a true witness delivereth souls.—proverbs.
late in february a blizzard swept over the north; it was followed by still, intense, stringent cold. by night the fogs were dense; by day the white world glittered in sunshine. trees of snow-blossom and iron filigree raised their heads, as white as plumes, against a china-blue sky. posts, hedges, buildings, snow-hooded and sparkling, rising out of pearly frost-haze, threw azure shadows on the softly rippled velvet of the drift. country lanes were buried many feet deep, but a passage had been carved down the westby road; the slow carts, lumbering in to market, crunched their way between tall, strange, silvery and chalky-white cliffs, like the sugar icing on a bridecake, along tracks made golden with the scattered sand. the sun found rainbows in the icicles and diamonds in the snow, but it did not melt them; and at night, under the sweet influences of the pleiades and the jeweled bands of orion, the frost struck deeper and deeper into the earth, the ice grew thicker and thicker on the steely lakes.
in spite of the weather, westby was full. not only was it market-day, but the assizes were on, with a sensational case. everybody knew that the late owner of the easedale hotel was to be tried for killing one of his own guests. the celebrated hancock, k.c., had been retained for the crown; and bullard, for the defense, was only less popular. moreover, the case was to be tried before mr. justice beckwith, who was said to be dead nuts on crimes of violence. blue look-out for the prisoner, every one agreed. the court was crowded, stuffy, and bitterly cold. mr. gardiner, a valorous[pg 171] and pathetic little figure, shivered and coughed under his rusty inverness. tom was doing his best to keep him covered up; but as often as he tucked the capes round his father's shoulders, that perverse and petulant invalid tossed them back. "i can't listen stuffed up like that!" he complained.
tom was gloomy. this was the second day of the trial; he had heard hancock open for the crown, he had listened to the evidence of the police, dr. scott, miss marvin, louisa; and he felt it was all up with his brother. what was more, he knew that kellett the lawyer thought so too. "it's unlucky, most unlucky, that mr. gardiner can't remember major trent's actual words," was all he would say when they discussed it; and he pulled a very long face on hearing the name of the judge. "beckwith? well, he hasn't a reputation for leniency, certainly!" tom was fully expecting penal servitude. he saw no ray of hope. unless, by any wild chance—there were those unexpected and seemingly aimless questions which bullard had put to miss marvin, questions about the rooms and the other guests—was it possible that they had a hidden meaning? had something fresh turned up at the last minute? had kellett a surprise up his sleeve? no, tom decided, it was not possible, it was absurd to imagine it. he returned to his gloom.
as to the prisoner, he had summoned just enough surface gayety to take in the reporters and his father, whose eyes were dim; but beneath it he looked sick, and sorry, and desperately tired. heavy lines were drawn to the corners of his mouth, and his jaw-bone stuck out, gaunt and ugly, from hollows under the ear where his neck was corded like an old man's. tom could see his throat swelling with suppressed yawns; but he woke up at any stir among the spectators. again and again his eyes went questing eagerly round the benches. what was he looking for? tom had no idea. he had never heard of lettice smith.
"who's that? who is it going into the box now, tom?"
"that's mrs. trent, sir."
general thrill in court. dorothea had resumed her[pg 172] widow's weeds together with her married name; and very young she looked, and fair, and pathetic, under the flowing veil. from hancock's point of view, this was as it should be. it would take a deal of sentiment to make her past proceedings go down with the jury. perhaps dorothea knew this. perhaps she was playing to the gallery. perhaps, on the other hand, she was only playing to herself—acting what she knew she ought to feel, in order to persuade herself that she did feel it. dorothea was a great hand at believing what she wanted to. however that might be, she was undoubtedly pathetic; and with her romantic story fresh in their minds from hancock's opening speech, the jury were duly impressed.
