and interest as she stood and watched every slackening or tightening of the line as the fish went up the pool and down the pool, and crossed the current in his efforts to escape. The only self-possessed person, indeed, was Lavender himself, who presently said, “Miss Mackenzie, won’t you take the rod now and have the honor of landing him? I don’t think he will show much more fight.”
At this moment, however, the line slackened suddenly, and the fish threw himself clean out of the water, turning a complete summersault. It was a dangerous moment, but the captive was well hooked, and in his next plunge Lavender was admonished by Duncan to keep a good strain on him.
“I will take the second one,” Sheila promised, “if you like; but you must surely land your first salmon yourself.”
I suppose nobody but a fisherman can understand the generosity of the offer made by the young man. To have hooked your first salmon–to have its first wild rushes and plunges safely over–and to offer to another the delight of bringing him victoriously to bank! But Sheila knew. And what could have surpassed the cleverness with which he had hooked the fish, and the coolness and courage he showed throughout the playing of him, except this more than royal offer on the part of the young hero?
The fish was losing strength. All the line had been got in, although the fore finger of the fisherman felt the pulse of his captive, as it were, ready for any expiring plunge. They caught occasional glimpses of a large white body gliding through the ruddy-brown water. Duncan was down on his knees more than once, with the landing-net in his hand, but again and again the big fish would sheer off, with just such indications of power as to make his conqueror cautious. At length he was guided slowly in to the bank. Behind him the landing-net was gently let into the water–then a quick forward movement, and a fourteen-pounder was scooped up and flung upon the bank, landing-net and all. “Hurrah!” cried Ingram, and Lavender blushed like a school-girl; and Sheila, quite naturally and without thinking, shook hands with him and said, “I congratulate you;” and there was more congratulation in her glad eyes than in that simple little gesture.
It was a good beginning, and of course the young man was very much pleased to show Sheila that he was no mere lily-fingered idler about town. He buckled to his work in earnest. With a few more casts he soon got into the way of managing the big rod; and every time the flies fell lightly on the other side of the pool, to be dragged with gentle jerks across the foaming current of the stream. Ingram went back to his couch on the rock. He lay and watched the monotonous flinging back of the long rod, the light whistle of the line through the air, and the careful manipulation of the flies through the water. Or was it something else that he was watching–something that awakened in his mind a sudden sense of surprise and fear, and a new and strange consciousness that he had been guiltily remiss?
Sheila was wholly preoccupied with her companion and his efforts. He had had one or two rises, but had struck either too soon or too late, until at last there was a terrific plunge and rush, and again the line was whirled out. But Duncan did not like the look of it, somehow. The fish had been sheering off when it was hooked, and the deep plunge at the outset was ugly.
“Now will you take the rod?” said Lavender to Sheila.
But before she could answer the fish had come rushing up to the surface, and had thrown itself out of the water, so that it fell on the opposite bank. It was a splendid animal, and Duncan, despite his doubts, called out to Ingram to slacken his hold. There was another spring into the air, the fish fell with a splash into the water, and the line was flying helplessly in the air, with the two flies floating about.
“Ay,” said Duncan, with a sigh, “it wass foul-hooked. It wass no chance of catching him whatever.”
Lavender was more successful next time, however, with a pretty little grilse of about half a dozen pounds, that seemed to have in him the spirit and fight of a dozen salmon. How he rushed and struggled, how he plunged and sulked, how he burrowed along the banks, and then ran out to the middle of the pool, and then threw himself into the air, with the line apparently but not really doubling up under him! All these things can only be understood by the fisherman who has played in a Highland stream a wild and powerful little grilse fresh in from the salt water. And it was Sheila who held him captive, who humored him when he sulked, and gently guided him away from dangerous places, and kept him well in hand when he tried to cross the current, until at last, all the fierceness gone out of him, he let himself be tenderly inveigled into the side of the pool, where Duncan, by a dexterous movement, surrounded him with network and placed his shining body among the bright green grass.
But Ingram was not so overjoyed this time. He complimented Sheila in a friendly way, but he was rather grave, and obviously did not care for this business of fishing. And so Sheila, fancying that he was rather dull because he was not joining in the sport, proposed that he should walk back to the house with her, leaving Mr. Lavender with Duncan. And Ingram was quite ready to do so.
But Lavender protested that he cared very little for salmon-fishing. He suggested that they should all go back together. The sun was killing the wind, and soon the pools would be as clear as glass. Had they not better try in the afternoon, when perhaps the breeze would freshen? And so they walked back to the house.
On the garden-seat a book lay open. It was Mr. Mill’s _Essay on Liberty_, and it had evidently been left there by Mr. Mackenzie, perhaps–who knows?–to hint to his friends from the South that he was familiar with the problems of the age. Lavender winked to Ingram, but somehow his companion seemed in no humor for a joke.
They had luncheon then, and after luncheon Ingram touched Lavender on the shoulder and said, “I want to have a word with you privately. Let’s walk down to the shore.”
And so they did; and when they had got some little distance from the house, Ingram said, “Look here, Lavender. I mean to be frank with you. I don’t think it fair that you should try to drag Sheila Mackenzie into a flirtation. I knew you would fall in love with her. For a week or two, that does not matter–it harms no one. But I never thought of the chance of her being led into such a thing, for what is a mere passing amusement to you would be a very serious thing to her.”
“Well?”
“Well? Is not that enough? Do you think it fair to take advantage of this girl’s ignorance of the world?”
Lavender stopped in the middle of the path, and said, somewhat stiffly, “This may be as well settled at once. You have talked of flirtation and all that sort of thing. You may regard it as you please, but before I leave this island I mean to ask Sheila Mackenzie to be my wife.”
“Why, you are mad!” cried Ingram, amazed to see that the young man was perfectly serious.
The other shrugged his shoulders.
“Do you mean to say,” continued Ingram, “that even supposing Sheila would consent–which is impossible–you would try to take away that girl from her father?”
“Girls must leave their fathers some time or other,” said Lavender somewhat sullenly.
“Not unless they are asked.”
“Oh well, they are sure to be asked, and they are sure to go. If their mothers had not done so before them, where would they be? It’s all very well for you to talk about it and argue it out as a theory, but I know what the facts of the case are, and what any man in my position would do; and I know that I am careless of any consequences so long as I can secure her for my wife.”
“Apparently you are–careless of any consequences to herself or those about her.”
“But what is your objection, Ingram?” said the young man, suddenly abandoning his defiant manner: “why should you object? Do you think I would make a bad husband to the woman I married?”
“I believe nothing of the sort. I believe you would make a very good husband if you were to marry a woman whom you knew something about, and whom you had really learned to love and respect through your knowledge of her. I tell you, you know nothing about Sheila Mackenzie as yet. If you were to marry her to-morrow, you would discover in six months she was a woman wholly different from what you had expected.”
“Very well, then,” said Lavender with an air of triumph, “you can’t deny this: you think so much of her that the real woman I would discover must be better than the one I imagine; and so you don’t expect I shall be disappointed?”
“If you marry Sheila Mackenzie you will be disappointed–not through her fault, but your own. Why, a more preposterous notion never entered into a man’s head! She knows nothing of your friends or your ways of life: you know nothing of hers. She would be miserable in London, even if you could persuade her father to go with her, which is the most unlikely thing in the world. Do give up this foolish idea, like a good fellow; and do it before Sheila is dragged into a flirtation that may have the most serious consequences to her.”
Lavender would not promise, but all that afternoon various resolutions and emotions were struggling within him for mastery, insomuch that Duncan could not understand the blundering way in which he whipped the pools. Mackenzie, Sheila and Ingram had gone off to pay a visit to an old crone who lived in a neighboring island, and in whom Ingram had been much interested a few years before; so that Lavender had an opportunity of practicing the art of salmon-fishing without interruptions. But all the skill he had shown in the morning seemed to have deserted him; and at last he gave the rod to Duncan, and, sitting down on a top-coat flung on the wet heather, indolently watched the gillie’s operations.
Should he at once fly from temptation and return to London? Would it not be heroic to leave this old man in possession of his only daughter? Sheila would never know of the sacrifice, but what of that? It might be for her happiness that he should go.
But when a young man is in love, or fancies himself in love, with a young girl, it is hard for him to persuade himself that anybody else can make her as happy as he might. Who could be so tender to her, so watchful over her, as himself? He does not reflect that her parents have had the experience of years in taking care of her, while he would be a mere novice at the business. The pleasure with which he regards the prospect of being constantly with her he transfers to her, and she seems to demand it of him as a duty that he should confer upon her this new happiness.
Lavender met Sheila in the evening, and he was yet undecided. Sometimes he fancied, when their eyes met unexpectedly, that there was something wistful as well as friendly in her look: was she too dreaming of the vague possibilities of the future? This was strange, too, that after each of those little chance reveries she seemed to be moved by a resolution to be more than usually affectionate toward her father, and would go round the table and place her hand on his shoulder and talk to him. Perhaps these things were but delusions begotten of his own imaginings, but the possibility of their being real agitated him not a little, and he scarcely dared to think what might follow.
That evening Sheila sang, and all his half-formed resolutions vanished into air. He sat in a corner of the curious, dimly-lit and old-fashioned chamber, and, lying back in the chair, abandoned himself to dreams as Sheila sang the mystic songs of the northern coasts. There was something strangely suggestive of the sea in the room itself, and all her songs were of the sea. It was a smaller room than the large apartment in which they had dined, and it was filled with curiosities from distant shores and with the strange captures made by the Borva fishermen. Everywhere, too, were the trophies of Mackenzie’s skill with rod and rifle. Deer’s horns, seal skins, stuffed birds, salmon in glass cases, masses of coral, enormous shells and a thousand similar things made the little drawing-room a sort of grotto; but it was a grotto within hearing of the sound of the sea, and there was no musty atmosphere in a room that was open all day to the cold winds of the Atlantic.
With a smoking tumbler of whisky and water before him, the King of Borva sat at the table, poring over a large volume containing plans for bridges. Ingram was seated at the piano, in continual consultation with Sheila about her songs. Lavender, in this dusky corner, lay and listened, with all sorts of fancies crowding in upon him as Sheila sang of the sad and wild legends of her home. Was it by chance, then, he asked himself, that these songs seemed so frequently to be the lamentation of a Highland girl for a fair-haired lover beyond the sea? First of all she sang the “Wail of Dunevegan,” and how strangely her voice thrilled with the sadness of the song!–
Morn, oh mantle thy smiles of gladness! Night, oh come with thy clouds of sadness! Earth, thy pleasures to me seem madness! Macleod, my leal love, since thou art gone. Dunevegan, oh! Dunevegan, oh!
Dunevegan! Dunevegan!
It was as in a dream that he heard Ingram talking in a matter-of-fact way about the various airs, and asking the meaning of certain lines of Gaelic to compare them with the stiff and old-fashioned phrases of the translation. Surely this girl must have sat by the shore and waited for her absent lover, or how could she sing with such feeling?–
Say, my love, why didst thou tarry
Far over the deep sea?
Knew’st thou not my heart was weary, Heard’st thou not how I sighed for thee! Did no light wind bear my wild despair
Far over the deep sea?
