 | CHAPTER XXVI.
THE DENUNCIATION. Haunted hearts |  |
26. CHAPTER XXVI.
THE DENUNCIATION.
As we, none of us, while yet in the flesh, can know
what it is to die, so none of us, with rare exceptions, can
know what it is to welcome back the dead, or those
believed to be such. In intensity and degree the emotion
can only be compared to the shock of sudden bereavement;
but even that is a less amazing fact, since sooner
or later all must die, while the law can never be broken
but by a miracle which forbids soul and body, once parted,
to be reunited in the flesh. As the earth seems to fall
from beneath our feet when one who is walking life's
path with us suddenly sinks into the grave, so at his reappearance,
it must be as if heaven itself had stooped and
dropped a blessing down, — a blessing which faith has
promised hereafter, but which no ray of hope has taught
us to look for here.
In these days of terrible uncertainty, long suspense,
premature despair, which are breaking hearts all over
this our land, such instances of earthly resurrection may
not be rare. God grant that there may be many such
with a nation's pain. God grant that the lives of the
lost may be so pure from every stain that if found again
they may be found spotless, and be welcomed back like
the pearl of great price.
Such a welcome did old Van Hausen's honest heart,
and Hannah's stern one, give to George. But, alas! for
his mother and Angie!
Already, evading Van Hausen's charge, Margery had
crouched down upon the lowest step of the little platform
which constituted the witness stand. With her knees
drawn up beneath her narrow dress of black bombazette,
her hands clasped and tightly compressed above them,
and her little wizened face peering out from the wide
cap-border and tall poke bonnet, which made her features
look even more miniature and quaint than Nature had
designed them, she sat, now casting an agonized look upon
her son, now fixing a defiant gaze upon the assembled
court. Like a startled bird, panting, frightened, but
every whit a mother, who has planted herself on the edge
of her nest between danger and her brood, so the trembling
little woman, perched at her son's feet, between
him and the officers of the dread tribunal before which he
stood, felt, no doubt, as if her mere presence there kept the
hounds of the law at bay. For what did she know of
courts except that they judged men to death? or, knowing
all else that she knew, for what could she suspect that
her son stood there except to be doomed?
At George's sudden reappearance, at the first sound
ceased to beat; the hot blood had rushed to her
face and scorched her brain, to be succeeded by deadly
paleness, and clammy drops of sweat that started out
upon her brow. She had first sprung to her feet, then
dropped heavily upon her knees, in which latter attitude
she continued, fixed as stone, her hands grasping the rail
that ran around the gallery, her chin supported by her
hands. These were but faint indications of the emotions
that seized and alternated within her; — joy and horror,
longing and dread, thanksgiving and despair. Packed as
the gallery was behind her, impossible as it was for her
to move, her first impulse would have been to turn and
endeavor to struggle to him through the crowd, but for
the contrary impulse which bade her rather keep quiet,
deny his indentity, beseech him, by some imploring
gesture, to depart, fly, bury himself once more in oblivion.
Excited, unreasoning, mad with love and fear, her
senses first reeled, then seemed benumbed; joy proved
but a deeper shock of pain, relief but an aggravation of
woe.
But no one observed all this. She made no noise.
Her sudden starting up was only the prelude to a similar
act on the part of many, who, on the strange apparition
of Margery, rose up, and even leaned far over the gallery,
to watch her novel and eccentric progress through the
crowd; or, if Angie's breath came quick and hard, and
her breast heaved with something between a shriek of
rapture and a groan of despair, these symptoms of agitation
cheering and clapping of hands, which were simultaneous.
Hannah's emotions, however, were more obstreperous
and voluble. “It's George Rawle!” she cried, grasping
Angie by the arm. “Lord bless me! am I in the body
or out on't? Who said he was dead? This world 's made
up o' lies; it's our George or else it's his ghost; an' tain't
no ghost nuther, for he never looked so hale and hearty
in his life. That's right! shake hands with him, Dick!”
as she continued her observations; and again, “I vum,
if there ain't our Margery comin' inter court a pig back!
O Lud! what's comin' next? O Lud! O Lud! that I
should live to see the lad agin, — in this here court-h'us
too! Why, it's like the findin' o' Joseph in Egypt!”
