The Case and Exceptions Part 1

The Case and Exceptions.

by Frederick Trevor Hill.

OUTSIDE THE RECORD.

IN GENERAL SESSIONS COURT ROOM, _June 5, 1896_.

DOROTHY DEAR:

It is over. Warren's fate is in the hands of the jury. I have done the little I could, but the strain has been almost too much for me.

Even now, my heart sinks at the thought that I may have left something undone or failed to see some trap of the District Attorney.

For more than two hours I have been sitting here fighting it all through again.

You have not known what this case means to me, and doubtless have often found me a dull companion and neglectful lover during the past months.

But I will not cry "peccavi," my Lady, unless you p.r.o.nounce me guilty after reading what I write. See how confident I am--not of myself but of you!

The Court Room is quiet now, for it is ten o'clock at night. Only a few reporters and officials have lingered, and these yawn over the protracted business. Think of it! This is merely a matter of business to them--the life of this man. I cannot blame them, yet the thought of such indifference to what is so terribly vital to me, crushes with its awful significance.

G.o.dfrey Warren is only a name to you, or at most only the name of one of my clients. You have not known that he is my oldest and dearest friend.

How hard it has been to keep this from you! But it was his wish that you should not know it--and, if I do not send this letter, you never will.

Warren and I have been friends from boyhood. We attended the same school where we "raised the devil in couples" after a manner bad to record but good to remember. So inseparable were we that our families planned to send us to different Universities, thinking, I suppose, that our continued intimacy would be at the expense of a broader knowledge of mankind. But their purpose, whatever it was, came to nothing, for we flatly rejected any college education upon such terms.

As a result we entered Yale together and left there four years later with our boyish affection welded in a friendship such as comes into the lives of but few men.

Warren showed, even as a lad, those characteristics which have since marked him as a man apart. He was quick at his studies and slow in his friendships. But his judgment of men, though slow, was sure. A more accurate reader of character never lived. But of late years, whenever I remarked on this, he would laugh and say the credit did not belong to him but rather to Fantine, who told him all he knew.

This brings me to another striking trait in the man--his devotion to animals and their worship of him. Dogs were his for his whistle, and horses once touched by his hand would whinny a welcome if he only neared the stable door. When he held a moment's silent conference with a cat, it behooved the owner to watch lest p.u.s.s.y followed the charmer, and the way birds looked at him was positively uncanny.

Good G.o.d! I am writing this as though he were dead, and my heart is beating louder than the great clock in this silent Court Room!

Warren is not a handsome man, honey. You must not picture any Prince Charming in his person. He has--he has red hair. There--one would think I was making a confession. How he would laugh at me! He always says I try to make him out an Adonis when he's about as ugly an animal as ever walked upright. This is nonsense, of course. He is not handsome, but his features are strong, and when he smiles, his eyes light up the whole face and he is splendid.

But it is the mind of the man that has always fascinated me. His ideas are so clean--his breadth of view so comprehensive--his intellect so keen and his purpose so high.

If I could only have told the jury about the man himself!--But all this is "outside the record." Do you understand, dear?

Never have I known a more sunny disposition or a more even temper in anyone. But he could get angry. Half a dozen times I have seen him lose control of himself, but, awful though his pa.s.sion was, it always rose in some cause that made me think the better of him as a man.

Once I remember he overheard a foul-mouthed fellow repeating a filthy story in the presence of a little child. In an instant his face utterly changed, and before I could prevent him he struck the man a fearful blow, and I shall never forget the torrent of invective he hurled at the offender. I had not believed him capable of such tongue-lashing. (Little did I then dream how this would be used against him.)

It was on that day I first noted that, as long as Warren's anger lasted, Fantine kept on growling. When I spoke of it he smiled and answered,

"Fantine recognized the cur, I fancy."

I have written that Warren was my oldest and dearest friend, but I have not claimed to be his.

I would not presume to usurp Fantine's place.

Fantine was a Gordon setter. When I first saw her she was little more than a fluffy ball in Warren's lap to which he was addressing some remarks as he sat upon the floor of our study.

I did not disturb the conference.

"Puppy," he was saying, "your name is Fantine. Do you understand, Fantine?"

For a moment the puppy gazed solemnly into his face, tilted its head slightly first on one side and then on the other, c.o.c.king it more and more in a puzzled effort at comprehension. Then it panted a puppy smile--licked G.o.dfrey's hand and wagged its little feather of a tail.

"Ah, you understand, do you?" Warren went on. "Well, you and I will understand one another thoroughly after a while. I can teach you a little--not much, but still something worth knowing. For instance--not to bite my watch chain with those tiny milk teeth of yours! And you'll teach me--O, lots of things I want to know.--You'll show me the men I ought to trust and the ones to keep an eye on. Won't you, Fantine?"

