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The Bird of Paradise

Chapter XV. "This Honourable Coort Stands Adjourned Till the Morning of Termorrer at the Hour of Haff-Pash Nine by the Clock: God Save the Republic: Ye'ze 'Ave to Get Out."

Chapter XV. "This Honourable Coort Stands Adjourned Till the Morning of Termorrer at the Hour of Haff-Pash Nine by the Clock: God Save the Republic: Ye'ze 'Ave to Get Out."

Reconstructed every consecutive morning at half-past nine the sittings of the purgatorial court in divorce and matrimonial causes jurisdiction, the case of Whit worth versus Whitworth was resumed, dragging its ever lengthening quotidian tail along over a period of two calendar months, while every day the interested parties bore the stare of the promiscuous crowd on the floor of the national court and the galleries. All the ragamuffin world and his wife were there.

Upon the morning of the second day when Marvel re-appeared for page 427cross-examination she had fortified herself with a mixture of chloride of ammonium or smelling salts in a filigree gold-mounted actinic green vinaigrette and two Russia leather diaries with silver-gilt spring locks. She made many blundering attempts at repartee, while her whole demeanour was that of pertness and animated defiance of the cross examining counsel. Without again taking the oath that she would speak the truth and nothing but the truth, the barrister impeached Marvel's devotion to her studies at the Ladies' College in preference to the practice of flirtation.

"'I'll not leave thee thou lone one to pine on the stem.'1 Who wrote that line, Mrs. Marvel Imogen Narramore Whitworth?"

"Julian Cæsar," said Marvel without the vestige of a doubt.

"Wrong," said the barrister: "it was Tommy Moore; but no matter, you need not pine away standing, the crier will get the bird of Paradise a chair."

Marvel accepted the offer of the three-legged stool with consummate dignity, wearing a black bird of Paradise spray and a chiné silk dress with a cream ground conventionally patterned in greens and reds and browns, showing a tracery of black over them; the bodice made of chiffon and lace and jet. She wore the same headgear as she wore on the first day —a great fawn panoply much in favour with Georgiana Spencer, the Duchess of Devonshire, and trimmed with brown satin bows, pheasant wings and mixed coloured wings, mottled green and black, and shading the oxydised silver ornament set in diamonds—the humped black tom-cat in the very act of fighting.

"Bright plumassier2:" said the cross-examining counsel. "Fine and feathery artisan! Best of plumists if you can,—will you tell his Honour and the jury if you ever kissed a man named Clifford?"

"I never did," said Marvel: "he kissed me, and I'm not ashamed of it."

Interspersed with many specimens like these, the cross-examination of Marvel occupied three days, during which time she stoutly maintained that her husband was one of the worst types of humanity crawling about the surface of the earth; that she herself was perfect, immaculate, pure and serene as the richest carbuncle ever unearthed, and that, although she had struck her husband with a bowie-knife and had left her everlasting autograph on his face, she did not feel at all repentant.

The barrister, finding that Marvel was a very hard case in the witnessbox, concluded his cross-examination with another shot from "wee Tammy"—

"When he who adores thee has left but the name
Of his faults and his sorrows behind;
Oh! say wilt thou weep when they darken the fame
Of a life that for thee was resigned?"3

Whereat, springing up with panther-like agility from the three-legged stool as if she were stung and in a state of great ebullition, "Indeed I page 428will do nothing of the sort," retorted Marvel: "I shall rejoice in seeing him get into trouble as long as ever he lives," and she left the box apparently pleased with the poetry of her position in the divorce court and nestled herself again amongst the barristers.

She had spent her money on fiery-tailed whips and chaldrons of red-hot coals, and had come there to scourge him with the fiery-tailed whips and to heap the coals on his head in token of her eternal enmity. Tout valid! It was not spite—oh! dear no, not in the slightest degree; it was the chastening influence of adversity, and she certainly wanted commensurate value for her money. During one of her mimicries of outraged virtue something dropped on the polished head of the old crier standing below. He felt for it with his hand and looked up at the bird. It was wet, but then it was a paradisal tear from the safety-valve of a sorely-oppressed paradisal heart.

Anenormous female image in tawdry trappings with a tip-tilted nose next appeared in the person of Sukey Bubtitt, who electrified the court with the thrilling tale of the respondent's movements shortly after he was married. The productive Sukey tried to emulate the maudlin tears of the bird, but the water-works would not come into play, although Sukey was willing to swear that she was positively melting in tears. "I guess," declared Sukey Bubtitt, "I jest could fall down and do a faint dead-away right here, and I feel kinder rattled all over and my heart is going bumpity-bump. He jest didn't know I nabbed him quite a number of times, once upon a time when I drove after him with a hackman down Railway Street, and once when he sneaked away to the hitching up of Carrie Downtail; but it ain't not a bit of good taxing him with anything, for he won't own up to nothing. When he freezed on to the bird of Paradise he jest calc'lated her pater would strike a pocket and make a pile right-away, but when he like began to fancy the claims would peter out to nothing he sorter throwed up his hand and cleared, and left his missis to fish for herself any'ow without a bloomin' greenback in the house. It's something right down horrid what she got to buck up against from him, and her marriage has been an everlasting smash."

"Buck-up-against!" quoth the judge in astonishment. "Bear up against," explained one of the Philistines, and Sukey was told to 'clear' herself.

Amelia Field, the melancholial victim, then told the jury that the doctor bad been very fond of Riesling wine. She had never known him to refuse a glass; although she had not seen him drunk, she imagined him to be intoxicated once or twice as he was going home at night. She had not a particle of jealousy concerning her husband.

