thee here to die and sleep upon the mountain with our fathers—though it
were but a little while. Yet if thou wilt—why—yes, go—I send thee.”
“Ah, ah,” he cried, “that is like the Viking ladies of the olden time!
This country where I go and all its boundlessness are mine and thine and
all who come alike. And all its wealth and houses. I will go in haste,
and when I have found a pretty nest for thee and all of us, I will come
with yet more haste, and when the ice comes down take thee to it. And
there I shall be king as here. For there every man is as a king. Have
not the pleasant travellers told me so?”
“Oh, Christof, I cannot help my fear! Yet thou shalt go!”
“Look at these mighty hands,” he cried passionately, “look at me! Will
there be any braver there? Will any outstrip me in the race for gold and
all those things they seem to need out there? Am I not great as they who
went away to-day? Yet they have conquered that vast world. But a little
time—think! but a little waiting—and no more cold or hunger—fear or
death. The little harvest and the fish now caught will give ye food for
all the while I stay. And when I come again, yea we shall wait God’s
word—But when the ice comes down we shall leave it rotting in its bins
and go away to happiness. Come! come to our marriage!”
And so they went away with arms entwined, and, singing, came to blind
Agra, who married them.
III
TO THE LAND OF THE BRAVE
Then came the day he was to go. They gathered up that money, yet lying
on the shore, and put it in his scrip, and all was ready—he in his
wolfskin—she in her stole; yet she trembled as with palsy in his arms.
“What? Hast thou changed?” he laughed.
“Ah, ah,” she sighed, “thou art my husband now! I am a wife!”
Tears would not flow she was so terrified. No sob rose in her throat.
She only trembled in his arms.
“Ah, this is not the lady of my dreams,” he said. “Come! come! Out with
thy shears. Give me a tress for talisman, as the ladies of our Vikings
did, and send me forth. Let me not stay. Call me a coward that I go.
Come! come!”
“I cannot bid thee go,” she breathed; “my heart will not. Yea, we are
poor and hungry here, sometimes, but stay with us thy kindred, who love
thee and will stand with thee when dark days come. There thou wilt be
alone! A stranger in a land of strangers. Life is a hard thing
here—yea—but stay and share it with us—make it not harder. Thou art
brave—the bravest on the earth to me. That is why God hath left thee to
care for us—of all those who are dead. Seest thou not His hand in this?”
“Yea.”
“Then must thou obey.”
“I see it not as thou. I see and hear God’s will in this longing for
another land—in the coming of the travellers to tell me of it.”
Her face grew solemn.
“I did not think of that. How shallow is my thought! And selfish. I fear
all selfish. Because I wish for thee to stay, my heart sees in each wish
to go a sin against the God. And yet—and yet—it does not seem His will.
Oh, husband, if it is, canst thou not make it plain to me who have
little thoughts—thou with thy eagle thought?”
“Nay—nay,” and he caressed her fondly. “I have made thee sad. What? A
sad bride? Even under the glacier? It shall not be!”
But yet, the while she nestled in his arms, she begged:
“Yet, love, speak to my soul and make all plain to me.”
“We will obey the God, my splendid one. I go now but to find a nest for
thee and these when God Himself doth make this land impossible.”
“Beloved, if God doth make this land impossible, then is it His purpose
that we shall cease with the land as we began. And that is just, as all
God’s dealings are. Oh, it is ominous that thou a man, and I a woman,
whom God made, should think to thwart His purposes in us or in this
land! Thou canst not change the purposes of God, beloved.”
“Does not God mean that we shall use the powers He gives us?”
“Yea—where He points the way.”
“And who points the way to me? Who puts these things into my brain?”
This reasoning was better to her. And it all was new—so great a thought
as that.
“I have not reasoned deep as that,” she said in awe. “Surely, thy
thought is greater and more reverent—than mine—as, indeed, a husband’s
should be greater than a wife’s,” she said in pretty pride of him. “I
try, just now, to think the travellers did put the purpose in thee. Yet,
somewhere, no matter how it came to thee, it had beginning in the mind
of God. I know not,” she whispered. “If thou thinkest it the will of
God—thou shalt go. To Him all oaths and promises against His will are
vanity and sin.”
“Beloved, if I stay, it will be alone to tread the mill and build me and
thee a house yonder with the dead. God does not desire that. That is our
destiny—our only destiny. To be hungry—poor—naked—to starve—to waste—to
be drowned in still waters—to sleep in decay yonder. If I go, the very
world is mine and all it has. That is God’s will.”
