Since the accident Lydia had been seeing Albee every day—had used him and consulted him, and yet had almost forgotten his existence. Now as she waited for his appearance it came to her with a shock of surprise that she had once come very near to engaging herself to him; that in parting like this for a few weeks he might make the assumption that she intended to be his wife. She thought she could make her trial a good excuse for refusing to consider such a proposal. That would get rid of him without hurting his feelings. She thought of the phrase, "A woman situated as I am cannot enter into an engagement." The mere idea of such a marriage was now intensely repugnant to her. How could she have contemplated it?
He entered, leonine yet neat in his double-breasted blue serge with a pearl in his black tie. He took her hand and beamed down upon her as if many things were in his heart that he would not trouble her with at this crisis by uttering.
"Ah, my dear," he said, "I wish I might be here to-morrow to see your triumph, but I'll be back in a month or so, and then—meantime I leave you in good hands. Wiley is capital. His summing up to-morrow will be a masterpiece. And remember, if by any chance—juries are chancy, you know—they do bring in an adverse verdict, on appeal you're safe as a church." He raised a cold, rigid little hand to his lips.
With her perfect clear-sightedness she saw he was deserting her and was glad to get him out of her way. She had not even an impulse to punish him for going.
The next morning it was raining torrents. It seemed as if the globe itself were spinning in rain rather than ether. Rain beat on the streets of New York so that the asphalt ran from curb to curb in black brooks; rain swept across the open spaces of the country, and as they ran through the storm water spouted in long streams from the wheels of the car. In the court room rain ran down the windows on each side of the American flag in liquid patterns. The court room itself had a different air. The electric lights were on, the air smelled of mud and rubber coats, and Judge Homans, who suffered from rheumatism, was stiff and grim.
A blow awaited Lydia at the outset. She had not understood that the defense summed up first—that the prosecution had the last word with the jury. What might not "that man" do with the jury by means of his hypnotic sincerity? She dreaded Wiley's summing up, too, fearing it would be oratorical—all the more because he kept disclaiming any such intention.
"The day has gone by for eloquence," he kept saying. "One doesn't attempt nowadays to be a Daniel Webster or a Rufus Choate. But of course it is necessary to touch the hearts of the jury."
She thought that O'Bannon's appeal was to their heads, and yet Wiley might be right. People were such geese they might prefer Wiley's method to O'Bannon's.
As soon as court opened Wiley began his summing up, and even his client approved of his simple, leisurely manner. He was very clear and effective with the merely legal points. The crime of manslaughter in the first degree—a crime for which a sentence of twenty years might be imposed—had not been proved. Nor was there credible evidence of criminal negligence, without which a verdict of manslaughter in the second degree could not be found. As he reviewed the facts he contrived to present a picture of Lydia's youthfulness, her motherlessness, of Thorne's early beginnings as a workingman, of his death leaving Lydia an orphan. He made her beauty and wealth seem a disadvantage—a terrible temptation to an ambitious young prosecutor with an eye to newspaper headlines. He made it appear as if juries always convicted young ladies of social position, but that this particular jury by a triumph of fair-mindedness were going to be able to overcome this prejudice. One juror who had wept over Alma Wooley now shed an impartial tear for Lydia.
"Gentlemen of the jury," Wiley ended, "I ask you to consider this case on the facts and the facts alone—not to be led away by the emotional appeals of an ambitious and learned young prosecutor who has the ruthlessness that so often goes with young ambition; not to convict an innocent girl whose only crime seems to be that she is the custodian of wealth that her father, an American workingman, won from the conditions of American industry. If you consider the evidence alone you will find that no crime has been committed. I ask you, gentlemen, for a verdict of not guilty."