When Cowperwood came into the crowded courtroom with his father and Steger, quite fresh and jaunty1 (looking the part of the shrewd financier, the man of affairs), every one stared. It was really too much to expect, most of them thought, that a man like this would be convicted. He was, no doubt, guilty; but, also, no doubt, he had ways and means of evading2 the law. His lawyer, Harper Steger, looked very shrewd and canny3 to them. It was very cold, and both men wore long, dark, bluish-gray overcoats, cut in the latest mode. Cowperwood was given to small boutonnieres in fair weather, but to-day he wore none. His tie, however, was of heavy, impressive silk, of lavender hue4, set with a large, clear, green emerald. He wore only the thinnest of watch-chains, and no other ornament5 of any kind. He always looked jaunty and yet reserved, good-natured, and yet capable and self-sufficient. Never had he looked more so than he did to-day.
He at once took in the nature of the scene, which had a peculiar6 interest for him. Before him was the as yet empty judge’s rostrum, and at its right the empty jury-box, between which, and to the judge’s left, as he sat facing the audience, stood the witness-chair where he must presently sit and testify. Behind it, already awaiting the arrival of the court, stood a fat bailiff, one John Sparkheaver whose business it was to present the aged7, greasy8 Bible to be touched by the witnesses in making oath, and to say, “Step this way,” when the testimony9 was over. There were other bailiffs — one at the gate giving into the railed space before the judge’s desk, where prisoners were arraigned10, lawyers sat or pleaded, the defendant11 had a chair, and so on; another in the aisle12 leading to the jury-room, and still another guarding the door by which the public entered. Cowperwood surveyed Stener, who was one of the witnesses, and who now, in his helpless fright over his own fate, was without malice13 toward any one. He had really never borne any. He wished if anything now that he had followed Cowperwood’s advice, seeing where he now was, though he still had faith that Mollenhauer and the political powers represented by him would do something for him with the governor, once he was sentenced. He was very pale and comparatively thin. Already he had lost that ruddy bulk which had been added during the days of his prosperity. He wore a new gray suit and a brown tie, and was clean-shaven. When his eye caught Cowperwood’s steady beam, it faltered14 and drooped15. He rubbed his ear foolishly. Cowperwood nodded.
“You know,” he said to Steger, “I feel sorry for George. He’s such a fool. Still I did all I could.”
Cowperwood also watched Mrs. Stener out of the tail of his eye — an undersized, peaked, and sallow little woman, whose clothes fitted her abominably16. It was just like Stener to marry a woman like that, he thought. The scrubby matches of the socially unelect or unfit always interested, though they did not always amuse, him. Mrs. Stener had no affection for Cowperwood, of course, looking on him, as she did, as the unscrupulous cause of her husband’s downfall. They were now quite poor again, about to move from their big house into cheaper quarters; and this was not pleasing for her to contemplate17.
Judge Payderson came in after a time, accompanied by his undersized but stout18 court attendant, who looked more like a pouter-pigeon than a human being; and as they came, Bailiff Sparkheaver rapped on the judge’s desk, beside which he had been slumbering19, and mumbled20, “Please rise!” The audience arose, as is the rule of all courts. Judge Payderson stirred among a number of briefs that were lying on his desk, and asked, briskly, “What’s the first case, Mr. Protus?” He was speaking to his clerk.
During the long and tedious arrangement of the day’s docket and while the various minor21 motions of lawyers were being considered, this courtroom scene still retained interest for Cowperwood. He was so eager to win, so incensed22 at the outcome of untoward23 events which had brought him here. He was always intensely irritated, though he did not show it, by the whole process of footing delays and queries24 and quibbles, by which legally the affairs of men were too often hampered25. Law, if you had asked him, and he had accurately26 expressed himself, was a mist formed out of the moods and the mistakes of men, which befogged the sea of life and prevented plain sailing for the little commercial and social barques of men; it was a miasma27 of misinterpretation where the ills of life festered, and also a place where the accidentally wounded were ground between the upper and the nether28 millstones of force or chance; it was a strange, weird29, interesting, and yet futile30 battle of wits where the ignorant and the incompetent31 and the shrewd and the angry and the weak were made pawns32 and shuttlecocks for men — lawyers, who were playing upon their moods, their vanities, their desires, and their necessities. It was an unholy and unsatisfactory disrupting and delaying spectacle, a painful commentary on the frailties33 of life, and men, a trick, a snare34, a pit and gin. In the hands of the strong, like himself when he was at his best, the law was a sword and a shield, a trap to place before the feet of the unwary; a pit to dig in the path of those who might pursue. It was anything you might choose to make of it — a door to illegal opportunity; a cloud of dust to be cast in the eyes of those who might choose, and rightfully, to see; a veil to be dropped arbitrarily between truth and its execution, justice and its judgment35, crime and punishment. Lawyers in the main were intellectual mercenaries to be bought and sold in any cause. It amused him to hear the ethical36 and emotional platitudes37 of lawyers, to see how readily they would lie, steal, prevaricate38, misrepresent in almost any cause and for any purpose. Great lawyers were merely great unscrupulous subtleties39, like himself, sitting back in dark, close-woven lairs40 like spiders and awaiting the approach of unwary human flies. Life was at best a dark, inhuman41, unkind, unsympathetic struggle built of cruelties and the law, and its lawyers were the most despicable representatives of the whole unsatisfactory mess. Still he used law as he would use any other trap or weapon to rid him of a human ill; and as for lawyers, he picked them up as he would any club or knife wherewith to defend himself. He had no particular respect for any of them — not even Harper Steger, though he liked him. They were tools to be used — knives, keys, clubs, anything you will; but nothing more. When they were through they were paid and dropped — put aside and forgotten. As for judges, they were merely incompetent lawyers, at a rule, who were shelved by some fortunate turn of chance, and who would not, in all likelihood, be as efficient as the lawyers who pleaded before them if they were put in the same position. He had no respect for judges — he knew too much about them. He knew how often they were sycophants42, political climbers, political hacks43, tools, time-servers, judicial44 door-mats lying before the financially and politically great and powerful who used them as such. Judges were fools, as were most other people in this dusty, shifty world. Pah! His inscrutable eyes took them all in and gave no sign. His only safety lay, he thought, in the magnificent subtley of his own brain, and nowhere else. You could not convince Cowperwood of any great or inherent virtue45 in this mortal scheme of things. He knew too much; he knew himself.
