Mrs. Balfame: A Novel

by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

CHAPTER XXXVI

It was nearly six o'clock. The court-room with its round white ceiling looked like a crypt in the soft glow of the artificial light, and the Judge, in his black silk gown, with his handsome patrician face, clean-cut but rather soft and flushed with good living, might have been an abbot seated aloft in judgment upon a recalcitrant nun. Mrs. Balfame in her crêpe completed the delusion—if the imaginative spectator glanced no further. The district attorney, who was summing up, looked more like a wasp than ever as he darted back and forth in front of the jury-box, shouting and shaking his fists. Occasionally he would hook his fingers in his waistcoat, balance himself on his heels and with a mere moderation of his rasping tones, demonstrate a contemptuous faith in the strength of his case.

It is to be admitted that his arguments and expositions, his denunciations and satirical refutations, were quite as convincing as those of the counsel for the defence had been, such being the elasticity of the law and of the legal mind; but although an able and powerful speaker, he lacked the personal charm and magnetism, the almost tragical enthusiasm and conviction, alternating with cold deliberate logic, that had thrilled all present to the roots of their beings during the long hours of the morning. Rush, whether he lost or won, had made his reputation as one of the greatest pleaders ever heard at the bar of New York State. He had finished at a quarter to one. Immediately after the opening of the afternoon session Gore had darted into the breach, speaking with a dramatic rapidity for four hours. He sat down at six o'clock; and Mrs. Balfame felt as if turning to stone while the Judge, standing, charged the jury and expounded the law covering the three degrees of murder: first, second, manslaughter. It was their privilege to convict the prisoner at the bar of any of these, unless convinced of her innocence.

He dwelt at length upon the degree called manslaughter, as if the idea had occurred to him that Mrs. Balfame, justly indignant, had run out when she heard her husband's voice raised in song, and had fired from the grove by way of administering a rebuke to an erring and inconsiderate man. The second bullet had been made much of by Rush, as indicating that two people, possibly gun-men, had shot at once, but the district attorney held no such theory and had ignored the bullet found in the tree. It was apparent, however, that the Judge had given to this second bullet a certain amount of judicial consideration.

The jury filed out, not to their luxurious quarters in the Paradise City Hotel, a mile away, but to a stark and ugly room in the Court-house where they must remain in acute discomfort until they arrived at a verdict. The Judge had his dinner brought to him in a private room adjoining theirs, and even the reporters and spectators snatched a hasty meal at the Dobton hostelry, so sure were they all that the jury would return within the hour. Mrs. Balfame did not take off her hat with its heavy veil, but sat in her quarters at the jail with several of her friends, outwardly calm, but with her mind on the rack and unable to share the dinner sent over from the Inn by Mr. Cummack for herself and her guests.

The hours passed, however, and the jury did not return. Once the head of the foreman emerged, and the sheriff, misunderstanding his surly demand for a pitcher of ice water, rushed over for Mrs. Balfame, the Judge was summoned, and the reporters, men and women, raced one another up the Court-house stairs. Mrs. Balfame, schooled to the awful ordeal of hearing herself pronounced a murderess in one form or other, but bidden by her friends to augur an acquittal from a mere three hours' deliberation, walked in with her usual quiet remoteness and took her seat. She was sent back at once.

Rush paced the road in front of the Court-house. He had little hope. He had studied their faces day by day and believed that several, at least, were persuaded of Mrs. Balfame's guilt. Mrs. Battle, Mrs. Gifning and Mrs. Cummack sat with Mrs. Balfame, who found the effort to maintain the high equilibrium demanded by her admiring friends as rasping an ordeal to her nerves as waiting for that final summons whose menace grew with every hour the jury wrangled. Finally she took off her hat and suggested that they knit, and the needles clicked through the desultory conversation until, after midnight, they all attempted to sleep.

The Judge extended himself on a sofa in the private room devoted to his use; he dared not leave the Courthouse. He told the district attorney (who told it to the sheriff, who told it to the reporters) that the jury quarrelled so persistently and so violently that he found it impossible to sleep, and that the language they used was appalling.

Midnight came and passed. The sob-sisters, worn out, went home. Miss Sarah Austin and Miss Alys Crumley had not returned to the Court-house after dinner. The sheriff appeared at the entrance of the courtroom and announced that the last trolley would leave for Elsinore and neighbouring towns within five minutes. Most of the spectators filed sleepily out. A few of Mrs. Balfame's less intimate but equally devoted friends remained in their seats near her empty chair, and shortly after midnight the warden's wife brought them over hot coffee and sandwiches.