Читать книгу Lydia Bailey - Kenneth Roberts - Страница 7

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Nothing was too much for Harriet Faulkner to do for me in the days before the trial of Thomas Bailey. I had heard Aunt Emmy say that any woman of moderate intelligence, no matter how unprepossessing she may seem, can make a conquest of any man she wants, old or young, rich or poor, married or single, provided she wants him hard enough. If this is true, then I think that the principal weapons of such a woman are an eager responsiveness, a ready smile, an unfailing willingness to be of help, and openly expressed sympathy. Certainly Harriet Faulkner had all those qualities to a degree that I had never before experienced, and I was grateful for them—stirred by them, too.

After my uncle’s return to Portland from New Brunswick, I had become (as I thought) engaged to a Portland young lady. Engagements are apt to be long in Portland, for some reason unknown to me; and frequently they end by the engaged ladies’ unexpectedly marrying sea captains or naval officers just back from long voyages. This is what had happened to me: the lady of my choice, who had been subject to occasional fits of the sulks and was admittedly averse to the dullness of farm life, had suddenly married one of the Shailer boys, just home from his first voyage to Spain. I wasn’t heartbroken, but I was certainly discouraged by the traits the lady had shown.

Thus Harriet Faulkner’s constant cheeriness, her watchfulness over my own comfort as well as over her cousin’s needs, made Boston almost endurable. My only worry now was the Bailey case. For Aunt Emmy had written to say that Eddie and Owen had changed their attitude since my departure, and had been heard to speak disparagingly of farmers who doubted the efficacy of lime; that my uncle had taken to hobbling to the barn three times a day, and had laid plans for clearing the alders from the long swamp and turning it into a five-acre fish pond—a piece of news that seemed to interest Harriet as much as it pleased me. No matter how early I might rise of a morning to work on Bailey’s case, she was always up, always warmly cheerful, always ready with scrambled eggs as soft as curds, tinker mackerel broiled two minutes over glowing coals, doughnuts that melted in the mouth, and coffee with thick cream in cups that held a pint.

For another thing, she came to me for advice, which is something that awakens any man to a woman’s helplessness and to her finer qualities. It was her habit to wait until I’d finished work at night, and then to bring in a pot of steaming coffee and wedges of mince pie, juicy and redolent of rum. Over these welcome midnight suppers she told me with affecting frankness of her late husband, who had been an unperceptive man if ever there was one; of her finances, which might have been worse; and of her expectations when her cousin died—as of course he was sure to do, and soon.

“I’ll be frank with you, Mr. Hamlin,” she said. “My husband and I were unsuited to each other. He was a cold man, interested only in making money. He’d go on long voyages and leave me alone for months at a time, and when he returned he’d be as silent and distant as a stone post.”

I thought he must have been a fool, and said so.

“No, he wasn’t a fool.” She hesitated for a moment. “He was an extremely smart man, Mr. Hamlin. I know he was actually far wealthier than seemed to be the case after his unfortunate death. He was lost at sea, you know.”

“Yes, your cousin told me.”

She sighed. “When his estate was settled, there wasn’t the fifth part of what I’d expected. Not the fifth part! In my opinion he had been carrying on with another woman in one of the ports he visited.”

When I tried to express my sympathy, she stopped me. “I’m not complaining, Mr. Hamlin. It’s not my nature to complain. I only mention such personal matters because I want your advice. Among my cousin’s belongings are twenty shares in the Barque Kingfisher. The French seized her without reason——”

“I know all about that,” I said. “My uncle and I were consulted on several French Spoliation Claims three years ago.”

“I knew it!” she cried. “I said to myself last night, ‘I know Mr. Hamlin can help me,’ and how right I was—and how fortunate! Mr. Hamlin, those shares had a value, my cousin believes, of sixteen thousand dollars. Is there any possibility of recovering that amount or any part of it in case I should inherit the shares?”

