Honor (42 page)

Honor stared at him, dumbfounded. “And how am I supposed to accomplish that?”

“Listen carefully…”

Catherine was skeptical when Honor cornered her in the dispensary late that afternoon and told her of Lyons’s plans.

Her sleeves rolled up to her elbows and her shirtwaist spattered with dried brown bloodstains, Catherine dragged her forearm across her brow and sighed wearily. “But I’m not an angel of the tenements, Honor. I’m just a doctor trying to treat my patients, and as for turning me into a fashion plate”—she shook her head—“I wear my hair in a chignon to keep it out of my way, and I wear plain, serviceable clothes that clean easily and let me move freely.”
She rolled down her sleeves. “And as for talking to newspaper reporters, I’d rather be dragged through the streets by wild horses.”

“Catherine,” Honor said, trying not to watch Hilda Steuben sewing up a gash on a woman’s head as if she were stitching two pieces of cloth together, “your husband is paying Philip Lyons a small fortune to keep you out of prison. The least you can do is take the man’s advice. He knows what he’s doing.”

“I’m sure he does, but I’d still rather have you defend me.”

“At least I’m helping him.”

Catherine frowned in annoyance. “New clothes, newspaper interviews…this is such a bloody awful waste of time.”

“It could keep you out of prison,” Honor said.

Hilda, without missing a stitch, muttered, “Go ahead, Dr. Dee, be as stubborn and pigheaded as I am. Don’t listen to your lawyers. And when you wind up behind bars on Blackwell’s Island, don’t expect me to come visit you.”

Catherine smiled. “Hilda, the thought of not seeing your smiling face or hearing your sweet voice for five years is enough to make me reconsider.” She said to Honor, “I surrender. When do we start?”

They started the following day to create the new Dr. Catherine Delancy.

Their labors bore fruit four weeks later when Elroy came rushing into Honor’s office with a fistful of newspapers.

There in the
World,
beneath a headline that screamed, “Angel of the Tenements Faced with Prison,” was a picture of Catherine, her severe chignon abandoned in favor of hair swept up beneath a charming hat, and her mannish shirtwaist replaced by a mourning outfit complete with black ruffles and ribbons.

The artist who had drawn Catherine had made her look appealing yet approachable, strong yet vulnerable, sad yet optimistic. She looked like a heroine out of Sir Walter Scott, a Rebecca looking for her Ivanhoe.

The illustration in the
Sun
was a romanticized depiction of her at a patient’s bedside, looking suitably noble and compassionate, holding a sick woman’s hand and mopping her brow. The accompanying article rang with sympathy for Dr. Delancy and vilified her persecutor, Anthony Comstock.

But though the newspapers were on Catherine’s side, the courts were not. Despite Philip Lyons’s best efforts throughout the spring and early summer, his two appeals in the Court of General Sessions for a jury trial were denied.

On August 6, 1897, Dr. Catherine Delancy was scheduled to go to trial.

Honor had never seen so many people packing the corridor outside Special Sessions as she found gathered there on the Friday morning of Catherine’s trial. With Nevada to her right, she and Lyons preceded Catherine and Damon, who walked arm in arm. In the milling crowd, she noticed an iron-jawed Hilda Steuben towering over almost everyone, several of Catherine’s patients from the tenements looking bewildered and out of place, and the newspaper reporter Liam Flynn leaning against a wall as he tried to jot something down on his notepad. She assumed that the rest of the spectators were curious onlookers and Socialists, who had declared their support early on.

Honor scanned the crowd, observing facial expressions and listening carefully like a hunting dog scenting the wind, and she exchanged a satisfied smile with Philip Lyons when she detected a decidedly pro-Catherine mood in the comments she overheard.

“They can’t send her to prison.”

“She’s only trying to help us have a better life.”

“Comstock ought to be shot for persecuting the poor woman.”

