Tried for Her Life Part 33

The carriage was drawn up before the last-named building.

The two gentlemen got out and a.s.sisted their companions to alight.

As they were about to enter the court-house, Sybil lifted her hand to draw her gray veil before her face; but Beatrix stayed her.

"Don't do it, my dear Sybil. You have no reason to veil your face, or bend your head, or even lower your eyes, before the gaze of any one alive!" she said, proudly, for her friend.

Sybil felt the force of these words, and indeed her own pride seconded their advice.

"I will take you first to my room, where your counsel are waiting to speak with you," said old Mr. Fortescue, drawing Sybil's hand through his arm, and leading her, followed by her husband and her friend, into the sheriff's office.

There they found Mr. Sheridan standing at a long table covered with green baize and laden with papers.

With him was a gentleman whose grandeur and beauty of person and manner must have deeply impressed any beholder, under any circ.u.mstances. "The form of Apollo and the front of Jove," had been said of him; and if it had been added that he possessed the intellectual power of a Cicero, and shared the divine spirit of Christ, it would have been equally true.

"Mr. Worth, late of the Washington Bar, now admitted to practice here for your benefit, Mrs. Berners," said Mr. Sheridan, presenting his colleague, after he himself had greeted the party.

Sybil lifted her glance to meet the gaze of the pure, sweet, strong spirit that looked forth on her from Ishmael Worth's beautiful eyes.

Sybil Berners might have been presented to half the weak-minded kings and vain queens on their mouldering old European thrones, without the slightest trepidation; but before this glorious son of the soil, this self-made man of the people, this magnate of the American Bar, this monarch of n.o.ble Nature's crowning, this magnificent Ishmael Worth, her spirit bowed in sincere homage, and she lowered her eyes and courtsied deeply, before she offered him her hand.

Holding that little hand between his own, he spoke a few strong, reviving words to her.

He told her, in the first place, that he had spent the whole night in making himself master of her case; that his firm faith in her innocence would give him great power as her advocate; that he would do his best for her sake; but that while doing his best, they must lean on Divine Providence for support and deliverance, who, in his own good time--later, if not sooner--would vindicate the innocent.

And as he uttered these words, looking down in her face, he infused into her soul comfort and courage, and patience to meet the worst this first day of trial might bring.

But no one knew better than Mr. Worth the almost utter hopelessness of the cause he had undertaken to defend; and that was no small sacrifice for an eminently successful barrister like Ishmael Worth, who had never in the course of his professional career lost a single case, to withdraw himself from his own bar and business, and take much trouble to get admitted to practice at another, for the sake of defending an utter stranger, in whose case there seemed not more than one chance in a thousand of success.

But if there had not been even that one slight chance, still the magnanimity and tenderness of Ishmael Worth's nature would have brought him to the accused lady's side, her defender to the death.

Something like this pa.s.sed through the mind of Lyon Berners as he grasped the hand of Mr. Worth, and warmly thanked him.

And then the sheriff drew Sybil's arm within his own to lead her on.

Lyon Berners offered his arm to Beatrix Pendleton, and followed them.

The counsel brought up the rear.

Thus the little procession entered the court-room. The presiding judge, Joseph Ruthven, sat on the bench, with two a.s.sociate judges, the one on his right hand, the other on his left. A few lawyers and law officers sat or stood around in groups. On the judge's extreme right, a little below the bench, two long seats were occupied by witnesses for the prosecution; on the extreme left was the jury-box; in the intermediate s.p.a.ce in front of the bench, stood the prisoner's dock, the witness's stand, and the counsel's tables. The remaining portion of the room, nearest the front doors, was filled up with the spectators' seats. But very few spectators were present; only some dozen villagers who had nothing better to do than to loiter there, and some score of farmers who had that morning come to market, and had dropped in to see what might be going on at the court.

Great was their excitement when they saw Mrs. Berners led in by the sheriff, and followed by her friends. They had not expected her trial would come on so soon. Indeed, an absurd rumor had prevailed that she would not be brought to trial at all. But now here she was, sure enough, and they stared at her with dilated eyes and open mouths.

Sybil impulsively put up her hand to drop her veil; but remembering Beatrix Pendleton's words, she refrained, and turned and swept her proud eye round upon the gazers, whose lids fell under her glance.

She was not put into the dock, but offered a chair at the table with her counsel. She bowed to the bench before taking her seat. On her right sat her husband; on her left, her friend Beatrix Pendleton, near her counsel. She was very much agitated, but a pressure from the hand of her husband, a glance from the eyes of Ishmael Worth, helped to rea.s.sure her.

Nor must the fidelity of another friend, a poor little four-footed friend, be forgotten. Little Nelly had faithfully followed her mistress, and now lay curled up at her feet.

Meanwhile the preliminary forms of the trial proceeded. The jurymen were sworn in and took their seats. Then Mr. Sheridan touched his client's hand to call her attention, while the clerk of arraigns, standing up with an open doc.u.ment in his hands directed the accused to listen to the reading of the indictment.

