In General Sessions
Court Room, June 5, 1896.
Dorothy dear:
It is over. Warren’s fate is in the hands of the jury. I have done the little I could, but the strain has been almost too much for me.
Even now, my heart sinks at the thought that I may have left something undone or failed to see some trap of the District Attorney.
For more than two hours I have been sitting here fighting it all through again.
You have not known what this case means to me, and doubtless have often found me a dull companion and neglectful lover during the past months. But I will not cry “peccavi,” my Lady, unless you pronounce me guilty after reading what I write. See how confident I am—not of myself but of you!
The Court Room is quiet now, for it is ten o’clock at night. Only a few reporters and officials have lingered, and these yawn over the protracted business. Think of it! This is merely a matter of business to them—the life of this man. I cannot blame them, yet the thought of such indifference to what is so terribly vital to me, crushes with its awful significance.
Godfrey Warren is only a name to you, or at most only the name of one of my clients. You have not known that he is my oldest and dearest friend. How hard it has been to keep this from you! But it was his wish that you should not know it—and, if I do not send this letter, you never will.
Warren and I have been friends from boyhood. We attended the same school where we “raised the devil in couples” after a manner bad to record but good to remember. So inseparable were we that our families planned to send us to different Universities, thinking, I suppose, that our continued intimacy would be at the expense of a broader knowledge of mankind. But their purpose, whatever it was, came to nothing, for we flatly rejected any college education upon such terms.
As a result we entered Yale together and left there four years later with our boyish affection welded in a friendship such as comes into the lives of but few men.
Warren showed, even as a lad, those characteristics which have since marked him as a man apart. He was quick at his studies and slow in his friendships. But his judgment of men, though slow, was sure. A more accurate reader of character never lived. But of late years, whenever I remarked on this, he would laugh and say the credit did not belong to him but rather to Fantine, who told him all he knew.
This brings me to another striking trait in the man—his devotion to animals and their worship of him. Dogs were his for his whistle, and horses once touched by his hand would whinny a welcome if he only neared the stable door. When he held a moment’s silent conference with a cat, it behooved the owner to watch lest pussy followed the charmer, and the way birds looked at him was positively uncanny.
Good God! I am writing this as though he were dead, and my heart is beating louder than the great clock in this silent Court Room!
Warren is not a handsome man, honey. You must not picture any Prince Charming in his person. He has—he has red hair. There—one would think I was making a confession. How he would laugh at me! He always says I try to make him out an Adonis when he’s about as ugly an animal as ever walked upright. This is nonsense, of course. He is not handsome, but his features are strong, and when he smiles, his eyes light up the whole face and he is splendid.
But it is the mind of the man that has always fascinated me. His ideas are so clean—his breadth of view so comprehensive—his intellect so keen and his purpose so high.
If I could only have told the jury about the man himself!—But all this is “outside the record.” Do you understand, dear?
Never have I known a more sunny disposition or a more even temper in anyone. But he could get angry. Half a dozen times I have seen him lose control of himself, but, awful though his passion was, it always rose in some cause that made me think the better of him as a man.
Once I remember he overheard a foul-mouthed fellow repeating a filthy story in the presence of a little child. In an instant his face utterly changed, and before I could prevent him he struck the man a fearful blow, and I shall never forget the torrent of invective he hurled at the offender. I had not believed him capable of such tongue-lashing. (Little did I then dream how this would be used against him.)
It was on that day I first noted that, as long as Warren’s anger lasted, Fantine kept on growling. When I spoke of it he smiled and answered,
“Fantine recognized the cur, I fancy.”
I have written that Warren was my oldest and dearest friend, but I have not claimed to be his.
I would not presume to usurp Fantine’s place.
Fantine was a Gordon setter. When I first saw her she was little more than a fluffy ball in Warren’s lap to which he was addressing some remarks as he sat upon the floor of our study.
I did not disturb the conference.
