Delphi complete works of.., p.1409
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells, page 1409
“The question, your honor,” the lawyer added, turning to the judge, “is, what is habitual drunkenness? I should like to ask the defendant a query or two. Now, Mr. O’Ryan, how often do you indulge yourself in a social glass?”
“Sor?”
“How often do you drink?”
“Whenever I can get it, sor.”
The audience appreciated this frankness, and were silenced by a threatening foray of the cravatless officer.
“You mean,” suggested the attorney, smoothly, “that you take a drink of beer, now and then, when you are at work.”
“I mane that, sor. A horse couldn’t do widout it.”
“Very good. But you deny that you are habitually intoxicated?”
“Sor?”
“You are not in the habit of getting drunk?”
“No, sor!”
“Very good. You are not in the habit of getting drunk.”
“I never get dhrunk whin I’m at work, sor. I get dhrunk Saturday nights.”
“Yes; when you have had a hard week’s work. I understand that—”
“I have a hard wake’s worruk every wake!” interrupted the defendant.
“But this is a thing that has grown upon you of late, as I understand. You were formerly a sober, temperate man, as your habits of industry imply.”
“Sor?”
“You have lately given way to a fondness for liquor, but up to within six months or a year ago you never drank to excess.”
“No, sor! I’ve dhrunk ever since I was born, and I’ll dhrink till I die.”
The officer could not keep ns quiet now. The counsel looked down at his table in a futile way, and then took his seat after some rambling observations, amid smiles of ironical congratulation from the other gentlemen of the bar.
The defendant confronted the judge with the calm face of a man who has established his innocence beyond cavil.
“What is the reputation of this man in his neighborhood?” inquired the judge of the policeman.
“He’s an ugly fellow. And his wife is full as bad. They generally get drunk together.”
“Any children?”
“No, sir.”
The defendant regarded the judge with heightened satisfaction in this confirmation of his own declaration. The judge leaned over and said in a confidential way to the clerk, “Give him six months in the House of Correction.”
A wild lament broke from the audience, and a woman with a face bruised to a symphony in green, yellow, and black thus identified herself as the wife of the defendant, who stood vacantly turning his cap round in his hand while sympathizing friends hurried her from the room. The poor creature probably knew that if in their late differences she had got more than she deserved, she had not got more than she had been willing to give, and was moved by this reflection. Other moralists, who do not like to treat woman as a reasonable being, may attribute her sorrow to mere blind tenderness or hysterical excitement. I could not see that it touched the spectators in any way; and I suspect that, whatever was thought of her escape from a like fate, there was a general acquiescence in the justice of his. He was either stunned by it, or failed to take it in, for he remained standing at the end of the table and facing the judge till the policeman in charge took him by the arm and stood him aside.
IV
He sat down, and I saw him no more; but I had no time to regret him, for his place was instantly occupied by a person who stepped within the bar from the audience. I had already noticed him coming in and going out of the court-room, apparently under strong excitement, and hovering about, now among the gentlemen of the bar and now among friends in the audience. He had an excited and eccentric look, and yet he looked like a gentleman — a gentleman in distress of mind; I had supposed that he could not he one of the criminal classes, or he would scarcely have been allowed so much at large. At the same time that he took his place he was confronted from the other end of the long table by a person whom I will call a lady, because I observed that every one else did so. This lady’s person tended to fat; she had a large, red face, and I learned without surprise that she was a cook. She wore a crimson shawl, and a bonnet abounding in blossoms and vegetables of striking colors, and she had one arm, between the wrist and elbow, impressively swathed in linen; she caressed, as it were, a small water-pitcher, which I felt, in spite of its ordinary appearance, wa3 somehow historical. In fact, it came out that this pitcher played an important part in the assault which the lady accused the gentleman at the other end of the table of committing upon her.
