It was the second day of the trial. Irene held her husband’s hand in a
nervous grasp. They were sitting together among a crowd of well-dressed
men and women, many of them friends of Hugh, in the reserved places on
the judge’s bench. Yesterday, in her unfamiliarity with the historic
court of the Old Bailey, its first aspect had shocked her sense of the
fitness of things. She had vaguely imagined a vast hall, stately and
imposing paraphernalia, all the pomp and circumstance of the law. But
this dingy, murky, incommodious chamber, furnished with just the bare
necessities for procedure, and crammed with perspiring men, seemed more
like a third-rate auction-room than the most solemn court of justice in
the land. It was mean and cramped; even God’s light cut off from it by
the eternal, blighting shadow of Newgate. Instead of spacious galleries
she had seen little yellow boxes by the roof, above the dock, surmounted
by vague agglutinated masses of faces. The nearness of everything to
her, consequent upon the small area and great depth of the court, had
affected her with a strange feeling of oppression.
To-day the surprise had passed; the scene had grown so intensely
familiar that she seemed to have borne its burden about her for years,
but the feeling of oppression still remained. The nameless atmosphere
of the gaol, sullen and hopeless and tainted, hung pall-like over
everything.
The well of the court was crowded. At narrow tables sat the rows of
barristers in wig and gown; behind them, on the short slope abruptly
terminating at the whitewashed wall, the pressmen, behind whom
again more barristers and members of the public, all standing in an
insignificant but suffocatingly packed crowd. Below her, Irene saw the
bobbing wig of the clerk of arraigns and the bald head of Harroway at
the solicitors’ table. Beyond, in the front row of the lines of counsel,
stood the attorney-general examining the witness; on her right the
judge, broad-wigged, red-robed, scratching loud with quill-pen; Lord
Mayor and Aldermen in civic robes, with their cynical nosegays of
flowers in front of them; on her right, beneath the dim closed window,
the pallid Jew butler in the witness-box. Opposite, the jury, twelve
commonplace, but hard and practical-looking men, as London juries
generally are. And next, the vast square dock, glass-panelled, grim,
overlooked by the inexorable clock face, which has marked the last hours
of life’s chances for so many tortured men and women; and in the dock,
guarded by the warder, the erect and somewhat haughty figure of the
prisoner.
On Irene’s arrival in court this morning, Harroway had handed her a
little pencilled note from Hugh.
“Bless you, dear Renie, for coming to cheer and strengthen me. Before,
it was best for me to fight it out alone. But now the sight of you
gladdens me. I am doing everything for what I consider the best. Don’t
fret. Gardiner will pull me through.”
And when he had entered the dock, his eyes had travelled to hers
with swift instinct, and for many seconds remained fixed. Whatever
possibilities of guilt may have lingered in her mind, were swept away in
that mutual gaze. She saw his innocence deep in her soul, and her heart
yearned towards him. She knew now, past all doubt, that he was risking
his life to save some wretched woman’s honour. The woman’s dastardly
silence was all but inconceivable, but the man’s chivalry blazed before
the world. Her eyes had glistened with a moment’s exultation. Here was a
man of unfaltering strength, a friend to be thrillingly proud of, to die
for, gladly, if need were. He became a hero, worthy of the devotion
of others. The heroic chord in her nature had been struck, and its
inarticulate music had sung in her heart. She had murmured her emotion
to Gerard, but before he could reply, the entrance of the judge and
the rising of the court had broken the momentary spell. Her anxiety
had returned with a sickening rush, and Hugh became once more, as all
through the aching hours of yesterday, the dear friend exposed to public
degradation and to deadly peril.
The examination of Samuels continued. He described the finding of the
body, the attitude in which it lay, the position of the heavy poker with
which, according to the theory of the prosecution, the murderous blow
was struck--all the harrowing details that had been so often laid before
the law. In a faltering voice he narrated the history of the evening:
the merry dinner-party, the sound of the lively music upstairs (Minna’s
mad tarantella), the angry words he had overheard on coming into his
master’s study, the permission to go to bed, his last sight of the
prisoner at ten minutes past eleven, his after meeting with Mr. Hart
in the bedroom at five minutes to twelve, when the latter had taken the
ledger from his bedroom safe and gone downstairs again. Familiar as all
these facts were to Irene, every fresh statement put them in a still
more terrible light. They seemed to leave Hugh no single avenue for
escape. He was hedged round by a pitiless fence of incontrovertible
testimony. Once Hugh looked swiftly from the window to her and then back
again. The glance appealed to her like that of a noble animal caught in
a trap.
Yet he bore the ordeal bravely, twirling now and then a disdainful
moustache. It was the man’s nature to carry his burdens defiantly.
