Part 22

Mr. Fenton on cross-examination, drew from him a description of her tears, of the fearless way in which she had entered, her apparent indifference to being observed. Was it, Mr. Fenton demanded, the manner of a guilty woman? The witness fully agreed that it was not. And then he left the stand, saying to himself philosophically that all was fair in the cause of a beautiful and unfortunate girl, whom he had admired extremely, and with whom his friend Gerard had been, and might be still, desperately in love.

The next witness was the Brooklyn tradesman, whose evidence had been already so much exploited by the yellow journals that it lacked the force of novelty. He deposed to having sold the flask on the morning of the twenty-third of December, to a woman in black, thickly veiled, slight and tall, and with reddish hair. The witness was quite sure about the date, and as to the time he was less explicit, but convinced that it was somewhere between the hours of ten and twelve. He was a middle-aged man with a plain, honest face, and evidently anxious to tell what he knew and no more. When the District Attorney, in a dramatic manner, desired him to look at the defendant, and declare if she were the woman to whom he sold the flask, he seemed to shrink in distress from the terrible responsibility thus placed upon him.

"I--it is so long ago," he protested, "and--you--must remember that she wore a veil."

"Which entirely obscured her face?"----

"No, not entirely," the witness reluctantly admitted.

"Look at the defendant," the District Attorney insisted, "and tell the court if her general appearance recalls that of the woman to whom you sold the flask."

He turned to Elizabeth and requested her to rise. She grew a shade paler and stared at him for a moment as if startled; then slowly, she obeyed him, and stood facing the witness, who brought reluctantly his anxious gaze to bear upon her. She was ashy-white, but she held her head erect, her eyes met his without flinching. Thus they stood for fully a minute, and the silence in the court-room was tense with nervous excitement. Then the witness spoke.

"I--there is a certain resemblance," he said.

"Then you identify her?" said the District Attorney.

The witness was silent. He looked again at Elizabeth. She was trembling now, and caught hold of a chair as if for support. The witness cleared his throat. He was thinking that he had a daughter of about Elizabeth's age.

"I--I really could not tell," he began.

"Take your time," said the District Attorney, impressively. "This is a very important point."

And then there was again a long silence. In the midst of it the sun, bursting through a gray mass of clouds, touched Elizabeth's hair with a wave of light. It stood out, a shining halo, against the rim of her black hat. The witness stared at it as if fascinated. Then he uttered a sound--it might almost have been a sob--of relief.

"That is not the same woman," he said. "The hair is quite different! That other woman's hair was a much deeper red--it didn't shine and glisten. And her whole air, the way she held herself was different. I am sure it is not the same."

And this opinion, once announced, he clung to tenaciously--nothing the District Attorney said could shake it. Mr. Fenton would not even cross-examine, and there was great rejoicing in the ranks of the defense.

But the next day the prosecution placed upon the stand a druggist's clerk, who remembered having sold a bottle of arsenic to a woman dressed in black on the morning of the twenty-third of December. The occurrence was impressed on his mind because he had demurred as to selling poison, and she had presented a physician's certificate. She was handsomely dressed and seemed like a lady; he had noticed particularly that her hair was reddish. And when asked to identify Elizabeth, he swore unhesitatingly that she was the same woman.

Upon Mr. Fenton's cross-examination, it became evident what important questions may hang on the color of a woman's hair.

_Mr. Fenton_: "You said, did you not, that the woman's hair was red?"

_Witness_, cautiously: "I said, reddish. That's not quite the same thing."

_Mr. Fenton_: "Explain the difference."

_Witness_, confused: "Well, I--I don't know. I meant to say it was sort of--sort of light"----

"You meant to say, in other words, that it was not black?"

_Witness_, recovering himself and speaking stubbornly: "No, I meant to say that it was reddish--sort of sandy"----

"Ah--like the District Attorney's moustache, for instance?"

There was laughter in the court-room. The District Attorney's moustache was a brilliant carrot color, which at the opposing counsel's words, was emulated by his face.

"I object to these personalities," he said.

