A faint, flickering smile of pathetic abstraction and simplicity, as of one listening to far-off but incomprehensible music stole over Ah Fe's face. Then he said kindly, gently, but somewhat vaguely and unsatisfactorily—
"Me no shabbee Melican man. Me washee shirtee! dollah and hap dozen!"
CHAPTER V.
THE PEOPLE V. JOHN DOE alias GABRIEL CONROY, AND JANE ROE alias JULIE CONROY. BEFORE BOOMPOINTER, J.
The day of the trial was one of exacting and absorbing interest to One Horse Gulch. Long before ten o'clock the Court-room, and even the halls and corridors of the lately rehabilitated Court House, were thronged with spectators. It is only fair to say that by this time the main points at issue were forgotten. It was only remembered that some of the first notabilities of the State had come up from Sacramento to attend the trial; that one of the most eminent lawyers in San Francisco had been engaged for the prisoner at a fee variously estimated from fifty to one hundred thousand dollars, and that the celebrated Colonel Starbottle of Siskiyou was to assist in the prosecution; that a brisk duel of words, and it was confidently hoped, a later one of pistols, would grow out of this forensic encounter; that certain disclosures affecting men and women of high social standing were to be expected; and, finally, that in some mysterious way a great political and sectional principle (Colonel Starbottle was from the South and Mr. Poinsett from the North) was to be evolved and upheld during the trial—these were the absorbing fascinations to One Horse Gulch.
At ten o'clock Gabriel, accompanied by his counsel, entered the Court-room, followed by Colonel Starbottle. Judge Boompointer, entering at the same moment, bowed distantly to Arthur, and familiarly to Colonel Starbottle. In his otium off the bench, he had been chaffed by the District Attorney, and had lost large sums at play with Colonel Starbottle. Nevertheless he was a trifle uneasy under the calmly critical eyes of the famous young advocate from San Francisco. Arthur was too wise to exhibit his fastidiousness before the Court; nevertheless, Judge Boompointer was dimly conscious that he would on that occasion have preferred that the Clerk who sat below him had put on a cleaner shirt, and himself refrained from taking off his cravat and collar, as was his judicial habit on the Wingdam circuit. There was some slight prejudice on the part of the panel to this well-dressed young lawyer, which they were pleased to specify and define more particularly as his general "airiness." Seeing which, Justice, on the bench, became more dignified, and gazed severely at the panel and at Arthur.
In the selection of the jury there was some difficulty; it was confidently supposed that the prisoner's counsel would challenge the array on the ground of the recent Vigilance excitement, but public opinion was disappointed when the examination of the defence was confined to trivial and apparently purposeless inquiry into the nativity of the several jurors. A majority of those accepted by the defence were men of Southern birth and education. Colonel Starbottle, who, as a representative of the peculiar chivalry of the South, had always adopted this plan himself, in cases where his client was accused of assault and battery, or even homicide, could not in respect to his favourite traditions object to it. But when it was found that there were only two men of Northern extraction on the jury, and that not a few of them had been his own clients, Colonel Starbottle thought he had penetrated the theory of the defence.
I regret that Colonel Starbottle's effort, admirably characterised by the Banner as "one of the most scathing and Junius-like gems of legal rhetoric ever known to the Californian Bar," has not been handed down to me in extenso. Substantially, however, it appeared that Colonel Starbottle had never before found himself in "so peculiar, so momentous, so—er—delicate a position. A position, sir—er—er—gentlemen, fraught with the deepest social, professional—er—er—he should not hesitate to say, upon his own personal responsibility, a position of the deepest political significance! Colonel Starbottle was aware that this statement might be deprecated—nay, even assailed by some. But he did not retract that statement. Certainly not in the presence of that jury, in whose intelligent faces he saw—er—er—er—justice—inflexible justice!—er—er—mingled and—er—mixed with—with chivalrous instinct, and suffused with the characteristic—er—er—glow of—er—er—!" (I regret to add that at this supreme moment, as the Colonel was lightly waving away with his fat right hand the difficulties of rhetoric, a sepulchral voice audible behind the jury suggested "Robinson County whisky" as the origin of the phenomena the Colonel hesitated to describe. The judge smiled blandly and directed the deputy sheriff to preserve order. The deputy obeyed the mandate by looking over into the crowd behind the jury, and saying, in an audible tone, "You'd better dry up thar, Joe White, or git out o' that!" and the Colonel, undismayed, proceeded.) "He well understood the confidence placed by the defence in these gentlemen. He had reason to believe that an attempt would be made to show that this homicide was committed in accordance with certain—er—er—principles held by honourable men—that the act was retributive, and in defence of an invasion of domestic rights and the sanctity of wedlock. But he should show them its fallacy. He should show them that only a base pecuniary motive influenced the prisoner. He should show them—er—er—that the accused had placed himself, firstly, by his antecedent acts, and, secondly, by the manner of the later act, beyond the sympathies of honourable men. He should show them a previous knowledge of certain—er—er—indiscretions on the part of the prisoner's wife, and a condonation by the prisoner of those indiscretions, that effectually debarred the prisoner from the provisions of the code; he should show an inartistic, he must say, even on his own personal responsibility, a certain ungentlemanliness, in the manner of the crime that refused to clothe it with the—er—er—generous mantle of chivalry. The crime of which the prisoner was accused might have—er—er—been committed by a Chinaman or a nigger. Colonel Starbottle did not wish to be misunderstood. It was not in the presence of—er—Beauty—" (the Colonel paused, drew out his handkerchief, and gracefully waved it in the direction of the dusky Manuela and the truculent Sal—both ladies acknowledging the courtesy as an especial and isolated tribute, and exchanging glances of the bitterest hatred)—"it is not, gentlemen, in the presence of an all-sufficient and enthralling sex that I would seek to disparage their influence with man. But I shall prove that this absorbing—er—er—passion, this—er—er—delicious—er—er—fatal weakness, that rules the warlike camp, the—er—er—stately palace, as well as the—er—er—cabin of the base-born churl, never touched the calculating soul of Gabriel Conroy! Look at him, gentlemen! Look at him, and say upon your oaths, upon your experience as men of gallantry, if he is a man to sacrifice himself for a woman. Look at him, and say truly, as men personally responsible for their opinions, if he is a man to place himself in a position of peril through the blandishments of—er—er—Beauty, or sacrifice himself upon the—er—er—altar of Venus!"
Every eye was turned upon Gabriel. And certainly at that moment he did not bear any striking resemblance to a sighing Amintor or a passionate Othello. His puzzled, serious face, which had worn a look of apologetic sadness, was suffused at this direct reference of the prosecution; and the long, heavy lower limbs, which he had diffidently tucked away under his chair to reduce the elevation of his massive knees above the ordinary level of one of the court-room chairs, retired still further. Finding himself, during the Colonel's rhetorical pause, still the centre of local observation, he slowly drew from his pocket a small comb, and began awkwardly to comb his hair, with an ineffective simulation of pre-occupation and indifference.