The Ordeal of Elizabeth Part 37

The witness glanced helplessly at Elizabeth. "It--isn't much like it,"

he admitted.

"And yet you describe both as 'reddish?'"

The witness was desperate. "Well, I--I don't exactly know"--he said.

"What you mean by 'reddish?'" said Mr. Fenton.

"Well--no," said the witness.

"I see that you don't. It's not necessary for you to tell us that. You are color blind evidently, and by 'reddish' you simply mean anything between black and tow-color. But you can't swear away a woman's life with such vague descriptions as this. You can go now. I have no more questions to ask."

The crestfallen witness gladly retreated. But in spite of his discomfiture, his evidence had been a serious blow to the defense, and when, a few days later, the prosecution closed its case, it was admitted on every side to be a strong one.

The defense opened quietly enough. Mr. Fenton, too, brought out his handwriting experts, who were prepared with an equally startling array of technical details, to swear to the exact opposite of what had been solemnly declared by the experts for the prosecution. The court settled down into a dreamy mood, and the spectators for the most part went to sleep.

There was a break in the monotony, and one which created much excitement, when Elizabeth took the stand on her own behalf. She had been very anxious to do this, and Mr. Fenton had reluctantly consented, with many misgivings and elaborate instructions, to which he saw, to his alarm, that she listened almost vacantly. But when she began to testify his doubts disappeared. She gave her evidence very simply and directly, and there was something in the soft, low tones of her voice, an indefinable ring of girlishness, of youth and inexperience, which carried with it an illogical thrill of conviction.

She had never, she said, bought the flask which contained the poison, nor had she ever seen one exactly like it. She had not gone to Brooklyn on the twenty-third of December--she had never gone there in her life. She had spent the morning of the twenty-third of December at the Metropolitan Museum. She had not bought the bottle of a.r.s.enic, and knew nothing of it. She had no reason to expect Paul Halleck's death.

She had read of it in the papers. No, she had not meant the a.s.sertion literally when she said that she had killed him; she had been startled because his death had seemed to come in direct answer to her wishes, and she had somehow felt accountable for it. Yes, it was a morbid idea--she realized it now, but she had not been at all well at the time. That was the reason she had gone up to the studio; she had been in a state of nervous excitement and hardly knew what she did. No, she had not thought of the police suspecting her in consequence; such an idea had never entered her mind.

On the whole, Mr. Fenton was satisfied with the effect that she was producing. He had made the agreeable discovery that he was beginning to believe in her himself; and if this conviction was impressing itself more and more upon his own suspicious mind, it must, he thought, be all-powerful with the jury, whom he had already mentally appraised as kindly men, anxious to escape from an unpleasant duty, and willing to give the prisoner the full benefit of every doubt.

But when Mr. Fenton at last sat down and the District Attorney took his place, then, indeed, began a very bad quarter of an hour for Elizabeth. Question by question, the lawyer drew out of her her reasons for keeping her marriage secret and for wishing Halleck dead, her engagement to Gerard and the manner in which she had deceived him.

Her color changed from white to red and back again to ghastly pallor, her voice faltered and broke piteously, but still the terrible inquiry proceeded. Behind her, her aunts were biting their lips in agony and Mrs. Bobby was beside herself with indignation. "I'd give anything in the world," she said to her husband, "to get even with that man."

Elizabeth's counsel was keeping up a running fire of objections, but in vain. The District Attorney got in his questions somehow or another, and Elizabeth answered them as best she could.

"Why," she was asked among other things, "was your engagement to Mr.

Gerard broken off?"

"Because," she faltered, "I--I told him of my marriage."

"Why did you suddenly tell him, when you had kept it concealed so long?"

Elizabeth looked up with a piteous appeal in her eyes, which was answered by an objection on the part of her counsel, and she was told by the Judge that she need answer no question unless she wished. But by this time she had recovered herself.

"I am quite willing to answer," she said. "I told him because I was sorry I had deceived him. I had no other reason."

"You are quite sure that you _did_ tell him, and that he did not--find out for himself?"

