So I sat there on a porch in Wilkesboro, peeling an unmetaphorical apple, and listening to Captain Allison stammer through an explanation of the behavior of our client. I was not shocked, though I would have never repeated a word of our conversation to my sainted wife. She would have been horrified beyond the power of speech. She’d have expected me to give up the case on the spot, I suppose, and since I was not being paid a red cent to conduct the defense, it would be hard to argue to the contrary. But, after all, somebody had to defend the poor boy.
I put down the apple. “So you are telling me that this Dula fellow had seduced the victim, Laura Foster, and promised to marry her, but that he was also in an adulterous relationship with his codefendant, Mrs. Ann Melton? And the state’s witness, the servant girl, Pauline Foster… she also claims that the accused has had-”
Allison nodded unhappily. “Carnal knowledge. Yes. So she alleges.”
I let out my breath in a long whistle. “I see what you mean about requiring that all ladies be barred from the court when all this testimony goes into the record.”
I was thinking what a waste his life had been, if he had chosen only to spend it on idle pleasures that led nowhere. Life is a gold coin-but you can only spend it once. How sad that a likely-looking fellow should throw away his one chance for so little of lasting value. I hoped he enjoyed himself, though. How sad if it had all been for nothing.
“I spoke with him briefly, you know,” I told Captain Allison. “He did not strike me as a dissolute fellow.”
My colleague ventured a tight smile. “Well, sir, they keep him sober in the jail, you know.”
“Even so…” I shook my head. “He is quite young… I perceive weakness… laziness covered by a facile charm, perhaps… He struck me as the sort of amiable fellow who would go along with anything a comrade suggested, provided the task was not too onerous, or if agreeing was less troublesome than saying no.”
“That may be, sir, but it won’t save him.”
“No. I hadn’t got to the point of thinking about ways to get him off, Allison. I was just indulging in a bit of speculation. I always want to know why people do things.”
He shook his head. “You know, Mr. Vance, I’ll bet you that sometimes they wish
After a moment of companionable silence, I said, “Well, you know, I also met the other defendant today.”
Perhaps it was a trick of the sunlight, but I could swear that Captain Allison was blushing again. “Oh-er-did you?”
My mind was still on biblical metaphors. I remembered an apocryphal story that-as the husband of a rock- ribbed Presbyterian-I was not encouraged to believe in: the tale of Lilith, Adam’s “other woman.” They say she wasn’t human-a demon, perhaps, or one of the fairy folk they talk of in the old country. Dula’s codefendant Ann Melton brought that old story to mind.
When I asked to see her at the jail, I was mindful of doing my bounden duty as her attorney, but I dreaded the encounter, for I imagined some poor weeping wretch, too frightened to speak, clinging to my coat sleeve and begging to be saved from the gallows.
But when the jailer brought her into the interview room, I found that I had done Mrs. Melton the grave injustice of underestimating her. My first impression-which I was careful not to show-was sheer admiration of her beauty, which affected me as I might stand back and appreciate a waterfall or a sunset, without having any desire to possess it. She was beautiful-not in the robust country way of an ordinary farm girl, for that is merely the bloom of youth and animal spirits, and it fades as fast as summer lightning. Ann Melton’s face had the sculpted perfection of Pygmalion’s marble goddess made mortal. Her alabaster skin was offset by smoldering dark eyes and a cloud of black hair that fell in waves about her shoulders. And she carried herself like a duchess, who had, by some error, fallen among ignorant rustics who had rudely imprisoned her. How extraordinary that such a rare creature should have come from an illiterate and shiftless family living in a primitive backwoods cabin in the middle of nowhere. Had she been more fortunate in her circumstances, she could have married a prince, I should think. All those thoughts passed through my mind in the time it took her to enter the room and sit in the chair opposite me across the little pine table in the interview room. No doubt she had been studying me, too, for her glance at me was one of cool appraisal. Here was no weeping wretch, in fear of her life, but rather a cool and disdainful beauty, who took men’s admiration in stride, and who took it for granted that her perfection would spare her the indignities visited upon lesser beings.
“I am sure this is most bewildering to you,” I said, attempting to put her at her ease.
She rolled her eyes and permitted herself a small mocking smile. “I understand it all right. People have been talking all summer, and they figure one of us killed Laura Foster.”
“Or that you did it together.”
“Well, we didn’t.”
“Do you know how Miss Foster met her death?”
She shrugged and looked away. “It’s nothing to do with me-or Tom.”
“Well, there’s no percentage in trying the two of you together, in any case. I intend to request severance in this case. That means that you will each have your own trial.”
She nodded. “Different juries?”
“Yes.”
“And in his trial, you’ll say I did it, and in my trial you’ll say he did it, and we’ll both walk free.”
I blinked. I had expected her to demand that I discover the real killer. “Well, I hope that we may see both of you acquitted of this terrible deed, but I would be remiss in my duty as your lawyer if I did not warn you that if you are convicted, you would be hanged.”
She gave me a pitying smile. “They’ll never put a rope around this pretty neck.”
PAULINE FOSTER
Ever since I found out that I had got the pox, I had been keeping still and listening whenever folks talked about it. They said it takes people in different ways, some faster than others, so I could not know what is in store for me. They said, though, that sometimes the disease poisons the mind, driving the sufferer to madness, and causing him to thrash and rave in a world of delirium until he finally rots from the inside, and dies. That may be a mercy, to be deprived of thinking so that you don’t realize what has become of you. But the future never troubles me overmuch. What I got to wondering about more and more was whether the madness of the pox had anything to equal the lunacy afflicting them that called themselves “in love.”
By the beginning of May, Ann Melton was pacing the floor like a penned-up bull downwind of heifers, and imagining Tom at Laura Foster’s place at any given hour of the day. It was tempting to think that the pox had got to her quick and gone to her head, and I can’t say I would have minded much if it had, but she seemed the same as ever on any subject except Tom. I tried to reason with her a time or two, more to get some peace than to give her any, but she would not be comforted with common sense, so I gave it up, and let her rave.
It didn’t sweeten my day any, though, to have to listen to her carping while I did the chores, sweeping around her feet like as not, and stepping over her to pick up an old bed quilt that had fallen on to the floor, while Ann wept and cursed Tom Dula for the faithless hound that he was.
“I don’t see that he’s changed,” I said once, to shut her up. “He is the same rotter now that he was at fourteen, bedding a married woman, and anybody else who would let him. I don’t see why it’s bothering you now. You’ve had most of your life to get used to the way of him. And you ain’t tied to him, so if he makes you as miserable as all that, you need never see him again. Just stick to your husband, who never gave you a minute of grief, and forget about Tom Dula.”
Ann laughed. “That won’t happen.”
“Likely not. Well, then, if you’re just fuming about his latest dalliance, why, you said yourself that such carryings-on don’t signify nothing to Tom.” Here I paused and pretended to be busy with my sweeping, but all the while watching her out of the corner of my eye. “Unless you think Cousin Laura means more to him than the rest.”
