"I don't agree with you!" And arguing and scolding, they wended their disapproving way over to the Dobton Inn and sat them down at tables to make the most of their bare material.
"No censorship needed here," growled Miss Austin. "She froze my very imagination."
Rush walked up and down the room for a few moments in silence. Mrs. Balfame sat back and folded her hands. She was haunted by a vague sense of inefficiency, of having not quite risen to the occasion, but she felt there could be no doubt that she not only had impressed the reporters as an innocent woman but as a perfect lady. The rest didn't matter.
"Are you really not a bit nervous?" demanded Rush, swinging on his heel and confronting her.
"I will not permit myself to be. And except that I hate publicity, I really do not dread the trial. It means the beginning of the end of this detestable prison life. I want to be out and free. A week in a courtroom is not too heavy a price to pay."
"Have you ever been to a murder trial?"
"Of course not. Such a thing would never have occurred to me."
Rush sighed. She had no imagination. But as her counsel he reminded himself that he should be grateful for the lack; he wanted no scenes, either in the courtroom or here in the imminent hours. But he would have welcomed a little more feminine shrinking, appeal to his superior strength. Even when he had worshipped her from afar, she had never moved him so powerfully as on the day of her arrest when she had flung herself over the table in an abandonment to despair as complete as the most exacting male could wish. That incident had long since taken on theshifting outlines of a dream. If she had felt any tremors since then she had concealed them from him.
"Tell me," he asked almost wistfully, "are you not terribly frightened at times? You are alone here so much. And it has been an experience to try even a strong man's nerves."
"Women nowadays really have better nerves than men. We not only lead a far fuller and more varied life than our predecessors, but you men work at such a terrific strain that it is a wonder you retain any control of your nerves at all. I will admit that I did have attacks of fear at first. It was all so strange and odd. But I got over them. You can get used to anything, I guess. And I have a strong will. I just made myself think about something else. This war has been a godsend. Have you noticed my new maps? I've really read about twenty war books, besides all the editorials, and they have given me a distaste for lighter reading, and really developed my—my—intellect. That seems such a big word. And then I've knitted dozens of things for the children and soldiers, and felt as if I were of some use for the first time in my life."
She glanced at him shyly, as he stared through the bars of one of the windows. The suppressions of a lifetime made it impossible to betray any depth of feeling save under terrible stress. She was ashamed of her breakdown before him on the day of her arrest, but she was conscious of the wish that she were able to infuse her cool even tones with warmth, to make them tremulous at the right moment; but if she attempted to betray something of her newer self even in her eyes, self-consciousness overcame her and she dropped the lids almost in a panic.
She wondered if love broke down those cliffs of ice that seemed to encompass a new-born soul. Or was it merely that the other members of her personal company, mature, jealous, self-sufficient, resented the intrusion of this shrinking alien? They had got on quite well without it; they felt no yearning for possible complications, readjustments. With all their quiet force they discouraged the stranger. Before any of the supreme experiences, including love, they might be routed, the new force might spring up in an instant like a flower from the magic soils of India—but not while the conventions bulwarked them. Their sum was Mrs. Balfame of Elsinore, and not for a moment did they permit themselves to forget it.
Moreover, it was quite true that she had conquered her first apprehensions and welcomed the trial as the initial step toward freedom. Her poise had always been remarkable, the result in part of a self-centred life and a will driven relentlessly in a narrow groove. More than ever was she determined to sit through those long days in the courtroom with the cold aloofness of the unfortunate women of history. The very ascents she had made of secret and solitary heights alone would have restored her poise, for she felt on far more friendly terms with herself than when living with a wretch she loathed, and dreaming of no higher altitudes then complete success in Elsinore. But she wished for the first time that she were a younger woman, or had made those ascents many years ago; she would have liked to reveal herself spontaneously to this interesting young man who was so deeply in love with her.
Suddenly she wondered if he were as ardently inlove with her as in that brief period when they had talked of themselves. Not loving him in return, she had been content with lip-service, the sure knowledge that all his fine abilities were at work upon the obstacles to her freedom; and she would have been deeply annoyed if he had broken the pact made on the day of her arrest and reiterated his devotion and his hopes.
But significant happenings—omissions—a certain flatness.... She turned her head sharply and looked at him. He was still staring moodily through the bars.
If far too diffident to show the best that was in her, she found it comparatively simple to practice the feminine art of angling, albeit with a somewhat heavy hand.
She asked softly: "Don't you think I did the wise thing to tell them I intended to travel as soon as I was acquitted? It surely would be in better taste than to settle down here—in that house!"
"Did you mean it? The intention would make a good impression on the public, certainly."
"Why, of course I meant it. I am not a good hand at saying things merely for effect."
"Where shall you go? Europe is rather impossible."
"Oh, not altogether. There is always Italy. And there is no danger from Zeppelins in the interior of Great Britain. And there is Spain—"
"I think Europe a very good place for women to keep away from until the war is over. Any of the nations may become involved at any minute—ourselves, for that matter. Better follow the advice of advertisers and see America first."
"Yes, I could visit the Expositions in California,and camp for a while in Glacier Park, and there are the Yellowstone and Grand Cañon—but all that would only consume a few months—and then there is this winter to think of. What I feel I should do is to stay away for a year, at least—"
"You could live very pleasantly in Southern California."
"I should be very conspicuous in those small fashionable settlements. The case has been telegraphed all over the country, and I have seen dreadful pictures of myself in several Western papers."
"Well, you might live quietly in New York until the war is over. There is no better place to hide—if you avoid the restaurants and theatres. And after all, even acause célèbreis quickly forgotten if there is no aftermath. But I certainly advise against even sailing for Europe until peace is declared. There is always the danger of mines and too enthusiastic submarines."
She turned quite cold and stared at her hands. They were well-shaped but large, and they looked like blocks of white marble on her black gown. He was still at the window, and his tone was listless. She had a curious sense of panic in the region of her heart. But instantly she curled her lip with defiant scorn. Was she the woman to fancy herself in love with a man the moment she seemed to be in danger of losing him? Besides, no doubt, the poor man was tired, and too absorbed in the case to have any room in him for the moods of the lover. Only a foolish impulsive woman would in conditions like the present try to rouse a dormant passion. When she was free, and he as well, his heart would automatically take precedence once moreand he would plead ardently for the privilege of marrying her. That was quite in order.
She rose briskly. "Let me show you this map," she said. "It is the very latest—Letitia Battle brought it to me two days ago. And do smoke."
"Thanks, but I must go over and watch those girls. Yes, it is a fine map. This war certainly is a godsend! Good luck. Keep up those splendid spirits. You're all right."