she struck the right note at once. "my husband was not intoxicated!" she said indignantly. "he was only very, very anxious for my comfort!" half-a-dozen credible witnesses had sworn that trent was intoxicated, but no matter; the point was that, after nearly a year of marriage, he appeared as still a hero to his wife. next came dorothea's own part in the drama. she described the scene: the lamp on the floor, the confusion of both men, denis's attempt to keep her out, gardiner's unconcealed terror. "i told him he had murdered my husband, and he didn't deny it. he cowered back against the wall with his arm across his eyes, so, but he never attempted to deny it!" she told how, kneeling on the floor beside her dead husband, she had come upon the chisel. "i slipped it under my cloak. no, i didn't mean to hide it. it was only that i—i—i couldn't speak just then. i was thinking of my husband." was it art that made her voice fail, or nature? "i don't know what happened next. i don't remember speaking to my maid. i don't remember anything. i think i fainted. i was ill afterwards. no, i didn't accuse the prisoner later on because i knew it wouldn't be any good. i was sure in my own mind that he had killed my husband, but i had no proof. i knew people would say it was just my fancy. so then i set myself to get proofs—"
because he knew it was bound to come out, hancock took[pg 173] her through the story of her attempt on gardiner. that gun must be surrendered to the enemy, but he would see that it was spiked first. dorothea's behavior must be palliated by showing her fanatical devotion to her husband. no need to dwell on the scene at the crucifix, what gardiner himself called the shilling-shocker part of the affair. both sides were equally anxious to leave that in a decent obscurity. "yes, i did pretend to be friends with him, and i did ask him, as a friend, to tell me the truth," dorothea defiantly avowed. "yes, i did know i was being hateful, and mean, and contemptible. but what did that matter? i had to see justice done!" jael, and judith, and charlotte corday—and dorothea trent? her story ended in a storm of tears, which broke, strange to say, after she had done with gardiner and was telling of her sojourn at dent-de-lion. but no one in court dreamed of connecting her emotion with that part of her tale.
"i'd be sorry to be a broad churchman and not believe in hell," mr. gardiner commented with gusto. "who's this now, tom?"
"that? oh, that's merion-smith—poor beggar!"
another general stir. this was due partly to denis's profession (for airmen weren't so common in the lakes then as they have since become), and partly to his dramatic share in the story. a whisper went round, which was the well-informed telling the ignorant about the inquest. denis's chin went up a shade higher. he had set his back against his family tree, and looked down arrogantly through his eyeglass on the court and all therein. it was plain he meant to give trouble.
the beginning ran smoothly. he told of trent's intrusion, bending aside the questions to show how gardiner had gone out of his way to avoid a quarrel. this was familiar ground; not so the conversation that had followed. counsel would fain have passed over the details of trent's discourse, but denis intended the court to hear as much as he could possibly get in. out came the story of the little girl at chatham, sounding twice as bad by contrast on denis's lips.[pg 174] the prisoner grinned. while ostensibly giving his evidence with distaste and reluctance (and indeed both sentiments were genuine enough), denis was supplying the best, the only excuse for his friend. vainly did his questioner try to show him as the straight-laced puritan, to whom the mildest of jokes is an offense. denis would not fit into the part.
"at last, when we had stood as much as we could, the prisoner suggested it was gettin' late. trent made a joking answer. what he said was grossly offensive, worse than anything before. the prisoner caught up a chisel and flung it at his head. no, it was not premeditated. no, there had been no quarrel. simply, the man was saying indecencies that had to be stopped, and the prisoner took the first way of stoppin' them—and if he hadn't, i'd've done it myself," denis put in, unasked. "no, i cann't remember what it was he said—"
instantly hancock pricked up his ears. "you don't remember what major trent said?"
"i do not. not the exact words."
"not any of them?"
"not to swear to."
"indeed! yet you could tell us in detail all about his other speeches?"
"not so," denis corrected, rather stiff. "i did not tell you in detail, i told you in substance. that is quite another thing."
"with considerable fullness and fluency, however," said his questioner dryly. "well, then: you remember all these other stories, so far as you do remember them, but you have forgotten every single word of this—which you say was the worst of all? can't you give us the substance of that too?"
"it was not a story," said denis, now very stiff indeed, "it was a few broken sentences. i cann't remember them accurately, and i won't make guesses. i dismissed them from memory as soon as i could. i don't burden my mind with pornographic details."
[pg 175]
"quite so; but surely without infringing either truth or decency you can give us some rough idea as to what this mysterious speech was about? was it about a woman, for example?"
denis remained obstinately silent.
"can't remember even that? only you are sure it was offensive?"
"it was insufferable."
the barrister leaned forward persuasively. "how about this for a suggestion? i put it to you: was it not to the prisoner personally that the deceased was offensive? and did not the prisoner lose his temper, and retaliate by throwing the chisel?"