Minna’s appearance in the witness-box the day before had lashed him to
a fury of pride. He would rather die a thousand deaths than use her
contaminated soul to save his life.
At times he looked round the familiar precincts with a smile almost of
mockery. The topsy-turvydom of his position contained elements of the
grotesque. The central sphere of his life’s ambitions, by some wizard
touch, had become the theatre of his shame. The judge before whom he
had most often pleaded was now trying him as a murderer. The brother
barristers below were cordial acquaintances, linked to him by the
honourable traditions of a beloved profession. The scene shimmered
before his eyes in whimsical unreality. But then, suddenly, a blaze of
associations would disclose, by lurid contrast, the pathos of his ruin.
It was terribly real. Once a lump rose in his throat, and he steadied
himself by the hand-rail. On the last occasion of his presence in this
place, he had delivered an impassioned harangue on behalf of a poor
trembling devil of an embezzling clerk, who had clutched at that same
hand-rail for support. He remembered how he had wondered at the craven
spirit that could thus make public exhibition of its terror. The memory
was a whip to his pride.
The butler’s evidence was black against him. What saving admission could
Gardiner, his counsel, ablest cross-examiner of the day though he was,
get out of this man? Wearily he glanced at the window, dwelling with
a shiver on the grey, gaunt walls of Newgate--the last abode of the
condemned man’s brief span of life, hiding the condemned cell and the
gallows--and on the irony of the doves of Newgate courtyard that flashed
their white wings in the overshadowed air. It was then that he turned
the quick glance at Irene which she intercepted and interpreted as one
of appeal. Gardiner rose to cross-examine the butler. There was little
hope of shaking the evidence.
“Oh, God! How my heart aches!” said Irene to Gerard, pressing her hand
to her bosom.
“Hush!” he replied. “Don’t give way. Let us follow this closely.”
But the meshes seemed tighter drawn than ever around Hugh. Her nerve
began to fail. Outside the bright spring sunshine flooded the sky. Not
a ray entered the murky court, where the heat was oppressive, the air
stifling. The judge, notorious for his horror of draughts, had caused
all the windows to be closed. Irene gasped for breath. A faint nausea
made her head swim. She closed her eyes and leaned against her husband.
For a few moments she lost consciousness. Gerard, intent upon the
evidence, remained unaware of her condition.
Suddenly a confused murmur of voices aroused her with a start. Samuels
was leaving the witness-box. Gardiner was regarding Hugh with a little
air of triumph. The mass of wigged heads below her was agitated like the
backs of a flock in motion.
“What’s the matter? I wasn’t listening?” she whispered.
Gerard, not catching her words, concluded they contained merely some
expression of emotion, and nodded to her vaguely. Soon absorbed in the
evidence of the next witness, Parsons, the porter at the mansion, Irene
let her question pass and forgot the incident.
Thus a material point for Hugh’s defence, an admission by Samuels that
he had heard a noise like the slamming of the front door at half-past
eleven, the hour when Hugh claimed to have left the house, had escaped
her cognisance.
The only point in his client’s favour that Gardiner elicited from the
porter, was the statement that the brown paper parcel which the prisoner
was carrying on the morning of the murder was neatly tied with string,
and in no wise resembled a hastily wrapped up bundle of documents.
Other witnesses followed. Again Irene felt the deadly faintness coming
over her. It was nature’s penalty for insufficient food, sleep and air.
She struggled against it with all her strength.
“Shall I take you out?” asked Gerard, noticing her pallor.
She shook her head. She would sit through it to the end. Never had
she felt such fierce contempt for her sex’s weakness as then. It was
maddening to feel her nerve yielding and her brain growing dizzy. Was
she going to follow the example of the shallow, hysterical girl of last
night? Were all women constituted alike--to snap like lath at the first
serious strain? The thought was abhorrent. For over an hour she sat
there scarcely heeding the proceedings, her whole mind concentrated
upon the efforts to retain her consciousness. And during this hour
Mrs. Parsons had stated that she had found among the prisoner’s linen
a sleeping suit which had been missing for some time, and Israel Hart’s
confidential clerk had sworn to the valueless nature of the £5,000
security.
The endless cross-fire of question and answer drew to a conclusion. The
charge was read, and the counsel for the prosecution submitted his case
to the judge.
Gardiner rose. Irene with a great effort regained her self-control, and
regarded him anxiously.
“I call no witnesses for the defence, my lord,” said he.
Irene, aghast, uttered a sharp cry of pain and dismay. To her mind,
unversed in legal methods, this proceeding seemed like capitulation.
