“I never tell ’er so!” Susan burst forth. “I tell ’er she didn’t ’ave a decent dress to wear!”
“Oh! so you provoked her, did you?”
Susan perceived that she had blundered, but the lawyer did not give her a chance to recover herself.
“Why did you provoke her? Answer me at once!” he insisted, and she was about to blunder further, when her lawyer rose and asked the magistrate if his client was to be intimidated and bullied in that fashion? He suggested that Susan had offered no provocation whatever, and, although the magistrate promptly stopped him, Susan caught the cue. She had to admit, however, that she had struck Maria after she herself had been struck, and Maria’s lawyer was satisfied that Susan’s principal witness would admit far more than that.
This witness was a young man, one Hezekiah Theophilus Wilberforce. Catherine had taken ill almost at the last moment, fear of the court-house having much to do with her sudden illness; so Susan had had to fall back upon the assistance of Hezekiah. Had she been sophisticated she might have tried to obtain the services of a professional witness. A few of these are always to be found in every West Indian town of any importance, and they perform the useful function of swearing to things they never saw. You relate the circumstances to them, and they find that they were in the vicinity of the occurrence (whatever it was) on the day or night in question; and, if they were not seen by any of the other witnesses, that may be attributed to the fact that the excitement was intense.
These men are well known to the magistrates and lawyers, and sometimes they are called upon to explain their astonishing ubiquity. But a man is by British law considered honest until he is proven to be a scoundrel, so these witnesses continue to flourish like green bay trees. Susan, however, knew nothing of the high mysteries of the law and the customs of the court. So Hezekiah had been selected by her, chiefly on the strength of his own recommendation, as a person most likely to give a graphic and satisfactory account of the ill-treatment she had suffered at the hands of Maria Bellicant.
Hezekiah had always had an ambition to figure as something in a court of justice. Not being able to prosecute anybody himself, he longed for the time when he should “kiss de book,” and then proceed to tell a story which should assist in sending a fellow-creature to prison. On his name being called, he came into the court all smiles, and holding high his shining head, as one who realized the importance of being a witness. He repeated the story that Susan had told, varying it only by a detailed description of the treatment to which she had been subjected. Asked by the magistrate why he had not attempted to separate the girls, he replied with a grin that “horse don’t have business in cow’s fight,” a reason which, he thought, amply explained his apparent cowardice. That said, he was about to step down from the box, not anticipating that anything further would be required of him, when Maria’s lawyer abruptly asked him where he was going to?
He paused, confused by the sharp and even threatening tone of the lawyer, who knew his type well.
“Hezekiah, what do you do for a living?” was the first question put to him.
The question was quite unexpected, and it was simply impossible for Hezekiah to answer it straightforwardly. For the truth was that he did nothing for a living. While he stared open-mouthed at the lawyer, wondering what to say, the latter called His Honour’s attention to the fact that the witness could not answer a simple question about his own means of livelihood, and then suggested that Hezekiah must either be a thief or a loafer.