Chapter XXXVII: The Letter

In the slight confusion that ensued upon the closing of the speech for the defense, Virgie Mason and Helen Starr obtained permission to speak to the prisoner.

With bitter tears they kissed the fair young face whose expression of hopeless woe almost broke their hearts. They implored her to forgive them because they had been brought to court to testify against her.

“We would not have come if we could have helped it,” they said, and Virgie added, indignantly: “I think it’s real mean to make us come against our will, and I for one sha’n’t tell them anything I can help!”

“Nor I,” said Helen.

But these two fair young girls had never been in a witness box and did not know that they would be subjected to so rigid an examination that they would be sure to tell all they knew. They were indignant when their turn came at the searching questions asked them by the prosecution, and try as they would they could not avoid giving a full and detailed account of the scene in the drawing room at Selwyn Heights, a few hours before the terrible tragedy. Virgie cried out impulsively:

“Nina did not mean to hurt her, I am sure, for she called on heaven to punish her for her sin, and if she meant to commit a crime she could not have taken the name of heaven upon her lips.”

Miss Strangemore, even, was compelled to go upon the stand and repeat the particulars of the drawing-room scene. Oh, cruel fate, the victim said to herself when even her friends were compelled to condemn her out of their own lips.

When all the witnesses had been examined the speech for the prosecution began. This lawyer honestly believed that the prisoner at the bar was guilty, and he tried his best to convince the judge and jury that it was so.

He said that the evidence against Mrs. Strangemore did not rest wholly upon the dying deposition of the murdered lady. The murderess had dropped a letter upon the floor of Mrs. St. Alban’s room in her hurried flight--a letter written that night by Mr. Strangemore to his wife, and which he told some one afterward he had slipped under the door of her chamber.

There was a piercing cry in the court-room. Nina sprang upon her feet pale as death, wild, excited.

“I never received that letter, I never even heard of it. Where is it now?” she cried, in deep agitation.

Mr. Davenport hastened to her side. The counsel for the prosecution was about to read Talbot Strangemore’s letter, dated on the night of the tragedy, in open court.

Nina leaned forward with parted lips and eager eyes to listen. Her veil was pushed carelessly back, and people gazed in wonder at the lovely _spirituelle_ face, marveling that one so young and fair with the expression of a suffering angel, could be in reality a crime-stained sinner.

But she did not heed them. In that moment when they were trying her for life or death, when there seemed to be no hope for her in earth or heaven, when the black shadow of the scaffold hung gloomily over her fair young head, there came to Nina Strangemore a moment of supreme and perfect joy--a moment of bliss all the fairer from contrast with the gloom that had encompassed her, a glimpse from out all the horror of a Hades at lost Heaven.

The counsel for the prosecution was reading aloud in a cold dispassionate voice:

“Nina, my beloved, my darling wife, on my knees I beg you to forgive
me for the folly and madness of which I have been guilty. Oh, if
you could know how remorseful, how shame-stricken, how penitent I
feel, you could not help but pardon me. I am not worthy of you, my
beautiful wife, but I love you with a deep and passionate love that
sprung into full growth the first moment I saw you that night with
the orange-blossoms on your hair and breast. In that very moment my
mad penchant for a fair coquette died an instant death, slain by the
glances of your innocent eyes. I know now that she was not worthy the
foolish passion I wasted on her for years, and I beg your pardon for
permitting her presence beneath your roof. Oh, my sweet and deeply
injured wife, I can explain all if you will grant me an interview
to-night, to-morrow, or at any time you may select. I shall not sleep
to-night. I shall wait in my room, hoping that you will send me word
that I may come to you and plead my cause. Oh, my bride, my wife,
do not be hard upon me, do not judge me as I deserve. Only remember
my love and my repentance that I place humbly at your feet, hoping
prayerfully that you will accept them, and that you will give me a
chance to win your forgiveness and then your love, my beautiful fate!
Remember I am waiting for a single word from your lips, Nina, and be
merciful to me although my past egregious folly merits no mercy at
your pure hands.

TALBOT STRANGEMORE.”

It seemed like sacrilege to read that letter fresh from the heart of the repentant and shame-stricken husband, to that eager, gaping throng. Murmurs of pity, of sorrow, some few of derision, ran from lip to lip. Those who believed that Nina was guilty thought worse of her than before. Surely when she read that letter, when she learned that her husband’s heart had returned to her, she ought to have spared that poor, pretty butter-fly Sibyl St. Alban. It was enough to triumph over her without taking her life in revenge for the past.

