Idols

CHAPTER XII

When a human being has not slept for five or six nights, especially if that human being is a woman of romantic temperament, many queer things are bound to happen. The sensory nerves become susceptible to impression from all influences that exist, and from many that do not. The head swells to an enormous size with its unrelieved store. Bells and music and the voice of an invisible person reading aloud an interminable and unintelligible book throb on the tympanum. Men and women have an uncomfortable way of growing suddenly large and then suddenly small before the eyes. The flesh seems disintegrated into elemental and quivering molecules. A sixth sense riotously develops, and makes the sufferer aware of a murderous devil dogging the footsteps. Under these conditions, to join in the small-talk of a family dinner table, do fancy work in the drawing-room and play Grieg on the piano to a virtuoso, argues a considerable reserve fund of moral power. And this is found more commonly in women than in men.

Until the day of Hugh’s trial at the Old Bailey, Minna had successfully concealed her state from the friendly eyes of the Bebros. She looked wretchedly ill, but a cunning shade of carmine relieved her haggardness and caused her to appear nothing more than interestingly afflicted. When the pains of hell gat more closely round about her, she forced her lips into a photographic smile, thereby impressing the motherly Mrs. Bebro with a sense of her patience under tribulation. It was a gruesome comedy.

At first pure terror and avarice, bitter resentment of the wrongs Hugh had done her, and consequent blindness to the imminent peril in which he stood, had paralysed the moral sense. But later, after she had given evidence before the magistrates, she knew to the full that she was playing the most desperate game that ever woman played for money. The gambler’s instinct kept her mind clear; strength of will saved her from collapse. Hugh acquitted, all her money would be her own. Everything would be well. She would seek fresh scenes, blot this nightmare for ever from her life. Hugh condemned, she would do some mad deed to save him, summon Anna Cassaba from Syria, cast herself at the feet of the Home Secretary, surrender her thousands, and—throw herself over Waterloo Bridge. This was a doom, inevitable, meted out to her, rather than a scheme which her brain had devised. All the passionate yet stubborn racial energies of her nature were concentrated upon the supreme effort of making her last bid for fortune.

It was a fixed idea, focussing the distempered mind and magnetising the exhausted flesh.

Her last bid for fortune. She had made it. She found herself in Mrs. Bebro’s carriage, with the motherly lady by her side. How she had been transported thither from the swaying, reeling court, she did not know. Mrs. Bebro, with veil raised above red eyes, was holding her hand. Yet she had a vague knowledge that she had not fainted.

“There, there, it is over now, dear,” said her companion, kindly. “It has been a trying time for you. We’ll soon get home, now, and a cup of tea and a lie down will do you good.”

“Yes,” said Minna, hoarsely. “It will do me good.”

“Poor young man,” said Mrs. Bebro. “I nearly cried my eyes out over him.”

“It is a terrible thing,” said the girl, with set teeth, clenching the arm-strap with her free hand.

“And I’m sure he’s innocent—poor fellow. I met him once—you remember? Such charming manners—like a prince. And your poor, dear father so fond of him too. He can’t have done it.”

“I know he is innocent,” said Minna.

Hitherto Mrs. Bebro had been very considerate in her allusions to the dreadful topic. But now human nature asserted itself. She was anxious to sympathise, also to relieve pent-up emotions; for the fascination of a murder upon those intimately connected with it is intense—it is a splash of blood upon the grey veil of decorous life, and cannot be hidden. She took up her parable, discoursed at length, in a hushed voice, such as she considered reverend upon the Day of Atonement. And as she talked, in the cramped space of the noiselessly gliding brougham, the horrors gradually grew upon the girl.

“We must buy an evening paper to see what happened before we got there. But I asked the policeman, and he said things were going very bad for the poor fellow. When once I got in, I should have liked to have heard it all from the beginning. But it would have been too painful for you, poor dear child, to have done more than just given your evidence. I am glad you were able to say what you did about him. It may help him.”

“Yes, I tried to help him,” said Minna.

The sides of the brougham seemed to be narrowing upon her, like the Inquisition torture-chamber. She suddenly thrust out her arms to keep them off.

“My dear child——?”

The question suddenly restored her balance. But she wanted to scream. Instead, she uttered a short laugh.

“I was thinking what a screaming farce this would make in hell!” she said, gutturally.

Mrs. Bebro looked at her enquiringly. The conception was beyond her.

“Yes, I am sure the Evil One must have a hand in it,” she said, at last, in a tone of assent. “Circumstances are diabolically against him. Oh, it gives me the horrors to think of it—and how proud and handsome he looked standing there—as if everyone was the dirt under his feet. Do you know, dear—about you and him—if he had been one of our people I could have fancied——”

She broke off. The carriage was blocked at Piccadilly Circus. A newspaper boy darted up to the open window, flourishing an evening paper.

