The ways of the hour

by James Fenimore Cooper

CHAPTER XXVII.

“I’ll brave her to her face:

I’ll give my anger its free course against her.

Thou shalt see, Phœnix, how I’ll break her pride.”

The Distressed Mother.

The District Attorney was fully impressed with the importance of the duty that had now devolved on him. Although we have daily proofs on all sides of us, of the truth of that remark of Bacon’s, “that no man rises to eminence in the State without a mixture of great and mean qualities,” this favourite of the people had his good points as well as another. He was a humane man; and, contrary to the expectations, and greatly to the disappointment of Williams, he now took on himself the office of summing up.

The public functionary commenced in a mild, quiet manner, manifesting by the key on which he pitched his voice a natural reluctance to his painful duty; but he was steady and collected. He opened with a brief summary of the facts. A strange female, of high personal pretensions, had taken lodgings in an humble dwelling. That dwelling contained a considerable sum of money. Some counted it by thousands; all by hundreds. In either case, it was a temptation to the covetous and ill-disposed. The lodgings were unsuited to the habits of the guest; but she endured them for several weeks. A fire occurred, and the house was consumed. The remains of the husband and wife were found, as the jury saw them, with marks of violence on their skulls. A deadly blow had been struck by some one. The bureau containing the money was found locked, but the money itself was missing. One piece of that money was known, and it was traced to the purse of the female lodger. This stranger was arrested; and, in her mode of living in the gaol, in her expenditures of every sort, she exhibited the habits and profusion of one possessed of considerable sums. Doubtless many of the reports in circulation were false; exaggerations ever accompanied each statement of any unusual occurrence; but enough was proved to show that Mary Monson had a considerable amount of money at command. Whence came these funds? That which was lightly obtained went lightly. The jury were exhorted to reject every influence but that which was sustained by the evidence. All that had been here stated rested on uncontradicted, unresisted testimony.

There was no desire to weaken the force of the defence. This defence had been ingeniously and powerfully presented; and to what did it amount. The direct, unequivocal evidence of Mrs. Burton, as to her knowledge of the piece of money, and all that related to it, and this evidence sustained by so much that was known to others, the coroner included, was met by a conjecture.[conjecture.] This conjecture was accompanied by an insinuation that some might suppose reflected on the principal witness; but it was only an insinuation. There were two legal modes of attacking the credibility of a witness. One was by showing habitual mendacity; the other by demonstrating from the evidence itself, that the testimony could not be true. Had either been done in the present instance? The District Attorney thought not. One, and this the most common course, had not even been attempted.[attempted.] Insinuations, rather than just deductions, he was compelled to say, notwithstanding his high respect for the learned counsel opposed to him, had been the course adopted. That counsel had contended that the circumstances were not sufficient to justify a verdict of guilty. Of this, the jury were the sole judges. If they believed Mrs. Burton, sustained as she was by so much other testimony, they must admit that Dorothy Goodwin’s money was found in Mary Monson’s purse. This was the turning point of the case. All depended on the construction of this one fact. He left it to the jury, to their good sense, to their consciences.

On the part of the defence, great stress had been laid on the circumstance that Mary Monson was herself rescued from the flames with some difficulty. But for assistance, she would most probably have perished. The District Attorney desired to deny nothing that could justly go to prove the prisoner’s innocence. The fact was unquestionably as stated. But for assistance, Mary Monson might have perished. But assistance was not wanting; for strangers were most opportunely at hand, and they did this piece of good service. They remained until all was over, and vanished. No one knew them; whence they came, or whither they went. Important agents in saving a life, they had gone without their reward, and were not even named in the newspaper accounts of the occurrence. Reporters generally tell more than happens; in this instance, they were mute.

As for the danger of the prisoner, it might have happened in a variety of ways that affected neither her guilt nor her innocence. After committing the murders, she may have gone into her room and been unexpectedly enclosed by the flames; or the whole may have been previously planned, in order to give her the plea of this very dangerous situation, as a proof of innocence. Such immaterial circumstances were not to overshadow the very material facts on which the prosecution rested.