Through all the reading of that long letter Nina did not stir nor speak. She leaned slightly forward with her small hands loosely clasped in her lap, her lips parted just enough for one to catch the glitter of small, pearly white teeth, her eager eyes fixed upon the reader. A loose tress of golden hair had strayed over her shoulder and lay like a sunbeam against her black dress. There was an expression upon her face that puzzled the gazers, an expression so rapt, so intense, that they held their breath in wonder.

“She looks positively radiant, like one in a happy dream,” they said, and it was true, for a soft flush had risen into the wan face, and the dark eyes beamed with light--the light of an overwhelming joy.

“He loved me--my husband loved me,” she said to her beating heart, whose pulses rose to flood-tide with this joyous revelation. “Oh, what a cruel fate it was that kept that letter away from me that night! How did I miss finding it? How came it to be lying on the floor in Sibyl St. Alban’s room?”

And suddenly like a flash of light the reason came to her mind.

Before any one could stay her, she rose in her seat, she flashed her blazing dark eyes upon judge and jury, she shook her white hand at the counsel who was going on with his accumulated evidence against her, ruthlessly trying to rob her of her young life.

“Hush,” she said. “Listen to me, for I must speak,” and in sheer wonder he obeyed her.

“I never received that letter,” she went on. “If I had done so the whole current of my life would have been changed. If I had received that letter, if I had known that my husband loved me, I should not have gone away. I should have granted the interview he asked, I should have forgiven him and loved him, and I should have forgiven Sibyl St. Alban, too, for I could not have held resentment for any one in my great happiness.”

A subdued murmur of pity and sympathy ran through the throng like an electric current. There were some there who pitied the girl and did not believe her guilty. These had tears in their eyes and their hearts ached for the hapless, beautiful creature who went on thrillingly:

“I am quite sure I can tell you why I never received that letter. You say that my husband pushed it under my door that night. Well, Sibyl St. Alban came to my room that night to goad me to despair by her cruel words. She told me that my husband wanted a divorce from me that he might marry her. I could not bear the thought of such a disgrace touching one of the proud Selwyns, I said to myself that I would fling myself from the bluff into the sea, and so free him from his fetters. I told her to be easy, she should soon have Talbot, and then I sent her away. Oh, God, I remember now that when she reached the door she stooped down for a single moment, and I believed that she had merely stumbled. But now it all comes over me, the cruel, cruel truth! While she talked to me the letter had been slipped beneath the door, and in her anger and malice she carried it away to her own room and left it there to wreak its mission of vengeance upon me.”

She turned her wild, bright eyes upon the solemn faces of the jurymen.

“Have pity upon me,” she cried to them faintly. “Do not let them swear away my life upon the evidence of that letter which my husband meant to be as the dove with the olive branch. I swear to you that I never saw that letter till this moment, and that Sibyl St. Alban herself carried it to her room that fatal night leaving me in blind ignorance that she was robbing me of a treasure more precious than gold!”

And then she turned back to the lawyer and held out her hand.

“It is mine. Give it to me,” she said, imperiously, and he leaned forward and placed it in the clasp of the trembling little fingers.

Something like a spasm of delight shook the frail young form as she held for the first time in her hands the letter so full of sweet assurances of Talbot’s love. Then, oh, matchless woman’s love, the girl standing there with the black shadow of the scaffold lowering over her golden head, in deadly peril of her life through her husband’s sin, lifted to her quivering lips that strangely found treasure and kissed it once, twice, thrice!

There was a moment’s breathless pause of wonder, sorrow, pity, then an uncontrollable thunder of applause shook the court-house to its center. The heart of humanity had been thrilled to its core by this impulsive emotion. “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”

Mr. Davenport drew his client to a seat in a glow of satisfaction, feeling that the incident of the letter had done more for her cause than all his powerful speech. Alas, the counsel had not done haranguing the jury yet.

Order was restored as soon as possible, and the lawyer resumed his speech. But he had not spoken ten words before another interruption occurred.

Kitty May, Mrs. Strangemore’s maid, who had come into court with her and Miss Drusilla, suddenly uttered a piercing shriek, and fainted.

“The devil take the women’s tongues,” savagely muttered the lawyer who was again compelled to suspend his speech until the unconscious maid was carried out of court into the fresh air.

Full of wonder and vexation Miss Drusilla Strangemore followed the bearers to the door. She was quite indignant with Kitty May for having nerves and fainting away just like a fine lady.