Chapter 2

Then Mr. Pope got on his legs. He passed his hand over his face, and there was a countenance for you!--luminous, inspired, magical; a face one moment like to a running brook for poetry and liquid sentiment, the lines and wrinkles on it shifting about and rippling sweetly down into his chin, where they cascaded off, so to speak; the next moment like a mighty and rugged rock, a stronghold of security and protection, on which he presently smote, Moses-like, and the brook of which I spoke gushed out again.

"You know already, gentlemen," said he, "my view of this case. I think that by this time it must be yours also."

Mrs. Stiles moaned. Then Mr. Pope proved to the jury that it was utter nonsense for Mrs. Stiles's witnesses to pretend that they had seen the accident, because the ordinary pedestrian looks at his nose when he is walking, and not at the car-track. The jury smiled, the room grew hotter and hotter, and the judge whiter and whiter.

"Mr. Mecutchen?" cried Mr. Pope. "Mr. Mecutchen never laid eyes on Mrs. Stiles until he saw her lying in the middle of the street. I don't say he is intentionally prevaricating. Of course he thinks he saw all that he says he did. I grew up in the firm conviction that I had known Judas Iscariot. I was ten years old before I could be persuaded that it was only a sweet delusion,--a dazzling dream of childhood, too bright to last."

The jury roared.

Then Mr. Pope talked of his own witnesses, and the virtues with which he didn't invest those remarkable beings may exist in heaven, but are certainly not to be found on earth, nor even in any of the intermediate planetary paradises known to the Spiritualists.

And then--then he descended on Mrs. Stiles herself.

"What," he cried, suddenly, turning with an outburst of indignant impatience from the petty arguments into which his love for the exhibition of the whole truth in all its details had led him, "what are you told by the most respectable and conscientious witness who has appeared here to-day? What is the testimony of the one person who ought to know _everything_ about this case? What does Mrs. Stiles say? Nothing. She says nothing. She doesn't know what happened. If this were a strong case, she would describe to you with minute particularity the manner in which she put her hand upon the rail of the car, stepped on, was jolted, tried to save herself, was thrown off. But not a word of this have you heard from her. All that she remembers, as she confesses, is that the car was in motion when she got on it."

Oh, where was Celandine? Had she gone out only to get ice-cream, or because Georgiana was so hot that she couldn't stand it any longer? Mrs. Stiles could not remember. Maybe it was Mr. Mecutchen that had spoken of the ice-cream, and Celandine was going to put Georgiana in the cars and send her home. It would have been better to send Augustus home with her. And where were Augustus and Tecumseh Sherman?

Mrs. Stiles looked about the room. She saw no friendly faces, nobody to encourage her, nobody whom she could apply to in her distress. How hot it was! Could she not go over to the window and get a breath of air? The room was very crowded. Mrs. Stiles hesitated, half rose, hesitated again, and then got up and limped outside of the railings. People made way for her, and when she reached the window a dark-faced man gave her a place, and she went through a sort of parody of putting her head out into the air.

The dark man looked at her thoughtfully. "Shan't I get you a glass of water?" said he. Mrs. Stiles accepted his kindness with immense gratitude. The dark man went and brought the water, and watched her with a pair of very keen eyes while she was drinking it.

"Mr. Pope is making a good speech," he said presently.

Mrs. Stiles groaned. "Do you think he'll win?" she asked.

"Win?" said the dark man, with a pleasant smile. "Well, I should think so. Just listen to him."