“Yes,” I said, “there’d be a possibility. Not a strong possibility; but if a good lawyer worked hard on the case and saw the proper people in Washington, I think he’d get somewhere eventually.”

Harriet leaned forward and spoke pleadingly. “Mr. Hamlin, I told you my unfortunate husband’s estate was only one-fifth of what I’d expected and hoped it would be. Even so, I’m comparatively fortunate. If I could add the value of the Kingfisher shares to my present capital, my path would be greatly smoothed. If my poor cousin should die, would you try to recover it for me? Would you?”

When I hesitated—not because I wasn’t willing to accept her suggestion, but because lawyers are never supposed to show eagerness—she lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’d be forever grateful, Mr. Hamlin. Of course, I’d expect you to have the tenth part of the value of the shares if you were fortunate enough to collect anything. I’d expect to bear all expenses, too—and I’m sure you’d never have cause to regret your efforts to help me.”

Her eyes widened as they gazed into mine, and I found it impossible to mistake her meaning or to look with disfavor upon it.

“You wouldn’t want me to take it on a contingent-fee basis, would you?” I asked, and I wasn’t speaking seriously. “Some people think that’s not ethical.”

I was surprised at the glance she gave me. If I hadn’t known her so well, I’d have sworn it was contemptuous. As it was, I felt it must be merely one of disappointment.

“I don’t mean to say I won’t take the case,” I hastened to say; and I added, though I hardly knew why, “If I should take it, would you let me have the little portrait of Lydia Bailey as my fee?”

She looked at me oddly. “Why do you want it?”

“Why?” I repeated. “Why, because I—because it looks like you. Because it’ll remind me of you.”

Harriet shrugged. “I don’t think it looks like me—not really. It’s such a vapid face, always half-smiling at us behind our backs.”

“That may be,” I said, “but there’s something about it that brings you to mind. If you’ll let me have it, I’ll take the Kingfisher case.”

“Very well,” Harriet said. “You may have it—and more, too—after the trial.”

I have no intention of inflicting on anyone a full account of that humiliating trial. I have often wished that I myself could forget every detail of the experience—the dusty damp smell of the courtroom, which undoubtedly arose in part from the jurors’ and spectators’ habit of spitting on the dirty floor; the stony stares with which the jurors watched poor Bailey, who lacked the strength to sit up straight and wasn’t even allowed to have Harriet beside him; the bitter rage of Nelson, the prosecuting attorney; the almost murderous rapidity with which Chase slammed in our faces any door to justice for our client.

Only one thing made the proceedings endurable, and that was Harriet’s presence. She was always in an aisle seat, as close to Bailey as she could get; and her concern over her cousin was touching; her eager attention to me irresistible. She had all that was needed, I thought, to make a man supremely happy, and I may have betrayed how I felt.

Chase was a giant of a man with so huge a backside that he seemed wedged permanently in his chair. He was bland-appearing, with pursed lips that looked as though they were mumbling cardamom seeds. Since he was heavy-eyed, with thin, bristly hair and a thin, bristly suggestion of a beard, he reminded me a little of Henry VIII. When he leaned forward to deliver an opinion—always an opinion that did rank injustice to Bailey or to me or to my two colleagues, Henry Grafton and Edwin Nicholas—his lips drew away from his yellow teeth, and his eyes popped wide open, so that I was reminded of Henry VIII gnawing a bone and dripping gravy on his doublet.

Just a little of the trial should be enough to show what confronted us. When the jurors were called, we proposed to challenge any man who had read the article in the Independent Argus, and formed or expressed an opinion on it.

But Grafton had no sooner put the question to the first juror than Chase was at Grafton with bared teeth. “That question,” Chase said, “is improper and you shall not ask it! The whole state has read the case and very probably formed an opinion. If I indulge you in putting the question, men would be misled by your ingenuity, and the traverser might never be tried.”

