“That was different. He hadn’t come there to talk about his wife. He swore before God and all His saints on the blessed book he’d never lifted so much as his little finger ’gainst Nelly Sullivan; strike him dead, if he had!”
“Well, we’ll see what others have to say about it,” concluded Edward, as he sat down.
“You’ve settled the assault on Graham, but what about resisting the police?” whispered Storth, to his partner; “that’ll settle his hash you’ll see.”
The constables who had arrested Pat and carried him to the cells certainly bore speaking marks of that hero’s prowess, and their story lost nothing in the telling. They told it with that unswerving consistency which distinguishes the British policeman before “their Washups.” They had certain things to say, those and no more. For the time being the sum total of human knowledge was contained in just that. They knew neither more nor less than what they went into the box to swear to. For anything they knew Sullivan might have been provoked beyond endurance by Graham, but when they appeared he ought to have become as a bleating lamb. That was the official view, that, too, it was clear, was the view of the Bench.
“We must support the police, you know,” was the most sacred tenet of the magisterial mind.
“I shall not occupy your Worship’s time by making a speech,” said Edward briefly. “I shall show you that Sullivan at the time the police appeared was smarting under the sense of a cowardly blow given by that wretched man Graham to his wife. When the police rushed in it was Graham they ought to have seized, not my client. But give a dog a bad name and hang him. But it is a most unfortunate thing that the police should have interfered and put poor Pat to his trial at the very time when there was some likelihood of his becoming a teetotaller and entirely amending his ways.”
The Mayor pricked up his ears.
“Eh, eh? What’s that you say, Mr. Beaumont—a teetotaller?”
“Yes, your Worship, incredible as it may seem. Sullivan had yielded to the persuasion a young lady, who will give her evidence before you, and whose influence, I verily believe, was in a fair way to accomplish what your Worships can do neither by fine nor imprisonment. You shall hear the lady’s story. She is known in the Salvation Army as Sister Gertrude, and as many ladies of very good social position and education are engaged in this good work under these assumed titles, I shall ask the Bench to allow the witness to be sworn in that name.
A hush fell upon the Court when Gertrude Fairfax entered the box, a thrill passed through it when her clear but sweet and soft voice spoke. Very quietly, almost timidly, with nothing of the self-assurance and glib loquacity one hears in so many of the public women speakers and that takes the bloom off their womanhood, she told to the Bench, with little prompting from Edward, the story with which we are already acquainted. Insensibly there arose before the minds of all who heard her the picture of this pure, delicately-nurtured maiden, seated in a vile den, surrounded by rough men, and slattern, vicious women, speaking to them words of loving counsel and pleading with them for their good; of Pat Sullivan, at first resentful, then subsiding into sulky silence, then interested, then touched, and at length moved to promise of amendment, the forgotten tenderness for his wife revived, the angel within the man rescued from the death of sensuality and self-indulgence. As she told her simple tale, women in the body of the Court sobbed aloud, and even the stolid policemen looked human. The Mayor, an emotional man, furtively used his handkerchief.