CHAPTER XXI

CHERCHEZ L'HOMME

Raimond straightened up with an effort and turned to face the jury. His face was almost as white as the prisoner's. His lips trembled and his eyes burned. From the moment the woman had pressed his hand he had been struggling with an emotion more unnerving than stage fright. Hitherto he had known misery only as we who never stir from home know the suffering of an arctic explorer. For the first time in his life he had been thrown into actual contact with the raw reality, stripped of the veneer and varnish of the story-teller. When he looked at the crouching woman and felt the railing tremble with her sobs he dimly understood the despair that could welcome death as a friend. If he had only known--if he could only have felt this way when he had written his speech! What was his speech? How did it begin? His eye met his father's for a wavering instant and the frightened gaze and livid features of the stern magistrate completed the demoralization of his son. His father saw that he would fail and shame him, he thought! He dared not glance toward Helene. He must begin! He fixed his eyes on a light stain on the dark wood of the jury-box and tried to remember the opening words of his address. They would not come. The overwhelming sense of failure, the foreknowledge that he could not make the jury feel the flood of emotion that had paralyzed his tongue, brought team to his eyes!

The courtroom was preternaturally still. A juryman coughed, and at the sound Raymond felt an Overmastering impulse to scream or run out. There was a long-drawn sob behind him and he straightened up--rigid. He raised his eyes and the jury-box was a gray-black blur. His lips felt stiff and his tongue dry--but he must begin! He bowed stiffly and hurriedly to the bench and quickly drew the back of his hand across his eyes to clear away the mist of tears....

"Gentlemen--of the jury!" His voice sounded strange to his own ears, and he leaned with both hands on the table. What were his opening words?--It was useless! But he must stumble on some way!

"I cannot--I will not try--to conceal--the very great emotion that I feel! I hope--you must pardon me----" He met the eyes of one of the jurors, and instead of the contempt and amusement that he had expected he saw a gleam of sympathy. Oh, if he had only the power to play upon it! Why couldn't he remember his speech? He could only tell them how he felt, and plead for mercy for the woman.

"My wish is to be cool--and to keep calm--but my eyes fill with tears in spite of all--my efforts." And again he quickly dashed his hand across his eyes. He looked up at the men, who must judge him and his speech, with almost piteous bravery.

"My heart is beating--quicker than it should! My voice is trembling--and it is all that I can do to keep from breaking down and crying like a child instead of pleading for my client--here before you. I crave your indulgence for this weakness--but it does not make me blush!" He threw back his head, and at last he saw the jurors clearly before him.

"It is the first time in my life that I have come close to the bitterness of a woman's grief and misery and--my heart is tom by the fear that I shall not be able to prove myself equal to the noble task that I have undertaken!"

He paused and wet his dry lips with his tongue.

"I can find none of the arguments that I had prepared for the purpose of moving and convincing you, and my ready-made phrases have vanished from my brain, dispersed by one glance at the suffering and distress of this poor woman!

"Look at her, gentlemen! No words of mine can have the power of tears to move you to mercy!"

There was a falter and piteous break in his voice as he half turned and laid his hand on the dock. There was not another sound save the woman's sobs. The faces of the jurors told him that they were listening with eager attention and the fear of being made ridiculous began to pass. Blindly, Instinctively, he had stumbled on to the greatest rule of the greatest orator that ever lived: "Be earnest!"

In those few minutes the jurymen had felt the force of clean emotion, of noble purpose, behind the stumbling words, and they waited breathlessly. With the growing confidence some of the arguments that he had embodied in his written speech came back to him; but he could not remember the words.

"And there is a mystery--a veil of mystery which has not been torn by the evidence and still surrounds this woman for whom I am pleading," he went on. "Who is this weeping and despairing woman? Where does she come from, and why did she kill the man with whom she lived? We do not know!" His voice was gaining a strong, commanding ring.

"She alone can rend this veil that surrounds her life, and she refuses to do so! She alone knows the secret and keeps it! Why? So as to mislead the cause of justice? Certainly not! For if that were her object, she would speak. She would try to justify herself. She would lie, so as to appear innocent!

"She could find a dozen plausible reasons for the murder of her lover! A quarrel, a violence on his part, a momentary madness--nobody could give her the lie. Nobody saw or heard what happened immediately before the murder; and Laroque, the only person in the room besides the prisoner, is dead! But my client has disdained all subterfuge! She knew perfectly well what the consequence of her act would be--_and--she--has not--tried--to--escape it_!

"'There's no hurry,' she said to the boots of the hotel, who wrenched the revolver from her hand. 'I sha'n't try to getaway.' And since then she has been silent. Why? Her own words tell us why, gentlemen, and will lift a corner of the curtain which hides the truth from us!

"The policeman who arrested her has told us that he asked the prisoner why she killed Laroque, and that she answered: 'I killed him to prevent him from doing an infamous and shameful thing which would have brought misfortune on some one I love!'