"But I'm not saying anything to Mrs. Tarbell's discredit," said the Honorable Pope. "Not a bit of it. Not a bit of it. Her feelings do her infinite honor. In her appearance on our wordy and contentious stage I see the commencement of a new era of things. Let her be guided by her feelings. Let her still preserve that beautiful sympathy which is one of the chiefest ornaments of the female sex. It will bring to her a thousand cases of injustice and oppression which we hardened lawyers of the other sex have lost--if we ever had it--the instinct to detect. It will lead her and her sisters to find justice and consolation for innumerable victims of wrong-doing, whose hopes of obtaining redress might have seemed poor and empty to us less inspired practitioners. No one, no man, however jealous and crabbed in temper, will be sorry to see the law vivified by a spark of that genius, that inexplicable instinct by which women know what is right and make right to be done, where men fail and fail again." Here Mr. Pope paused, and his features were those of an angel. Then his expression changed to one of the most remarkable sagacity and wariness. "But no one, gentlemen, will fail to recognize the danger, easily avoided, which accompanies the lubricating, so to speak, of our legal machinery by this sometimes superabundant sympathy. Even genius errs, even instinct may be mistaken. Take the present case. My learned opponent would be acting strictly within her duty by bringing this case before you to ask for your decision. A man would do that. A casehardened lawyer like myself would do that. But a man would take it for granted his client was wrong, if he were beaten. Perhaps my learned opponent will do the same thing. But if she does I shall be mistaken. In all her subsequent career, which will be marked by more generosity, charity, and enthusiasm than can now be boasted of by any man at the bar, she never will believe that the verdict which I am asking you to give was just to Mrs. Stiles. But she will be wrong. Right in a hundred other cases, perhaps,--let that stand for the proportion, if you will,--but wrong in this. And nothing but her misapplied sympathy and tenderness of heart could have lent her the vigor and earnestness which she has displayed to-day.

"Now, gentlemen, one thing more."

"That'll fetch 'em," said the dark man decidedly.

"Oh," moaned Mrs. Stiles, half aloud, "why didn't Mrs. Tarbell let me accept that there compromise?"

"Compromise?" said the dark man quickly. "Why, are you Mrs. Stiles?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Stiles, drawing back in great alarm.

"And you say you were offered a compromise by the railway company which your lawyer didn't let you accept?" said the dark man, in lower tones.

"Why, yes," said Mrs. Stiles hesitatingly.

The dark man struck his hand against the window-seat. "Well, upon my word!" said he.

"Do you think I ought to have took it?" said poor Mrs. Stiles, in a stifled voice.

The dark man eyed her pityingly. "You've lost your chance now," said he.

There was a sudden cry, a great bustle in the court-room, a rush toward the judge's bench. Mr. Pope stopped short in his speech, looked up, and hastened to follow the court clerk, who had sprung over the desk, though Mr. Pope went round by the side-bar. The judge had swooned in his chair, falling forward upon his desk. The heat had at last got the upper hand of him, after a severe fight of two or three hours. Jurymen, witnesses, spectators, all stood aghast. The judge was brought to and assisted to his room, and the court clerk, presently returning to the disturbed and excited forum, announced that, his honor being unwell, all parties would be dismissed until to-morrow morning at ten o'clock,--and there was a general rush for the door.

So it happened that when Miss Stiles and Mr. Mecutchen came back to the court-room they found it closed, and neither Mrs. Stiles nor Mrs. Tarbell anywhere to be seen.

The next morning, at ten o'clock, Mrs. Tarbell was wondering what had become of the Stileses. She had missed Mrs. Stiles the day before, after the sudden adjournment of the court, but she had been detained by Pegley and friends, and thought it not unnatural that her client should have decided not to wait for her. She was rather glad the accident had happened,--that is, she was not sorry on her own account,--for the delay had given her time to prepare one or two witticisms in answer to Mr. Pope. She greeted Mr. Pope with a pleasant smile as he came into court, but Mr. Pope seemed rather surprised to find her in such a serene frame of mind.

"I assure you, my dear madam," said he, coming up to her instantly, and speaking in his most earnest tones, "I assure you that I had nothing to do with it whatever. I had no idea that anything of the sort was going on; I knew absolutely nothing of it until they sent word to me from the railway-office in the afternoon, and I really most sincerely regret that I am forced to take advantage of my client's--and your client's--improper action."

"What--what do you mean?" said Mrs. Tarbell, very much perplexed.