"Oyez, oyez, oyez! The Supreme Court of the State of New York County of Brabant trial term is now in session all people having business with this court may draw near and give their attentionand they shall be heard."
The court crier delivered his morning oration in one breathless sentence, the last five words of which only have ever been captured by mortal ears. The roll of the jury was called. The first witness stood on the step of the witness-stand and swore by the everlasting God that the testimony he would give in the trial of the People of the State of New York against the defendant would be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and then he seated himself in the chair. The trial of Mrs. Balfame began.
It had taken three days to select a jury. If Rush was determined to keep out Germans, Mr. Gore, the district attorney, was equally reluctant to admit to the box any man whom he suspected of being under commands from his wife to get on that jury and acquit Mrs. Balfame, if he had to imperil his immortal soul. He also harboured suspicions of felonious activities on the part of Mr. Sam Cummack and certain other patriotic citizens less devoted to the cause of justice than to Elsinore. In consequence the questions were not only uncommonly searching, but both the districtattorney and the defendant's counsel exhausted their peremptory challenges.
The talesmen that had crowded the courtroom beyond the railing were for the most part farmers and tradesmen, but there were not a few "prominent residents," including rooted Brabantites and busy commuters. The last answered without hesitation that they had followed the case closely from the first and formed an unalterable opinion; then, dismissed, rushed off and caught a late train for New York. Those of Mrs. Balfame's own class would have been passed cheerfully by Mr. Rush, but in spite of their careless avowals that they had been too busy to follow the case, or had found it impossible to reach any conclusion, they were peremptorily challenged by the district attorney. They, too, went to New York, not on business, and returned to their hearthstones as late as possible.
Finally a jury of almost excessively "plain men" were chosen after long and weary hours of wrangling. They were all married; their ages ranged from forty-five to fifty; not one looked as if he had an illusion left in regard to the sex that had shared his burdens for a quarter of a century, or, German or no German, he had any leniency in him for a woman who had presumed to abbreviate the career of a man. But at least they were real Americans, with reputations for straight dealing, and good old-fashioned ideals of justice, irrespective of sex. Rush doubted if any of them could be "fixed" by Mr. Cummack or the able politicians whose services he had bespoken, although the sternest visages often hid unsuspected weak spots; but after all his best chance was with honest men whose soft spots were of another sort.
So naïve had been the eagerness of the German-American talesmen to get on the jury that Rush had had little difficulty in demonstrating their unfitness for duty. These were too thrifty to go to New York and stood in no fear of their wives, but they avoided thegemütlichresort of Old Dutch until the trial was over.
Throughout this ordeal Mrs. Balfame sat immovable, impassive, her face a white bas-relief against the heavy black crêpe of her veil, which hung like a black panel between her profile and the western light. Her chair was at the foot of the long table which stood beneath the two tiers of the jury-box and was reserved for counsel, the district attorney, the assistants and clerks. Her calm grey eyes looked straight ahead, interested apparently in nothing but the empty witness-stand, on the right of the jury and the left of the judge. She knew that the reporters, and the few outsiders that had managed to crowd in with the talesmen, scarcely took their eyes from her face, and that the staff artists were sketching her. All her complacency had fled before certain phases of this preliminary ordeal for which no one had thought to prepare her. The constant reiteration of that question of horrid significance: "Have you any objection to capital punishment as practised in this State?" struck at the roots of her courage, enhanced her prison pallor; and that immovable battery of eyes, hostile, or coldly observant, critical, appraising, made her long to grind her teeth, to rise in her chair and tell those men and women, insolent in their freedom, what she thought of their vulgar insensibility. But not for nothing had she schooled herself, and not for a moment did her nerves really threaten revolt. She had taken her second sleepingpowder on the night preceding the opening of the trial, but on the third morning she awakened with the momentary wish that she had preserved Dr. Anna's poison, or could summon death in any form rather than go over to that courthouse and be tried for her life. For the first time she understood the full significance of her condition.
But Mrs. Battle, Mrs. Cummack and Mrs. Gifning, when they bustled in to "buck her up," congratulated her upon "not having a nerve in her body"; and although she had felt she must surely faint at the end of the underground tunnel between the jail and the rear of the courthouse, she had walked into that room of dread import upstairs with her head erect, her eyes level, and her hands steady. She may have built a fool's paradise for herself, assisted by her well-meaning friends, during the past ten weeks, and dwelt in it smugly; but as it fell about her ears she stood erect with a real courage that strengthened her soul for any further shocks and surprises this terrible immediate future of hers might hold.
On the first day, although she never glanced at a talesman, she had listened eagerly to every question, every answer, every challenge. As the third day wore on, she felt only weariness of mind, and gratitude that she had a strong back. She was determined to sit erect and immobile if the trial lasted a month. And not only was her personal pride involved. Circumstances had delivered her to the public eye, therefore should it receive an indelible impression of a worthy representative of the middle-class American of the smaller town, so little unlike the women of the wealthier class, and capable of gracing any position towhich fate might call her—a type the United States of America alone has bred; also of a woman whose courage and dignity had never been surpassed by any man brought to the bar of justice on the awful charge of murder.
She knew that this attitude, as well as her statuesque appearance, would antagonise the men reporters but enchant her loyal friends, the women. Her estimate was very shrewd. The poor sob sisters, squeezed in wherever they could find a vacant chair, or even a half of one (all the tables being reserved for the men), surrendered in a body to her cold beauty, her superb indifference, soul and pen. A unanimous verdict of guilty brought in by that gum-chewing small-headed jury merely would petrify these women's belief in her innocence. She was vicarious romance; for women that write too much have little time to live and no impulse to murder any one in the world but the city editor.
On the morning of the fourth day, the space between the enclosure and the walls of the courtroom was filled with spectators from all over the county, many of them personal friends of Mrs. Balfame; but New York City would not become vitally interested until the business of examining the minor witnesses was concluded. Behind and at the left of Mrs. Balfame were the members of her intimate circle. Occasionally they whispered to her, and she smiled so sweetly and with such serene composure that even the men reporters admitted she looked younger and more feminine—and more handsome—than on that day of the interview which had proved her undoing.
"But she did it all right," they assured one another.They must believe in her guilt or suffer twinges in that highly civilised and possibly artificial section of the brain tabulated as conscience. Their fixed theory was that she had mixed the poison for Balfame and then, being in a highly nervous state, and apprehensive that he would capriciously refuse to drink it, had snatched her pistol as she heard his voice in the distance, dashed downstairs and out into the grove, and fired with her established accuracy.
