Patience Sparhawk and Her Times: A Novel

by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

Simms opened the case for the defence.

He had a harsh strident voice. He gesticulated as if practising for a prize fight, doubling back and springing forward. He cleared his throat with vicious emphasis and rasped his heels upon the floor. His statements were dry and matter-of-fact, his language bald; but he made a direct vigorous and enthusiastic speech. The jury was informed that it was there to save the life of one of the most brilliant and high-minded young women of the age,—a woman utterly incapable of murder or of any violent act, a woman with the mild and meditative mind of the student. That it would be proved not only that she was far too clever to take life by such clumsy methods, but that she had no object, as she had gained her liberty, and the lover was a myth. The whole prosecution was a malignant and personal prosecution of an innocent but too gifted woman by an absurdly conceited family that had resented her superior intelligence. This and much more of fact and fancy. But Patience, with perverse feminity, liked him none the better, and would not even look at him when he sat down.

Mr. Field was the first witness for the defence. Although compelled under cross-examination to admit the prisoner’s interest in subtle poisons, he managed to convey to the jury that it was merely the result of an unusually brilliant and inquiring mind, a thought born of the moment, of his suggestion. He gave the highest tribute to her cleverness, her work on his paper, and to her reputation.

Latimer Burr was called next, and spoke with enthusiasm of her “unfailing submission to a man of abominable and savage temper until submission ceased to be a virtue.” He had never heard her utter any threats to kill. Yes, it was true that he had engaged counsel for defence. He believed in her thoroughly.

Miss Merrien, her landlady, and Mrs. Blair were put on the stand next morning, and the good character they gave Patience was unshaken by the nagging of the district attorney. Mr. Tarbox testified to her demeanour of innocence during her imprisonment.

“But the defence is weak all the same,” whispered Patience to Lansing. “Not a word can be said in rebuttal. Only Mr. Bourke’s eloquence can save me.”

“Good character goes a long way,” replied Lansing. “You have no idea of its weight with a jury, particularly with a jury of this kind.”

Patience was put on the witness stand next. The supreme effort to overcome nervousness gave her an icy and repellent demeanour. Never had she held her back as erect, her head as high. She kept her eyelids half lowered, and spoke with scarcely any change of inflection. She told the story of the night as she had told it in rehearsal many times. There had been a quarrel an hour before she heard the deceased get up and go to the lavatory. She offered to drop his morphine, and he replied with an oath that she should never do another thing for him as long as he lived, that he hoped she would leave the house by the first train next morning. His sudden silence upon his return to his bed excited her apprehension, and she called the family.

When Bourke sat down and the district attorney arose and confronted her she shivered suddenly. Bourke’s rich strong voice and kind magnetic gaze had given her courage, but this man with his eyes like grey ice, his mechanical smile, and cold smooth voice conjured up a sudden awful picture of the execution room at Sing Sing. Her insight appreciated with exactitude the pitiless ambition of the man, knew that he stood pledged to his future to send her to her death. He made her admit all the damning facts of the evidence against her, the facts which stood out like phosphorescent letters on a black wall, and to acknowledge her abhorrence of the man that had been her husband. But all this had been anticipated: at least he could not confuse her.

Again two days and a part of a third were monopolised by experts. These two illustrious chemists testified, through the same bewildering mass of detail as that employed by their equally illustrious predecessors, that there was not enough morphine in Beverly Peele’s stomach to kill a cat.