He could imagine that beautiful face grown pale and wild with anguish. And then some day, as she went along the lonely island, with all the light of hope gone out of her eyes, and with no more wistful glances cast across the desolate sea, might not the fair-haired lover come at last, and leap ashore to clasp her in his arms, and hide the wonder-stricken eyes and the glad face in his bosom? But Sheila sang of no such meeting. The girl was always alone, her lover gone away from her across the sea or into the wilds.
Oh long on the mountain he tarries, he tarries: Why tarries the youth with the bright yellow hair: Oh long on the mountain he tarries, he tarries: Why seeks he the hill when his flock is not there?
That was what he heard her sing, until it seemed to him that her singing was a cry to be taken away from these melancholy surroundings of sea and shore, and carried to the secure and comfortable South, to be cherished and tended and loved. Why should this girl be left to live a cruel life up in these wilds, and to go through the world without knowing anything of the happy existence that might have been hers? It was well for harder and stronger natures to withstand the buffetings of wind and rain, and to be indifferent to the melancholy influences of the lonely sea and the darkness of the northern winters; but for her–for this beautiful, sensitive, tender-hearted girl–surely some other and gentler fate was in store. What he, at least, could do he would. He would lay his life at her feet; and if she chose to go away from this bleak and cruel home to the sunnier South, would not he devote himself, as never a man had given himself to a woman before, to the constant duty of enriching her life with all the treasures of admiration and respect and love?
It was getting late, and presently Sheila retired. As she bade “Good-night” to him, Lavender fancied her manners was a little less frank toward him than usual, and her eyes were cast down. All the light of the room seemed to go with her when she went.
Mackenzie mixed another tumbler of toddy, and began to expound to Ingram his views upon deer-forests and sheep-farms. Ingram lit a cigar, stretched out his legs and proceeded to listen with much complacent attention. As for Lavender, he sat a while, hearing vaguely the sounds of his companions’ voices, and then, saying he was a trifle tired, he left and went to his own room. The moon was then shining clearly over Suainabhal, and a pathway of glimmering light lay across Loch Roag.
He went to bed, but not to sleep. He had resolved to ask Sheila Mackenzie to be his wife, and a thousand conjectures as to the future were floating about his imagination. In the first place, would she listen to his prayer? She knew nothing of him beyond what she might have heard from Ingram. He had had no opportunity, during their friendly talking, of revealing to her what he thought of herself; but might she not have guessed it? Then her father–what action might not this determined old man take in the matter? Would his love for his daughter prompt him to consider her happiness alone? All these things, however, were mere preliminaries, and the imagination of the young man soon overleapt them. He began to draw pictures of Sheila as his wife in their London home, among his friends, at Hastings, at Ascot, in Hyde Park. What would people say of the beautiful sea-princess with the proud air, the fearless eyes and the gentle and musical voice? Hour after hour he lay and could not sleep: a fever of anticipation, of fear and of hope combined seemed to stir in his blood and throb in his brain. At last, in a paroxysm of unrest, he rose, hastily dressed himself, stole down stairs, and made his way out into the cool air of the night.
It could not be the coming dawn that revealed to him the outlines of the shore and the mountains and the loch? The moon had already sunk in the south-west: not from her came that strange clearness by which all these objects were defined. Then the young man bethought him of what Sheila had said of the twilight in these latitudes, and, turning to the north, he saw there a pale glow which looked as if it were the last faint traces of some former sunset. All over the rest of the heavens something of the same metallic clearness reigned, so that the stars were pale, and a gray hue lay over the sea, and over the island, the white bays, the black rocks and the valleys, in which lay a scarcely perceptible mist.
He left the house and went vaguely down to the sea. The cold air, scented strongly with the seaweed, blew about him, and was sweet and fresh on the lips and the forehead. How strange was the monotonous sound of the waves, mournful and distant, like the sound in a seashell! That alone spoke in the awful stillness of the night, and it seemed to be telling of those things which the silent stars and the silent hills had looked down on for ages and ages. Did Sheila really love this terrible thing, with its strange voice talking in the night, or did she not secretly dread it and shudder at it when she sang of all that old sadness? There was ringing in his ears the “Wail of Dunevegan” as he listened for a while to the melancholy plashing of the waves all around the lonely shores; and there was a cry of “Dunevegan, oh! Dunevegan, oh!” weaving itself curiously with those wild pictures of Sheila in London which were still floating before his imagination.
He walked away around the coast, seeing almost nothing of the objects around him, but conscious of the solemn majesty of the mountains and the stillness of the throbbing stars. He could have called aloud, “Sheila! Sheila!” but that all the place seemed associated with her presence; and might he not turn suddenly to find her figure standing by him, with her face grown wild and pale as it was in the ballad, and a piteous and awful look in her eyes? Did the figure accuse him? He scarcely dared look round, lest there should be a phantom Sheila appealing to him for compassion, and complaining against him with her speechless eyes for a wrong that he could not understand. He fled from her, but he knew she was there; and all the love in his heart went out to her as if beseeching her to go away and forsake him, and forgive him the injury of which she seemed to accuse him. What wrong had he done her that he should be haunted by this spectre, that did not threaten, but only looked piteously toward him with eyes full of entreaty and pain?
He left the shore, and blindly made his way up to the pasture-land above, careless whither he went. He knew not how long he had been away from the house, but here was a small fresh-water lake set round about with rushes, and far over there in the east lay a glimmer of the channels between Borva and Lewis. But soon there was another light in the east, high over the low mists that lay along the land. A pale blue-gray arose in the cloudless sky, and the stars went out one by one. The mists were seen to lie in thicker folds along the desolate valleys. Then a faintly yellow whiteness stole up into the sky, and broadened and widened, and behold! the little moorland loch caught a reflection of the glare, and there was a streak of crimson here and there on the dark-blue surface of the water. Loch Roag began to brighten. Suainabhal was touched with rose-red on its eastern slopes. The Atlantic seemed to rise out of its purple sleep with the new light of a new dawn; and then there was a chirruping of birds over the heath, and the first shafts of the sunlight ran along the surface of the sea, and lit up the white wavelets that were breaking on the beach. The new day struck upon him with a strange sense of wonder. Where was he? Whither had gone the wild visions of the night, the feverish dread, the horrible forebodings? The strong mental emotion that had driven him out now produced its natural reaction: he looked about in a dazed fashion at the revelation of light around him, and felt himself trembling with weakness. Slowly, blindly and hopelessly he set to walk back across the island, with the sunlight of the fresh morning calling into life ten thousand audible things of the moorland around him.
And who was this who stood at the porch of the house in the clear sunshine? Not the pale and ghastly creature who had haunted him during those wild hours, but Sheila herself, singing some snatches of a song, and engaged in watering the two bushes of sweetbrier at the gate. How bright and roseate and happy she looked, with the fine color of her face lit up by the fresh sunlight, and the brisk breeze from the sea stirring now and again the loose masses of her hair! Haggard and faint as he was, he would have startled her if he had gone up to her then. He dared not approach her. He waited until she had gone round to the gable of the house to water the plants there, and then he stole into the house and up stairs, and threw himself upon the bed. And outside he still heard Sheila singing lightly to herself as she went about her ordinary duties, little thinking in how strange and wild a drama her wraith had that night taken part.
[TO BE CONTINUED]
[Footnote 12: Pronounced _Argyud-chark_; literally, “hen-money.”]
MEDICAL EXPERT EVIDENCE.
There is scarcely any position of more responsibility than that of the medical expert in cases of alleged poisoning. Often he stands with practically absolute power between society and the accused–the former looking to him for the proof of the crime and for the protection which discovery brings; the latter relying upon him for the vindication of his innocence. How profound and complete, then, should be his knowledge! how thorough his skill! how pure and spotless his integrity! how unimpeachable his results! Yet recently the humiliating spectacle has been repeatedly presented of expert swearing against expert, until the question at issue was apparently degraded into one of personal feeling or of professional reputation. So far has this gone that both judicial and public opinion seems to be demanding the abolition of expert testimony. The medical expert must, however, remain an essential feature in our criminal procedures, partaking as he does of the functions of the lawyer, inasmuch as he has, to some extent, the right to argue before the jury, partaking also of the judicial character in that it is his duty to express an opinion upon evidence, but differing from both judge and advocate in that as a witness he testifies to facts. Were the attempt made to do away with his functions, there would be an end to just convictions in the class of cases spoken of, because no one would be qualified to say whether any given death had been produced by poison or by a natural cause.
In many matters that come under the notice of medical experts there is room for honest differences of opinion. Of such nature are questions of sanity and insanity. It must be remembered that these are, after all, _relative_ terms. Reason leaves its seat by almost imperceptible steps. Who can determine with exactness the line that separates eccentricity from madness–responsibility from irresponsibility? Moreover, the phenomena upon which opinion is based are, in such cases, so hidden, so complex, so obscure, that in the half-lights of a few short interviews they will often be seen differently by different observers.
In scarcely any of its parts does toxicology belong to this class of subjects–certainly not at all in so far as it deals with mineral poisons. To a great extent it is a fixed science–a science whose boundaries may be widened, whose processes may be rendered more delicate, but whose principles are in great measure settled for ever. Not in the imperfections of the science, but in the habits of the American medical profession and in the methods of our criminal procedures, lies the origin of the evils complained of.
Some of the causes of the present difficulties are readily to be seen. One is the common ignorance of legal or forensic medicine among the members of the profession. In none of our medical colleges is legal medicine taught as a part of the regular course or as an essential branch of study. Consequently, when the student graduates he has only heard a few passing allusions to the subject from professors of other branches. Unfortunately, this is more or less true of many other medical subjects of importance: helped out, however, by his mother wit, and impelled by necessity, the imperfectly-educated graduate after a time becomes very generally a skillful practitioner. During the period of growth his daily needs govern the direction of his studies, which are therefore more or less exclusively confined to the so-called practical branches. Forensic medicine is not one of these, poison cases are comparatively rare, and to be called upon to give a definite opinion upon such matters before a legal tribunal happens not once in the lifetime of most medical men. Consequently, to a great part of the American medical profession legal medicine is a veritable _terra incognita_.
Moreover, the whole drift of modern medicine is toward a division of labor, and forensic medicine is more widely separated from the ordinary specialties of the science than these are from one another. In a case of delicate eye-surgery who would value the opinion of a man whose attention had been devoted mainly to thoracic diseases? What specialist of the latter character would even offer an opinion? Yet physicians who acknowledge that they have paid no especial attention to toxicology do not hesitate to give the most positive opinions upon the most delicate questions of that science. Men who would, as in honor bound, ask for a consultation in any case of serious sickness outside of their line of private practice, on the witness-stand put forth with the utmost boldness their ignorant crudities, careless or forgetful of the fact that they may be imperiling the life of an innocent human being. On the trial of Mrs. Wharton for the attempted murder of Mr. Van Ness, Dr. Williams asserted that there are peculiar characteristic symptoms or groups of symptoms of tartar emetic poisoning;[13] and both he and Dr. Chew–who with frankness acknowledged that he had not especially studied toxicology–did most positively recognize tartar emetic as the sole possible cause of certain symptoms which were but a little beyond the line of medicinal action, and for which obviously possible natural cause existed. Contrast these bold opinions with the cautious statement of a man who had given a lifetime of study to this particular subject. On the trial of Madeleine Smith, Professor Christison–at that time the first toxicologist of England–stated that if in any case the symptoms and post-mortem appearances corresponded exactly with those caused by arsenic, he should be led to _suspect_ poisoning.
