III.
I may say here that the features of the performance followed one another rapidly, as at a variety theatre, without any disagreeable waits or the drop of a curtain. If I had anything to complain of it was the swiftness of their succession. I was not yet habituated to this, when I found the scene occupied by the two principal actors in a laughable little interlude of Habitual Drunkenness. A powerfully built, middle-aged Irishman, with evidences of coal-heaving thick upon his hands and ground into his face to the roots of his hair, was standing at one end of that long table, and listening to the tale of the policeman who, finding him quarrelsomely and noisily drunk, and not being able to prevail with him to go home, had arrested him. When he finished, the judge said to the defendant, who had stood rolling his eyes—conspicuous from the black around them—upon the spectators, as if at a loss to make out what all this might be about, that he could ask any questions he liked of the plaintiff.
“I don’t want to ask him anything, sor,” replied the defendant, like one surprised at being expected to take an interest in some alien affair.
“Have you ever seen the defendant drunk before?” asked the judge.
“Yes, your honor; I’ve seen him drunk half a dozen times, and I’ve taken him home to keep him out of harm’s way. He’s an industrious man when he isn’t in drink.”
“Is he usually disorderly when drunk?”
“Well, he and his wife generally fight when he gets home,” the policeman suggested.
The judge desisted, and the defendant’s counsel rose, and signified his intention to cross-question the plaintiff: the counsel was that attorney of African race whom I have mentioned.
“Now, we don’t deny that the defendant was drunk at the time of his arrest; but the question is whether he is an habitual drunkard. How many times have you seen him drunk the past month?”
“About half a dozen times.”
“Seven times?”
“I can’t say.”
“Three times?”
“More than three times.”
“More than twice you will swear to?”
“Yes.”
“Now, I wish you to be very careful, please: can you state, under oath, that you have seen him drunk four times?”
“Yes,” said the policeman, “I can swear to that.”
“Very good,” said the counsel, with the air of having caught the witness tripping. “That is all.”
Aside from the satisfaction that one naturally feels in seeing any policeman bullied, I think it did me good to have my learned colored brother badger a white man. The thing was so long the other way, in every walk of life, that for the sake of the bad old times, when the sight would have been something to destroy the constitution and subvert social order, I could have wished that he might have succeeded better in browbeating his witness. But it was really a failure, as far as concerned his object.
“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 us 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.