“If, later, you say to one another and to yourselves, ‘The old man is prejudiced in her favour; we must take that into account,’ I say to you, ‘And so you must—and so you must—well into account.’ I am prejudiced because I have known her since she was so small that she did not come to my knee; because I have watched her with unvarying wonder and devotion from the days that she used to cling to me, weeping because her black kitten had hurt its paw, or radiant because there was a new daisy in her garden; because I have watched her from those bright, joyous days to these dark and terrible ones, and never once have I found a trace of alloy in her gold. I have found united in her the traits we seek in many different forms—all the gallantry and honesty of a little boy, all the gaiety and grace of a little girl, all the loyalty and courage of a man, all the tenderness and beauty of a woman. If you think I am prejudiced in her favour you will be right, gentlemen. And if that fact prejudices me in your eyes, make the most of it.
“Of Stephen Bellamy I will say only this: If I had a daughter I would ask nothing more of destiny than that such a man should seek her for his wife—and you may make the most of that too.
“On this subject I will not touch again, I promise. It is not part and parcel of the speech of counsel for the defense to the jury in a murder trial to touch on his feeling toward his clients. I am grateful for the indulgence of both the Court and the prosecution in permitting me to dwell on them at some length. During the course of Mrs. Ives’s examination something as to our relation was inadvertently disclosed. In any case, I should have considered it my duty to inform you of it, as well as of every other fact in this case. I have now done so.
“A few days ago I said to you that Susan Ives was rich in many things. When I said that I was not thinking of money; I was referring to things that are the treasured possessions, the precious heritage, of many a humble and modest soul. Love, peace, beauty, security, serenity, health—these the least of us may have. As I have said, I am pretty close to being an old man now, and in my time I have heard much talk of class feeling and class hatred. I have even been told that it is difficult to get justice for the rich from the poor or mercy for the poor from the rich. I believe both these statements to be equally vile and baseless slanders.
“In this great country of which you and I are proud and privileged citizens, we are all rich—rich in opportunity and in liberty—and there is no room in our hearts for grudging envy, for warped malice. We do not say, ‘This woman is rich; she has breeding; she has intelligence and culture and position, therefore she is guilty.’ We do not say, ‘This man is a graduate of one of our greatest universities. Five generations of his ancestors have owned land in this country, and have lived on it honourably and decently, gentlefolk of repute and power in their communities; he is the possessor of a distinguished name and a distinguished record, therefore he is a murderer!’ We do not say that. No; you and I and the man in the street say, ‘It is impossible that two people with this life behind them and a richer and finer one before them should stoop to so low and foul a weapon as an assassin’s knife and a coward’s blow in the dark.’
“But even in the strictly material sense of wealth, Mrs. Ives is not a wealthy woman. I should like, in the simple interests of truth, to dispel the legends of a marble heart moving through marble halls that has been growing about her. She has lived for several happy years in what you have heard described to you as a farm house—a simple, unpretentious place that she made lovely with bright hangings and open fires and books and prints and flowers. If you had rung her doorbell before that fatal day in June, no powdered flunky would have opened it to you. It might have been opened by Mrs. Ives herself, or by Mr. Ives’s mother, or by a little maid in a neat dark frock and a white apron. Whoever had opened it to you, you would have found within a charming and friendly simplicity that might well cause you a little legitimate envy; you would have found nothing more.
“Sue Ives had what all your wives have, I hope—flowers in her garden, babies in her nursery, sunshine in her windows. With these any woman is rich, and so was