"This, gentlemen," he cried, his voice rising, "tells us the secret of this poor creature!

"She killed this man Laroque, of whose past--as my friend the Public Prosecutor rightly said--no good was known. She killed this man who has, on two occasions, undergone punishment for theft and was capable of anything. _She killed him, because taking his life was the only way she could prevent an infamy that would have brought shame land despair on some one she loved!_

"Does this not explain the insistency of her silence? This woman, this poor wreck, who has been beaten down to the lowest rungs of the ladder of physical and moral misery, this wretched creature--_loves_! Good women will sweep their skirts from her touch in the streets, but love is in her heart, and the happiness of him or her whom she loves is dearer to her than her own life!

"One day she sees a menace to this happiness and kills--kills without hesitation the scoundrel who was about to destroy it!"

Gone was the stage fright--gone the fear of failure! As the ear of a musician tells him when his hands have found a chord, so is there a psychic ear which tells the orator that the spirit of his audience is in harmony with his words. As this telepathic message reached his brain, Raymond felt at last within him the power to move the hearts of men. Words poured forth in a rushing flood!

"Love was the motive that made her a criminal! Love, and love only! And whom does she love to the sacrifice of herself? Is it a father who is respected and honored by all in his old age? Is it a husband or lover to whom she has been false and whom she left long ago? Is it a child who knows nothing of his mother's shame and lives unconscious and happy?

"We do not know! But some such love is the secret of my client and the reason of her silence. She cares nothing for what men may say of her, nor for man's judgment of her! She does not care for her own life, and sacrifices it with gladness! But she will not let herself be known! There is only one single being of importance to her, and she will not let her name be spoken lest the sentence stain her picture in the heart of the one she worships!

"Gentlemen of the jury, a woman who can feel like this is no vulgar criminal! I feel sure that I shall prove to you that it is no mere criminal who stands before you! The police have moved heaven and earth to establish her identity, and they have failed. This is alone sufficient proof that this crime is her first; for had she been convicted before, the police would have found traces of her past!

"And there is no doubt, gentlemen"--his voice was vibrant and his eyes flashed through the tears--"there is no doubt that a man was originally responsible for my client's fall. When a woman falls and rolls in the gutter, it is not with her that we should feel indignant--it is not against her breast that we should cast the stones!

"A man has done this thing!" he shouted, his features quivering. "He has seduced or ill-treated her! He is a lover without scruple, or a husband with too little nobility of character and too much pride--a husband who has not known how to pity, and who sentenced her for a first fall to a life of sin!

"The laws of man are powerless against such a lover or such a husband," he cried, stepping forward with clenched fist above his head, "but God sees him--and God judges him!

"Such a man has made this woman what you see her to-day, and he alone is responsible!" He paused and gulped to swallow an imaginary something in his throat. Then he went on bitterly:

"He, no doubt, lives happily--his name respected and his conscience calm! But in the eyes of Eternal Justice this man stands by this woman's side, or lower still! And in the name of a higher law, in the name of your mothers and sisters, I call upon you to do justice--with pity--to this woman whose life has been the plaything of the man who should stand in her place!"

He paused again. His head felt hot and his; feet cold. He knew that he had not used a syllable of his original speech, but words and phrases that he had never dreamed of before leaped to his tongue in battalions. His voice, that had been hoarse and uncertain at the opening, was now true to every changing note of his heart. Without looking in their direction he was conscious that Helene and Rose were crying. From the audience he heard the strained coughing of "men and the muffled weeping of women. He glanced toward the bench and saw, with vague wonder, his father's bowed and shaking figure. His eloquence had even moved that iron judge, he thought! He could not know the agony of which he was the author! He could not dream that the generous wrath that flamed up from his pure heart had made his tongue a lash for his father's soul! Noel, watching and listening, his eyes shaded by his hand, felt the terrible torture of his friend, and twice he rose as if he would interrupt the boy's bitter arraignment of his father. But Raymond swept on with his speech.

"In the course of the eloquent address for the prosecution my friend reminded us that murder might sometimes be worthy of forgiveness, and that the wave of passion which causes murder sometimes excuses it.

"Gentlemen, I ask you on your consciences_--is this woman guilty_? Does she deserve punishment for wiping out of existence the pestilent criminal who was threatening the happiness of the one person she loved? Does this unfortunate woman deserve punishment for the silence she has kept heroically to save her name from scandal--and for whom? For the sake of another!

"No, gentlemen, a thousand times--_No!_ Attire mere thought my heart cries out in protest! And you will, I know, gentlemen, share my emotion--and my conviction!

"Gentlemen of the jury, my cause is just, and the verdict will bear witness to its justice! I await it without fear! Were you to find my client guilty--even with extenuating circumstances--your verdict would only prove that I have not been equal to my task!

"And I should never cease to regret my lack of ability to make you feel those sentiments and convictions which bid me declare in a loud voice, with my hand upon my heart_--this woman is not guilty_!"