The Ordeal of Elizabeth Part 34

Elizabeth turned her face away. "Ah, I see," she murmured, "he doesn't wish to be reminded of--anything at home." A pale cold smile flitted across her white face. "It is better so," she said, firmly, "far, far better. I am glad that he is away and that there is no use in sending for him."

"But if there were"--all Mrs. Bobby's self-control could not keep the tremor from her voice--"if there were, Elizabeth, isn't there something that he could testify in your favor? Do tell me, dear," she urged; the girl sat silent. "You see I have guessed it--it can do no harm for me to know what it is."

Elizabeth spoke at last, low and hesitatingly. "He knows that on the twenty-third of December, when--when that man said he saw me in Brooklyn, I was with him--with Julian. I went out that morning, meaning to do some shopping, but I met him accidentally. He persuaded me to go up to the Metropolitan Museum--there was a picture he wanted to show me. We were there some hours. And--and that is all."

"And that was," said Mrs. Bobby breathlessly, "on the twenty-third of December. You are _sure_?"

"Quite sure," said the girl listlessly, "but what difference does it make? I wouldn't tell Mr. Fenton--I said I couldn't remember what I did that day, and I wouldn't tell you now, if I thought that you could send for him. You can't send for him, can you?" She looked at Mrs.

Bobby with sudden alarm. "You really don't know where he is?"

"Upon my word and honor," Mrs. Bobby a.s.sured her, "I don't." And then she said little more, but kissed Elizabeth presently, bade her keep up her courage, and left sooner than she generally did.

"No, I don't know where he is," she said to herself, as the hansom bore her swiftly up-town, and she stared out absently at the deserted streets. "We don't know, but please G.o.d, we shall soon. If only that man finds him, if he can only get him here in time."

_Chapter x.x.xIV_

This was in the early summer; and Elizabeth's trial was to be in November. The time approached, and nothing had been heard of Julian Gerard. Efforts were made to postpone the trial, that this important witness might have time to appear. But the influence of people like the Van Antwerps, which seems in some ways all-powerful, is in others curiously slight. The District Attorney was acting in the interests of the yellow journals and they, according to their own account, in the interests of the people, which required, as they set forth in high-sounding editorials, that no more favor should be shown to Miss Van Vorst than to the lowest criminal.

After all, the girl's health had suffered so severely from the long confinement that it seemed a cruelty to lengthen it, even with the hope of Gerard's return. Mr. Fenton himself was of opinion that the trial should not be postponed. He had done his best for his client, though hampered more, perhaps, than he realized by his secret doubt of everything she said. He did not believe in this alibi, which she had trumped up, as he decided, when the one person who could confirm or deny it was safely out of the way. Yet he tried to find some other witness who remembered, or imagined having seen her at the Museum on the morning when she was supposed to have been in Brooklyn. No such person could be found. The case for the defence was lamentably weak.

Mr. Fenton admitted the fact to himself with a shrug of the shoulders, and fell back philosophically on his conviction that no jury would send a young woman of Elizabeth's position and attractions to the electric chair.

Perhaps the person most to be pitied in those days was Miss Cornelia, who had been summoned as witness for the prosecution to corroborate the testimony of Bridget O'Flaherty, her former waitress, as to her niece's words and manner on the morning after the murder. The poor lady was in a pitiful state of agitation. "What shall I say?" she asked, looking appealingly from one to the other of Elizabeth's friends and advisers.

"Say anything," said Mrs. Bobby, hastily, "any--any lie that you can invent."

She stopped. Miss Cornelia drew herself up with dignity. "I don't think our child's cause can be helped by--by lies, Mrs. Van Antwerp,"

she said.

Mrs. Bobby felt herself rebuked. "Well, I am not given to lies myself, as a rule," she explained, apologetically, "but in a case like this it seems to me that the end justifies the means. It's a doctrine brought into discredit, I know, by the Jesuits, but still it seems to have a certain foundation in common-sense."

"I don't know anything about the Jesuits," said Miss Cornelia, with some stiffness, "but I shall try to act as our Church would advise, even--even if Elizabeth"--here her voice broke.

"I think," said Bobby Van Antwerp, coming to the rescue, "that Miss Cornelia is right, Eleanor. It is much better to tell the exact truth, and Fenton will make the best of it.--Good Heavens," he said afterwards to his wife, "you don't suppose that the poor lady could invent a plausible story, or even keep back anything that wouldn't be brought out in cross-examination and make a worse effect than if she gave it of her own accord!"