Hannah's exclamations and her soliloquy (it was truly
the latter, for she addressed no one, she did not even
claim Angie's attention) were so protracted, that when
the sudden hush was enforced in the court-room they became
audible, and not only absorbed for a moment the
interest of those about her, but would have proved an interruption
to the trial had she not been almost instantly
checked by the restraining and monitory gestures of the
fine lady next her, as well as by a deputy sheriff who had
entered the gallery purposely to enforce silence, and who
tapped her with his pole just in time to prevent her attracting
the attention of George himself, which she was
apparently endeavoring to do.
“This is all very well; quite dramatic, indeed!” were
the congratulations of the audience. “It is a well-conceived
scene; my legal brother deserves great credit
for the exhibition. The young man's friends seem to be
very glad to see him back from his voyage. If I were one
of his friends, I have no doubt I should be very glad to
see him myself; but the gentlemen of the jury must be
aware that all this fails to establish a good character for
the witness, or to prove that he is the man he claims to
be. If the court will allow, I should like to put a few
questions to him.”
The doubt and suspicion thus suggested grated against
the universal sympathy in a scene whose genuineness nobody
could justly question. The judge even hesitated
about acceding to Trump's motion, but in default of a
positive prohibition, the lawyer commenced his cross-questioning.
“How long have you been absent from the country?”
“Just five years.”
“And your family have heard nothing from you all
this while?”
“Nothing.”
“And believed you dead?”
“So it seems.”
“Such mysterious disappearances are very unusual,
young man,” — spoken sarcastically.
“They are, sir, thank Heaven.”
“How came you to leave your home and country in
such haste as to admit of no leave-taking or knowledge
men run away, disappear, seek to be forgotten, it is generally
for some good reason — or some bad reason
rather.”
There was more than insinuation in Trump's tone, —
there was insolence and menace; his face, too, wore the
threatening frown, which it always assumed when he
desired to browbeat a witness.
The young man colored, and for an instant became
confused — precisely what the lawyer had intended.
“Unless,” he continued, improving his advantage,
“you can account for yourself, and prove your identity
more satisfactorily, why, the jury must take your evidence
for what it is worth, and no more.”
George had been embarrassed at the very first words
of the lawyer's question; but he was in no degree
cowed. Trump had mistaken his man, and gone too
far. As collected and as cool now as if on the deck of
his own ship, with his clear blue eye full of honest indignation,
and his lip proudly set, he turned deliberately away
from the lawyer, and with the manly instinct of one who
knows his own rights, appealed to the presiding judge.
“If I understand aright, your honor, I have been
called here to state what I know of the mode of life of the
prisoners at the bar, and not my own experiences. If you
command me to give an explanation of my motives and
actions, sir, I shall do my best to obey orders, but otherwise
I should prefer to be excused from answering questions
which I deny any man's right to ask.”
A murmur of approbation succeeded this assertion of
independence. “Mr. Trump,” remarked the judge in
reply, “I think the witness justified in his objection to
your question. After what we have heard and witnessed,
any further discussion of his identity is trivial.
If you propose to sift his private character, an opportunity
for that may arise later in the trial. For the present I
rule that the attorney for the prosecution be permitted to
resume his examination.”
“Though I trust I shall not be guilty of putting my
questions in so offensive a form as that my legal brother
has thought proper to employ,” now remarked the government
attorney, “he has to some degree forestalled the very
first inquiry which I proposed making. It has appeared,
in the evidence already before us, Captain Rawle, that
your ship was steering considerably off her course when
the pirate hove in sight, and that in your pursuit and
capture of her you expended an amount of time and zeal
inconsistent with your interest as a shipmaster and with
that of your owners. By way of satisfying the jury on
this point, I trust you have no objection to furnishing
such a statement of facts as will be explanatory of your
motive and its cause.”
“None whatever, sir.”
“Your zeal, then, in the detection and arrest of pirates.
To what is that due?”
“To five years of bondage, and cruelty, and hard labor
imposed on me by men of their stamp; to my knowing what
it is to be my own master, and what it is to be a slave; to
turning up the sleeve of a rough pea-jacket which he wore,
he displayed, just above his wrist, a ghastly groove that
encircled it, the effects of a long corroding would); “and
more than this,” he added, replacing his sleeve, and looking
down upon his mother, with that tender, boyish smile
of his, tempered now by the sterner sufferings of his
manhood, “more than all to the homesickness that has
eaten into my heart.”
“When and where did you encounter pirates?”
“In the Mediterranean, on my first voyage.”
“And you were taken prisoner?”
“All of us, sir. I was before the mast, but that made
no difference; officers and men, weak and strong, they
treated us all alike.”
“And took you to —?”
