THE FIRST DAY OF THE TRIAL.
All of Sunday Mr. and Mrs. Ralston spent with Paul, who was calmer than
either of his parents.
“I think my bones must have contracted some of Miss Hansford’s prophetic
nature,” he said to his mother, “for I feel it in them that something
will turn up in my favor,—the right man appear, perhaps, at the last and
own up.”
His mother tried to smile, but her heart was heavy with fear of what the
result might be. Her husband had employed the very best talent in
Boston, while the prosecution was rather lame in experience at least.
But it had an unbroken chain of evidence, beginning with the quarrel at
the hotel and ending with the revolver and the story Elithe would tell.
Popularity and a good name could scarcely stem that tide, and when at
parting she brushed his brown hair from his forehead, she thought with a
shudder of the shears which would soon cut that soft hair short and of
the prison garb which would disfigure her son’s manly form, if he
escaped——. There was a gurgling sound in her throat when she got so far,
and the tight clasp around Paul’s neck, as she whispered “Good-bye, my
boy, good-bye,” was like a mother’s farewell to her dead child. She
would see him on the morrow, it was true, first for a few moments in the
jail, and then in the Court House, a prisoner arraigned on trial for his
life, and she would almost rather he had died a baby in her arms than
see him there.
“Come, Fanny, come,” the judge said, unwinding her arms from Paul’s neck
and gently pushing her towards the door.
When his parents were gone Paul threw himself upon his bed and sobbed so
loud that the jailer’s wife heard him in the hall outside and cried
herself for the unhappy man. Tom came before long, cheerful as usual,
but for once his cheerfulness failed in its effect.
“Don’t, Tom,” Paul said, “don’t try to rouse hopes which can not be
fulfilled, and don’t think me weak if I cry. I shall be braver to-morrow
and face it like a man.”
They were both crying now,—Paul and Tom, who had broken down for the
first time and gave way so utterly that it was Paul’s task to comfort
and soothe.
“Let _me_ cry a bit, and don’t touch me,” Tom said, shaking off Paul’s
hands; then regaining his composure he continued: “We were boys
together, Mr. Paul, you the master, I the servant, but you never made me
feel that, and now misfortune has brought us very close together, so
close that—would you mind if—if—I kissed you as your mother did? I
should like to remember it when—.” Tom finished the sentence in his own
mind one way, and Paul another as like two girls they kissed each other
and said good-bye.
Then Paul was really alone through the longest night he had ever known
and which seemed the shortest when it was over and daylight looked
through the window. He did not go to bed, but sat the whole night
through, thinking of what was before him, and feeling sure that he did
not reach the reality or know how it would feel to confront his friends
and acquaintances and strangers and the rabble, men and women,—more
women than men,—who would come to see him and hear him tried for his
life. He was glad Clarice was not to be there. All his tenderness for
her was in full force; her selfish letter was forgotten, her faults
condoned, and she was only the girl he loved and had hoped to make his
wife. He would have been glad to have seen her once and heard her say
she loved him still, but he felt no hardness towards her because she had
kept aloof from him. She couldn’t come, he said, and then he thought of
Elithe and his heart gave a sudden throb of something inexplicable to
himself. She would be in the courtroom and he was sorry to have her see
him humiliated and charged with murder, and sorry for her that she must
testify against him. He didn’t blame her. He didn’t blame anybody,
although there came into his mind the thought “Why has God allowed this
when he knows I am innocent.” He knew prayers had been offered for him
in all the churches, for Tom had told him so and during the dark days of
his incarceration he had prayed himself as he had never done before. God
had not answered and he was still a prisoner, and the day was breaking
over the sea, a glorious September day such as he had seen and revelled
in many a time in the old life gone forever, for if he were freed it
could never be quite the same again. A man, however innocent he might
be, who had been tried for his life, could not hold his head as he had
held it before.
“I must stoop always,” he said. “I find myself doing it now when I walk.
Tom and I used to be just of a height. Now I am the shorter. I noticed
it last night when we stood together before the glass.”
It was a little change to think of this and wonder at it, but the pain
came back again when he heard some one outside of the building say to
another, “Fine day for the trial. The town will be full. They say there
isn’t standing room now at the hotels.”
