"Oyez, oyez, oyez! The Supreme Court of the State of New York County of
Brabant trial term is now in session all people having business with
this court may draw near and give their attention _and they shall be
heard_."
The court crier delivered his morning oration in one breathless
sentence, the last five words of which only have ever been captured by
mortal ears. The roll of the jury was called. The first witness stood on
the step of the witness-stand and swore by the everlasting God that the
testimony he would give in the trial of the People of the State of New
York against the defendant would be the truth, the whole truth and
nothing but the truth, and then he seated himself in the chair. The
trial of Mrs. Balfame began.
It had taken three days to select a jury. If Rush was determined to keep
out Germans, Mr. Gore, the district attorney, was equally reluctant to
admit to the box any man whom he suspected of being under commands from
his wife to get on that jury and acquit Mrs. Balfame, if he had to
imperil his immortal soul. He also harboured suspicions of felonious
activities on the part of Mr. Sam Cummack and certain other patriotic
citizens less devoted to the cause of justice than to Elsinore. In
consequence the questions were not only uncommonly searching, but both
the district attorney and the defendant's counsel exhausted their
peremptory challenges.
The talesmen that had crowded the courtroom beyond the railing were for
the most part farmers and tradesmen, but there were not a few "prominent
residents," including rooted Brabantites and busy commuters. The last
answered without hesitation that they had followed the case closely from
the first and formed an unalterable opinion; then, dismissed, rushed off
and caught a late train for New York. Those of Mrs. Balfame's own class
would have been passed cheerfully by Mr. Rush, but in spite of their
careless avowals that they had been too busy to follow the case, or had
found it impossible to reach any conclusion, they were peremptorily
challenged by the district attorney. They, too, went to New York, not on
business, and returned to their hearthstones as late as possible.
Finally a jury of almost excessively "plain men" were chosen after long
and weary hours of wrangling. They were all married; their ages ranged
from forty-five to fifty; not one looked as if he had an illusion left
in regard to the sex that had shared his burdens for a quarter of a
century, or, German or no German, he had any leniency in him for a woman
who had presumed to abbreviate the career of a man. But at least they
were real Americans, with reputations for straight dealing, and good
old-fashioned ideals of justice, irrespective of sex. Rush doubted if
any of them could be "fixed" by Mr. Cummack or the able politicians
whose services he had bespoken, although the sternest visages often hid
unsuspected weak spots; but after all his best chance was with honest
men whose soft spots were of another sort.
So naive had been the eagerness of the German-American talesmen to get
on the jury that Rush had had little difficulty in demonstrating their
unfitness for duty. These were too thrifty to go to New York and stood
in no fear of their wives, but they avoided the _gemuetlich_ resort of
Old Dutch until the trial was over.
Throughout this ordeal Mrs. Balfame sat immovable, impassive, her face a
white bas-relief against the heavy black crepe of her veil, which hung
like a black panel between her profile and the western light. Her chair
was at the foot of the long table which stood beneath the two tiers of
the jury-box and was reserved for counsel, the district attorney, the
assistants and clerks. Her calm grey eyes looked straight ahead,
interested apparently in nothing but the empty witness-stand, on the
right of the jury and the left of the judge. She knew that the
reporters, and the few outsiders that had managed to crowd in with the
talesmen, scarcely took their eyes from her face, and that the staff
artists were sketching her. All her complacency had fled before certain
phases of this preliminary ordeal for which no one had thought to
prepare her. The constant reiteration of that question of horrid
significance: "Have you any objection to capital punishment as practised
in this State?" struck at the roots of her courage, enhanced her prison
pallor; and that immovable battery of eyes, hostile, or coldly
observant, critical, appraising, made her long to grind her teeth, to
rise in her chair and tell those men and women, insolent in their
freedom, what she thought of their vulgar insensibility. But not for
nothing had she schooled herself, and not for a moment did her nerves
really threaten revolt. She had taken her second sleeping powder on the
night preceding the opening of the trial, but on the third morning she
awakened with the momentary wish that she had preserved Dr. Anna's
poison, or could summon death in any form rather than go over to that
courthouse and be tried for her life. For the first time she understood
the full significance of her condition.
But Mrs. Battle, Mrs. Cummack and Mrs. Gifning, when they bustled in to
"buck her up," congratulated her upon "not having a nerve in her body";
and although she had felt she must surely faint at the end of the
underground tunnel between the jail and the rear of the courthouse, she
had walked into that room of dread import upstairs with her head erect,
her eyes level, and her hands steady. She may have built a fool's
paradise for herself, assisted by her well-meaning friends, during the
past ten weeks, and dwelt in it smugly; but as it fell about her ears
she stood erect with a real courage that strengthened her soul for any
further shocks and surprises this terrible immediate future of hers
might hold.