She had had plenty of time between the crime and her arrest to pass the pistol to one of her friends, or even to slip out at night and drop it in the marsh.
As to the shot that had missed Balfame and entered the tree: it was either by one of those coincidences more frequent in fact than in fiction that another enemy of Balfame's had been lurking in the grove, intent upon murder; or the bullet hole was older than they had inferred. The idea of a lover they scoffed at openly. And it was one of the established facts, as they reminded their sisters of the press, that the worst women in history had looked like angels, statues or babies; they had also possessed powerful sex magnetism, and this the handsome defendant wholly lacked.
The theory of the women reporters was far simpler. She hadn't done it and that was the end of it.
The judge, a tall imposing man with inherited features and accumulated flesh, very stately and remote in his flowing silk gown, looked unspeakably bored for three days, but was visibly hopeful as he swept up to his seat on the rostrum on Thursday morning. As the justice for Brabant, Mr. Bascom, had not been on speaking terms with the deceased, and as his wife was one of the defendant's closest friends, aneminent Supreme Court justice from one of the large neighbouring cities had been assigned to the case.
The reporters of the evening newspapers, were packed closely about a long table parallel with the one just below the jury-box, and behind were four or five smaller tables dedicated to the morning stars. A large number of favoured spectators had found seats within the railings, but a passage was kept open for the boys who came up at regular intervals to get copy from the "evening table" for the telegraph operator below stairs.
Broderick's seat beneath the rostrum commanded both the witness-box and Mrs. Balfame. He had used his influence to have Alys Crumley assigned to the position of artist for the Woman's Page of theNews, and she and Sarah Austin shared a chair.
The trial began. Dr. Lequer established the fact of the death, described the course of the bullet, demonstrating that it had been fired by some one concealed in the grove. A surveyor followed and exhibited to the jury a map of the house and grounds. Three of the younger members of the Country Club, Mr. John Bradshaw Battle, cashier of the Elsinore Bank; Mr. Lemuel Cummack, son of Elsinore's esteemed citizen, Mr. Sam Cummack; and Mr. Leonard Corfine, a commuter, had been subpœnaed after a matching of wits. Overawed by the solemnity of the oath, they gave a circumstantial account of the quarrel which had preceded the murder but a few hours—all, in spite of constant interruptions from the defendant's counsel, conveying the impression, however unwillingly, that Mrs. Balfame had been livid with wrath and the man who had been her husband insufferable. It was amaster-stroke of the district attorney to open his case with the damaging testimony of two members of the loyal Elsinore families. As for Mr. Corfine, although born and brought up without the pale, he had been graciously received upon electing to build his nest in Elsinore and his young wife was one of Mrs. Balfame's meekest admirers.
Mr. Broderick muttered, "H'm! H'm!" and Mr. Bruce squirmed round from the "evening table" and jerked his eyebrows at his senior. "Bad! Bad!" muttered Mr. Broderick's neighbour. "But watch her nerve. Can you beat it? She hasn't batted an eyelash."
Two former servants that had preceded Frieda in the Balfame menage testified that the household consisted of three people only, the master and mistress and the one in help. A gardener came three times a week in the morning. No, none of the old spare rooms was now furnished, and the Balfames never had had visitors overnight.
The prosecution rested, and Mr. Rush approached the bar according to usage and asked that the case be dismissed. The judge ruled that it should proceed; and immediately after the noon recess the first witness for the defence was called. This was Mr. Cummack, and he testified vigorously to the harmonious relations of the deceased and his amiable wife; that Mrs. Balfame—who was always pale—had treated the episode out at the Club in the casual manner observed by all seasoned and intelligent wives, the conversation over the telephone in his house proving that the domestic heavens were swept clean of storm-clouds; and that thedeceased had departed for his home quite happy and singing at the top of his lungs. He had often remarked jocularly (his was a cheery and jocular temperament) that he expected to die with his boots on, especially since he had taken to bawling Tipperary in the face of American Germany.
It is not to be imagined that Mr. Cummack was able to deliver himself of this valuable testimony without frequent and indignant interruptions from the district attorney, whose "irrelevant, incompetent and immaterial" rang through the courtroom like the chorus of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera. Mr. Gore, a wasp of a man with snapping black eyes and a rasping voice emitted through his higher nasal passages, succeeded in having much of this testimony stricken out, but not before the wily Mr. Rush, who stood on tiptoe, as alert and nervous as a race horse at the grandstand, had by his adroit swift questions fairly flung it into the jury-box. It was of the utmost importance with an obstinate provincial jury to establish at once a favourable general impression of the prisoner.
When, in the theatre, a trial scene is depicted, it is necessary to interpose dramatic episodes, but no one misses these adventitious incidents in a real trial for murder, so dramatic is the bare fact that a human being is battling for his life. When the prisoner at the bar is a woman reasonably young and good looking, the interest is so intense and complete that the sudden intrusion of one of the incidents which have become the staples of the theatre, such as the real culprit rushing into the courtroom and confessing himself, a suicide in the witness-box, or dramatic conduct on the part ofthe defendant, would be resented by the spectators, as an anti-climax. Real drama is too logical and grimly progressive to tolerate the extrinsic.
The three other men who had been at Mr. Cummack's house that night were called, and corroborated his story. They all wore an expression of gentle amusement as if the bare idea of the stately and elegant Mrs. Balfame descending to play even a passive rôle in a domestic row was as unthinkable as that any woman could find aught in David Balfame to rouse her to ire.
"By Jove!" whispered Mr. Broderick to Mr. Wagstaff of theMorning Flag, "just figure to yourself what the line would be if she had been caught red-handed and was putting up a defence of temporary insanity caused by the well-known proclivities of that beast. A good subject for a cartoon would be Dave Balfame in heaven with a tin halo on, whitewashing Mrs. B., weeds and all. The human mind is nothing but a sewer."
The afternoon session was also enlivened by the testimony of several of the ladies who had been members of the bridge party on the day of Mr. Balfame's unseemly conduct at the Club. They testified that although Mrs. Balfame naturally dissolved upon her return to the card-room, there had been nothing whatever in her demeanour to suggest seething passion. Mrs. Battle, who was an imposing figure in the witness chair, her greater bulk being above the waist, tossed her head and asseverated with refined emphasis that Mrs. Balfame was one of those rare and exquisite beings that are temperamentally incapable of passion of any sort. Her immediate return to her home was prompted more by delicacy than even by pain. Miss Crumley's pencilfaltered as she listened. She could not give a jeering public even a faithful outline of a woman as devoted to the sacred cause of friendship and Elsinore as Mrs. Battle.