“Puppy,” he was saying, “your name is Fantine. Do you understand, Fantine?”
For a moment the puppy gazed solemnly into his face, tilted its head slightly first on one side and then on the other, cocking it more and more in a puzzled effort at comprehension. Then it panted a puppy smile—licked Godfrey’s hand and wagged its little feather of a tail.
“Ah, you understand, do you?” Warren went on. “Well, you and I will understand one another thoroughly after a while. I can teach you a little—not much, but still something worth knowing. For instance—not to bite my watch chain with those tiny milk teeth of yours! And you’ll teach me—O, lots of things I want to know.—You’ll show me the men I ought to trust and the ones to keep an eye on. Won’t you, Fantine?”
The puppy put a fat paw on Warren’s breast and wagged its whole body with its tail.
“And, Fantine, you’ll never forget me as some people do, or think me ugly because I’ve got red hair? You have red hair yourself, you minx!—See those tiny flecks through your black coat? Tan, you say? Well, you’ll have beauty enough for both of us some day. I’ll teach you how to hunt too—Is that a yawn? I make you tired, do I, Mademoiselle? Well, I dare say you do know more about hunting than I ever shall. I apologise. But we’ll be great friends anyway—inseparables—worse than your master and this great oaf who’s stolen in upon our confidential chat,—eh, Fantine?”
The puppy gave a sleepy sigh, nestling under Godfrey’s coat and, as he stooped to peer at her, lifted a baby head and licked his face.
From that hour I was to a certain extent supplanted. But Fantine approved of me which was all I could hope. Of extraordinary intelligence she seemed to interpret every mood of her master and sometimes almost to anticipate his orders. The man and the dog were indeed inseparables. If he left a room where she was sleeping it was as though the very air she breathed had been exhausted, and she would wake with a start and follow him instantly. The first time Warren sent her to his country place, some fifty miles from town, he forwarded her in a crate by express, and, the morning after she arrived he returned to town, leaving her with the gardener. Before nightfall she was at his office door whining for admittance. How she had found her way back no one ever knew.
It was more than instinct. The animal seemed to feel the man as the Martian felt the north. No mere instinct could make a dog growl in sympathetic response to a man’s moods, and yet Fantine, as I have said, would do this very thing. Yes, and sometimes the hair on her back would rise in silent warning against some stranger—a warning Warren never disregarded. This devotion was no one-sided affair, for Godfrey was a man—
—There! I am lapsing into the past tense again. God grant there is no evil omen in my pen!—
—It all happened so suddenly. I have not yet lived down the shock of it, and am nervous as any woman. Just now there was a noise in the rear of the room and I leaped to my feet barely repressing a cry. I thought the Jury were entering. But they are still talking.—About what I dare not think.
It is foolish, I suppose, to let my mind dwell on this “case,” but I cannot get away from it and it calms me to “talk” with you in this way and to feel your quiet sympathy. I could not sit idle in this gloomy room—fearful to me now, and full of shadows. I should go mad.—I am a cheerful counsellor—am I not?
It was in the early evening of May tenth, a year ago, that Warren passed through Washington Square with Fantine at his heels. As they crossed the plaza on the north, a two-horse hack suddenly wheeled through the Arch on the wrong side of the road, narrowly missing the man and dog. Enraged at having to check his team, the driver, a burly Irishman named Dineen, snatched up his whip and, cursing fiercely, struck the dog with all his might. The lash wound itself about her head and flicked out one of Fantine’s eyes. With a howl she ran a few rods down the Square and then crouched in the roadway, rubbing her bloody eye between her paws.
In an instant Warren was at the horses’ heads and the hack stopped.
“Let go them horses—Let them go, I tell you! Ye won’t, ye scum?—Then take that and that!”
The lash fell twice on the horses’ backs and Warren was thrown to the ground, but still kept his grip upon the reins. Then the whip cut him in the face, his hold loosened, and the team plunged forward, the driver guiding straight for the spot where Fantine lay. An instant more and the iron hoofs had trampled her down and the wheels of the carriage had crushed out her life.
