The surprise of the day was the speech of the attorney-general. It opened simply enough. He sought to show that it was impossible for Tad to be alive. The poor boy was doubtless at the bottom of the river. How could it be otherwise? Assume, as his learned opponent would have them believe, that he had swum ashore. Where was he now? The suggestion that he was in the custody of some enemy of the prisoner, who sought by concealing him to effect the incarceration of Reuben Lorey in the penitentiary for a long term, was so absurd that he hesitated to argue such a foolish position before so intelligent a body of men as the jury whom he had the pleasure of addressing. Who would, for revenge, encounter the hazards of such a scheme? The boy was as well known throughout the section as Piomingo Bald. Any chance glimpse of him by a casual visitor would fling the conspirators themselves into the clutches of the law, that would be loath to lightly loose its hold on such rascals. Who would voluntarily burden themselves with the support of an idiot? If anybody had found Tad, he would have been mighty quick to carry the boy back to old man Griff. Say that no one had detained him,—what then? He was an idiot, incapable of taking care of himself. If he were wandering at large, starving, half clad, would not some one have seen him besides Alethea Sayles, in all these weeks, gentlemen, in all these months? It was a remarkable story that the witness had told,—a remarkable story. (The counsel seemed to find fit expression of his sense of its solemnity by sinking his basso profundo to a thunderous mutter.) No one for a moment could doubt the sanity of that witness. She was evidently a girl of fine common sense; an excellent girl, too,—no one could for a moment doubt the truth of any word she uttered. The fact was, Alethea Sayles saw a strange thing that night. She thought she saw Tad. It was only his image, not himself. “The forlorn boy is dead, gentlemen,” he continued. “She saw the fantasy of her own anxious, overwrought brain. He was in her mind. She had pondered long upon him, and upon the plight of her lover, who had killed him. What wonder, then, that in the mist, and the flickering moonlight, and the lonely midnight, she should fancy that she saw him!”
He told the gaping and amazed jury that this was not an isolated instance. He mentioned other victims of hallucination; he detailed the strange experiences of Nicolai, of Spinoza, of Dr. Bostock, of Lord Londonderry, of Baron de Géramb, of Leuret, of Lord Brougham.
Harshaw, who had sat listening, with his hands in his pockets and his legs crossed, a smile of ostentatious derision upon his face, grew grave upon the mention of the last name. He had never heard of the others, but to attempt to bolster a theory of spectral apparition by this name, revered in the profession, was, he felt, a juridical sacrilege that should cause the attorney-general to be at the very least stricken from the rolls.
As Kenbigh went on, expounding the relative and interdependent functions of the brain and eye, the fine and subtle theories of spiritual and physical life, its vague boundaries, its unmeasured capabilities,—the deductions, the keen analysis of science, all reduced to the vernacular in the mouth of a man trained by years of practice to speak to the people,—Harshaw sat in blank dismay. He had never heard of any spiritual manifestation but the vulgar graveyard ghost, usually headless, stalking in its shroud to accomplish missions of vengeance upon the very ignorant in the deep midnight. But Kenbigh’s account of sundry ethereal-minded and mild-mannered spectres, with a preference for high company, singing, appearing at dinner-tables, conversing agreeably, arrayed in conventional garb, as decorous and reasonable and as mindful of etiquette as if still bound by all the restraints of the world, the flesh, and the devil, disappearing as noiselessly as they had come, with no appreciable result of the visit,—it shocked every sense of precedent within him. He was country-bred and did not know that when ghosts are fashionable they conduct themselves as fashionable people do. He noted keenly the discrepancies in the scientific explanations. Always, despite its show of learning, its systems, its terminology, its physiology, its psychology, and its persistent reference of supernatural appearances to natural causes, Reason retires from the spectral exhibition with some admission of occult influences, not fully understood,—in effect making a bow to the ghost in question, “Saving your presence.” He noticed, too, that the jury were listening with that intentness and eager interest which characterize every mind, even the most ignorant, in considering things of the other world, manifestations of hidden agencies. When he rose to reply he felt at a loss. The sound, however, of his own hearty voice ringing against the walls, instead of the sepulchral basso profundo of the attorney for the State, the motion of his own stalwart arm sawing the air,—for he was in the habit of impressing his views with a good deal of muscular exertion,—had an invigorating effect upon him, and brought him back to his normal state of confidence and bluster. He found words for his ready scorn. He sought to discredit the attorney-general’s phantoms. He did not know where the counsel got these old women’s tales; they were an insult to the intelligence of the jury. The learned counsel knew mighty well he wasn’t going to be called upon for his authorities,—medical books can’t be produced as evidence in a court of justice, much less ghost stories, “Raw-head and bloody-bones”! For his own part, he didn’t believe a word of them. A fact is a thing that can be proved. The law requires authentication. “Henry Brougham, Lord Chancellor, saw visions, did he? And may be Lord Coke dreamed dreams,” he sneered indignantly. “And Lord Mansfield perchance walked in his sleep. And who knows they did? And what drivel is this! Gentlemen, we live in the nineteenth century!”