The testimony of none of these ladies was more emphatic than that of Mrs. Bascom, wife of the supplanted justice, and she added unexpectedly that she had been so upset herself that she too had left the clubhouse immediately, and, her swift car passing Dr. Anna Steuer's little runabout, she had seen Mrs. Balfame chatting pleasantly and without a trace of recent emotion.
Mrs. Balfame almost relaxed the set curves of her mouth at this surprising statement. She recalled that a car had passed and that she had wondered at the time if any one had noticed her extreme agitation. She kept her muscles in order, but unconsciously her eyes followed Mrs. Bascom, as she left the witness-chair, with an expression of puzzled gratitude.
The District Attorney turned to the reporters with a short sardonic laugh, and Mr. Broderick shook his head as he murmured to Mr. Wagstaff:
"Can you beat that? And yet they say women don't stand by one another."
"Good for the whole game, I guess," replied the youngFlagstar, who was enamoured of a very pretty suffragette.
The Judge rose, and the afternoon session was over. The great case of The People vs. Mrs. Balfame rested until the following morning.
Mrs. Balfame walked back through the now familiar tunnel more hopeful and elated than any one in the courtroom would have inferred from her chiselled manner.
"I almost feel that I have the courage to look at the sketches of myself in the papers," she said lightly to Rush, who escorted her. "I haven't dared open a paper since Monday morning."
"Better not." Rush also was in high spirits. "Keep your mental mercury as high as possible. It doesn't matter, anyhow. You'll be clear in less than a week. The impression all those splendid friends of yours created knocked the prosecution silly."
"I have not once glanced at the jury," said Mrs. Balfame proudly, "and I never shall. All I was conscious of was that they were chewing gum, and that the man above me snorts constantly."
"That's Houston. He's likely to be predisposed in your favour on account of your intimacy with Dr. Anna. And he's a just man, of some intelligence. I fancy none of them is in the mood to be too hard on any one, for they are having a fine vacation in the Paradise City Hotel. Each has a big room with a soft bed and rich and delicate food three times a day. If they don't get indigestion they will be inclined to mercy on general principles. I engineered the housing of them. Gore was all for putting them up at the DobtonInn, where they would have grown as vicious as starved dogs. I won my point by reminding him that certain men of that sort try to get on a jury for the sake of having a rest and a soft time, and if they aren't coddled, they are equal to falling ill and forcing the court to begin the trial over again. You're all right."
They were in the jail sitting-room, and she stood with her head thrown back and her eyes shining. The moment they had entered she had removed her heavy hat and veil and run her hands through her crushed hair. Rush, who was very nervous and excited, made a swift motion forward as if to seize her hands. But it was only later, when alone, that she realised that possibly she had brushed aside an opportunity to rekindle a flame which she alternately feared and doubted was burning low; she was not thinking of him and exclaimed happily:
"It is quite a wonderful sensation to feel that you have made friends like that. My! how they did lie! And so convincingly! For a moment I was quite the outsider and deeply impressed with the weakness of the case against the accused. Here they come. I feel as if I never really loved them before." And she ran to the door to admit the elated trio who that day had made their noblest sacrifice to the cause of friendship. Mrs. Balfame kissed them and embraced them, and dried their excited tears, while Rush, his contemptible part in the day's drama forgotten, slunk down the stairs and out of the jail.
He met Alys Crumley as she was about to board the trolley for Elsinore, and she stepped back and congratulated him warmly.
"Your brain worked like blades of chain lightning,"she said with real enthusiasm. "I know you have only begun, but I can well imagine—wasn't Mrs. Balfame delighted?"
"With her friends' testimony," he replied gloomily. "I don't seem to come in."
There are some impulses, born of sudden opportunity, too strong for mortal powers of resistance. "Come home to supper," said Miss Crumley, with the same spontaneous warmth. "You look so tired, and Mother promised me Maryland chicken and waffles. Besides, I want to show you my drawings. I am so proud of being a staff artist."
"I'll come," said Rush promptly.
The following day was also taken by the examination of witnesses for the defence. Dr. Lequer, who had been called in occasionally by the Balfames when Dr. Anna was unavailable, and who was also an old friend of the family, asserted that so far as he knew there never had been a quarrel between husband and wife. Mrs. Balfame, in fact, was unique in his experience, inasmuch as she never looked depressed nor shed tears.
He was followed by a woman who had been general housemaid in the Balfame home for three years. She had left it to reward the devotion of a plumber, and between her and Frieda there had been a long line of the usual incompetents. Mrs. Figg testified with an enthusiasm which triumphed over nerves and grammar that although she guessed Mr. Balfame was about like other husbands, especially at breakfast, Mrs. Balfame was too easy-going to mind. She'd never seen her mad. Yes, she was an exacting mistress, all right, terrible particular, and she never sat with the hired girl in the kitchen and gossiped, and you couldn't take a liberty with her like you could with some; but that was just her way, naturally proud and silent-like. She was terrible economical but a kind mistress, as she didn't scold and follow up, once she was sure the girl would suit, and not a bit mean about evenings and afternoons off. She did up her own room and dustedthe downstairs rooms, except for the weekly cleaning. No, she never'd seen no pistol. It wasn't her way to look in bureau drawers. No, she'd never seen or heard any jealousy, tempers, and so forth, and had always taken it for granted that Mrs. Balfame wasn't on to Mr. Balfame's doings—or if she was, she didn't care. There was lots like that.
The district attorney snarled and trumpeted throughout this placid recital, but Mrs. Figg took no notice of him whatever. She had been thoroughly drilled, and looked straight into the sparkling blue eyes of Mr. Rush as if hypnotised.
Other minor witnesses consumed the afternoon, and once more Mrs. Balfame returned to the jail with glowing eyes. The women reporters were elated. The men made no comment as they filed out of the courtroom, but their whole bearing expressed a lofty and quiet scorn.
"It's fine! fine!" exclaimed Cummack, sitting down beside Rush at the table below the empty jury-box. "But I do wish Dr. Anna was available. She stands head and shoulders above every one else in the estimation of these jurymen; she doctored the children and confined the wives of pretty near all of them. There's no stone she wouldn't leave unturned."
"She's pretty bad, isn't she?" asked Rush. "Would there be any chance at all of getting a deposition—in case things went wrong?"
