Hand and Ring - Anna Katharine Green (love story books to read TXT) 📗

whether the whereabouts of Miss Dare on that fatal morning can have any thing to do with the defence we have proved."

"Your Honor," commenced the District Attorney, calmly following the lead of his adversary, "I am ready to stake my reputation on the declaration that this witness is in possession of a fact that overturns the whole fabric of the defence. If the particular question I have made use of, in my endeavor to elicit this fact, is displeasing to my friend, I will venture upon another less ambiguous, if more direct and perhaps leading." And turning again to the witness, Mr. Ferris calmly inquired:

"Did you or did you not see the prisoner on the morning of the assault, at a time distinctly known by you to be after ten minutes to twelve?"

It was out. The line of attack meditated by Mr. Ferris was patent to everybody. A murmur of surprise and interest swept through the court-room, while Mr. Orcutt, who in spite of his vague fears was any thing but prepared for a thrust of this vital nature, started and cast short demanding looks from Imogene to Mansell, as if he would ask them what fact this was which through ignorance or presumption they had conspired to keep from him. The startled look which he surprised on the stern face of the prisoner, showed him there was every thing to fear in her reply, and bounding again to his feet, he was about to make some further attempt to stave off the impending calamity, when the rich voice of Imogene was heard saying:

"Gentlemen, if you will allow me to tell my story unhindered, I think I shall soonest satisfy both the District Attorney and the counsel for the prisoner."

And raising her eyes with a slow and heavy movement from the floor, she fixed them in a meaning way upon the latter.

At once convinced that he had been unnecessarily alarmed, Mr. Orcutt sank back into his seat, and Imogene slowly proceeded.

She commenced in a forced tone and with a sudden quick shudder that made her words come hesitatingly and with strange breaks: "I have been asked—two questions by Mr. Ferris—I prefer—to answer the first. He asked me—where I was at the hour Mrs. Clemmens was murdered."

She paused so long one had time to count her breaths as they came in gasps to her white lips.

"I have no further desire to hide from you the truth. I was with Mrs. Clemmens in her own house."

At this acknowledgment so astonishing, and besides so totally different from the one he had been led to expect, Mr. Ferris started as if a thunder-bolt had fallen at his feet.

"In Mrs. Clemmens' house!" he repeated, amid the excited hum of a hundred murmuring voices. "Did you say, in Mrs. Clemmens' house?"

"Yes," she returned, with a wild, ironical smile that at once assured Mr. Ferris of his helplessness. "I am on oath now, and I assert that on the day and at the hour Mrs. Clemmens was murdered, I was in her house and in her dining-room. I had come there secretly," she proceeded, with a sudden feverish fluency that robbed Mr. Ferris of speech, and in fact held all her auditors spell-bound. "I had been spending an hour or so at Professor Darling's, whose house in West Side is, as many here know, at the very end of Summer Avenue, and close to the woods that run along back of Mrs. Clemmens' cottage. I had been sitting alone in the observatory, which is at the top of one of the towers, but being suddenly seized with a desire to see the widow and make that promised attempt at persuading her to reconsider her decision in regard to the money her—her—the prisoner wanted, I came down, and unknown to any one in the house, stole away to the woods and so to the widow's cottage. It was noon when I got there, or very near it, for her company, if she had had any, was gone, and she was engaged in setting the clock where——"

Why did she pause? The District Attorney, utterly stupefied by his surprise, had made no sign; neither had Mr. Orcutt. Indeed, it looked as if the latter could not have moved, much less spoken, even if he had desired it. Thought, feeling, life itself, seemed to be at a standstill within him as he sat with a face like clay, waiting for words whose import he perhaps saw foreshadowed in her wild and terrible mien. But though his aspect was enough to stop her, it was not upon him she was gazing when the words tripped on her lips. It was upon the prisoner, on the man who up to this time had borne himself with such iron-like composure and reserve, but who now, with every sign of feeling and alarm, had started forward and stood surveying her, with his hand uplifted in the authoritative manner of a master.

The next instant he sank back, feeling the eye of the Judge upon him; but the signal had been made, and many in that court-room looked to see Imogene falter or break down. But she, although fascinated, perhaps moved, by this hint of feeling from one who had hitherto met all the exigencies of the hour with a steady and firm composure, did not continue silent at his bidding. On the contrary, her purpose, whatever it was, seemed to acquire new force, for turning from him with a strange, unearthly glare on her face, she fixed her glances on the jury and went steadily on.