Was Gardiner going to make no show of fight for his friend’s life? She
questioned her husband in a fever of anxiety.
“He is relying on his speech to-morrow to devaluate the evidence. What
witnesses can he bring forward?”
But Irene was not reassured. She lay back, with white lips and panting
bosom. The halter was already round Hugh’s neck. To her strained eyes
his features seemed to have undergone an awful change since the morning.
Her vision invested him with imaginary haggardness and deathlike pallor.
Again she felt faint and closed her eyes.
When she opened them again, the attorney-general was addressing the
jury. Now he had more scope for emotion than in his opening. He spoke of
the prisoner’s position as a barrister, of the terrible pain it had been
to him to lead this prosecution. (All the unreasoning feminine in Irene
blazed into inward reproach. It was hypocrisy, baseness, a hireling’s
part. No noble or generous nature could have undertaken the task.)
He spoke of duty, of the law, of the necessity of sacrificing private
feelings to the interests of justice. And justice compelled him to point
out the prisoner as a man guilty of a terrible crime. He proceeded to
the evidence, recapitulated the details. Constructed a romance of evil
passions. Drew a picture of the imaginary scene, the quarrel over the
£5,000, the insulting word, the dastardly and fatal blow.
Hugh, leaning over the railing of the dock, gazed at him intently, with
set teeth. Throughout all the sordid commonplaces of the trial, he had
maintained his bearing of scorn. But now the touch of a lurid eloquence
gripped his nature. His breath came hard and fast, in speechless
indignation and horror at the vivid fable.
The crowded court was deathly still. Irene gripped her husband’s hand,
looking now at the denunciatory, attitudes of the speaker, now at the
intense steel of the denounced man’s eyes, now at the set faces of the
jury as they sat under the spell of the fierce oratory.
“Gerard--they will kill him. I see condemnation in their eyes,” she
whispered, hoarsely.
“Damn them,” he answered, carried away by the excitement, “I believe
they will.”
“Can nothing human save him?”
“I would give ten years of my life.”
She tightened her clasp on his great hand by way of sympathy and
acknowledgment. A little sound of sobbing was heard. It came from a lady
next but one to Irene--Mrs. Gardiner--the wife of Hugh’s counsel and
friend. Irene was dry-eyed. Suddenly she felt strong, with her young
blood thrilling through her veins. Again she whispered.
“Gerard--would you give all you held most dear in the world?”
“Of course,” he replied.
The sonorous voice went on.
“The defence have called no witnesses. There are none to call. Let them
prove that the prisoner was elsewhere between eleven o’clock and seven
on that fatal night--even between one and five, the limits set by the
medical evidence--and the case falls to the ground. But they cannot do
so. It has been hinted that a woman’s honour is in question. That will
be urged in his defence. But does the woman live who is so vile, so
despicable as to let her reputation stand in the way of saving an
innocent man from the most shameful of deaths? It is unthinkable. Human
nature does not sink to such degradation of cowardice. When that blow
was struck the prisoner was in no woman’s arms.”
He paused to take breath. There was just a flash of silence. And then
a woman’s voice broke out into a hoarse cry, as if the words tore their
way through a gasping throat.
“_HE WAS. IN MINE!_”
Another silence; this time longer; one of dumb bewilderment. Every eye
was straining at the tall, quivering woman who stood with burning eyes
and parted lips, throwing down her defiance. Then swift reaction swept
through the assembly. The sudden, emotional, tragic, in a time of
strain, brings elemental, inarticulate sounds from men’s hearts.
Confusion of voices reigned. Some broke into silly laughter. Gardiner
leapt to his feet, quivering like a race-horse, gesticulating with his
hands, uttering idle words of appeal that were lost in the clamour.
Gerard Merriam too was standing, had seized his wife’s arm.
“Have you gone mad?” he shouted, hoarsely.
He wrenched her down to her seat. She shook off his grasp and sprang
up again, facing the court. Before her will, his gave way. He sat and
gnawed at his fingers in a frenzy of agitation.
The first amazement had held Hugh speechless. For a moment he stared
at her stupidly. Then amid the hubbub he burst into passionate cries of
denial. He would have leaped from the dock, had not iron arms encircled
him and rough voices in his ear commanded silence. He obeyed, his heart
thumping like a piston-rod. Then Gardiner and Harroway met by the side
of the dock. Hugh leaned over the rail, at once engaged in excited
discussion.
“You are mad!” cried Gardiner, at last, in his ear. “I shall save your
life and you can shoot me afterwards if you like.”