“Sunnington murder! latest details!”

Minna threw herself aside onto Mrs. Bebro with a piercing shriek. There was a rush of startled and attracted bystanders. Mrs. Bebro stretched across Minna and pulled up the glass. The carriage moved on. She took the shaking girl in her arms and held her to her bosom, uttering motherly words of soothing.

But that sudden shriek was the beginning of things. All the rest of the drive home she lay quite still, continuing the comedy and the mystification of the worthy, single-minded woman; but in order to do so, she was forced to keep her gloved fingers between her teeth.

“There, there,” continued Mrs. Bebro, petting her. “Don’t take on so, dear. We must bear all the afflictions that the Lord sends us. Bear up, dear, under them, like a Jewish maiden. We will put you to bed, with something hot and nice to take, and you will sleep and wake up strong to-morrow.”

And so the good woman went on, seeking to heal the bayonetted body with housewifely sticking-plaster.

But the girl was too far gone for heeding. The new horrors were upon her. As soon as they reached the house and had entered, she fled upstairs to her room, with the black things at her heels.

What passed then, when alone in her room she crouched before her terror, it is neither profitable nor decent to say. She had been strong up to a certain point—the goal to whose attainment she had set the marvellous mechanism of nerves and fibres. It was of her sex not to have calculated upon the beyond. She paid her sex’s penalty. The inevitable law of inconsistency dragged her out, a wild, half-mad thing, an hour later into the street. A hansom cab chanced to have just put down a fare at the next house. She entered, flung an address at the driver, and a moment later was being carried through whirling space.

The first day of Hugh’s trial was over. The streets rang with it. Reports were flashing through the kingdom on a thousand wires. It was the theme of all men’s talk. A cause célébré convulsing a vast society. The attorney-general had delivered his opening address. One or two witnesses had been called; Minna Hart the last.

The prisoner’s prospects were damnably black. His friends regarded each other with pale lips. In the quiet Hertfordshire townlet two gentle ladies clung together in awful anguish of soul. The man himself lay in Holloway Gaol mailed in a pride of steel.

Irene and Gerard sat over their evening meal. She had been in court all the gnawing day, and now, leaning back in her chair, dressed in a pink wrapper, a pretty coquetry of happier times, she looked almost diaphanous in her exhaustion.

“It is no use your not eating,” said Gerard, “you’ll make yourself ill.”

She shook her head.

“I can’t, Gerard. I’ll have some beef tea or something presently. You go on. You are a man and have a big body to nourish.”

She helped him from the dish in front of her, choosing, in her wifely fashion, the nicest-looking morsels, and then sat regarding him with her great eyes, admiring the strength of will that could compel appetite on so sorrowful an evening. She knew that rejection of food was silly. But the thought of it turned her sick. “I feel ill,” she said. “I always prided myself on being strong-minded and above affected, feminine weaknesses. But now—” she shrugged her shoulders and her lips moved in a wan smile.

“You had better not come to the court to-morrow, if you don’t feel up to it,” said Gerard.

“Oh, I should go if I were dying!” said Irene. “It is the least thing we can do—go and cheer and keep the brave heart in him. For with all your efforts, dearest, you have been able to do nothing.”

“There was nothing to be done. I did what I could. Couldn’t even get hold of your famous photograph. He must have destroyed that too. So I couldn’t trace the original.”

That cold, cruel and exquisitely chiselled face, whose likeness she had seen in Hugh’s rooms, had persistently assumed the identity of the woman for whose sake he was maintaining this silence. Even when she doubted the probability of her conjecture, the mysterious woman gradually revealed herself as the possessor of those ophidian eyes. They haunted her night and day. At last she doubted no longer. That was the woman; she had the face of one who could well see the man that loved her die before her eyes. As a forlorn hope Irene had set Gerard upon the track of this photograph. But it had disappeared from Hugh’s rooms. The disappearance, however, confirmed her certainty.

There was a silence. Gerard went on with his dinner with the steadiness of a big-framed man who must eat. Irene pressed her hands over her burning eyeballs and leant forward on the table. She was suffering greatly.

“Will you be able to bear it—if the worst comes?” she asked, after a while.

“The worst hasn’t come yet,” he replied, “so it’s no good talking about it.”

His brow clouded. There was a deep note in his wife’s voice that troubled him. She noticed the shadow.

“I must not pain you, Gerard. I have only known Hugh for a few years. He has been your friend all your life. I can’t feel it all as you do.”

