Book: The Gilded Age, Part 7.

M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner >> The Gilded Age, Part 7.



THE GILDED AGE

A Tale of Today

by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

1873


Part 7.



CHAPTER LV.

Henry Brierly took the stand. Requested by the District Attorney to tell
the jury all he knew about the killing, he narrated the circumstances
substantially as the reader already knows them.

He accompanied Miss Hawkins to New York at her request, supposing she was
coming in relation to a bill then pending in Congress, to secure the
attendance of absent members. Her note to him was here shown. She
appeared to be very much excited at the Washington station. After she
had asked the conductor several questions, he heard her say, "He can't
escape." Witness asked her "Who?" and she replied "Nobody." Did not see
her during the night. They traveled in a sleeping car. In the morning
she appeared not to have slept, said she had a headache. In crossing the
ferry she asked him about the shipping in sight; he pointed out where the
Cunarders lay when in port. They took a cup of coffee that morning at a
restaurant. She said she was anxious to reach the Southern Hotel where
Mr. Simons, one of the absent members, was staying, before he went out.
She was entirely self-possessed, and beyond unusual excitement did not
act unnaturally. After she had fired twice at Col. Selby, she turned the
pistol towards her own breast, and witness snatched it from her. She had
seen a great deal with Selby in Washington, appeared to be infatuated
with him.

(Cross-examined by Mr. Braham.) "Mist-er.....er Brierly!" (Mr. Braham had
in perfection this lawyer's trick of annoying a witness, by drawling out
the "Mister," as if unable to recall the name, until the witness is
sufficiently aggravated, and then suddenly, with a rising inflection,
flinging his name at him with startling unexpectedness.) "Mist-er.....er
Brierly! What is your occupation?"

"Civil Engineer, sir."

"Ah, civil engineer, (with a glance at the jury). Following that
occupation with Miss Hawkins?" (Smiles by the jury).

"No, sir," said Harry, reddening.

"How long have you known the prisoner?"

"Two years, sir. I made her acquaintance in Hawkeye, Missouri."

"M.....m...m. Mist-er.....er Brierly! Were you not a lover of Miss
Hawkins?"

Objected to. "I submit, your Honor, that I have the right to establish
the relation of this unwilling witness to the prisoner." Admitted.

"Well, sir," said Harry hesitatingly, "we were friends."

"You act like a friend!" (sarcastically.) The jury were beginning to hate
this neatly dressed young sprig. "Mister......er....Brierly! Didn't
Miss Hawkins refuse you?"

Harry blushed and stammered and looked at the judge. "You must answer,
sir," said His Honor.

"She--she--didn't accept me."

"No. I should think not. Brierly do you dare tell the jury that you had
not an interest in the removal of your rival, Col. Selby?" roared Mr.
Braham in a voice of thunder.

"Nothing like this, sir, nothing like this," protested the witness.

"That's all, sir," said Mr. Braham severely.

"One word," said the District Attorney. "Had you the least suspicion of
the prisoner's intention, up to the moment of the shooting?"

"Not the least," answered Harry earnestly.

"Of course not, of course-not," nodded Mr. Braham to the jury.

The prosecution then put upon the stand the other witnesses of the
shooting at the hotel, and the clerk and the attending physicians. The
fact of the homicide was clearly established. Nothing new was elicited,
except from the clerk, in reply to a question by Mr. Braham, the fact
that when the prisoner enquired for Col. Selby she appeared excited and
there was a wild look in her eyes.

The dying deposition of Col. Selby was then produced. It set forth
Laura's threats, but there was a significant addition to it, which the
newspaper report did not have. It seemed that after the deposition was
taken as reported, the Colonel was told for the first time by his
physicians that his wounds were mortal. He appeared to be in great
mental agony and fear; and said he had not finished his deposition.
He added, with great difficulty and long pauses these words. "I--have
--not--told--all. I must tell--put--it--down--I--wronged--her. Years
--ago--I--can't see--O--God--I--deserved----" That was all. He fainted
and did not revive again.

The Washington railway conductor testified that the prisoner had asked
him if a gentleman and his family went out on the evening train,
describing the persons he had since learned were Col. Selby and family.