“Algiers. For three years I labored there like a
galley slave, a delicate lad, passenger in our ship,
chained to my arm. We were never once separated,
though he sickened and came near dying. We might be
there yet, alive or dead, but for Decatur and the rest —
God bless 'em!”
A fresh buzz of interest and enthusiasm now circulated
through the court-room. There are but few members
of a free community, however illiterate, who are
wholly ignorant of the historical events of their own day.
Our recent successes against the Barbary States, and the
deliverance of the unfortunate captives, had every where
been subjects of familiar talk and discussion, and an individual
hated corsair was at once brought into personal and fraternal
relations with every American citizen. What with
these facts, and the simple manliness with which they
were narrated, there was scarcely a person present who
would not eagerly have emulated Van Hausen in shaking
hands with George, — which, at this crisis, the old man
came forward and did over again, with more heartiness,
if possible, than before.
“I think we have here a sufficient justification of the
motive which took Captain Rawle's ship as many points
off her course as the counsel for the accused may prove
her to have been,” remarked the attorney, with difficulty
concealing, under a show of moderation, his triumph in
the sensation produced by his witness. “It has been
reported that the principal on the indictment, Bullet,
learned his trade among the African corsairs; however
this may be, his reputation as the king of pirates has been
so long established that Captain Rawle owed him a very
natural grudge, and could afford to go out of his way to
gratify it.”
“I owe no man a grudge,” said George, promptly taking
up the word in response to this insinuation. “God, who
has afflicted me in justice, and delivered me in mercy, forbid.
My duty is to Him who has had pity on me, to the
country that has rescued me, and to all brave tars whom
I had the power, in my turn, to save from such a fate as
mine. If there is a man on earth who might well be
believed, who has had cause, indeed, to act in this case
have acted from no such motive, no such feeling, so help
me Heaven.”
There was a solemnity and fervor in this asseveration
for which no one was prepared. It gave dignity and
grandeur to what might otherwise have seemed merely
an act of retaliation. It gave added weight, too, to the
succeeding testimony.
“And your owners?” continued the attorney. “You
had their license for your attempt to suppress piracy?”
“The license was in my instructions. The court will
not wonder that my owners fitted out the Antelope so
that she could face a pirate, when I state that one of
them, a merchant in Surinam, is father of the lad who
was my fellow-prisoner, and who all but died of the hardships
he had to suffer in Algiers. The vessel, too, which
was captured, together with ourselves, was mostly the property
of their firm. If the owners had had no other
reason for putting me in master of the Antelope, I think
it would have been enough that they knew if a chance
came for bearing down on any craft that sailed under
the black flag, it was a duty I'd never turn my back on.”
This answer was so satisfactory, the evidence on this
point so conclusive, that the attorney now turned his
attention to testimony that bore directly against the accused.
It was given throughout in that graphic, laconic
style, peculiar to men of active occupation and simple
character; here and there a sea phrase, or a rustic allusion,
marked the witness as a man whose education had
rather than of the schools of learning; but so intelligent
was George's narrative, so unpretending in its conciseness,
that it confirmed all the proof that had gone before,
and, so far as it went, carried with it conviction.
But after all, there was a deficiency in the evidence;
two essential links were wanting. The attorney unfortunately
had boasted early in the day of more than one
point which he had no means of proving, and the
opposing counsel did not forget to put him to the test.
“Captain Rawle,” said the latter, an opportunity being
given him at last to resume his cross-questioning, “supposing
we grant all the crimes imputed to the pirate
Bullet by the foregoing witnesses, can you swear, on
your own knowledge, that the prisoner at the bar is that
man?”
“I can only state my belief.”
“I do not ask what you believe, but what you know.”
“I cannot, then.”
“Ah!” with an ironical emphasis; then resuming an
interrogatory tone, “supposing it proved that the vessel
commanded by the aforesaid Bullet was a pirate ship,
and fitted out accordingly, can you swear that the vessel,
whose destruction you witnessed, was his vessel?”
“I cannot.”
“Ah!” again.
And here there was an ominous pause. A loophole
was evidently opening, by which these dreaded criminals
might escape after all. Every body looked confounded.
the audience.
“Is your evidence all in?” inquired the judge of the
prosecuting attorney.
The latter fumbled his papers nervously, whispered
with his colleague, hesitated, and then said he believed
that it was.
“And yours?” to the prisoners' counsel.