"Things ain't goin' wrong; but as for Anna, she's out of it, and everything else, I guess. I was out to the hospital yesterday, for I've had her in mind; but although she was better for a time, she's worse again.But say—what do you think I discovered? Those damned newspaper men have been hangin' round out there. That young devil Broderick—"
Rush was sitting up very straight, his eyes glittering. "But he surely hasn't been able to see her? I don't believe any sort of graft would get by Mrs. Dissosway—"
"You bet he hasn't been able to see Anna, and just now they're not leaving her for a moment alone, like they did at first. But Broderick seems to have the idea wedged in his brain that Mrs. Balfame confessed to Anna and that poor old Doc lost the pistol somewhere out in the marsh—"
Rush made an exclamation of disgust. "I can't understand Broderick. He's got his trial all right, and it isn't like him to hound a woman—"
"I said as much to him, and though he wouldn't talk much, I just gathered from something he let fall that he was afraid if the crime wasn't well fixed onto Enid some innocent person he thought a lot more of might come under suspicion. Can you guess who he had in mind?"
Rush pushed back his chair and sprang to his feet. "Good Lord, no. One case at a time is all my brain is equal to." He was almost out of the empty courtroom when Cummack caught him firmly by the shoulder.
"Say, Dwight," he said with evident embarrassment, "hold on a minute. I've just got to tell you that somehow or other I sensedyouwhen Broderick was trying to put me off. There are a good many things; they've been comin' back—"
Rush turned the hard glittering blue of his eyes fullupon Mr. Cummack, whose shrewd but kindly gaze faltered for a moment. "Do you believe I did it?" demanded Rush.
"Well, no, not exactly—that is, I'd know that if you had done it, it would have been because you'd got the idea into your head that Enid was having an awful row to hoe, or because he'd attacked her that night. It wouldn't have been for no mean personal reason, and no one knows better than I that the blood goes to the head terrible easy at your age and when a beautiful woman is in question. If I'd guessed it before, I'm free to say I'd have rushed your arrest in order to spare Enid, if for no other reason. But as it's gone so far and she's sure to get off,—and you wouldn't stand much show,—the matter had best stay where it is; particularly—well, I may as well tell you Enid sort of confided to Polly that you had offered to cover her name with yours as soon as she got out; and if you've been in love with her all this time, as I guess you have been—well, Dave can't be brought back. And—well, I've lived out West and it isn't so uncommon there for a man to shoot on sight when he's mad about a woman and a few other things at the same time. Dave was my friend, but I guess I understand."
Rush had withdrawn stiffly from the friendly hand laid on his shoulder. "I have asked Mrs. Balfame to marry me," he said. "But she has by no means consented."
"But she means to. Don't let it worry you. Women are queer cattle. Nail her the next time she's in the melting mood. She gets 'em oftener than she ever did before, and I guess you see her alone often enough."
"Oh, yes, I've seen her alone nearly every day for ten weeks."
Cummack narrowed his eyes, and his face, generally relaxed and amiable, grew stern and menacing. "You don't love her!" he exclaimed. "You don't! Like many another damned fool, you've compromised your very life for a woman, only to be disenchanted by seeing too much of her. But by God you've got to marry her—"
They were standing at the head of the winding stair in the rotunda, and several of the reporters were still in front of the telephone booth below.
"Hush!" said the lawyer peremptorily. "I mean to marry Mrs. Balfame if she accepts the proposal I made to her the day she was arrested. I have said nothing to warrant your jumping to the conclusion that I no longer wish to marry her. But by God! if you ever dare to threaten me again—" And he raised his fist so menacingly, his set face was so tense and white, his eyes bore such a painful resemblance to hot coals, that Cummack retreated hastily.
"All right! All right!" he called up from the first turning. "Don't fancy I think I could. And what's passed between us is sacred. S'long."
On the morrow the first witness called by the prosecution in rebuttal was old Kraus, and now it was Mr. Rush's turn to shout "Immaterial, Irrelevant and Incompetent," so that it was well-nigh impossible for the jury to do more than guess what the choleric person with a strong German accent was talking about. The district attorney fought valiantly to draw forth the story of Frieda's nocturnal visit to the Kraus home in search of advice after hearing Mrs. Balfame enter the kitchen from the yard, but his efforts ended in a shouting contest between the prosecution and the defence, both deserting their positions before the jury-box and wrangling before the Judge like two angry school-boys. Alys Crumley longed to laugh aloud, but not so the Judge. He asked them curtly how he was to know what was their point of dispute if they both talked at once. He then commanded Mr. Rush to state in as few words as possible what he was objecting to; and when the counsel for the defence had stated his purely legal reasons for blocking this purely hearsay testimony, the Judge abruptly threw Mr. Kraus out of court. Rush, flushed and triumphant, returned to his chair below the jury-box, and Mr. Gore sulkily called the name of Miss Frieda Appel.
There was no question of poor Frieda's making a good personal impression upon spectators or jury, no matter how worthy her motives. She had saved almostevery penny of her wages since coming to America; it had been her lover's intention to emigrate to Brabant County as soon as his term of service was over, and her housewifely intention to greet him with a furnished cottage. Since the war began, she had sent all her savings to East Prussia lest her people starve.
Dress in any circumstances would never tempt her. Economy was her religion, and she cherished no illusions about her face and form. To-day she wore a skirt of an old voluminous cut and a jacket with high puckered sleeves. The colour had once been brown. Her coarse blonde hair met her eyebrows in a thick bang, and its high knob was surmounted by a sailor hat a size too small. Her thick-set body was uncorseted, and her indeterminate features were lost in the width and flatness of her face. Only the little eyes beneath the heavy thatch of hair alternately glowed dully and spat fire.
The Judge sternly suppressed the titter that ran over the court-room as this caricature mounted the witness-stand, and the district attorney, in spite of frequent interruptions, elicited a remarkably clear and coherent statement. The Judge sustained him, for here was a real witness, and Miss Appel not only had been as thoroughly rehearsed as Mrs. Figg, but she had a neat precise little mind set with rows of pigeonholes that ejected their contents in routine when her coach pressed the cognate button.
She had come home abruptly from the dance-hall as she had an insupportable toothache—had run all the way, as she had some toothache-drops in her room. She was in such agony she hardly had noticed that her friend Conrad Kraus was behind her. When shereached her room she had applied the drops, and to her horror they made the pain worse. After walking the floor for perhaps ten minutes—she didn't know or care whether it was ten or fifteen minutes—she was just starting to go down-stairs and heat some water for her bag when she heard the kitchen door open and shut. She held her breath and did not answer when Mrs. Balfame called, as she feared she was wanted and was determined to do nothing for anybody while her tooth ached like that.
Mrs. Balfame's voice had sounded quite breathless, as if she had been running. In a moment Frieda heard her go into the dining-room then back to the kitchen, and turn on the tap,—not the filter, which made no noise,—and then she heard one glass clink against another on the pantry shelf. After that, Mrs. Balfame went upstairs from the front hall and the witness returned to her room and threw herself on the bed, where she remained until Mr. Cummack came and asked her to go downstairs and make coffee. By this time her tooth ached so she didn't care what she did.