The aspersion of Lord Brougham—for thus he considered the anecdote—was very bitter to him. He was a man of few enthusiasms, and such hero-worship as was possible to him had been expended upon the great lights of his profession whose acquaintance he had formed in his early reading of law, some twenty years ago. He so dwelt upon this point that the jury received the valuable impression that Henry Brougham was a chancellor and a “valley man,” hailing from Knoxville, perhaps, and was held in high esteem by the lawyers in Shaftesville, and that Harshaw seemed to think the attorney-general had slandered him. He wrenched himself from this phase of the subject with some difficulty. “Gentlemen,” he said sarcastically, “the attorney-general is a mighty smart man. He’s got a heap of learning lately about visions.” He glanced down obliquely at his opponent; he would have given a good deal to know how the counsel for the State came by his information. He could have sworn that it was not indigenous. “But there are plenty of folks in this town could have told him just as much and more. He’s mighty particular to show the difference between il-lusion and de-lusion, and hallucination and mania. Visions! That ain’t what we call ’em, gentlemen. Down here in the flat woods we call ’em—‘snakes’!” The hit told, and he went on, encouraged. “Right over yonder in Tim Becker’s saloon they keep every assortment of vision. Men have seen green rabbits there, and black dogs, and snakes, and whole menageries of hallucinations. Is anybody going to believe Alethea Sayles had the jim-jams that night, coming from camp-meeting? She had no call to see visions! This girl had her head in her hands; she was leaning on the fence; she felt some one touch her; she looked up, and saw the boy before her. Mighty few of the ghosts that we have heard of had such consistency of entity as to make their presence perceived by the sense of touch; on the contrary, it is thus that their unreality is often demonstrated in these same fables. A lady passes her fan through one immaterial image. A man thrusts his knife vainly into the misty heart of another. And why does this instance differ? Because, gentlemen, there was no phantom. It was Tad Simpkins in flesh and blood. The fugitive boy sees Alethea Sayles, whom he knows well; he is about to appeal to her; he lays his hand on her hand. She lifts her head, and at the unexpected appari—sight, she screams, and the foolish boy is frightened, and flees!”
He went on to say that he would impose upon the patience of this court and jury only for a few moments longer. He wanted to contradict the statements of the attorney-general that no one would voluntarily burden himself with the support of a useless member of society. “How many yaller dogs at your houses, gentlemen? I’d be afraid to count how many at mine. How many of your wife’s relations? No, gentlemen, none of us are so rich in this world’s goods as we deserve to be, but we ain’t got down to dividing bread and meat that close yet. As to the reckless crime of keeping the boy in hiding in order to put Mink Lorey in the penitentiary for involuntary manslaughter,—why, gentlemen, if there were not just such reckless people continually committing crimes, the consequences of which they cannot escape, the attorney-general and I would have nothing to do. We’d have to suck our paws for a living, like a bear in the winter, and look at one another,—a profitless entertainment, gentlemen.”
He sat down, his pink smile enlivening his countenance, well satisfied with his efforts and with the prospects of the case.
The attorney-general, who had the last word, was very brief in saying it. The judge charged the jury, and he, too, was brief. The long slant of sunshine falling athwart the room was reddening when the jury were led out by the officer to their deliberations, noisily ascending the stairs to the jury-room above, assigned to their use.