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Mrs. Balfame

[Pg 261] <h2>CHAPTER XXIX</h2> "Oyez, oyez, oyez! The Supreme Court of the State of New York County of Brabant trial term is now in session all people having business with this court may draw near and give their attention and they shall be heard." The court crier delivered his morning oration in one breathless sentence, the last five words of which only have ever been captured by mortal ears. The roll of the jury was called. The first witness stood on the step of the witness-stand and swore by the everlasting God that the testimony he would give in the trial of the People of the State of New York against the defendant would be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and then he seated himself in the chair. The trial of Mrs. Balfame began. It had taken three days to select a jury. If Rush was determined to keep out Germans, Mr. Gore, the district attorney, was equally reluctant to admit to the box any man whom he suspected of being under commands from his wife to get on that jury and acquit Mrs. Balfame, if he had to imperil his immortal soul. He also harboured suspicions of felonious activities on the part of Mr. Sam Cummack and certain other patriotic citizens less devoted to the cause of justice than to Elsinore. In consequence the questions were not only uncommonly searching, but both the district [Pg 262]attorney and the defendant's counsel exhausted their peremptory challenges. The talesmen that had crowded the courtroom beyond the railing were for the most part farmers and tradesmen, but there were not a few "prominent residents," including rooted Brabantites and busy commuters. The last answered without hesitation that they had followed the case closely from the first and formed an unalterable opinion; then, dismissed, rushed off and caught a late train for New York. Those of Mrs. Balfame's own class would have been passed cheerfully by Mr. Rush, but in spite of their careless avowals that they had been too busy to follow the case, or had found it impossible to reach any conclusion, they were peremptorily challenged by the district attorney. They, too, went to New York, not on business, and returned to their hearthstones as late as possible. Finally a jury of almost excessively "plain men" were chosen after long and weary hours of wrangling. They were all married; their ages ranged from forty-five to fifty; not one looked as if he had an illusion left in regard to the sex that had shared his burdens for a quarter of a century, or, German or no German, he had any leniency in him for a woman who had presumed to abbreviate the career of a man. But at least they were real Americans, with reputations for straight dealing, and good old-fashioned ideals of justice, irrespective of sex. Rush doubted if any of them could be "fixed" by Mr. Cummack or the able politicians whose services he had bespoken, although the sternest visages often hid unsuspected weak spots; but after all his best chance was with honest men whose soft spots were of another sort. [Pg 263] So naïve had been the eagerness of the German-American talesmen to get on the jury that Rush had had little difficulty in demonstrating their unfitness for duty. These were too thrifty to go to New York and stood in no fear of their wives, but they avoided the gemütlich resort of Old Dutch until the trial was over. Throughout this ordeal Mrs. Balfame sat immovable, impassive, her face a white bas-relief against the heavy black crêpe of her veil, which hung like a black panel between her profile and the western light. Her chair was at the foot of the long table which stood beneath the two tiers of the jury-box and was reserved for counsel, the district attorney, the assistants and clerks. Her calm grey eyes looked straight ahead, interested apparently in nothing but the empty witness-stand, on the right of the jury and the left of the judge. She knew that the reporters, and the few outsiders that had managed to crowd in with the talesmen, scarcely took their eyes from her face, and that the staff artists were sketching her. All her complacency had fled before certain phases of this preliminary ordeal for which no one had thought to prepare her. The constant reiteration of that question of horrid significance: "Have you any objection to capital punishment as practised in this State?" struck at the roots of her courage, enhanced her prison pallor; and that immovable battery of eyes, hostile, or coldly observant, critical, appraising, made her long to grind her teeth, to rise in her chair and tell those men and women, insolent in their freedom, what she thought of their vulgar insensibility. But not for nothing had she schooled herself, and not for a moment did her nerves really threaten revolt. She had taken her second sleeping[Pg 264] powder on the night preceding the opening of the trial, but on the third morning she awakened with the momentary wish that she had preserved Dr. Anna's poison, or could summon death in any form rather than go over to that courthouse and be tried for her life. For the first time she understood the full significance of her condition. But Mrs. Battle, Mrs. Cummack and Mrs. Gifning, when they bustled in to "buck her up," congratulated her upon "not having a nerve in her body"; and although she had felt she must surely faint at the end of the underground tunnel between the jail and the rear of the courthouse, she had walked into that room of dread import upstairs with her head erect, her eyes level, and her hands steady. She may have built a fool's paradise for herself, assisted by her well-meaning friends, during the past ten weeks, and dwelt in it smugly; but as it fell about her ears she stood erect with a real courage that strengthened her soul for any further shocks and surprises this terrible immediate future of hers might hold. On the first day, although she never glanced at a talesman, she