Cross-questioned, she admitted that Mrs. Balfame was in the habit of drinking a glass of filtered water the last thing at night. No, she had not heard her go out, but only come in. But why, if Mrs. Balfame saw nothing outside to frighten her, or if she hadn't been out, was she so short of breath? As may be imagined, mere speculation on Miss Appel's part was cut short by Mr. Rush, who interrupted her constantly. Yes, she had heard what she now knew had been a shot but she had paid no attention. Who would, with a red-hot iron forcing one's tooth down through one's jaw?
Even the scornful questions of counsel which forcedher to admit that she had lied to the coroner neither perturbed her nor made any impression on jury, press, or spectators. Every one present had suffered from toothache, and two farmers in the box showed their tusks in an appreciative grin when she replied tartly that she didn't know or care anything that day but tooth, tooth, tooth. It was manifest that she was far too conservative to have had it out at once, to say nothing of the cost.
The only question she was not prepared for was the abrupt challenge of Mr. Rush as to how she could prove that young Kraus had followed her if she had neither seen nor spoken to him during that short run from Main Street. But although she was visibly perturbed at being confronted with a set of words to which no neat little pigeon-hole responded, it was so evident she was firmly convinced her friend had accompanied her, that for Rush to make too much of his solitary point would prejudice his case, and he let her go.
Conrad Jr. followed, and his story was equally straightforward. He also made a good impression. True, he had a very small closely cropped head, with eyes too small and ears too large, but he held himself with arrogance, and he was well dressed in a new grey suit and pink shirt. Born in the United States, it was manifest that he was proud not only of being an American citizen but of the country's choicest vintage. He had been sent to the public school until he was sixteen, had studied conscientiously, and his grammar was quite as good as that of the District Attorney, who in emotional moments confused his negatives. But, even Rush, whose advantages had been as superior as his natural equipment, became a good nasal American whenexcited, opened into vowels, and freely translatedyouintoyer. It is these persistent characteristics, so racy of the soil, which cheer us when apprehending that our original Americanism may in time be obliterated by the foreign influx.
No, said young Kraus, he had no sentimental interest in Frieda. (He smiled.) And he was engaged to a young lady to whom he had been attentive for three years. But he felt like a brother to Frieda; she had come to his father's house direct from Germany, their families having been friends for generations. It was not only his duty but his pleasure to dance with her, she being "the best of the bunch down at the hall."
As he was dancing with her when her toothache became unendurable, it was natural that he should see her home; in fact, he always saw her home when it was convenient. Of course if he had to catch the last trolley for Dobton in a hurry, that was another matter.
When she had entered the house, he had waited, thinking she might want some other drops or possibly a dentist. Once when he had had a toothache, he had been obliged to go to a dentist's house at night. His papa had sent him, and naturally he thought of it as a possibility in Frieda's case.
Then the kitchen door opened and a woman came out.
At this point the interest in the court-room became intense. Even the blasé young reporters sat forward, their pencils poised. The Judge wheeled his chair to the right and stared down fixedly at the back of young Kraus' head. The district attorney balanced himself on his heels, his thumbs hooked in the sleeves of his vest, and Rush stood with his back curved as if to springdown the witness' throat with a wild yell of "Immaterial, irrelevant and incompetent." Only Mrs. Balfame sat like a statue that had neither eyes to see nor ears to hear.
Yes, Mr. Kraus recognised Mrs. Balfame's figure and walk. She was one in a thousand for looks, and taller than many men. She had on a long dark ulster and a black scarf round her head. The kitchen light was behind her—
Here there was another furious contest between the chief counsel and the district attorney, but the Judge ordered the young man (who had consumed a toothpick imperturbably) to proceed with his story. Mrs. Balfame had slipped round the corner of the house, listened intently, walked for a minute toward the back of the grounds,—he could just see the moving shadow in the darkness,—turned abruptly and entered the grove. Naturally interested, he waited to see what she was up to; and then—possibly three or four minutes later—he heard Balfame singing "Tipperary," and a moment or two after that the shot,—one shot, not two; he took no stock in the theory that there had been two shots,—followed by loud voices from the other side of the avenue.
Then he "beat it," that being his natural instinct at the moment. His papa had taught him to be cautious and to keep clear of other people's fights. He had never been close up against a crime, and he hoped he never should be. He walked through the adjoining grounds at the back and then into Balfame Street and took the next trolley home. He didn't feel like dancing after what he guessed had happened.
No, he had heard no sound of running footsteps, buthe stood for a moment near the back fence of the Lequer place; there were people in the library until some man ran in calling for the doctor to come at once—and he did see a car leave the lane behind the Balfame place. He had thought nothing of it, however, as automobiles were everywhere all the time. No, he hadn't tried to see whether the car was driven by a man or woman or how many occupants it had. Not only was the night very dark (as far as he remembered, the car had no lamps), but his one idea was to get out of the neighbourhood.
Rush put him through a grilling cross-examination, and although he could not shake his testimony, he made use of all his practised arts to exhibit the youth as a sorry coward who ran away when he heard a revolver-shot instead of rushing with the common instinct of American manhood to ascertain if it were the woman herself who had been the victim. How much had he been paid to give this testimony withheld at the coroner's inquest? Young Kraus' ruddy hues had deepened to purple some time since, and he shouted back that he had come forward only when that woman's lying friends were trying to fasten the crime upon his innocent papa. Here he was sternly admonished by the Judge to confine his answers to "Yes" and "No" unless he could control his temper. Rush forced him to reiterate that he had not had a glimpse of Mrs. Balfame's face that night, that he never had spoken to her at any time; and the lawyer remarked crushingly that the young man's brain must have been in a hopelessly confused state if he saw a car leave the lane so soon after the shooting—a car, moreover, without lights—and failed to connect this phenomenon withthe immediately previous sound of a pistol-shot. It was evident that his brain moved so slowly that it had taken him almost a week to put a good story together.
Young Kraus left the stand with his inborn sense of superiority over mere Americans severely shaken, but although his small angry eyes encountered more than one sneer, and many of those hostile spectators looked as if they would laugh outright were it not for their awe of the Judge, he had injured Mrs. Balfame far more than himself. Few believed him to be lying or that he had seen a vision, not a real woman, leave the Balfame house by the kitchen door. He was known to have been as sober as usual on the night of the dance, and as the evidence against his father had been regarded as fantastic from the first, there was no conceivable cause for him to lie.
