The Girl at the Halfway House Part 2

It was therefore predetermined that Edward Franklin should go into the office of Judge Bradley to begin his law studies, after he had decided that the profession of the law was the one likely to offer him the best career. In making his decision, Franklin was actuated precisely as are many young men who question themselves regarding their career. He saw the average results of the lives of others in a given calling, and conceived, without consulting in most jealous scrutiny his own natural fitnesses and preferences, that he might well succeed in that calling because he saw others so succeeding. Already there were two dozen lawyers in Bloomsbury, and it was to be questioned whether they all did so well as had Judge Bradley in the hog-stealing epoch of the local history. Yet it was necessary for him to take up something by way of occupation, and it resolved itself somewhat into a matter of cancellation. For the profession of medicine he had a horror, grounded upon scenes of contract surgery upon the fields of battle. The ministry he set aside. From commerce, as he had always seen it in his native town, twelve hours a day of haggling and smirking, he shrank with all the impulses of his soul. The abject country newspaper gave him no inkling of that fourth estate which was later to spring up in the land. Arms he loved, but there was now no field for arms. There were no family resources to tide him over the season of experiment, and, indeed, but for a brother and a sister, who lived in an adjoining farming community, he had no relatives to be considered in his plans.

Perforce, then, Franklin went into the law, facing it somewhat as he had the silent abattis, as with a duty to perform. Certainly, of all students, Judge Bradley had never had a handsomer, a more mature, or a more reluctant candidate than this same Edward Franklin, late captain in the United States Army, now getting well on into his twenties, grave, silent, and preoccupied, perhaps a trine dreamy. He might or might not be good material for a lawyer; as to that, Judge Bradley did not concern himself. Young men came into his office upon their own responsibility.

It was one of the unvarying rules of Judge Bradley's office, and indeed this was almost the only rule which he imposed, that the law student within his gates, no matter what his age or earlier servitude, should each morning sweep out the office, and should, when so requested, copy out any law papers needing to be executed in duplicate. So long as a student did these things, he was welcome as long as he cared to stay.

The judge never troubled himself about the studies of his pupil, never asked him a question, indeed never even told him what books it might be best to read, unless this advice were asked voluntarily by the student himself. He simply gave the candidate a broom, a chair, and the freedom of the library, which latter was the best law library in the town. What more could one ask who contemplated a career at law? It was for him to work out his own salvation; and to sweep the stairs each morning.

Edward Franklin accepted his seat in Judge Bradley's office without any reservations, and he paid his daily fee of tenure as had all the other students before him, scorning not the broom. Indeed, his conscience in small things augured well, for it was little cousin to his conscience in great things. Ardent, ambitious, and resolute, he fell upon Blackstone, Chitty, and Kent, as though he were asked to carry a redoubt. He read six, eight, ten hours a day, until his head buzzed, and he forgot what he had read. Then at it all over again, with teeth set. Thus through more than a year he toiled, lashed forward by his own determination, until at length he began to see some of the beautiful first principles of the law--that law, once n.o.ble and beneficent, now degraded and debased; once designed for the protection of the individual, now used by society as the instrument for the individual's extermination. So in his second year Franklin fared somewhat beyond principles merely, and got into notes and bills, torts, contracts, and remedies. He learned with a shiver how a promise might legally be broken, how a gift should be regarded with suspicion, how a sacred legacy might be set aside. He read these things again and again, and forced them into his brain, so that they might never be forgotten; yet this part of the law he loved not so much as its grand first principles of truth and justice.

One morning, after Franklin had finished his task of sweeping down the stairs, he sat him down by the window with Battersleigh's letter in his hand; for this was now the third day since he had received this letter, and it had been in his mind more vividly present than the pages of the work on contracts with which he was then occupied. It was a bright, fresh morning in the early spring. A little bird was singing somewhere near the window. From where Franklin sat he could see the green gra.s.s just starting, over in the courthouse yard. A long and lazy street lay in perspective before the window, and along it, out beyond the confines of the town, there reached the flat monotony of the dark prairie soil.

The leaves of the soft maples were beginning to show over there, near the village church. A dog crossed the street, pausing midway of the crossing to scratch his ear. The cart of the leading grocer was. .h.i.tched in front of his store, and an idle citizen or two paused near by to exchange a morning greeting. All the little, uneventful day was beginning, as it had begun so many times before here in this little, uneventful town, where the world was finished, never more to change.