Another source of mischief lies in the fact that the law does not recognize the well-established principles of forensic medicine, and consequently the books in which these principles are laid down by the highest authorities are excluded by the courts, while the _viva voce_ evidence of any medical man, however ignorant on such points, is admitted as that of an expert.
It is therefore not to be wondered at that juries give but little consideration to the knowledge or professional standing of expert witnesses. It is, in fact, notorious that the medical autocrat of the village, who has superintended the entrance of the majority of the jurymen into this troublous world, is a more important witness than the most renowned special student of the branch: indeed, the chief value of the real expert often rests on his ability to influence the local physician.[14] At the late Wharton-Van Ness trial the defence desired to show that the work of the chemist employed by the prosecution was unreliable, because the analyses made by him in a previous case had “been condemned by the united voice of the whole scientific world.” The court was not able to see the _relevancy_ of this, and refused to allow the professional ability or standing of an expert to be called in question. The witness thus adjudged competent brought no results into court; had kept no laboratory notes; relied solely on a memory so deficient that although he had been teaching for thirty-five years, he could not tell the shape of a crystal of tartar emetic, the poison in question; and upon the stand made a statement different from one which he had furnished officially to the district attorney of Baltimore fourteen months before.
There are principles of toxicology which ought to have legal force and recognition, and ought to govern expert testimony in the same way that the principles of evidence govern ordinary testimony. Without presuming to enumerate these, I will cite two or three for illustration. Certain substances, the so-called irritant poisons, such as arsenic, tartar emetic and the like, induce their toxic effects by causing irritation and inflammation of the alimentary canal. All authorities agree that poisoning by these substances cannot be proved, or even rendered, very probable, by symptoms alone–that chemical evidence, the discovery of the poison in the food, dejections, or in case of death the body, is absolutely essential for making out a case. Irritation and inflammation of the alimentary canal occur so often and so suddenly from natural causes, which are sometimes apparent, but often hidden, that no especial weight can be attached to them.
In the case of the so-called neurotic poisons, those which act upon the nervous system, the symptoms are so closely simulated by natural disease that even when they agree in the most absolute manner with those usually developed by any such poison they only render poisoning highly probable, not certain.[15] When in any case the symptoms diverge from the typical array, poisoning becomes improbable just in proportion to the amount of divergence.
All toxicological authorities also agree that in the case of the metallic poisons, such as tartar emetic and arsenic, the metal must be brought into court, and that the so-called “color tests” are not to be relied on. When sulphuretted hydrogen is passed through solutions of these metallic substances colored precipitates are thrown down, which at one time were thought to be absolute proof of the existence of the poison in the original solution. But in the celebrated Donnal case, tried at Falmouth, England, in 1817, Dr. Neale saved the accused by showing that a decoction of onions, of which the deceased had eaten a short time before death, yielded similar precipitates to those relied upon by the prosecution as establishing the presence of arsenic in the stomach. In regard to tartar emetic, Dr. Taylor, in his work on medical jurisprudence, says: “Antimony in the metallic state is so easily procured from a small quantity of material that on no account should this be omitted. A reliance on a small quantity of a colored precipitate would be most unsatisfactory as chemical evidence.” In defiance of all the authorities the prosecution, on the trial of Mrs. Wharton for the murder of General Ketchum, rested its proof of poison upon these color tests and their sequences. The defence, however, found that the counterparts of three out of the four so-called characteristic reactions were readily performed with the substances known to have been in the stomach of General Ketchum at the time of his death.
Several cases of poisoning which have been tried recently in this State and Maryland have attracted much attention, and I propose now briefly to outline these, and show that the disgraceful scenes which have taken place were not due to deficiencies of toxicological science, but to the causes already spoken of.
First in time among these _causes celebres_ was the Schoeppe case, the facts of which may be briefly summed up as follows: Dr. Schoeppe, a young German practicing medicine in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, became engaged to be married to a Miss Stennecke, a maiden lady of sixty years of age. Miss Stennecke was somewhat of an invalid, not often actually sick, but habitually distressed by dyspeptic symptoms, etc. On the morning of the 27th of January, 1869, feeling unwell, she sent for Dr. Schoeppe, who gave her an emetic. In the afternoon, according to the testimony of her maid, she was weak, but apparently not ill. Between 7 and 8 P.M., however, she became much worse, and her servant noticed that she was very drowsy, so that if left alone she would immediately fall asleep whilst sitting in her chair. Shortly after this she was put to bed, and was not seen again until the next morning about six o’clock, when she was found comatose, with contracted pupils, irregular respiration and complete muscular relaxation. Late in the afternoon of the same day she died quietly.
Nothing was said about poisoning until some days afterward, when, a will having been produced in favor of Dr. Schoeppe, an accusation was made against him. The body of Miss Stennecke was exhumed, and underwent a post-mortem examination, which, for culpable carelessness and inexcusable omissions, stands unrivaled. Not a single organ in the whole body was thoroughly examined, and many of the more important parts were not looked at. Death, preceded by the symptoms exhibited in the case of Miss Stennecke, occurs not infrequently from insidious disease of the kidneys, yet these organs were not taken out of the body. The stomach was examined chemically by Professor Aiken of the University of Maryland, who reported that he had found prussic acid, and who testified on the trial that Miss Stennecke had received a fatal dose of that poison. When, however, his evidence was sifted, it was discovered that he had only obtained traces of the poison by the distillation of the stomach with sulphuric acid. As saliva contains ferrocyanide of potassium, out of which sulphuric acid generates prussic acid, the latter substance will always be obtained by the process adopted by Professor Aiken from any stomach which has in it the least particle of saliva. If, then, the professor did really get prussic acid, without doubt he manufactured it.
Dr. Hermann, however, testified that Miss Stennecke, whom he saw on the morning of her death, must have died of a compound poison, because her eye looked like that of a hawk killed by himself some years before with a dose of all the poisons he had in his apothecary’s shop. Dr. Conrad confirmed the assertion of Dr. Hermann, that Miss Stennecke could not have died from a natural cause, and testified that as the liver was healthy, therefore the kidneys must have been so too–a conclusion which could only have been evolved from his inner consciousness.
In vain Professor Wormley protested, declaring that it was impossible Miss Stennecke could have been killed by prussic acid, because that poison always does its work in a few minutes, if at all, whereas Miss Stennecke lived nearly twenty-four hours after the alleged poisoning. What did it matter that Dr. Conrad had shown himself by his post-mortem examination ignorant of the first rudiments of legal medicine, and that Dr. Hermann was a village doctor of the olden type dragged into court from a mediaeval contest with the diseases of simple country-folk, while Professor Wormley had devoted his life to toxicology and achieved a world-wide reputation? What did it matter that the written words of all authorities upon such subjects in every land were in absolute accord with Dr. Wormley? Under the ruling–which has been reaffirmed at Annapolis–the settled principles of science were overborne by ignorant conjecture, and to the mockery of justice, to the deep disgrace of our commonwealth, Dr. Schoeppe was condemned to death upon evidence which, from the same bench, was subsequently stigmatized as being insufficient to warrant his commitment for trial.
Three years of close confinement under the shadow of death followed. The governor refused a pardon, and Dr. Schoeppe heard the hammer driving the nails into his scaffold beneath the prison-window. He was measured for his coffin, but at the last moment was reprieved, and listened to the heavy thud as the drop fell and a man whose companion he was to have been on the scaffold was launched into eternity. Finally, moved by the incessant pleadings of Mr. Hepburn, the junior counsel, by the urgings of the public press, led by the Philadelphia _Evening Bulletin_, and by the protests of numerous scientific bodies, the legislature passed a special act granting Dr. Schoeppe a new trial. On this occasion the judge allowed the weakness of the expert testimony for the prosecution to be demonstrated, and chiefly as a result of this demonstration–of what has been called the “coarse brutality” of showing Dr. Conrad’s ignorance–Dr. Schoeppe was acquitted.
If the principles contended for in this article had been acknowledged, the processes and results in the case of Dr. Schoeppe would have been far different. In the first place, the post mortem would have been entrusted to some one qualified to make it–an expert in legal medicine–and very probably a natural cause for the death of Miss Stennecke would have been found. Such post mortem not having been made, the case, after Professor Aiken’s analysis, would have been dropped, because it was impossible that prussic acid could have caused the death. Had, however, capable experts failed to detect a natural cause of death, a very serious case might have been made out against Dr. Schoeppe, even though the analyst had not found morphia in the stomach. The prosecution might have affirmed that the poison had been absorbed, and therefore was not in the stomach, and, for the support of the charge, relied upon the resemblance of the symptoms to those produced by morphia, and upon the absence of natural cause of death.
A case which has acquired even more celebrity than the last is that of Mrs. Wharton of Baltimore. The chief facts, as developed at the first trial at Annapolis, are as follows: General Ketchum, a man of over middle age and usually in good health, was very much engaged in attending to matters of business at Washington throughout the entire day of the 24th of June, 1871. The weather was very hot, yet he walked about hurriedly and steadily, getting no dinner, and returning in the evening to Mrs. Wharton’s at Baltimore about 9 P.M., where he ate a very hearty meal, consisting partly of raspberries. During the night he was heard to go down stairs several times. The next day he complained of feeling unwell, but took at bed-time a glass of lemonade with brandy, and during the night had some slight vomiting and purging. In the morning he complained of sick stomach and giddiness, and at Mrs. Wharton’s earnest request[16] Dr. Williams was finally sent for, and on arriving at 4 P.M. found him sitting up and vomiting, and prescribed as for a slight attack of cholera morbus. The next morning General Ketchum thought himself so much better that he discharged his physician. He was, however, very drowsy during the day, and the evidence at the trial rendered it probable that he took laudanum on this day upon his own responsibility. In the evening he was found sleeping heavily upon the lounge, and again at Mrs. Wharton’s request Dr. Williams was sent for, but did not think it worth while to come. The next morning Mrs. Wharton again sent for Dr. Williams, as General Ketchum was found still lying upon the lounge in a stupor. He remained in this state until his death, which took place in a convulsion at 3 P.M. He had had during the intervening period repeated convulsions, and about one o’clock had become very uneasy, uttering incoherent cries, but did not recover true consciousness. At the examination of the body, made the following morning, the spinal cord was not looked at: the inner membranes of the brain were found congested, and the brain-substance presented throughout “those dark points of blood which indicate passive congestion.” No other lesions were found, and the stomach was handed for analysis to Professor Aiken, who in due time reported that he had “satisfied himself” of the existence of at least twenty grains of tartar emetic in it.
It is highly probable that this official announcement had much influence upon the minds of Drs. Williams and Chew, with their colleagues, and it is very certain that by it and their representations was created the public belief in Baltimore that General Ketchum had been poisoned. The false analysis remained for months uncontradicted, and backed up as it was by the whole intellectual and moral force of the University of Maryland, it could scarcely happen otherwise than that public opinion should become so set and hardened that no testimony at the trial could affect it, especially as local pride and local prejudice came to its support when experts from other cities questioned the work of the Baltimore physicians.
Mrs. Wharton’s servants were first accused, but after a few days she was arrested, and with her daughter–who has clung throughout to her faith in her mother’s purity and goodness–was thrust into a common felon’s cell, with only the grated bars between her and the lowest of men in every stage of drunkenness and delirium. After nearly two weeks her lawyers obtained her removal to one of the better rooms of the jail, but it was months before anything was said in her favor.
