“Well, it happened around Christmas time. A traveling man from New York, drygoods or notions or something, had his car break down during a blizzard, and between waiting for the county plows to come through and clear the road and his car to be fixed by Peter Berry, he was snowed in here till after New Year’s. Stayed with the Berrys, as I recall, in their spare room. At a fee, of course. With the holiday goings-on and all, Sarah was in the village a good deal that week. And when the traveling man left, she left with him.”
“Elopement?”
“That’s what we thought. Mert and Hillie were fit to be tied. Not only was the man a New Yorker, he had a furrin-sounding name — at least it wasn’t Anglo-Saxon — and, what was worse, he was an atheist, or pretended to be. Good deal of a smart aleck; I don’t doubt he was pulling the yokels’ legs. His gibes at religion made Mert Isbel froth at the mouth. And this was the man who’d run off with his only daughter.
“As if that wasn’t bad enough, about a year later Sarah came home. She hadn’t written once during that year, and when she got home we realized why. She showed up with a baby, Mary-Ann, and no husband. In fact, she hadn’t seen the man she’d run away with for months. He’d got her pregnant and abandoned her, and of course he’d never married her.”
“Dirty dog,” said Johnny pleasantly.
“Well, there are dirty dogs and dirty dogs,” said the Judge. “I give you Mert Isbel as a relative example.”
“What do you mean?”
“Hillie died. Between her daughter’s disgrace and her husband’s Biblical tantrums — and a heart that was never very strong — Hillie just gave up the ghost. And from the day Mert buried his wife, he hasn’t uttered one syllable of recognizable human speech to Sarah or the child.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Well, you’ve seen them together. Have you noticed Merton Isbel so much as glance Sarah’s way, or at Mary-Ann? They live in the same farmhouse, Sarah keeps house for him, prepares his meals, makes his bed, darns his socks, separates his cream, churns his butter, helps him with the milking and in the fields, and he pretends she has no existence whatsoever. The invisible woman, with an invisible child.”
“And Shinn Corners?” said Johnny in a clipped way.
“No, no, you’ve got the wrong picture, Johnny. The people here feel very sorry for her. Mert’s an exceptional case.
“Adultery to the Puritan,” said the Judge, “has always been a serious crime, because like murder it endangers the family and the town. But fornication was, and is, different. It’s a private misdemeanor, hurting the offender chiefly.”
“And it’s always been so common,” remarked Johnny.
“Yes, indeed. Remember, the Puritan is a practical man. He keeps the statute making fornication a crime on the books as a matter of principle, but he winks at it more often than not because he knows if he didn’t there wouldn’t be enough jail room to hold all the criminals.
“No, the stone in this furrow is Mert Isbel. We feel sorry for Sarah and Mary-Ann, but we can’t show it except when Mert isn’t around. And that’s practically never. He compounds his cruelty by making sure Sarah doesn’t get out of his sight. At church, or whenever they make a public appearance, we ignore Sarah and the little girl because if we didn’t he’d make their lives even more hellish than they are. And he’s quite capable of going on a rampage if he’s balked. Then, too, of course, they’re his daughter and granddaughter. In old Yankeeland, my boy, you don’t interfere in a family affair... Only one in town who ever gave Mert his comeuppance was Aunt Fanny. She didn’t care if Mert was around or not. She invariably singled out Sarah and the child for special attention. For some reason, Mert was afraid of old Aunt Fanny. At least, he ignored her kindness to the outcasts.
“Well, that’s the story,” said Judge Shinn, “and now you know why Sarah Isbel can’t serve on this jury. Mert simply wouldn’t have it. It would have to be either Mert or Sarah, and of the two the town obviously will pick Mert. He’s the head of a family, the taxpayer, the property owner, the deacon of the church.
“And that,” said the Judge, “makes eleven.”
“But there’s no one left,” said Johnny. “Or have I forgotten somebody?”
“No, that’s all there are.”
“Oh, I see. You’re going to put an eleven-man jury over on them.”
“I doubt if I could get away with it.”
“But... then what are you going to do, Judge?”
“Well,” said the Judge, doodling on his pad, “there’s you.”
“Me!” Johnny was flabbergasted. “You mean you’re counting on
“Well, I suppose you wouldn’t want to bother.”
“But—”
“It would be kind of convenient, though,” said Judge Shinn vaguely.
“In what way, in God’s name?”
“You sitting among these people, Johnny? Why, I’d have someone I could trust sitting in on the trial, hearing and seeing everything that goes on.”
“Might be a kick at that,” said Johnny.