had listened eagerly to every question, every answer, every challenge. As the third day wore on, she felt only weariness of mind, and gratitude that she had a strong back. She was determined to sit erect and immobile if the trial lasted a month. And not only was her personal pride involved. Circumstances had delivered her to the public eye, therefore should it receive an indelible impression of a worthy representative of the middle-class American of the smaller town, so little unlike the women of the wealthier class, and capable of gracing any position to[Pg 265] which fate might call her—a type the United States of America alone has bred; also of a woman whose courage and dignity had never been surpassed by any man brought to the bar of justice on the awful charge of murder. She knew that this attitude, as well as her statuesque appearance, would antagonise the men reporters but enchant her loyal friends, the women. Her estimate was very shrewd. The poor sob sisters, squeezed in wherever they could find a vacant chair, or even a half of one (all the tables being reserved for the men), surrendered in a body to her cold beauty, her superb indifference, soul and pen. A unanimous verdict of guilty brought in by that gum-chewing small-headed jury merely would petrify these women's belief in her innocence. She was vicarious romance; for women that write too much have little time to live and no impulse to murder any one in the world but the city editor. On the morning of the fourth day, the space between the enclosure and the walls of the courtroom was filled with spectators from all over the county, many of them personal friends of Mrs. Balfame; but New York City would not become vitally interested until the business of examining the minor witnesses was concluded. Behind and at the left of Mrs. Balfame were the members of her intimate circle. Occasionally they whispered to her, and she smiled so sweetly and with such serene composure that even the men reporters admitted she looked younger and more feminine—and more handsome—than on that day of the interview which had proved her undoing. "But she did it all right," they assured one another.[Pg 266] They must believe in her guilt or suffer twinges in that highly civilised and possibly artificial section of the brain tabulated as conscience. Their fixed theory was that she had mixed the poison for Balfame and then, being in a highly nervous state, and apprehensive that he would capriciously refuse to drink it, had snatched her pistol as she heard his voice in the distance, dashed downstairs and out into the grove, and fired with her established accuracy. She had had plenty of time between the crime and her arrest to pass the pistol to one of her friends, or even to slip out at night and drop it in the marsh. As to the shot that had missed Balfame and entered the tree: it was either by one of those coincidences more frequent in fact than in fiction that another enemy of Balfame's had been lurking in the grove, intent upon murder; or the bullet hole was older than they had inferred. The idea of a lover they scoffed at openly. And it was one of the established facts, as they reminded their sisters of the press, that the worst women in history had looked like angels, statues or babies; they had also possessed powerful sex magnetism, and this the handsome defendant wholly lacked. The theory of the women reporters was far simpler. She hadn't done it and that was the end of it. The judge, a tall imposing man with inherited features and accumulated flesh, very stately and remote in his flowing silk gown, looked unspeakably bored for three days, but was visibly hopeful as he swept up to his seat on the rostrum on Thursday morning. As the justice for Brabant, Mr. Bascom, had not been on speaking terms with the deceased, and as his wife was one of the defendant's closest friends, an[Pg 267] eminent Supreme Court justice from one of the large neighbouring cities had been assigned to the case. The reporters of the evening newspapers, were packed closely about a long table parallel with the one just below the jury-box, and behind were four or five smaller tables dedicated to the morning stars. A large number of favoured spectators had found seats within the railings, but a passage was kept open for the boys who came up at regular intervals to get copy from the "evening table" for the telegraph operator below stairs. Broderick's seat beneath the rostrum commanded both the witness-box and Mrs. Balfame. He had used his influence to have Alys Crumley assigned to the position of artist for the Woman's Page of the News, and she and Sarah Austin shared a chair. The trial began. Dr. Lequer established the fact of the death, described the course of the bullet, demonstrating that it had been fired by some one concealed in the grove. A surveyor followed and exhibited to the jury a map of the house and grounds. Three of the younger members of the Country Club, Mr. John Bradshaw Battle, cashier of the Elsinore Bank; Mr. Lemuel Cummack, son of Elsinore's esteemed citizen, Mr. Sam Cummack; and Mr. Leonard Corfine, a commuter, had been subp&oelig;naed after a matching of wits. Overawed by the solemnity of the oath, they gave a circumstantial account of the quarrel which had preceded the murder but a few hours—all, in spite of constant interruptions from the defendant's counsel, conveying the impression, however unwillingly, that Mrs. Balfame had been livid with wrath and the man who had been her husband insufferable. It was a[Pg 268] master-stroke of the district attorney to open his case with the damaging testimony of two members of the loyal Elsinore families. As for Mr. Corfine, although born and brought up without the pale, he had been graciously received upon electing to build his nest in Elsinore and his young wife was one of Mrs. Balfame's meekest admirers. Mr. Broderick muttered, "H'm! H'm!" and Mr. Bruce squirmed round from the "evening