“We have none to bring forward, your honor. The
nature of the case forbids it to my unfortunate clients, —
dragged hither from a foreign clime, and compelled to
take their chance of a trial in the midst of a prejudiced
community, and destitute of the support and countenance
of their compatriots and friends. Fortunately, your
honor, they require no such extraneous aid. The incompleteness
and fallacy of the testimony brought forward
against them is a sufficient refutation of the indictment.
I do not need to expend much strength on this occasion;
the weakness of my opponent is my guarantee, and will,
I am confident, insure a verdict of acquittal from this intelligent
jury so soon as I am permitted to make a fair
statement of the case.”
These were mere words of course, but Trump's air of
security and self-confidence indicated a reserved force, by
means of which, knowing his adversary's weak points, he
would by and by effectually undermine him; and when
the experienced counsellor, who was to address the jury
on behalf of the prosecution, rose to commence his task,
if he did not tremble, every body trembled for him.
But before he had uttered a syllable, when he had just
raised his right arm to enforce the opening phrases of his
argument, the attorney at his side gave a start of surprise,
and arrested the gesture of his colleague, as, seizing him
by the arm, he exclaimed, “By the lord Harry, here
comes Bly! They're bringing him in just in time!
We're all right now!” and the attorney rubbed his
hands, and actually chuckled with glee.
It was true. Bly, too feeble to walk, was at this
moment brought in on a straw mattress, hastily mounted
on one of the narrow prison doors. He was stretched at
full length, and lay so stiff and helpless as to prove a
dead weight to his carriers. His features, too, were so
pinched, his lips so unnaturally compressed, the whole
face so colorless, that those who were in the way of his
entrance moved aside with involuntary awe to permit the
passage, as they believed, of a corpse. Only the attorney,
who had seen him look just so in the prison, could have
hoped to wring living testimony from this human clod;
only one who was a sharer in the secrets of which he
kept the key could have feared the unlocking of those
lips. As it was, the attorney experienced an exultant
thrill, while that other, who, from her vantage post at
the front of the gallery, overlooked the scene that was
enacting below, felt all the suspense, the horror, the
dread that had haunted her heart for years concentrated
into one moment's agony. Yes, worse, a thousand times
worse than her utmost fear had conjured up was this
moment realized, for the accuser and the accused were
what power now could avert the judgment?
When suspense, the suspense of years, has culminated;
when the crisis is reached, and the final blow aimed, the
soul does not at once recoil; it stands upright, it braces
itself for the charge, and meets the shock with the firmness
that desperation gives. How Angie looked, or what
she endured at this moment, it is not for you, nor me,
nor herself, ever to know. It is enough that she was
neither stunned, nor crazed, nor stupefied; that, noiseless,
motionless, breathless, with an intensity of all her
powers, which crowded years of common life into that
awful moment, she watched and waited for the end.
At a sign from the attorney, George had stepped down
from the witness-stand, and taking a position just opposite,
stood leaning against the dock. He had vacated his former
post to make way for the stretcher that bore the
new witness, which was about to be deposited there.
Apparently he had not recognized his old comrade; indeed,
he had scarcely caught sight of him, for the porters,
staggering under their load, carried him low, and bent
over their burden in such a way as partially to conceal it.
Not until Bly, relieved from the agony he had suffered
in the process of transportation, opened his eyes, and
rolled them wildly around him, did George become
transfixed by their stare; not until, borrowing strength
from the excitement of the occasion; Bly gathered up
his limbs and scrambled, like a fallen beast, first to his
knees, and then, by the aid of his attendants, to his feet,
disfigured by disease, and branded by moral scars, was
jerked impatiently from one side of the house to the
other, and the eyes at length fastening on their object,
glared in his direction as if gloating on their prey, while
a scowl of malignant determination darkened the face
even more fearfully than before — then he knew him.
Meanwhile, in a mechanical, abstracted way, Bly had
submitted to the process of being sworn, and the court
were prepared to listen to his testimony.
“Well, Bly,” said the prosecuting attorney, with
difficulty repressing any other symptoms of his exuberant
gratification and triumph than were indicated by a
diligent rubbing of his hands, and complacent nodding
of his head, “I am glad to see that you have come to
give your evidence of crimes that you know more about,
I suspect, than any of us. Mind now, my good fellow,”
he proceeded, in a cautious, conciliatory tone, “I don't
ask you to commit yourself any more than you can help.
I only want you to point out your partners in any transaction
you may have been engaged in, and to give a
correct account of the affair, so far as they were concerned.”