Two strapping buxom damsels in magenta skirts and leg o' mutton sleeves, Gloriana Bloobumper and Esmeralda Knight, both a trifle balmy and wearing flash, lopsided Gainsborough hats with flaming red flamingo feathers, which Marvel called "poems" and "dreams," Esmeralda displaying a tortoise-shell shovel and Gloriana a great chignon; the jackals and the amanuenses whom Marvel had paid so handsomely for their duties at page 429Myamyn, gave evidence to the effect that the doctor often quarrelled with his wife; that he seemed to be often stupefied by drink, although they admitted that they had not seen him drink anything but the Tennent's and the German Lager beer, of which there was a liberal supply in the cellar; further, that they had heard him wrangling with his wife and had seen an unsheathed sword lying on the floor of the surgery at the time. He had accused her of immorality.

The slit-eyed, chinchilla-bearded Simon Ernest Bubtitt with the sore thumb in a sling horrified the court by telling them that the respondent had once called him by an abusive 'enema,' but the only cross-examination consisted in asking the witness if he did not mean an abusive 'anathema:' also, how many children he had, to which he replied nine, ranging in age from one month to five years: the boat-shaped bottle was the simplest, the cleanest, the cheapest and the best: he had tried them all. Daffy's elixir was no good for the wind.

The case for the petitioner, after the appearance of forty-five witnesses, came to a close. Lawyer Wilmington, his face wreathed in smiles as if the trial were over and won, refrained from addressing the jury. He first asked Judge Grant if he would clearly define the dates embracing the exact time as required by the new act to substantiate a charge of habitual intemperance. The application was peremptorily refused, and Eugene began to wonder if favour could be shown even by the judge to Marvel's story. He next asked his Honour if he would strike out the charge of cruelty, as there was no evidence of bodily cruelty at all and scarcely any evidence of legal cruelty excepting such as had been described by the petitioner, which was merely abuse under strong provocation. This application was also refused pointblank and in a gruff tone of voice by Grant J.

The barrister for the respondent thereupon began to call his witnesses, the first of whom was one of the leading doctors of the city, Dr. Francis Grey, who stated that he had known Eugene for ten years and had been very intimate with him for five years; that he frequently had a few drinks with him; that he considered the charge of intemperance a gross and deliberate scandal; that he had a great regard and respect for Whitworth, both as a man and as a member of the medical profession, and that he had always found him to be an agreeable companion and a temperate member of society. The medical men who had enjoyed the scientific junketings at the paradisal wedding and several other medical men corroborated the statements of the first witness for the defence. The chemists of the various places where the nomadic surgeon had practised were called and asked if they had ever noticed any mistake in the scientific composition of prescriptions written out by the respondent during the term of ten years. The question having been answered by them all in the negative, the witnesses further swore that his income at Augusta and Galveston had been, they would imagine, five thousand dollars a year; while the chemist at Sabinnia considered that his practice there must have amounted to close on fifteen thousand a year, and that in the estimation of the whole of the inhabitants of the page 430Sabine River district he was by far the best medical practitioner who had ever lived amongst them.

The principal bank manager of the town gave evidence in accordance with the bankers' evidence act and produced the books of the bank showing deposits by Eugene in the bank of Louisiana at Sabinnia of an average of fifteen thousand five hundred per annum, and an item of three thousand dollars paid for a single case of surgical operation for tumour on the brain. The next witness filled the court with the odours of essences and pomatums. Naturally grey and for some years black, his hair was now straw-coloured. All he had to say was entirely in the some-time resident surgeon's favour, but his missus had said a great deal to him about the bird of Paradise and as this was only hearsay he would refer the judge to his missus, "the evening star."

"A Daniel come to judgment; yea, a Daniel"4—Daniel Carter of the Hallelujah Hotel. He was mad drunk, and had to get out of the box and narrowly escaped being committed for contempt of court.

Martha Wax arrived in a great fluster, but she appeared to be suffering from such a snowstorm in her head that her evidence was waived by Wilmington.

Lady Kincaird stated that she had known the respondent for four years, and had been associated with him in works of charity and benevolence, but had never seen nor suspected that he was under the influence.

Barbara Houldsworth, who had been so incommoded by the intoxicated Silas P. Grinder at Kincumboo5 demesne, informed the court that she had seen him in her cotton plantation homestead every day for six months; that she had never seen him take anything more than what any other doctor might take to keep out the cold, that he had saved the life of herself and her daughter, and for that she was extremely grateful to Dr. Whit-worth.

Chevalier Jules Léroche came on his own account to state that "Madame zee Dogder vaz no bedder zann a vipèrs," but his evidence was immaterial. Many old cripples, whose lives the doctor had saved or whose limbs he had amputated, stumped into the witness-box to rally around the flag of Eugene; while two poor old women were dragged from the heart of the Rocky Mountains on wooden legs to mention to the crier of the court— whom like old Scotch lassie Jean they took to be the judge and before whom they frequently curtseyed by dropping on the knee pad of the wooden leg —that he had cut their legs off, and that they were very much obliged to him for so doing.

Many of the leading city men, merchants, heads of government departments, bankers and professional men enthusiastically espoused the cause of the doctor; after which his Honour asked the senior counsel for the respondent if he had any good evidence to meet the accusation of adultery as concerning the girl, who was, he said, undefended by counsel and on whose behalf it was a matter of paramount importance to obtain specific evidence.

page 431

Lawyer Wilmington explained that he did not propose to ask any of the medical witnesses whom he had called that question, as they were all friends of Whitworth, and that they knew nothing about Lillie Delaine, but that he thought the girl would be willing to wait upon any medical gentlemen whom his Honour might appoint with that object in view. This proposition finding favour with the judge, three of the principal gynæcological clinicians, who were unknown to the respondent, were appointed to interview Lillie Delaine, so that their evidence might be taken at a subsequent epoch in the trial.