Mr. Gifning, Mr. Battle and Mr. Carden, who were the first to reach Balfame, after he fell, were forced by the district attorney to give damning evidence against Mrs. Balfame. Her room was in the front of the house; if in it, she could have heard the shot as plainly as they on Mr. Gifning's veranda. But she did not come downstairs or manifest herself in any way until they had had time to summon the coroner (who to be sure lived round the corner) and Dr. Lequeur. It must have been quite six minutes before she opened her window and demanded the reason for the disturbance at her gate. At least, it had seemed that long. No, they never confused a revolver-shot with a bursting tire. They had when cars first came into use, but they had learned to differentiate long since.
When Mr. Rush asked them sarcastically why one at least of the party had not searched the grove andattempted to capture the murderer, they replied they had by no means been sure that the shot had come from the grove. It might have come from anywhere. It was only after the doctor's examination that the direction of the bullet had been agreed upon. Later they did search the grove with a dark-lantern brought from Mrs. Gifning's house; in fact, they searched every inch of the grounds, and their only reward was abuse from the police.
These three witnesses, examined after the noon recess, occupied very little time. It was at ten minutes to four that the district attorney electrified every one in the courtroom by calling to the stand a man whose name up to that moment had not been mentioned in the case. The reporters looked deeply annoyed; even Mrs. Balfame raised her head a trifle higher as if listening; Rush's pale face was paler, the lines in it seemed deeper, as he sprang to his feet, alert at once, his nostrils expanding. The district attorney balanced himself on his heels, his thumbs in his waistcoat armholes, a grin of triumph on his sharp little face.
The name called was James Mott, and it was borne by a highly reputable drummer who had made sales for many years to houses carrying general merchandise, including that of Balfame & Cummack. Mr. Mott was as well known in Brabant County as any of its inhabitants; in fact, he was engaged to an estimable young lady of Elsinore, and hence, so it soon transpired, had happened to be in town on the fatal night. For once the acumen of the district attorney had proved more penetrating than that of the brilliant counsel for the defence.
Mr. Mott took the stand. He was a clean-shavenupstanding American with the keen eye and grim mouth of the travelling salesman who knows that he must do or die. He looked as honest as urbane, and for the first time Mrs. Balfame's heart sank; and her hands, so the women reporters noted for the benefit of the public, clenched for a full minute.
Although Rush stood with his head stretched forward, he thought it wise to let the man tell his story in his own way. Interruptions would have been of little avail; the Judge would sustain the district attorney if it were patent the witness were telling the truth; and as he was completely in the dark himself it were better to wait until he got a promising lead. He knew that no man's brain could work more quickly than his.
Mr. Mott being solemnly sworn, deposed that on the night of the shooting he had been taking supper with his friend Miss Lacke, who lived at Number 3 Dawbarn Street, just round the corner from Elsinore Avenue. He left her house at a little before eight, as he was obliged to catch the eight-ten for New York. As he closed the gate behind him, he saw David Balfame walk unsteadily past, shouting "Tipperary"; and being a friend of many years' standing, had concluded to follow and see Balfame safely inside the house. He would lose but a minute or two, and it seemed to him a decent act, for it was possible the man might fall and hurt himself before he reached his home. Mott was so close behind him that he must have just escaped the shot or shots himself, and although he jumped backward he saw distinctly somebody run out of the grove and toward the back of the house. Whether it was a man or a woman he had no idea, but the figure was tall—yes far taller than either young Kraus or Frieda.Then, he said, he doubled on his tracks and got back into Dawbarn Street as quickly as he could. He blushed as he admitted this, but added that he knew from the shouts on Gifning's veranda that men were hastening to Balfame's aid, and he had to catch the eight-ten or lose his night train to the West and a big piece of business. Moreover, he didn't like the idea of giving testimony against anybody; he abhorred the institution of capital punishment. For the same reason he did not come forward until the District Attorney ferreted him out, as he was afraid the running figure might have been Mrs. Balfame and she was the last person he wished to harm, innocent or guilty.
No one could doubt that he told the truth and hated to tell it. Nor could any one jump to the conclusion that he was the assassin; he had as little motive for killing Balfame as any of the other men of Brabant County with whom he had been for years on the same cordial terms.
All that Rush could do was to make him admit that perhaps he was naturally confused by the flash, the report almost in his ear, the man sinking at his feet, and only fancied he saw a running form; the delusion would be natural in the circumstances, particularly as his thoughts seemed to have been concentrated upon getting out of the way. Mr. Mott admitted almost too eagerly that this might be true, but added that when the district attorney, who was a cousin of Miss Lacke, as well as an old friend of his own, had squeezed the story out of him bit by bit (the form of extraction was supplied by Mr. Rush), that had been his impression; he seemed to have that tall running figure imprinted upon his retina, as it were. Of course it might be just imagination.He wished to God he could swear it was. When asked sharply if even one of his parents was German, he recovered his poise and replied haughtily that he was straight American and as pro-Allies as the best man in the country. He had never entered Old Dutch's beer garden; his choice was a hotel bar, anyhow; he avoided saloons.
Rush had a diabolical power of making a witness look ridiculous, but the American mind is essentially a just mind, normally unemotional, and a very magnet for facts. As the Judge adjourned the court until Monday the sob-sisters trailed out dejectedly, after a vain endeavour to get close to Mrs. Balfame; the young men sauntered forth with their heads in the air, and Rush's lips were so closely pressed together that his face looked pure granite. As a matter of fact, his heart felt like water.
Mrs. Balfame, who had not permitted herself to show a flicker of interest while Mott was on the stand, rose as the Judge left the room. She smiled upon each of her friends separately and kissed the prominent ladies of Elsinore who had sat beside her throughout that trying day.
"Please don't come over to the jail," she said. "I know you are worn out, and I have a bad headache. I must lie down. But do please come to-morrow. You are all too good. Thank you so much."
Then with a faint smile and a light step she followed the sheriff through the long tunnel, a horrible vision dancing before her eyes.
When Rush arrived at the sitting-room of the jail's private suite he found Mrs. Balfame, not in tears as he had nervously anticipated, but distraught, pacing the room, her hands in her disordered hair.
"I am done for! done for!" she cried as Rush hastily closed the door. "It would have been better if I had told the truth in the beginning—that Ihadgone out that night. It was not such a bad excuse,—that I thought I saw a burglar down there,—and it was God's truth. Or I could have said I was walking about the grounds because I had a headache—"
"It never would have gone down. If I could have discovered who the other person in the grove was—found him and his forty-one-calibre revolver, well and good. Failing that, our line of defence is the best possible. I will admit, though," he too was pacing the room,—"it looks bad to-day, pretty bad. There isn't the ghost of a chance to prove Mott was the man. Gore has the time to the minute he left Susie Lacke's; you must have gone out some time before—"
"Oh, he didn't do it. I've not thought it for a moment. No such luck. It was some enemy who went straight to New York—in that car. But I—I—Auburn—the electric chair—they all believed—Oh, my God! God!"