The jaws, no longer compressed by a resolution of
silence, but rigid with suppressed passion, parted at this,
quivered and rattled an instant, as with an ague-fit, then,
heavy with the weight of matter that struggled to find
vent, came to a dead-lock.
“Speak out, my man,” said the watchful attorney, in
strained to catch words, at the mere suspicion of whose
import the air seemed resonant. The wretched witness
was such a living testimonial to crime and its consequences,
that proof of it seemed to emanate from his
person, and thicken the very atmosphere in which he
stood, — or hung helpless, rather, — for he was still supported
by two jail officials, who propped him under each
shoulder, and so enabled him to maintain an upright
posture.
Again he attempted to give utterance to his too eager
words. The result was a gurgle — a prolonged stammer
— then an exultant “Ha! ha!” which caused every body
to shrink and shudder, and finally the first syllables having
found voice and exit, a torrent of speech poured itself
forth, beginning in stammers and half-articulate phrases,
but ending in a storm of invective and accusation which
defied all leading and guidance on the part of the counsel
for the prosecution, as well as all interruption from his
opponents.
“A — a — a — angels, or de — e — e — vils couldn't
put a bit in my mouth now!” was his first coherent assertion.
“They've tried it, both on 'em. I've been led by
the devil all my life, an' when Ole Nick, as they call
me, turned agin such a hard master, he came in sheep's
clothin', an' got the upper hand o' me agin that way.
Yes, he sent an angel (this last word was spoken with
terrible irony) to find out the soft spot in me an' gull me.
I believed her, the hussy, an' promised to keep dark, but
but one man in this 'ere world that I'd give what's left o'
my poor life to see kick the bucket, an' him — him,” —
here the witness might be seen to clinch his fist, and his
voice, hitherto so choked by agitation and weakness as
to be intelligible to those only who were in his immediate
vicinity, gathered strength and volume, — “why, I'd
give my neck to the halter any minute if I could fust see
him swung off. She told me he was dead already, the
lyin' jade! an' so I held my tongue, an' would ha' let it
rot there 'fore I'd spoke, fur what did I care about hangin'
half a dozen poor sailors that are no wuss an' no
better than what I've been myself. They might ha' got
off fur all me, an' welcome; but there's one man here
that it's wuth my while to spend my last breath in
blastin'. You want me to pint out my partner in sin, —
the head of the bizness, — do yer, sir?” (to the lawyer)
“Wal, then, there he stands!” and raising his finger, the
finger of doom, a skeleton finger, like that of Death itself,
he aimed it with the precision of fate in the exact direction
of the young sea-captain, who but a moment before
had, by the manliness of his deportment and testimony,
created such a universal predisposition in his favor.
George stood upright and unflinching as a rock, looking
Bly full in the face. There was an instant of awful expectation.
“Yes,” continued Bly, poising his head a little on one
side, as if better to survey his victim; then looking around
upon the audience with greedy satisfaction at the multitude
the man that fust dipped my hands in blood, when he
murdered, — yes, he, not I — for he made me do it, —
when we between us, at any rate, beat out the brains of
poor old Baultie Rawle.”
Here his words were cut short. Bly had just boasted
that no power, whether of angel or demon, could stay him
now, but even he, deceived, hardened, implacable as he
was, paused and shuddered at the cry that here went ringing
and echoing through the house, — a woman's cry, —
the short, sharp cry that comes from heart-strings snapped
asunder. The guardian spirit that hears a lost soul, —
the soul it has watched, tended, prayed for, condemned
at the final judgment, — could not ring out a more fearful
death-knell to hope than that human cry. At the
same time two arms were flung convulsively in the air, in
the manner of those who have experienced a fatal shot,
and a head, still young, and glorious with a wealth of
wavy hair, sank, as if by its own weight, upon the breast
that still heaved with the cry that had just been wrung
from it. The next instant the arms had dropped heavily,
and the hands, just raised convulsively towards heaven,
were spread as a shield between a pale, horror-struck
face, and a thousand eyes that were instantly turned upon
it, — George's among the rest.
The gaping curiosity of the crowd was baffled by the
natural screen which had buried the poor face out of
sight. But the hair from which the faded hood had
fallen, the delicate outline of the hands, the figure, half
needed to render George's recognition of Angie complete
and instantaneous. His heart had been no less true in
its instincts than her own. The voice that had been the
music of his life could not be mistaken even in its wildest
discord. He knew her before he looked up.