The puppy put a fat paw on Warren's breast and wagged its whole body with its tail.

"And, Fantine, you'll never forget me as some people do, or think me ugly because I've got red hair? You have red hair yourself, you minx!--See those tiny flecks through your black coat? Tan, you say?

Well, you'll have beauty enough for both of us some day. I'll teach you how to hunt too--Is that a yawn? I make you tired, do I, Mademoiselle?

Well, I dare say you do know more about hunting than I ever shall. I apologise. But we'll be great friends anyway--inseparables--worse than your master and this great oaf who's stolen in upon our confidential chat,--eh, Fantine?"

The puppy gave a sleepy sigh, nestling under G.o.dfrey's coat and, as he stooped to peer at her, lifted a baby head and licked his face.

From that hour I was to a certain extent supplanted. But Fantine approved of me which was all I could hope. Of extraordinary intelligence she seemed to interpret every mood of her master and sometimes almost to antic.i.p.ate his orders. The man and the dog were indeed inseparables. If he left a room where she was sleeping it was as though the very air she breathed had been exhausted, and she would wake with a start and follow him instantly. The first time Warren sent her to his country place, some fifty miles from town, he forwarded her in a crate by express, and, the morning after she arrived he returned to town, leaving her with the gardener. Before nightfall she was at his office door whining for admittance. How she had found her way back no one ever knew.

It was more than instinct. The animal seemed to feel the man as the Martian felt the north. No mere instinct could make a dog growl in sympathetic response to a man's moods, and yet Fantine, as I have said, would do this very thing. Yes, and sometimes the hair on her back would rise in silent warning against some stranger--a warning Warren never disregarded. This devotion was no one-sided affair, for G.o.dfrey was a man--

--There! I am lapsing into the past tense again. G.o.d grant there is no evil omen in my pen!--

--It all happened so suddenly. I have not yet lived down the shock of it, and am nervous as any woman. Just now there was a noise in the rear of the room and I leaped to my feet barely repressing a cry. I thought the Jury were entering. But they are still talking.--About what I dare not think.

It is foolish, I suppose, to let my mind dwell on this "case," but I cannot get away from it and it calms me to "talk" with you in this way and to feel your quiet sympathy. I could not sit idle in this gloomy room--fearful to me now, and full of shadows. I should go mad.--I am a cheerful counsellor--am I not?

It was in the early evening of May tenth, a year ago, that Warren pa.s.sed through Washington Square with Fantine at his heels. As they crossed the plaza on the north, a two-horse hack suddenly wheeled through the Arch on the wrong side of the road, narrowly missing the man and dog. Enraged at having to check his team, the driver, a burly Irishman named Dineen, s.n.a.t.c.hed up his whip and, cursing fiercely, struck the dog with all his might. The lash wound itself about her head and flicked out one of Fantine's eyes. With a howl she ran a few rods down the Square and then crouched in the roadway, rubbing her b.l.o.o.d.y eye between her paws.

In an instant Warren was at the horses' heads and the hack stopped.

"Let go them horses--Let them go, I tell you! Ye won't, ye sc.u.m?--Then take that and that!"

The lash fell twice on the horses' backs and Warren was thrown to the ground, but still kept his grip upon the reins. Then the whip cut him in the face, his hold loosened, and the team plunged forward, the driver guiding straight for the spot where Fantine lay. An instant more and the iron hoofs had trampled her down and the wheels of the carriage had crushed out her life.

Dineen shook the reins over the flying horses and shouted as he turned on his seat,

"Now pick up yur dirty cur--you loafin' scut you!"

But his victim leaping and bounding alongside the thundering carriage made no answer, and the laugh the fellow started was never finished, for two strong hands gripped his throat as Warren swung up beside him.

Literally torn from his seat by the shock, the reins flew from the driver's hands and the frightened team became a runaway. For a moment the two men, locked in deadly grapple, were struggling on the box. In another instant they were over the dashboard swaying to right and left above the wheels, until at last they crashed back upon the roof of the carriage rolling horribly to the fearful lurching of the wheels. One moment Warren was on top--another moment he was under. Then suddenly the wheels of the hack struck a curb and the dark ma.s.s was hurled from the roof to the ground with a sickening thud. There was a short struggle in the street and then Warren raised the driver's head and dashed it fiercely against the stones.

Half an hour later he staggered into my rooms--the blood trickling down his face and Fantine's crushed and bleeding body in his arms.

He would hear of no other counsel. In vain I begged him to retain some criminal pract.i.tioner.