Dineen shook the reins over the flying horses and shouted as he turned on his seat,
“Now pick up yur dirty cur—you loafin’ scut you!”
But his victim leaping and bounding alongside the thundering carriage made no answer, and the laugh the fellow started was never finished, for two strong hands gripped his throat as Warren swung up beside him. Literally torn from his seat by the shock, the reins flew from the driver’s hands and the frightened team became a runaway. For a moment the two men, locked in deadly grapple, were struggling on the box. In another instant they were over the dashboard swaying to right and left above the wheels, until at last they crashed back upon the roof of the carriage rolling horribly to the fearful lurching of the wheels. One moment Warren was on top—another moment he was under. Then suddenly the wheels of the hack struck a curb and the dark mass was hurled from the roof to the ground with a sickening thud. There was a short struggle in the street and then Warren raised the driver’s head and dashed it fiercely against the stones.
Half an hour later he staggered into my rooms—the blood trickling down his face and Fantine’s crushed and bleeding body in his arms.
He would hear of no other counsel. In vain I begged him to retain some criminal practitioner.
“Why should I?” he replied. “You know the facts and believe in me. That is all I want. Only remember this. I would rather die than be imprisoned, and no trick or technicality shall ever clear me.”
What weary months of waiting we have gone through! The Grand Jury indicted for murder, the case has been much talked about and the District Attorney has been very—zealous.
How my spirits rose when I found so many animal lovers among the men summoned as jurors, and how the District Attorney and I fought for and against them the whole of one long day! But he couldn’t get rid of them all, lass. Every man who admitted that he had no feeling for animals possessed some other trait which made even the District Attorney fear him.
There were dozens of witnesses but little controversy of fact. Without difficulty I proved that Dineen was a drunken sot of evil reputation, who had been drinking heavily on the day of his death, and then I placed Warren on the stand.
How splendid he looked as he faced the jury and told his story to their eyes.
The District Attorney was powerless before such a witness and he knew it. His only chance lay in the fearless candour of the man and, God forgive him, he took it. He asked only one question.
“Warren, do you feel any regret for the death of Dineen?”
I sprang to my feet with an objection, but Godfrey waved me back.
In breathless silence the Court awaited his answer. The District Attorney saw his advantage in the pause, and judging the man rightly, spoke with a show of fairness deliberately planned to his own purposes.
“You can decline to answer upon the ground that it will tend to incriminate you.”
As he expected, Warren flushed angrily, and flashed a scornful glance at his questioner.
What a noble sensation it must give one to convict a man of murder by a trick!
“You do not decline to answer? Then tell us, Warren, do you feel any regret for the death of this man?”
“None whatsoever.”
The answer was given slowly and distinctly with his face full to the jury.
Oh, how my heart sank as I heard his words! I felt it was useless, but I tried to soften them by explanation.
“Mr. Warren, tell the jury why you have no regret for the man’s death.”
“Because I saw him do foul murder which no law would reach. Because I looked in the creature’s face and saw in it something far lower than the lowest brute, and I killed him in the same spirit as I would kill any dangerous beast.”
I suppose I should have foreseen the awful hush which followed and prevented it with a flood of questions no matter how futile or meaningless. But at that moment, and in this place reeking with the breath of falsehood, his answer rang forth so true and brave that I closed the case without another word and began my summing up to the jury.
Dearest, I cannot now remember a single phrase I uttered. Twelve men sat before me, but I could only see one face, and to that face I spoke. Again and again the District Attorney interrupted, claiming that what I said was outside the record, but I paid no heed. Behind me the crowd was restless, and, once or twice, I think, the Justice rapped for order with his gavel on the desk, but I never paused. This man’s life was dearer to me than life itself, yet, in that moment of supreme effort, I failed.
