THE VERDICT.
Tread lightly here--let outraged justice weep!
There had been a severe change in the weather since morning. The pure
frosty air, that invigorated everything it touched, hardened toward
night, into one of those cold storms--half snow, half ice--that chill
you to the vitals. A coating of this sleety snow lay upon the Park,
icing the trees with crystal, and bending every twig as with a fruitage
of pearls. The stone pavement and the City Hall steps were carpeted an
inch deep by the storm; and the hail crackled sharply under foot if any
one attempted to pass over them. In short, it was one of those nights
when everything living seeks shelter, and no human being is seen abroad,
save those given up to wild desolation, either of body or mind.
Miserable and stormy as the night was, two persons had been wandering in
it for hours, sometimes lost in the blackness of the storm, sometimes
gliding by the lamps that seemed struggling to keep themselves
alive--and again stealing up the curving staircase within the City
Hall, ghost-like and shadowy, only to come forth in the tempest and
wander as before.
In the darkness, it would have been difficult to judge of the sex or
condition of those persons. Both were muffled in garments black as the
clouds that hung over them. Both were tall, and, sometimes as they
walked, the outlines of their persons blended together, till they seemed
scarcely more than a mass of moving darkness. It was remarkable that,
standing or walking, they never lost sight of a range of windows in one
wing of the City Hall, where lights shone gloomily into the mist, not
wandering about as the lamps of a happy household often do, but
motionless, like watchfires, half smothered by the dense atmosphere.
Once more these two persons ascended the steps and entered the
vestibule, from which the horse-shoe staircase diverges. A shower of
sleet followed them, and the wind swept wailing over their heads as they
went in. A lamp burned near the staircase, and for a moment, the faces
of those two wanderers became visible. The one that struck you first,
was that of a female. Tresses, that had of late been curled, hung in
dripping masses down each side of her face, that was not only as white,
but seemed cold also as marble. A pair of wild eyes, really blue, but
blackened with the smothered fire that protracted suspense leaves behind
it, gleamed out from the shadow of her bonnet, around which the folds of
a heavy lace veil dripped in sodden masses to her shoulders. The velvet
cloak which shrouded her was heavy with rain; its lustre all gone, and
its rich fringes, frozen together with sleet, rattled against the
balustrades as she pressed them in passing. Her companion--but even as
we attempt to describe him, the woman turns, with her hand upon the
balustrade, and addresses him--thus giving his identity better than any
description could convey.
"What was that, Jacob? A noise--the stirring of feet! Oh, my God--my
God--they are coming in!"
She caught hold of Jacob's rough over-coat with one hand. The gleam of
her teeth, as they knocked together, made the strong man recoil. It
gave an expression of fearful agony to her face. He listened.
"No, it is the wind breaking through the hall."
"How it sobs! How like a human voice it is! Do you hear it?
Death!--death!--that is what it says!"
"You shudder--you are cold. How your teeth chatter!" said Jacob, folding
the half-frozen cloak about her. "What can I do? If you would only go
home, I will come the first minute after the verdict. Do--do go!"
"Hush! it is there again. Are the winds human, that they moan so?"
"It is a fierce storm, nothing more," said Jacob.
A woman came down the steps that moment. She had no cloak on, and a thin
shawl hung in limp folds over her shoulders. An old hood lay back from
her face, revealing features large and stern, but for the instant
softened with sorrow. She came from the vestibule overhead. In that
direction lay the court-room. Ada saw the woman, and holding out both
her hands, shivering and purple with cold, walked slowly up to meet her.
These two females had seen each other but once in the world. One was
from a prison, the other from a palatial home; yet they stood face to
face, on equal terms, now. I am wrong; the woman of the prison looked
down with something of stern rebuke upon the lady. She said in her
heart, "The blood of this old man be upon her head! Did she not deny me
the gold that might have saved him?" But when she looked upon that face,
her resentment gave way. She paused on the steps, instead of pushing
roughly by, and said, in a tone that sounded peculiarly gentle from its
contrast with her appearance and bearing--
"This is a bitter night, madam."
"Tell me--tell me," gasped Ada, seizing the woman's shawl, and raising
her hand toward the court-room, "have they--have they--"
"Poor thing! so you repent at last," answered the woman, comprehending
her gesture with that quick magnetism which is the lightning of some
hearts. "No, they have not come in; but it is of no use waiting--the
poor old man is as good as hung, depend on it."
Ada uttered a faint cry, very faint, but it seemed to her that it
sounded through the whole building, ringing above the storm like a yell.
She dropped the woman's shawl, and stood motionless, looking helplessly
in her face.
"You had better take the lady home," said the woman, turning kindly to
Jacob; "she is wet through--the ice rattles on her clothes; she will
catch her death of cold. I would stay and help her, for she seems in
trouble; but there is worse trouble coming for the poor creature
overhead. I thought I had seen hard sights before; but this--there is no
brandy strong enough to make me forget this!"
