so bad. But when she began talking about the plumber’s stomach it got different.”
“How do you mean—different.”
Charles Stuart looked around helplessly.
“I can’t explain,” he said, his mustache wavering a little, “but when she began talking about the plumber’s stomach you—you had to listen.”
A snicker ran about the courtroom. Mrs. Robinson and her attendant ladies on the bench were visibly horrified. The guard took a step nearer as if at a nod from the judge he would whisk off this criminal to the dingiest dungeon in Manhattan.
But much to his surprise the judge settled himself comfortably in his chair.
“Tell us about it, Stuart,” he said not unkindly. “Tell us the whole story from the beginning.”
This request was a shock to the prisoner and for a moment he looked as though he would have preferred the order of condemnation. Then after one nervous look around the room he put his hands on the edge of the desk, like the paws of a fox-terrier just being trained to sit up, and began to speak in a quivering voice.
“Well, I’m a night cashier, your honor, in T. Cushmael’s restaurant on Third Avenue. I’m not married”—he smiled a little, as if he knew they had all guessed that —“and so on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons I usually go to the matinee. It helps to pass the time till dinner. There’s a drug store, maybe you know, where you can get tickets for a dollar sixty-five to some of the shows and I usually go there and pick out something. They got awful prices at the box office now.” He gave out a long silent whistle and looked feelingly at the judge. “Four or five dollars for one seat—”
The judge nodded his head.
“Well,” continued Charles Stuart, “when I pay even a dollar sixty-five I expect to see my money’s worth. About two weeks ago I went to one of these here mystery plays where they have one fella that did the crime and nobody knows who it was. Well, the fun at a thing like that is to guess who did it. And there was a lady behind me that’d been there before and she gave it all away to the fella with her. Gee”—his face fell and he shook his head from side to side—“I like to died right there. When I got home to my room I was so mad that they had to come and ask me to stop walking up and down. Dollar sixty-five of my money gone for nothing.
“Well, Wednesday came around again, and this show was one show I wanted to see. I’d been wanting to see it for months, and every time I went into the drug store I asked them if they had any tickets. But they never did.” He hesitated. “So Tuesday I took a chance and went over to the box office and got a seat. Two seventy-five it cost me.” He nodded impressively. “Two seventy-five. Like throwing money away. But I wanted to see that show.”
Mrs. Robinson in the front row rose suddenly to her feet.
“I don’t see what all this story has to do with it,” she broke out a little shrilly. “I’m sure I don’t care—”
The judge brought his gavel sharply down on the desk.
“Sit down, please,” he said. “This is a court of law, not a matinee.”
Mrs. Robinson sat down, drawing herself up into a thin line and sniffing a little as if to say she’d see about this after awhile. The judge pulled out his watch.
“Go on,” he said to Stuart. “Take all the time you want.”
“I got there first,” continued Stuart in a flustered voice. “There wasn’t anybody in there but me and the fella that was cleaning up. After awhile the audience came in, and it got dark and the play started, but just as I was all settled in my seat and ready to have a good time I heard an awful row directly behind me. Somebody had asked this lady”—he pointed to Mrs. Robinson—“to remove her hat like she should of done anyhow and she was sore about it. She kept telling the two ladies that was with her how she’d been at the theatre before and knew enough to take off her hat. She kept that up for a long time, five minutes maybe, and then every once in awhile she’d think of something new and say it in a loud voice. So finally I turned around and looked at her because I wanted to see what a lady looked like that could be so inconsiderate as that. Soon as I turned back she began on me. She said I was insolent and then she said ‘Tchk! Tchk! Tchk!’ a lot with her tongue and the two ladies that was with her said ‘Tchk! Tchk! Tchk!’ until you could hardly hear yourself think, much less listen to the play. You’d have thought I’d done something terrible.
“By and by, after they calmed down and I began to catch up with what was doing on the stage, I felt my seat sort of creak forward and then creak back again and I knew the lady had her feet on it and I was in for a good rock. Gosh!” he wiped his pale, narrow brow on which the sweat had gathered thinly, “it was awful. I hope to tell you I wished I’d never come at all. Once I got excited at a show and rocked a man’s chair without knowing it and I was glad when he asked me to stop. But I knew this lady wouldn’t be glad if I asked her. She’d of just rocked harder than ever.”
Some time before, the population of the courtroom had begun stealing glances at the middle-aged lady with yellowish-white hair. She was of a deep, life-like lobster color with rage.
“It got to be near the end of the act,” went on the little pale man, “and I was enjoying it as well as I could, seeing that sometimes she’d push me toward the stage and sometimes she’d let go, and the seat and me would fall back into place. Then all of a sudden she began to talk. She said she had an operation or something—I remember she said she told the doctor that she guessed she knew more about her own stomach than he did. The play was getting good just then—the people next to me had their handkerchiefs out and was weeping—and I was feeling sort of that way myself. And all of a sudden this lady began to tell her friends what she told the plumber about his indigestion. Gosh!” Again he shook his head from side to side; his pale eyes fell involuntarily on Mrs. Robinson—then looked quickly away. “You couldn’t help but hear some and I begun missing things and then missing more things and then everybody began laughing and I didn’t know what they were laughing at and, as soon as they’d leave off, her voice would begin again. Then there was a great big laugh that lasted for a long time and everybody bent over double and kept laughing and laughing, and I hadn’t heard a word. First thing I knew the curtain came down and then I don’t know what happened. I must of been a little crazy or something because I got up and closed my seat, and reached back and pushed the lady in the face.”
As he concluded there was a long sigh in the courtroom as though everyone had been holding in his breath waiting for the climax. Even the judge gasped a little and the three ladies on the witness bench burst into a shrill chatter and grew louder and louder and shriller and shriller until the judge’s gavel rang out again upon his desk.
“Charles Stuart,” said the judge in a slightly raised voice, “is this the only extenuation you can make for raising your hand against a woman of the plaintiff’s age?”
Charles Stuart’s head sank a little between his shoulders, seeming to withdraw as far as it was able into the poor shelter of his body.
“Yes, sir,” he said faintly.
Mrs. Robinson sprang to her feet.
“Yes, judge,” she cried shrilly, “and there’s more than that. He’s a liar too, a dirty little liar. He’s just proclaimed himself a dirty little—”
“Silence!” cried the judge in a terrible voice. “I’m running this court, and I’m capable of