Susan Cullum, colored servant at Senator Dilworthy's, was sworn. Knew
Col. Selby. Had seen him come to the house often, and be alone in the
parlor with Miss Hawkins. He came the day but one before he was shot.
She let him in. He appeared flustered like. She heard talking in the
parlor, I peared like it was quarrelin'. Was afeared sumfin' was wrong:
Just put her ear to--the--keyhole of the back parlor-door. Heard a man's
voice, "I--can't--I can't, Good God," quite beggin' like. Heard--young
Miss' voice, "Take your choice, then. If you 'bandon me, you knows what
to 'spect." Then he rushes outen the house, I goes in--and I says,
"Missis did you ring?" She was a standin' like a tiger, her eyes
flashin'. I come right out.

This was the substance of Susan's testimony, which was not shaken in the
least by severe cross-examination. In reply to Mr. Braham's question, if
the prisoner did not look insane, Susan said, "Lord; no, sir, just mad as
a hawnet."

Washington Hawkins was sworn. The pistol, identified by the officer as
the one used in the homicide, was produced Washington admitted that it
was his. She had asked him for it one morning, saying she thought she
had heard burglars the night before. Admitted that he never had heard
burglars in the house. Had anything unusual happened just before that.

Nothing that he remembered. Did he accompany her to a reception at Mrs.
Shoonmaker's a day or two before? Yes. What occurred? Little by little
it was dragged out of the witness that Laura had behaved strangely there,
appeared to be sick, and he had taken her home. Upon being pushed he
admitted that she had afterwards confessed that she saw Selby there.
And Washington volunteered the statement that Selby, was a black-hearted
villain.

The District Attorney said, with some annoyance; "There--there! That will
do."

The defence declined to examine Mr. Hawkins at present. The case for the
prosecution was closed. Of the murder there could not be the least
doubt, or that the prisoner followed the deceased to New York with a
murderous intent: On the evidence the jury must convict, and might do so
without leaving their seats. This was the condition of the case
two days after the jury had been selected. A week had passed since the
trial opened; and a Sunday had intervened.

The public who read the reports of the evidence saw no chance for the
prisoner's escape. The crowd of spectators who had watched the trial
were moved with the most profound sympathy for Laura.

Mr. Braham opened the case for the defence. His manner was subdued, and
he spoke in so low a voice that it was only by reason of perfect silence
in the court room that he could be heard. He spoke very distinctly,
however, and if his nationality could be discovered in his speech it was
only in a certain richness and breadth of tone.

He began by saying that he trembled at the responsibility he had
undertaken; and he should, altogether despair, if he did not see before
him a jury of twelve men of rare intelligence, whose acute minds would
unravel all the sophistries of the prosecution, men with a sense, of
honor, which would revolt at the remorseless persecution of this hunted
woman by the state, men with hearts to feel for the wrongs of which she
was the victim. Far be it from him to cast any suspicion upon the
motives of the able, eloquent and ingenious lawyers of the state; they
act officially; their business is to convict. It is our business,
gentlemen, to see that justice is done.

"It is my duty, gentlemen, to untold to you one of the most affecting
dramas in all, the history of misfortune. I shall have to show you a
life, the sport of fate and circumstances, hurried along through shifting
storm and sun, bright with trusting innocence and anon black with
heartless villainy, a career which moves on in love and desertion and
anguish, always hovered over by the dark spectre of INSANITY--an insanity
hereditary and induced by mental torture,--until it ends, if end it must
in your verdict, by one of those fearful accidents, which are inscrutable
to men and of which God alone knows the secret.

"Gentlemen, I, shall ask you to go with me away from this court room and
its minions of the law, away from the scene of this tragedy, to a
distant, I wish I could say a happier day. The story I have to tell is
of a lovely little girl, with sunny hair and laughing eyes, traveling
with her parents, evidently people of wealth and refinement, upon a
Mississippi steamboat. There is an explosion, one of those terrible
catastrophes which leave the imprint of an unsettled mind upon the
survivors. Hundreds of mangled remains are sent into eternity. When the
wreck is cleared away this sweet little girl is found among the panic
stricken survivors in the midst of a scene of horror enough to turn the
steadiest brain. Her parents have disappeared. Search even for their
bodies is in vain. The bewildered, stricken child--who can say what
changes the fearful event wrought in her tender brain--clings to the
first person who shows her sympathy. It is Mrs. Hawkins, this good lady
who is still her loving friend. Laura is adopted into the Hawkins
family. Perhaps she forgets in time that she is not their child. She is
an orphan. No, gentlemen, I will not deceive you, she is not an orphan.
Worse than that. There comes another day of agony. She knows that her
father lives. Who is he, where is he? Alas, I cannot tell you. Through
the scenes of this painful history he flits here and there a lunatic!
If he, seeks his daughter, it is the purposeless search of a lunatic, as
one who wanders bereft of reason, crying where is my child? Laura seeks
her father. In vain just as she is about to find him, again and again-he
disappears, he is gone, he vanishes.