"nothing of the sort. i have told you before: there was no quarrel of any kind. the deceased was laughing up to the last moment, and what the prisoner did was done in the interests of decency. it was impossible to sit still and listen to the things that were comin' out of that man's mouth."
"come, come, mr. smith! as a man of the world, are you going to ask us to believe that the prisoner—who, i gather, has knocked about all over the world, in countries which aren't precisely like a sunday school—do you seriously expect us to understand that he was so much upset by an ordinary after-dinner story as to lose all self-control, and endanger his liberty, if not his life?"
"i do not expect you to understand anything," said denis, serenely insolent. "i was addressin' the gentlemen of the jury."
"why can't he speak out? what's he hiding?" mr. gardiner whispered feverishly to tom. tom could only shake his head and pull his mustache. certain memories were stirring uncomfortably. what was it harry had said about having his hands tied, not being free to explain? he had never given it another thought until this minute.
meanwhile denis, already convicted of tampering with the truth on behalf of his friend (for every one believed he had suppressed a speech that told against the prisoner), was[pg 176] being taken through the rest of his evidence. hancock was trying to show his bias: that he would twist the truth in gardiner's favor, and tell only the minimum against him. in this topsy-turvy business denis was virtually on the side of the defense. he had to suffer for his sympathies. his self-respect was stripped bare. yet it was only by guesswork that gardiner could divine his feelings; the harder fate hit him, the stiffer grew his back. how gardiner envied that effortless and natural control!
hancock finished, and counsel for the defense rose to cross-examine. bullard, k.c., was a long, lank, untidy figure, and had a hesitating, negligent way of speech. he began with some unimportant minor points slurred over in the examination-in-chief. then came a pause, during which he gazed at his brief, the people whispered, and the prisoner yawned. then a bombshell.
"i have only one more question to trouble you with, mr. merion-smith," he said, looking up. "did the deceased, in that last speech which you cannot remember, make any mention of mrs. trent?"
denis's head went up with a jerk. a thrill went round the court, but was instantly stilled. bullard was repeating his question in another form.
"did not the prisoner suggest that mrs. trent would be tired; and did not the deceased answer by a coarse allusion to her state of health?"
the witness was seen to struggle for words—in vain.
"thank you, that will do."
upon this followed the luncheon interval. through the excited crowd tom carried off his father to a quiet inn near by, where he had ordered lunch. the old man sat over the fire with his basin of soup (he would take nothing else, and did not drink that), shrunken, and silent, and aged. once he looked up piteously. "what does it mean, tom? what does it all mean?" tom could only answer: "i've no idea, sir. shall i go and see if i can get hold of kellett?" but mr. gardiner shook his head and crouched closer to the fire, muttering: "no, no. time enough, time enough.[pg 177] we shall hear it all presently." tom, though he was longing to find the lawyer, durst not leave him.
the court was crowded to its last seat when they reassembled, and bullard opened for the defense. he was a clever advocate; perhaps a little too clever. he was apt to hint his points instead of making them, to cut and refine his phrases like some fastidious literary artist. this is not the way to get a verdict from plain men accustomed to plain language, clear outlines, the black and white of fact. they do not understand half-tones and intellectual subtleties. on the other hand, bullard had a reputation for incorruptible honesty; and he rose at times to eloquence.
he began, in his negligent way, to recapitulate the facts, a touch here and there serving to rearrange them to the prisoner's advantage. he did not, he said, propose to deny that his client had thrown the tool; but he submitted that the evidence proved, first, that the death of the deceased was due to the fall and not to the blow; second, that if he had been perfectly sober he would not have fallen. very lucid was he, very persuasive. but his audience was waiting for what was to come.
"finally, gentlemen, i hope to show that in throwing that chisel the prisoner was guilty of no crime; rather that he was the necessary unofficial policeman of the moral law. there are still," he went on, dwelling on the words like an epicure, "there are still offenses which are not amenable to ordinary justice, which can be dealt with only by ... punching the offender's head, cramming his words back down his own throat. this was such a case. look first at the dead man." he broke off to give a summary of trent's glorious-inglorious career: the ribbon on the one hand, disgrace on the other. "brilliant promise, you see, marred by a single fault. 'it was never wine with me'—we have that on his own authority; it was a fouler vice. the man was rotten: still showing a fair outside, still preserving some traits of kindliness, but black-rotten within. when a decent man gets a glimpse of that sort of thing, he doesn't stay to argue; he hits out.