It seemed from her story that the gentleman was a boarder in the house where she was cook, and that he was in the habit of intruding upon her in the kitchen against her will and express command. A week before (I understood that she had spent the intervening time in suffering and disability) she had ordered him out, and he had turned furiously upon her with an uplifted chair and struck her on the arm with it, and then had thrown at her head the pitcher which she now held in her hands.
There were other circumstances of outrage which I cannot now recall, but they are not important in view of the leading facts.
Further testimony in behalf of the plaintiff was offered by another lady, whose countenance expressed second - girl as unmistakably as that of the plaintiff expressed cook. She was of the dish-faced Irish type, and whereas the cook was of an Old-World robustness, her witness had the pallor and flat-chestedness of the women of her race who are born in America; she preferred several shades of blue in her costume, which was of ready-made and marked-down effect. This lady with difficulty comprehended the questions intended to elicit her name and the fact of her acquaintance with the plaintiff, and I noticed a like density of understanding in most of the other persons testifying or arraigned in this court. In fact, I came to wonder if the thick-headedness of average uneducated people was not much greater than I had hitherto suspected, in my easy optimism. It was certainly inconceivable why, with intelligence enough to come in when it rained, the cook should have summoned this witness. She testified at once that she had not seen the assault, and did not know that the cook had been hurt; and no prompting of the plaintiff’s counsel could inspire her with a better recollection. In the hands of the defendant’s lawyer she developed the fact that his client was reputed a quiet, inoffensive boarder, and that she never knew of any displeasures between him and the cook.
“Did you ever see this lady intoxicated?” inquired the lawyer.
The witness reflected. “I don’t understand you,” she answered, finally.
“Have you ever known her to be overcome by drink?”
The witness considered this point also, and in due time gave it up, and turned a face of blank appeal upon the judge, who came to her rescue.
“Does she drink — drink liquor? Does she get drunk?”
“Oh! Oh yes; she’s tipsy sometimes.”
“Was she tipsy,” asked the lawyer, “on the day of the alleged assault?”
The witness again turned to the magistrate for help. “Was she tipsy on the day when she says this gentleman struck her with a chair and threw the pitcher at her head?”
“Yes, sir,” replied the witness, “she was.”
“Was she very tipsy?” the lawyer pursued.
The witness was equal to this question. “Well, yes, sir, she was. Anyway, she hadn’t left anything in the bottle on her bureau.”
“When did you see the bottle full?”
“The night before. Or in the evening. She commenced drinking in the night.”
“What was in the bottle?”
“A pint of whiskey.”
“That will do,” said the lawyer.
The witness stepped down and genteelly resumed her place near the plaintiff. Neither of the ladies changed countenance, or seemed in any wise aware that the testimony just given had been detrimental to the plaintiff’s cause. They talked pleasantly together, and were presently alike interested in the testimony of a witness to the defendant’s good character. He testified that the defendant was a notoriously peaceable person, who was in some sort of scientific employment, but where or what I could not make out; he was a college graduate, and it was quite unimaginable to the witness that he should be the object of this sort of charge.
When the witness stood aside the defendant was allowed to testify in his own behalf, which he did with great energy. He provided himself with a chair, and when he came to the question of the assault he dramatized the scene with appropriate action. He described with vividness the relative positions of himself and the cook when, on the day given, he went into the kitchen to see if the landlady were there, and was ordered out by her. “She didn’t give me time to go, but caught up a chair and came at me, thus.” Here he represented with the chair in his hand an assault that made the reporters, who sat near him, quail before the violence of the mere dumb-show. “I caught the rung of the chair in my hand, thus, and instinctively pushed it, thus. I suppose,” he added, in diction of memorable elegance, “that the impact of the chair in falling back against her wrist may have produced the contusions of which she complains.”
The judge and the bar smiled; the audience, not understanding, looked serious.
“And what,” said the judge, “about throwing the pitcher at her?”
“I never saw the pitcher, your honor, till I saw it in court. I threw no pitcher at her, but retreated from the kitchen as quickly as possible.”
