“I don’t know you by name,” she said, “but I want to thank you for having the courage of your convictions. I’m told it’s not often a juror dares do what you’ve done to-day.”
The man was a little abashed as he replied:
“Oh, that’s all right! I don’t mind saying what I think to anybody. I wish I could have done something for you, though. I wish the jury could have got a chance at that case.”
“So do I. But the judge couldn’t afford to let you get a chance at it. He knew what you’d do with it. His rich friends would have been displeased. It was their money that elected him, wasn’t it?”
“Well, I don’t know about that. I guess he was elected fair enough. But, to my way of thinking, when it comes to doing justice, as between man and man, or man and corporation, twelve men are better able to decide than one, and if the law’s different from that, then the law ought to be changed.”
“Oh,” she said, “it doesn’t matter much about the law, nor about what anybody’s idea of justice is; the important thing is that the rich must stay rich, and the poor must stay poor. It’s the business of the lawyers and the judges to see that it’s done. That’s what they’re paid for. It would have set a bad example to the poor for my husband to have won his case. Some other poverty-stricken wretch might have tried by law to get a little of the justice that’s due him. They’ve won their point, but maybe they’ve made a mistake, after all. Maybe Richard Malleson has sowed the wind. I believe he has. Not that John Bradley will ever be able to resent what’s been done to him, but I will, and, as God lives, I’ll do it!”
The clergyman, standing near by, could not see her face; but her words came distinctly to his ears. Her voice rose slightly toward the end, but it was not so much its pitch as its expression of fierce determination that moved and startled him. The juror, too, seemed to be somewhat awed by the woman’s intensity, and waited a moment before answering her. Finally he said:
“I ain’t so sure as you seem to be that the rich, and those in power, are trying to keep the rest of us under their heels; but I am sure that justice hasn’t been done in your case, and if things like this keep on happening in our courts, something is going to drop in this country some day.”
“I believe you,” she replied; “and when it does drop, I pray that the first man it hits will be the one who is responsible for—this.”