"What? Haven't you heard?" cried Mr. Pope.

"Heard? What should I hear?"

From the depths of his green bag Mr. Pope extracted a stiff pasteboard envelope, bursting with papers and confined by an india-rubber band. From this envelope he drew out a folded document, which he handed to Mrs. Tarbell; and when Mrs. Tarbell clapped eyes on the document's contents her face wore an expression before which Pope ought to have blushed for shame. The document was a release, given by Mrs. Stiles to the railway company,--a printed form, with blanks to be filled in as the individual case should demand; a devilish engine of cozen and covin, constructed in cold blood by the railway company, and supplied to them (as a small line of print at the bottom of the paper showed) by Detweiler, the Blank-Book Mfr., Irving Ave. and Prime St. Mrs. Stiles had sold herself. For one hundred and twenty-five dollars she had released to the railway company all the claims she might have, or could have, upon it at any time, past, present, or future, on account of her accident. There was Mrs. Stiles's hand, there was her seal; the date was yesterday. Mrs. Tarbell read the release, and then looked at Mr. Pope. But he did not blench.

"I regret this extremely, Mrs. Tarbell," he said. "It places me in a very unenviable position. It was done," he continued, with a brazen front, "it was done without my knowledge. My advice was not asked: the company acted on their own responsibility and of their own motion. It is, at best, a poor compliment to me as an officer of the road."

"Pray, how did Mrs. Stiles happen to go to the company's office?" asked Mrs. Tarbell.

"I have not had a very clear account of it myself," said Mr. Pope, clearing his throat and putting one foot up on a chair in front of him. "It seems, however, that Mrs. Stiles was--hem--very much frightened by my speech, and in some way got into conversation with an agent of the company, a sort of bailiff to the corporation, in fact,--a man who serves their subpoenas, and looks up their witnesses, and so on, in addition to other work. This man is a sharp fellow, and, finding out which way the cat was jumping, he decided, I suppose, that he would try to make it jump as far as possible. Mrs. Stiles herself spoke of the compromise, and said she regretted she had not signed it. That was enough for my man; and when Judge Measy fainted he suggested to her to take advantage of the delay by going round to the railway company's office with him, where, he said, of course, he would see what he could do for her, as he had friends in the office. At the company's office he represented that he was acting under orders from me, the fact of the matter being that the rogue knew that the case was going against us, and Mrs. Stiles was virtually allowed to name her own sum. She took it, and signed the release. The ingenious bailiff is in disgrace, but the company think they have a good thing in the release, and I, as their servant, can't refuse to obey them. _You_ understand that, of _course_, my dear madam. But I must repeat that I'm sorry, and sorry for my own sake, that this has happened, for I should be very unwilling to have anything occur to interrupt or cloud the very pleasant professional relations in which I have had the good fortune to find myself standing toward you. But clients are queer cattle, as you'll soon discover. I can assure you I have been treated much worse in my day."

Mrs. Tarbell tapped the slender paper against her open palm. Her lips were compressed. Mr. Pope gazed at her with a queer look in his eyes. The court-room was beginning to fill up; the jurymen were taking their places in the box; the public interest in Stiles _vs._ The Railway Company had not in the least diminished.

"Your bailiff seems to be a person of extraordinary acuteness," said Mrs. Tarbell, at length.

"He used to be a sheriff's officer," said Mr. Pope blandly. "If you like," he continued, "if you choose to attack this release on the ground of fraud, I won't say a word. I think you're entitled to try it. Possibly you might prove that the company took an unfair advantage of your client, that misrepresentations were made to her. Still, I am free to say that she seems to have signed it with her eyes open."

Mrs. Tarbell, her lips still compressed, raised her head and looked about the room. As she did so she caught sight of Celandine standing by the railing. Miss Stiles's face was anxious and downcast: she gave Mrs. Tarbell an appealing glance.

"Excuse me one moment," said Mrs. Tarbell. She walked over to Miss Celandine with a rapid step. "Did your mother know what she was doing when she signed this?" said Mrs. Tarbell.