She had tossed her arms above her head then flung herself down before the table, her face upon them,rocking her body back and forth. Her voice was deep with horror and despair, her abandonment far more complete than on the day of her arrest; and wrought up himself, Rush was stirred with the echo of all he had felt that day. In the semi-intimacy of these past ten weeks, when he had talked with her for hours at a time, she had disillusioned him in many ways, bored him, forced him to admit that her lovely shell concealed an uninteresting mind, and that the only depths in her personality that he was permitted to glimpse were such as to make him shrink, by no means to excite that fascination even in repulsion peculiar to the faults of a more passionate nature. He still thought her the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, however, and if it was beauty which now left him cold, his admiration of her had been renewed these last three days when her manner and appearance in court had been beyond all praise. He had excoriated himself for his fickleness, his contemptible failure as a lover; and the more he hated himself the more grimly determined he was to behave precisely as if he still loved and revered her as he had when ready to sacrifice life itself for her sake. He was in such animpassethat he cared little what became of himself.
He leaned over the table and pressed his hands hard on her arms.
"Listen!" he said peremptorily. "You never will go to Auburn. You will leave this jail not later than the middle of next week, a free woman. If I cannot get you off by my address to the jury,—and it will be the supreme effort of my life,—I'll take the stand and swear that I committed the murder myself."
"What?" She lifted her head and stared up athim. His face was set, but his eyes glowed like blue coals.
"Yes. I can put it over, all right. You remember I went to your house from the Club that day. Nobody saw me go; no one saw me leave. From the moment I left you, until the following morning, no one—no one that I know of—saw me that night, except Dr. Anna. We met out on the road leading to Houston's farm, and she drove me in. She believes I did it. So does Cummack, and if necessary he will manage to get an affidavit from her—"
Mrs. Balfame had sprung to her feet. "Did you do it? Did you?"
"Aha! I can make even you believe it. No, I did not, but I couldn't prove an alibi if my life depended upon it. I can make the Judge and the jury believe—"
"And do you think I would permit—"
"They will believe me. And Dr. Anna—who would doubt her testimony that my appearance and conduct were highly suspicious that night on the marsh road? And what could you disprove? There was a man in that grove, was there not?"
"Yes, but not you; I don't know why, but I could swear to that. I shall—if you do anything so mad—tell the whole truth about myself."
"What good would that do? Balfame was killed with a forty-one revolver. Yours was a thirty-eight."
"How do you know that?"
"I found it the night I spent in your house—the night of your arrest. I knew that you never would have gone out to head off a burglar without a revolver—any more than the jury would have believed it. I found the pistol. Never mind the long and manydetails of the search. It is in my safe. I kept it on the off chance that it might be necessary to produce it after all."
"But I fired at him. I hardly knew that I was firing, until I felt the revolver in my hand go off. Perhaps it was a suggestion from that tense figure so close to me, intent upon murder. Perhaps I merely felt I must—must—I have never been able to analyse what I did feel in those terrible seconds. It doesn't matter. I did. And you? You know I fired with intent to kill. Did you guess at once?"
"Oh, yes. But it doesn't matter. You were not yourself, of course. You had what is called an inhibition—as maddened people have when fighting their way out of a burning theatre. I only wish you had told me. I—that is to say, it is never fair to keep your counsel in the dark."
"You mean you wish I had not lied!" She caught him up with swift intuition. "Well, to-day I would not, but then—well, I was full of pettiness, it seems to me now. But although I am far even yet from being a fine woman,—I know that!—I am not a poor enough creature to let you die for me. Oh, you are far too good for me. I never dreamed that a man would go as far as that for a woman in these days. I thought it was only in books—"
"The veriest trash is inspired by the actual occurrences of life—which is pretty much the same in books as out. And I guess men haven't changed much since the world began, so far as making fools of themselves about a woman is concerned."
As she stood with one hand pressed hard against the table she was far more deeply moved than a fewmoments since by fear, although outwardly calm. She had climbed far out of her old self within these prison walls, but she saw steeper heights before her, and she welcomed them.
"Then," she said deliberately, "I must cure you. Before I went out, I had prepared that glass of lemonade and put poison in it. I had planned for several weeks to kill him when a favourable opportunity arrived. I had stolen a secret poison from Anna—out of that chimney cupboard Cassie described. You see that I am a potential murderer,—and a cold-blooded one,—even if by a curious irony of fate some one else committed the deed. Now do you think I am worth giving up your life for—going to the electric chair—"
"Suppose we postpone further argument until the necessity arises—if it ever does. I fully expect you to be triumphantly acquitted. Tell me"—he looked at her curiously, for he divined something of her inner revolutions and hated himself the more that he was interested only as every good lawyer must be in human nature,—"could you do that in cold blood again?"
"No—not that way—never. I might let a pistol go off under the same provocation—that is bad enough."
"Oh, no. Remove the restraints of a lifetime—or perhaps it is merely a matter of vibration and striking the right key."
"And do you mean that—you still want to marry me?"
"Yes," he answered steadily. "Certainly I do."
"Ah!" Once more she wondered if he still loved her. But she had been too sure of him and of herself to harbour doubt for more than a passing moment.She had come to the conclusion that he had merely taken her at her word, and she knew the specialising instinct of the busy American. She had, indeed, wondered if it were not the strongest instinct he possessed. And in spite of her new humility, she had suffered no loss of confidence in herself as a woman. She vaguely felt that she had lost something of this man's esteem, but trusted to time and her own charm to dim the impression. For she had made up her mind to marry him. Not only would it be the wisest possible move after acquittal,—a decent time after,—but during sleepless hours she had come to the conclusion that she loved this brilliant knightly young man as deeply as it was in her power to love any one. And after this terrible experience and the many changes it had wrought within her, she wanted to be happy.
He had taken up his hat. She crossed the room swiftly and laid her hand on his arm. "I could not stand one word of love-making in jail," she said, smiling up at him graciously, although her eyes were serious. "But it is only fair to tell you now that if I am acquitted I will marry you."
And stabbed with a pang of bitter regret that he felt not the least impulse to scout her authority and seize her in his arms, he bent over her hand and kissed it with cold lips, but with an air of complete gallantry.
"Thank you," he said, and went out.