Yes, I know it now, I utterly failed. But I did not realise it, dearest, even when I heard the pitiful feebleness of my argument exposed in the cool and cutting words of the District Attorney. Why could I not have seen the fatal weakness of my plea before it mocked me through the maddening calmness of the Judge’s charge, to echo all these weary hours from every nook and corner of this dreadful room!
Why did I not insist that he have some able counsel! To think that I—his closest friend, did not do for him what some hired advocate could have done! His blood is on my hands—the hands he grasped as the jurors filed from the Court Room—and I did not hide my head in shame.
How gloomy this place is. I shudder at its every shadow, and the very air is poison. They’re lighting more gas jets now. That’s better. I could not have stood it much longer.
I can at least be quiet in my humiliation. They shall not startle me again, and I will write on calmly.
Are you ashamed of me? You must be. You believed in me—thought me a man of some power—not a weakling who failed his friend. And you are right. I will never——
They are lighting the Judge’s desk. I must look up—
Dorothy—Dorothy! The Jury is coming in!—
To
Miss Dorothy Bentham,
Forest Lodge,
Adirondacks, N. Y.
My Dear Miss Bentham:
There is no justification for these lines save the request of the man you love, but in that you will find a reason if not excuse for me—will you not? This, he says, is to be a postscript to some letter telling you of the dark days we have passed and which, if it please God, shall not have been lived through in vain.
I have no right at this time to say what has been in my heart for you ever since my friend told me of his happiness. It is more fitting now that I write you what I am sure he has not, and what he seems to realise so little—his personal triumph in this day’s work.
Twice, dear Miss Dorothy, the audience broke into uncontrollable applause during his wonderful address, and when the jury brought in their verdict those who heard it set up a mighty cheer for him which shook the very building. He bids me write that the jury found for acquittal on the first ballot, and were delayed two hours by a slight illness of one of their number. It was this period of anxious waiting, I fear, which told upon him so sadly. Let me hasten to reassure you, however, as to his health. He is now resting at my rooms, and to-morrow I hope to send him to the only physician whose presence he needs, and who, I hope, will make him take a long summer vacation.
That God may bless and keep you both is the earnest prayer of
Godfrey Warren.
June 6, 1896.
I have hesitated to tell this story because it involves confidential relations between lawyer and client which are, of course, absolutely sacred to all who love and honour their profession as I do—and there are many such, thank God.
But I’m—well, I’m old enough to be sensitive about my age, and not old enough to be proud of it. Almost all my companions are dead—Bateman and his enemies have passed away, and I think there ought to be a Statute of Limitations for the relief of old lawyers who must live on memories. Then, too, if a man has had the lessons which a matter like this teaches, I think his experiences belong to his profession.
But when I think of it again, there is little in what I have to tell that will serve either as instruction or warning, because there never was, and never will be, another case like Bateman’s.
I am satisfied, however, that there is no impropriety in disclosing the facts after all these years, and of this I trust my professional record is sufficient guaranty.
At the time of which I write I was junior partner in the firm of Paulding & Wainwright, and our offices were on Front Street, in the heart of the shipping business.
Josiah Bateman had been a client of Mr. Paulding long before I was admitted to a partnership. His Will had been in our safe for fifteen years, but neither my partner nor I knew its terms, for the old man had drawn it up himself. “He guessed he knew enough law to give away his property,” he told us as we witnessed the instrument.
Mr. Bateman ought to have known some law. Certainly he had expended enough money in litigation to pay for a hundred legal educations. Indeed his genius for disputes would have made him an ideal client save for one fact—he seldom took the advice of his lawyers. It naturally followed that his success in the Courts was by no means encouraging. Whenever he won a suit he claimed all the credit, and if he lost, our responsibility was voiced by the loser in a tone only a little more offensive than his self-gratulation. People used to wonder how we got on with the man, but we were accustomed to his vagaries, and despite his declamations he paid handsomely and promptly for every service rendered.