Was it pity for himself or her which caused his eyes
to fall as suddenly as they had been raised, and his back
to be turned to her despair, while he once more faced the
witness-stand?
Nor was the diversion given to the public eye more
than momentary. No secondary object, however implicated
in the mysteries about to be revealed, could rival
Bly himself, on whose next words the audience hung
breathless; and there was no time to be wasted in the
indulgence of idle curiosity or speculation, unless they
would lose the thread of his testimony. The interruption
had checked him for an instant only; he had even
managed, by the rapidity with which he returned to the
charge, to baffle Trump, who rose with the design of
putting an injunction upon testimony which was evidently
foreign to the indictment. He was aided, indeed,
in this by the judge, who, perceiving the difficulty with
which testimony could on any terms be extracted from
a witness so shattered by disease, intimated, by a wave
of the hand, that he must be suffered to tell his story in
his own way.
But there was a marked change in his voice and manner
as he proceeded. Whether his first outburst of accusation
experienced an involuntary awe and terror at having
given form and publicity to the crime that had secretly
haunted him so long; whether “conscience waked despair
that slumbered,” or whether there was still a soft
spot in his heart, which Angie's cry had reached, certain
it is that the man, an instant before so eager and savage
for his prey, subsided now into a strain more convincing
and condemnatory because less wildly vindictive.
There was even a touch of pathos in the retrospective
protest with which he continued.
“Yes, that was the fust; I'd never known the taste o'
blood then; but fur him I never should have, to this day,
for I hadn't a bad heart. God is my witness;” and
here, by a sudden revulsion of feeling, the voice of the
wretched criminal shook with the genuine tremblings of
remorse, — a remorse that threatened next to explode into
the sobs of a penitent, — “God is my witness that the
face, the voice, the white hairs of that old man have
haunted me night an' day ever since, an' driven me desprate.
Things as bad, or wuss, came arterwards. I
saw 'em done, if I didn't have a hand in 'em; but nothin'
like that to me, no, nothin' like that, — stand aside
Geordie Rawle, stand aside, my man; yer honest face
looks too much like that o' yer dead uncle, — it blinds
my eyes,” — and he drew the back of his hand across
the sunken orbs, — “besides, you were never made to
screen a villain, leastways this one!”
Thus admonished, George stepped aside, bewildered
by the terrible revelations of the moment, and tenderly
with Angie's cry, without warning, without
apparent motive, had rushed towards him with outspread
arms, and infolded him, so far as might be, in the miniature
shelter of her embrace.
Shelter from what? Some phantom of her imagination
only. George was guiltless of every fault but that
of intercepting Bly's line of vision, and, as he stood leaning
against the dock, partially hiding the true object of
his accusation.
“That's right, Mr. George; now I have him, face to
face;” and Bly, easing himself from the oblique position
in which his head had hitherto been inclined, gazed
straight at the chief of the piratical gang, now more fully
exposed to his view, — “I've told the fust; listen now,
all on yer, while I call this man to answer fur some o'
the other black deeds he's fathered, under one name or
another. I don't care what high soundin' title he's borrerd
or stolen fur this occasion, it's all the same whether
you call him Hebrew Bullet, the Black Bull o' the Indies,
Cap'n Josselyn of his Majesty's Roy'l Navy, or the very
Evil One himself.”
The audacious villain, thus designated and presented to
the audience, here rose, with as much assurance and
complacency as a man might assume upon an honorary
introduction to an assembly (he had been seated until
now, and his insignificant stature had helped to secure
him from observation), and surveyed the jury and the
legal circle in front of him, a supercilious expression
Then settling his shirt-collar (he was dressed to a point),
and adjusting a foppish eye-glass to his eye, he turned
himself in the dock, and looked leisurely around the
house.
Angie still stood in her central position, her hands
fallen from her face, her lips parted, her eyes strained
wide open, her features and attitude indicative of nothing
comprehensible to the observer; it might have been anguish,
fear, amazement, which so disturbed and petrified
her, — it simply looked like vacancy. Recognizing her,
— finding in her possibly the object of his search, — Bullet
smiled an icy smile, saluted her familiarly, and
pressed his hand to his heart, as if in acknowledgment
of her recent expression of interest in his fate.
The crowd, slow to believe in such cold-blooded
effrontery, watched him in silence an instant, then a
storm of hisses burst from every lip, and the constables
hastily interfered, compelling Bullet to reseat himself,
and a second time proceeding to enforce order in the
house. Probably the girl, who had been thus signalled
out and again made conspicuous, sank down mechanically
when the rest of the audience subsided into quiet.