"Mrs. Tarbell," cried Miss Stiles, "I don't know what I can say to you. I don't know how I'm ever going to beg your pardon. Ma she's in a dreadful state; and I'm sure she ought to be, the way I've been talking to her. She didn't dare to come here this morning; she was ashamed to have you see her. And, if anything, I'm more ashamed than she, for I really feel it more. I wonder you have the patience to listen to me."

Here Mrs. Tarbell interrupted. "Never mind that," she said. "Did Mrs. Stiles do this of her own free will, or was she tricked into it?"

"That's the worst of it, Mrs. Tarbell, that's the worst of it. I can't get her to say anything but that it was her own fault. To every question I ask her, she says, 'No; it was my own fault. I just went and did it.' I can_not_ understand it. Is there no way out of it? It's really, if you don't mind my saying so, it's on your account I ask. I haven't slept a wink all night. Ma was taken remorseful before she'd got two steps with the money. And, do _you_ know, she was late for tea. We were in an awful state about her; she never came home to dinner. We hunted high and low for her. She went to Everett Square, and sat down on a bench there, just--just--penitent. Oh, I _wish_ you could _see_ her! Indeed, if it wasn't so right down dishonest it would be funny. But is there nothing to be done? Do you know how it all happened? Do you know that a man in the company's _em_ploy--I'm sure he was--got hold of ma and just twisted her round? Couldn't you show that? And I know Mr. Pope got that man to talk to her; I'm sure he did. Ma ain't fit to be trusted alone, that's the amount of it."

"But can you get your mother to say that she was imposed upon?" said Mrs. Tarbell, a faint gleam of hope asserting itself.

Celandine shook her head sadly. "After all," she said, "it ain't so much that she was imposed upon, but that she imposed upon herself. They took advantage of her, true enough, that's certain; but she let them do it. Why, Georgiana--you couldn't make her give more than five cents' worth of lemon taffy for five cents if you talked to her all day; but any three-year-old baby on Pulaski Street can persuade ma that she's giving short weight. I do feel so bad about it, Mrs. Tarbell. And ma lost three buttons off her black silk yesterday, and won't have them sewed on. You might think she was a Catholic, doing penance."

Mrs. Tarbell turned away without saying a word.

"Mrs. Tarbell! Mrs. Tarbell!" cried Celandine.

Mrs. Tarbell turned back. A few minutes later she was walking away again, leaving Celandine very red in the face and beginning to cry. Mrs. Tarbell had refused to accept the hundred and twenty-five dollars, or any part of it, in payment of her fee.

As Mrs. Tarbell was coming out of the court-room--a juryman had in the mean time told her that he hoped she had got a good round sum by her compromise: "You would have had, say, eighteen hundred from us," he said,--as Mrs. Tarbell was going down-stairs, having just told Mrs. Pegley that she--Mrs. Tarbell--did not think it necessary to communicate all her private affairs to her friends, there was Celandine waiting for her in the passage.

"Mrs. Tarbell," said Celandine hesitatingly, her eyes still red,--"Mrs. Tarbell--"

"Well?" said Mrs. Tarbell.

"About my studying law, please, ma'am. I just wanted to say that--that--"

Unpropitious moment. The storm gathered on Mrs. Tarbell's brow.

"I just wanted to tell you that I shall have to give it up, ma'am," said Celandine hurriedly. "I'm going to marry Mr. Mecutchen."

"I wish you joy," Mrs. Tarbell said, and went on down-stairs.

THOMAS WHARTON.

QUEEN ANNE OR FREE CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE.

"If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces."

_Merchant of Venice_, Act i., Scene ii.