The solicitor and himself returned to their places. The judge thundered
for order. The hubbub waned to a murmur. He threatened to clear the
court. A scuffle near the door drew general attention to the fact of an
ejection. Peace was restored. Men wiped streaming foreheads and looked
about with eager eyes.
Gardiner, with wig awry, had the first word.
“My lord, I beg permission to call that lady as a witness.”
“I protest, my lord!” cried Hugh in torture of soul. “Her tale is a lie.
I will not have her commit perjury for my sake.”
The judge rebuked him. The management of the case was in the hands of
counsel. They only could be heard.
“But for God’s sake, my lord?” cried Hugh again.
Sternly the judge threatened forcible measures. Hugh cast a wild,
despairing glance around the hushed and wondering court, threw up his
hands in a passionate gesture of appeal to Irene, who stood transfigured
before him, and then with a groan sank into his chair and buried his
face in his arms. He was powerless.
The prisoner being effectually silenced, the judge bent his heavy brows
upon Irene.
“Will you repeat that statement on oath?”
She nodded her head thrice in affirmation before she could articulate
the “yes.”
There was a consultation between the judge and the attorney-general.
The latter had no objection to the request of the defence. Irene stepped
into the witness-box. She took the oath, shivered, and shot a swift
glance of appeal at her husband. He sat glaring at her like a man
stupefied, his eyes crossed in a kind of glazed squint, his body bent
forwards, still biting at his fingers.
The self-accusing cry had sprung from resistless impulse. The heroic
instinct, awakened earlier, had been clamouring, in the darkness. It
rose to the lightning flash of suggestion. Hugh was doomed. Here was
a splendid rescue. It had been a moment of tumultuous rapture.
Simultaneously had come the conviction of Gerard’s acquiescence, his
equal gladness to sacrifice his honour for his friend’s life. Had not
Hugh once faced death for Gerard? Had not Gerard just said that he would
give all he held most dear in the world to save him? It had been an
exquisite moment of faith, during which the world had grown young again
and radiant deeds were the commonplaces of life. All had crowded, in the
instant, upon her mind. And the words had gone from her, she scarce knew
how. They had sounded strange in her ears. But the silence, the cold,
dispassionate accents of the judge brought to the surface her instincts
as a nineteenth-century woman, cultivated under a thousand complex
conditions. She realised the gravity of the step she was taking. All her
faintness had gone under the magic of her inspiration, but the great and
sudden effort to concentrate her intellectual powers checked the thrill
in her veins. To be heroic in cold blood is the highest grade. She
answered calmly. Her questioner was less collected than herself.
Only a woman could have committed the splendid perjury. Under
examination she told with faultless precision the story of the fabulous
adultery; the prisoner’s Orestian friendship with her husband; his
love for her before her marriage; the later and guilty passion on her
own side; the rare chance of that fatal night when her husband was in
Edinburgh. Solemnly she swore that the prisoner arrived at her house
at a quarter to twelve and stayed there until the morning, leaving just
before the servants were astir. Her manner gave the story the seal of
truth.
The attorney-general cross-examined. In no particular could he shake her
statement. Why had she not come forward before? She urged the scandal,
the pain to her husband, the overmastering hope, grown to conviction,
that the evidence against the prisoner was too slight to harm him.
“How did he enter your house?”
“He had a latch-key always in his possession.”
“Was this the first time it had been used for this purpose?”
She set her teeth and answered, “No.” Gardiner re-examined. No third
party was aware of the existence of this liaison. The utmost precaution
and secrecy had been maintained. Was her husband in court? Yes. She
went down the steps and back to her place like one in a dream. Gerard
remained motionless by her side, as if unconscious of her presence.
Gardiner, wishing to have corroborative evidence, sought permission to
call Merriam. The latter assented, went into the witness-box. Irene’s
heart fluttered faintly with happiness. Gerard had accepted the
sacrifice. He would play his part as she had done hers. Yet his face was
clouded and heavy and he answered doggedly, with the air of a man who
has formed a resolve in the caverns of his soul.
He was absent in Edinburgh on the night in question. For some time past
he had been uneasy as regards his wife’s relations with Colman. The
revelation was not an absolute surprise to him. Colman had been, for
many years, almost a member of his household. By virtue of the intimacy
he possessed a latch-key. No further questions were put. The opposite
side declined to cross-examine. Gerard, looking neither to right nor
left, walked out of the court.
Irene was left alone. She could not understand Gerard’s neglect. Surely
he meant her to follow. She rose and took a sweeping survey of the
scene. Counsel were whispering eagerly. The jury crowded together in
animated discussion, the front row leaning over the backs of the
seats. Many eyes were fixed admiringly upon herself. The judge, seen
in obscured profile, was turning over his notes. The air still seemed
impregnated with the odour of the gaol. Hugh sat in the dock, his face
still buried in his arms, in an attitude of supreme dejection. And
behind him stood his blue-habited imperturbable guards. Then, with bowed
head, she hurried across the court, leaving by the door through which
Gerard had disappeared.