With a mien suggestive of "spice-laden gales soft from Ceylon's isle,"6 and with a do-or-die expression on his cœur de lion face, weather-beaten from India to the Pole, the thimble-rigging Brick Bore next appeared, and the Salomon Island prince of Wales at his heels. Soon after the bursting of the tin-mine bubble he had obtained a master mariner's certificate and had been filibustering7en cachette8 under a pseudonym as a pirate king of the "Summer Isles of Eden."9 After a failure at hotel-keeping in the South of New Zealand, he had returned to his old happy hunting-grounds and was in command of a schooner called the White Hawk, then lying at her berth on the Mississippi Quay. After a dogmatic harangue in a bold and brassy voice replying to Wilmington, "What is your name again?" coaxingly inquired Carrick. "Captain Brick Bore," in tones of thunder, after which, punctuating his rhetoric by bringing his fist down at intervals upon the moulding of the witness-box with the force of an aerolite or the patting paw of a lion, he began his répertoire of the old parlance:—"Holy smoke! by the holy poker and Saint Anastasius, he's the whitest man in creation— by the lord Harry, the whitest man on God's earth. I knew Julian Jasper Gould, and by thunder Julian Jasper Gould, God bless him, knew the bird of Paradise: she's the most mutineering woman you ever saw in yore life and you can take your bible oath on that. If I had her I'd spike her guns: strike me blind, I'd keelhaul her and I'd make her walk the plank for six months on bread and water with peas in her boots and a gully in her mouth. Some of the lovely dark-skinned maidens on the Pitcaim Islands would read her a lesson; by Jupiter, they would show her a book to take a leaf out of; by the Lord Harry they would, and you may lay to that. Belay there, Mister what's-your-name; just you look here, if you ask me a question I won't be gagged by you or any hog like you till I answer it, d'ye see? you just shut yore mouth, you old lubbering corn-cob, and by the holy poker I'll spike the guns of every mother's son who says that man is not the whitest man on God's earth. I know, by heavens I know, who should have been spliced to him: he should have been overhauled and boarded by a princess of the blood Royal— yes, by St. Peter, a princess of the blood Royal! Just you mark my words down there, I've seen me, my own self, scuttle a case of Languedoc wine by knocking the corner on the deck to smash the bottles and catch the stuff in a bucket and drink the lot besides a couple of demijohns of battle-axe brandy, but, by Saint Aloysius, he sat like 'tween decks all the page 432watch and never once held out his pannikin. If that's what you call an habitual drunkard then, by the holy poker, the law's a crimson full-blooded harss."

"What were you doing at the Caroline Islands?" inquired Carrick, trying to get a word in side-ways.

"Missionary! in the name of all the"——

"That will do," quoth the judge, waking up after forty winks at his post, with a paternal look like that on the face of the Conscript fathers10 at Brick Bore: "you may leave the box," and he left with a mighty exordium, but the strident sound of his expletives could be heard as he strode in a rage through the long corridors.

Miriam was the next witness called and catechised by the counsel for the respondent, as to the night she had visited Edenhall with Noah's ark, the jumping-jacks, the doodle-'m-bucks and the jacks-in-the-box in company with Guinevere, when the snarling, growling bully, who had opened out the case for the petitioner, attempted to defy her to give the date of the described rebuttal. He failed. Miriam remembered it was on the eve of Whitsuntide, and that she had planted some white violets when she returned from Edenhall in an urn below the coping of little Percy's grave. She further proved the mistake made by two of the private detectives in suspecting that the respondent had been talking to Lillie Delaine near the gate of Margery Moon's domicile on the night when Brosie had carried her box from the steamboat. She clearly established an alibi by showing that the respondent was walking home with her late from St. Martin's cemetery at the time fixed for his covert interview with Lillie.

"Mrs. Guinevere Payne," called the barrister for the respondent. Pale and calm she ascended the box, and was requested by Grant J. to raise the misty veil from her lips. He asked her if she would like a seat, but the statuesque Guinevere preferred to stand. Every curve and outline of her matchless figure, her mystic and plastic quietism, the poise of her head and her graceful step prepossessed every man and woman in the court. She was a dream of gracefulness and a womanly woman; her quiet beauty depending not upon colouring or regularity in the lineaments of her face more than upon purity of soul. Heroic as Atalanta11, the spiritual calm and classic repose of her sweet sad eyes pourtrayed her as the very presentment of a courage and refinement which seemed to etherealise all her surroundings. In defiance of her emotional trials she looked as young, as fresh and as fair as she did on the morning of her visit to Eugene at the residence of the Augusta hospital. Her costume was salvage from the spoils of Marma-duke. She was a charming picture in white crepon, the skirt plain with large godets12; a blouse bodice with a wide pleat in front, and the yoke covered with sparkling steel bangles. Her bonnet was encircled with yellow and violet irises, and a large mauve iris stood out as an aigrette.

"How long have you known the respondent?" inquired the counsel.

"Fifteen years," replied Guinevere.

page 433

"Have you ever seen him intoxicated?"

"I have never seen him in such a condition. I never heard of him drinking till after the return of his wife to Myamyn. He has done all he could to correct my husband from drinking, and if it had not been for Eugene Whitworth my child would have been dead years ago and my husband and myself left to starve."

"Did the doctor's wife quarrel with the doctor over you?"

"Not that I am aware of, unless you refer to one evening when I called with my little boy at Myamyn to see him in reference to my husband. Then she became very passionate and aggressive without any provocation that I could observe, and spoke to me very rudely."

"You were the children's preceptress, I believe," remarked the lawyer.

"Yes," replied Guinevere: "I guided them in their early education. I always loved the dear little children, and I tried to show them the paths of goodness and honour and virtue. They were remarkably bright and precocious children and they made rapid progress in their little studies I anticipate a brilliant future for both of them. They were always strong, healthy and spirited. Their father always seemed to me to be deeply attached to them, to humor them and indulge all their childish whims and fancies."