As he grew older Mr. Bateman’s tendency to litigate increased tremendously and the Office Register coupled his name with every kind of law suit from a dispossess proceeding to a knotty problem in the law of nations.
Mr. Bateman had never married, and he never spoke of his relatives to anyone. Down-town New York knew him as a clear-headed, obstinate, hard-working, irascible merchant who had made a great deal of money. But there information stopped. His fortune was variously estimated from a million up to five millions—one guess being as good as another in the absence of any known facts.
So when the news came that Josiah Bateman was dead I think everybody connected with our firm, from the senior partner to the office boy, was curious to learn how the old man had left his money.
The news of his death did not reach us until a week after he had been buried. We were then advised by letter that he had been on a hunting trip in the Adirondacks and had become ill and died when far away from any town. The guides seem to have known nothing about him and he was buried at the nearest cemetery. No papers or documents were found upon the body, and it was not until a week after his funeral that a crumpled piece of paper was discovered in his game bag. This proved to be one of our letters to him and we were at once put in possession of the facts. At the same time we were informed that the body had been exhumed and positively identified by an old friend of our client. Mr. Paulding was away from Town on his vacation when the news came and in his absence the responsibility for proper action devolved upon me.
The letter announcing Mr. Bateman’s death arrived in the morning mail, but I was engaged in Court all day and it was nearly seven o’clock in the evening before I returned to the office. Letters and papers had accumulated on my desk during my absence, but I was too tired and hungry to attack the work they suggested, so dismissing the clerks for the night I sought out the nearest restaurant.
All thought of Bateman’s affairs had been crowded out by the events of the day, and it was not until I had finished my after-dinner cigar that they were recalled to me by seeing Mr. Bateman’s obituary printed in an evening paper.
It was the usual “boneyard” article which had doubtless been set up in the newspaper office years before. Any way, after reading three quarters of a column I learned nothing about the man I did not already know, and what I knew could have been condensed into a dozen lines. It set me thinking, however, about our queer old client. Perhaps his Will contained some directions for the disposition of his body which should govern my immediate instructions to the people in the Adirondacks. His end would have been lonely enough anywhere, but up there in the silent mountains, away from the city’s bustle and battle which he loved, death must have seemed fearful to that lonesome old man. Late as it was I determined to return to the office and look at Mr. Bateman’s Will.
I always carried a key to the front door of our office building, for no one slept on the premises and sometimes it was important to gain admission after the closing hour.
The streets were absolutely deserted as I left the restaurant and my footsteps echoed upon the flagstones.
Surely down-town New York is the most dismal spot in the world at night—a veritable city of the dead. The silent, empty streets have an atmosphere of utter gloom—the buildings dark and forbidding stand in gruesome solemnity or huddle together in hideous attitudes of fear—the deserted offices here and there show a shaded light in some rear room, but the ghastly glow only intensifies the darkness, and over all is the silence—the awful silence—of the night. It is not the restful quiet of sleep—it is not the peaceful stillness of death—it is the horrid, breathing, staring silence of the trance. It is the silence that makes you stop and listen—hush and whisper, or gently motion with your finger on your lips.
The feeling of all this was upon me as I turned toward my office. The unaccustomed stillness filled me with absurd apprehension, and tricked me into starting at every shadow. My footsteps echoed more and more rapidly upon the sidewalk, and louder and louder until I found myself actually running along deserted Front Street.
I had been in the offices at night before, but I stumbled and tripped up the familiar stairway as though the steps and the very walls themselves had changed positions in the darkness.
I lit a lamp in our front room, but the big black shadows transformed the well-known surroundings so that nothing seemed the same.
The globe on the corner shelf took the shape of some great bird sitting gorged and sombre on its ample perch—the document cases with their white letterings suggested dark heads and shining rows of teeth, and the green baize doors studded with brass-nails seemed like monster coffins set on end, each staring silently through an oval eye of glass.
I carried the lamp into my private room, but the draught from the hall blew it out, so I closed the door before lighting it again.