Franklin shuddered. Was this, then, to be his life? He turned to the rows of scuffed-backed law books on their shelves. Then he turned again to his letter, and to the window, and to the birds and the gra.s.s.

He caught himself noting how long the dog's hind leg looked, how impossible the angle between the fore leg and the spine, as it half sat in flea-compelled contortions.

There came a regular tread upon the stair, as there had always for years come at this hour of half past seven in the morning, rain or shine. Judge Bradley entered, tall, portly, smooth shaven, his silk hat pushed back upon his brow, as was his fashion. Franklin turned to make the usual morning salutation.

"Good-morning, Ned," said the Judge, affably.

"Good-morning, Judge," said Franklin. "I hope you are well."

"Yes, thank you. Nothing ever the matter with me. How are things coming?"

"Oh, all right, thank you."

This was the stereotyped form of the daily greeting between the two.

Judge Bradley turned as usual to his desk, but, catching sight of the letter still held in Franklin's hand, remarked carelessly:

"Got a letter from your girl?"

"Not so lucky," said Franklin. "From a friend."

Silence resulted. Judge Bradley opened his desk, took off his coat and hung it on a nail, after his custom, thereafter seating himself at his desk, with the official cough which signified that the campaign of the day had begun. He turned over the papers for a moment, and remarked absent-mindedly, and more to be polite than because the matter interested him, "Friend, eh?"

"Yes," said Franklin, "friend, out West"; and both relapsed again into silence. Franklin once more fell to gazing out of the window, but at length turned toward the desk and pulled over his chair to a closer speaking distance.

"Judge Bradley," said he, "I shouldn't wonder if I could pa.s.s my examination for the bar."

"Well, now," said the Judge, "I hope you can. That's nice. Goin' to hang out your own shingle, eh?"

"I might, if I got my license."

"Oh, that's easy," replied the other; "it's mostly a matter of form.

The court'll appoint a committee of three members of the bar, an'

they'll tell you when they want to see you for the circus--some evening after court. They'll ask you where you've been readin' law, an' for how long. If you tell 'em you've read in my office, it'll be all right. I never knew 'em to fail to pa.s.s a student that had read with me--it wouldn't be professional courtesy to me. You'll go through all right, don't worry. You want to post up on a few such questions as, 'What is the law?' and 'What are the seven--or is it eight?--forms of actions at law?' Then you want to be able to answer on 'What was the rule in Sh.e.l.ley's Case?' There's sure to be some fool or other that'll ask you that question, just to show off--I don't remember what the d----d thing is myself--and you'll never hear of it again; but you get fixed to answer them three questions, an' you can be admitted to the bar all right anywhere in the State of Illinois, or leastways in this county. Then it's customary for a fellow just admitted to the bar to have a little jug around at his office before court adjourns--just to comply with a professional custom, you know. No trouble about it--not in the least. I'll see you through."

"I am clear in my own mind that I don't know much about the law," said Franklin, "and I should not think of going up for examination if that ended my studies in the profession. If I were intending to go into practice here, sir, or near by, I should not think of applying for admission for at least another year. But the fact is, I'm thinking of going away."

"Goin' away?" Judge Bradley straightened up, and his expression if anything was one of relief. He had had his own misgivings about this grave-faced and mature young man should he go into the practice at the Bloomsbury bar. It was well enough to encourage such possibilities to take their test in some other locality. Judge Bradley therefore became more cheerful. "Goin' away, eh?" he said. "Where to?"

"Out West," said Franklin, unconsciously repeating the phrase which was then upon the lips of all the young men of the country.

"Out West, eh?" said the judge, with still greater cheerfulness.

"That's right, that's right. That's the place to go to, where you can get a better chance. I came West in my day myself, though it isn't West now; an' that's how I got my start. There's ten chances out there to where there's one here, an' you'll get better pay for what you do.

I'd advise it, sir--I'd advise it; yes, indeed."

"I think it will be better," said Franklin calmly.

"Hate to lose you," said the judge, politely--"hate to lose you, of course, but then a young man's got to make his way; he's got to get his start."

Franklin sat silent for a few moments, musingly staring out of the window, and listening, without active consciousness of the fact, to the music of the singing bird which came from somewhere without. At length he rose and turned toward the elder man.