She had met the salutation of Bullet, and the stare of the
multitude, with an unmoved countenance, as if quite
unconscious of the attention which was concentrated
upon her; few could catch sight of her face after she
had resumed a kneeling attitude, and the attention of
those few was but superficial. A watchful eye might
was by this time creeping over the court-room, that, as
she knelt there, with clasped hands and uplifted gaze,
the stony lines on her face gradually melted into a
rapturous and triumphant smile, her eye shone with an
almost unearthly light, her countenance was like that of
one transfigured. It was an ecstacy of joy, the reaction
after despair, and scarcely less apalling, in view of possible
consequences. But, as I have said, no one noticed
all this, not even Hannah, who sat close beside her,
excited, suspicious, and not a little wrathful at her own
inability to hear and comprehend what was going on,
and at Angie's unaccountable behavior and apparent
indifference to her privations.
The shameful audacity with which Bullet had met the
charges of Bly, displayed the more hardihood, inasmuch
as a few moments ago he and his comrades might reasonably
have hoped for an acquittal, while now the evidence
was bearing down upon them with such overwhelming
force as to blanch the cheeks and send a quiver
through the frames of his accomplices. For a few moments,
indeed, the most sanguine of the indignant crowd,
and especially the prosecuting attorney, had reason to
tremble lest the torrent of condemning testimony was
about to be intercepted and stayed, for Bly, exhausted
by the vehemence with which he had charged home to
Bullet the crime which lay heaviest on his own conscience,
swooned, and there seemed, for a time, little hope of his
revival. But by cautious treatment and the aid of stimulants,
proceed with his revelations of the past. These covered
a period of four years, dating from the time succeeding
the murder of Baultie Rawle, — when, a fugitive from
justice, nothing remained for Bly but to connect himself
with Bullet's gang, and set sail with them, on what
proved a piratical cruise — up to a period of desperate
resolve, when weakened by disease, but maddened by
tyranny, he had succeeded in effecting an escape from
the master-spirit who had hitherto bound him, soul and
body, to his iron will.
And now the government attorney had an opportunity,
and he improved it well, of exhibiting his skill in managing
a witness. With delicate discrimination and masterly
tactics he so controlled and led the erratic mind of Bly as
to keep him within the bounds of legal decorum, limit
his confessions to the charges contained in the indictment,
and more than all, evade the interruptions and
escape the legal injunctions of Trump, who spared no
effort to frighten, bully, or confuse the witness, whose
every word was as a thread in the rope that was to prove
a fatal noose to his clients.
Thus guided and guarded, Bly gave his testimony with
less spirit and originality than at the commencement of
the examination, when his precarious condition and overmastering
excitement either plead his excuse or claimed
the indulgence of the court. Thus detailed and sifted,
however, his confessions proved enough, and far more
than enough, to implicate all the prisoners at the bar,
the indictment; the crimes imputed to them by the consul
and supercargo were established beyond question,
and their identity, and that of their ship, so certified to,
that the nature and unanimity of the verdict was placed
beyond question.
Once only did Bly escape the watchfulness of his guardians,
and, bursting all legal bounds, strike boldly at the
doors, so long shut upon that crime, which evidently lay
nearest his conscience.
His attention, for some time distracted from the matter
in hand, had at length become fixed on a cringing
figure which, creeping nearer and nearer to the witness-stand,
stood at last with neck bent forward and head a
little inclined, greedily and yet cautiously drinking in the
evidence. “I see yer — yer old wolf!” howled Bly at
last, shaking his head at this individual, with a singular
gesture of recognition. “How comes on that tavern o'
yourn where all the mischief in the Jarseys is hatched?
— and where's your ugly cub, that drunken Pete, that
was the go-between in the pooty piece o' business
I've jest blown on? Why ain't he here to help me out
with my story! What did he say when he heerd the
end his old uncle had come ter — heh?”
All eyes followed the direction of Bly's, but to no purpose,
for by this time the wretched father had slunk
away, and hid his tell-tale face in the human thicket of
the crowd.
Then, with a grin of satisfaction at the effect of his innuendoes,
and proceeded with the revolting task, not yet completed,
of perfecting his development of crime.
The short winter's day had drawn to a close before
the evidence was all in. The lamps that were lighted
for the benefit of those immediately engaged in the trial
cast but a feeble light around one end of the court-room
and left the remainder in deep gloom. The gathering
shades of night seemed to foreshadow the darkness of
death which was closing in upon the prisoners. As Bly
was removed from the witness-stand a pause succeeded:
the hush that hung over the assembly was ominous. It
was in itself a verdict.