We did our best to find a way to exclude at least a few violent Federalists from that jury; but Chase gnawed and snapped at us until we were helpless with fury before this violent politician who protected himself from attack by shouting that our every challenge was inspired only by politics. In the end we had no choice but to accept a jury who had long ago tried and convicted Thomas Bailey in their minds.

On the very first day, Grafton retired from the case. Nicholas lasted two days longer—until Chase refused to admit our best piece of evidence: a letter written by John Adams at the beginning of the Revolution, inveighing against any encroachment on the freedom of the press. “It is improper,” Chase said in overruling our motion to read this paper, “to submit to a jury speculative productions, written at a period of disorder and commotion, however respectable and illustrious the author from whom they emanated.”

That finished Nicholas. He put away his papers and sat in stony silence, unwilling to defer longer to such a judge.

Chase’s greatest spleen was reserved for me, perhaps because of my youth; perhaps because Grafton and Nicholas had chosen to conduct the case in their own way and to ignore most of my suggestions—an attitude not calculated to add to my stature in the eyes of anybody, particularly a judge of Chase’s caliber; perhaps because he knew my uncle had been Chief Justice of New Brunswick; most of all, perhaps, because I didn’t look at him when I rose to sum up.

The truth was, I didn’t dare look at him. I hated him and his injustice so profoundly that I couldn’t have looked him in the eyes without showing my feelings and thus spurring him on to greater injustices. It seemed to me, during that summing-up, that I would never live through it without exploding with rage.

“Your honor and gentlemen,” I said, when I rose to face the jury, “our defense of Thomas Bailey has been more than the defense of an individual. It has been a defense of the people of the United States of America against encroachments on their liberty.”

Judge Chase threw himself back in his chair and cast his eyes upward, as if asking Heaven to witness his martyrdom.

“The men responsible for the liberation of this country from England’s rule,” I went on, “were never quite able to live up to their own high standards. They argued that men must have freedom to think as they wish, and to speak as they think. Without that freedom, said this country’s leaders, political truth could be neither discovered nor disseminated. They held that a country can’t be happy unless it has liberty, and can’t have liberty unless it has courage. They held public discussion to be a political duty, and an inert people to be the greatest menace to a country’s freedom.

“That was what they preached, but not at all what they practised. The leaders of the Revolution practised the suppression of all opinion that ran contrary to their own. They encouraged the imprisonment, the tarring and feathering, the banishing, yes, even the killing of men who dared to say they saw no adequate reason for fighting England—although at this very moment, only twenty-five years later, there are men of wealth, men of high position, throughout New England who are ready to persecute, to imprison, to banish, or in any other convenient manner to silence those who dare to say that this country has no adequate reason for fighting a war in behalf of England. Thus, in the space of a quarter-century, has public discussion been encouraged and liberty protected!”

Judge Chase picked up his gavel and tapped it on his desk. “This court cannot permit a political harangue in the guise of a summing-up. May I remind you, young gentleman, that this court is not the hustings, and that you are not soliciting the votes of the jury for the position of Public Executioner on the Jacobin ticket?”

“Your honor,” I said, and I kept my eyes on his hairy fat hands so I wouldn’t have to see his scowling face, “I’m interested in no man’s vote, except to see that he has a right to cast it without interference; and my only interest in any political party is my interest in seeing that it is willing to protect the people’s liberties.”

“Your intention, sir, is clear,” Judge Chase said. “You are maligning the Chief Executive of the United States and the government itself. Your government, sir, must not be subjected to the attacks of small, ignorant, and uninformed men. Your duty, sir, is to have faith in your government. Yet you deliberately imply that it is acting without proper reason, without a knowledge of the country’s present necessities and future needs. I warn you: this is sedition! I shall permit no such partisan attack in this court, no such treasonable utterances!”

I opened my mouth to protest against this petitio petendi, this arguing in a circle, for the very case itself challenged the assumption, that free criticism constitutes sedition; but I closed my mouth when I saw the faces of the jurymen. Nearly all those men were Federalists, as I had good reason to know because of our vain efforts to get a few non-Federalists on it; and yet every one of them was staring at the floor, embarrassed by this travesty of a judge, or gazing contemplatively at his boots, or eyeing the ceiling. I realized that further protest would be futile, so I merely bowed to Judge Chase. “With your honor’s leave,” I said.