On the first day, although she never glanced at a talesman, she had
listened eagerly to every question, every answer, every challenge. As
the third day wore on, she felt only weariness of mind, and gratitude
that she had a strong back. She was determined to sit erect and immobile
if the trial lasted a month. And not only was her personal pride
involved. Circumstances had delivered her to the public eye, therefore
should it receive an indelible impression of a worthy representative of
the middle-class American of the smaller town, so little unlike the
women of the wealthier class, and capable of gracing any position to
which fate might call her--a type the United States of America alone has
bred; also of a woman whose courage and dignity had never been surpassed
by any man brought to the bar of justice on the awful charge of murder.
She knew that this attitude, as well as her statuesque appearance, would
antagonise the men reporters but enchant her loyal friends, the women.
Her estimate was very shrewd. The poor sob sisters, squeezed in wherever
they could find a vacant chair, or even a half of one (all the tables
being reserved for the men), surrendered in a body to her cold beauty,
her superb indifference, soul and pen. A unanimous verdict of guilty
brought in by that gum-chewing small-headed jury merely would petrify
these women's belief in her innocence. She was vicarious romance; for
women that write too much have little time to live and no impulse to
murder any one in the world but the city editor.
On the morning of the fourth day, the space between the enclosure and
the walls of the courtroom was filled with spectators from all over the
county, many of them personal friends of Mrs. Balfame; but New York City
would not become vitally interested until the business of examining the
minor witnesses was concluded. Behind and at the left of Mrs. Balfame
were the members of her intimate circle. Occasionally they whispered to
her, and she smiled so sweetly and with such serene composure that even
the men reporters admitted she looked younger and more feminine--and
more handsome--than on that day of the interview which had proved her
undoing.
"But she did it all right," they assured one another. They must believe
in her guilt or suffer twinges in that highly civilised and possibly
artificial section of the brain tabulated as conscience. Their fixed
theory was that she had mixed the poison for Balfame and then, being in
a highly nervous state, and apprehensive that he would capriciously
refuse to drink it, had snatched her pistol as she heard his voice in
the distance, dashed downstairs and out into the grove, and fired with
her established accuracy.
She had had plenty of time between the crime and her arrest to pass the
pistol to one of her friends, or even to slip out at night and drop it
in the marsh.
As to the shot that had missed Balfame and entered the tree: it was
either by one of those coincidences more frequent in fact than in
fiction that another enemy of Balfame's had been lurking in the grove,
intent upon murder; or the bullet hole was older than they had inferred.
The idea of a lover they scoffed at openly. And it was one of the
established facts, as they reminded their sisters of the press, that the
worst women in history had looked like angels, statues or babies; they
had also possessed powerful sex magnetism, and this the handsome
defendant wholly lacked.
The theory of the women reporters was far simpler. She hadn't done it
and that was the end of it.
The judge, a tall imposing man with inherited features and accumulated
flesh, very stately and remote in his flowing silk gown, looked
unspeakably bored for three days, but was visibly hopeful as he swept up
to his seat on the rostrum on Thursday morning. As the justice for
Brabant, Mr. Bascom, had not been on speaking terms with the deceased,
and as his wife was one of the defendant's closest friends, an eminent
Supreme Court justice from one of the large neighbouring cities had been
assigned to the case.
The reporters of the evening newspapers, were packed closely about a
long table parallel with the one just below the jury-box, and behind
were four or five smaller tables dedicated to the morning stars. A large
number of favoured spectators had found seats within the railings, but a
passage was kept open for the boys who came up at regular intervals to
get copy from the "evening table" for the telegraph operator below
stairs.
Broderick's seat beneath the rostrum commanded both the witness-box and
Mrs. Balfame. He had used his influence to have Alys Crumley assigned to
the position of artist for the Woman's Page of the _News_, and she and
Sarah Austin shared a chair.
The trial began. Dr. Lequer established the fact of the death, described
the course of the bullet, demonstrating that it had been fired by some
one concealed in the grove. A surveyor followed and exhibited to the
jury a map of the house and grounds. Three of the younger members of the
Country Club, Mr. John Bradshaw Battle, cashier of the Elsinore Bank;
Mr. Lemuel Cummack, son of Elsinore's esteemed citizen, Mr. Sam Cummack;
and Mr. Leonard Corfine, a commuter, had been subpoenaed after a
matching of wits. Overawed by the solemnity of the oath, they gave a
circumstantial account of the quarrel which had preceded the murder but
a few hours--all, in spite of constant interruptions from the
defendant's counsel, conveying the impression, however unwillingly, that
Mrs. Balfame had been livid with wrath and the man who had been her
husband insufferable. It was a master-stroke of the district attorney
to open his case with the damaging testimony of two members of the loyal
Elsinore families. As for Mr. Corfine, although born and brought up
without the pale, he had been graciously received upon electing to build
his nest in Elsinore and his young wife was one of Mrs. Balfame's
meekest admirers.
Mr. Broderick muttered, "H'm! H'm!" and Mr. Bruce squirmed round from
the "evening table" and jerked his eyebrows at his senior. "Bad! Bad!"
muttered Mr. Broderick's neighbour. "But watch her nerve. Can you beat
it? She hasn't batted an eyelash."