Paul stopped his ears lest he should hear more. The town was already
full and would be fuller of people come to see him,—Paul Ralston,—once
the head of everything, and now brought so low that when he left the
jail it would be under an official escort and on his way to the
prisoner’s dock accused of murder. The sun was now up and he could hear
the stir of life in the street and on the water where row boats were
passing, full of people, who had come from Johnstown a few miles up the
coast to be on hand when the doors of the Court House were opened. He
guessed their object and stopped his ears again to shut out the sound of
their voices, which rang as cheerfully as if they were going to his
bridal. Once he thought of Clarice. Was she thinking of him in that
dread hour? Was she praying for him? He believed so, and bowing his head
he prayed for her that God would give her strength to keep up under the
strain of that day. Mrs. Stevens was bringing his breakfast, but he
turned from it with loathing. Then as he saw the look of disappointment
on her face he tried the coffee and the steak, telling her both were
excellent, and adding with a smile, “They say criminals eat heartily the
very morning before they are hung. I am a criminal in the eyes of the
world, but I am not to be hung to-day, and I can’t eat. You are so kind;
you always have been. Father will not forget it when I am gone.”
An hour later his father and mother came in, the latter so weak that she
could scarcely walk. All night at intervals she had been upon her knees,
praying for her boy, and when her husband bade her take some rest she
answered, “If Paul were dying in my arms I could not rest, and I feel as
if he were dying to us. To-morrow and next day will tell the story. We
have done all we can do. Only God can help us now.”
When morning came her strength was nearly gone and she was lifted half
fainting into the carriage which took her to the jail through the
streets full of people hurrying to the Court House.
“Oh, see them, going to look at Paul,” she said to the judge, who was
scarcely less affected than herself.
Tom, who drove them, scowled defiantly at the crowd, a few of whom were
nearly knocked down by the spirited horses he did not try to check.
“Careful, Tom, careful. You’ll run over some of them,” the judge said to
him.
“Ought to be run over,” was Tom’s reply, as he went dashing along, until
the jail was reached.
There was not much time to wait, for the hour was near and Paul must be
on hand. Tom had brought him a fresh suit of clothes the day before and
he had put them on before his mother came, and except for his face and
stooping figure looked a fashionably dressed young man when he stood up
to meet her. She was so crushed and helpless and leaned so heavily on
him that he felt at once the necessity of bracing himself if he would
not have her fainting in his arms.
“Don’t, mother, don’t. It isn’t so very hard; there’ll be some way out
of it, and it makes me worse to see you so bad,” he said to her, and
with a great effort the little mother nerved herself to calmness.
Max Allen, the constable, was there by virtue of his office, shaking so
he could hardly speak.
“I don’t want to go with you, but it’s the law which must be
vin-_di_-cat-ed,” he said to Paul, who answered cheerfully, “All right,
Max, I understand, and as long as I am not handcuffed I shan’t mind.”
“Handcuffed,” Max repeated. “I’d like to see ’em make me do that. No,
sir! You are going to court like a gentleman in your father’s carriage.
I wish to gracious I could walk, as I or’to, but I can’t. You are to go
on the back seat with Mrs. Ralston, I in the front with the judge.”
This was the arrangement, and when all was ready the jailer unlocked the
door and Paul stepped out into the brightness and freshness of the
morning, but before he had time to look about him he was met and nearly
knocked down by Sherry. They had forgotten to shut him up and he had
followed the carriage to the jail, where, while the judge and Mrs.
Ralston were inside, he sniffed under the window and scratched upon the
door with low whines of eagerness and delight as if he knew his master
were there. The moment Paul appeared there was a roar of joy, and
Sherry’s paws were on Paul’s shoulders and his shaggy head was lain
first on one side of his neck and then on the other.
“Good Sherry, are you glad to see me?” Paul said, caressing the dog and
with some difficulty removing his paws from his neck. “Get down, old
fellow, get down, I’ve no time for you now.”
Sherry got down, but crouched at Paul’s feet, wagging his tail with
short barks and occasionally leaping up again towards his face. Paul
kept his hand upon him, while he inhaled the pure salt air in long
breaths and looked about him as if the place were new. To his right was
the sea, dotted with sails afar in the horizon,—nearer the shore a boat
was coming as fast as steam could bring it, its lower deck black with
passengers, who, afraid of being late, were crowding to the front in
order to be among the first to land. To the south, over the roofs of
other buildings, he could see the cupola of his father’s house, and he
winked hard to keep back the tears choking him as he thought he might
never enter that house again. He could not see Mrs. Percy’s cottage, nor
Miss Hansford’s, but he knew where they were and his eyes wandered from
one locality to the other and then went on to the Court House half a
mile away and on the same wide street with the jail. He could see the
people hurrying there before he entered the carriage and after he was in
it and out of the jail yard he could see them more distinctly lining the
way and reminding him of ants when their nest is disturbed. All turned
their heads to look as the carriage drove by with Sherry in attendance
trotting on the side where Paul was sitting and sometimes springing up
to see that his master was there. Many lifted their hats, and the piping
voice of a little child grasping its mother’s dress called out, “Mam-ma,
which is _him_!”