"But this is only the prologue to the tragedy. Bear with me while I
relate it. (Mr. Braham takes out a handkerchief, unfolds it slowly;
crashes it in his nervous hand, and throws it on the table). Laura grew
up in her humble southern home, a beautiful creature, the joy, of the
house, the pride of the neighborhood, the loveliest flower in all the
sunny south. She might yet have been happy; she was happy. But the
destroyer came into this paradise. He plucked the sweetest bud that grew
there, and having enjoyed its odor, trampled it in the mire beneath his
feet. George Selby, the deceased, a handsome, accomplished Confederate
Colonel, was this human fiend. He deceived her with a mock marriage;
after some months he brutally, abandoned her, and spurned her as if she
were a contemptible thing; all the time he had a wife in New Orleans.
Laura was crushed. For weeks, as I shall show you by the testimony of
her adopted mother and brother, she hovered over death in delirium.
Gentlemen, did she ever emerge from this delirium? I shall show you that
when she recovered her health, her mind was changed, she was not what she
had been. You can judge yourselves whether the tottering reason ever
recovered its throne.

"Years pass. She is in Washington, apparently the happy favorite of a
brilliant society. Her family have become enormously rich by one of
those sudden turns, in fortune that the inhabitants of America are
familiar with--the discovery of immense mineral wealth in some wild lands
owned by them. She is engaged in a vast philanthropic scheme for the
benefit of the poor, by, the use of this wealth. But, alas, even here
and now, the same, relentless fate pursued her. The villain Selby
appears again upon the scene, as if on purpose to complete the ruin of
her life. He appeared to taunt her with her dishonor, he threatened
exposure if she did not become again the mistress of his passion.
Gentlemen, do you wonder if this woman, thus pursued, lost her reason,
was beside herself with fear, and that her wrongs preyed upon her mind
until she was no longer responsible for her acts? I turn away my head as
one who would not willingly look even upon the just vengeance of Heaven.
(Mr. Braham paused as if overcome by his emotions. Mrs. Hawkins and
Washington were in tears, as were many of the spectators also. The jury
looked scared.)

"Gentlemen, in this condition of affairs it needed but a spark--I do not
say a suggestion, I do not say a hint--from this butterfly Brierly; this
rejected rival, to cause the explosion. I make no charges, but if this
woman was in her right mind when she fled from Washington and reached
this city in company--with Brierly, then I do not know what insanity is."

When Mr. Braham sat down, he felt that he had the jury with him. A burst
of applause followed, which the officer promptly, suppressed. Laura,
with tears in her eyes, turned a grateful look upon her counsel. All the
women among the spectators saw the tears and wept also. They thought as
they also looked at Mr. Braham; how handsome he is!

Mrs. Hawkins took the stand. She was somewhat confused to be the target
of so many, eyes, but her honest and good face at once told in Laura's
favor.

"Mrs. Hawkins," said Mr. Braham, "will you' be kind enough to state the
circumstances of your finding Laura?"

"I object," said Mr. McFlinn; rising to his feet. "This has nothing
whatever to do with the case, your honor. I am surprised at it, even
after the extraordinary speech of my learned friend."

"How do you propose to connect it, Mr. Braham?" asked the judge.

"If it please the court," said Mr. Braham, rising impressively, "your
Honor has permitted the prosecution, and I have submitted without a word;
to go into the most extraordinary testimony to establish a motive. Are
we to be shut out from showing that the motive attributed to us could not
by reason of certain mental conditions exist? I purpose, may, it please
your Honor, to show the cause and the origin of an aberration of mind,
to follow it up, with other like evidence, connecting it with the very
moment of the homicide, showing a condition of the intellect, of the
prisoner that precludes responsibility."

"The State must insist upon its objections," said the District Attorney.
"The purpose evidently is to open the door to a mass of irrelevant
testimony, the object of which is to produce an effect upon the jury your
Honor well understands."

"Perhaps," suggested the judge, "the court ought to hear the testimony,
and exclude it afterwards, if it is irrelevant."