Two former servants that had preceded Frieda in the Balfame menage
testified that the household consisted of three people only, the master
and mistress and the one in help. A gardener came three times a week in
the morning. No, none of the old spare rooms was now furnished, and the
Balfames never had had visitors overnight.
The prosecution rested, and Mr. Rush approached the bar according to
usage and asked that the case be dismissed. The judge ruled that it
should proceed; and immediately after the noon recess the first witness
for the defence was called. This was Mr. Cummack, and he testified
vigorously to the harmonious relations of the deceased and his amiable
wife; that Mrs. Balfame--who was always pale--had treated the episode
out at the Club in the casual manner observed by all seasoned and
intelligent wives, the conversation over the telephone in his house
proving that the domestic heavens were swept clean of storm-clouds; and
that the deceased had departed for his home quite happy and singing at
the top of his lungs. He had often remarked jocularly (his was a cheery
and jocular temperament) that he expected to die with his boots on,
especially since he had taken to bawling Tipperary in the face of
American Germany.
It is not to be imagined that Mr. Cummack was able to deliver himself of
this valuable testimony without frequent and indignant interruptions
from the district attorney, whose "irrelevant, incompetent and
immaterial" rang through the courtroom like the chorus of a Gilbert and
Sullivan opera. Mr. Gore, a wasp of a man with snapping black eyes and a
rasping voice emitted through his higher nasal passages, succeeded in
having much of this testimony stricken out, but not before the wily Mr.
Rush, who stood on tiptoe, as alert and nervous as a race horse at the
grandstand, had by his adroit swift questions fairly flung it into the
jury-box. It was of the utmost importance with an obstinate provincial
jury to establish at once a favourable general impression of the
prisoner.
When, in the theatre, a trial scene is depicted, it is necessary to
interpose dramatic episodes, but no one misses these adventitious
incidents in a real trial for murder, so dramatic is the bare fact that
a human being is battling for his life. When the prisoner at the bar is
a woman reasonably young and good looking, the interest is so intense
and complete that the sudden intrusion of one of the incidents which
have become the staples of the theatre, such as the real culprit rushing
into the courtroom and confessing himself, a suicide in the witness-box,
or dramatic conduct on the part of the defendant, would be resented by
the spectators, as an anti-climax. Real drama is too logical and grimly
progressive to tolerate the extrinsic.
The three other men who had been at Mr. Cummack's house that night were
called, and corroborated his story. They all wore an expression of
gentle amusement as if the bare idea of the stately and elegant Mrs.
Balfame descending to play even a passive role in a domestic row was as
unthinkable as that any woman could find aught in David Balfame to rouse
her to ire.
"By Jove!" whispered Mr. Broderick to Mr. Wagstaff of the _Morning
Flag_, "just figure to yourself what the line would be if she had been
caught red-handed and was putting up a defence of temporary insanity
caused by the well-known proclivities of that beast. A good subject for
a cartoon would be Dave Balfame in heaven with a tin halo on,
whitewashing Mrs. B., weeds and all. The human mind is nothing but a
sewer."
The afternoon session was also enlivened by the testimony of several of
the ladies who had been members of the bridge party on the day of Mr.
Balfame's unseemly conduct at the Club. They testified that although
Mrs. Balfame naturally dissolved upon her return to the card-room, there
had been nothing whatever in her demeanour to suggest seething passion.
Mrs. Battle, who was an imposing figure in the witness chair, her
greater bulk being above the waist, tossed her head and asseverated with
refined emphasis that Mrs. Balfame was one of those rare and exquisite
beings that are temperamentally incapable of passion of any sort. Her
immediate return to her home was prompted more by delicacy than even by
pain. Miss Crumley's pencil faltered as she listened. She could not
give a jeering public even a faithful outline of a woman as devoted to
the sacred cause of friendship and Elsinore as Mrs. Battle.
The testimony of none of these ladies was more emphatic than that of
Mrs. Bascom, wife of the supplanted justice, and she added unexpectedly
that she had been so upset herself that she too had left the clubhouse
immediately, and, her swift car passing Dr. Anna Steuer's little
runabout, she had seen Mrs. Balfame chatting pleasantly and without a
trace of recent emotion.
Mrs. Balfame almost relaxed the set curves of her mouth at this
surprising statement. She recalled that a car had passed and that she
had wondered at the time if any one had noticed her extreme agitation.
She kept her muscles in order, but unconsciously her eyes followed Mrs.
Bascom, as she left the witness-chair, with an expression of puzzled
gratitude.
The District Attorney turned to the reporters with a short sardonic
laugh, and Mr. Broderick shook his head as he murmured to Mr. Wagstaff:
"Can you beat that? And yet they say women don't stand by one another."
"Good for the whole game, I guess," replied the young _Flag_ star, who
was enamoured of a very pretty suffragette.
The Judge rose, and the afternoon session was over. The great case of
The People vs. Mrs. Balfame rested until the following morning.