had told her that the worst thing they had suffered during their imprisonment was what they had had to listen to, insults and obscenity and the mad ravings of the "drunks."
Although Yetta was not afraid nor surprised, her whole being shuddered under it. Her flesh seemed to contract in an effort to escape the contagion of such loathsomeness. For years she would turn suddenly pale at the barest memory of that torrent of abuse. Once Pick-Axe came close as if he was going to strike her, but the detective pulled him away. Yetta was almost sorry. It would have been a relief if he had struck her with his hand.
And yet it was very little for herself that Yetta suffered. She was being sacrificed for a great host. What they did to her mattered very little, but in her they were striking at all the myriad "people of the process"—the women of her trade, the cloth weavers, the wool-growers, those who grew wheat for their bread, who made beds for them to sleep in. She felt herself a delicate instrument for the transmission of sound. Those stinging, cruel words were going out to the remotest corners of the land, were bringing shame on all the lowly people of the earth, just as his kick, crashing into Mrs. Muscovitz' side, had made them all gasp with pain. Once she looked up, she wanted to ask him what they paid him that made it worth his while to treat her people so. But she knew it was useless to ask—he would not have understood.
Then echoing down the corridor, she heard a warden bawling her name. From the point of view of Braun's intended defence, Yetta's arrest had come at a fortunate time of day. By noon the morning calendar is disposed of, and he could have her arraigned for hearing at once. The least delay meant the possibility of the prosecution finding some witness who had seen Yetta strike Pick-Axe.
Yetta had wanted to tell the judge the truth. It was only because Braun insisted that it would endanger the success of the strike that she had consented to lie. But when she was led into the court-room, her scruples left her.
Telling the truth is like a quarrel—there must be two parties to it. Nicolas Gay, the Russian painter, has a canvas called, "What is Truth?" It portrays Pontius Pilate, putting this question to the Christ. And you realize at once why the Prisoner could not answer. Truth is not the enunciation of certain words. Nothing which the scorned and scourged and thorn-crowned Jesus might have said about His Truth could have penetrated the thick skull of the gross and pride-filled Roman proconsul.
Yetta, in a somewhat similar situation, understood at once that this dingy court-room was not an Abode of Truth. Magistrate Cornett, before whom she was led, although a young man, was quite bald. He sat hunched up in his great chair, and the folds of his heavy black robe made him look deformed. His finger nails were manicured. His skin was carefully groomed, but the flesh under it was flabby. His face and hands were those of a gourmand.
The clerk read the complaint. It charged Yetta with assault in all its degrees in that on that very day she had with felonious intent struck one Michael Brennan on the head with a dangerous weapon, to wit a blackjack.
"Guilty or not guilty?"
"Not guilty," Braun replied.