"Will your honor hear argument on that!"

"Certainly."

And argument his honor did hear, or pretend to, for two whole days,
from all the counsel in turn, in the course of which the lawyers read
contradictory decisions enough to perfectly establish both sides, from
volume after volume, whole libraries in fact, until no mortal man could
say what the rules were. The question of insanity in all its legal
aspects was of course drawn into the discussion, and its application
affirmed and denied. The case was felt to turn upon the admission or
rejection of this evidence. It was a sort of test trial of strength
between the lawyers. At the end the judge decided to admit the
testimony, as the judge usually does in such cases, after a sufficient
waste of time in what are called arguments.

Mrs. Hawkins was allowed to go on.




CHAPTER LVI.

Mrs. Hawkins slowly and conscientiously, as if every detail of her family
history was important, told the story of the steamboat explosion, of the
finding and adoption of Laura. Silas, that its Mr. Hawkins, and she
always loved Laura, as if she had been their own, child.

She then narrated the circumstances of Laura's supposed marriage, her
abandonment and long illness, in a manner that touched all hearts. Laura
had been a different woman since then.

Cross-examined. At the time of first finding Laura on the steamboat,
did she notice that Laura's mind was at all deranged? She couldn't say
that she did. After the recovery of Laura from her long illness, did
Mrs. Hawkins think there, were any signs of insanity about her? Witness
confessed that she did not think of it then.

Re-Direct examination. "But she was different after that?"

"O, yes, sir."

Washington Hawkins corroborated his mother's testimony as to Laura's
connection with Col. Selby. He was at Harding during the time of her
living there with him. After Col. Selby's desertion she was almost dead,
never appeared to know anything rightly for weeks. He added that he
never saw such a scoundrel as Selby. (Checked by District attorney.)
Had he noticed any change in, Laura after her illness? Oh, yes.
Whenever, any allusion was made that might recall Selby to mind, she
looked awful--as if she could kill him.

"You mean," said Mr. Braham, "that there was an unnatural, insane gleam
in her eyes?"

"Yes, certainly," said Washington in confusion.

All this was objected to by the district attorney, but it was got before
the jury, and Mr. Braham did not care how much it was ruled out after
that.

"Beriah Sellers was the next witness called. The Colonel made his way to
the stand with majestic, yet bland deliberation. Having taken the oath
and kissed the Bible with a smack intended to show his great respect for
that book, he bowed to his Honor with dignity, to the jury with
familiarity, and then turned to the lawyers and stood in an attitude of
superior attention.

"Mr. Sellers, I believe?" began Mr. Braham.

"Beriah Sellers, Missouri," was the courteous acknowledgment that the
lawyer was correct.

"Mr. Sellers; you know the parties here, you are a friend of the family?"

"Know them all, from infancy, sir. It was me, sir, that induced Silas
Hawkins, Judge Hawkins, to come to Missouri, and make his fortune.
It was by my advice and in company with me, sir, that he went into the
operation of--"

"Yes, yes. Mr. Sellers, did you know a Major Lackland?"

"Knew him, well, sir, knew him and honored him, sir. He was one of the
most remarkable men of our country, sir. A member of congress. He was
often at my mansion sir, for weeks. He used to say to me, 'Col. Sellers,
if you would go into politics, if I had you for a colleague, we should
show Calhoun and Webster that the brain of the country didn't lie east of
the Alleganies. But I said--"

"Yes, yes. I believe Major Lackland is not living, Colonel?"

There was an almost imperceptible sense of pleasure betrayed in the
Colonel's face at this prompt acknowledgment of his title.

"Bless you, no. Died years ago, a miserable death, sir, a ruined man,
a poor sot. He was suspected of selling his vote in Congress, and
probably he did; the disgrace killed' him, he was an outcast, sir,
loathed by himself and by his constituents. And I think; sir"----

The Judge. "You will confine yourself, Col. Sellers to the questions of
the counsel."

"Of course, your honor. This," continued the Colonel in confidential
explanation, "was twenty years ago. I shouldn't have thought of referring
to such a trifling circumstance now. If I remember rightly, sir"--

A bundle of letters was here handed to the witness.

"Do you recognize, that hand-writing?"

