CHAPTER VI
THE LADY LAWYER
When old Hosie had withdrawn with his expectorative plunder, Katherine sat down at the desk and gazed thoughtfully out of her window, taking in the tarnished dome of the Court House that rose lustreless above the elm tops and the heavy-boned farmhorses that stood about the iron hitch-racks of the Square, stamping and switching their tails in dozing warfare against the flies.
Once more, she began to go over the case. Having decided to test all possible theories, she for the moment pigeon-holed the idea of a mistake, and began to seek for other explanations. For a space she vacantly watched the workmen tearing down the speakers’ stand. But presently her eyes began to glow, and she sprang up and excitedly paced the little office.
Perhaps her father had unwittingly and innocently become involved in some large system of corruption! Perhaps this case was the first symptom of the existence of some deep-hidden municipal disease!
It seemed possible—very possible. Her two years with the Municipal League had taught her how common were astute dishonest practices. The idea filled her. She began to burn with a feverish hope. But from the first moment she was sufficiently cool-headed to realize that to follow up the idea she required intimate knowledge of Westville political conditions.
Here she felt herself greatly handicapped. Owing to her long residence away from Westville she was practically in ignorance of public affairs—and she faced the further difficulty of having no one to whom she could turn for information. Her father she knew could be of little service; expert though he was in his specialty, he was blind to evil in men. As for Blake, she did not care to ask aid from him so soon after his refusal of assistance. And as for others, she felt that all who could give her information were either hostile to her father or critical of herself.
For days the idea possessed her mind. She kept it to herself, and, her suspicious eyes sweeping in all directions, she studied as best she could to find some evidence or clue to evidence, that would corroborate her conjecture. In her excited hope, she strove, while she thought and worked, to be indifferent to what the town might think about her. But she was well aware that Old Hosie’s prophecy was swift in coming true—that a storm was raging, a storm of her own sex. It should be explained, however, in justice to them, that they forgot the fact, or never really knew it, that she had been forced to take her father’s case. To be sure, there was no open insult, no direct attack, no face-to-face denunciation; but piazzas buzzed indignantly with her name, and at the meeting of the Ladies’ Aid the poor were forgotten, as at the Missionary Society were the unbibled heathen upon the foreign shore.
Fragments of her sisters’ pronouncements were wafted to Katherine’s ears. “No self-respecting, womanly woman would ever think of wanting to be a lawyer”—“A forward, brazen, unwomanly young person”—“A disgrace to the town, a disgrace to our sex”—“Think of the example she sets to impressionable young girls; they’ll want to break away and do all sorts of unwomanly things”—“Everybody knows her reason for being a lawyer is only that it gives her a greater chance to be with the men.”