The Ordeal of Elizabeth Part 32

There was one form of reading which no one suggested, which she did not, apparently, think of herself. No one brought her a newspaper, and she never asked to see one. Perhaps she did not realize how much her case was discussed, perhaps she realized it only too well. Her aunts were thankful for her lack of curiosity. They could not themselves open a paper, or enter a street-car, without an agony of dread as to what they might see or hear.

For the yellow journals, of course, were exploiting the affair--it was Mrs. Bobby's opinion, indeed, that it had been started originally on their account, for the enlivenment of a dull season. This may or may not be true; but certainly they made the most of it. They published Elizabeth's picture, and long accounts of her conquests. There were pictures, too, of her grandmother, that stately beauty whose fame was traditional, and of old Van Vorsts who had held important offices, and served city and state with credit in colonial and revolutionary times.

Then, by contrast, there were accounts of her mother's past and her mother's kindred through several generations of moral and social disrepute. The Neighborhood was overrun by disguised reporters who made copious notes of local items, and took photographs of the Van Vorst Homestead, of the village, of Ba.s.sett Mills and even of the church--thereby causing the Rector's wife nervous spasms in her anxiety lest any of Elizabeth's moral perversions should be laid to the account of the religious teaching that she had received. Ba.s.sett Mills was all a-flutter in its excitement over this gratuitous advertis.e.m.e.nt. But in the Neighborhood--the staid, aristocratic old Neighborhood--there was a feeling of humiliation, a presentiment that it could never recover from the disgrace of such notoriety.

And yet, in spite of all discredit, what a subject for conversation--in the Neighborhood as well as Ba.s.sett Mills! Nothing else was talked of at the various tea-parties, of which so many had never been given before. People who had guests took them over on Sunday afternoons to the Homestead, and wandered about the grounds relating the family history, while the strangers stared with interest at the old house, and the horse-shoe on the door. There was a dreary look about the place for the Misses Van Vorst were not coming back that summer, and the old gardener left in charge had not the heart under the circ.u.mstances to keep it in order. Gra.s.s grew in the gravel-walks, the flowers in the garden hung their heads, the foliage was sadly in need of clipping. A shadow seemed to brood over house and grounds, as in the day of old Madam Van Vorst.

In town, where there were more things to talk about, the great poisoning case still took precedence of all other subjects, and society was divided on account of it into warring camps. There were those--a very large number--who followed Mrs. Hartington's lead, and spoke of Elizabeth as a sort of adventuress, who had thrust herself into circles which she had no right to enter; a party which disowned her entirely and believed implicitly in her guilt. But there was another party, smaller perhaps but not less influential, which took uncompromisingly the opposite side. The people who composed it were friends, many of them, of Mrs. Van Antwerp, and there were others who had cared for Elizabeth for her own sake, and again others to whom the romantic facts of the case appealed irresistibly, inducing them to espouse her cause regardless of reason. These all spoke of her as a suffering martyr and regarded her imprisonment as an outrage. They did not discuss the evidence, but met all doubts with the one unanswerable argument of their own intuitions.

But the first side had in point of logic, so much the best of it! This conviction intruded itself reluctantly on Eleanor Van Antwerp's mind, as she looked up from an exhaustive summary of the case for the prosecution. The article presented, in clear, remorseless details, all the links in the terrible chain of evidence--her hasty marriage, and then her repentance; her efforts to buy off her husband; the trouble she had to supply him with money; her evident fear of his betraying her to Gerard; her refusal to name her wedding day, till she had in sheer desperation decided on the murder; then when the thing was at last accomplished, her sudden remorse, her strange actions; the rumor that she had in the first excitement confessed her guilt before witnesses; the description too, of the woman who had bought the flask, and which fitted Elizabeth exactly in height, coloring and general appearance; the resemblances which the experts were said to have discovered between her letters and the handwriting on the package--never was chain more strongly forged! And what, the article further demanded, had her friends to offer in reb.u.t.tal but her social position, her youth and her beauty?

"It's not much, certainly," Mrs. Bobby's anxiety admitted. "And yet a good deal, too," her aristocratic instincts involuntarily responded; "and will have their weight with the jury," her cynicism added. But then again despair overwhelmed her, and she put the unavailing question: "Bobby, is there--do you think there is any hope?"