The trial opened on December 4, 1871, at Annapolis, and lasted nearly two months. The circumstantial evidence certainly went no farther than to render it probable that if General Ketchum died of poison it was administered by Mrs. Wharton. The State attempted to prove as a motive that Mrs. Wharton owed the deceased money. They were signally unsuccessful in this, however; so that a very intelligent member of the jury said to the writer since the trial, “Whether Mrs. Wharton did or did not poison General Ketchum, certainly the State completely failed to prove a motive.” The defence admitted that Mrs. Wharton had bought tartar emetic near the time of the alleged poisoning, but proved that she was in the habit of using it externally as a counter-irritant, and that it was purchased in the most open manner, through a third party, not with the secresy that marks the steps of the poisoner.
Thus the whole case centred in a rather remarkable degree upon the expert testimony, and the very point of it all was the chemical analysis. This is not the place to follow out in detail the scientific testimony, but only to point out some peculiarities of it. Almost all the medical witnesses for the prosecution were colleagues of Professor Aiken, none of them men of eminence in toxicological science–surgeons, physiologists, obstetricians, the whole faculty, trying apparently to hide the nakedness of their colleague. Never was strong language more justifiable than that of Mr. Hagner, when he said, “It seemed that the University of Maryland was on trial, and that blood was demanded to support it.”
After all, the testimony of most of these gentlemen amounted only to this: that they did not believe the death of General Ketchum could have occurred from natural causes. On the other hand, the numerous medical witnesses for the defence, unconnected by any bond of common interest, testified that natural causes, were sufficient to account for the death; many of them asserting that the case in all its symptoms and post-mortem appearances tallied precisely with the so-called fulminating form of cerebro-spinal meningitis, which was prevalent in Baltimore at the time of General Ketchum’s death.[17]
The medical witnesses for the defence further called attention to the fact that the symptoms of General Ketchum’s illness were wholly different from those produced by tartar emetic, and some denied that the latter could have caused the sickness. The chemical evidence for the prosecution was triumphantly refuted. It was shown that antimony did not conform in its reactions with at least one of the tests, which Professor Aiken said his precipitates did; that almost all the other reactions could be closely simulated with ordinary organic bodies; that the processes used were those universally condemned by authorities; and that carelessness was everywhere so manifest in their conduction as to entirely vitiate any results. It was also proved that Professor Aiken had simply estimated the amount of tartar emetic in General Ketchum’s stomach by the _ocular comparison_ of the _bulk of precipitates, neither of which could have been pure_, and _in neither of which was the existence of antimony really proved_. To weigh a precipitate was a labor not to be thought of when nothing more important than the life of a woman was involved: _guessing_ was all that such a trifling issue demanded!
The most extraordinary event of this most extraordinary trial occurred when the chemists for the defence had completely broken down the testimony of Professor Aiken. With the knowledge, it is said, of at least one of the judges, without the presence of a representative of the defence, or even of a legal officer, the body of General Ketchum was secretly exhumed by the doctors who had shown themselves so eager for the execution of Mrs. Wharton. The viscera, which they removed, were put into the hands not of a chemist of national reputation, but of an individual who had been advanced from the position of hospital steward at Washington to that of professor of chemistry in a small local institute at Baltimore. This professor, when on the witness-stand, was singularly confused as to his weights and measures, and finally shared the ignominy of his predecessor. The defence had several chemists at Annapolis of world-wide reputation and unspotted integrity. If the prosecution really believed that General Ketchum had been poisoned, if they really did expect tartar emetic to be found, why did they not allow the presence of these gentlemen at the analysis, and thereby ensure the condemnation of Mrs. Wharton? The conviction is irresistible that they were _afraid of the truth_–that they were simply determined to procure the desired verdict at all hazards and by any means. Yet this was the procedure for the completion of which the court suspended the trial for two days, because, as Chief-Justice Miller stated from the bench, “it thought the ends of justice demanded it”! Is any further evidence needed of the strange ideas, of the perversion of truth and justice, which have grown out of the American method of using expert testimony?
Before leaving this trial I desire to quote from advanced sheets of the edition of Dr. Taylor’s great work on medical jurisprudence, now passing through the press. Reviewing the trial in London with that freedom from bias which the isolation of distance produces, he says: “The trial lasted fifty-two days, and an astonishing amount of evidence was brought forward by the defence and prosecution, apparently owing to the high social position of the parties, for there is nothing, medically speaking, which might not have been settled in forty-eight hours. The general died after a short illness, but the symptoms, taken as a whole, _bore no resemblance_ to those observed in poisoning with antimony; and but for the alleged discovery after death of tartar emetic in the stomach, _no suspicion of poisoning_ would probably have arisen…. The chemical evidence,” he adds, “does not conflict with the pathological evidence, for _it failed to show_ with clearness and distinctness _the presence_ and proportion of poison said to have been found. The _evidence that antimony was really there_ was not satisfactory, and that twenty grains were in the stomach wholly unproven.”[18]
What would have been the course of this trial if expert testimony were established upon proper principles? Professor Aiken having shown his complete incompetency in the Schoeppe case, the analysis would have been entrusted to some skillful chemist, who by failing to discover poison would have established the innocence of Mrs. Wharton, or by bringing positive results into court have ensured conviction; or, Dr. Aiken having made the analysis, and having broken all the laws of toxicological evidence, his testimony would have been ruled out, and the case dismissed because the bungling of the State’s witness had destroyed the evidences of guilt or of innocence.
In January, 1873, Mrs. Wharton was tried at Annapolis for attempting to poison Eugene Van Ness. The facts of the case are briefly as follows: Mr. Van Ness, whose relations with the Wharton family had been extremely intimate for many years, was a bank-clerk, but during the spring and early summer of 1871, besides attending to his regular duties, was employed in settling a large estate. He habitually rose early, often at 5 A.M., and generally worked until eleven o’clock at night. During this period he suffered from severe nervous headaches, and probably from other symptoms of an overworked nervous system, but on this point the testimony disagreed. His stomach is at all times so sensitive that brandy nauseates him. On the 19th of June, after taking some claret on an empty stomach at Mrs. Wharton’s, he felt very badly, suffering from lightness of the head or giddiness and general wretchedness, with stiffness and numbness in the back of his neck. On the 20th he stopped at Mrs. Wharton’s about 4 P.M., having eaten nothing for seven or eight hours, and took raspberries with cream, and drank claret. This claret, he stated, “had a taste like peach leaves.”[19] Directly after this he had an attack similar to, but much more violent than, that of the day before. Some little time after this, whilst in a condition of profound relaxation, he took some brandy, and at once emptied his stomach by a single spasmodic effort of vomiting, with immediate relief. The weather was extremely hot during the whole time in which the various attacks here narrated took place.
On the 24th of June, Mr. Van Ness rose at 5 A.M., but was forced to return to bed by a severe headache. At 9 A.M., after dressing, he said to his wife that he would not eat at home, but would stop at Mrs. Wharton’s on his way to the office, to get a cup of her “nice black tea.” A piece of toast was all he ate before his return to Mrs. Wharton’s from the banking-house at 4 P.M. Mrs. Wharton then offered him some lager beer, and, partly at his own suggestion, put into it something out of a bottle labeled “Gentian Bitters.” He found the liquid so bitter that he took but a part of it.[20]
Shortly afterward Mr. Van Ness became partially blind, and was “seized with the same feeling of giddiness” as on the day before. After this he had convulsions, with unconsciousness, for which large doses of chloroform and chloral were given. During the attack the patient repeatedly said it was of the same character as the preceding ones, and referred the trouble to the pit of the stomach and to indigestion.
The next morning (Sunday), about an hour after waking, he took some tea and toast, and in ten minutes was seized with nausea, followed by heartburn and retching, which lasted all day. On Monday morning some beef tea–two-thirds of a cupful–was given him, and in less than an hour as much more, which induced nausea with heartburn. In the evening he was roused, and more beef tea offered him, which he refused because the last dose had made him sick, and he was afraid this would have the same effect. He was, however, prevailed on to take it. After this he fell asleep, but in a short time woke up with violent nausea, burning at the pit of the stomach, and finally vomiting. Not until this occurred did he discover anything wrong with the beef tea: as he vomited it he found it had an acrid metallic taste.[21]
The circumstantial evidence in the case did not amount to any more than, or indeed as much as, in the previous trial. It was distinctly admitted that no motive could be found, Mr. Van Ness testifying that the relations between himself and Mrs. Wharton were most friendly; that he held four thousand dollars of her government bonds, for which she had not even a receipt; that she depended upon him for the completion of her pecuniary arrangements for a contemplated trip to Europe; or, in other words, that she had nothing to gain and much to lose by his death, and that there was no conceivable emotional motive, such as hate, revenge or envy.[22]
No attempt was made to prove that Mrs. Wharton had at any time in her possession strychnia, the poison alleged to have been used by her. As on the previous trial, the case centred upon the expert testimony, but there was no direct chemical evidence, neither the food, the matters vomited nor the bodily secretions having been examined. Some sediment found in a tumbler of punch was asserted by Dr. Aiken to consist largely of tartar emetic. This tumbler was not connected with Mrs. Wharton, except by being found at her house in a position where, in the language of one of the State’s witnesses, “hundreds of persons” had access to it. It was carried about in the pocket of a lady inimical to Mrs. Wharton, and into at least one drug-store, before it reached Professor Aiken, whose analysis was as faulty as before. Any tartar emetic present in the sediment might have been procured in a pure form by the simple process of dialysis. The only apparatus necessary for this would have been a glass vessel divided into two compartments by a piece of hog’s bladder stretched across it. These chambers having been partially filled with distilled water, and the sediment of the tumbler put into one of them, the tartar emetic would have left the other ingredients and passed into the second compartment. By taking the water out of this and evaporating it, the poison would have been obtained in a pure crystalline state, and might have been brought into court. But Dr. Aiken thought it sufficient for him to “satisfy himself:” as he stated on the witness-stand, he did not consider it his business whether other people were or were not satisfied. Consequently, the court was only favored with a memorized report of the color tests used by him, exactly as in the previous trial. One of the reactions which he said he obtained antimony does not conform to.
Drs. Williams and Chew unhesitatingly stated on the witness-stand that they recognized poisoning as early as the Saturday of Mr. Van Ness’s illness.[23] Yet they gave no antidote. They employed on Monday and Tuesday a treatment which, although well adapted to a case of natural disease presenting such symptoms, would in a case of poisoning have materially increased the risk to life. They did not save the matters vomited: they did not save the secretions, which would certainly have contained antimony if Mr. Van Ness had been poisoned as alleged. According to their testimony, Mr. Van Ness received six doses of poison on as many different days, four of the doses administered under their eyes; yet they gave no warning to the unfortunate victim or to his friends. If the theory they upheld be correct, that Mrs. Wharton poisoned both General Ketchum and Mr. Van Ness, the extraordinary spectacle was presented of one man lying dead in the house from the effect of poison, of another receiving day after day the fatal dose with the knowledge of the attending physician, yet no antidote given, no warning word put forth, no saving of the evidences of guilt! It would seem as though silence at a trial would best become gentlemen with such a record, yet they were the only experts who asserted that strychnia was the sole possible cause for the attack of the 24th of June, and tartar emetic of the subsequent attacks.