When the judge finally cleared away the various minor motions pending46, he ordered his clerk to call the case of the City of Philadelphia versus47 Frank A. Cowperwood, which was done in a clear voice. Both Dennis Shannon, the new district attorney, and Steger, were on their feet at once. Steger and Cowperwood, together with Shannon and Strobik, who had now come in and was standing48 as the representative of the State of Pennsylvania — the complainant — had seated themselves at the long table inside the railing which inclosed the space before the judge’s desk. Steger proposed to Judge Payderson, for effect’s sake more than anything else, that this indictment49 be quashed, but was overruled.
A jury to try the case was now quickly impaneled — twelve men out of the usual list called to serve for the month — and was then ready to be challenged by the opposing counsel. The business of impaneling a jury was a rather simple thing so far as this court was concerned. It consisted in the mandarin-like clerk taking the names of all the jurors called to serve in this court for the month — some fifty in all — and putting them, each written on a separate slip of paper, in a whirling drum, spinning it around a few times, and then lifting out the first slip which his hand encountered, thus glorifying50 chance and settling on who should be juror No. 1. His hand reaching in twelve times drew out the names of the twelve jurymen, who as their names were called, were ordered to take their places in the jury-box.
Cowperwood observed this proceeding51 with a great deal of interest. What could be more important than the men who were going to try him? The process was too swift for accurate judgment, but he received a faint impression of middle-class men. One man in particular, however, an old man of sixty-five, with iron-gray hair and beard, shaggy eyebrows52, sallow complexion53, and stooped shoulders, struck him as having that kindness of temperament54 and breadth of experience which might under certain circumstances be argumentatively swayed in his favor. Another, a small, sharp-nosed, sharp-chinned commercial man of some kind, he immediately disliked.
“I hope I don’t have to have that man on my jury,” he said to Steger, quietly.
“You don’t,” replied Steger. “I’ll challenge him. We have the right to fifteen peremptory55 challenges on a case like this, and so has the prosecution56.”
When the jury-box was finally full, the two lawyers waited for the clerk to bring them the small board upon which slips of paper bearing the names of the twelve jurors were fastened in rows in order of their selection — jurors one, two, and three being in the first row; four, five, and six in the second, and so on. It being the prerogative57 of the attorney for the prosecution to examine and challenge the jurors first, Shannon arose, and, taking the board, began to question them as to their trades or professions, their knowledge of the case before the court, and their possible prejudice for or against the prisoner.
It was the business of both Steger and Shannon to find men who knew a little something of finance and could understand a peculiar situation of this kind without any of them (looking at it from Steger’s point of view) having any prejudice against a man’s trying to assist himself by reasonable means to weather a financial storm or (looking at it from Shannon’s point of view) having any sympathy with such means, if they bore about them the least suspicion of chicanery58, jugglery59, or dishonest manipulation of any kind. As both Shannon and Steger in due course observed for themselves in connection with this jury, it was composed of that assorted60 social fry which the dragnets of the courts, cast into the ocean of the city, bring to the surface for purposes of this sort. It was made up in the main of managers, agents, tradesmen, editors, engineers, architects, furriers, grocers, traveling salesmen, authors, and every other kind of working citizen whose experience had fitted him for service in proceedings61 of this character. Rarely would you have found a man of great distinction; but very frequently a group of men who were possessed62 of no small modicum63 of that interesting quality known as hard common sense.
