His own charge was a skillful defense of Gerard's evidence, a criticism, not too violent, of the District Attorney's brutality, and an appeal, not too open, to the sympathies of the jury. Elizabeth flushed as she realized that this was the point, after all; she was to be saved on issues that would not have been effectual with a man. And then the Judge's charge began, and she forgot all sense of humiliation, forgot everything but the thought that her fate hung in the balance, to be decided one way or the other by those carefully-balanced, judicial phrases. Did she imagine it, or was there, through all the calm analysis of evidence, the impartial weighing of this or that detail, a conviction of her innocence so decided that it made itself felt almost unconsciously?
"Strong on our side!" Bobby Van Antwerp's voice, unusually animated and exultant, sounded in his wife's ear at the end. "The prosecution are furious—they say it's horribly unfair. But of course, we won't quarrel with that."
Eleanor was deathly white; her hands were tightly locked together. At Bobby's words she gave a little sob of hysterical relief. "Oh, Bobby," she murmured, under her breath, "thank God that judges are human, after all! Now, if the jury are anything short of brutes, they'll acquit her at once and make an end of this."
But the jury fell short of this test of humanity, and retired to deliberate. Mrs. Bobby scanned their faces anxiously, as she had done at the beginning of the trial. They were care-worn and gloomy—naturally, with a woman's life in their hands; but surely—surely they should look happier, since it was in their power to save her?
"I wish, Bobby," she murmured, with that sob again in her throat, but this time not one of relief, "I wish we had tried if they wouldn't take money!"
"Don't, Eleanor," said Bobby. "They're all honest men—and besides, one can't do such things!" To himself he was thinking that women really seemed on such occasions as this to be entirely without principle, and yet that somehow one liked them all the better for it.
This was at two o'clock. Three, four, five o'clock came, and still they made no sign. The long deliberation seemed ominous to the anxious group who waited in a small, dark room on the ground floor of the court-house, starting at every sound and counting the moments as they dragged wearily along. Mr. Fenton and the other counsel came restlessly in and out, with a cheerful air that covered but indifferently their intense anxiety; Bobby and Julian Gerard stood by the window, talking occasionally in low tones, more often silent and gazing at the prison walls that rose up grimly before their eyes. Elizabeth sat at a small table in the middle of the room, and her aunts and Mrs. Van Antwerp sat around her in a forlorn circle. It was a long while since any one had spoken; all consoling suggestions were exhausted.
Elizabeth's hands were clasped tightly in her lap, her eyes, wide-open yet unseeing, stared steadily before her. Vaguely she was conscious that there were people in the room, that by the window stood the man whose presence might have mattered more to her at some other time than anything else on earth; that her aunts and Eleanor Van Antwerp were beside her, and would bend forward now and then, one or other of them, to press her hand. In a dull, mechanical way, she was thankful to know that they were there; yet nothing they said or did could help her, a great gulf seemed to yawn between her and the outside world.... It is thus, perhaps, that the dying feel when they see, with their failing sight, the faces of friends, and know that even love is powerless to reach them. Elizabeth suffered, during those hours of suspense, the agony of death a hundred times over. But as the afternoon wore on, hope faded and the numbness of despair crept over her tortured nerves.
"I don't like their staying out so long," Bobby Van Antwerp could not help murmuring to Gerard. "After the charge, I thought they'd let her off at once. They all want to—that's certain. But there were one or two of them who looked—infernally conscientious."
"I don't want any of them"—Gerard began, but stopped. "To go against his convictions," was what he had meant to add, but the words remained unspoken. There are limits to even a Puritan conscience. "Good God! Bobby," he whispered, hoarsely, "a man who could convict her deserves to be shot!"