When Comstock himself appeared at the other end of the hallway, the crowd suddenly turned ugly, and Honor witnessed the mindless, collective savagery of a lynching party. The crowd surged toward Comstock like a human wave, sweeping past Honor and everyone else in its path. She felt Nevada grab her arm and shield her with his own body, lest someone shove her to the floor, but even he was helpless against the movement of the angry human tide.

Before outstretched hands could claw and tear at Comstock, several policemen appeared between him and the crowd.

“Order!” one of them barked. “Quiet down, or I’ll throw the lot of you in jail!”

“Just try it,” someone shouted back, causing the policeman to turn red and search the sea of faces for the transgressor.

But the crowd settled down, much to Honor’s relief, and they were admitted to the courtroom.

Entering the large, well-lighted courtroom, Honor felt her blood race as though she were striding onto a battlefield where Catherine Delancy’s freedom would be won or lost. Her heart sank when she saw the identity of the presiding justice.

She caught Lyons’s sleeve and whispered, “The presiding justice is Cresswell Pike. You should know that he’s not exactly sympathetic to passers of anti-conception information.”

Lyons’s youthful eyes sparkled. “But there are two other justices sitting there. Hambly and George could overrule Pike.”

Honor hoped so as she, Nevada, and Damon found their seats behind the defense table. She took out her handkerchief and dabbed at her brow, for it was hot in the courtroom and she felt strangely light-headed. She dismissed the sensation as the result of too much excitement.

A clerk looked around the crowded courtroom, where spectators now filled the benches, and shouted, “Hearken to the call of the calendar!”

Pike consulted a long sheet of paper. “People against Delancy?”

District Attorney Rampling rose and replied, “The people are ready.”

Lyons rose. “The defense is ready.”

The clerk bellowed, “Catherine Delancy to the bar!”

Still dressed in deepest mourning for her lost child, Catherine approached the bench along with Lyons and District Attorney Rampling.

Pike gave her a stern look. “Catherine Delancy, you stand accused of receiving obscene literature through the mails and circulating said obscene literature. How do you plead?”

“Not guilty, Your Honor,” she said in a clear voice that carried in the hot, hushed courtroom.

Honor knew that Lyons’s defense strategy was aimed at proving that the pamphlet in question was not obscene; therefore she was not guilty of the charges against her.

Anthony Comstock, who had secured himself a seat near the witness enclosure, glared at her, shook his head, and muttered, “How can she perjure herself by not admitting her guilt?”

“Mr. Rampling,” Pike said, “call your first witness.”

As Catherine and Lyons returned to their seats, the district attorney called Anthony Comstock to the stand.

Comstock heaved his bulk up and approached the bench, his eyes flashing self-righteous fire as he glanced back at the spectators, seeking Damon Delancy. “Your Honors, I have been told that if I pursued this case, I would be shot.” He eased his bulk into the witness chair, his huge paunch shaking. “I have disregarded that threat, and have only brought it to your attention so you’ll have all the facts in this case.”

The district attorney thanked him for performing his civic duty and waited for him to be sworn in before questioning him.

Sitting between Nevada and Damon, Honor listened to Comstock relate to the court how Dr. Delancy had first come to his attention when one of his agents heard that a woman doctor was distributing obscene anti-conception pamphlets to poor women in the tenements. He later sent one of his agents, Homer Baggins, to the doctor’s office to obtain one of the pamphlets, but a suspicious Dr. Delancy refused to give him a copy.

Later another agent saw her leaving a brothel called Ivory’s one night. A young prostitute, when questioned, accused the doctor of having performed an abortion.

“Was Dr. Delancy prosecuted for that crime?” the district attorney said.

“She was arrested,” Comstock replied, “but another doctor later confessed to it.” He sounded disappointed. “Since Dr. Flanders was her friend, I suspect that he did so just to save Dr. Delancy, and—”

“Objection,” Lyons said.