There was an insulting tone to the question, but she answered it steadily, without anger. "I am quite sure," she said.

"Who was with you on the day that you say you went to the Metropolitan Museum?" This was the next question, put with disconcerting suddenness.

She turned still whiter, if that were possible, than before, and her answer was barely audible. "Mr. Gerard."

"Was any one else with you?"

"No one."

"Is he the only person who can corroborate your statement?"

"Yes."

"Then it is a pity he is not here."

She was silent.

"Mr. Gerard," observed Mr. Fenton, "when he went abroad left no address. We made efforts to communicate with him, but so far, we have not succeeded. It is most unfortunate."

"Most unfortunate, certainly," echoed the District Attorney, "for the defendant. But perhaps he was not anxious to be summoned. We have heard of witnesses who went to the ends of the earth to avoid it."

He turned to Elizabeth. "Do you know of any reason," he asked, "why he should not wish to come?"

Elizabeth's hands were clasped together nervously. "I--I cannot tell."

"Did you send for him, as soon as you knew that his testimony was needed?"

"I did not."

"_Why_ did you not?" said the District Attorney, in his sneering voice.

The color flushed into her face. "Because I--because I"--Her voice faltered and broke. "I did not _wish_ him sent for," she said, with a sudden flash of defiance. Then she turned deathly white, and put up her handkerchief to her lips. "I--will not answer any more questions,"

she added, faintly.

After all, it had been very bad--worse, far worse, than she had expected. She felt as she left the stand that she had done her cause only harm. It seemed to her moreover, that whether she were acquitted or found guilty, she could never, after the abas.e.m.e.nt of that cross-examination, hold up her head again.

The outlook was gloomy, and the case for the defence was almost closed. But when Mrs. Bobby arrived in court the next morning, she was greeted by Mr. Fenton with a broad smile.

"We must put the handwriting experts on again," he said, cheerfully.

"It will be dull, but anything to gain time. I have had a cable from Mr. Gerard. He will be here in a few days."

_Chapter x.x.xVII_

Julian Gerard paced impatiently the deck of the steamer on which, for eight miserable days, he had existed without sight of a newspaper. It was early dawn; the outlines of the G.o.ddess of Liberty loomed uncertainly through a thick fog. He remembered how, when he had last seen his native sh.o.r.es, he had been distraught with bitter anger against the woman to whom his heart now turned with an eager longing, a pa.s.sionate remorse.

For the hundredth time his mind a.n.a.lyzed and condemned that strange whim, the expression of a pa.s.sing but very real phase of his disappointment and disillusion, which had led him to cut himself off from the world he had left behind. He had no wish to hear from home, to be reminded of home ties, or of the woman whom he had resolved to forget. Beneath his self-repressed exterior there was a strain of adventure in his blood, which made him turn, in a crisis like this, to the primitive resources of uncivilized life.

He had left home with no definite plans; but in London he met a friend, who was about to start for his farm in South Africa. Gerard at once decided to accompany him. South Africa was as good a place as any other, when all one desired was solitude and hardship, and to get away from one's self, and the unsatisfactory tone of the world.

The farm was deep in the interior of the country, many miles distant from railroad or telegraph station. For months the two men saw no one but the natives; they had no connection with the outside world. Gerard rode and hunted and studied, and took notes on the condition of the country. It was not a bad life on the whole, with a certain charm for a man satiated with all that wealth can give. He might even have enjoyed it, if he could have forgotten what had driven him to it, or erased from his memory the one face which haunted him.

The worst of it was, that she always seemed to be unhappy; he always saw her as he had left her, white and sad, with pathetic eyes. The thought of her which he had carried away that night seemed to have entirely effaced his earlier impressions of her, as she had first flashed upon him in the vivid radiance of her fresh beauty, as he had seen her often in a ball-room, a being meant only for smiles. He had never pictured her then as suffering; but now, he could not think of her in any other way.

One evening, as he and his friend sat together smoking, he found himself impelled, as it were, in spite of himself, to tell his story.