"Thank you, Mrs. Payne," said the examining counsel.

Scowling rose the pompous gladiatorial bully, hurling at her in a gruff stentorian voice the question:—"Was there any undue familiarity between you and the respondent?"

Safe behind the shield of Artemis13, but changing colour, the crimson blood mantled to her ivory cheeks chafing in indignation at the insulting question. The flame of her purity steady and brilliant, she had the faculty of modelling her graceful intellect to every circumstance which it encountered. Her answer came with the coruscating flash of lightning uttered with a subtlety of contradiction which a virtuous woman alone possesses. Insults struck a supremely sensitive chord in her heart, but undismayed she relieved the court of all misapprehension on that count by the brave manner and tone in which she replied in the ten-thousandth part of a second:—"Never, sir, never:" and the big bully sat down like a whipped cur under the charge of the withering scorn on the face of the girl where never before a frown had been seen. Her violet eyes alight with electric indignation were rivetted upon the barrister and instantaneously he dropped further questioning, while the old crier silenced the hissing among the huddle of the gods in the galleries and the mixed mob on the floor of the court. She had not shown the artificial smartness of Marvel, nor any of her theatrical studied side-play. Every word that she uttered had the ring, the impress, and the clonc timbre of truth and virtue.

"Lillie Delaine," said the counsel for the respondent. "Lillie Delaine," cried louder the crier: "lillie Delaine!" roared out the guard at the side door; "Lillie Delaine, Lillie Delaine!" re-echoed the reverberating cor-page 434ridors: "Lillie Delaine, Lillie Delaine, Lillie Delaine!" amidst the shuffling of feet in the galleries.

In she sailed in a sailor hat in fawn Dunstable-straw with a bell crown and trimmed with velvet bows, while her sky-blue dress was decorated with a bouquet of cowslips and violets.

"Have you ever seen the respondent intoxicated?"

"Which one?" replied the witness, and the counsel for the respondent said he alluded to the doctor, her master.

"I seen Brosie," she volunteered.

"Oh never mind Brosie," said the counsel, "have you ever seen the doctor himself?"

"Only a few times in four years," said the witness: "I seen him drink a bottle of beer, and I think there was poison in the bottles and it flew to his 'ead."

"Did he abuse his wife and children?" asked the counsel.

"Wot a lie!" said the witness: "I been in his 'ouse four year and I never see him abusin' any pusson in his life; he was always very good to Pearly and Vallie and give them lots of money. I often heard the missis kickin' up rows with him, and the missis have told me that when she got her father's money like when he died, she was going to clear out of the 'ouse."

"Was he ever intimate with you?" asked the barrister.

"Wot's that?" was the rejoinder, and it was explained what he meant.

"No he wasn't," said the witness: "my word! if my mother heard tell or knowed that anybody did me any 'arm they'd catch it! then there'd be murder."

The Scotch terrier bully then attacked the girl and asked her if she had ever been drunk at Myamyn.

"Wot a bare-faced lie!" said the witness. "I never took anythink, any wines or beers or spirits, never till I took sick and my mother gives me some of the bottled beer. I only drank a 'arf a glass in a day;." if the doctor had ever called her 'my dear girl,' as stated by the nurse-girl; to which she replied with a loud derisive laugh at which the whole court laughed, when she said it was ridick'lous; if she had not been seen talking to the respondent at the gate of the Galveston house; to which she vouchsafed the reply:—"My word! if my mother 'ad a 'old of that there hawful bad woman she'd ha-caught it; she hain't no good, and that there Hemma Powell wants drowndin' bad;" if the respondent had not carried her box from the wharf, to which she replied that it was a lie, because it was Doctor Brosie; if she had heard the policeman and two detectives swear that she was drunk at Myamyn one Sunday; to which she replied that her mother had since told her that she was out of her mind at the time, and as for her own recollection her mind in the matter was an absolute blank.

Then whispered amongst themselves the defending party about the advisability of calling the next witness; would they call the young gentle-page 435man then or would they not? would they leave him till afterwards or would they not? As the respondent considered that it did not matter when they called him they would find him perfectly serene and seraphic, the nams of the variant Brosie was in everybody's mouth in two seconds, and vibrating on the waves of sound through the hollow-resounding colonnades.

In he came, the glass of fashion and the mould of form; brown kid gloves and hessian boots with long tassels: a knuckle-duster diamond nearly as large as a Koh-i-nor14: an extra superfine double-milled black surtout with coat-tails lined with satin; a button-hole of snow-drops and white phlox, and a black silk hat in his hand.

Everybody from Grant J. on the throne to the envious throng who flattened their noses against the glass doors at the back was amazed at the striking resemblance between the two brothers, when Brosie jauntily beamed forth and filled the box. When asked to speak the truth and kiss the book he did so in proper Chicago style, and replied to the old crier that he guessed and calculated he naturally would. When he was asked by the senior counsel for his brother if he had often been mistaken for the respondent he guessed the lawyer was "fair on the bull's-eye plumb centre;" asked if he was ever intoxicated, he replied that "in Chicago, Lake Michigan, it would not be called intoxicated, it was only under the influence of liquor," and explained what a Chicago gin-sling, a Chicago cobbler, a fairy kiss, a flip - flap, a dog's - nose and a Lake Michigan cock-tail was; he alluded to the bird of Paradise as a' cock-tail.' Asked if he ever carried the box for the girl he replied that "he was by natur' a gen'leman and nat'rally helped the gal to elevate the box, when he calc'lated there was no other way for its locomotion;" if he ever offended one of the theatrical artists, to which he replied that he had a set-to with a gen'leman, who was not a patch on the play-actors of the city of Chicago, and that "he opinionated he was justified in planting him on the jug'lar."