Mr. Fenton was instructed by the Judge to be more serious, but held to his point.

"Your Honor, it is necessary to find out what the witness means by the vague word 'reddish.' If he thinks it applies to the District Attorney's moustache"----

"But I don't," objected the aggrieved witness, to the renewed amusement of the court-room. "I call that carroty."

"Then point out, among people present, what hair you consider reddish."

The witness's eyes wandered till they alighted upon the distinctly sandy locks of one of the experts for the prosecution. "I call that hair reddish," he announced, with some satisfaction at finding a way out of his dilemma.

"Ah--now oblige me, by looking at the defendant's hair and tell us if you think it is like that of this gentleman."

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 arsenic, 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 assertion 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 abasement 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 XXXVII_

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 Goddess of Liberty loomed uncertainly through a thick fog. He remembered how, when he had last seen his native shores, he had been distraught with bitter anger against the woman to whom his heart now turned with an eager longing, a passionate remorse.

For the hundredth time his mind analyzed and condemned that strange whim, the expression of a passing 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. The doubts, the misgivings which tortured him had grown too strong; it was a relief to put them into words. He spoke low and bitterly, in hurried phrases that were evidently the expression of his constant thoughts; not excusing the conduct of the woman who had deceived him, dwelling upon it rather with some harshness, for the very wish perhaps which he was conscious of to do the reverse. The other man, as he spoke, scanned his face keenly. At the end he made only one comment. "And yet she loved you?"

Gerard stared at him for a moment, the color flushing into his dark cheek. And then his face softened. Yes, it was not his money and position--he could at least do her that justice. "I believe she did," he said at last in a low voice.

"Then, for Heaven's sake," the other man flashed out, "what more do you want? Why, good Lord, if a woman _loved_ me!"--and here he broke off and sat in silence, staring fixedly into the fire.

Gerard paced the floor that night, and his friend in the next room smiled grimly to hear him. The same smile flickered across his impassive features when Gerard, the next morning, announced his departure. His reasons were plausible; he wished to go about the country and study for himself the political situation of which he had hitherto seen little or nothing. His host, after that first involuntary smile, heard him through unmoved and expressed his approval. He escorted him to the nearest town, wrung his hand at parting, and went back, with a grimmer look than ever, to his own solitude.

Gerard had no plans; he was conscious of only one wish--to be where he could have news of home. At Cape Town he met the detective, who had followed him, led astray by various false clues, till he had at last found the right track. An hour later the two men started for New York. And now at last the wretched journey was over, and Gerard paced the deck of the ship and wondered miserably what new developments might have occurred.

There was a sensation in the court-room when he appeared. There had been rumors for days that the trial was being delayed for the arrival of an important witness, but it had hardly been expected that this would prove to be Elizabeth's missing lover, who had disappeared from view, as the prosecution had asserted, to avoid testifying against her. At least that reason for his absence could not be true, since it was Mr. Fenton who was bringing him in, with an evident air of triumph. Gerard himself had a worn and haggard look, which showed even through the sun-burn which had darkened his face. He had grown very thin, and there were white threads in his hair which were not visible a year before; his features were set in lines of absolute, impassive rigidity. He glanced neither to the right nor left, but sat down at once in the ranks of witnesses.

There was a short pause of breathless expectancy, and then the prisoner was brought in. Her aunts and Mrs. Van Antwerp were with her as usual, and behind followed the police officer--a little in the background, and with the air he considerately wore of effacing himself as much as possible. Those who were near Gerard saw him wince and flush painfully. He had been prepared for this, but the reality shocked him, almost beyond his powers of self-control. How changed she was! Paler even than he remembered her, and thin and worn till, but for her eyes and hair, he might scarcely have known her. It gave him a shock, too, somehow to see her all in black; he had always pictured her, illogically, in white as she had been that last evening.... For a moment she hardly seemed the same woman he had thought of, dreamed of, all these months. A rush of remorseful tenderness swept over him, all the greater because she was so changed. He would have liked to go to her before them all, and proclaim to the whole world his love and faith. But what he actually did was to turn his eyes away, to spare her.

