The Just And The Unjust (55 page)

'That's about it, I guess,' Abner said. 'I had to get in those Blessington will papers this morning. It's certainly doing the Blessington sisters dirt. Well, I got them in. Intelligent self-interest. I guess what I thought to myself was that I couldn't afford to turn down any business. I don't know.'

Judge Coates said heavily, 'Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! For ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers. Yes. We're vulnerable. A lawyer can't very well do to others as he would be done by. Not in the line of business. I don't know whether you're asking my advice. It's the same conflict we were speaking of before — well, I was speaking of before. You don't get much chance to speak, do you?' He worked himself up a little higher on his pillows.

'Here's your Blessington situation. It's provided by law, primarily by statute, that one of a man's rights which the courts shall protect him in, is the disposal of his property after his death according to his intentions expressed in an attested will. It is a very important right. It is part and parcel of human freedom and dignity. Just as the jury must be free to find against the evidence, we have to hold that a man must be free, if he has the legal capacity to make a will, to make an unequal, unjust, and unreasonable will.

'True, we can't let him make it against public policy. Expediency will set bounds to his freedom. You cannot define exactly and for ever what the right bounds of expediency may be; but you can say what they must not be. The intention to realize is not the intention of the Court, nor the intention of Abner Coates, Counsellor at Law. In ethics and morals their intentions may be demonstrably better and wiser and fairer than the testator's intention. You've been saying, in effect, that you'd like to devise a better and juster disposal of Blessington's goods. You have no right to do it. The Court has no more right. The point for you is not whether you personally think the will just and good, but whether you can dispassionately and disinterestedly submit to the Court reasons in law and equity that bear out what you feel to be the testator's intention to leave the money to the clients you represent.'

Judge Coates coughed, holding up his good hand so that Abner would not interrupt him. 'Sorry,' he said, gasping. 'Now, if you don't feel and believe that such was the testator's intention, you should have nothing to do with it. In your case, I think it is obvious that the testator's intention, or his contingent intention, was that Enoch's college should get the money. If that was his intention, and if it is not an illegal intention, it ought to be realized. Granted that Blessington intended an injustice (and remember, that is an opinion; you and most other people may hold it, but it remains an opinion), would you say to me that the law ought to betray its great first principle and pay off one injustice (a matter of opinion) with another injustice (a matter of indisputable fact)? I think not.'

'I think not, too,' Abner said. 'It isn't what the law should do; it's what I should do.' He repressed a yawn. The long day had tired him, not physically in a way to make him sleepy, but in the protracted drain of nervous energy. He could not seem to whip his mind up to the heavy labour of manipulating abstractions. He said, 'I'd like to do what was right. Who wouldn't? Maybe that's only one of those deliberate noble actions you don't think much of. It has something to do with how things look, what people think of me.' He paused. 'Jesse told me your Senator Perkins said you wouldn't worry so much about what people were thinking of you if you remembered that most of the time they weren't. I'm not so good on come-backs. It took me until now to see what was wrong with that.'

In spite of himself, Abner did yawn. 'What's he mean? Does he mean that most of the time there's nobody looking, so you can do what you want? I don't give a damn whether anybody is looking or not. I'm looking. I care whether I look like a louse. Certainly I care what people think of me. They may only do it for ten seconds once in ten years, but I still care.'

Judge Coates said, 'Well, we all have our pride. It does a good deal to make us fit for human company. But I don't know how far the world at large, or Jesse in particular, is in duty bound to minister to yours. You made your decision. Don't go on arguing it over.'

'Well,' said Abner, 'to-day I guess I unmade it. Jesse asked me again, and I told him I'd run.'

'You did?' Judge Coates said. 'Why did you do that?'

'Because it was what I really wanted to do,' Abner said somewhat defiantly. 'At least, I suppose that's why.'

'Well, that's a good enough reason,' Judge Coates said. 'Why do you think it isn't?'

'I don't know that I do think it isn't,' Abner said. His mind in desperation refused him its services. 'I'd like to think there was more to it than just my own advantage. I wish I weren't so sure of that part of it. If it cost me something instead of paying me something —'

'It seems to me it costs you a good deal,' Judge Coates said. 'For the last few weeks you've been running yourself ragged on this case, this Howell-Basso thing. What do you get out of it? It puts you on edge, all right; I can tell you that.'

'I get my salary out of it,' Abner said. 'Why shouldn't I run myself ragged? It's my job.'

'Then just go on doing it, and don't worry. You take care of your job and other things will take care of themselves.'

'I don't remember that things ever did. Things don't look as if they would. You can see them cooking up another war for us in Europe; and when they do, I guess all bets are off.'

'Don't be cynical,' Judge Coates said. 'A cynic is just a man who found out when he was about ten that there wasn't any Santa Claus, and he's still upset. Yes, there'll be more war; and soon, I don't doubt. There always has been. There'll be deaths and disappointments and failures. When they come, you meet them. Nobody promises you a good time or an easy time. I don't know who it was who said when we think of the past we regret and when we think of the future we fear. And with reason. But no bets are off. There is the present to think of, and as long as you live there always will be. In the present, every day is a miracle. The world gets up in the morning and is fed and goes to work, and in the evening it comes home and is fed again and perhaps has a little amusement and goes to sleep. To make that possible, so much has to be done by so many people that, on the face of it, it is impossible. Well, every day we do it; and every day, come hell, come high water, we're going to have to go on doing it as well as we can.'

'So it seems,' said Abner.

'Yes, so it seems,' said Judge Coates, 'and so it is, and so it will be! And that's where you come in. That's all we want of you.'

Abner said, 'What do you want of me?'

'We just want you to do the impossible,' Judge Coates said.