But upon Miss Cornelia the opposite side of the question was beginning to make an impression. Her mind moved slowly. It was not easy for her to break from old tradition. Her conscience had hitherto recognized the broadly drawn line between right and wrong; no indefinite, subtle gradations. As she had said once to Elizabeth, fully meaning it, one could always do right if one tried. But if--if one could not tell what the right was?...

Miss Joanna, sitting opposite to her in the twilight, broke the silence hesitatingly. "I suppose, sister," she said, "I suppose you remember--exactly what the poor child said--that morning? You haven't"--Miss Joanna caught her breath--"you haven't forgotten?"

There was a note of entreaty in her voice.

Miss Cornelia could see it so plainly; the breakfast table and the paper with those startling headlines, and the look on Elizabeth's face, when she had made that extraordinary a.s.sertion. A confession of guilt! That was the way in which it would be construed--there seemed no way out of it. Miss Cornelia did not think that the most merciful jury could acquit her after that. And yet the child was innocent--Miss Cornelia knew that as surely as she knew that the Bible was inspired.

Was it reasonable, was it right that she should be required to give evidence against her? Over Miss Cornelia's mind there swept a sudden, sharp sense of injustice, a pa.s.sionate rebellion against fate.

But a life-long habit of truth-telling is hard to overcome. She answered Miss Joanna after a moment. "I--I haven't forgotten, sister,"

she said, and the hot tears scorched her eyeb.a.l.l.s.

Miss Joanna put away her knitting with a hopeless sigh. "Well, of course, sister, you must speak the truth," she said, drearily, "but--it does seem hard." Then she went out of the room, crying quietly.

Miss Cornelia sat motionless in the twilight, while that new tumult of rebellion still raged within her. Ah, yes, it seemed more than hard--it seemed cruel, unjust, that such a thing should be required of her. Those strange people, the Jesuits, whom she had always held in horror, had some reason on their side after all. There were cases to which the simple, old-fashioned rules of right and wrong did not apply, which were extraordinary, unprecedented.... Miss Cornelia could not help asking herself--with a thrill of self-condemnation, indeed, and yet another feeling which defended the question--whether in certain circ.u.mstances, the wrong were not more to be commended, wiser, better than the right.

She spent a sleepless night, thinking it over. The whole foundations of her life, of her faith seemed shaken. She looked the next morning so exhausted, when she went down as usual to The Tombs, that Elizabeth at once divined that some new misfortune had happened, and it was not long before she drew it out of her.

She sat for a long time very still, one hand clasping Miss Cornelia's, the fingers of the other tapping on the ledge of the wall beside her.

"Of course, auntie," she said at last, quietly, "you must tell exactly what happened. There's no good to be gained by lies; at least"--she made an attempt at a smile--"my own success in that line hasn't been very striking. I was a little out of my head that morning, and I don't remember exactly what I said! but whatever it was"--she raised her head proudly--"I don't want anything kept back. Let them know the whole truth; then, if they condemn me, well and good. At least I shan't have anything"--her voice faltered--"anything _more_ to reproach myself with."

"Elizabeth!" The older woman gazed up at her admiringly. "You are so brave--you are a lesson to me! But you--you don't realize, my darling--" sobs choked her voice.

"Oh, yes--I realize." A pale smile flitted across the girl's face. "I have realized--quite clearly--all these months. But that's no reason, auntie, why you should save me by lies."

And then she turned the subject, and began to talk calmly enough, about one of the women prisoners, in whose case she took a keen interest. Nothing more was said about her own affairs. She had relapsed, since that conversation months before with Mrs. Bobby, into her old reserve, and spoke very little of herself. The cooler weather was helping her. She seemed stronger, and always quite calm. Miss Cornelia went away, feeling rebuked for her own cowardice. Elizabeth was right, she thought with a pang of self-reproach; nothing but the truth must be told in her defence. But meanwhile Miss Cornelia tried to reconcile two opposite instincts; offering up day and night two apparently irreconcilable pet.i.tions; that she might be enabled to speak the truth exactly, and yet do no harm to her niece's cause.

_Chapter x.x.xV_

It was the first day of Elizabeth's trial. She could hardly realize that it had come--this event which they had antic.i.p.ated so long, the thought of which had lately crowded out every other. There was nothing alarming about the present proceedings--the appearance of one jury-man after another, generally followed in each case by a peremptory challenge. One was objected to because he was thought to have formed a favorable opinion, another an unfavorable one, and still another because he was apparently incapable of forming any opinion at all. If she had not been on trial for her life, she might have thought it dull.