"As if it was my own, sir. It's Major Lackland's. I was knowing to these
letters when Judge Hawkins received them. [The Colonel's memory was a
little at fault here. Mr. Hawkins had never gone into detail's with him
on this subject.] He used to show them to me, and say, 'Col, Sellers
you've a mind to untangle this sort of thing.' Lord, how everything
comes back to me. Laura was a little thing then. 'The Judge and I were
just laying our plans to buy the Pilot Knob, and--"

"Colonel, one moment. Your Honor, we put these letters in evidence."

The letters were a portion of the correspondence of Major Lackland with
Silas Hawkins; parts of them were missing and important letters were
referred to that were not here. They related, as the reader knows, to
Laura's father. Lackland had come upon the track of a man who was
searching for a lost child in a Mississippi steamboat explosion years
before. The man was lame in one leg, and appeared to be flitting from
place to place. It seemed that Major Lackland got so close track of him
that he was able to describe his personal appearance and learn his name.
But the letter containing these particulars was lost. Once he heard of
him at a hotel in Washington; but the man departed, leaving an empty
trunk, the day before the major went there. There was something very
mysterious in all his movements.

Col. Sellers, continuing his testimony, said that he saw this lost
letter, but could not now recall the name. Search for the supposed
father had been continued by Lackland, Hawkins and himself for several
years, but Laura was not informed of it till after the death of Hawkins,
for fear of raising false hopes in her mind.

Here the Distract Attorney arose and said,

"Your Honor, I must positively object to letting the witness wander off
into all these irrelevant details."

Mr. Braham. "I submit your honor, that we cannot be interrupted in this
manner we have suffered the state to have full swing. Now here is a
witness, who has known the prisoner from infancy, and is competent to
testify upon the one point vital to her safety. Evidently he is a
gentleman of character, and his knowledge of the case cannot be shut out
without increasing the aspect of persecution which the State's attitude
towards the prisoner already has assumed."

The wrangle continued, waxing hotter and hotter. The Colonel seeing the
attention of the counsel and Court entirely withdrawn from him, thought
he perceived here his opportunity, turning and beaming upon the jury, he
began simply to talk, but as the grandeur of his position grew upon him
--talk broadened unconsciously into an oratorical vein.

"You see how she was situated, gentlemen; poor child, it might have
broken her, heart to let her mind get to running on such a thing as that.
You see, from what we could make out her father was lame in the left leg
and had a deep scar on his left forehead. And so ever since the day she
found out she had another father, she never could, run across a lame
stranger without being taken all over with a shiver, and almost fainting
where she, stood. And the next minute she would go right after that man.
Once she stumbled on a stranger with a game leg; and she was the most
grateful thing in this world--but it was the wrong leg, and it was days
and days before she could leave her bed. Once she found a man with a scar
on his forehead and she was just going to throw herself into his arms,`
but he stepped out just then, and there wasn't anything the matter with
his legs. Time and time again, gentlemen of the jury, has this poor
suffering orphan flung herself on her knees with all her heart's
gratitude in her eyes before some scarred and crippled veteran, but
always, always to be disappointed, always to be plunged into new
despair--if his legs were right his scar was wrong, if his scar was right
his legs were wrong. Never could find a man that would fill the bill.
Gentlemen of the jury; you have hearts, you have feelings, you have warm
human sympathies; you can feel for this poor suffering child. Gentlemen
of the jury, if I had time, if I had the opportunity, if I might be
permitted to go on and tell you the thousands and thousands and thousands
of mutilated strangers this poor girl has started out of cover, and
hunted from city to city, from state to state, from continent to
continent, till she has run them down and found they wan't the ones; I
know your hearts--"

By this time the Colonel had become so warmed up, that his voice, had
reached a pitch above that of the contending counsel; the lawyers
suddenly stopped, and they and the Judge turned towards the Colonel and
remained far several seconds too surprised at this novel exhibition to
speak. In this interval of silence, an appreciation of the situation
gradually stole over the, audience, and an explosion of laughter
followed, in which even the Court and the bar could hardly keep from
joining.

Sheriff. "Order in the Court."

The Judge. "The witness will confine his remarks to answers to
questions."

The Colonel turned courteously to the Judge and said,

"Certainly, your Honor--certainly. I am not well acquainted with the
forms of procedure in the courts of New York, but in the West, sir, in
the West--"

The Judge. "There, there, that will do, that will do!

"You see, your Honor, there were no questions asked me, and I thought I
would take advantage of the lull in the proceedings to explain to the,
jury a very significant train of--"

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.