“Sustained.” Justice Pike turned to the witness. “Mr. Comstock, you will only answer the questions and refrain from adding personal comments.”

Comstock then told the court that he suspected Dr. Delancy of providing her patients with anti-conception devices and obscene literature detailing how to employ such godless methods to limit the size of their families. He said that he had interviewed her patients, but they had all played dumb and none would report the doctor.

Then he told how he finally found evidence that incriminated Dr. Delancy: “I obtained a search warrant, and with several of my agents, on October 15 in the year 1894, we went to Catherine Delancy’s office. There we found a supply of anti-conception devices and a disgusting, obscene pamphlet entitled
A Married Woman’s Secret.
As it says in my original complaint, Your Honor, the devices were still in their packaging with the postage affixed.” Comstock glared at Catherine. “Before the state could prosecute, the doctor and her husband fled the country.”

Honor risked a glance at Damon, sitting to her left, his body rigid with tension. He stared at Comstock out of narrowed eyes so cold they could have frozen fire, and a muscle in his cheek twitched with the superhuman effort to suppress his rage and loathing. She wondered if Damon had hired someone to threaten to shoot Comstock. As a lawyer she objected on ethical and moral grounds, but as a woman she wouldn’t have blamed him.

Then it was Lyons’s turn to question Anthony Comstock.

He rose and approached the witness enclosure with the confidence of a stalking lion assessing his prey. Honor leaned forward in her seat and clenched her fists. She held her breath.

Lyons said, “When you sent Mr. Baggins to Dr. Delancy’s office, isn’t it true that he did not inform her that he was a member of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice?”

Comstock regarded him with utter contempt. “If he had done that, she wouldn’t have given him the pamphlet, now, would she?”

Lyons grasped the enclosure’s railing. “You tried to obtain that pamphlet under false pretenses, did you not?” His voice rang out: “You tried to frame her! That’s fraud, Mr. Comstock!”

The district attorney objected.

Comstock ignored his objection. “If she had been innocent, she would have had nothing to fear. She would have welcomed my scrutiny as a God-fearing woman, and I couldn’t have trapped her.” He stared out at the spectators. “When you’re doing the Lord’s work, the end justifies the means.”

A low rumble of outrage rippled through the courtroom, causing Justice Pike to call for order.

When the noise died down, Lyons said, “When you couldn’t prosecute Dr. Delancy for performing an abortion, didn’t you stand outside her office and harass her patients, intimidating them and threatening them with arrest?”

“I was exercising my right of free speech by trying to make those sinful women see the error of their ways.”

Beside Honor, Nevada stirred.

Lyons smiled coldly. “I see. You were exercising your right of free speech by harassing those poor women, but at the same time you prevented them from exercising their right to see their physician.”

“Objection, Your Honor. That’s irrelevant,” Rampling said. “Mr. Comstock is not on trial here.”

What a damn shame, Honor thought. She had never loathed another human being more than she loathed Anthony Comstock.

Lyons said, “On October 15, 1894, when you obtained a warrant and searched Dr. Delancy’s office, was she present?”

“Of course not. I waited until she went out. If I hadn’t, she would’ve destroyed the evidence before I had a chance to seize it.”

“And according to your previous testimony, you found copies of a pamphlet entitled
A Married Woman’s Secret
in Dr. Delancy’s desk. Is that true?”

“Yes, an obscene anti-conception pamphlet.”

Lyons walked back over to the defense table, retrieved a copy of the pamphlet, and showed it to Comstock.

“This is the pamphlet?”

“The very one.”

Lyons stroked his chin and frowned as if in deep thought. Then he looked up. “How do you know this pamphlet is obscene, Mr. Comstock?”

The question silenced Comstock, but only for a second. He regained his composure almost immediately. “For over twenty-five years I have dedicated my life to destroying filth such as this, sir. In that time I have destroyed over one hundred and fifty tons of pornography. Do you think I don’t know an obscene pamphlet when I see one?”