“We don’t mend matters by dwelling upon them,” he said. “Besides—if there really is a woman——”

“Oh, she must be in hell-fire now!” exclaimed Irene, fiercely—“a foretaste of the future.”

“Yes,” he assented-grimly, “I shouldn’t like to be in her shoes.”

Another silence. This time broken by the rattle and sudden drag of a carriage drawing up at the front door. A moment later the faint whirr of the electric bell downstairs.

“Who can that be?” cried Irene, nervously. “Hush, dear! Let me listen.”

She strained her ears, rather overwrought. “It is a woman—if it should be the woman!”

“Oh, nonsense, Renie,” said Gerard, with a man’s contempt for the feminine-fanciful.

The maidservant entered.

“Miss Hart, sir, wishes to speak to you.”

“Miss Hart!” echoed Irene, with a shade of disappointment. Then succeeded quick scorn for the silliness of her fluttering hope, and natural interest in the visitor’s errand. “What can she want?”

Gerard rose from the table and went out into the hall. It was a broad passage, softly carpeted, well warmed, furnished with oak settles and tables, here and there a great indoor plant, all brightly lighted from a great central cluster of electric globes.

Minna was standing near the door. As Gerard approached, she advanced hurriedly to meet him—her veil off, her dark hair disordered over her forehead, her fashionable, befeathered and beribboned hat awry.

“I have come—I want to——”

She stopped dead. Stared at him open-mouthed. He was somewhat bewildered.

“Yes?” he said, in lame enquiry.

But she stood before him, trembling, uttering little sharp noises, like a terrier wistful to make his wants known, a horror in her eyes.

“Good God—what is the matter?”

She could not reply. The horror faded into mere helpless fright. She raised her hands and twitched her fingers, somewhat horridly, in the air, and continued the little staccato moans.

“Renie!” cried Gerard, sharply. “Renie, come here!”

Irene started at her husband’s summons and ran out into the hall. But as soon as the girl saw her, she uttered a long, shivering moan and shrank against the wall.

“What is it?”

“The girl’s got a fit—hysterics or something. Said a couple of words and then gasped at me.”

“Poor child,” said Irene, touched.

She approached her, but Minna waved her away with unreasoning terror, and, edging backward, met an oak settle on which she instinctively sat, and, crouching, continued her inarticulate cries.

“She evidently doesn’t want you, Renie,” said Gerard. “What the devil shall I do with her?”

“I’ll go away for a minute—you must try and quiet her. I’ll send Jane to you. Then I’ll come back and see if she’ll bear me to touch her. It’s hysteria. The whole thing has been too much for her to-day—poor little thing.”

Irene made one more attempt; but seeing that her ministrations would perhaps render the girl violent, she retired and sent the maid in her place. Irene gone, Minna grew less excited, but she trembled and moaned and was apparently incapable of understanding words. Gerard arranged some cushions, and the servant administered smelling-salts. On trying to pull off her gloves, so as to chafe her hands, they found the fingers of one hand swollen. The kid was cut, and bloody at the edges, where she had bitten. Gerard left the two women, and, going into the dining-room, explained matters hurriedly to Irene.

“What the deuce is the meaning of it?”

“She’s overwrought, poor child. Think what a terrible ordeal she went through in the witness-box to-day. Hugh was very friendly at The Lindens, you know.”

“Do you think she was in love with Hugh?”

“Perhaps,” said Irene, rather wearily. “But what did she want me for?”

“All hysterical, dear. She knew you were Hugh’s dearest friend. Came to ask whether you thought him likely to be condemned. Then broke down. You see what poor silly stuff we women are made of.”

“At any rate, you don’t fall to gibbering like a monkey at the sight of a snake,” said Gerard, accepting his wife’s explanation. “And now, what are we to do with her?”

“She won’t let me come near her, or else I would nurse her,” said Irene. “What do you think?”

“Her cab is still waiting. I could take her home to her friends. Would it hurt her?”

“No,” said Irene. “It might do her good—the drive; but you—you are so tired, dear.”

“Oh, Lord, I’d sooner take her away than have her fooling about here,” said Gerard. And he went back again to the hall.

Thus Minna was restored to the scared and anxious Bebros, who put her to bed and sent for a doctor. The hysteria, on whose brink she had long been trembling, had at last engulfed her, and hour by hour she sank deeper into the abyss, where all the horrors fought for her. But the significance of her foiled errand did not reach her consciousness.

And that night, as Gerard slept stertorously by her side, Irene lay throbbingly awake, aching with suspense. The awful peril of the man whom Gerard loved dulled her reminiscence of the strange visit of the hysterical girl. It never crossed her mind that the Lord had delivered her enemy into her hands.

CHAPTER XIII

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.