Sybil raised her head and became attentive, while that officer read aloud the terrible instrument, setting forth that Sybil Berners of Black Hall, in the county of Blank, being instigated thereto by diabolical agency, did, with malice aforethought, on the night of the thirty-first of October ultimo, feloniously break into the chamber of Rosa Blondelle, then residing at Black Hall, in the county of Blank, and there did unlawfully and maliciously stab, kill, and murder the said Rosa Blondelle, etc., etc., etc.

During the reading of this indictment, charging her with a crime at once so base and so atrocious, Sybil's emotions were all revolutionized. No longer unmerited shame and terror had power to bend her soul. The fiery spirit of her race arose within her; the "burning blood" boiled in her veins; a fierce indignation flashed from her dark eyes, like lightning from a midnight cloud; bitter scorn curled her beautiful lips.

When told to stand up, to hold up her hand, and to answer whether she were guilty or not guilty of the felony laid to her charge, she answered haughtily:

"Not guilty, of course, as every one here knows, or should know. No more guilty than were many of the queens and princesses of old, who were martyred for crimes that we in these days know they never committed."

She had exceeded the forms of law, and said more than was necessary; but her heart was on fire, and she could not help it; and no one interrupted her.

"How will you be tried?" proceeded the clerk of arraigns, trying to avoid the beautiful, terrible eyes that were gazing on him.

"By G.o.d and--my peers, if indeed I have any peers here," answered this arrogant young Berners, sweeping her full eyes scornfully over the rustic occupants of the jury box, and then resuming her seat.

Her words and manner did her no good; their only effect upon the jury was to convince them that Mrs. Berners had inherited all the furious pa.s.sions of her forefathers, and that she was an excessively high-tempered and high-spirited young lady, quite capable of doing a very rash deed.

"Patience, patience, my dearest one," whispered her husband, as he pa.s.sed his arm behind her.

"I cannot be patient or prudent, Lyon, under such insults. I cannot, if they kill me," she fiercely whispered back.

"Hush, hush," he said, softly patting her shoulder.

And then both became quiet, while the business of the trial proceeded.

The State's Attorney, Charles Coldman, took the bill of indictment from the hand of the clerk, and proceeded to open the case. Mr. Coldman was not the friend of the accused, neither was he her enemy. He did not belong to the old aristocracy of the State, neither had he distinguished himself in any manner. A successful lawyer he was, in so far as he had attained his present position, but no farther. He had never been admitted within the exclusive circles of Black Hall, or shared its hospitalities. And if this exclusion did not make him the enemy of the lady of that manor, it certainly did not embarra.s.s him with any of those old a.s.sociations of friendship and intimacy, such as might have distressed him, had he been, like nearly all the other members of the Blackville bar, the frequent guest of her father and her husband.

Thus the State's Attorney could deal with the lady of Black Hall, as he would deal with any other person on trial at that court.

He opened the indictment, and gave the theory of the crime. Here was no complication, he said, and no uncertainty. The case was so clear, that it need occupy the court but a little time. He then, in a grand, eloquent, and highly colored style, described the murder. He drew a moving-picture of the lovely young victim, whose fair image many who were present, he said, would recall with tears of pity; he described her accepting the invitation of the jealous mistress of Black Hall, and drawn within its dread doors, as a bird is enticed into the trap which is to be its destruction. He showed her on that fatal Hallow Eve reposing in her chamber, sleeping the sleep of innocence in fancied security. He painted, in lurid colors, the form of the murderess stealing down the stairs that led to her victim's room, "in the dead waste and middle of the night," creeping to the innocent sleeper's bedside, and plunging the fatal dagger in her peaceful, unsuspicious bosom. He described the startled look and cry of the victim, shocked from calm repose by a violent and b.l.o.o.d.y death; the scene of confusion, horror, and terror that ensued; the dying words of Rosa Blondelle, charging Sybil Berners with her death. He adverted to the guilty flight of the murderess and the desperate means she and her friends had taken even to the immolating of other lives, to secure her escape; until at length, unable to hold out against the authorities any longer, she had surrendered at discretion, and made a merit of giving herself up to justice. All this, he concluded, he should undertake to prove to the gentlemen of the jury.

He then proceeded to call the witnesses for the prosecution. The first witness called to the stand was--Sybil's best friend, Captain Clement Pendleton of Pendleton Park.

He came forward slowly, with a pale, stern face. He would rather have lost his power of speech, than have used it for her detriment. But he was known to have been present at the death of Rosa Blondelle, and he was therefore subpoenaed to attend the trial as a witness for the prosecution.

Being duly sworn, he testified that he had been startled by loud screams from the room below his chamber; and that on rushing down into that room, he had found Mrs. Rosa Blondelle bleeding from a wound in her chest, and supported in the arms of Mr. Lyon Berners, who was in the act of bearing her across the room to the sofa, on which he then laid her.

"Was there any one else in the room?" inquired the prosecuting attorney, seeing that the witness had paused.

"Mrs. Berners was there."

"Describe her appearance."

"She was very much agitated, as was quite natural."

"Had she anything in her hand?".

"Yes," answered Clement Pendleton, who never added a word against Sybil that he could honestly keep back.

"Witness, you are here to tell the _whole_ truth, without reservation.