When the examination had been finished, he faced half left with the greatest sang-froid to see the bull-dogs. In his youthful days be had been, he reflected, possessed of a peculiar charm in the placating of dogs of all breeds. He was well posted up in all the proper markings and points of a pure bred terrier. From the vantage ground of his elevated situation in the witness-box, scrutinising the cynological show in the corner he came to the conclusion that they were all too coarse and shaggy, and should have had their ears clipped.

"Now then, Doctor Brosie," snarled the big bully, "where did you get that hat?"

"That hat," said Brosie, holding it up and looking it all over: "in reply to that enquerry I guess I made that hat."

"What is the difference between a three and a six. Doctor Brosie?"

"Three and a six what?" said Brosie in great astonishment, until he was compelled to reply—"One right-down pull and a haff-pull at the beer-page 436engine I calc'late, no froth, I had you there, boss: advance me another slick."

"Were the dinners you gave in Apricot Street as magnificent as that you gave in honour of the servants and the groom?"

"Wa'al," returned Brosie quite unnerved: "if there air any differences I guess the Chicago spreads were the better. I don't worship the golden caff. I am by natur' a cosmopolitan gen'leman, and I like to see my brother-man enjoy himself. My occ'pation nat'rally accustoms me to all sarts and conditions of mouths. What is the use of a doctor of dental surgery of Apricot Street, Chicago, Lake Michigan, if he is too disgustin' partick'lar."

"How many sixes have you carried under your other coat?"

"In reply to that rayther large order, I calc'late four twos in one line."

"Was your princely income the sole source of the beer supply?"

"In reply to that enquerry, I had, I guess, some few bills, I.O.U. tickets and kites bearing on the business, and sometimes I worked it on the cross: I had a good contract with a Chinaman for the purchase of the dead lager marines, and I once raised a trifle on the flat-irons and other things at the golden-balls."

"Do you play sing-tai-loo now?"

"I do not," said Brosie: "but I shall be gratified to enlighten you on that subject of spec'lation if you air going to prodooce the bones."

Lawyer Carrick gave him up, and Wilmington re-examined him, asking him if he ever went for sixes now, to which he finally replied—"No sir: I do not sir: not for a year and a haff sir: I have elevated my position and I guess and calc'late my takings, to give a spec'lative guess, at three thousand dollars per annum: I have an improving business in mineral teeth, and in the city, I opinionate, I make the science and art of dentistry fairly locomotive."

He left the witness-box in a most cavalierly style, told the crier that if that wer'n't true he could ride him on a rail, and nestled himself among the body of the audience, buttoning up the breast of his coat and drawing on his gloves as he retired from the canine show.

Fair in his wake under a full head of steam and rolling with the yaw and the swell of the seas, next sailed into the court the brusque, coarsegrained and good-humoured Christy-minstrel—the maritime Marco Polo —but he had to "take off that hat," which, however, happened to be a cap ornamented with the badge of the Mississippi Steam Navigation Company. He testified to the truth of Brosie's statements and the "damned infernal lies" of Marvel, when he was snapped at by the Scotch terrier without even the warning of a snarling circumlocution.

"Do you get drunk too, Mr. Roderick?"

"That be hanged for a yarn: I never was so drunk in my life but that I could stand on my head if I liked and walk the plank blindfolded" winding up with a great sigh, looking up at the chaps in the galleries and stuffing his thumbs into his waistcoat armpits.

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"How do you account for the petitioner running out of the house on Easter eve, and for her statements about abusive language?"

"She must have had the blues or the shakes, and noises in her head," said the realistic Dolly.

"What a funny man you are, Mr. Roderick!"

"Don't see anything funny in the thing," returned Dolly: "I think it's a lot of rot: the fact is she always lay too many points off the wind and you can lay to that."

Clack sniggled and told him that would do, while the guffawing Lord Dundreary knocked over a book, the flying Dutchman said "Right," and without swinging around steamed astern out of the shoals of the witness-box.

Last but not least among the doctor's relations appeared the sturdy well-built form of his father, looking as if with his big brawny arms he could strangle the champion in one act. Both of the barristers elicited the same story: "You may put any questions you please to me my christian friend; I shall answer them fairly within the compass, as the saying is, and well on the square. I am the right worshipful grand master of the Orange Lodge. I have never seen my son intoxicated in my life. I am well acquainted with his wife and children, especially with his children. I have heard that she was called, asthe saying is, the bird of Paradise: I should say she was, as the saying is, the serpent of the garden of Eden. I spent three days away from my home at Lily Cottage shortly after she was married to my son, as the saying is, and I assisted her father in conciliating her, as the saying is, in some ridiculous jealousy which she entertained towards a respectable female in Augusta. I have noticed her nonsensical ways, as the saying is, her frivolities, her vanities and her expensive frocks: I consider she is, as the saying is, empty-headed. Her father often told me that she was very obstinate and he said he laid all the blame, as the saying is, on her mother. When I have spoken to her about her foolish ways, she has answered me with a sort of a dance, as the saying is, like a spinning tee-totum before my very eyes, and she has treated all my family, as the saying is, in a haughty and scornful manner. My firm belief is that any woman is not right in her head, as the saying is, when she gets into such tantrums as that woman sitting there. It's awful to think, as the saying is, of what fools and idiots there are in the world. What she wants, in my opinion, is a good wholesome shower-bath of common sense, as the saying is, and it's my firm belief that what she has to say is all moonshine, in a manner of speaking."

The big champion bully muzzled him and asked him if he got drunk too; but the old man, then in the fading twilight of his long life, replied that he had never taken a glass too much at any time.

