CHAPTER XIII
It was the second day of the trial. Irene held her husband’s hand in a nervous grasp. They were sitting together among a crowd of well-dressed men and women, many of them friends of Hugh, in the reserved places on the judge’s bench. Yesterday, in her unfamiliarity with the historic court of the Old Bailey, its first aspect had shocked her sense of the fitness of things. She had vaguely imagined a vast hall, stately and imposing paraphernalia, all the pomp and circumstance of the law. But this dingy, murky, incommodious chamber, furnished with just the bare necessities for procedure, and crammed with perspiring men, seemed more like a third-rate auction-room than the most solemn court of justice in the land. It was mean and cramped; even God’s light cut off from it by the eternal, blighting shadow of Newgate. Instead of spacious galleries she had seen little yellow boxes by the roof, above the dock, surmounted by vague agglutinated masses of faces. The nearness of everything to her, consequent upon the small area and great depth of the court, had affected her with a strange feeling of oppression.
To-day the surprise had passed; the scene had grown so intensely familiar that she seemed to have borne its burden about her for years, but the feeling of oppression still remained. The nameless atmosphere of the gaol, sullen and hopeless and tainted, hung pall-like over everything.
The well of the court was crowded. At narrow tables sat the rows of barristers in wig and gown; behind them, on the short slope abruptly terminating at the whitewashed wall, the pressmen, behind whom again more barristers and members of the public, all standing in an insignificant but suffocatingly packed crowd. Below her, Irene saw the bobbing wig of the clerk of arraigns and the bald head of Harroway at the solicitors’ table. Beyond, in the front row of the lines of counsel, stood the attorney-general examining the witness; on her right the judge, broad-wigged, red-robed, scratching loud with quill-pen; Lord Mayor and Aldermen in civic robes, with their cynical nosegays of flowers in front of them; on her right, beneath the dim closed window, the pallid Jew butler in the witness-box. Opposite, the jury, twelve commonplace, but hard and practical-looking men, as London juries generally are. And next, the vast square dock, glass-panelled, grim, overlooked by the inexorable clock face, which has marked the last hours of life’s chances for so many tortured men and women; and in the dock, guarded by the warder, the erect and somewhat haughty figure of the prisoner.
On Irene’s arrival in court this morning, Harroway had handed her a little pencilled note from Hugh.
“Bless you, dear Renie, for coming to cheer and strengthen me. Before, it was best for me to fight it out alone. But now the sight of you gladdens me. I am doing everything for what I consider the best. Don’t fret. Gardiner will pull me through.”
And when he had entered the dock, his eyes had travelled to hers with swift instinct, and for many seconds remained fixed. Whatever possibilities of guilt may have lingered in her mind, were swept away in that mutual gaze. She saw his innocence deep in her soul, and her heart yearned towards him. She knew now, past all doubt, that he was risking his life to save some wretched woman’s honour. The woman’s dastardly silence was all but inconceivable, but the man’s chivalry blazed before the world. Her eyes had glistened with a moment’s exultation. Here was a man of unfaltering strength, a friend to be thrillingly proud of, to die for, gladly, if need were. He became a hero, worthy of the devotion of others. The heroic chord in her nature had been struck, and its inarticulate music had sung in her heart. She had murmured her emotion to Gerard, but before he could reply, the entrance of the judge and the rising of the court had broken the momentary spell. Her anxiety had returned with a sickening rush, and Hugh became once more, as all through the aching hours of yesterday, the dear friend exposed to public degradation and to deadly peril.
The examination of Samuels continued. He described the finding of the body, the attitude in which it lay, the position of the heavy poker with which, according to the theory of the prosecution, the murderous blow was struck—all the harrowing details that had been so often laid before the law. In a faltering voice he narrated the history of the evening: the merry dinner-party, the sound of the lively music upstairs (Minna’s mad tarantella), the angry words he had overheard on coming into his master’s study, the permission to go to bed, his last sight of the prisoner at ten minutes past eleven, his after meeting with Mr. Hart in the bedroom at five minutes to twelve, when the latter had taken the ledger from his bedroom safe and gone downstairs again. Familiar as all these facts were to Irene, every fresh statement put them in a still more terrible light. They seemed to leave Hugh no single avenue for escape. He was hedged round by a pitiless fence of incontrovertible testimony. Once Hugh looked swiftly from the window to her and then back again. The glance appealed to her like that of a noble animal caught in a trap.
Yet he bore the ordeal bravely, twirling now and then a disdainful moustache. It was the man’s nature to carry his burdens defiantly. Minna’s appearance in the witness-box the day before had lashed him to a fury of pride. He would rather die a thousand deaths than use her contaminated soul to save his life.
At times he looked round the familiar precincts with a smile almost of mockery. The topsy-turvydom of his position contained elements of the grotesque. The central sphere of his life’s ambitions, by some wizard touch, had become the theatre of his shame. The judge before whom he had most often pleaded was now trying him as a murderer. The brother barristers below were cordial acquaintances, linked to him by the honourable traditions of a beloved profession. The scene shimmered before his eyes in whimsical unreality. But then, suddenly, a blaze of associations would disclose, by lurid contrast, the pathos of his ruin. It was terribly real. Once a lump rose in his throat, and he steadied himself by the hand-rail. On the last occasion of his presence in this place, he had delivered an impassioned harangue on behalf of a poor trembling devil of an embezzling clerk, who had clutched at that same hand-rail for support. He remembered how he had wondered at the craven spirit that could thus make public exhibition of its terror. The memory was a whip to his pride.