The judge gave me a contemptuous wave of his hand. “You may proceed, Mr. Hamlin. But remember this: I’ve been patient so far, even when you have mocked slyly at the properly constituted authorities who are conducting the affairs of this country with wisdom and justice. Such underhanded attacks, sir, are not to be countenanced by honorable men. They are stabs in the back, sir, from one who has, by implication, stabbed his own country in the back on another occasion. I refer to the fact that your family were Tories when every decent man in America was a Patriot.”

The courtroom was so still that a single bluebottle fly, frenziedly thumping and buzzing against a window pane, sounded as noisy as a child’s drum. Every face—barring Harriet Faulkner’s—looked either blank or actually hostile. Harriet’s hands were clasped together, her eyes bright with anger; but, so far as I could tell, she was the only person in the room besides myself who was desperate with rage at the judge. By now I realized that I’d lost my case, and I made up my mind that I might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb.

I turned to the jury. “Gentlemen, it is commonly said that your fathers fought for liberty. Not only did they fight for it—they gained it; and in gaining it they won the perpetual right, according to the Declaration of Independence, to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That liberty, gentlemen, is now in dire peril, and unless you arouse yourselves you will surely lose it.

“Thomas Bailey has already lost it. He has been denied the liberty of saying what he wishes to say in his newspaper. He is fighting here in this court to regain that liberty. I pray you, gentlemen, to remember that liberty, once lost, is almost impossible to regain. Remember that no matter how much you may want liberty, you can’t win it or keep it without fighting for it. If you’re afraid to fight for it; if you lack the public spirit to exert yourselves in behalf of it; if you’re too careless or too indolent to realize when you’re losing it; if, gentlemen, you let yourselves be cheated of your liberty by clever tricks or laws; if for a moment you relax your hold on liberty because of discouragement, because of panic, because of a persuasive leader, even when that leader is the President of the United States——”

Judge Chase half-rose from his chair to bang his desk with his gavel and cry, “That will do, young gentleman!”

“If for a moment you relax,” I repeated—and I had to shout to make myself clearly heard above the thumping of Judge Chase’s gavel—“if for a moment you can be coaxed, forced, bribed, or cheated into trusting your liberties to that one leader, then you are unfit for liberty!”

Judge Chase was standing, and so were all the lawyers within the bar and all the spectators outside it. “I fine you four hundred dollars for contempt of court,” the judge thundered.

The courtroom was a babel of confused shouting, of cries of encouragement, of angry denunciations, and I raised my voice.

“As an American, I’ve been guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States the freedom to express my mind, just as Thomas Bailey, by that same Constitution, is guaranteed freedom to express his. For God’s sake, gentlemen, look around you! Courts everywhere are silencing and jailing Jeffersonians, suppressing free speech, striking down the liberty of the press——”

Judge Chase’s voice cracked with rage. “Bailiffs! Arrest this man!”

Two uniformed officers with staves were pushing through the excited people, and as I took a firm hold on the rail of the jury box I noticed tears on Harriet Faulkner’s cheeks.

“The fundamental law of America is outraged by this judge and by the laws he’s enforcing,” I shouted. “Those laws were passed as an experiment on the American mind—an experiment to find out whether you’ll suffer in silence an avowed violation of the Constitution! If you don’t reject——”

The bailiffs had me by the shoulders, pulling at me, but I held fast to the rail. “If you don’t rise against it,” I went on, “if you don’t repudiate it and its authors, you’ll see immediately another Act of Congress declaring that the President shall continue in office for life!”

I felt my coat rip in the bailiffs’ hands. Then the rail gave way; my hands slipped from it and I was dragged ignominiously through the crowd and out of court.