table" and jerked his eyebrows at his senior. "Bad! Bad!" muttered Mr. Broderick's neighbour. "But watch her nerve. Can you beat it? She hasn't batted an eyelash." Two former servants that had preceded Frieda in the Balfame menage testified that the household consisted of three people only, the master and mistress and the one in help. A gardener came three times a week in the morning. No, none of the old spare rooms was now furnished, and the Balfames never had had visitors overnight. The prosecution rested, and Mr. Rush approached the bar according to usage and asked that the case be dismissed. The judge ruled that it should proceed; and immediately after the noon recess the first witness for the defence was called. This was Mr. Cummack, and he testified vigorously to the harmonious relations of the deceased and his amiable wife; that Mrs. Balfame—who was always pale—had treated the episode out at the Club in the casual manner observed by all seasoned and intelligent wives, the conversation over the telephone in his house proving that the domestic heavens were swept clean of storm-clouds; and that the[Pg 269] deceased had departed for his home quite happy and singing at the top of his lungs. He had often remarked jocularly (his was a cheery and jocular temperament) that he expected to die with his boots on, especially since he had taken to bawling Tipperary in the face of American Germany. It is not to be imagined that Mr. Cummack was able to deliver himself of this valuable testimony without frequent and indignant interruptions from the district attorney, whose "irrelevant, incompetent and immaterial" rang through the courtroom like the chorus of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera. Mr. Gore, a wasp of a man with snapping black eyes and a rasping voice emitted through his higher nasal passages, succeeded in having much of this testimony stricken out, but not before the wily Mr. Rush, who stood on tiptoe, as alert and nervous as a race horse at the grandstand, had by his adroit swift questions fairly flung it into the jury-box. It was of the utmost importance with an obstinate provincial jury to establish at once a favourable general impression of the prisoner. When, in the theatre, a trial scene is depicted, it is necessary to interpose dramatic episodes, but no one misses these adventitious incidents in a real trial for murder, so dramatic is the bare fact that a human being is battling for his life. When the prisoner at the bar is a woman reasonably young and good looking, the interest is so intense and complete that the sudden intrusion of one of the incidents which have become the staples of the theatre, such as the real culprit rushing into the courtroom and confessing himself, a suicide in the witness-box, or dramatic conduct on the part of[Pg 270] the defendant, would be resented by the spectators, as an anti-climax. Real drama is too logical and grimly progressive to tolerate the extrinsic. The three other men who had been at Mr. Cummack's house that night were called, and corroborated his story. They all wore an expression of gentle amusement as if the bare idea of the stately and elegant Mrs. Balfame descending to play even a passive rôle in a domestic row was as unthinkable as that any woman could find aught in David Balfame to rouse her to ire. "By Jove!" whispered Mr. Broderick to Mr. Wagstaff of the Morning Flag, "just figure to yourself what the line would be if she had been caught red-handed and was putting up a defence of temporary insanity caused by the well-known proclivities of that beast. A good subject for a cartoon would be Dave Balfame in heaven with a tin halo on, whitewashing Mrs. B., weeds and all. The human mind is nothing but a sewer." The afternoon session was also enlivened by the testimony of several of the ladies who had been members of the bridge party on the day of Mr. Balfame's unseemly conduct at the Club. They testified that although Mrs. Balfame naturally dissolved upon her return to the card-room, there had been nothing whatever in her demeanour to suggest seething passion. Mrs. Battle, who was an imposing figure in the witness chair, her greater bulk being above the waist, tossed her head and asseverated with refined emphasis that Mrs. Balfame was one of those rare and exquisite beings that are temperamentally incapable of passion of any sort. Her immediate return to her home was prompted more by delicacy than even by pain. Miss Crumley's pencil[Pg 271] faltered as she listened. She could not give a jeering public even a faithful outline of a woman as devoted to the sacred cause of friendship and Elsinore as Mrs. Battle. The testimony of none of these ladies was more emphatic than that of Mrs. Bascom, wife of the supplanted justice, and she added unexpectedly that she had been so upset herself that she too had left the clubhouse immediately, and, her swift car passing Dr. Anna Steuer's little runabout, she had seen Mrs. Balfame chatting pleasantly and without a trace of recent emotion. Mrs. Balfame almost relaxed the set curves of her mouth at this surprising statement. She recalled that a car had passed and that she had wondered at the time if any one had noticed her extreme agitation. She kept her muscles in order, but unconsciously her eyes followed Mrs. Bascom, as she left the witness-chair, with an expression of puzzled gratitude. The District Attorney turned to the reporters with a short sardonic laugh, and Mr. Broderick shook his head as he murmured to Mr. Wagstaff: "Can you beat that? And yet they say women don't stand by one another." "Good for the whole game, I guess," replied the young Flag star, who was enamoured of a very pretty suffragette. The Judge rose, and the afternoon session was over. The great case of The People vs. Mrs. Balfame rested until the following morning. <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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