Of all the recognized styles of domestic architecture the position of modern Queen Anne, or so-called Free Classic, is perhaps the most difficult to determine. The nomenclature will assist us but little in investigating its art-history and constructive laws,--the term Queen Anne being as much too narrow as Free Classic is too broad. If we ask the professors of architecture and the more learned practitioners of the art for information on the subject, we shall get vague and unsatisfactory replies. Many of the younger and more enthusiastic architects, and the devotees of spinning-wheels, blue India teapots, and green crown glass will, on the contrary, unhesitatingly tell us that Queen Anne, is "high art;" forgetting that art had reached its lowest ebb in England when William and Mary ascended the throne left vacant by the Stuarts.

With such diversity of sentiment and reasoning, how shall we elucidate the truth? When did Queen Anne architecture originate, who were its great masters, under what influence did it spring up, what causes led to its decline, and to what source may we trace its sudden and aggressive renaissance? To the student who looks beneath the surface of fashionable art-culture the Queen Anne and Georgian periods seem almost like a mirage, where he sees dimly reflected vistas of city streets lined with tall houses built of red brick, with tiled roofs, long and narrow sash-windows painted white, and outside shutters painted green. If he goes to the academies for information, he will be told that early Queen Anne was a feeble application of Palladian rules designed for palatial works in marble to smaller edifices built of brick, and that late Queen Anne is simply a craze that must run its course and then sink into obscurity, as did its prototype.

This lack of historical data is the more remarkable when we consider that the style now known as that of Queen Anne is but of yesterday. We can follow the gradual development of styles and systems of construction and their transitions into other and later styles, from the Egyptian, Syrian, Grecian, Roman, and Byzantine, and the wondrous science of the Middle Ages, to the wealth of Continental Renaissance, but of the style of Queen Anne we can find little more than the name. England gradually remodelled her feudal castles into the noble and picturesque manor-houses of the Tudor kings, and her architects during the reign of Elizabeth carried this somewhat fanciful, but at the same time dignified, system of construction to its utmost development. All this will be clearly and logically explained by the professors of the academies. They will further add that after the accession of the Stuarts the building art gradually declined, with only a few flashes of brilliant light in the works of Inigo Jones and Wren. The Commonwealth was prudish in art as in manners, and the Restoration was a reign of revel and wild license. The social worlds of William and Mary and of Queen Anne, stiff, starched, and formal, left their impress upon the buildings of their day, which were mostly of a domestic character. The Free Classic of the Georgian reigns followed,--more refined in sentiment, delicate but severe in outline, aristocratic, but lacking strength and boldness in composition. With the advent of the Victorian Gothicists the worn-out and debased Free Classic passed into obscurity, there to remain until the passage by Parliament of the Elementary Education Act in 1870 brought it once more into prominence.

So much for the teachings of the academies, hampered by conservatism and constructive traditions. They see little that is good in architecture which cannot be traced through a long line of precedents, gradually developing, as did the Gothic from the slender lancets and bold buttressing of the earlier examples to the delicate tracery and wondrous carving of Lincoln and of York. But, for all this, Queen Anne has a history, architectural as well as political. Her short reign witnessed the erection of a class of manor-houses and city dwellings which, gradually improved under the two succeeding monarchs, have formed the basis for a revival of a remarkable character. The sudden renaissance of Queen Anne or Free Classic architecture is the growth of but fourteen years, and yet all classes of society have been alike filled with aspirations for Queen An-tic houses, and for domestic appliances, and even dresses and garniture, associated with that period. The extremely low art of the last decade of the seventeenth century has become the "high art" of to-day, and bids fair, after outgrowing the eccentricities of plan and detail with which many designers have loaded it down, to develop into an honest, home-like, and thoroughly domestic style, in consonance with the requirements of nineteenth-century culture and refinement. England and America alike have felt the pulse-beat of the reformers, ready and longing for a change that will be radical and honest in its workings. Let us, then, attempt to define the position of Queen Anne architecture, historically, constructively, and aesthetically. Let us endeavor to penetrate beyond the superficial investigations of the "high-art" amateur and see what may be the real value of the Queen Anne revival as a basis for the architecture of to-day, and wherein lies the germ which may be utilized as a stepping-stone to greater excellence.

HISTORY.