Throughout all this Cowperwood sat quietly examining the men. A young florist64, with a pale face, a wide speculative65 forehead, and anemic hands, struck him as being sufficiently66 impressionable to his personal charm to be worth while. He whispered as much to Steger. There was a shrewd Jew, a furrier, who was challenged because he had read all of the news of the panic and had lost two thousand dollars in street-railway stocks. There was a stout wholesale67 grocer, with red cheeks, blue eyes, and flaxen hair, who Cowperwood said he thought was stubborn. He was eliminated. There was a thin, dapper manager of a small retail68 clothing store, very anxious to be excused, who declared, falsely, that he did not believe in swearing by the Bible. Judge Payderson, eyeing him severely69, let him go. There were some ten more in all — men who knew of Cowperwood, men who admitted they were prejudiced, men who were hidebound Republicans and resentful of this crime, men who knew Stener — who were pleasantly eliminated.
By twelve o’clock, however, a jury reasonably satisfactory to both sides had been chosen.
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1
jaunty
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| adj．愉快的，满足的；adv.心满意足地，洋洋得意地；n.心满意足；洋洋得意 | |
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evading
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| 逃避( evade的现在分词 )； 避开； 回避； 想不出 | |
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canny
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| adj.谨慎的，节俭的 | |
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hue
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| n.色度；色调；样子 | |
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ornament
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| v.装饰，美化；n.装饰，装饰物 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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greasy
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| adj. 多脂的，油脂的 | |
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testimony
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| n.证词；见证，证明 | |
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arraigned
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| v.告发( arraign的过去式和过去分词 )；控告；传讯；指责 | |
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defendant
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| n.被告；adj.处于被告地位的 | |
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aisle
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| n.（教堂、教室、戏院等里的）过道，通道 | |
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malice
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| n.恶意，怨恨，蓄意；[律]预谋 | |
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14
faltered
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| （嗓音）颤抖( falter的过去式和过去分词 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃 | |
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drooped
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| 弯曲或下垂，发蔫( droop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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16
abominably
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| adv. 可恶地，可恨地，恶劣地 | |
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contemplate
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| vt.盘算，计议；周密考虑；注视，凝视 | |
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slumbering
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| 微睡，睡眠（slumber的现在分词形式） | |
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mumbled
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| 含糊地说某事，叽咕，咕哝( mumble的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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incensed
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| 盛怒的 | |
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untoward
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| adj.不利的，不幸的，困难重重的 | |
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queries
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| n.问题( query的名词复数 )；疑问；询问；问号v.质疑，对…表示疑问( query的第三人称单数 )；询问 | |
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hampered
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| 妨碍，束缚，限制( hamper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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accurately
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| adv.准确地，精确地 | |
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miasma
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| n.毒气；不良气氛 | |
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nether
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| adj.下部的，下面的；n.阴间；下层社会 | |
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weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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30
futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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incompetent
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| adj.无能力的，不能胜任的 | |
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pawns
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| n.（国际象棋中的）兵( pawn的名词复数 )；卒；被人利用的人；小卒v.典当，抵押( pawn的第三人称单数 )；以（某事物）担保 | |
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33
frailties
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| n.脆弱( frailty的名词复数 )；虚弱；（性格或行为上的）弱点；缺点 | |
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snare
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| n.陷阱，诱惑，圈套；（去除息肉或者肿瘤的）勒除器；响弦，小军鼓；vt.以陷阱捕获，诱惑 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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ethical
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| adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的 | |
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platitudes
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| n.平常的话，老生常谈，陈词滥调( platitude的名词复数 )；滥套子 | |
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prevaricate
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| v.支吾其词；说谎；n.推诿的人；撒谎的人 | |
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subtleties
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| 细微( subtlety的名词复数 )； 精细； 巧妙； 细微的差别等 | |
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40
lairs
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| n.（野兽的）巢穴，窝( lair的名词复数 )；（人的）藏身处 | |
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41
inhuman
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| adj.残忍的，不人道的，无人性的 | |
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42
sycophants
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| n.谄媚者，拍马屁者( sycophant的名词复数 ) | |
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43
hacks
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| 黑客 | |
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44
judicial
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| adj.司法的，法庭的，审判的，明断的，公正的 | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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46
pending
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| prep.直到，等待…期间；adj.待定的；迫近的 | |
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47
versus
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| prep.以…为对手，对；与…相比之下 | |
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48
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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49
indictment
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| n.起诉；诉状 | |
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50
glorifying
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| 赞美( glorify的现在分词 )； 颂扬； 美化； 使光荣 | |
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51
proceeding
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| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
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52
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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53
complexion
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| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
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54
temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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peremptory
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| adj.紧急的，专横的，断然的 | |
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56
prosecution
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| n.起诉，告发，检举，执行，经营 | |
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57
prerogative
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| n.特权 | |
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58
chicanery
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| n.欺诈，欺骗 | |
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jugglery
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| n.杂耍，把戏 | |
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assorted
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| adj.各种各样的，各色俱备的 | |
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61
proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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modicum
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| n.少量，一小份 | |
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florist
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| n.花商；种花者 | |
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speculative
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| adj.思索性的，暝想性的，推理的 | |
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66
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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wholesale
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| n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售 | |
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retail
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| v./n.零售；adv.以零售价格 | |
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severely
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| adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地 | |
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