Bobby stared back at her, his face hardly less white than hers.

"G.o.d only knows, Eleanor! If she were just a man, or even an ordinary woman, I should say 'no;' but for a young girl, there's always a chance. Let her"--he dropped his hand on the table beside him with a deep sigh--"let her look as pretty as she can. It seems to me about the only hope."

"She won't look pretty," his wife returned, with a little sob. "She is just the shadow of her old self; if she stays in that place much longer, I believe it will kill her. Bobby," she cried, with a sudden burst of indignation, staring up at him with tragic eyes, "if that child dies--there, it will be murder! And yet you say the law is just!"

Bobby had said so much in the last few weeks in perfunctory defence of the law that he was weary of the subject, and so he attempted no further protestations, but watched his wife sadly as she walked impatiently to and fro; a slight, childlike creature, her cheeks flushed, her eyes brilliant with impotent anger, das.h.i.+ng herself as it were against impenetrable barriers. Only once before in her life had Eleanor Van Antwerp been confronted with an obstacle that did not yield to her wishes. That was when the baby died, and she had resigned herself to what she believed to be Divine Providence. But this seemed mere human stupidity.

"If only men were not so logical!" she exclaimed, despairingly.

"Women, if they intended to get her off, would do it, no matter what the evidence was; but men!--they are so bound hand and foot by their sense of justice, their respect for law, and Heaven knows what! that they are quite capable, even if they believe her innocent, of finding her guilty, just because the evidence was against her."

"Well that's what they're supposed to do," Bobby put in, deprecatingly, "they've got to abide by the evidence." It was the twentieth time that he had made this explanation, and for the twentieth time, she brushed it aside.

"What does it matter," she demanded, "about the evidence, when any one with common-sense must _know_ the girl is innocent? But I see how it is, Bobby," she went on, her lip quivering. "You don't really believe in her the way that I do. You have doubts--at the bottom of your heart you have doubts. Tell me the truth, and I'll try to forgive you--_haven't_ you?"

She stopped before him, her dark eyes, fastened upon his, seemed to read his soul, but he answered steadily: "Eleanor, upon my honor, I believe in that child's innocence as you do. I'd give anything in the world to get her off. (Yes, and I would," he added to himself "for your sake, if she had committed twenty murders.")

She drew a long sigh of relief. "Oh, Bobby, you _are_ nice," she said, gratefully. "You've been very good to me all this time--never once saying 'I told you so,' when the whole thing has been all my fault for not taking your advice."

"Your fault, you poor child! How do you make that out?"

"If I had never asked Elizabeth to stop with me," she said tremulously, "all this wouldn't have happened. You warned me--don't you remember?--and you were right. I've come to the conclusion, Bobby, that you generally _are_ right and I wrong."

Her tone of submission was as edifying as it was surprising, but Bobby with unwonted quickness cut it short. "Nonsense!" he said almost roughly. "You were right in that case, as you generally are, and I was wrong; and no harm would have come of it if Elizabeth--well, I don't want to hit people when they're down," he said, apologetically "but if she had only been frank with us from the first, all this wouldn't have happened. My dear"--this in response to a reproachful look from his wife--"I don't mean to be hard on her, but I can't hear you blame yourself for what has been poor Elizabeth's own fault, helped out by a most extraordinary train of circ.u.mstances."

"She was to blame, certainly," faltered his wife, reluctantly, "but I can understand--I believe I should have done the same in her place."

"No, Eleanor," said Bobby, briefly and with some sternness, "you would not."

"It's true," she admitted, "I don't think I could keep a secret if I tried. But then neither apparently could Elizabeth--to the bitter end.

That is one thing I can't understand," she went on, "why you don't any of you attach more importance to the fact that she told Julian herself."

"Because," said Bobby, slowly, "we have only her own word that she did so."

"But her aunts"--began Mrs. Bobby.

"They can't know what pa.s.sed between them. What people think is that he discovered the marriage and charged her with it. It seems improbable that after deceiving him so long she should suddenly repent. And of course he would s.h.i.+eld her as far as possible, so his version goes for nothing."

"All the same, I should like to hear it," said Mrs. Bobby decidedly.

"If I were Mr. Fenton, I should summon him at once as witness." (Mr.

Fenton was the counsel for the defence.)

