XVIII.
The Trial.
“The morn lowered darkly; but the sun hath now,
With fierce and angry splendor, through the clouds
Burst forth, as if impatient to behold
This our high triumph. Lead the prisoner in.”
—VESPERS OF PALERMO.
To say that, long before the hour fixed for the trial, the court room was crowded to its utmost capacity with eager and expectant faces, would be to repeat what has been written and said of every trial, the events of which have been chronicled; but it would be no less true for that. And when the young prisoner was brought into the room, his handsome face pale from agitation and recent confinement, and with an expression of intense anxiety in his eye, all not before deeply interested for the friends of the unfortunate Cranston were moved to pity, and strongly prepossessed in his favor.
Mr. W——, the counsel for the prisoner, was an able and eloquent lawyer. He was a small, slight man, with a high, bald forehead; and a pair of very bright, black, restless eyes. His manner was naturally quick and lively; but he well knew how to touch the tender strings, and make them give forth a tone in unison with his own, or with that which he had adopted for his own to suit the occasion. He had an appearance, too, of being assured of the justice of his cause, and perfectly confident of success, which was encouraging to the prisoner and his friends.
After the necessary preliminaries and statements had been gone through with, the witnesses against the prisoner and in his favor were called, who testified to the fact of the murder, and to the prisoner’s natural quickness of temper, inducing fits of sudden passion, which, even in childhood, seemed at times hardly to leave him the mastery of himself. Friends, school-mates, college-mates, in turn gave their testimony to the prisoner’s kindness of heart, which would not suffer him to harbor resentment; and yet many instances were mentioned of fierce and terrible passion, utterly heedless of results for the moment, and yet passing away quick as the lightning’s flash.
It was shown that he had no ill-will to young Cranston; on the contrary, they were generally friendly and affectionate; that they had been so throughout the evening on which the fatal deed was done. It was at a supper table, when all were excited by wine; and Cranston, who was fond of a joke, and rather given to teazing, and being less guarded than usual, introduced some subject exceedingly unpleasant to young Elwyn. The quick temper of the latter was aroused at once, and he gave a hasty and angry reply. The raillery was pushed still farther; and before those about him had time to interfere, the fatal blow was struck in frantic passion.
“And is this no palliating circumstance,” said Mr. W——, “that God has given to this young man a naturally fierce and hasty temper, which could not brook that which might be borne more patiently by those whose blood flows more coldly and sluggishly? Is there no difference to be made in our judgment of men, because of the different tempers and dispositions with which they were born? Of course there is!—of course there is! It has been clearly shown that there was no malice aforethought in this case; the injury was not brooded over in silence, and the plan matured in cold blood to murder a class-mate and friend. No! on the moment of provocation the blow was struck, with but the single idea of giving vent to the passion which was bursting his breast. And those who witnessed his deep remorse and agony of mind, when he discovered the fatal effects of his passion, as, all regardless of his own safety, he endeavored to restore his expiring friend to life, have assured me, that though they were witnesses of the whole scene, they felt for him only the deepest commiseration.”
And here Mr. W—— paused and wiped his eyes repeatedly, and the sobs of the young prisoner were heard all over the court room.
“There was one,” Mr. W—— continued, “of whom he wished to speak, and whom, on some accounts, he would have been glad to bring before the jury to-day. But he would not outrage the feelings of his young friend by urging him to consent to the entreaties of his lovely sister, that she might be permitted to sit by his side in that prisoner’s seat to-day. She is his only sister; he her only brother; and they are orphans.” (Here there was a faltering of the voice, a pause, which was very effective; and after apparently a great effort, Mr. W—— went on.)
“She has sat beside him hour after hour, and day after day, in yonder dreary jail, endeavoring to make the weary hours of solitude and captivity less irksome, and lead the prisoner’s heart away from earthly trouble to heavenly comfort. Her hope in the jury of to-day is strong. She believes they will not doom her young and only brother to an ignominious death, and a dishonored grave; she even hopes that they will not consign him to long years of weary imprisonment; she feels that he is changed; that he no longer trusts to his own strength to overcome his naturally strong and violent passions; but that his trust is in the arm of the Lord his God, who ‘turneth the hearts of men as the rivers of water are turned.’”
“May He dispose the hearts of these twelve men, on whom the fate of this youth now hangs, so that they shall show, that like Himself they are lovers of mercy.”
And Mr. W—— sat down and covered his face with his handkerchief. The hope and expectation of acquittal now were very strong.
And now slowly rose the counsel for the prosecution. Mr. G—— was a tall thin man, of a grave and stern expression of countenance; his hair was of an iron-gray, and his piercing gray eye shone from under his shaggy eye-brows like a spark of fire. It was the only thing that looked like life about him; and when he first rose he began to speak in a slow, distinct, unimpassioned manner, and without the least attempt at eloquence.
