Pembroke smiled. It was not the first praise that had reached his ears, but the first that he had heeded. He had quite lost sight in the last few extraordinary days of any outside view of what he was doing—but praise from a pretty woman—especially praise so obviously sincere, is dear to man’s heart.
“I am sorry the Colonel should be so uproarious in consequence of the trial.”
“He is, I assure you. But I—I—too, feel very great interest in your success. How much more noble this is than dawdling on the continent! You will not get any money by it, but think—the whole county will admire and applaud you—and think of those two poor black creatures.”
“You are crediting me with more than I deserve,” he said, finding it difficult to explain that what he was doing had long passed out of the region of a desire for applause, and indeed, of the feeling of compassion which had once inspired him. Now it was the overpowering intellectual and natural bent that was having its own way. Pembroke had been born a lawyer, although he did not suspect it.
In taking his thoughts back to that remote period before the trial begun, Olivia had brought Madame Koller to mind.
“Have you seen Elise—Madame Koller—lately?” The first name slipped out involuntarily. He rarely called Madame Koller by it at any time—but now, by one of those tricks which memory serves all people, her name came to his lips not only without his will, but against it. His face turned a deep red, and he bit his lip in anger and vexation. Olivia straightened herself up on her horse and smiled at him that peculiar indulgent smile, and addressed him in those gentle tones that betokened the freezing up of her sympathies and the coming to life of her contempt. He knew only too well the meaning of that appalling sweetness. “No, I have not. But to-morrow I will probably see her. Shall I remember you to her?”
“If you please,” replied Pembroke, wishing Madame Koller at the devil, as he often did. Often—but not always.
Then they drifted into commonplace, and presently they parted, Pembroke galloping back to the village, despising himself almost as much as the day he had allowed his anger to lead him into the quarrel with Ahlberg.
But when he reached his dingy little office, Olivia Berkeley, Madame Koller, Ahlberg, all faded rapidly out of his mind. That great game of skill in which he was engaged, the stake being a human life, again absorbed him. And then the critical time came, when, after having tried to prove that the negro’s blow had not killed Hackett, he had to bring out his theory that a dead and missing man was the murderer. Hackett’s boon companions, who formed a community of lawless loafers, had been unaccountably shy about attending the trial. Like the rest of their class, they regarded a sensational murder trial as the most fascinating occasion in life. They were great frequenters of the court house, particularly of its low drinking places during “court week,” but not one of them showed up in the first days of the trial. Cave brought this significant news to Pembroke, who knew few persons in the miscellaneous crowd that he saw every day. It made his heart beat hard and fast with the hope of a coming success. The Hibbses and their retainers, and a certain set of people who overcame their dislike to the Hibbs family out of exaggerated sympathy for a Northern man with Southern sympathies, for which Hackett had posed, formed a kind of camp to themselves in the court room.
The lawyers for the State found out that Pembroke knew all the weak spots in their theory that Bob Henry’s blow killed Hackett, but there was no suspicion of any evidence forthcoming to support Pembroke’s theory that another hand struck the blow. Hackett’s association with the deserters had evidently been carefully concealed by him, as it would have ostracized him utterly.