“I am thy joy, Christof,” pleaded his young wife. “So thou hast often
said. And I will give thee all my little life to make thee happy here. I
think I can. Oh, we will be hungry—yea—and poor—but we will be together.
There is no other life for me. Is there for thee? Together, Christof!”
“I cannot go without thy well-wishing,” he smiled and caressed her; “but
my wife will give me that and send me forth. She will not make me wear a
young life out here that might be great and honored there. She has it in
her splendid head that it will be for long and far. It is a week to the
great land. A week to find a nest. A week to come again. Canst thou not
wait and ward three weeks for paradise? Could I fail, if that is in thy
head, when it is for the helpless ones upon our hands and hearts and
for—thee? Now, for thy talisman of success. I will preserve it from all
harm and bring it back to thee. I swear it on this pretty hand. Thus did
our ancestors go forth. Art thou less brave than they? Am I?”
There was a moment in which nothing was heard but the sullen beating of
the waves. She was so sad that almost he was persuaded to renounce
ambition for her love. But his eye caught the sun upon a distant sail.
“There!” cried he. “It shall be as swift as that!”
“Why, then, my husband, go. I think it _is_ the good God prompts thee.
Else thou couldst not go from us who need thee so. And, if ’tis
He—why—He knows thy heart—and He will go with thee and keep thee, and
bring thee back to us. Thou art our all. For that I pray. For that each
night we all shall pray. So—Christof—go with God. And I, thy Christine—I
will stay and keep thine oath for thee—here in our little land—I will
not forsake one of the little ones—not one of the old or blind or maimed
or simple ones. And I shall have joy in this—remember that! Great joy
shall I have in keeping thy oath for thee—to the priest—thy
ancestors—thy God—until thou comest back to keep it once again thyself.
Farewell, O sweetest lover ever woman had, farewell until thou comest
back to me again!”
She took the brazen shears which hung at her belt and, cutting an unruly
lock, she put it in his hands while her white lips moved in benediction.
And so he went, looking last upon her at that turning of the road, and
she, there, her last on him.
IV
THE HOME OF THE FREE
There is a city which vaunts itself because in its laws oppression and
injustice are not; where the popular shibboleth is freedom; whence
liberty throughout all the land hath of old been proclaimed; where the
proudest boast writ upon its monuments is of the sublime quality of its
justice.
A great bell booms the hour of ten, and at the last reverberation the
judge of the Quarter Sessions of the Peace advances from his retiring
room and takes his place upon the bench. The crier raps the chamber to
silence and delivers the customary invitation of the Commonwealth to the
Falstaffian company being marshalled into the receiving docks.
“Oyez! oyez! oyez! All manner of persons who stand bound to appear
before this honorable court, holden here this day, come forward, and ye
shall be heard. And may God save the Commonwealth and this honorable
court.”
Instantly a felon starts forward to the bar. An officer restrains him.
The benchers laugh. He has accepted the invitation of the Commonwealth
too literally. He cannot come forward and be heard.
The grand jury must first second the invitation of the State.
This body now files into its place.
“Gentlemen of the grand jury, have you any bills of indictment to
present to the court?” the crier asks, and is rewarded with a
considerable parcel.
The clerk scrutinizes these, the court does likewise, and then they come
into the hands of the prosecuting officer, who briskly takes one from
the top and calls a name:
“Christof Nielsen!”
Meanwhile, in seeming confusion, the grand jury is discharged and the
petit jury called, and sworn.
“You, and each of you, do swear that you will well and truly try, and a
true deliverance make, between the Commonwealth and the prisoner at the
bar, whom you will have in charge, and a true verdict render, according
to the evidence, so help you God.”
Again the crier calls:
“Put Christof Nielsen in the dock!”
At the name a haggard face emerges from the herd in the dock. The head
is hooped about with blood-stained bandages—the face is bruised and
swollen—one arm hangs limp and helpless at his side—with the other he
steadies himself at the spiked railing as he obeys the court officer’s
gesture to stand.
He no longer wears the wolfskin tunic—but a worn “sack-coat” too small
for him. His neck and the circlet of wolf’s teeth are concealed by the
collar of a flannel shirt. Trousers are on his legs instead of the skins
and cross-garterings, and on his feet, where once were the great shoes
of furred wolfskin, are hard shoes “made in America,” which torture his
feet. His hair has lost its sunlustre and is cut short. In his hand he
carries a small cloth cap.
