The Happy Average. Brand Whitlock

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СКАЧАТЬ sir, he’s a good preacher, and a good man,” Powell went on. He had taken a cigar from his pocket and was nipping the end from it with his teeth. He lighted it, and leaned back comfortably again to smoke, and then in tardy hospitality he drew another cigar from his waistcoat pocket and held it toward Marley.

      “Smoke?” he said, and then he added apologetically, “I didn’t think; I never do.”

      Marley declined the cigar, but Powell pressed it on him, saying:

      “Well, your father does, I’ll bet. Give it to him with Wade Powell’s compliments. He won’t hesitate to smoke with a publican and sinner.”

      Marley smiled and put the cigar away in his pocket.

      “I don’t know, though,” Powell went on slowly, speaking as much to himself as to Marley, while he watched the thick white clouds he rolled from his lips, “that he’d want you to be in my office. I know some of the brethren wouldn’t approve. They’d think I’d contaminate you.”

      Marley would have hastened to reassure Powell had he known how to do so without seeming to recognize the possibility of contamination; but while he hesitated Powell avoided the necessity for him by asking:

      “Did your father send you to me?”

      He looked at Marley eagerly, and with an expression of unfounded hope, as he awaited the answer.

      “No,” replied Marley, “he doesn’t know. I haven’t talked with him at all. I have to do something and I’ve always thought I’d go into the law. I presume it would be better to go to a law school, but father couldn’t afford that after putting me through college. I thought I could read law in some office, and maybe get admitted that way.”

      “Sure,” said Powell, “it’s easy enough. You’ll have to learn the law after you get to practising anyway—and there isn’t much to learn at that. It’s mostly a fake.”

      Marley looked at him in some alarm, at this new smiting of an idol.

      “I began to read law,” Powell went on, “under old Judge Colwin—that is, what I read. I used to sit at the window with a book in my lap and watch the girls go by. Still,” he added with a tone of doing himself some final justice, “it was a liberal education to sit under the old judge’s drippings. I learned more that way than I ever did at the law school.”

      He smoked on a moment, ruminating on his lost youth; then, bringing himself around to business again, he said:

      “How’d you happen to come to me?”

      “Well,” said Marley, haltingly, “I’d heard a good deal of you—and I thought I’d like you, and then I’ve heard father speak of you.”

      “You have?” said Powell, looking up quickly.

      “Yes.”

      “What’d he say?”

      “Well, he said you were a great orator and he said you were always with the under dog. He said he liked that.”

      Powell turned his eyes away and his face reddened.

      “Well, let’s see. If you think your father would approve of your sitting at the feet of such a Gamaliel as I, we can—” He was squinting painfully at his book-shelves. “Is that Blackstone over there on the top shelf?”

      Marley got up and glanced along the backs of the dingy books, their calfskin bindings deeply browned by the years, their red and black labels peeling off.

      “Here’s Blackstone,” he said, taking down a book, “but it’s the second volume.”

      “Second volume, eh? Don’t see the first around anywhere, do you?”

      Marley looked, without finding it.

      “Then see if Walker’s there.”

      Marley looked again.

      “Walker’s American Law,” Powell explained.

      “I don’t see it,” Marley said.

      “No, I reckon not,” assented Powell, “some one’s borrowed it. I seem to run a sort of circulating library of legal works in this town, without fines—though we have statutes against petit larceny. Well, hand me Swan’s Treatise. That’s it, on the end of the second shelf.”

      Marley took down the book, and gave it to Powell. While Marley dusted his begrimed fingers with his handkerchief, Powell blew the dust off the top of the book; he slapped it on the arm of his chair, the dust flying from it at every stroke. He picked up his spectacles, put them on and turned over the first few leaves of the book.

      “You might begin on that,” he said presently, “until we can borrow a Blackstone or a Walker for you. This book is the best law-book ever written anyway; the law’s all there. If you knew all that contains, you could go in any court and get along without giving yourself away; which is the whole duty of a lawyer.”

      He closed the book and gave it to Marley, who was somewhat at a loss; this was the final disappointment. He had thought that his introduction into the mysteries of the noble profession should be attended by some sort of ceremony. He looked at the book in his hand quite helplessly and then looked up at Powell.

      “Is that—all?” he said.

      “Why, yes,” Powell answered. “Isn’t that enough?”

      “I thought—that is, that I might have some duties. How am I to begin?”

      “Why, just open the book to the first page and read that, then turn over to the second page and read that, and so on—till you get to the end.”

      “What will my hours be?”

      “Your hours?” said Powell, as if he did not understand. “Oh, just suit yourself.”

      Marley was looking at the book again.

      “Don’t you make any entry—any memorandum?” he asked, still unable to separate himself from the idea that something formal, something legal, should mark the beginning of such an important epoch.

      “Oh, you keep track of the date,” said Powell, “and at the end of three years I’ll give you a certificate. You may find that you can do most of your reading at home, but come around.”

      Marley looked about the office, trying to imagine himself in this new situation.

      “I’d like, you know,” he said, “to do something, if I could, to repay you for your trouble.”

      “That’s all right, my boy,” said Powell. Then he added as if the thought had just come to him:

      “Say, can you run a typewriter?”

      “I can learn.”

      “Well, that’s more than I can do,” said Powell, glancing at his new machine. “I’ve tried, but it would take a stationary engineer to operate that thing. You might help out with my letters and my pleadings now and then. And I’d like to have you around. You’d make good company.”

      “Well,” said Marley, “I’ll СКАЧАТЬ