"If you please, judge," said he, "get the committee appointed for to-night if you can. I'll take the examination now."

"Yes? You are in a hurry!"

"Then to-morrow I'll go over and say good-bye to my sister; and the next day I think I'll follow the wagons West. I've not much to put in a wagon, so I can go by rail. The road's away west of the Missouri now, and my letter comes from the very last station, at the head of the track."

"So?" said the Judge. "Well, that ought to be far enough, sure, if you go clean to the jumping-off place. Goin' to leave your sweetheart behind you, eh?"

Franklin laughed. "Well, I don't need face that hardship," said he, "for I haven't any sweetheart."

"Ought to have," said the judge. "You're old enough. I was just twenty-two years old when I was married, an' I had just one hundred dollars to my name. I sent back to Vermont for my sweetheart, an' she came out, an' we were married right here. I couldn't afford to go back after her, so she came out to me. An' I reckon," added he, with a sense of deep satisfaction, "that she hasn't never regretted it."

"Well, I don't see how love and law can go together," said Franklin sagely.

"They don't," said the judge tersely. "When you get so that you see a girl's face a-settin' on the page of your law book in front of you, the best thing you can do is to go marry the girl as quick as the Lord'll let you. It beats the world, anyhow, how some fellows get mixed up, and let a woman hinder 'em in their work. Now, in my case, I never had any such a trouble."

"And I hope I never shall," said Franklin.

"Well, see that you don't. You hit it close when you said that love an' law don't go together. Don't try to study 'em both at the same time; that's my advice, an' I don't charge you anything for it, seeing it's you." With a grin at his little jest, Judge Bradley turned back to his desk and to his little world.

CHAPTER VII

THE NEW WORLD

Franklin crossed the Missouri River, that dividing stream known to a generation of Western men simply as "the River," and acknowledged as the boundary between the old and the new, the known and the untried. He pa.s.sed on through well-settled farming regions, dotted with prosperous towns. He moved still with the rolling wheels over a country which showed only here and there the smoke of a rancher's home. Not even yet did the daring flight of the railway cease. It came into a land wide, unbounded, apparently untracked by man, and seemingly set beyond the limit of man's wanderings. Far out in the heart of this great gray wilderness lay the track-end of this railroad pushing across the continent. When Franklin descended from the rude train he needed no one to tell him he had come to Ellisville. He was at the limit, the edge, the boundary! "Well, friend," said the fireman, who was oiling the engine as he pa.s.sed, and who grinned amiably as he spoke, "you're sure at the front now."

Franklin had not advised his friend Battersleigh of his intended arrival, but as he looked about him he saw that he had little need for any guide.

Ellisville as an actual town did not yet exist. A rude shanty or two and a line of tents indicated the course of a coming street. The two hotels mentioned by Battersleigh were easily recognised, and indeed not to be evaded. Out of the middle of this vast, treeless plain the great stone hotel arose, with no visible excuse or palliation, a deliberate affront to the solitude which lay far and wide about. Even less within the bounds of reason appeared the wooden building which Franklin learned was the Cottage. "Surely," thought he, "if the railroad company had been mad in building the stone hotel, much worse must have been the man who erected this rambling wooden structure, hoping for customers who must come a thousand miles." Yet was this latter mad act justified before his very eyes. The customers had come. More than forty cow ponies stood in the Cottage corral or in the street near by. Afar there swelled the sound of morning revelries.

Franklin wanted breakfast, and instinctively turned toward the stone hotel at the depot, where he learned were quartered the engineers and contractors on the railroad work. He seated himself at one of the many tables in the vast, barren dining room. Half the attendants were haughty young women, and half rather slovenly young men.

Franklin fell under the care of one of the latter, who greeted him with something of the affection of an old acquaintance. Coming to the side of his chair, and throwing an arm carelessly across Franklin's shoulder, the waiter asked in a confidential tone of voice, "Well, Cap, which'll you have, hump or tongue?" Whereby Franklin discovered that he was now upon the buffalo range, and also at the verge of a new etiquette.

After breakfast Franklin paused for a moment at the hotel office, almost as large and empty as the dining room. Different men now and then came and pa.s.sed him by, each seeming to have some business of his own. The clerk at the hotel asked him if he wanted to locate some land. Still another stranger, a florid and loosely clad young man with a mild blue eye, approached him and held some converse.