He was not outside, in the witnesses’ lobby, waiting for her as she had
expected. She enquired of the policeman on duty. He had seen him pass,
pointed out the way he had gone. She followed his directions, found
herself in the courtyard. Gerard was nowhere to be seen. She hung about
for a while, went outside and walked up and down the hurrying pavement,
waited again by the entrance. But no Gerard. Disappointed and anxious,
she retraced her steps, up worn bleak stairs, through gloomy corridors,
and finally lost herself completely. But she hurried on with downcast
eyes. At last she arrived at an entrance guarded by a policeman. It was
not the door with which she was familiar. A sudden failing seized her.
She could not return to her seat and present herself alone before
the gaze of all those men. The valiantest of women has small feminine
cowardices, which she does not seek to overcome. To leave the precincts
was equally impossible. She resolved to wait, and walked bravely up and
down the lobby. A few patient figures of men and women were sitting by
the wall. Scarcely speculating who these might be, she sat down finally
by an old man, poorly clad, who was leaning forward, his chin supported
on his hands, regarding the pavement with lack-lustre eyes. Then for the
first time she was able to think with some coherence of the stupendous
nature of the deed she had just committed. She put her ungloved hands
over her burning eyes as if to shut out the scene that had blazed before
them a few moments ago. The words of the counsel, her own replies,
reverberated distinct in her ears. She would have given a year of her
life for Gerard’s protecting presence.
So absorbed was she that she did not hear a rough voice call out a
strange name, nor notice the old man by her side rise in weary obedience
to the summons. When, later, she withdrew her hands from her face, she
did not heed his absence. Now and then a barrister or a document-laden
clerk hurried past her. She waited in a torture of anxiety. At last the
policeman approached and asked her if she was a witness in this case.
Her reply gave him a clue to her interest. He smiled indulgently. This
was the witnesses’ lobby of the Recorder’s Court. The Sunnington case
was being tried in the chief court, before the judge; just the other end
of the Old Bailey. Irene stamped her foot with vexation. Suspense had
made her lose count of time. It seemed as if she had been absent for
hours. What had happened? She must know. And here she had been waiting,
like a fool, in a wrong part of the building.
“Direct me to the door the prisoner will come out by.”
The policeman was still indulgent.
“If he’s sentenced or the case is adjourned, he’ll go down the dock and
you won’t see him. If he gets off he may leave by the main exit.”
“That’s what I want,” said Irene.
He gave her the necessary directions. She hurried away, half running. At
last she had perceived the cause of her error. The chief court was only
up one flight of stairs, and she had passed it by in her agitation.
The door and its guardian appeared in sight. But at that moment it was
thrown open and a stream of men issued forth. The recognition of her was
a signal for wild cheering and a rush towards her. She turned to fly.
Someone overtook her, grasped her arm. It was a young barrister, an
acquaintance.
“Let me take you out quietly. You will be mobbed by well-meaning
enthusiasts.”
The news that she was in front had spread. There was a tumult of cheers
behind her. She pressed on with her guide. Her brain reeled. She dared
scarcely ask the reason of the demonstration. In this first moment of
confusion, it was merely significant of her own popularity. The thought
was burning fire. A few steps brought them into the counsels’ and
solicitors’ lobby, at the end of which was quiet. The young man looked
at her glowingly.
“Thank God! They might have hanged an innocent man.”
She stared at him only half comprehending.
“Yes. Don’t you know? Of course--he is acquitted--your evidence----”
The young fellow stopped short, blushed--he was a fair youth and his
white wig made him fairer--realising the delicate ground.
“Yes--my evidence?” replied Irene, pausing. “I have been away from the
court.”
“It knocked the prosecution all of a heap. Hanna threw up the case. The
judge directed a formal verdict. Thank God!”
“Then he is free!”
She staggered under the realisation, leaned for a moment against the
wall. From a little distance off came the noise of voices and footsteps
of people leaving the court. Twos and threes of barristers passed by and
eyed her curiously.
“Let me put you into a cab,” said the young man.
“Thank you--yes,” she faltered.
Taking his arm, faint and dizzy and half-closing her eyes, she allowed
him to lead her by a staircase unused by the public, to the street. As
she entered the cab a few persons recognised her, and set up a cheer and
waved their hats. The cab drove off. The ceaseless, roaring traffic of
Holborn seemed the phantasmagoria of a strange world.