"Puppy," he was saying, "your name is Fantine. Do you understand,
Fantine?"
For a moment the puppy gazed solemnly into his face, tilted its head
slightly first on one side and then on the other, cocking it more and
more in a puzzled effort at comprehension. Then it panted a puppy
smile--licked Godfrey's hand and wagged its little feather of a tail.
"Ah, you understand, do you?" Warren went on. "Well, you and I will
understand one another thoroughly after a while. I can teach you a
little--not much, but still something worth knowing. For instance--not
to bite my watch chain with those tiny milk teeth of yours! And you'll
teach me--O, lots of things I want to know.--You'll show me the men I
ought to trust and the ones to keep an eye on. Won't you, Fantine?"
The puppy put a fat paw on Warren's breast and wagged its whole body
with its tail.
"And, Fantine, you'll never forget me as some people do, or think me
ugly because I've got red hair? You have red hair yourself, you
minx!--See those tiny flecks through your black coat? Tan, you say?
Well, you'll have beauty enough for both of us some day. I'll teach you
how to hunt too--Is that a yawn? I make you tired, do I, Mademoiselle?
Well, I dare say you do know more about hunting than I ever shall. I
apologise. But we'll be great friends anyway--inseparables--worse than
your master and this great oaf who's stolen in upon our confidential
chat,--eh, Fantine?"
The puppy gave a sleepy sigh, nestling under Godfrey's coat and, as he
stooped to peer at her, lifted a baby head and licked his face.
From that hour I was to a certain extent supplanted. But Fantine
approved of me which was all I could hope. Of extraordinary intelligence
she seemed to interpret every mood of her master and sometimes almost to
anticipate his orders. The man and the dog were indeed inseparables. If
he left a room where she was sleeping it was as though the very air she
breathed had been exhausted, and she would wake with a start and follow
him instantly. The first time Warren sent her to his country place, some
fifty miles from town, he forwarded her in a crate by express, and, the
morning after she arrived he returned to town, leaving her with the
gardener. Before nightfall she was at his office door whining for
admittance. How she had found her way back no one ever knew.
It was more than instinct. The animal seemed to feel the man as the
Martian felt the north. No mere instinct could make a dog growl in
sympathetic response to a man's moods, and yet Fantine, as I have said,
would do this very thing. Yes, and sometimes the hair on her back would
rise in silent warning against some stranger--a warning Warren never
disregarded. This devotion was no one-sided affair, for Godfrey was a
man--
--There! I am lapsing into the past tense again. God grant there is no
evil omen in my pen!--
--It all happened so suddenly. I have not yet lived down the shock of
it, and am nervous as any woman. Just now there was a noise in the rear
of the room and I leaped to my feet barely repressing a cry. I thought
the Jury were entering. But they are still talking.--About what I dare
not think.
It is foolish, I suppose, to let my mind dwell on this "case," but I
cannot get away from it and it calms me to "talk" with you in this way
and to feel your quiet sympathy. I could not sit idle in this gloomy
room--fearful to me now, and full of shadows. I should go mad.--I am a
cheerful counsellor--am I not?
It was in the early evening of May tenth, a year ago, that Warren passed
through Washington Square with Fantine at his heels. As they crossed the
plaza on the north, a two-horse hack suddenly wheeled through the Arch
on the wrong side of the road, narrowly missing the man and dog. Enraged
at having to check his team, the driver, a burly Irishman named Dineen,
snatched up his whip and, cursing fiercely, struck the dog with all his
might. The lash wound itself about her head and flicked out one of
Fantine's eyes. With a howl she ran a few rods down the Square and then
crouched in the roadway, rubbing her bloody eye between her paws.
In an instant Warren was at the horses' heads and the hack stopped.
"Let go them horses--Let them go, I tell you! Ye won't, ye scum?--Then
take that and that!"
The lash fell twice on the horses' backs and Warren was thrown to the
ground, but still kept his grip upon the reins. Then the whip cut him in
the face, his hold loosened, and the team plunged forward, the driver
guiding straight for the spot where Fantine lay. An instant more and
the iron hoofs had trampled her down and the wheels of the carriage had
crushed out her life.
Dineen shook the reins over the flying horses and shouted as he turned
on his seat,
"Now pick up yur dirty cur--you loafin' scut you!"
But his victim leaping and bounding alongside the thundering carriage
made no answer, and the laugh the fellow started was never finished, for
two strong hands gripped his throat as Warren swung up beside him.
Literally torn from his seat by the shock, the reins flew from the
driver's hands and the frightened team became a runaway. For a moment
the two men, locked in deadly grapple, were struggling on the box. In
another instant they were over the dashboard swaying to right and left
above the wheels, until at last they crashed back upon the roof of the
carriage rolling horribly to the fearful lurching of the wheels. One
moment Warren was on top--another moment he was under. Then suddenly the
wheels of the hack struck a curb and the dark mass was hurled from the
roof to the ground with a sickening thud. There was a short struggle in
the street and then Warren raised the driver's head and dashed it
fiercely against the stones.
Half an hour later he staggered into my rooms--the blood trickling down
his face and Fantine's crushed and bleeding body in his arms.
He would hear of no other counsel. In vain I begged him to retain some
criminal practitioner.
"Why should I?" he replied. "You know the facts and believe in me.
That is all I want. Only remember this. I would rather die than be
imprisoned, and no trick or technicality shall ever clear me."
What weary months of waiting we have gone through! The Grand Jury
indicted for murder, the case has been much talked about and the
District Attorney has been very--zealous.
How my spirits rose when I found so many animal lovers among the men
summoned as jurors, and how the District Attorney and I fought for and
against them the whole of one long day! But he couldn't get rid of them
all, lass. Every man who admitted that he had no feeling for animals
possessed some other trait which made even the District Attorney fear
him.
There were dozens of witnesses but little controversy of fact. Without
difficulty I proved that Dineen was a drunken sot of evil reputation,
who had been drinking heavily on the day of his death, and then I placed
Warren on the stand.
How splendid he looked as he faced the jury and told his story to their
eyes.
The District Attorney was powerless before such a witness and he knew
it. His only chance lay in the fearless candour of the man and, God
forgive him, he took it. He asked only one question.
"Warren, do you feel any regret for the death of Dineen?"