“He had intended,” he said, “to call a few more witnesses, but he found it was utterly unnecessary; those already called had said all he cared to hear; indeed, he had been much surprised to hear testimony on the side of the prisoner which he should have thought by right his own. No one attempts to deny the fact of the killing, and that the deed was done by the hand of the prisoner. The question for us to decide is, was it murder? was it man-slaughter? or was it nothing at all? for to that point my learned adversary evidently wishes to conduct us.”
“The young man it appears, by the testimony of friends and school-mates, has always been of a peculiarly quick and fiery temper; so much so it seems, that a playful allusion, or what is commonly called a teazing expression, could not be indulged in at his expense but his companion was instantly felled to the ground. And was he the one to arm himself with bowie-knife or revolver? Should one who was perfectly conscious that he had not the slightest control over his temper, keep about him a murderous weapon ready to do its deed of death upon any friend who might unwittingly, in an hour of revelry, touch upon some sore spot?”
“As soon would I approach a keg of gun-powder with a lighted candle in my hand, as have aught to do with one so fiery and so armed for destruction. It has been said that it is the custom for young men in some of our colleges to go thus armed; the more need of signal vengeance upon the work of death they do. Gentlemen of the jury, if this practice is not loudly rebuked we shall have work of this kind accumulating rapidly on our hands.”
“‘It was done in the heat of frenzied passion, and so the prisoner must go unpunished.’ My learned friend argued not so, when he appeared in this place against the murder Wiley; poor, ignorant, and half-witted; who with his eyes starting from his head with starvation, entered a farmer’s house, and in the extremity of his suffering demanded bread. And on being told by the woman of the house to take himself off to the nearest tavern and get bread, caught up a carving knife and stabbed her to the heart, seized a piece of bread, and fled from the house. He had a fiendish temper too; it was rendered fiercer by starvation; and when asked why he did the dreadful deed, he said he never could have dragged himself on three miles to the nearest tavern, and he had no money to buy bread when he got there. He must die anyway, and it might as well be on the gallows as by the road-side.”
“He, poor fellow, had no friends; he had been brought up in vice and misery; he had no gentle sister to lead him in the paths of virtue, a kind word was never spoken to him; a crust of bread was denied him when he was starving; and above all, he had no wealthy friend to pay an enormous counsel fee, and my learned opponent standing where he did just now, called loudly on the jury and said, ‘away with such a fellow from the earth!’”
“Do not think me blood-thirsty or unfeeling. The innocent sufferer in this case, the sister of this unfortunate young man, has my deepest sympathy and commiseration, as she has that of this audience and the jury. But could those here present have gone with me”—(here the speaker paused, too agitated to proceed)—“to yonder desolated home; had they seen a mother, lately widowed, and four young sisters, around the bier where lay the remains of the murdered son and brother—their only hope next to God—he for whom they were all toiling early and late, that, when his education was completed, he in turn might work for them,—had they heard that mother’s cry for strength, now that her last earthly prop was thus rudely snatched away, they would have found food for pity there. I tell you, my friends, I pray that I may never be called upon to witness such a scene again!”
Wiping his cheeks repeatedly, Mr. G——resumed:
“These tears surprise me; for I am not used to the ‘melting mood,’ and I cannot afford to weep as readily as my learned opponent, who will count his pile of bank notes for every tear he sheds, and think those tears well expended. I speak for an outraged community; my sympathies are with the poor—with the widow and the fatherless—with those whose only son and brother has been cut off in his hope and promise, and consigned to an early grave.”
“Shall these things take place unnoticed and unpunished?—and for a light and hasty word, shall our young men of promise be cut down in the midst of their days, and the act go unrebuked of justice? I look not so much at this individual case as to the general good. Were I to look only on the prisoner, I too might yield to feeling, and forget justice. But feeling must not rule here: in the court room, justice alone should have sway; and I call upon the jury to decide as impartially in this case as if the poorest and most neglected wretch, brought up in vice and wretchedness, sat there, instead of the handsome and interesting prisoner; and I call upon the jury to show that, though in private life they may be ‘lovers of mercy,’ yet, where the general good is so deeply involved, they are determined to ‘deal justly’ with the prisoner.”
The judge then gave his charge to the jury, which was thought to lean rather to the side of the prisoner, though he agreed with Mr. G——, that some sharp rebuke should be given to the practice, so common among the young men in some of our colleges, of carrying about with them offensive weapons.
The prisoner was led back to the jail; the jury retired; and it being now evening, the court room was deserted.