"I have said," she began, "that Mrs. Clemmens was winding her clock. When I came in she stepped down, and a short and angry colloquy commenced between us. She did not like my coming there. She did not appreciate my interest in her nephew. She made me furious, frenzied, mad. I—I turned away—then I came back. She was standing with her face lifted toward her clock, as though she no longer heeded or remembered my presence. I—I don't know what came to me; whether it was hatred or love that maddened my brain—but——"

She did not finish; she did not need to. The look she gave, the attitude she took, the appalling gesture which she made, supplied the place of language. In an instant Mr. Ferris, Mr. Orcutt, all the many and confused spectators who hung upon her words as if spell-bound, realized that instead of giving evidence inculpating the prisoner, she was giving evidence accusing herself; that, in other words, Imogene Dare, goaded to madness by the fearful alternative of either destroying her lover or sacrificing herself, had yielded to the claims of her love or her conscience, and in hearing of judge and jury, proclaimed herself to be the murderess of Mrs. Clemmens.

The moment that followed was frightful. The prisoner, who was probably the only man present who foresaw her intention when she began to speak, had sunk back into his seat and covered his face with his hands long before she reached the fatal declaration. But the spectacle presented by Mr. Orcutt was enough, as with eyes dilated and lips half parted in consternation, he stood before them a victim of overwhelming emotion; so overcome, indeed, as scarcely to be able to give vent to the one low and memorable cry that involuntarily left his lips as the full realization of what she had done smote home to his stricken breast.

As for Mr. Ferris, he stood dumb, absolutely robbed of speech by this ghastly confession he had unwillingly called from his witness' lips; while slowly from end to end of that court-room the wave of horror spread, till Imogene, her cause, and that of the wretched prisoner himself, seemed swallowed up in one fearful tide of unreality and nightmare.

The first gleam of relief came from the Judge.

"Miss Dare," said he, in his slow, kindly way that nothing could impair, "do you realize the nature of the evidence you have given to the court?"

Her slowly falling head and white face, from which all the fearful excitement was slowly ebbing in a dead despair, gave answer for her.

"I fear that you are not in a condition to realize the effect of your words," the Judge went on. "Sympathy for the prisoner or the excitement of being recalled to the stand has unnerved or confused you. Take time, Miss Dare, the court will wait; reconsider your words, and then tell us the truth about this matter."

But Imogene, with white lips and drooped head, answered hurriedly:

"I have nothing to consider. I have told, or attempted to tell, how Mrs. Clemmens came to her death. She was struck down by me; Craik Mansell there is innocent."

At this repetition in words of what she had before merely intimated by a gesture, the Judge ceased his questions, and the horror of the multitude found vent in one long, low, but irrepressible murmur. Taking advantage of the momentary disturbance, Byrd turned to his colleague with the agitated inquiry:

"Hickory, is this what you have had in your mind for the last few days?"

"This," repeated the other, with an air of careful consideration, assumed, as Byrd thought, to conceal any emotion which he might have felt; "no, no, not really. I—I don't know what I thought. Not this though." And he fixed his eyes upon Imogene's fallen countenance, with an expression of mingled doubt and wonder, as baffling in its nature as the tone of voice he had used.

"But," stammered Byrd, with an earnestness that almost partook of the nature of pleading, "she is not speaking the truth, of course. What we heard her say in the hut——"

"Hush!" interposed the other, with a significant gesture and a sudden glance toward the prisoner and his counsel; "watching is better than talking just now. Besides, Orcutt is going to speak."

It was so. After a short and violent conflict with the almost overwhelming emotions that had crushed upon him with the words and actions of Imogene, the great lawyer had summoned up sufficient control over himself to reassume the duties of his position and face once more the expectant crowd, and the startled, if not thoroughly benumbed, jury.

His first words had the well-known ring, and, like a puff of cool air through a heated atmosphere, at once restored the court-room to its usual condition of formality and restraint.

"This is not evidence, but the raving of frenzy," he said, in impassioned tones. "The witness has been tortured by the demands of the prosecution, till she is no longer responsible for her words." And turning toward the District Attorney, who, at the first sound of his adversary's voice, had roused himself from the stupor into which he had been thrown by the fearful and unexpected turn which Imogene's confession had taken, he continued: "If my learned friend is not lost to all feelings of humanity, he will withdraw from the stand a witness laboring under a mental aberration of so serious a nature."

Mr. Ferris was an irritable man, but he was touched with sympathy for his friend, reeling under so heavy a blow. He therefore forbore to notice this taunt save by a low bow, but turned at once to the Judge.

"Your Honor," said he, "I desire to be understood by the Court, that the statement which has just been made in your hearing by this witness, is as much of a surprise to me as to any one in this court-room. The fact which I proposed to elicit from her testimony was of an entirely different nature. In the conversation which we held last night——"

But Mr. Orcutt, vacillating between his powerful concern for Imogene, and his duty to his client, would not allow the other to proceed.

"I object," said he, "to any attempt at influencing the jury by the statement of any conversation which may have passed between the