The experts for the defence asserted that the convulsion of Saturday could not have been caused by strychnia or other known poison; that although the symptoms of the later attacks resembled those of tartar emetic poisoning, they were not identical with those usually produced by that drug; and that it was exceedingly improbable that these attacks were due to the poison named, because obvious natural causes for them existed.[24]
The impropriety and total insufficiency of our methods of criminal prosecutions were very strongly shown by this trial. One member of the jury could barely write his name, and not more than one or two of them were in the lowest sense of the term educated; no record of the testimony was kept by the court, and none, except in the very beginning, by the jury, who must therefore have been guided chiefly by impressions, lawyers’ speeches or newspaper records; the feeling amongst the populace, with whom the jurymen freely mingled, was so bitter that one of the experts was barred out of his lodgings at ten o’clock at night, openly because he was for the defence of Mrs. Wharton; the newspaper which circulated most largely in the place misrepresented the testimony, and devoted its columns to scurrilous attacks upon the integrity and professional ability of the medical witnesses for the defence. Yet under these influences, mazed and confused by the subtleties and partial statements of the lawyers, these twelve honest but ignorant men were called upon to decide between physicians offering precisely opposite opinions. It is well when this so-called administration of justice ends as a monstrous farce and not as a tragedy.
The conduct of the Wharton-Van Ness trial would have been far different if the expert testimony had been what it ought to have been. If the excretions of Mr. Van Ness had been put in the hands of a properly-qualified chemist, by finding the metal antimony or by proving its absence he would at once have settled the case. As it is, there is no proper evidence of the guilt of Mrs. Wharton. The probabilities are in favor of her innocence, because the symptoms were certainly widely divergent from those induced by poison, if not, as I believe, absolutely incompatible with poisoning. The medical gentlemen who attended Mr. Van Ness, by destroying all the evidence, have made a just conviction and an absolute proving of innocence equally impossible.
If it were necessary, further illustrations of the deficiencies of our criminal processes could be detailed. Some little time since, upon the chemical evidence of Professor Aiken, a poor colored woman was hung in Anne Arundel county, Maryland. She died protesting her innocence, and the general impression appears to be now that she did not commit the crime. A prominent member of the Maryland Bar told me recently of a case tried in that State, in which the accused, as he stated, certainly did kill the deceased with arsenic, yet in which, by showing the insufficiency of Professor Aiken’s analysis of the stomach, he obtained the acquittal of the prisoner.
It cannot be stated too strongly that the trouble is not in the science of toxicology, nor in the real students of it. So far as mineral poisons are concerned, any qualified expert will determine the question of poisoning with the unwavering step of a mathematical demonstration.
The legal recognition of the true character and position of the expert, and of certain principles of medical jurisprudence, would probably improve the present status, but it is doubtful whether some other method of reform may not be more available. Professor Henry Hartshorne, at the last meeting of the American Medical Association, suggested that the court should appoint in poisoning cases a commission to collect the scientific testimony and make report on the same. This seems at first sight practicable, but suppose the court had appointed, as is not at all improbable they would have done, Professors Aiken and Chew and Dr. Williams as the commission in Mrs. Wharton’s case? The result would certainly have been an unjust conviction.
In Spain and some other countries of Europe the custom is to refer the case to the local medical society. If the opinion afterward given is unanimous, the court is bound by it; if any member object to the opinion, the case is referred to the medical society of the province; if the disagreement continue, the matter is brought before the chief society of the capital. Evidently, this plan would not work well here. In Prussia it was formerly, and may still be, the custom for an expert holding a fixed appointment under the government to investigate the case, and to send his report to the Royal Medical College of Prussia. A standing committee of this body, after investigating the matter, sent the original report, with their comments, to the ministry, by whom it was referred to a permanent commission of experts. The report of the latter body, with all the other papers, was finally sent to the criminal court. This method seems complicated, but it resulted in giving to Prussia the best corps of experts the world has ever seen, as well as the most eminent individual medical jurists.
It is not, however, the object of the present paper to urge any especial method of reform, but to call attention to the need of it, and to show that the present evils do not grow out of the imperfections of medical jurisprudence, but out of the methods of our criminal procedures. Certainly, the matter needs investigation, and it is hardly possible but that some practicable means of relief could be devised by the deliberations of a mixed commission of lawyers and medical jurists of eminence.
H.C. WOOD, JR., M.D.
[Footnote 13: The utter absurdity of Dr. Williams’s assertion is shown by the fact that on the first and second trials of Mrs. Wharton he affirmed that the violent convulsions, the extreme muscular rigidity, the retentive stomach, seen in the last day of General Ketchum’s life were due to tartar emetic, and that to tartar emetic were due the excessive vomiting, the motionless prostration and muscular relaxation of Mr. Van Ness on the Sunday and Monday of his illness. Tartar emetic the sole possible cause of precisely opposite symptoms!]
[Footnote 14: The parsimony of many legal authorities is an indication of their want of appreciation of the differences in men. Not rarely medical experts are forced to sue a borough or county for compensation, even when the fee has been agreed on beforehand. In Huntingdon county, Pennsylvania, some time ago a woman was arrested on the charge of poisoning her mother-in-law, and the stomach of the deceased was sent to Professor Reese of this city for analysis. Warned by previous experience, he refused to make the analysis without a written agreement as to the fees. Nearly three months were spent by the authorities in vainly trying to get him to do it without such arrangement, and finally the stomach was returned unopened. During the whole of this time the poor woman, very probably innocent, was lying in prison with the dreadful charge hanging over her.]
[Footnote 15: A very forcible illustration occurs to me from my own experience. I was once summoned to see a woman in the Philadelphia Hospital to whom an assistant nurse of bad character had been seen to administer laudanum. At the time of my arrival she was apparently suffering from the advanced stages of opium poisoning. I spent about five hours in trying to restore her. The nurse protested that she had given only the medicinal dose ordered by the doctor, but was not believed. After death we found thrombosis of the brain–a rare affection, leaving such minute traces behind it that a careless examination will always fail to detect them. This was one of the affections which, as I had stated on the witness-stand some months before the occurrence just narrated, might have caused the death of Miss Stennecke with symptoms resembling those of opium poisoning.]
[Footnote 16: According to the testimony in both the cases of alleged poisoning by Mrs. Wharton, professional advice was called in at her request.]
[Footnote 17: I think the general opinion of the profession has endorsed the position of the defence. It is very probable that General Ketchum did die of the disease named, but there are other affections of which he I may have died; and certainly there were no sufficient grounds for asserting that the facts of his case were inconsistent with natural disease. The truth is, disease is often so hidden, its manifestations so obscure, its stamp upon the tissues so faint, that rarely is a physician justified in asserting from the symptoms and a _partial_ negative post mortem, such as was performed on General Ketchum, that any given death could not have been due to a natural cause. Numerous cases of death from natural causes have occurred in which science has been apparently baffled. I have myself seen at least one sudden death in which a careful post mortem failed entirely to detect the cause.]
[Footnote 18: Since writing the present paper I have been shown a private letter of Judge Pierce, written last April in regard to the first trial of Mrs. Wharton. After considerable solicitation the judge has allowed the publication of an extract from it, which I insert here as the words of one of our most eminent criminal jurists, He says: “I had made up my mind, when Dr. Williams’s first testimony was concluded, that the case would fail. When Professor Aiken’s examination was concluded it was beyond recovery. All efforts to secure a conviction after that were a waste of time and money. The case could have been safely for the defendant given to the jury on the testimony of the prosecution alone. If I had been sitting as a judge in the case, I would have instructed the jury at the close of the case for the State, if there had been no other testimony, that the evidence would not warrant a conviction. And I would have set aside the verdict if the jury had found the defendant guilty. I do not know the lady who was so wantonly charged with this crime, and I do not know of any case in the annals of criminal jurisprudence which, from the evidence submitted in the case, had so baseless a foundation for so grave a charge.”]
[Footnote 19: It is proper to state that Miss Wharton, in his presence, partook of the same claret, but perceived nothing peculiar either in its taste, as she told him at the time, or in its effects upon her afterward. According to Miss Wharton’s testimony, Mrs. Wharton actually drank the claret left in the glass of Mr. Van Ness directly after he left the room.]
[Footnote 20: This bottle was found in the house after the arrest of Mrs. Wharton, with compound tincture of gentian in it.
I have outlined the circumstances as Mr. Van Ness told them. A peculiarity of this trial was the direct contradiction of witnesses. Mr. Van Ness for a long time refused to entertain the idea that Mrs. Wharton had poisoned him. Whilst he was being persuaded into this belief he sent for Mrs. Neilson, a prominent lady of Baltimore, with whom both he and Mrs. Wharton were very intimate, and dismissing his wife from the room had a private conversation with her. During this, according to Mrs. Neilson’s testimony, he stated that Mrs. Wharton could not have poisoned him on the Saturday, because they had exchanged glasses when he complained of the bitterness of the one into which she had put the gentian. On the stand Mr. Van Ness flatly denied ever having said anything of the sort. In a point of such vital importance it is impossible to account for the contradiction by “failure of memory.”
Miss Neilson also contradicted Mr. Van Ness, and the act was in this case especially impressive from the manner in which it was done. Miss Neilson being on the stand, a dispute arose as to whether Mr. Van Ness had or had not previously made a sufficient denial for contradiction. To settle this, Miss Neilson left the stand: Mr. Van Ness went up and took the oath. Then the question was put, “Did you say so and so?” He answered, “I certainly did not.” Miss Neilson returning to the stand immediately after this, the question was put to her. The court-room was in the deepest silence while in a low but audible voice she replied, “He did say it.” The testimony of these ladies was in no degree shaken by a severe cross-examination.]
[Footnote 21: An essential symptom of tartar emetic poisoning is purging as well as vomiting. Dr. Williams of course knows this. It is a singular circumstance that whilst Mr. Van Ness stated that his bowels were scarcely affected at all, Dr. Williams testified that there was frequent purging. No remedies calculated to arrest purging were employed by Dr. Williams, however, during the illness of Mr. Van Ness.]
[Footnote 22: Mrs. Wharton’s trip to Europe had been arranged and her passage engaged months before the occurrence of these events. If the theory of the State of Maryland, that she poisoned General Ketchum, be true, by poisoning Mr. Van Ness she placed herself in the position of the criminal who voluntarily and without motive destroys his means of escape. Either she was insane, or the asserted crimes were not committed.]
[Footnote 23: It is well worthy of mention in this connection that Mr. I.G. Moale of Baltimore testified that he went for Dr. Chew on Sunday morning, on account of the sick stomach of Mr. Van Ness, and that Dr. Chew told him that the vomiting was the almost necessary result of the remedies used the day before–a truth which, previous to Mr. Moale’s appearance in Annapolis, the experts for the defence had insisted upon. H. Clay Dallam also testified that Dr. Williams had told him on Saturday that the indisposition of Mr. Van Ness the day before had been a nervous attack from overwork. This opinion also was in absolute agreement with the opinion expressed by the experts for the defence.]