The ever-vigilant, predatory cormorant and money-monger, Jonathan Scatter, who was a senior wrangler in parsimony, and had stopped his wife's credit at the drapers' shops, had taken his congé from the timber-yard, as the last thing he could take, and was now running page 438a marine store on strictly cash principles. Holding the book in his hand all the time he stood in the box he corroborated the alibi about the respondent being seen with Lillie Delaine at the gate of Margery Moon. He also declared that the bird of Paradise had once treated him and his wife a "bit uppish like," that she wore faddy dresses, and that all she had to say was "all his eye and Betty Martin."15 He importuned the judge to guarantee his expenses for attendance, and quietly left the court apparently quite uninterested, and as unconcerned in the case as he was in the revolutions of the moons of Jupiter.

On the thirty-fifth day of the ever-lengthening trial the daily welcome adjournment was made by the court for lunch. In the usual barrel-organ way came the habitual peroration of the crier—"Ye'ze 'ave to get out." When the hour for lunch had been expended and the hands of the big polyagonal clock pointed to ten minutes past two, the senior counsel for the respondent requested the entrance into the witness-box of Eugene Percival Whitworth. He walked up the steps. The book was gone! The crier had to get another, but he couldn't make it out at all; 'twas strange— 'twas passing strange. The smooth face of Eugene, as placid and clear, his eyes as bright as on the happier day when he had stepped into the carriage from the verandah of the hospital residence to be taken to the altar of All Saints at Maconville and submit to the consecrated blending of his life with that of his beloved Marvel; not a tremor as an index of alcoholism to be noticed in his frame; not a vestige of tippling changes to be discovered anywhere upon him; not the sort of man to be suspected of ill-treating a woman or even a dumb animal; not a libertine and certainly not an adulterer, he appeared in the box with imperturbable composure and paused for the questions of his intermediary friend and his adversaries.

During the examination-in-chief he detailed every entry for ten years in his account books, and explained that they were posted up every night by himself when the work was finished for the day. He made exhibits of the books to the court and produced his bank-books, showing at Augusta receipts of four thousand dollars a year; at Galveston four thousand, and at Sabinnia the princely income from his medical practice of fifteen thousand five hundred dollars per annum. In New Orleans was defigured the arithmetical retrogression of his practice, and a further diminution in his receipts when he lived and practised at Myamyn, which short-comings he attributed to enforced neglect through litigation, and the wide-spread scandal generated by the attitude of his wife.

"I married her for love," he said, "and I have loved her to adoration, with a love which has borne the test of the touchstone of neglect and desertion. At the time her father was on his own showing a comparatively poor man engaged in precarious speculations, and my union with Marvel was purely a love-match. I espoused her in honour, and I wedded her in devotion. I cared for her and cherished her with my whole heart and soul as long as she remained in my home, and I was ever thoughtful of her while she was page 439away. I never knew she was married before until my counsel elicited the information. She has been a flighty, fickle and capricious woman, and time after time for months together she deserted me in Galveston. Sabinnia and New Orleans for the fresh fields and pastures new of an establishment which she expected to be given to her by her father. I provided her with all ordinary requirements for her comfort and happiness: in return she has spurned me and slandered me, and ruined my practice by her depreciatory moiling and bespattering of my good name. I have been all my life in the habit of drinking very little until lately: at Galveston, Sabinnia and Summer Hill, for years I was approximately a total abstainer and seldom took any more than a glass or two of wine, after some unusual exertion in my out-door labours, or on returning home late at night from my professional duties. At Mobile I took to heart the demeanour and the effrontery of my returned wife. The unkindest cut of all was the sudden revulsion of my children's affections, and on that account I may have tried to drown my sorrows. However, I took very little else but Tennent's ale and German lager beer, of which now and then, when I drank more than the usual amount, I noticed during the last few months of my residence at Myamyn that it had the effect of confusing my mind and bringing on a phase of stupor resembling alcoholic intoxication. I might have put morphia in it myself as I was a martyr for months to insomnia. Nevertheless, like the sower of old, I thought that an enemy had done this: I do not think that my wife is capable of such treachery. I have never uttered one whisper of disparagement against her, and I do not intend to do so unduly now or ever to traduce her moral character in my life; on the other hand I have sounded her praises abroad and have screened her delinquencies wherever I have heard her name. I have coloured her good qualities, I have extenuated her faults, and if there be any mésalliance16 it is owing to the conflict of two fiery tempers and her unreasonable jealousy, together with the fact that 1 was not, before I was married to her, accustomed to the whimsical ways of women. I have never in my life entered a house of questionable character for improper purposes, although I have been in such places in pursuance of my professional duties. I defy the world to prove my words untrue. I have never committed adultery with Lillie Delaine: I have never committed adultery with any woman in my life. Lillie Delaine was simply the hired working housekeeper of my home and one of the truest friends the children ever had —a trusted and faithful servant whose moral character is pure and undefiled, although it is now unjustly impeached and at stake owing to the machinations of mercenary pimps and informers, and the rabid yearning for vengeance on the part of my wife. Ever since she has been married to me she has shown a jealous, vitriolic and revengeful nature. As to the charge of cruelty, it lies altogether in the magic mirror of her distorted imagination—I have never ill-treated her in the slightest degree: I might have on one occasion, when she grossly and wantonly insulted my old friend Mrs. Payne, said some hard words, but I have never called her, as page 440far as I can remember, by any abominable epithets. Her statements to this effect are deliberate twistings of the truth. My meetings with the servant were pre-arranged by my mother, and were connected with an inquiry into the whereabouts of a missing skeleton which had been routed from the grave. I was compelled to meet the girl in a covert way at Mobile. I went openly to the house in Galveston to get her statement as a witness, because I had lost all my money and I was unable to pay a solicitor to do the work of preparing the defence: I have never been at the front gate of the Galveston house talking to Lillie Delaine under the circumstances insinuated, nor to any other woman in my life. I applied for the custody of my children, after appealing to their mother in vain to come home, when I could bear their abstention no longer, and I applied for them solely from motives of natural affection. They are the pride and the sunbeams of my existence—my love for them is unsurpassable: they are my all in all. The statement of my wife that I have neglected and ill-treated them is a base and concocted malversation of the truth. The adversarial evidence is a tissue of brazen-faced exaggerations and falsehoods from beginning to end. I have done all in my power for Marvel: in return, she has busied herself in the ruination of my home and my medical practice. My only motive for fighting this suit is my profound attachment to the children, and in the previous litigation over them she had virtually thrown down the glove herself."