She knew that he was there. She had read the news in the trembling joy depicted on her aunts' faces, before Eleanor Van Antwerp had whispered: "Darling, prepare yourself! He has come--he has come to save you." It hardly seemed a surprise, now that it had happened; she had always known in her heart that he would come. But she was not glad, she did not wish to be saved--by him. She still felt as she had felt from the first, that she would rather die than sit in her place of humiliation and see the pity in his eyes.... Ah, thank Heaven, he had turned them away; for him, no doubt, as for her it was a painful moment. He felt sorry for her, of course--a woman whom he had loved once, who was being punished more than she deserved. But there was an invincible pride in her nature which rebelled against his pity, which would have preferred condemnation, contempt. Yet, after all, pity was all that she deserved; she had never been worthy of his love. Let her take what poor remnant of it was left and be thankful. Yet deep down in her heart, there was, in spite of herself, a feeling of joy that the world would know that he had not forsaken her.

There was little time for these conflicting thoughts to oppose each other in Elizabeth's weary brain. Gerard was called to the stand, and then she could do nothing but listen--and listen gratefully--while in quiet, even tones, speaking very simply and to the point, he corroborated all that she herself had testified. Yes, he remembered perfectly the morning of the twenty-third of December. He had spent it with Miss Van Vorst at the Metropolitan Museum. They had been at the Museum for several hours, and he had left her at her home at half-past one. Had he known then of her marriage to Halleck? No, not then, but soon afterwards. She had told him on New Year's Eve. No, he had not suspected it, or drawn out the avowal in any way. It had been entirely voluntary. Naturally their engagement had been at an end, and he had gone abroad immediately. That was his evidence. It materially strengthened the defence on two points; first, that the prisoner had not bought either the flask or the poison; second, that she had not expected Paul Halleck's death.

The District Attorney, realizing this, tried to undermine its credibility. It was not an easy thing with a man of Gerard's character and high standing; but after all, a man in love is hardly an accountable being. The District Attorney dwelt sarcastically on the improbability of his having remained in ignorance all this time of the impending trial, and insinuated that he must have had serious objections to returning, which had been finally overcome by the efforts of the defense. He asked his questions in a blustering way, which fell just short of insolence. Gerard answered them quietly, apparently unmoved. Yes, he admitted, it seemed improbable that he should not have heard of the trial, but it was nevertheless absolutely true. He had spent the greater part of his absence on a farm in South Africa; he had led a rough, solitary life, read no newspapers, received no letters. He had first heard that his evidence was needed at Cape town, five weeks before. No, he had not received a letter from the defendant, urging him to come to her rescue, nor did he believe that any such letter had been sent. It would have been quite unnecessary.

"Your disinterested chivalry, in other words," sneered the District Attorney, "was sufficient, without such an appeal?"

"It is not a question of chivalry," said Gerard, coolly, "it is a question of telling the truth."

"Which of course you are anxious to do."

"Of course."

His imperturbability seemed proof, against all the offensiveness of the other's manner. The District Attorney, shifting his ground, questioned him as to the broken engagement; and here he was rejoiced to find his man more vulnerable. A tremor would cross Gerard's face, he changed color more than once. But still his answers were given quietly, in low, measured tones. Yes, it was true that Miss Van Vorst had kept him in ignorance of her marriage; but he did not think that her reasons for her silence need be discussed, since they were quite irrelevant.

"And you mean to assure us," said the District Attorney, incredulously, "that she told you at last of her own accord, without the slightest necessity?"

"Most certainly."

"And what she told you then was the only information you received of her marriage?"

"Yes."

"It was the only reason for breaking the engagement?"

"Yes."

"And now that that reason no longer exists," said the District Attorney, "the engagement, I suppose, is likely to be renewed?"

The question was so unexpected that Mr. Fenton was not ready with an objection, and Gerard spoke before he could interpose.

"I don't think that I am bound to answer questions as to what may or may not occur in the future."

Mr. Fenton hastily agreed with him, and he was sustained by the judge. But the District Attorney defended his line of inquiry.