Paul heard it and laughed. “It’s quite an ovation, isn’t it,” he said to
his mother, who could not answer. It was dreadful to her, and she was
glad when they reached the Court House and were for a little time alone
in the anteroom to which Paul was taken. The Court House was a large one
for the size of the town and comparatively new. Mr. Ralston’s money had
helped to build it. Indeed, he had given more towards its erection than
any one else, and now his son was to be tried in it. Every available
seat was taken before the session opened. A great many people had left
the Island,—some to avoid being subœnaed, others because business called
them home, but their places had been filled and the hotels and boarding
houses were doing a thriving business. They were empty this morning. The
guests were all at the court house, waiting the appearance of the
prisoner. Judge Ralston had taken his seat near where Paul would sit.
Beside him was his wife, white and corpse-like. Miss Hansford sat not
far away,—with fire in her eyes as they rested on the sea of heads there
to look at Paul, and Elithe, who sat beside her, with a blue veil over
her hat effectually hiding her face from the eyes bent upon her. There
were many rumors in circulation concerning the young girl, who was
nearly as much talked of as Paul. That Jack Percy had been in love with
her and known to her as Mr. Pennington, until she saw him dying,
everybody knew, while many believed that she had been engaged to him,
for hadn’t the papers said so? That she was to be the principal witness
against Paul was generally understood and great was the anxiety to see
her.
“That’s she, with the blue veil, sitting by that cross-looking old
woman,” was buzzed about, and many were the wishes expressed that she
would remove her veil. She would have to do it when called to the stand,
and with that reflection the crowd consoled themselves and waited for
Paul, who would not be veiled.
He came at last, walking unsteadily to his seat, with that stoop in his
shoulders which had come upon him in prison. He was very pale and thin,
with dark rings around his eyes, which for a few minutes he kept upon
the floor as if he could not meet the hundreds of eyes watching him and
compelling him at last to look up. He had tried to prepare himself for
it, and thought he had done so, but, at the sight of so many
people,—friends, acquaintances and strangers,—some in the rear of the
house, with opera glasses, as if at a play, he felt his strength leaving
him, and was more dead than alive when told to stand up and asked if he
were guilty. Stumbling to his feet, he answered, “Not guilty,” the words
ringing through the room and seeming to come back to him from every
corner and every face in front of him. He was very much alive now. The
numb feeling which had come over him at first was gone, and it seemed to
him his head must burst with the pressure on it. He thought of the band
of which Elithe had written and fancied there was a similar one across
his forehead and the back of his head,—burning, boring, blinding, and
making him lift his hand to loosen it, if possible, or take it away.
Just where it pressed so hard was torture. Below it everything was
clear, and, without apparent effort, he knew where his father sat, with
his mother beside him, her face turned toward him with ineffable love
and pity. She believed him wholly innocent,—so did his father, so did
Tom, these three and no more. All the rest believed it accidental
shooting, and that he was telling lies. This thought hardened him for a
moment, and the glance with which he swept the house had in it something
like reproach and a sense of injustice. This, however, changed as he met
only looks of pity and sympathy, with here and there smiles of
recognition. He saw Miss Hansford and Elithe and was glad the latter was
veiled, feeling instinctively that, next to himself, she was the one
most looked at. He was glad Clarice was not there, but up to the last
minute he had hoped she would send him some word of comfort on this day
which was to try his soul. But she had not. “She does not care as I
thought she would, and she was to have been my wife,” kept repeating
itself over and over in his mind during the preliminaries of the trial,
which were rather long and tiresome.
There was not much heart in the prosecution, and the opening of the
prosecuting attorney showed it. He told what he expected to prove, but
indulged in no bursts of eloquence or sarcasm such as frequently mark
the openings of similar trials. The jury, drawn with great difficulty,
listened rather apathetically, and the audience impatiently, and Paul
scarcely at all at first. He was looking at Elithe, trying to get a
glimpse of her face, thinking again of the band around her head and
wondering if it were as wide and hot as the one round his, benumbing him
so that, for a second time, he did not realize where he was or why he
was there, until Sherry came rushing in.
Generally, he staid quietly with the horses, and he had kept near them
now for a while. Then, as if scenting danger to his master, he went to
the Court House, pushed his way into the room, looked around for an
instant until he saw Paul. With a bound, he was at his side, uttering
cries more like human sounds than those of a canine, as he again put his
paws on Paul’s shoulders and looked in his face. There was a stir among
the people, which Sherry evidently did not like, for he turned his head
from side to side in a threatening kind of way.
“Somebody remove that dog,” the judge said, sternly,—a command more
easily given than obeyed.