Here the petitioner, who was sitting at his feet below the witness-box, hemmed in by lawyers on every side and with the mouchoir tucked into her waist so as to be handy when occasion required, enacted the ruse of the crocodile again. Her lachrymal duct was now in a chronic 17catarrhal18 condition. Dissembling grief, she burst into sobs, exclamations, snufflings and convulsive hysterical swoons, but she met with a good Samaritan from Sligo in Lord Dundreary, who revived her with his alcoholic regurgitating perfume again and helped the ambulance party to take her out of the court.

The celebrated divorce case of Whitworth v. Whitworth had at this stage extended itself over a period of six weeks, during which time Marvel had cajoled the jury by cleverly swooning more than a dozen times. The examination and cross-examination of the respondent had occupied seven days. All this time he stood in the witness-box day after day responding amidst the tempests of cross-examination and vivisection whirling and eddying around him to every incriminatory charge levelled at his devoted head by the three barristers for Marvel, to the immense satisfaction of the man who alone lifted up his voice on Eugene's behalf.

After his evidence was concluded, he sat again with his counsel at the barristers' table. Leaning back he looked up through the sky-light of the white dome-shaped ceiling, whereon the beams of weltering sunlight skipped and danced fantastically over the centre-flower, feeling relieved as the weight was slowly coming off his mind. Nevertheless, although the voice of conscience page 441whispered to him that the case had so far progressed well for himself, the echoing eerie voice of his father again and again intoned in his ears the terrible danger of the corruptibility of the jury. Night after night, they had been reading the garbled reports in the newspapers, and once or twice he had been told by his friends that after the court rose for the day some of them had followed Marvel into the Oxford hotel on the invitation of the contriving Simon Bubtitt, ostensibly for refreshments.

As he sat for the remaining hour after his cross-examination, he heard the distant bells chiming "Lead kindly light amidst the encircling gloom, lead thou me on! The night is dark and I am far from home: lead thou me on,"19 and the court-messenger brought him a letter. He opened it, and there came tears into his eyes; it was from Pearly—"Dear puppa, I have got a little squirrel: it is alive: when are you coming home? me and Vallie wants to know." In that crucial time no other light came through the gloom.

Every morning while the divorce court had been sitting the solicitors for Marvel had paid into the office of the state-sheriff at the law courts a sum of fifty dollars for jury fees after the first three days, during which three days they had contributed for the same purpose a sum of one hundred altogether. Now on the forty-second day the jury fees amounted to nearly two thousand dollars.

Her barristers lost no opportunity of drumming into the heads of the jury the fact that all the money which they were to receive was the product of Marvel's purse, and the fact that her husband had not a dollar to jingle on a tombstone. This, together with the universal sympathy which the stronger sex naturally feels for the weaker, even apart from considerations of auxiliary tearful aids to the awakening of their emotions, troubled sorely the mind of Eugene. Evening after evening as he sat down to dinner with his old friend his counsel, who kept constantly repeating his cock-sure prognostications that Marvel could not by any possible chance obtain a decree, he heard the haunting sound of his sensible father's voice, warning him of the dangers of the pervertibility of the jury. The judge too, he thought, had shown emotional feelings towards the woman, theatrically "like Niobe—all tears." He had snubbed his counsel and given the doctor the impression that he looked with disfavour upon those intermediaries who practised all the scales on the litigation keyboard, and favoured the uncontaminated and lofty academicians of the Temple of Justice such as Carrick and Clark and Lord Dundreary.

After a few days had been bridged over by the law's delay and the insolence of the office of the paradisal solicitors, and several reputable tradespeople spoke of the respectability of Lillie Delaine, whom they had known from a child, her mother in the box expressed her perfect complacency at leaving her daughter alone with the doctor and his children when his wife was away.

On the morning of the forty-fourth day, as soon as the court was reconstructed, the senior counsel for the respondent addressed himself to page 442Judge Grant and said that the girl Lillie Delaine, whose name had been associated so much with that of the respondent, had unreservedly professed herself willing to acquiesce in the suggestion which his Honour had made—that she had been taken to the surgeries of four of the principal gynæcologists unknown to the respondent in the city, and that by them she had undergone a special examination. He then directed the judge to the probable nature of the expert medical evidence, and by the order of the latter all ladies were requested to disappear from the court. It was no wonder that the paradisal bird wanted to stay, and there was a soupçon of excuse for all the others, rampant as they were with curiosity and desire. Their glowering and retroverted faces reluctantly vanished from the interior of the building, to leave the very spice, the pièce de résistance, the crème de la crème, the pot bouillant of the melodrama to the men; just at the very time when it was piping-hot too. Proh Pudor20! They had many of them, if not all of them, survived forty-four days, sitting day after day like Lazarus, living on the crumbs of the nice and naughty innuendoes from the paradisal barristers'table and eating the blue-mouldy bread of the paradisal troubles and the ignominy of the mouchards, to be tantalized like Tantalus of old by the snatching away of the chalice containing the nectarine juice of the banquet from their lips by that nasty old judge and his horrid old yellow-pated crier with his ignorant brogue of — "Ye'ze 'ave to get out." It was cruel—very, very, very cruel.

