And, in fact, when the great day came for the journey to the county town, the rickety little wagon with the old white mare stood harnessed before the porch for an hour while Editha, in the toils of perplexity, decided on the details of her toilet for the momentous occasion, and Benjie bent the whole capacity of his substantial mind in the effort to aid her. The finishing touch to her costume of staid, brown homespun had a suggestion of sacrilege in the estimation of each.
“I’d lament it ef it war ter git sp’iled anyways, Benjie,” she concluded at length, “but I dunno ez I will ever hev a more especial occasion ter wear this big silk neckerchief what that painter-man sent me in a letter from Glaston—I reckon fer hevin’ let him mark up my mantel-shelf so scandalous. Jus’ the color of the sky it is, an’ ez big ez a shoulder-shawl, an’ thick an’ glossy in the weave fer true. See! I hev honed ter view how I would look in it, but I hev never made bold ter put it on. Still, considerin’ I ain’t been in Shaftesvul sence the year I spent thar forty-six years ago, I don’t want ter look tacky in nowise; an’, then, I’ll he interjuced ter all them gentlemen of the jury, too.”
Benjie solemnly averred himself of like opinion, and this important question thus settled, the afternoon brought them to Shaftesville, where they spent the night with relatives of Editha.
The criminal court-room of the old brick court-house was a revelation of a new and awesome phase of life to the old couple when the jury was impaneled early the next morning. Editha, decorous, though flushed and breathless with excitement, sat among the spectators, who were ranged on each side of the elevated and railed space inclosing the bar, and Benjie, conspicuous among the jury, exercised the high privilege, which most of his colleagues had sought to shirk, of aiding in the administration of his country’s laws.
Although the taking of testimony occupied only two or three hours during the morning, the rest of the jury obviously wearied at times and grew inattentive, but Benjie continued alert, fresh, intent on a true understanding of the case. More than once he held up his hand for permission to speak, after the etiquette acquired as a boy at the little district school, and when the judge accorded the boon of a question, the point was so well taken and cut so trenchantly into the perplexities involved, that both the arguments of the lawyers and the charge from the bench were inadvertently addressed chiefly to this single juryman, whose native capacity discounted the value of the better-trained minds of the rest of the panel.
When the jury were about to retire to consider their verdict, the unsophisticated pair were surprised to discover that Editha was not to be allowed to sit with Benjie in the jury-room and aid the deliberations of the panel. She had stood up expectantly in her place as the jury began to file out toward an inner apartment, and had known by intuition the import of Benjie’s remark to the constable in charge, happily sotto voce, or it might have fractured the decorum of the court-room beyond the possibility of repair. At the reply, Benjie paused for a moment, looking dumfounded; then catching her eye, he slowly shook his white head. The constable, young, pert, and brisk, hastily circled about his “good and lawful men” with much the style of a small and officious dog rounding up a few recalcitrant head of cattle. The door closed inexorably behind them, and the old couple were separated on the most significant instance in their quiet and eventless lives.
For a few minutes Editha stood at a loss; then her interest in the judicial proceedings having ceased with the retirement of Benjie from the court-room, she drifted softly through the halls and thence to the street. There had been many changes in Shaftesville since the twelvemonth she had spent there forty-six years before, and she presently developed the ardor of a discoverer in touring the town with this large liberty of leisure while her husband was engrossed in the public service.
Drawn by George Wright. Half-tone plate engraved by G. M. Lewis.
“SHE HAD STOOD UP EXPECTANTLY IN HER PLACE AS THE JURY
BEGAN TO FILE OUT”