[pg 178]
"now in defending the prisoner i was met at first by a singular difficulty. neither he nor the only known witness of the scene could remember the words which provoked the outbreak. strange, you will say; most strange; suspicious, even. surely they could make some sort of rough guess? but no, both persisted; they could not. what pointed the moral was the fact that these two were conferring together at the moment of the prisoner's arrest. it looked like a conspiracy of silence. now why should they conspire to keep silence? in order to hide some fact damaging to the prisoner. that is the obvious deduction, which of course you have already drawn. and, gentlemen, the prisoner would have left it at that: he would have let your judgment go by default against him, and taken the consequences: you would never have heard the facts, never, but for a totally unexpected circumstance, which came to my knowledge not forty-eight hours ago.
"there was another witness to that scene in the hotel. unknown to my client or to his friend, another of the guests saw and overheard everything that happened. i shall not attempt to summarize this testimony. i shall leave it in the witness's own words, and i shall leave you to draw your own conclusions; asking you to bear in mind, as you do so, the story of her dealings with the prisoner which you have heard from mrs. trent.
"this only i will say: we men of the law, seeing nothing but meanness and crime, day after day, year after year, grow sometimes to despair of the world, to see nothing before it but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation. acts such as the prisoner's redress the balance. they show us once again the sense of tears in mortal things, the indestructible nobility of the human heart, the god in human nature. 'through such souls alone god stooping shows sufficient of his light for us i' the dark to rise by.' gentlemen, i should like to thank the prisoner.
"call l?titia jane smith."
lettice stepped into the witness-box. she did not look at[pg 179] gardiner, gazing at her with his haggard eyes as at a dream come true; nor at dorothea, shrinking away like a child from the lash. self-withdrawn and expressionless, she looked straight at the examining counsel, and to him alone she gave her evidence.
yes, she had been staying at the prisoner's hotel on the night in question. she had gone there to meet her cousin, mr. merion-smith. she had not told him that she meant to do so; she wanted to take him by surprise. she engaged a room on the ground floor of the west wing. she did not go in to dinner, nor did she try to see her cousin that evening, because she had a bad headache. she stayed in her room writing. about ten o'clock she went out for a breath of air. she came back at twenty-two minutes past ten. how did she know the time? because she stopped to set her watch by the clock in the hall. afterwards she went straight to her room. it was in darkness, but the room opposite, the prisoner's room, was lighted up. her window and his were both open. she could see in clearly. the distance was not great. she had very good sight. "i can read the papers in your hand," said lettice concisely. there were three persons in the room: her cousin, sitting by the window; the prisoner, at the table: and a third man, whom from a photograph she had since identified as major trent, leaning back against the mantelpiece. major trent was speaking. he seemed to be finishing some story. he was laughing. the prisoner did not laugh, nor did mr. merion-smith. the latter leaned forward and spoke to the prisoner, and the prisoner answered. she could not hear what was said because they spoke in whispers. her cousin seemed angry. "he was bristling all over," said lettice. the prisoner then turned and addressed the deceased. yes, she could hear that. what he said? he suggested it was getting late, and that mrs. trent would be tired. was she sure he mentioned mrs. trent? quite. major trent said, "oh, my wife!" and burst out laughing. he came up to the table, leaned across to the prisoner, and added another[pg 180] sentence. yes, she had heard every word. yes, she remembered every word. would she tell the court exactly what it was?
lettice looked back at her questioner and answered him alone, isolating him and herself, as though judge, jury, prisoner, and spectators did not exist. she spoke with colorless precision:
"he said, 'ever hear of what they call an interesting situation? damn uninteresting i find it—especially to look at!'"
the truth was out. useless for hancock to cross-examine; not a soul in court but knew they had the facts at last. the jury made up their minds upon their verdict. as juries often do, they had set up among themselves a standard of rough justice, and neither the prisoner's own statement nor the judge's summing up could avail to change them. if lettice had not spoken, they would have found the prisoner guilty; if he himself had not tried to evade justice, they would have found him innocent. as it was, their verdict was a compromise. guilty of manslaughter, but very strongly recommended to mercy.
mr. justice beckwith may have thought he was carrying out their recommendation in sentencing gardiner to nine months' imprisonment in the second division.