“Christof Nielsen,” reads the clerk, “you are charged in this bill of
indictment with the larceny of one silver watch, of the value of four
dollars, the property of John Hall. How say you, guilty or not guilty?”
The prisoner lifts his dull, sick eyes, for the first time, when the
voice of the clerk ceases, and stares inquiringly at the officer at his
side.
“Not guilty,” answers the officer for him.
“Put him in the small dock,” commands the prosecuting officer, and the
prisoner is marched, staggering, from the one dock to the other, the
gate clangs to behind him, and he is upon his trial by his “peers”—the
twelve “good men and true” yonder.
There are no challenges. The prosecutor of the pleas challenges only for
the Commonwealth, and the prisoner is not assisted by counsel. Instead,
the Commonwealth’s officer opens his case to the jury.
“Gentlemen of the jury, the charge is pocket picking. In the mêlée
consequent upon the arrest the prisoner assaulted an officer. For that,
also, he is indicted upon a separate bill. I shall try both together. It
will be for you to say upon such evidence as I shall produce whether or
not he is guilty and, if so, of which or both offences. Officer Gorman,
take the stand.”
Gorman is emulous to oblige the attorney for the State.
“You made this arrest. Tell the jury all about it.”
There is much jockeying before Gorman is brought to his pace. He would
wander into the enchanting by-paths of his adventure, to show his
heroism. But the prosecuting officer will not permit this, and so the
gist of his testimony is in this answer:
“I arrested that man there and run him in.”
“You searched him, of course, and what did you find?”
“These here.”
He holds up a letter with a curl dangling from its broken end.
The benchers laugh.
“Nothing else? No watch?”
“No. I expect he throwed that into a sewer. They mostly do when we git
after ’em.”
“Did he escape from you?”
“He tried to. I had to both club and shoot to git him. He’s strong.”
“You were obliged to call for assistance?”
“Yes.”
“Has he ever been arrested before?”
“Yes. Served a term of seven months five years ago.”
“Do you identify the man?”
“Yes.”
“Let an officer inform the prisoner of his rights,” says the district
attorney, in the meantime calling Officer Jaspar to the stand.
The “rights” of the prisoner are to cross-examine the witness. The
officer who gives him this information must lift the prisoner’s wounded
head from his bosom to do it. And, when he releases it again, it returns
there.
Officer Jaspar is the one who assisted Gorman to make the arrest, and,
when he can be brought into his narrative, knows nothing which Gorman
does not. He, however, had also used his club and his pistol to subdue
the prisoner.
“It seems to me,” cries the Commonwealth’s officer, “that it took an
extraordinary quantity of shooting and clubbing to take one man.”
“He’s a big un!” grins the witness.
“You seem to have used your pistols first?”
“Yes,” admits the officer.
“You are the prosecutor,” says the district attorney to Mr. Hall, when
he is brought to the stand. “We have not, thus far, proved that a watch
was taken out of your possession by this man, and without that I shall
not ask for a conviction. Are you sure that it was?”
“Perfectly certain, sir,” answers Mr. Hall.
“Well, tell the facts as briefly as possible to the jury,” says the law
officer, whose hope of an early adjournment and some golf begins to grow
doubtful.
“Well, sir, I first saw the man at Chestnut and Tenth streets. He was
walking fast, talking to himself, and he staggered. He ran against me
and said something I could not understand, then went on rapidly down
Chestnut Street. A moment after, when I looked what time it was, my
watch was gone.”
“And the chain—was there a chain?”
“Yes, that was gone, too.”
“Broken?”
“No, the whole chain was taken.”
“Are you sure of that? It is not easy for a thief to do.”
“I am quite sure of that.”
“Then, that’s my case,” yawns the happy officer of the forum. “I shall
play golf at Bala this afternoon till six,” he says to his assistant.
V
THE QUALITY OF JUSTICE
A young man sitting at the counsel table, and grown diffident the moment
he finds himself on his feet, rises to address the court.
“If the court pleases,” he begins, and the court awakes with a start
from a revery of dinner.
“Eh? Who is he?” the court whispers to the district attorney.
The officer scowls back and answers that he does not know.
The young man has heard.
“I am John Forrest, if the court pleases, admitted yesterday.”
“Precisely, sir,” smiles the court, icily; “but you are interrupting the
trial of a cause. Your motion will have to wait until it is
concluded—unless it is imperative.”