"Why, Fenton thought of it," said Bobby. "He spoke about it to Elizabeth, and she cried out 'Oh, not he--not he of all people' in such a way that he--well, he thought he'd better not send for him, for fear of discovering something that would go very much against us. It did look badly, you know, that she should dread Gerard's evidence so."

Mrs. Bobby's reply to this was unexpected. "Is Mr. Fenton considered a clever lawyer, dear?" she asked.

"The best that money can get," said Bobby, somewhat taken aback. "But why, Eleanor?"--

"Oh, well--I hope he knows more about law than he does about women, that's all. Now I say, send for Julian at once."

"Well, you know, Eleanor, I can't help thinking that if he knew of any evidence in her favor he'd have turned up of his own accord before this. It looks badly, I think--his staying away; as if he were afraid of being questioned if he came."

Mrs. Bobby sat for a moment reflecting deeply, her brows knit. "I don't believe," she said, suddenly, "that he knows a thing about it.

Where is he, do you know?"

"Some one saw him ages ago in London," said Bobby. "Goodness knows where he is now. But in all events, he must have heard."

"I doubt it. It happened, you know, while he was on the ocean, and by the time he had landed, the first excitement was over, and there was nothing about it in the papers for a long time. So that, even if he bought an American paper, he might not see anything about it, and the foreign ones of course would have nothing--you know how little interest they take in us over there. Oh, it might easily happen--strange as it seems, that he has heard nothing."

"But why is it, do you think," said Bobby, "that Elizabeth doesn't want him here?"

"My dear Bobby, how dull men are! Of course, she doesn't want to call upon him in a time like this. She's too proud. But nothing will prevent him--if I know him rightly--from coming at once, if there is anything he can do to help her."

"Well, if you think it's any good, I'll send a detective after him,"

said Bobby, with the composure of one to whom money is no object.

_Chapter x.x.xIII_

The services of a detective proved imperative in finding Gerard. His banks when applied to by cable, regretted to reply that they did not know his address. He had left no directions to have his mail forwarded. Apparently his one idea had been to efface himself and break with some home ties. It was a proceeding which did not altogether surprise Mrs. Bobby, who understood the phase of mind which it indicated; but to Mr. Fenton it was proof positive of his own suspicions, that Gerard dreaded to be summoned as witness on behalf of the woman whom he had once loved.

"She is glad to have him out of the way," thought the astute lawyer to himself. "No doubt he has evidence which she is afraid of. Yes, she lied no doubt when she said she had told him herself of her marriage, just as she lied when she said she couldn't remember what she had done on the twenty-third of December. She remembered--I could see that plainly--very well." The counsel for the defence was reluctantly convinced of his client's guilt, but he had good hopes of saving her nevertheless, though he did not think it was to be done by means that were strictly legal. He said little and accepted Gerard's disappearance with philosophy, even though he did not absolutely discourage Bobby Van Antwerp from sending a detective on his track. It could at least, the lawyer argued, do no harm, since he was quite certain that Gerard however urgently summoned would not come. Bobby lost heart and would have let the matter drop, but his wife's influence again carried the day. The detective started, with urgent directions from Mrs. Bobby to find the witness at any cost, and equally urgent directions from Mr. Fenton by no means to find him, unless his evidence were desirable.

Meanwhile the summer came and life in The Tombs a.s.sumed a different phase.

The atmosphere in Elizabeth's cell grew unbearable, and the warden allowed her to spend a large part of her time in the prison court.

Here, too, since the intense heat, the other women a.s.sembled for an hour every day, and she was brought in actual contact with them for the first time. The court was large, and she could sit on the bench which the warden had placed for her in the shadow of the wall. And yet, though she tried to, she could not ignore them; she found herself, little by little, observing them, taking even some faint interest in them. She grew to know them by name, and would talk to some of them, asking timid questions, partly with an instinctive desire to get away from her own thoughts, partly with the feeling that they were human beings, in trouble like herself. There was a lurking sympathy in her heart for even the most depraved. She would share with them her fruit and flowers, or make little presents of one kind or another, even though the matron, discovering this a.s.sured her that they were in many cases quite unworthy of her kindness.

"They won't thank you for it, Miss," she said "they won't indeed.

They're just as likely as not to say the worst things of you behind your back."

Elizabeth stared at her thoughtfully for a moment beneath knit brows.