The only words since Eugene had been introduced to him on the opening day he heard, as all the ladies flounced out of the court, from the junior counsel who appeared on his behalf. They contained a suggestion that all the women should be put into omnibuses and taken to the coming gynæ-cological scientific experts for individual and special examination before they were again allowed to enter the holy of holies in the Temple.

The first medical expert witness called by the senior counsel for the respondent was a gentleman about forty-five years of age; tall in stature, wearing a dark moustache and spectacles. He explained to the court that he was one of the honorary surgeons of the gynæcological and children's hospital, and he was also demonstrator of anatomy at the medical schools of New Orleans. He had been in constant and active practice in the city for twenty years and was a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery of the University of Edinburgh.

He, Dr. Norman Dawn, had seen the girl on the night of her wandering out of Myamyn, and had also since treated her for acute mania with delusions. He had made a special examination two days before.

"What say you as to the virginity of the young woman?" asked his Honour.

"I am decidedly of the opinion that she is," replied the medical expert, "a virgo intacta. I cannot imagine any medical man entertaining the slightest doubt of her virtue, which in her case is particularly well marked.

page 443

If that girl is not a virgin then the science of anatomy is altogether at fault."

The witness stepped down from the box and made room for the next medical expert called by the senior counsel for the respondent. It was Dr. Lionel Garland. In reply to the senior counsel he stated that he had been for twenty-five years in practice in West Broadway, New York; he was an honorary surgeon of the city of New Orleans hospital, and professor of surgery and surgical anatomy in the medical college of New Orleans. An average sized man with a magnificent bearing and physique, his fair hair fell in clusters over his expansive brow, and he had a countenance like Apollo.

"What say you as to the virginity of the girl?" queried his Honour.

"Your Honour," he declared in clarion tones, "there is not a shadow of doubt in my mind that the girl is a pure and perfect virgin. There is not the remotest trace of any disturbance of her virginal condition: it would be impossible for me to make a mistake on the subject. In her case there are particularly strong grounds for my opinion, which is that that girl is as pure and unblemished as she was on the day she was born."

Next appeared the third medical witness, Dr. Gabriel Marchbank, a tall, highly-polished gentleman in a black frock-coat. His hair was grey, his face smooth-shaved. In manner and tone he was quiet and reserved. He had made the subject of gynæcology a special study all his life since he entered the university and St. Thomas' Hospital of London. He was a Master of Surgery of the University of Edinburgh, a Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. For twenty-four years he had been the honorary physician at the maternity hospital of the city, and for fifteen years he had been the professor of gynæcology and diseases of women and children in the University of Harvard.

"Have you made a special examination of the young woman?" inquired the judge, to which Dr. Gabriel Marchbank replied in the affirmative.

"What say you as to her virginity?" inquired the judge, to which he returned— "I have made a special digital examination and an endoscopic examination by the aid of mirrors and the electric light. I find that her anatomy in every minute detail is that of an immaculate virgin. The charge against her is to my mind a gross slander, and I consider it extremely improbable that I should make a mistake."

Another highly distinguished medical practitioner, Dr. Godfrey Meredith, was then called. He unhesitatingly corroborated every scientific opinion which the others had given, and the crier again silenced the hubbub among the audience.

The senior counsel for Eugene, addressing Judge Grant, then said that that was his case: that he observed it was then only fifteen minutes to five. If his Honour preferred he would commence his address to the jury at once, although he was not quite ready and had not expected to begin before the following day. He asked his junior for the papers, as if preparing for his page 444address to the jury. Grant J. looked up at the clock and down with a wink at the crier, who called out as he had done at every quotidian adjournment for lunch and at the termination of every day's proceedings since the great divorce case began—

"This honourable coort stands adjourned till the morning of the twenty-first of May at the hour of haff-pash nine by the clock: God save the Republic: ye'ze 'ave to get out!"

1 The Last Rose of Summer. Thomas Moore.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

2 A person who works with or trades in ornamental feathers or plumes. OED Online.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

3 When He Who Adores Thee. Thomas Moore.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

4 Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, IV.i., also Biblical.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

5 Possibly a reference to Kincumber, New South Wales.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

6 Correctly, 'the spicy breezes blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle'. From Greenland's Icy Mountains, Reginald Heber.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

7 Filibuster - a member of any of those bands of adventurers who between 1850 and 1860 organized expeditions from the United States, in violation of international law, for the purpose of revolutionizing certain states in Central America and the Spanish West Indies; or more generally, one who engages in unauthorized and irregular warfare against foreign states. OED Online. See 'filibuster', n.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

8 In hiding; secretly.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

9 Locksley Hall. Alfred Lord Tennyson.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

10 The Roman Senate. Brewer 1898 (2010)

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

11 A chaste huntress of Arcadia whose suitor was required to beat her in a race. Dictionary of Classical Mythology 1995.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

12 A triangular piece of stuff inserted in a dress, glove, etc. OED Online, sense 2.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

13 Huntress goddess of Greek mythology; a maiden and patron of chastity. Dictionary of Classical Mythology 1995.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

14 Also 'Koh-i-noor'; an Indian diamond, famous for its size and history, which became one of the British Crown jewels on the annexation of the Punjaub in 1849. OED Online.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

15 Nonsense. Partridge 1972.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

16 Mis-match; specifically, marriage between persons of different rank. Jones 1963:298.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

17 Involving a profuse discharge from nose and eyes.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

18 Involving a profuse discharge from nose and eyes. OED Online. See 'catarrh'.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

19 The Pillar of the Cloud. John Henry Newman.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

20 For shame! Jones 1963:96.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]