“I didn’t mean to say it out loud, Judge Maxwell, but I thought it so hard, I reckon, sir, that it got away. Anybody that knows my Joe––” 320
“Come on, ma’am,” the sheriff ordered.
Joe was on his feet. The sheriff’s special deputy put his hands on the prisoner’s shoulders and tried to force him down into his seat. The deputy was a little man, sandy, freckled, and frail, and his efforts, ludicrously eager, threw the court-room into a fit of unseemly laughter. The little man might as well have attempted to bend one of the oak columns which supported the court-house portico.
Judge Maxwell was properly angry now. He rapped loudly, and threatened penalties for contempt. When the mirth quieted, which it did with a suddenness almost tragic, Joe spoke. “I wish to apologize to you for mother’s words, sir,” said he, addressing the judge, inclining his head slightly to the prosecuting attorney afterward, as if to include him, upon second thought. “She was moved out of her calm and dignity by the statement of Mr. Lucas, sir, and I give you my word of honor that she’ll say no more. I’d like to have her here by me, sir, if you’d grant me that favor. You can understand, sir, that a man needs a friend at his side in an hour like this.”
Judge Maxwell’s face was losing its redness of wrath; the hard lines were melting out of it. He pondered a moment, looking with gathered brows at Joe. The little deputy had given over his struggle, and now stood with one hand twisted in the back of Joe’s coat. The sheriff kept his hold on Mrs. Newbolt’s arm. She lifted her contrite face to the judge, tears in her eyes.
“Very well,” said the judge, “the court will accept your apology, and hold you responsible for her future behavior. Madam, resume your seat, and do not interrupt the prosecuting attorney again.”
Mrs. Newbolt justified Joe’s plea by sitting quietly while the prosecutor continued. But her interruption had acted like an explosion in the train of his ideas; he was so much 321 disconcerted by it that he finished rather tamely, reserving his force, as people understood, for his closing speech.
Hammer rose in consequence, and plunged into the effort of his life. He painted the character of Isom Chase in horrible guise; he pointed out his narrowness, his wickedness, his cruelty, his quickness to lift his hand. He wept and he sobbed, and splashed tears all around him.
It was one of the most satisfying pieces of public oratory ever heard in Shelbyville, from the standpoint of sentiment, and the view of the unschooled. But as a legal and logical argument it was as foolish and futile as Hammer’s own fat tears. He kept it up for an hour, and he might have gone on for another if his tears had not given out. Without tears, Hammer’s eloquence dwindled and his oratory dried.
Mrs. Newbolt blessed him in her heart, and the irresponsible and vacillating public wiped its cheeks clean of its tears and settled down to have its emotions warped the other way. Everybody said that Hammer had done well. He had made a fine effort, it showed what they had contended for all along, that Hammer had it naturally in him, and was bound to land in congress yet.