“It is imperative,” says the young lawyer.
“Ah, then, proceed,” says the judge, “and pray be brief.”
“I ask leave to conduct the defence of the prisoner. I know him—I know
his language—I believe him innocent.”
The prosecuting officer leaps to his feet.
“What this extraordinary young gentleman _believes_ is of no consequence
to us, your honor. Let him appear for the prisoner—if the prisoner
wishes to have it so. I should consider it extra hazardous. The
constitution countenances this sort of aberration, however, so I suppose
we must suffer it—though the case is at an end.”
The district attorney calculates that he will be a half-hour late at the
links. The court nods his assent, and takes up the fascinating menu
which has been sent over to him from the Union League, to whet his
appetite upon. He will dine there to-night with the witty Grover Club.
The young lawyer has addressed a few words to the prisoner and has taken
his hand. Instantly the inert head rises. The fires of life and hope
once more light the eyes for an instant. His tongue is loosed. He is the
Viking again—the lion at bay. The young lawyer assures him with the
overconfidence of youth that all will be well. That they have proved
nothing.
At once the eyes are dull again, the head droops as before.
“Ah, they! It is the doom of God. They are only instruments of God. I do
not hate them. I hate them no more than I should hate the axe of the
executioner. Last night—and, yea, for many nights I saw Estan, the
priest. I heard him say again: ‘I do fear the things that will come upon
thee and our land!’ Go! It is the doom of God!”
At this moment the district attorney, seeing his time for golf being
dissipated, says to the court:
“If your honor pleases, unless the defence is ready to proceed at once,
I shall ask your honor to give the case to the jury on its default.”
Forrest takes his place.
“I recall all the witnesses for the Commonwealth for cross-examination,”
says the young lawyer to the court.
“Object!” shouts the district attorney, on his feet at once. “The
prisoner failed to take advantage of this right when it was offered to
him and his counsel sat idly by. It is too late now. I won’t try the
case all over again.”
“I think,” says the smiling court, “that I shall permit this. It is not
your right, sir,”—to the counsel for the prisoner—“but the easiest way
is the best, in law as well as—elsewhere.”
He smiles down upon the district attorney, as if he were saying:
“You will get your game the sooner, I will get my dinner hot.”
“Proceed!” is all the officer of the Commonwealth has to say.
It is the young counsel’s first examination of a witness.
“Officer Gorman,” he says, with a child’s savagery, “yi—you were
here—bif—before?”
“Sure!” answers the officer, with a grin, and now the gentlemen of the
bar laugh with the benchers, and even the court lays down the gilt menu
and smiles broadly.
But, these things are good. They crowd upon the young champion of the
prisoner a tremendous sense of the responsibility he has assumed. He
addresses the court foolishly but seriously:
“I shall beg in advance the indulgence of the court. I have never before
tried a case. I shall make some blunders in trying this one. But, sir, I
have undertaken, here, upon the instant, without preparation, the
defence of that priceless thing—a man’s liberty—nay, his life! For he is
sick and hopeless unto death. And, unless he is taken from this court to
an hospital, upon our hands will be not only his liberty but his life.
Sir, I have been taught, I am sure this court has been taught, before it
ascended the three steps which lead to the bench, that liberty is a holy
thing. That it is a nobler quest, in this forum, to stand its champion
than in that other to contend for those priceful things which may be
measured in money. Am I wrong, sir, to do this? Do the gentlemen of the
bar laugh for that reason? If they laugh at me, in God’s name let them
do so. But, let no one laugh at such a solemn spectacle as this—Look!
Look at the man! Look about! Was ever man save He that suffered on the
cross so friendless and alone? such a stranger among strangers?”
“Proceed!” shouts the district attorney.
The court nods in assent.
“When your opportunity comes, Mr.—Mr.—”
“Forrest,” prompts the lawyer.
“—to address the jury, they may be interested in—er—your
views—upon—er—liberty. The court—has—er—heard them often. Proceed, sir,
with your witness.”
Under this brutality John Forrest has become the steady practitioner of
a dozen years.
“You know nothing about this watch, or its taking?”
“No.”
“Then why did you arrest him?”
“On complaint of Mr. Hall.”
“You had no warrant?”
“No.”
The lawyer turns to the court.
“Upon the testimony of the man who made the arrest it was an illegal
seizure. He must have had a warrant unless he saw the commission of the
offence. I move his discharge from custody.”