[Footnote 24: The detailed reasons for this opinion will be given in a medical journal at the proper time. It is allowable here to state, however, that not one of the symptoms laid down by authorities as characteristic of strychnia poisoning was present in the attack of the 24th of June, and that not one of the symptoms which characterizes the natural convulsion was absent. Further, there is a connection between the various portions of Mr. Van Ness’s illness which is inconsistent with the theory advanced by the prosecution. Mr. Van Ness stated very positively that the attacks of the 19th, 20th and 24th of June commenced in the same way, with the same symptoms. Yet, according to the theory alluded to, they were the result of poisons which act in precisely opposite methods. On the other hand, the very simple natural explanation of the illness of Mr. Van Ness which was offered by the defence at the trial accounts for the unity and the diversity of the attacks, the basis of which, according to it, was over-susceptibility of the nervous system and of the stomach, produced by overwork and heat.]
THE SWEET WATERS.
The denizens of great cities, whose weary eyes are doomed to rest eternally on long rows of buildings, unrelieved by anything softer or fresher than brownstone or marble fronts, thirst for an occasional glimpse of Nature, so healing to jaded mind and wearied body. So universal is this sentiment that provision for gratifying it is not confined to the cities which our modern civilization has reared, nor do the capitals of Christendom alone boast of their parks and similar places of resort. In effete and uncivilized Turkey the “institution” has long been established, and still flourishes; and the “Sweet Waters of Constantinople” draw quite as well, as regards both male and female visitors, as either Fairmount, Central or Hyde Park, or even the Bois de Boulogne, to which far-famed resort of all that is wise, wicked or witty in Paris these Turkish parks most nearly assimilate.
One of the two “Valleys of the Sweet Waters” is on the European, the other on the Asiatic, side of the Bosphorus. The former is more frequented by the Greek and other Christian populations, while the latter is chiefly resorted to by the higher classes among the Turks and the veiled ladies of their hareems, and is often visited by the sultan himself.
To the Asiatic Sweet Waters you must go by boat, or rather by _caique_, a peculiar little frail cockle-shell of a conveyance, rowed by the most truculent-looking and unmitigated ruffians, Turkish or Grecian, to be found on any waters or in any land, Christian or heathen. Picturesque in costume and exceedingly ragged and dirty, with the most cut-throat expression of face possible to conceive of, when you entrust your person and purse to their tender mercies you involuntarily remember with satisfaction that you insured your life for a good round sum before leaving your native country, and that this is one of the risks it covers.
To the European Sweet Waters you may go by carriage, but if wise will go there also by caique; for even the corduroy roads of our Southern country, so famous for their dislocating qualities, can be paralleled by the so-called road over which once (and once only), for our sins, we suffered ourselves to be shaken, not driven. It is the fashion at Constantinople to visit the Asiatic Sweet Waters only on Friday (the Mussulman Sabbath), and the European Sweet Waters on Sunday; and on those days all that may be seen of Turkish ladies is on full exhibition.
If you select the Asiatic Sweet Waters for your visit, you go down to the wharf at Tophane, where the rival boatmen (caiquejees) raise as loud a din and make as fierce a fight for your person and piastres as you ever encountered on your arrival at New York in a European steamer from rival hack-drivers or hotel “touters.” Pulled, pushed and shoved about in all directions as fiercely as ever was the body of Patroclus in the _Iliad_, when Greek and Trojan contended for possession of it, you are at last hustled into a caique, and deposited in the bottom on soft cushions, your back supported by the end of the boat, your face to the two boatmen. The caique is gayly ornamented and pretty to look at, but it is the crankiest and tickliest of all nautical inventions–more resembling a Canadian birch-bark canoe than any other craft you are acquainted with. Admiring the view, you partially rise up and lean your elbow on the side of the boat. A warning cry from your boatmen and a sudden dip of your frail bark, which almost upsets you head-foremost to feed the fishes of the Bosphorus, admonish you to sit quietly, and you can scarcely venture to stir again during the long row. The caique is long and very narrow, and sharp at both ends–pointed, in fact. It is boarded over at these ends to prevent shipping seas. These planks are prettily varnished, with gilded rails, which give the boat a gay look.
The men row vigorously, and the frail skiff skims along the water at a rate of speed equal to an express-train. But the rushing of the rippling waters past the boat is the chief indication of the rapidity of our progress, so smoothly do we glide along. One peculiarity of the caique is that there are no rowlocks for the oars, which are held by a loop of leather fastened on the boat.
All the senses are soothed and steeped in Elysium during this rapid transit. The eye lazily runs over the squat-looking red houses with flat roofs which line the shore, to rest on the dark cypress trees which fill the intervening spaces, with the gilded balconies of some pleasure-palace of sultan or high Turk catching the sight occasionally. Caiques similar to your own are darting about in all directions, following, passing or meeting you, until at length you reach your destination, indicated by the crowd of caiques tied up there, like cabs on a grand-opera night waiting for their customers. Those of high Turkish functionaries or foreign ambassadors are very different from yours–as different as a coach-and-four from a common cab. Many of these have twelve rowers, all in fancy uniforms–red fezzes and jackets embroidered with gold–while the larger caiques are profusely and expensively ornamented.
Stepping ashore, you see a long line of carriages drawn up in several rows, and of every conceivable variety–from the Turkish araba to the most coquettish-looking Parisian coupe–gilded and adorned in a style to make a French lorette stare with amazement at a lavishness of expenditure exceeding her own.
The fair ones to whom these carriages belong may be seen in the distance squatting down on rugs spread out beneath the trees, and sipping coffee or sherbert while listening to musicians or story-tellers. You stroll toward them as near as their attendant guardians–grim-looking black eunuchs armed to the teeth, and quite ready to use those arms with very little provocation on the persons of any “dogs of infidels” who may interfere or seem to interfere with their fair charges–will permit. You see bundles of the gayest colored silks worn by women whose veils are thin as gossamer, and generally permit a very fair view of their charms, not only of face, but of bust as well. The bold black eyes of the caged birds flash out unshrinkingly on the strangers, who inspire curiosity, and not always aversion, if the language of those eyes be interpreted according to the Western code. In fact, the women seem to take a malicious pleasure in annoying their guards by encouraging such advances as can be made by the mute language of looks and signs.
Every Friday in the year the same pantomime is performed. The women go to the Sweet Waters to sit and stare at men whom they do not and never will know or speak to, and the men go to walk or waddle about and stare back at the women in the same way. This monotonous and melancholy pastime is varied by much stuffing of sweetmeats and cakes and sipping of colored beverages by the fair ones, and endless smoking by the men. There are strolling jugglers and musicians plying their trades for the amusement and paras of the public, and they are liberally patronized in the dreary dearth of amusement on these pleasure-grounds.
To the foreigner, after the sight has been seen a few times and divested of its novelty, the whole thing becomes tedious in the extreme; but we must remember that in his tastes the Turk is the very opposite of the Western man, and what would be death to us is fun to him. His idea of true enjoyment is that it should be passive, not active: his highest happiness is in “keff,” a perfect repose of mind and body–an exaggeration of the Italian _dolce far niente_. This keff he enjoys at these weekly meetings, and the women in their way enjoy it too as the only public exposition of themselves they are permitted to make, and as a break in the monotony of their dreary and secluded lives.
But there is another mode of killing time there, evidently borrowed, as are the carriages, from Europe. The conveyances at intervals are driven round a circular road in two long files, going and coming, to permit people to stare at each other, just as in London, Paris or New York, minus the salutations to friends or conversation. As the poet says of the stars–
In silence all
Move round this dark terrestrial ball,
though the women, while sitting under the trees, chatter like magpies to one another. The etiquette is to recline languidly back in the carriage and speak through the eyes alone to the mounted cavaliers, who prance as near the carriages containing veiled inmates as the sable guards will permit, to the infinite amusement of Fatima and Zuleika, and boundless wrath and disgust of Hassan or Mustapha, “with his long sword, saddle, bridle, etc.”
Two of these carriages are so peculiar to the place and people as to merit description. One of these, the “araba,” is an heirloom from their old Tartar ancestry, and is only an exaggerated ox-cart with seats, and a scaffolding of poles around it. Over these poles there hangs a canopy of red to keep off the sun, and the seats are well-stuffed cushions, making a kind of bed of the bottom of the wagon. Into this curious conveyance are piled promiscuously the mother, children and slaves of the establishment–packed in as tightly as possible; and the contrast of costumes, faces, colors and ages between its occupants may be imagined, but cannot be described. For a genuine old-fashioned family carriage commend us to the araba.
This curious conveyance is drawn not by horses, but by white oxen, whose broad fronts are pleasingly painted between the eyes bright red with henna, the dye with which the Turkish ladies tinge their own fair hands and the soles of their feet. The oxen bear high wooden yokes covered with fringes and tassels, and their tails are often looped up with bright cords. Their pace, bearing their heavy burden of wood and flesh, is slow and stately, and the jolting of the springless wagon over the rough roads seemingly very severe. But the inmates seem used to their discomforts, and sit placidly and contentedly on their uneasy seats, apparently proud of their turn-out and the effect they are producing. These cumbrous vehicles are much affected by the elder ladies of the sultan’s court, who constitute the Faubourg-Saint-Germain portion of society. True old-school Turks these, who look down with scorn on the new fashions, both in costume and carriage, stolen or adopted from the despised Franks.
Chief and most conspicuous of these latter is the small imitation brougham or coupe, termed a “teleki,” and generally built at Paris regardless of cost, and resembling a Christian carriage about as nearly as the Turk resembles a European when he puts on a similar dress. The teleki is pumpkin-shaped, almost round, painted and gilded in the gayest colors, with large bunches of the brightest flowers painted on panels and on the glasses which shut it in all round. It is the most dazzling carriage the imagination of carriage-makers ever devised, and well adapted to the taste of the grown-up children it is intended for, who, clad in raiments of rose-color, pink, bright blue or scarlet, seem a fit lining for the gorgeous exterior. Unlike the French carriage, the teleki has no springs; so the exercise these fair ladies get is about equal to that of a ride on a hard-trotting horse.
Another peculiarity consists in the driver’s dismounting from his box and walking gravely alongside the carriage, holding in his hands the colored silken reins to guide the well-bred horses.
On horseback alongside prance the ill-favored eunuchs, ready to swear at or smite the insolent Frank venturing too near the moon-eyed beauties in the teleki.
At these Sweet Waters the sultan has his own kiosk, a gilded monstrosity of architecture, and at its window, worn, pallid, haggard, gazing out with lacklustre and indifferent eye upon the scene below, this shadow of the Prophet might frequently be seen a few years since. It was etiquette for him to come sometimes, so he did it as a duty, not a pleasure; for the poor man had no pleasures, being the most utterly _blase_ man in this wide world. The drawback on all his pomp and power is the condition annexed to it, that no one is worthy of his society, and he must be ever alone, in public as in private. A representative of the faith as well as of the loyalty of his people, no one can be supposed to meet or associate with him on terms approaching equality, and hence his isolation from human sympathy or society.[25]
The fountain is covered by a square roof, and all around it are marble slabs with Turkish inscriptions in gilt letters praising the virtues of the water. In that scriptural phraseology so common in the East you are notified that “These waters are as sweet as those of the well of Zemzem, of which Abraham drank, and like unto those of the rivers of Paradise to the hot and thirsty who come here to taste them.” The water was really very good water, but its praises struck us as rather hyperbolical, possibly because the Frank at Constantinople generally drinks and prefers other and more potent beverages.
