Fruits of the Earth (39 page)

“Mr. McPherson,” she said, “I want to consult you about a case. What can a person do when a man has taken advantage of a girl?” She wondered at her own fluency.

Mr. McPherson smiled. “We don't handle such cases, madam. You want to see Mr. Inkster of Inglewood, Inkster, and McIntosh. He will give you competent advice.”

Ruth rose. “Mr. Inkster?”

“I'll see whether he is in.” He reached for the receiver of a telephone and made an inquiry. “One block east. You will find him there.”

At the offices of Inglewood, Inkster, and McIntosh, Ruth had to wait half an hour before she was admitted. When she entered the private room, she found a middle-aged man of powerful build who held his half-bald head to one side where his chin jerked over his shoulder. His face was expressive of utter disillusionment. He did not rise or look up from his papers as he asked her to be seated and to state her case.

She repeated the question which she had asked Mr. McPherson.

“I can't tell without knowing the details. It is for you to know whether you want to disclose them or not.”

Ruth told the story as she knew it; and now and then the lawyer jotted down a note on a pad of paper. He seemed to pay the closest attention, but whether to her story or to his papers was hard to say. He asked a few questions, so brutal that she winced. She quailed before his indifference; but she answered to the best of her knowledge.

Then, “You say the girl was innocent before this happened?”

“I do.”

The man shot her a shrewd glance. “Does she use rouge?”

Ruth bridled. “I don't see–”

Mr. Inkster smiled at his papers. “You wouldn't, madam. My question is answered.” He leaned back, relaxing, spreading out. “May I ask what your purpose is in proceeding against the man?”

“Surely he should be punished for ruining the life of a child?”

Again he smiled. “If your story is strictly true, madam; if you can persuade a jury to accept it, you may have a case. I won't say offhandedly on what charge: rape or seduction of a girl under eighteen. I do not mean to cast any doubt on your veracity, madam. But there are two sides to every case. A conviction is never certain. Every trial is full of surprises. May I call your attention to another thing? If the girl was not strictly innocent, the trial is bound to bring the fact to light. I do not say that she was not; understand me, madam. I am merely putting the case for your consideration. You may not be fully informed. Parents rarely are. In that case, a trial can bring only additional sorrow. But even if she was strictly innocent when
this thing happened, you might, if you knew how such trials are necessarily conducted, not wish to expose your daughter to the sort of cross-examination which she will have to undergo. The opposing lawyer will ply her with questions about the minutest and most unsavoury details of the act….”

Ruth gasped. “Will he be able to get a lawyer?”

Mr. Inkster's broad body swung forward, his head jerking over his shoulder. “Even the guilty are entitled to the protection of the law, madam. I'll be quite frank. If what has happened to your daughter had happened to mine, I should not proceed. Suppose her essentially innocent. I assure you, a girl that has stood in the witness-box in a trial for rape or seduction can never again be called innocent in any sense but that of the law. She knows human nature in its worst aspects more thoroughly than any one except a criminal lawyer. From what she learns in the trial she can never recover. Her imagination is sullied for life. That is the way this thing looks to me; and I should know.”

Ruth was speechless. The lawyer's eyes remained on his papers.

At last she recovered sufficiently to ask, “What is your advice?”

“That depends on your reason for proceeding against the man. As for the thing itself, it is done; nothing can undo it.”

“I want him punished.”

Mr. Inkster raised a weary hand. “The full rigour of the law! If I were without a conscience, madam, I should confirm you in that wish.”

“Cannot the girl be left out of the proceedings?”

“She cannot.”

Ruth rebelled. “If that is justice–”

The lawyer spoke tentatively. “Are there other considerations, madam? Financial ones?”

“No. Except inasmuch as they might embarrass the man.”

“In that case you might do almost anything with him, provided you get him to admit the fact before witnesses.”

“That would be very hard to do.”

“May I suggest a proceeding?”

“If you please.”