Her gaze wandered to that wide court-room window opposite, from which she could see an expanse of roofs, flag-staffs and chimneys, full of charm and excitement after the unbroken outline of blank walls, which for many months had bounded her view. Then, forgetting herself, she glanced about the room, quickly turned and shrank back, while the color rushed into her white face. There were some women whom she knew, thickly veiled, in the crowd behind her--women who were against her.

Those who were her friends had the consideration to stay away. And there were others whom she did not know, who crowded as close to the bar as they could, eying her with eager curiosity, making remarks about her in a stage whisper. As the heroine of this sensational case, she was a disappointment both in dress and appearance.

"Well, her hair waves prettily"--the words came distinctly to Elizabeth's ears in a lull in the proceeding--"but that's about all. I don't see why she was ever called a beauty, do you?"

"Why, no, indeed. Her features aren't regular--not a bit. And isn't she thin and white!"

"Hush!" a kindlier voice broke in, suppressing the others. "It's no wonder, poor thing. Most people would lose their looks, if they'd been through what she has."

A pang shot through Elizabeth none the less distinct because the reason was, in view of what was going on, so trifling and absurd. She had dressed herself that morning with unusual care, resolved to present as far as possible an undisturbed front to the world; and she had not realized that the plain black gown, and the unrelieved sombreness of the black hat, which would once have thrown into more dazzling relief her fresh young beauty, now emphasized with startling plainness the change in her appearance. For a moment, the fact forced itself upon her and hurt even then. When a woman has always been regarded as a beauty, it is hard to become accustomed to a different point of view. After all, what difference did it make? She had not realized the effect which her looks were supposed to produce on the jury.

For a while the prospect of any jury at all seemed dubious. The hours pa.s.sed, the day came to an end, and there were exactly two men in the box. It was not till the end of the third day that the number was complete--twelve most unhappy men, whose faces Eleanor Van Antwerp scanned eagerly. Some, she decided, were kind; others--too logical; all of them were more or less intelligent. There were one or two, she thought, to whom the pathos of Elizabeth's pale and faded looks might appeal with an eloquence that fresh coloring and rounded curves would have lacked entirely. Upon these men she based her hopes.

And so the trial, once fairly started, dragged on its weary length.

Mrs. Bobby spent her days there, sitting beside Elizabeth; her whole life, just then, seemed bounded by the court-house walls. She had no interest in anything outside. And Elizabeth's aunts, too, came every day. It was pathetic to see these timid, elderly women, plunged for the first time in their sheltered lives into this fierce glare of publicity, under which they bore up unflinchingly, in the effort to show to all the world their firm faith in their niece's ultimate acquittal.

As for Elizabeth, she had little hope; but neither had she, except at times, any great fear. The worst had been that first day, and now she was used to being stared at; used even to the thought that she was being tried for her life. The scene and its accessories--the listening, eager crowd behind her, the judge before her with his impa.s.sive face, in which she thought she could perceive, now and again--or did her hopes deceive her?--a gleam of sympathy; the jury weary but resigned, the reporters taking notes, scanning her with eyes that noted every detail of her manner and bearing, placed upon them Heaven knows what construction! Bobby Van Antwerp moving restlessly about, holding long conferences with the lawyers; her counsel and the District Attorney wrangling, glaring at each other over the heads of unfortunate witnesses--the whole thing lost its terrors, grew to be an accepted part of her life's routine.

The evidence at first was technical. There was much she did not understand--she wondered if the jury did. There were the doctors, showing with many long words and tedious explanations, with what sort of poison the murder had been committed; and then there were the handwriting experts, with still longer words and more tedious explanations. Now--what was it that they had brought out? Those unfortunate letters which she remembered so well having written, in great haste and anxiety. The experts were pointing out numerous points of resemblance between them and another piece of paper, which she had never seen before. And now it was the secret marriage they were proving--though what was the use of that, when no one denied it? The question of motive was absolutely clear; the District Attorney had expatiated upon it at great length in his opening speech.

All this Elizabeth grasped more or less distinctly. She realized that the evidence was strong against her. But she could not, weak and dazed as she was, keep her mind on it. The voice of the witnesses would grow indistinct, a mist would pa.s.s over the anxious faces around her, a lull would come in the nervous tension of the atmosphere; the blue sky, which she saw from the window, would seem very near, and she would float off into phases of oblivion, from which she would be roused, perhaps, by a touch on her arm, or a voice in her ear.

"Listen, darling, that was a point in your favor," her aunts or Eleanor Van Antwerp would say.

These points were few and far between. But there was one which Elizabeth understood--she hoped that the jury did.