But drinking the water is the least part of the performance here, and, unlike Saratoga, “flirtation around the spring” is a thing undreamed of where the sexes, at peril of life and limb, dare not even approximate, much less exchange courtesies over the draught.
There is a narrow road which leads you away from this busy spot to the sources of the fountains of these Sweet Waters. But road-making is not one of the triumphs of Turkish skill, and this is a very dirty and dusty road, full of holes which would smash the springs of any conveyances less primitive and strong than those in use. It is hedged in by fig trees growing to a size which would astonish those who have only seen the dwarf trees of the species which we possess. Passing along this road, we reach the inner valley. Here we find fewer people, but the same astonishing variety of race and costume which makes the other so curious and characteristic. The richness of the silk and satin dresses, all of the brightest colors, which adorn the women, and the gayly-embroidered jackets of the men, make the eyes ache which gaze upon them. Almost every specimen of the Eastern races may be seen here–all taking their pleasure in the same indolent way which distinguishes Eastern enjoyment. The Circassian and Georgian women are certainly very beautiful, as far as regularity of features, bold flashing eyes and great symmetry of form can make them; but they lack expression, the highest feminine charm, and softness is alien to those bold beauties. They remind you of Jezebel, and like her they “paint their faces” before going into public. Not only do they smear their faces freely with white and red, but they also join together their eyebrows by a thick black band of _kohl_, and with the same pigment blacken the lower lids of the eyes, giving a wicked and peculiar expression to the eyes. The tips of the fingers are stained red with henna; and without these appliances no Eastern woman deems her toilette complete. Many of them would doubtless be exceedingly lovely were they to let themselves alone, but Turkish taste requires these appliances, and an unpainted woman is a rarity.
It is an Eastern saying that a woman should be a load for a camel, and in deference to this taste they fatten themselves up until they become mountains of flesh. Where obesity is considered a charm, delicacy of outline ceases to be regarded, and a woman who has not rotundity is regarded as an unfortunate being. They are decidedly the greatest collection of well-fed females to be seen in the world.
The task of the black guards who accompany these houris is anything but a sinecure, and “nods and becks and wreathed smiles” are freely bestowed on the male passers-by in spite of etiquette and eunuchs. If the scandalous chronicles of the coffee-shops and bazaars are to be relied upon, “Love laughs at locksmiths” here as well as in more civilized lands, and Danger and Opportunity wink at each other. There is far less decorum and outward reserve of manner here than in our parks, but this freedom is all confined to looks and gestures, access and converse being both forbidden.
Frequently, however, the bad-tempered guardians of the hareem commit outrages on the persons of real or supposed aggressors in this way, and from these even members of the foreign embassies have not always been exempt. The difficulty of identifying the offender in such cases enhances the impunity of these wretches, for to arrest one on the spot would be impossible in the midst of a crowd which sympathizes with the offender, instead of the sufferer, and looks upon it as a proper punishment for the insolent Giaour. A private person unconnected with an embassy has still less chance for satisfaction, but must pocket the affront, even if smitten by whip or flat of sabre, considering himself fortunate to have escaped maiming or mutilation should he incautiously give a pretext for Ethiopian or Nubian intervention.
Few persons of foreign birth and training would go more than twice to visit the Sweet Waters of Asia, whose peculiarities and amusements have been thus briefly sketched. The spectacle at the European Sweet Waters differs somewhat from the routine already described. There, although you also meet the Turks, the greater proportion of the visitors are either Greeks or native Christians of different races. You see fewer arabas and telekis, and more carriages, or rather hacks, and men galloping along on raw-boned horses in a kind of imitation “Rotten-Row” style. The men wear the European dress, often surmounted by the red fez: the women dress in an insane imitation of French fashions, and glitter with jewelry–a passion with Eastern women of all races and creeds. Frequently a woman carries her whole fortune and her husband’s in these ornaments, which, in a country where the difference between _meum_ and _tuum_ is so little observed by persons in authority, is regarded as the safest mode of investment.
The European Sweet Waters are rather more dull and less interesting than the Asiatic, owing to the causes already described, nor is compensation to be found in the superior beauty of the women; for, as a general rule, the Greek men are better looking than the women; and the intercourse between the sexes is regulated on the Eastern plan to a very great extent, though there is not the same absolute prohibition, nor the same peril attendant on the attempt to open an acquaintance. In all Eastern countries, however, the position and treatment of woman are modified by the prevailing prejudice, which places her on a much lower level than the man, and deprives her of most of the cherished privileges of her more favored Western sisters. If the Turk has failed in forcing his religious faith on his Christian vassals, he has succeeded in fixing the social status of their women on much the same basis as his own.
The day selected for visiting the European Sweet Waters by the native or Greek population is either Sunday or on the festival of some one of the many saints whose names are legion in the Greek calendar. Never was there a people so fond of holidays, or who take them oftener under religious pretexts. Yet they celebrate them in anything but a pious manner. Their fasts are much fewer and not so punctiliously observed.
As the restriction on intoxicating beverages is not such a cardinal article of faith at the European as at the Asiatic Sweet Waters, that element enters into the diversions at the former place, to the frequent scandal of the decorous and abstemious Turks. The fiery wines of Sicily and the Greek islands are freely indulged in, and tipsy cavaliers, caracoling on the hacks of Pera and Galata, are not infrequent accessories, aggravating the danger and discomfort to the stranger of the return in carriage or on horseback. The roughness of the road, its heat and dust, are bad enough; but to aggravate these discomforts you have a crowd of hacks and a swarm of cavaliers pursuing the same route, with all the collisions inevitable from unskillful coachmen and tipsy riders. It is a long, dreary drive too, with no scenery worth looking at on the route, even could you discern it through the dense clouds of dust which envelop you from its commencement to its close. When you reach your hotel you take a bath to refresh yourself, and go down to supper, exclaiming with a sigh of relief, “Well, thank Heaven! I have seen the Sweet Waters!”
EDWIN DE LEON.
[Footnote 25: This rule was observed by Abdul Medjid, the late sultan, of whom I speak. It is said that his successor has broken through this restriction to a considerable extent, and is a social being.]
MADEMOISELLE STYLITES.
I.
The discussion between Mr. John Woodstock and his sister was becoming animated, and their aunt, who never could understand the difference between a discussion and a quarrel, was listening anxiously, expecting every moment to see Marjory flounce out of the room at one door, and John at the other, in their respective furies. It began in this way: John had just read a notice of an extraordinary concert to come off the next week, and had pushed the paper over to Marjory, with the remark, “Like to go, Peg?”
_She_. Of course I should like to go! You don’t mean to say you have tickets for it? (Excitedly.)
_He_. No, of course I don’t: I am not a thief.
_She_. No, you are only the next thing to it–a shabby fellow. Why did you ask me in that way when you knew we couldn’t go?
_He_. How you do jump at lame and impotent conclusions! Who said we could not go? I am sure I did not.
_She_. John Woodstock, if you don’t stop this, and tell me what you mean, I will never make you another shirt!
_He_. Small loss! Of all mean things, a homemade shirt is the meanest; and why a man of my native nobility of character should be condemned to wear them–
_Their aunt_ (distressedly). Children! children!–
_He_ (soothingly). Never mind, aunty: she did not mean it. She would not put it out of her power to say that she had made every shirt I ever wore for all the mines of Golconda.
_She_. What a small potato you are!
_He_. Now, my dear Marjory, how often must I tell you that calling a fellow names is not arguing? If you could keep from being abusive for five minutes, you might hear of something to your advantage. I have a little money, for a wonder, but it is like the turkey–too much for one, and not enough for two. You cannot go by yourself, for it is an evening affair; but if you were not so frightfully vain about your personal appearance, I think we could manage it. I heard you say yesterday that you had the money for a new pair of gloves: if you will sacrifice them, we can go, and in two weeks I can give you the gloves besides. I can’t before, for my princely income is at present heavily mortgaged. Can you furbish up your old ones till then, and thereby prove yourself sensible for once?
_She_. You are a pretty good boy, after all; but really I have not a decent pair to my name: that last pair of light ones got lemonade all over them, and it took the color out, of course.
_He_. Now I’ll tell you what! I can take them for you on my way down town, and leave them to be dyed, and then you can do some fancy-work on their backs; and what more do you want?
_She_ (doubtfully). But would black gloves do?
_He_ (conclusively). Of course they would for a thing like that. Fetch them out, and be quick about it; and bring your money too, for I had better buy the tickets this morning, and then we shall have some choice as to seats.
So it was arranged. Marjory’s lofty mind did wince a little at the idea of dyed gloves, but she tried not to think of it. John brought the objectionable kids home in time for elaborate decoration “on their backs;” but, as he watched her in the pauses of his reading aloud, they both observed with anxiety that the black “came off a little,” and Marjory asked him to warn her if he saw her let them go anywhere near her face.
Two children never enjoyed a holiday more than these two enjoyed that concert. Dyed gloves and all other sublunary trials were forgotten: Marjory did not touch her face once; and when the happy evening was over, the gloves were put away with a loving pat on their backs, and John had risen ten degrees in Marjory’s respect.
If those gloves had but rested on their laurels! But if people of genius will not do that, can you expect it of dyed gloves? Few are the authors who have not followed up a brilliant success with something very like a failure, and Marjory’s gloves seemed to catch the spirit of the times.
Before the two weeks were up which were to restore John to comparatively easy circumstances, and Marjory to respectability so far as her hands went, John asked her to go with him to hear a lecture. Just about that time he was rather wild concerning natural history, for which, I am sorry to say, Marjory did not care a pin. She indignantly repelled the idea of a gorilla somewhere toward the top of her family tree, asserting that she preferred to believe that she had descended from so mean a man as Adam, and so curious a woman as Eve, to that: furthermore, she was indifferent upon the subject. But there was not much she would not do to please John; so when he asked her to go with him to hear a lecture about the gorilla, she made a face to herself, and said certainly she would.
She consented with rather better grace from the fact that Mr. Pradamite–such was the lecturer’s euphonious name–undertook to prove conclusively that man was _not_ descended from the gorilla; but when the little old gentleman walked briskly upon the stage, she whispered John that he would have been a valuable advocate of the theory held by the other side: he wanted nothing but a little pointed felt hat, with a feather in it, to look very much like a small edition of the original gorilla reduced to earning his living by assisting a hand-organist.
The lecture, to John, was delightful–so clear, so logical, went so far back, and so deep down, and so high up. “Walked all around that fellow I heard last week on the other side,” John said. But Marjory, who had herself taken a long walk that afternoon, thought the whole thing unutterably stupid: her eyelids would drop, her neck felt double-jointed and would not stay erect. Fortunately, their seats were far back, not very brilliantly lighted, and Marjory’s had the advantage of being next a pillar. John, however, considered this fact unfortunate, for he could not obtain a good view of the remarkable figures with which the old gentleman was illustrating his lecture, talking in spasmodic jerks as he drew, and when John saw a dear and scientific friend on a front seat, with a vacant place beside him, he could not resist the temptation to take it. He looked at Marjory: she was half asleep, but still contending bravely for the other half. He surveyed their immediate neighbors–three strong-minded-looking women just behind them; a fatherly-looking old gentleman in the seat next his own; a pillar protecting Marjory on the other side, and two highly respectable-looking young men in the row of seats before them, who appeared to be listening intently and occasionally taking notes; at least, one of them was, and he submitted his note-book to the criticism of the other, who smiled approvingly. The seats immediately in front of his own and Marjory’s were vacant.