It was now the duty of the senior counsel for the
prosecution to address the jury. He claimed their attention,
however, for a few moments only; his advantage in
the case was too palpable, too solemn to gain any thing
from oratory, and he prudently waived any other argument
than that of the facts to which they had just listened.
Trump was almost immediately, therefore, called
to his task of arguing the defence — so hopeless a task,
so impossible a defence, that it would surely have been
stigmatized in the annals of the bar as “Trump's great
failure,” but that he wisely imitated the example of his
opponent, and after a brief harangue to the jury, couched
in vague terms of compliment and caution, left his cause,
as he said, “to the decision of a body of his fellow-citizens,
in whose unbiased judgment he was no less willing
than his learned brother to confide.”
Thereupon the judge briefly but gravely summed up
the evidence. The jury, without leaving their seats, pronounced
the anticipated verdict — “Guilty.” The prisoners
were then remanded to jail, with orders to appear
the following morning to receive their sentence — and the
court adjourned.
One act of brutality was yet wanting to fill up the
measure of Bullet's crimes. As they conducted him back
to prison, and when just outside the court-room door the
excited throng was pressing hotly on his path, a woman,
one who had all day been flitting like a phantom around
and within the court-room, an emaciated, haggard woman,
the veriest outcast of the crowd, pierced by frantic efforts
to the front, and moved by the power of a love stronger
than death, stronger than sin, of which death is but the
offspring, tried to fling herself upon his breast. But he
drew back with a motion of disgust and scorn which baffled
her intention. With imploring gesture she now held
up to his gaze a child which hung wilting at her breast, —
a child some four years old perhaps, — an infant in size,
though with the withered face of age; a wretched thing,
perishing inch by inch of privation and disease, but with
eyes the very image of his on whom they were fastened
in mournful appeal, wine-colored, blood-tinted eyes, awful
in their piteous glare. With a fiendish laugh of recognition
and mockery, the cruel father hissed blasting words
at the child,—words at which the woman stood rooted and
aghast. And then, because she so stood an obstacle in
his path, and even the constables, appalled and confounded
hands it will be remembered were shackled by handcuffs)
and — the indignant crowd gave a simultaneous yell of
expostulation — but he did it — he kicked her! The
sharp edge of his polished boot inflicted only a slight
grazing wound, but it was a deeper pain than that which
drew from her stung heart a piercing cry, and caused her
to clutch the child closer to her bosom, as if it too had
shared the blow. The cry of the down-trodden creature
was lost in that of the outraged crowd, whom it by this
time required the full constabulary force that constituted
the escort, to restrain from violently taking the law into
their own hands; and while the tumult was at its height,
the figures of mother and child, wasted shadows that
they were, melted into the throng and were lost — more
hopelessly lost even than before.
“Doubtless,” said the Morning Chronicle of the next
day, in reference to the circumstance above related, “this
poor abandoned creature was the same woman whose cry
of anguish interrupted the proceedings at the trial, and
thrilled the heart of every listener. We are also informed”
added the Chronicle, “that the attorney for the
prosecution ascribes to the agency of this woman some
tampering with one of his principal witnesses, upon whom
she succeeded in imposing a vow of silence, which, had it
been persevered in, would materially have thwarted the
ends of justice. How or when this poor wanderer, generally
known as Mad Moll, contrived to obtain communication
with the witness, himself a prisoner, no one can
woman often attempt and accomplish for the sake of the
wretch who has betrayed her to her ruin!”
The reporter for the Chronicle was but a superficial
observer of the minor features of the trial. So it must
be confessed was the attorney, who, preoccupied with his
own arduous duties, failed to observe that the female,
whose cry of distress in the court-room attracted his eye
for an instant only, was identical with the girl whom he
had seen, or more probably overlooked, in the jail.
It was a reasonable mystery, a natural complication,
which thus confounded Angie with Polly Stein, or rather
left the former out of the case altogether, except in the
minds of the parties immediately concerned.
For who could have dreamed that the one tragedy,
which was the foremost topic of the day, had involved
within it experiences scarcely less deep, real, and far-reaching
in their significance, or that the unravelling
of one thread of destiny had released another from its
strange entanglement?
| CHAPTER XXVI.
THE DENUNCIATION. Haunted hearts | |