“Object,” said the district attorney, and the court instantly rules the
objection sustained.
“Proceed, sir.”
“Then, I ask the court to rule upon the question of whether or not the
prisoner was justified in resisting an illegal arrest.”
The district attorney objects again, and the court again frankly
sustains him. The easiest way is certainly being proved the best—for
him.
Nothing is developed from the other witnesses, who repeat their
testimony. The prosecutor remembers distinctly having his watch, though
he knew nothing of its taking.
Then the young champion puts the prisoner upon the stand. Now, if God’s
pity ever descends to temper the rigor of human judgment, here is its
invocation—
His story is little and simple as his counsel translates it.
He had arrived in the city three days before. He gave a runner his last
money to procure him work, but he did not return. And he waited and
hungered and walked the streets, neither sleeping nor eating. He
staggered against the prosecutor—yes—blindly—in an agony—he
apologized—but the man called out—officers came—they shot at him—he
fell—and then he opened his eyes as they saw him—bloody—maimed in a
prison—
Then there is something which the young attorney hesitates to translate
until he is charged with concealing testimony which will injure his
case:
“‘It is the doom of God,’” he repeats then. “‘God meant me to stay and
die in the ice. But I defied His purposes and came here. God is taking
His vengeance. It is useless. These things are come upon me and my
country because of sin. I must suffer them. They must. It is the doom of
God!’”
“Oh! Is he THAT sort?” laughs the district attorney, and the benchers
laugh with him.
The court declines to be amused. It takes time to be amused. And he has
none to spare—before dinner.
The prosecuting officer, with a significant smile, declines to
cross-examine, and so far as the Commonwealth is concerned, submits the
case without argument to the jury. His assistant questions the propriety
of this.
“Always wins,” he laughs. “The jury think either that it is not worth
while, or that I think it safe, and agree accordingly. Juries haven’t
much mind, you know. Besides, think of those idle golf sticks!” They
laugh together. “And, further, it will flabbergast the doughty champion
of the foreign gentleman. He won’t know how to begin—since he will have
nothing of mine to answer or suggest.”
VI
THE FOOLISHNESS OF PREACHING
This seems true. Forrest knows the trick, and now he rises with manifest
fear and trembling.
“Although the Commonwealth does not care to address you,” he says, “I
conceive it my duty to do so—”
“I told you he would be caught,” whispers the district attorney to his
assistant, in glee. “There is only one counter to that trick, and that
is to submit your own case. Then the jury is compelled to think that the
defence has as much or more confidence in its case than the
Commonwealth. For it has more to gain from a speech.”
“—It is not proven that a watch has been stolen, nor that an officer was
assaulted, yet that is exactly and only what the prisoner is charged
with. All that is proven is that a man had a watch before he collided
with the prisoner, and that he did not have it afterward. The law in its
mercy has provided that every man shall be presumed innocent until he is
proven guilty—_proven_, remember!—not guessed guilty—”
His address is now, unfortunately, to the court, who is getting more and
more hungry.
“Why, sir, if anybody be guilty here, I am the one. But a short while
ago I was his guest in that little kingdom hedged by the mountain and
the glacier. I sang to him the stirring songs of our country. Those
songs of which the theme is liberty alone! I thrilled his very soul with
the tales of its freedom and justice and equality. I watched his
nostrils expand at the words of our great battle-hymn. I beguiled him
here with these things—though I did not mean to. And he came—to you,
Columbia, land of the brave, who hold out your arms to all the nations
of the earth and cry Come! You—you—who invited him! And you meet him
with pistol and club and shackles; the home of the free is a prison! He
begs for a crust, and you give him a bullet. And what has he done? He
has but entered the door you hold open to him. And what will you do?
Sick, wounded, and miserable—in peril of his life—at your own hands—what
is your verdict? He is in your keeping. And as you hope for mercy at the
great day, as you respect the sanctity of your oath, deal in justice and
mercy with this stranger who has come within your opened gates—”
“One of the difficulties of the young lawyer is to know when he is
done,” says the district attorney, slyly, leaning his elbow on the bench
and speaking to the judge.
The judge nods in a certain gastric irritation which is not well for
either the prisoner or his counsel, but answers nothing.
“And to cease from college orations in a court of law. Somewhere these
things should be taught as part of the law course. I am not aware that
they are.”
The champion perspires and plunges on—when he had better stop—as any one
but he—even the meanest of the benchers—can see.