“That will do,” said the judge. The plaintiff’s counsel did the best that could he done for no case at all in a brief argument. The judge heard him patiently, and then quietly remarked: “The charge is dismissed. The defendant is discharged. Call the next case.”
The plaintiff had probably imagined that the affair was going in her favor. She evidently required the explanation of her counsel that it had gone against her and all was over; for she looked at the judge in some surprise before she turned and walked out of the court-room, with quiet dignity, still caressing her pitcher and amicably accompanied by the other lady, her damaging witness.
V
Before she was well out of the door, a lady-like young woman in black was on the stand, testifying against a prisoner, who did not confront her from the other end of the long table, but stood where he seemed to have been seated on the top of those stairs I have imagined behind the railing. He looked twenty one or two years of age, and he had not at all a bad face, but rather refined; he was well dressed, and was gentlemanlike in the same degree that she was ladylike. From her testimony it appeared to me that his offence was one that might fitly be condoned, and in my ignorance I was surprised to find that it was taken seriously by the court. She had seen him, from the top of some steps in the shop where she was employed, open a drawer in the bookkeeper’s desk, and take out of it a revolver and some postage-stamps; but on his discovering her he had instantly replaced them and tried to make his escape. She gave her evidence in a low voice, and, as I thought, reluctantly; and one could very well imagine that she might have regretted causing his arrest; but it was to he considered that her own reputation was probably at stake, and if his theft had succeeded she might have been accused of it. When she stood aside, the judge turned to the defendant, who had kept quite still, nervously twisting something between his fingers, and questioned him. He did not attempt to deny the facts; he admitted them, but urged that he had immediately put the stamps and pistol back into the drawer, from which, indeed, he had hardly lifted them. The judge heard him patiently, and the young man went on, with something of encouragement, to explain that he only meant to take the things to spite the owner of the shop, on account of some grudge between them, and that he had not realized that it was stealing. He besought the judge, in terms that were moving, but not abject, to deal mercifully with him; and he stood twisting that invisible something between his fingers and keeping his eyes fixed on those of the magistrate, with a miserable smile, while he promised that he would not offend again.
The judge passed his hand to and fro over his chin, and now dropped his eyes, and now glanced at the culprit, who seemed scarcely more unhappy.
“Haven’t I seen you here before?” he asked at last.
“Yes,” I could hardly hear the prisoner assent.
“How often?”
“Twice.”
“What for?”
“Theft,” gasped the wretched creature.
The judge moved in his chair with a discomfort that he had not shown throughout the morning’s business. “If this were the first time, or the second, I should have been glad to let you off with a slight fine. But I can’t do that now. I must send you to the
House of Correction.” He nodded to the clerk: “Two months.”
The prisoner remained, with that nervous twisting of his fingers, eying the judge with his vague smile, as if he could not realize what had befallen. He did not sit down till the next culprit rose and stood near him. Then a sort of fatal change passed over his face. It looked like despair. I confess that I had not much heart for his successor. I was sick, thinking how, so far as this world was concerned, this wretch had been sent to hell; for the House of Correction is not a purgatory even, out of which one can hopefully undertake to pray periculant spirits. To he sure, the police court is not a cure of souls; and doubtless his doom was as light as the law allowed. But I could have wished that the judge had distrusted his memory or taken on his conscience the merciful sin of ignoring it. He seemed very patient, and I do not question but he acted according to light and knowledge. This may have been a hopeless thief. But it was nevertheless a terrible fate. The chances were a thousand against one that he should hereafter be anything but a thief, if he were not worse. After all, when one thinks of what the consequences of justice are, one doubts if there is any justice in it. Perhaps the thing we call mercy is the divine conception of justice.