“Suppose you sign an information in blank. I shall have it filled in with due care. I shall get a warrant for the man's arrest and send a detective down. You procure another witness and hide the two in your house. Invite the man in under some pretext and talk matters over so as to make him involve himself. Get his admission, as if you were willing to compromise. The detective will place him under arrest and take him to the city. He will engage counsel and ask to be admitted to bail. Bail will be granted; but the sum fixed will depend on the girl's previous innocence. He may know more than you. The sum imposed will tell us. That he will claim knowledge of the girl's bad character goes without saying. Every man accused of such things does. It will depend on the degree to which he can substantiate his claim. If the trial judge disbelieves him, bail may be as high as a thousand dollars; but if he makes his defence plausible, it may be as low as two hundred. We force him to show his cards; you will have time to consider whether you want to proceed or not. A trial offers small chance of success when a man can show cause why his bail should be low. If bail is high, it remains to be considered whether you wish to expose the girl to a trial or not. If the problem is money, that is the time to settle out of court.”

Ruth became hopeful once more. “We can get an arrest, then?”

“You can get an arrest on any kind of a charge.”

“That is something,” Ruth muttered.

“You agree to the plan?”

“I believe I do.”

“If you will take a seat in the waiting-room, I will have the papers prepared when my secretary returns from her luncheon. We need your signature. In an hour you will be able to go home. Sixty miles, you said? The detective will be down by five to-morrow. Will that do?”

“Yes. The man comes at six to do the chores at my place.”

At four o'clock, Ruth met Mary on Broadway. For the moment she felt as if her action had invested her with a consciously heroic attitude towards life.

THE CONFLICT

R
uth had succeeded in evading Mary's questions and declined her offer to stay with her at the farm. But as soon as her sister-in-law had left, she surrendered to fears and doubts. She suspected the world to be vastly more complex than it appeared to be. New and unforeseen possibilities constantly arose before her imagination. The man was a returned soldier; did that give him privileges before the law? He had friends in the district; would they defend and help him?

There was the difficulty of procuring a witness. Whom could she ask? How was she to induce McCrae to come into the house? What, when she had him there, was she going to say? If she could not adequately punish, she craved the satisfaction of striking at least a telling blow.

But her hatred was complicated by such a longing for Abe and his support as she had never felt before. Love? What was love! She wished for a quiet, harmonious life by his side–a life of mutual forbearance if not understanding. But with this secret in her heart, how could she ever look Abe in the face again?

She had taken on herself a responsibility in which she needed the support of him in whom she discovered herself to believe more unconditionally than in God. When she had rebelled against him in the past, she had done so not the least because she had felt that she could never fulfil his expectation of her. She was not what he had thought her to be; thence had sprung a devastating jealousy of an ideal in his heart.

Repeatedly Ruth sat down, in dining-or living-room, and later at the foot of her bed, to abandon herself to a paroxysm of sobbing.

Again the unchained emotional possibilities dormant in her took their direction against McCrae; him she hated so that she could have annihilated the world to annihilate him. What he had done, made her past life one utter, dismal failure. The intensity of her hatred appalled her. He
must
be punished though it meant ruin to herself.

Whom could she ask to act as witness? Whom but Nicoll!

Night came, and practical things demanded to be done. She must see Nicoll. With the need for action her agitation subsided. She waited till it was quite dark before she went to the road to break into a needless run; but when the unwonted exertion affected her heart, she forced herself to go at a more leisurely gait.

She passed Dick Nicoll's new place which looked deserted; but the windows of the school were ablaze with light; there, the young people were assembled for a dance. A dance!

When she reached the gate of the farm at the corner, a light was moving near the stables. She stopped and called.

The light approached. “Mrs. Spalding?” Nicoll asked, surprised.

“Mr. Nicoll, I have come to ask you to do me a favour.”

“Anything I can do–”

“Will you come to the house to-morrow, between four and five, and listen to a conversation. I need a witness.”

Nicoll looked at her uncomprehendingly.

