Ishmael; Or, In the Depths

by Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

Among the eyes that gazed upon him were those of the three giants of the law whom he had now to oppose. They stared at him mercilessly—no doubt with the intention of staring him down. But they did not even confuse him; for the simple reason that he did not look towards them. They might stare themselves stone blind, but they would have no magnetic influence upon that strong, concentrated, earnest soul!

Ishmael was not in the least embarrassed in standing up to address the court for the first time, simply because he was not thinking of himself or his audience, but of his client, and her case as he wished to set it forth; and he was not looking at the spectators, but alternately at the court and at the notes in his hand.

He did not make a long opening like the Giant Wiseman had done; for he wished to reserve himself for the closing speech in final reply to the others. He just made a plain statement of his client's case as it is in part known to the reader.

He told the court how, at the age of fifteen, she had been decoyed from her mother's house and married by the plaintiff, a man more than twice her age; how when she had come into her property he had squandered it all by a method that he, the plaintiff, called speculation, but that others called gambling; how he had then left her in poverty and embarrassment and with one child to support; how he remained away two years, during which time her friends had set his wife up in business in a little fancy store. She was prospering when he came back, took up his abode with her, got into debt which he could not pay, and when all her stock and furniture was seized to satisfy his creditors, he took himself off once more, leaving her with two children. She was worse off than before; her friends grumbled, but once more came to her assistance, set her up a little book and news agency, the stock of which was nearly all purchased on credit, and told her plainly that if she permitted her husband to come and break up her business again they would abandon and leave her to her fate. Notwithstanding this warning, when at the end of seven or eight months he came back again she received him again. He stayed with her thirteen months; and suddenly disappeared without bidding her good-by, leaving her within a few weeks of becoming the mother of a third child. A few days after his disappearance another execution was put into the house to satisfy a debt contracted by him, and everything was sold under the hammer. She was reduced to the last degree of poverty; her friends held themselves aloof, disgusted at what they termed her culpable weakness; she and her children suffered from cold and hunger; and during her subsequent illness she and they must have starved and frozen but for the public charities, that would not let anyone in our midst perish from want of necessary food and fuel. When she recovered from her illness, one relative, a widow now present in court, had from her own narrow means supplied the money to rent and furnish a small schoolroom, and this most hapless of women was once more put in a way to earn daily bread for herself and children. Nine years passed, during which she enjoyed a respite from the persecutions of the plaintiff. In these nine years, by strict attention to business, untiring industry, she not only paid off the debt owed to her aged relative, but she bought a little cottage and garden in a cheap suburb, and furnished the house and stocked the garden. She was now living a laborious but contented life and rearing her children in comfort. But now at the end of nine years comes back the plaintiff. Her husband? No, her enemy! for he comes, not as he pretends, to cherish and protect; but as he ever came before, to lay waste and destroy! How long could it be supposed that the mother would be able to keep the roof over the heads of her children if the plaintiff were permitted to enter beneath it? if the court did not protect her home against his invasion, he would again bring ruin and desolation within its walls. They would prove by competent witnesses every point in this statement of the defendant's case; and then he would demand for his client, not only that she should be secured in the undisturbed possession of her children, her property, and her earnings, but that the plaintiff should be required to contribute an annual sum of money to the support of the defendant and her children, and to give security for its payment.

"That's 'carrying the war into Africa' with a vengeance," whispered Walsh to his counsel, as Ishmael concluded his address.

He then called the witnesses for the defendant. They were numerous and of the highest respectability. Among them was the pastor of her parish, her family physician, and many of the patrons of her school.

They testified to the facts stated by her attorney.

The three giants did their duty in the cross-examining line of business. Wiseman cross-examined in a stern manner; Berners in an insinuating way; and Vivian in a sarcastic style; but the only effect of their forensic skill was to bring out the truth from the witnesses—more clearly, strongly, and impressively.

When the last witness for the defendant had been permitted to leave the stand Wiseman arose to address the court on behalf of the plaintiff. He spoke in his own peculiar sledge-hammer style, sonorously striking the anvil and ringing all the changes upon law, custom, precedent, and so forth that always gave the children into the custody of the father. And he ended by demanding that the children be at once delivered over to his client.

He was followed by Berners, who had charge of the eloquence "business" of that stage, and dealt in pathos, tears, white pocket handkerchiefs, and poetical quotations. He drew a most heart-rending picture of the broken-spirited husband and father, rejected by an unforgiving wife and ill-conditioned children, becoming a friendless and houseless wanderer over the wide world; in danger of being driven, by despair, to madness and suicide! He compared the plaintiff to Byron, whose poetry he liberally quoted. And he concluded by imploring the court, with tears in his eyes, to intervene and save his unhappy client from the gulf of perdition to which his implacable wife would drive him. And he sank down in his seat utterly overwhelmed by his feelings and holding a drift of white cambric to his face.