VI
It was a thief again who was on the stage; but not a thief like that other, who, for all the reality there was in the spectacle, might have gone behind the scenes and washed the chalk off his white face. This thief was of the kind whose fortunes the old naturalistic novelists were fond of following in fictions of autobiographic form, and who sometimes actually wrote their own histories; a conventional thief, of those dear to De Foe and the Spanish picaresque romancers, with a flavor of good literature about him. Nothing could have been more classic in incident than the story of the plaintiff, an honest-looking young fellow, who testified that he had met the prisoner on the street, and, learning that he was out of work and out of money, had taken him home to his room and shared his bed with him. I do not know in just what calling this primitive and trustful hospitality is practised; the plaintiff looked and was dressed like a working-man. His strange bedfellow proved an early riser; he stole away without disturbing his host, and carried with him all the money that was in his host’s pockets. By an odd turn of luck the two encountered shortly after breakfast, and the prisoner ran. The plaintiff followed, but the other eluded him, and was again sauntering about in safety, when the eye of a third actor in the drama fell upon him. This was a young man who kept some sort of a small shop, and who was called to the witness-stand in behalf of the prosecution. He was as stupid as he could well be in some respects, and very simple questions had to be repeated several times to him. Yet he had the ferret-like instinct of the thief-catcher, and he instantly saw that his look fluttered the guilty rogue, who straightway turned and fled. But this time he had a sharper pursuer than his host, and he was coursed through all his turns and windings, up stairs and down, in houses and out, and gripped at last.
“As soon as I saw him start to run,” said the witness, who told his story with a graphic jauntiness, “I knowed he’d got something.”
“You didn’t know I’d got anything!” exclaimed the thief.
“I knowed you’d get ninety days if I caught up with you,” retorted the witness, wagging his head triumphantly.
As the officer entered the station-house with his prisoner, the host, by another odd chance, was coming out, after stating his loss to the police, and identified his truant guest.
The money, all but thirty cents, was found upon him; and though he represented that he had lawfully earned it by haying in Dedham, the fact that it was in notes of the denominations which the plaintiff remembered was counted against him, and he got the ninety days which his captor had prophesied. He, too, sat down, and I saw him no more.
VII
Now arose literally a cloud of witnesses, who came forward from some of the back seats and occupied the benches hitherto held by the plaintiffs and witnesses in the preceding cases. They were of all shades of blackness, and of both sexes and divers ages, and they were there in their solemn best clothes, with their faces full of a decorous if superficial seriousness. I must except from this sweeping assertion, however, the lady who was the defendant in the case: she was a young person with a great deal of what is called style about her, and I had seen her going and coming throughout the morning in a high excitement which she seemed to enjoy. It is difficult for a lady whose lips have such a generous breadth and such a fine outward roll to keep from smiling, perhaps, under any circumstances; and it may have been light-heartedness rather than lightmindedness that enabled her to support so gayly a responsibility that weighed down all the other parties concerned. She wore a tight-skirted black walking-dress, with a waist of perhaps caricatured smallness; her hat was full of red and yellow flowers; on her hands, which were in drawing with her lips rather than her waist, were a pair of white kid gloves. As she advanced to take her place inside the prisoner’s bar she gave in charge to a very mournful-looking elder of her race a little girl, two or three years of age, as fashionably dressed as herself, and tottering upon little high-heeled hoots. The old man lifted the child in his arms and funereally took his seat among the witnesses, while the culprit turned her full-blown smile upon the judge and confidently pleaded not guilty to the clerk’s reading of the indictment, in which she was charged with threatening the person and life of the plaintiff. At the same moment a sort of pleased expectation lighted up all those dull countenances in the court-room which had been growing more and more jaded under the process of the accusations and condemnations. The soddenest habitué of the place brightened, the lawyers and policemen eased themselves in their chairs, and I fancied that the judge himself relaxed. I could not refuse my sympathy to the general content; I took another respite from the thought of my poor thief, and I too lent myself to the hope of enjoyment from this Laughable After-piece.