Sherry refused to be removed and growled savagely at the attendant who
tried to get him out. He took his paws from Paul’s neck, and, stretching
himself at full length upon the floor, looked as if he meant to stay
there.
“Quiet, Sherry!” Paul said, in a low tone, as the dog continued to growl
and show his teeth.
In an instant Sherry was quiet and dropped his head between his paws.
There was a brief consultation between judge and attorney, with the
result that Sherry was permitted to remain as long as he behaved. He
seemed to understand the decision, and, with one loud whack of his tail
and one uplifting of his eyes to Paul, lay perfectly still while the
trial progressed.
The first witness was the clerk at the Harbor Hotel, who had seen Jack
when he came. The second, the clerk at the Beach Hotel, where Jack had
spent the night. What their testimony had to do with the matter no one
could tell. Miss Hansford mentally called the attorney a fool for
intruding such matters. She was anxious to get on. So were the
spectators, and when the clerks were dismissed they straightened up with
new courage and waited for what was to come next. Those who had
witnessed the quarrel and knockdown at the hotel were called, their
testimony all leaning towards Paul, who, now that his name was used so
often, began to listen to what was said and to live it all over
again,—hearing Jack’s insulting words, feeling the heavy blow which
felled him and involuntarily putting his hand to his side, which was not
well yet from the force of Jack’s fist. The boy who had seen him on the
sands and heard him say, “I’d like to kill him!” told a straightforward
story and identified Paul as the man. The ladies who had been at the
Percy cottage when Paul came there testified very unwillingly to the
state of high excitement he was in when he left them to find Jack. Miss
Hansford’s lodgers, who had been brought from Boston for the trial, took
the stand one by one and told of seeing him and speaking to him as he
passed the steps on which they were sitting twenty minutes or half an
hour before the shot was fired. He was looking for Jack and had asked if
they had seen him pass that way.
Up to this point, everything that Paul heard was strictly true and just
as he remembered it. He would have sworn to it himself had they asked
him to do so. But when Seth Walker, the man who had found the revolver
with his initials upon it, came forward, he listened with a different
interest, and as Seth described his meeting with Miss Hansford and her
agitation as she demanded it of him and hid it under her apron, the
confusion in his head increased and there was a buzzing in his brain
like the sound of machinery in motion. Here was something he could not
understand. The revolver was a mystery which he could not explain.
“It’s mine; but I have no idea how it came there in the woods,” he said,
when it was shown to him, and, returning it to the attorney, he sank
into his seat with a feeling that it was going hard with the poor wretch
being tried for his life.
He was not the wretch. The buzzing in his head had separated him from
that man for whom there was scarcely a ghost of a chance, and he began
to pity him and to look around to see where he was. He could not find
him, but his eyes fell upon Miss Hansford, who had relaxed from her
stiff, upright position, and settled down in her chair until she was not
much taller than Elithe, sitting beside her. Elithe had not moved
perceptibly and might have been asleep, she was so motionless, until
Paul said, “It is mine, but I have no idea how it came there in the
woods.” Then she clutched at her veil, as if it smothered her. There was
something in his voice so sad that her heart ached with a fresh pain and
she used all her self-control not to cry out. Very gently, as we touch a
sick, restless child, Miss Hansford put her hand on Elithe, who grew
quiet again and resumed her former attitude.
It was expected that Miss Hansford would follow Seth Walker, who found
the revolver, but it was growing late, and the judge thought it best to
adjourn until the day following, when Miss Hansford and Elithe would be
put upon the stand and with their testimony and that of the physicians
called to attend Jack the prosecution would close. There had been some
sharp cross-questioning for the defense, but it had failed to shake the
evidence of the witness sworn, and not much had been accomplished either
way. As the black mass of human beings surged out of the house, many
murmurs of disappointment were heard. They had seen Paul and seen Elithe
through her blue veil, but they wanted more than that,—wanted to see her
on the stand, and Miss Hansford, too. This would come to-morrow, and,
with this to anticipate, they went their different ways, talking of
nothing but the trial and the seeming impossibility that Paul could be
cleared. He was driven back to jail in his father’s carriage, very quiet
and thoughtful and a great deal mystified with all he had heard and
seen. His brain was still affected by the pain in his forehead and the
back of his neck, and he could not understand clearly what it was all
about or why he was conducted to prison, with Max Allen in attendance,
instead of that other man who had shot Jack Percy. His father noticed
his peculiar state of mind and feared for his reason.
“Better so, perhaps, than something worse. They don’t hang crazy people,
or send them to State’s prison, either,” he thought, and, with this
grain of comfort, he bade Paul good-night.