"There is no news--the jury are still out?" questioned Jacob. "Tell me!"
"No, no--I have nothing to say--the jury are out yet--the judge
waiting--the old man--"
"Hush!" said Jacob, "she is listening."
"Stay--tell me all--the old man--tell me all!" cried Ada, hurrying down
two or three steps after the woman.
"I cannot wait, lady; the jury may come in any moment. Those poor
watchers will want a carriage. I must find one somewhere. Nobody thought
of that but me. They might not feel the storm, for the verdict will numb
them; but it is a piercing night."
"You have no cloak--scarcely more than summer clothes. I will go," said
Jacob.
"I am used to battling with the weather," was the answer. "Thank you,
though."
"Stay with her," answered Jacob, and he hurried down the steps.
"How the wind blows!--it is a terrible night," said the woman, drawing
her scant shawl together, and sitting down by Ada, who had sunk upon the
cold steps, as if all the strength had withered from her limbs the
moment Jacob left her. "You tremble--your teeth chatter--these poor
hands are like ice; there, there, let me rub them between mine."
Ada submitted her shivering hands meekly as a child, and a drop, that
was not rain, stole down her face.
"You told me once," she said, "that money would save him; will
thousands--hundreds of thousands do it now?"
"It is too late," answered the woman, sadly.
The tempest rose just then, and, to Ada's almost frenzied mind, it
seemed as if every swell of the wind answered back, "too late--too
late!" She shuddered, and cowered down by the woman, as if a death
sentence were ringing over her.
When Jacob returned, he found the two women sitting together, upon the
steps. Ada rose to her feet, and, without speaking, began rapidly to
mount them. Jacob followed.
"Where are you going! Not there, I hope--not there!"
"Yes, _there_!"
She rushed forward, her frozen garments crackling and shedding ice-drops
as she moved. All the high-bred dignity of her mien was gone; all the
richness of her toilet drenched away. The woman who followed her
scarcely looked more poverty stricken--did not look so utterly desolate.
She opened the court-room door, and crept in. All the audience was gone.
Empty benches flung their long, gloomy shadows athwart the room. Dim
lamps flared across the wall, leaving patches of blackness in the angles
and around every object that could catch and break the weak gleams of
light. The judge was upon his seat, pale and still as a statue of
marble. Weary with excitement and the protracted trial, he sat there in
the gloomy midnight, waiting for the death-word, face to face with that
old man, whose life lay in the breath on his lip. Constantly his eyes
turned upon the prisoner, and always they were met with a glance that
penetrated his heart to the core. A light, overhead, fell upon the old
man's temple, silvering the broad, high forehead, gleaming through the
white locks and glancing downward, shedding faint rays upon his beard
and bosom. I have seen a picture of Rembrandt's, so like my idea of the
old man, that it has haunted me ever since. The calm, deep-set eyes,
the holy strength slumbering within them--the expanse of forehead, the
whole head, were so perfectly the embodiment of my thought, that it
startled me. That which I saw in the picture, it was, which penetrated
to the heart of the judge, as he gazed upon the living man.
A group of police-officers hung about the door; some asleep, with their
caps down over their eyes, others yawning and stretched at full length
upon the benches, making the scene more gloomy by the contrast of their
indifference with the anguish that surrounded them.
Away, in the darkest corner, was another group of persons--three females
and a man. No word, no whisper passed among them. It scarcely seemed as
if they drew breath; but as you looked that way, the glitter of wild
eyes struck you with a sort of terror; and if the least sound arose, the
shadows around those women changed sharply, as if they felt something of
the anguish which made their principals start. Ada Leicester crept
noiselessly along the darkened wall, followed by the prison woman, and
sat down a little way from the rest. No one seemed to regard her, and
there she remained in the gloom, motionless as the figures upon which
her dull eyes were now and then turned. Thus an hour went by; all within
the court room was silent as death; without was the storm, wailing and
sobbing around the windows, shaking them angrily, like evil spirits
striving to break in, then rushing off with a hoarse disappointed howl.
This terrible contrast--the stillness within--the wild tumult
without--made even the officers cower closer together, and filled the
other persons present with intense awe. It seemed as if heaven and earth
had combined in hurling denunciations against that hapless old man. It
was after midnight, and for an instant there was a hush in the storm--a
hush in the vast building. Then came the sharp closing of a door, the
tramp of heavy feet, and twelve figures glided, one after another, into
the court-room. They ranged themselves in a dark line along the
jury-box, and stood motionless, their cloaks huddled around them, like
folds of a thunder-cloud, their faces white as marble.
The judge arose, leaning heavily with one hand upon the desk before him.
His lips moved, but it was not till a second effort that they gave forth
a sound; but when it did come, his voice broke through the room like a
trumpet.
"Prisoner, stand up and look upon the jury!"
The old man arose, and turning meekly around, lifted his eyes to the
twelve jurors. * * *
"Guilty or not guilty?"
"Guilty!"
The storm began to howl again, but all was still in the court-room.