“Would you mind, Peggy,” said John, deprecatingly, “if I left you for a few minutes? I can’t half see what he is drawing, and there is a vacant front seat. I’ll only stay five minutes.”
“Certainly, dear,” said Marjory with sleepy amiability: “stay up there till he has finished, and then come back for me. I am not at all afraid.”
“Oh no: I will not do that,” answered John, considerately, “but I do want to go for a few minutes.” So away he went, and, once up there, he of course “took no note of time,” and Marjory was left to her own devices. These were few and simple, but small causes sometimes produce great effects. She had on those gloves, of course.
She never could recall that part of the evening very distinctly. A confused recollection that she found the pillar very comfortable for a while; that finally the ridges in it hurt her cheek; that she had one or two lucid intervals between her naps, in one of which she concluded that it would be better to take those gloves off for fear of marking her face; and that while she was doing so she caught a sentence or two of the lecture–something like this: “This one essential point of difference is in itself convincing proof of the theory which I hold. The difference in the formation of the hands is a difficulty which no theory of development can overcome.” These few insignificant items were all which remained in her memory: then the little gentleman’s voice gradually took to her ears the form of a chant: his “theory,” as the simple rustic said about a matter less abstruse, “might be wrong, but it was awful soothin’,” and pleasant dreams of having four hands, all available, and not of the objectionable sort whose bones the professor was dangling, beguiled the time for Marjory–how long she knew not.
What woke her? Surely somebody laughed? She started up: the lecture was over at last; John, with a penitent face, was hastening back to her; the people who had sat nearest her were gone, and so were her gloves!
“What, in thunder–” said John forcibly, looking at her face in blank amazement.
“Oh, I didn’t mind,” she answered mildly, thinking he was apologizing. “I believe I have had a little nap, Jack, but I can’t find my gloves: will you look under the next seat, please?”
“My dear child,” said John, shaking with suppressed laughter, “your face has ‘found your gloves’ with a vengeance! It’s as black as–anything. Can’t you put your veil down till we get out of this?”
Obediently hiding her countenance, Marjory, bewildered and still not quite awake, followed John after a few minutes’ further and fruitless search for the missing gloves.
The brisk walk home through the frosty air restored her consciousness, and when John led her up to the looking-glass, kindly removing her veil at the same time, consciousness took the form of wrath.
“I _never_ could have done all that myself,” she exclaimed indignantly. “Why, I took those hateful gloves off, and put them on the cushion; and it is just my belief that one of those dreadful boys in front of us–”
“Boys!” interrupted John. “Those fellows were enough older than you–or I either, for that matter.”
“I don’t care,” said Marjory, with tears of vexation in her brown eyes. “They behaved like boys, for when I woke–I mean just before you came for me–I thought I heard somebody laugh, and then they were gone, and my gloves were gone too; and I just believe they managed to blacken my face somehow, and then stole my gloves.”
“If I thought that–” exclaimed John savagely; and then added in a puzzled tone, “But how could they have done it, Peg, unless you were sleeping like a rock?”
“Well, I believe I was,” answered the young woman candidly, “for I was tired to death, and couldn’t understand half the gorilla said.”
“It was all my fault for dragging you there, and then leaving you,” said John, his penitence making him overlook this glaring disrespect to his hobby and its rider. “But those fellows looked like gentlemen; and besides, I know who that old man was who sat next me, and I am sure he would not have let any such trick be played right under his nose without stopping it.”
“You can think what you please,” said Marjory, a little crossly, for her naturally good temper had been severely tried, “but nothing will ever make me believe it was not those boys.”
II.
Some weeks had elapsed since that sorrowful result of praiseworthy economy. Marjory’s feelings had been soothed by a pair of tan-colored kids, three-buttoned, stitched on the backs, accompanied by a glove-buttoner and a hug from John. The mention of dyed gloves still raised a flush on her round cheeks and painful recollections in her heart, but she was beginning to banish the sore subject from her mind, and to half smile to herself when she did think of it; for, in spite of the enormity of the supposed offence, the vision of her remarkable appearance when John raised her veil before the glass was too much for her risibles as it grew more and more retrospective. For she was one of those happy mortals who cannot help seeing a joke, even when it points their way.
She came down stairs one evening arrayed in her best bib and tucker, and was speedily joined by John, whose appearance likewise indicated some approaching festivity–all but his face, which wore a rather disgusted expression. “What a bore parties are!” said that world-weary individual from the height of his twenty-third year.
“That depends,” answered Marjory with the superior wisdom of eighteen. “If one meets bright people, they are not a bore. And I’ll give you some advice, Jack: don’t always take it for granted that the girls can only talk gossip and fashions. Take it for granted that they have at least as much sense as you have, and talk about something worth while.”
“The descent of man, for instance?” suggested John, somewhat mischievously. “From the interest _you_ take in that, I’ve no doubt the rest of the girls would be charmed.”
“What is that thing somebody said about the man of one book?” asked Marjory, looking abstracted.
“Don’t know,” replied John–“never met him.”
The party was about as lively and about as stupid as parties generally are. There was a little pleasant music, a little innocent “square dancing,” a very well-ordered supper, and a good deal of conversation.
Toward the close of the evening the hostess came to Marjory. “My dear,” she said, “I have a young friend here whom I wish to introduce to you and your brother: he told me he had heard of John’s interest in scientific matters, and as he has just come to live in the city, he has not many acquaintances. He is a very nice fellow. I know all about him, and I want him to have a few pleasant visiting-places: I always feel so sorry for a young man away from his family in a large city. May I bring him and introduce him to you?”
“Certainly, if he is not stupid,” said Marjory, smiling. “There is John: I will make him come here before you have captured your young man, and then we can be introduced together.”.
John, however, was talking biology or protoplasm or something else to an interested listener on the other side of the room, and was blind to all Marjory’s “nods and becks and wreathed smiles.” So, when the amiable old lady returned with her prize, whom she appeared to have “captured” without either difficulty or delay, Marjory had the introduction all to herself. She was not one of those wonderful inventions, a girl who can meet a man’s eyes with a steady stare, and for the first few minutes after their hostess left them she only noticed that her new acquaintance looked and spoke like a gentleman, that he had a very pleasant voice, and that, without being pedantic, he was not talking nonsense. Imagine the sensation which took place in her head when, at some bright speech from her antagonist–for they had immediately fallen into an argument–she raised her laughing eyes to his face, and saw–one of the youths who had fallen under her righteous indignation on the memorable night of the gorilla lecture! Marjory had what are called “speaking eyes.” It afflicted her greatly that, no matter what the emergency, her feelings would appear in her face; so–although she struggled hard to go on as if nothing had happened, resolving, after a hasty mental review of the situation, to behave as if she had never seen him before, and upon better acquaintance demand the truth if she liked him, and let him severely alone if she did not–anybody could have seen her countenance change, and to her intense chagrin she felt herself blushing. To make matters worse, he blushed too, and over his intelligent face flitted just the shadow of a smile.
This was too much! Marjory fanned herself vigorously, and hazarded an original observation in a constrained voice. “Don’t you think it is very warm here?” she said.
“Very!” replied the student of nature. “Shall we walk in the hall for a few minutes?” and he offered her his arm. She rested the tips of her fingers on his sleeve, and they proceeded to walk up and down the hall, she being saved only by her escort from collision with various other couples similarly employed. This interesting exercise lasted for some minutes, varied by attempts at conversation which were about as natural as spasms. Marjory took a desperate resolution. This absurd state of things should not last much longer, if she could help it. “I never could act as if nothing was the matter when something was,” she began, “and I can’t help it if this is not polite; but I think, from what Mrs. Grove said about you, that you will tell me the truth if I ask you something. Will you?” and she looked up once more.
“Certainly I will,” he answered gravely, meeting her glance with steady, honest eyes, and somehow, short as their acquaintance had been, she believed him.
She had meant to ask him deliberately if he or his companion, or both, had stolen her gloves and decorated her face, but she felt unable to do that with those eyes on hers; so she changed her tactics, and said, rather meekly, considering what her former feelings had been: “Will you please tell me exactly what happened the evening that man lectured about the gorilla, and you sat nearly in front of my brother and me?”
“That was your brother, then?” he said quickly, and then stopped, looking a little foolish.
“Yes,” she answered, with a surprised glance at his face; “but you said you would answer.”
“I beg your pardon,” he replied. “I will, of course, and I know you will believe me. After your brother left you, you leaned your head against the pillar, and then, as if the grooving hurt your face, you put your hand between; and then–I must apologize for my apparent impoliteness, but I promised to tell the truth;” and he smiled a little–“then you seemed to fall fast asleep. A mosquito lit on your nose, and woke you. When you raised your head, your cheek was quite black from your glove; you rubbed your nose and made that black too; then you went to sleep again, and directly a curl of your hair fell over your other cheek, and woke you again, and you gave your cheek a little slap, thinking, I suppose, that the mosquito had come back: that left the mark of your fingers, and you rubbed it a little and made it yet blacker. Then you took your gloves off and fell asleep again; and then–you will believe now that I am telling you ‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,’ for I am risking your displeasure by telling what came next;” and he flushed up to his hair–“I made up my mind that it was my duty to secure those gloves, and prevent thereby the possibility of such an accident in the future. So I put my arm over the back of the seat carelessly, and when nobody was looking I picked them up and pocketed them. It was not I who laughed, but my brother, who did not notice your face–after you had blackened it, that is–until he rose to go, when he laughed involuntarily, and I collared him and took him off. Now you know all about it, and I await my sentence. Can you forgive me for stealing your gloves? The motive at least was good.”
Marjory’s face had cleared as this highly circumstantial narrative progressed, and when it was finished she looked up smiling. “Yes,” she said, “I quite forgive you: the motive is everything. But do please tell me, were you really so interested in what that little gorilla said as you seemed to be? You were taking notes, you know–I saw that before I went to sleep. Now what was there that was worth making a note of? I am sure I heard nothing.”
“Would you like to see my notes?” he asked, drawing a little book from his waistcoat pocket.
“Yes, if they are not long,” she answered doubtfully; “but Jack will tell you how stupid I am on all such subjects as that.”
He placed the book in her hand, open, and she saw a clever sketch of herself and the pillar: underneath was written, “Mademoiselle Stylites.”
“Did you draw that?” she asked, smiling in spite of herself.
“Yes,” he replied, answering her smile. “I am fond of sketching from nature.” Then, as he glanced at the picture, he added hastily, “I forgot that absurd inscription: George, my brother, did that.”
Marjory did not look deeply offended, even at the “absurd inscription;” and the conversation continued, upon different and indifferent subjects, until John bethought himself of his duty, and came to find her. She introduced her squire to him, and after a few minutes more of pleasant conversation they separated, Mr. Owen–such was the natural philosopher’s name–having received John’s assurance of a speedy call upon him, and given his address with an alacrity which proved, John thought, that they were kindred spirits.
As they walked home, John suddenly exclaimed, “You know I never remember faces, Peg, but somehow I feel as if I had seen that fellow before. He’s an uncommonly good fellow, and Mrs. Grove says he is very fond of my hobby, as you call it, so I shall go to see him soon.”