“I am in great need of help.”

“Of course, I'll come. But what is it?”

“You will hear. You must arrange to get there without being seen. Abe is away. It's McCrae who mustn't see you.”

“I'll go through the field. It is muddy, but–”

“Thanks,” Ruth said. She had spoken evenly throughout; but as she turned away, her knees shook….

Another night without sleep: a vague, chaotic night, full of tossings and lapses, accelerated heartbeats and bottomless voids.

And a morning, seemingly endless, yet regretted when it was gone.

As the afternoon wore on, a dull, feverish excitement invaded her, with no articulate thought, only feelings undefined and full of menace.

It was hardly four o'clock when a sound in the yard proclaimed the fact that a car had arrived. Ruth ran to the window in Abe's den. A medium-sized stranger was coming to the house.

“Mrs. Spalding?” he asked at the door, with a liveliness of speech in contrast to the mournful expression of his face. “Stuart, P.P., from headquarters, request Mr. Inkster.”

“Come in,” Ruth said faintly.

The man laughed mirthlessly. “The cah, madam. We'd bettah not leave the cah in the yahd. I have a drivah along.”

“I'll show you.” And, running, she led the way to the new barn.

“All-l-l right,” said the stranger, looking in. “Be at the house in a minute.”

Ruth felt no longer exhausted; but she hardly knew what she was doing. In the kitchen, she caught herself in the act of
putting on an apron as if to wash the dishes which had accumulated since Tuesday.

The detective reappeared. “Your man isn't heah yet?”

“My man?…Oh, McCrae. No, I don't expect him till six o'clock.”

“A witness?”

“Will be here any moment.”

“Does the man suspect?”

“I don't think so.”

“That's the dining-room? No, leave the blinds drawn. A den? All-l-l right. We'll be in theah. You get your man into this room heah…”

There was a knock at the back door. It was Nicoll; returning, she introduced the men to each other.

“
P.P
.,” the stranger said in explanation.

“McCrae is going to be arrested,” Ruth said to make it all clear. Nicoll betrayed no surprise. Perhaps he understood.

Ruth did wash the dishes, leaving the men to themselves. Nicoll was on the point of lighting a cigarette when the detective stopped him….

McCrae appeared a few minutes to six, on horseback. Ruth was upstairs watching from Jim's window. She ran down to tell the detective.

“Don't be in hurry,” the stranger advised. “Call him in casually.”

She returned to her post at the upper window. McCrae was behind the barn, calling to horse and cows, “Come on–come on–come on!”

Half an hour went by; the horses came; and McCrae fed them.

Impatient for action, Ruth went down again. Again the stranger warned her against hurry. “He mustn't suspect a trap.”

If only it were over. A plan was forming in her mind. Yet she wished she could postpone it all. Once more she returned upstairs.

McCrae was in the cow barn. Again half an hour went by. For the third time he appeared, carrying two pails of skimmed milk. A dull shock went through Ruth at his sight. How she hated him! How she hated every jaunty motion of his! She went down; and the detective nodded to her, all but closing the door of the den; she went to the shed.

Five minutes later, she saw the man returning from the pig-pen, holding his head high, his cap aslant on his skull. Ruth's excitement reached such a pitch that she feared she would fall and scream.

Now! As by a miracle her mind became clear. McCrae was on the point of turning the corner of the barn when she ran out, her bulk shaking. “Mr. McCrae!” She marvelled at the friendliness which she succeeded in putting into her voice. She was listening to its sound.

He stopped in his tracks.

“Would you mind coming in for a moment? I want you to do me a favour.”

“Sure,” he replied in cynical surprise. “Not at all.”

Ruth was conscious of the fact that she could not readjust her features from the ghastly smile she had put on. Yet she said coolly, “Come right in,” as she led the way through shed and kitchen. “Sit down.” She moved a chair in the dining-room. “Are the fields drying?”

“They're drying, yes. Unless we get more rain.”