Victor's Triumph Part 72

Mr. Martindale, State's Attorney, opened the case for the prosecution with a few brief but very severe remarks upon the baseness of the crime with which the prisoner stood charged, and then called his first witness--

"The Reverend Adam Borden."

Mr. Borden took the stand and testified to having performed the marriage ceremony between Alden Lytton and Mary Grey on the morning of the fifteenth of the preceding September, at his own parish church, in the city of Philadelphia.

He was strictly cross-examined by Mr. Berners, but his testimony only came out the clearer from the ordeal.

John Martin, s.e.xton of the church, and Sarah Martin, his daughter, were successively examined, and testified to having witnessed the marriage ceremony between the parties in question.

They also were cross-examined by Mr. Berners, without detriment to their testimony.

"Mrs. Mary Lytton" was then called upon to come forward for identification.

And Mary Grey, dressed in deep mourning and closely veiled, came up, leaning heavily on the arm of Mr. Philip Desmond, a.s.sistant counsel for the prosecution.

At the request of counsel she drew aside her veil, revealing a face so ghastly pale that all who gazed upon it shuddered.

Alden Lytton turned to look at her, in order to catch her eyes, but they were fixed upon the ground, and never once raised.

Even he, so deeply injured by her diabolical arts, turned away from her with shuddering pity.

"The woman is at once going mad and dying," he said to himself.

Mary Grey was then fully identified by the three witnesses as the woman who was, at the time and place specified, married to Mr. Alden Lytton.

But she had scarcely stood long enough to be sworn to, when her white face turned blue and she fell swooning into the arms of Philip Desmond.

She was borne out into the sheriff's room, amid the sympathetic murmurs of the audience.

Mr. Martindale then produced and read the marriage certificate, and recalled the Rev. Mr. Borden, who acknowledged it as his own doc.u.ment, presented to "Mrs. Mary Lytton" immediately after the marriage ceremony had been concluded.

The State's Attorney next produced certain letters, purporting to have been written by Mr. Alden Lytton to Mrs. Mary Grey during the period of his courts.h.i.+p.

These letters, he said, were important as corroborative evidence, and he begged leave to read them to the jury.

He then commenced with the correspondence from the earliest date.

And there in open court he read aloud, one after the other, all those fond, foolish, impa.s.sioned letters that the love-sick lad, Alden Lytton, had written to the artful woman who had beguiled him in the earliest days of their acquaintance, and before he had discovered her deep depravity.

This was the severest ordeal Alden Lytton had to bear. For he knew he had written these foolish letters in his romantic boyhood, and in his manhood he felt heartily ashamed of them. Under _any_ circ.u.mstances he would have been heartily ashamed of them. His ears tingled and his face burned to hear them read aloud to judge, jury and gaping crowd.

And then and there he registered a vow never, never, never to write another gus.h.i.+ng love-letter so long as he should live in this world; no, not even to his own dear wife.

When the last terrible letter was finished he felt as much relieved as if he had been unbound from the rack.

But his relief was soon superseded by the utmost astonishment when Mr.

Martindale took up another parcel, saying:

"The letters that I have just read, your honor, and gentlemen of the jury, were, as you have heard, written from the University of Charlottesville some years ago. Those that I am about to read to you were written from Wendover last year, in the few weeks preceding the marriage of the prisoner with Mary Grey."

And so saying, the State's Attorney proceeded to read, one after the other, all those forged letters which had been executed with inimitable skill by Mary Grey herself and mailed from Wendover by her unconscious confederate, Craven Kyte.

These counterfeits were even fonder, more foolish and more impa.s.sioned than the real ones, and every letter pressed speedy marriage, until the last one, which actually arranged the mode and manner of proceeding.

During the reading of the final letter Mr. Alden Lytton beckoned his counsel, who approached him.

"I acknowledge the first batch of folly written from Charlottesville, when I was a boy of eighteen or nineteen," said Alden, between a laugh and a blush.

"Every man has been a boy, and a fool, at least once in his life. I know I have; and I would much rather be hanged than have my letters read,"

laughingly replied Mr. Berners.

"But, by all my hopes of heaven, I never wrote one of those infernal letters of the last parcel!" added Mr. Lytton.

"I never supposed you did. It will, no doubt, be possible to prove them to be forgeries. If we can do that the whole prosecution breaks down,"

replied Mr. Berners.

"They _are_ forgeries!" said Alden Lytton, indignantly.

But that was more easily said than established.

A score of witnesses, one after the other, were called, and swore to the hand writing of Mr. Alden Lytton in those letters.

Other witnesses of less importance followed--waiters and chambermaids from the Blank House, Philadelphia, who swore to the fact that Mr.

Lytton and Mrs. Grey had taken rooms together at that house on the fourteenth of September and had left it on the afternoon of the fifteenth.

The prosecuting attorney said that he might call other witnesses who had seen the parties meet as by appointment at the railway station at Forestville and proceed thence to Richmond, and others again who had seen them together in the Richmond and Was.h.i.+ngton steamer; but he would forbear, for he felt convinced that the overwhelming amount of testimony already given was more than sufficient to establish the first marriage.

The second and felonious marriage was a notorious fact; but for form's sake it must be proved before the jury.

And then, to their extreme disgust, the Rev. Stephen Lyle, Joseph Brent and John Lytton were successively called to testify that they had all been present and witnessed the marriage of the accused, Alden Lytton and Emma Angela Cavendish, on the fifteenth of the last February, at Blue Cliff Hall, in this county and State.

John Lytton, who was the last of the three put upon the stand, came very near being committed for contempt of court by saying:

"Yes, he had witnessed his nephew's, Mr. Alden Lytton's marriage with Miss Cavendish, which he had a perfect right to marry her, never having been married before. None of the Lyttonses were capable of any such burglarious, bigamarious conduct as they accused his nephew of.

Everybody knew the Lyttonses. The Lyttonses were none of your upstart judges"--this was aimed directly at the bench. "The Lyttonses was as old as the flood, for that matter!" and so forth, and so forth.

The witness was not committed for this offense, but merely reminded that all this was very irrelevant to the matter in question, and ordered to sit down.

He obeyed, growling at the indignities heaped upon the "Lyttonses" by "upstarts."

State's Attorney Martindale then arose in his place and opened his argument for the prosecution in a very able review of the evidence that had been given by the witnesses examined and the doc.u.ments presented.

It was while he was still speaking that a little disturbance was heard at the lower end of the court-room.

All who heard it looked around to see what the matter was.

Presently a bailiff was seen pus.h.i.+ng his way up through the crowd.