“I could read it, sir; but I hope you will excuse me. She that wrote it was very, very dear to me.”
The young man's full voice faltered as he uttered these words, and he turned his lion-like eyes soft and imploring on the judge. That venerable and shrewd old man, learned in human nature as well as in law, comprehended in a moment, and said kindly, “You misunderstand him. Witnesses do not read letters out in court. Let the letter be handed up to me.” This was fortunate, for the court cuckoo, who intones most letters, would have read all the sense and pathos out of this, with his monotonous sing-song.
The judge read it carefully to himself with his glasses, and told the jury it seemed a genuine document: then the crier cried “Silence in the court,” and his lordship turned towards the jury and read the letter slowly and solemnly:
“DEAR, DEAR BROTHER,—Your poor little Jane lies dying, suddenly but not painfully, and my last earthly thoughts are for my darling brother. Some wicked person has said you are insane. I deny this with my dying breath and my dying hand. You came to me the night before the wedding that was to be, and talked to me most calmly, rationally and kindly; so that I could not resist your reasons, and went to your wedding, which, till then, I did not intend. Show these words to your slanderers when I am no more. But oh! Alfred, even this is of little moment compared with the world to come. By all our affection, grant me one request. Battered, wounded, dying in my prime, what would be my condition but for the Saviour, whom I have loved, and with whom I hope soon to be. He smoothes the bed of death for me, He lights the dark valley; I rejoice to die and be with Him. Oh, turn to Him, dear brother, without one hour's delay, and then how short will be this parting. This is your dying sister's one request, who loves you dearly.”
With the exception of Julia's sobs, not a sound was heard as the judge read it. Many eyes were wet: and the judge himself was visibly affected, and pressed his handkerchief a moment to his eyes. “These are the words of a Christian woman, gentlemen,” he said. And there was silence. A girl's hand seemed to have risen from the grave to defend her brother and rend the veil from falsehood.
Mr. Colt, out of pure tact, subdued his voice to the key of the sentiment thus awakened, and said impressively, “Gentlemen of the jury, that is our case:” and so sat down.
CHAPTER LIII
SERGEANT SAUNDERS thought it prudent to let the emotion subside before opening the defendant's case: so he disarranged his papers, and then rearranged them as before: and, during this, a person employed by Richard Hardie went out and told him this last untoward piece of evidence. He winced: but all was overbalanced by this, that Skinner had not come to bear witness for the Plaintiff.
Sergeant Saunders rose with perfect dignity and confidence, and delivered a masterly address. In less than ten minutes the whole affair took another colour under that plausible tongue. The tactician began by declaring that the plaintiff was perfectly sane, and his convalescence was a matter of such joy to the defendant, that not even the cruel misinterpretation of facts and motives, to which his amiable client had been exposed, could rob him of that sacred delight “Our case, gentlemen, is, that the plaintiff is sane, and that he owes his sanity to those prompt, wise, and benevolent measures, which we took eighteen months ago, at an unhappy crisis of his mind, to preserve his understanding and his property. Yes, his property, gentlemen; that property which in a paroxysm of mania, he was going to throw away, as I shall show you by an unanswerable document. He comes here to slander us and mulet us out of five thousand pounds; but I shall show you he is already ten thousand pounds the richer for that act of ours, for which he debits us five thousand pounds instead of crediting us twice the sum. Gentlemen, I cannot, like my learned friend, call witnesses from the clouds, from the United States, and from the grave; for it has not occurred to my client strong in the sense of his kindly and honourable intentions, to engage gentlemen from foreign parts, with woolly locks and nasal twangs, to drop in accidentally, and eke out the fatal gaps in evidence. The class of testimony we stand upon is less romantic; it does not seduce the imagination nor play upon the passions; but it is of a much higher character in sober men's eyes, especially in a court of law. I rely, not on witnesses dropped from the clouds, and the stars, and the stripes—to order; nor even on the prejudiced statements of friends and sweethearts, who always swear from the heart rather than from the head and the conscience; but on the calm testimony of indifferent men, and on written documents furnished by the plaintiff', and on contemporaneous entries in the books of the asylum, which entries formally describe the plaintiff's acts, and were put down at the time—at the time, gentlemen—with no idea of a trial at law to come, but in compliance with the very proper provisions of a wise and salutary Act. I shall also lay before you the evidence of the medical witnesses who signed the certificates, men of probity and honour, and who have made these subtle maladies of the mind the special study of their whole life. I shall also call the family doctor, who has known the plaintiff and his ailments, bodily and mental, for many years, and communicated his suspicions to one of the first psychological physicians of the age, declining, with a modesty which we, who know less of insanity than he does, would do well to imitate—declining, I say, to pronounce a positive opinion unfavourable to the plaintiff, till he should have compared notes with this learned man, and profited by his vast experience.”