Aileen had written him the afternoon before saying she had returned from West Chester and wishing him luck.
She was so anxious to know what was to become of him that she could not stay away any longer and had returned—not to go to the courtroom, for he did not want her to do that, but to be as near as possible when his fate was decided, adversely or otherwise.
She wanted to run and congratulate him if he won, or to console with him if he lost.
She felt that her return would be likely to precipitate a collision with her father, but she could not help that.
The position of Mrs. Cowperwood was most anomalous.
She had to go through the formality of seeming affectionate and tender, even when she knew that Frank did not want her to be.
He felt instinctively now that she knew of Aileen. He was merely awaiting the proper hour in which to spread the whole matter before her.
She put her arms around him at the door on the fateful morning, in the somewhat formal manner into which they had dropped these later years, and for a moment, even though she was keenly aware of his difficulties, she could not kiss him.
He did not want to kiss her, but he did not show it.
She did kiss him, though, and added:
"Oh, I do hope things come out all right."
"You needn't worry about that, I think, Lillian," he replied, buoyantly.
"I'll be all right."
He ran down the steps and walked out on Girard Avenue to his former car line, where he bearded a car.
He was thinking of Aileen and how keenly she was feeling for him, and what a mockery his married life now was, and whether he would face a sensible jury, and so on and so forth.
If he didn't—if he didn't—this day was crucial!
He stepped off the car at Third and Market and hurried to his office.
Steger was already there.
"Well, Harper," observed Cowperwood, courageously, "today's the day."
The Court of Quarter Sessions, Part I, where this trial was to take place, was held in famous Independence Hall, at Sixth and Chestnut Streets, which was at this time, as it had been for all of a century before, the center of local executive and judicial life.
It was a low two-story building of red brick, with a white wooden central tower of old Dutch and English derivation, compounded of the square, the circle, and the octagon.
The total structure consisted of a central portion and two T-shaped wings lying to the right and left, whose small, oval-topped old-fashioned windows and doors were set with those many-paned sashes so much admired by those who love what is known as Colonial architecture.
Here, and in an addition known as State House Row (since torn down), which extended from the rear of the building toward Walnut Street, were located the offices of the mayor, the chief of police, the city treasurer, the chambers of council, and all the other important and executive offices of the city, together with the four branches of Quarter Sessions, which sat to hear the growing docket of criminal cases.
The mammoth city hall which was subsequently completed at Broad and Market Streets was then building.
An attempt had been made to improve the reasonably large courtrooms by putting in them raised platforms of dark walnut surmounted by large, dark walnut desks, behind which the judges sat; but the attempt was not very successful.
The desks, jury-boxes, and railings generally were made too large, and so the general effect was one of disproportion.
A cream-colored wall had been thought the appropriate thing to go with black walnut furniture, but time and dust had made the combination dreary.
There were no pictures or ornaments of any kind, save the stalky, over-elaborated gas-brackets which stood on his honor's desk, and the single swinging chandelier suspended from the center of the ceiling.
Fat bailiffs and court officers, concerned only in holding their workless jobs, did not add anything to the spirit of the scene.
Two of them in the particular court in which this trial was held contended hourly as to which should hand the judge a glass of water.
One preceded his honor like a fat, stuffy, dusty majordomo to and from his dressing-room.
His business was to call loudly, when the latter entered,
"His honor the Court, hats off.
Everybody please rise," while a second bailiff, standing at the left of his honor when he was seated, and between the jury-box and the witness-chair, recited in an absolutely unintelligible way that beautiful and dignified statement of collective society's obligation to the constituent units, which begins,
"Hear ye! hear ye! hear ye!" and ends,
"All those of you having just cause for complaint draw near and ye shall be heard."
However, you would have thought it was of no import here.
Custom and indifference had allowed it to sink to a mumble.
A third bailiff guarded the door of the jury-room; and in addition to these there were present a court clerk—small, pale, candle-waxy, with colorless milk-and-water eyes, and thin, pork-fat-colored hair and beard, who looked for all the world like an Americanized and decidedly decrepit Chinese mandarin—and a court stenographer.
Judge Wilbur Payderson, a lean herring of a man, who had sat in this case originally as the examining judge when Cowperwood had been indicted by the grand jury, and who had bound him over for trial at this term, was a peculiarly interesting type of judge, as judges go.
He was so meager and thin-blooded that he was arresting for those qualities alone.
Technically, he was learned in the law; actually, so far as life was concerned, absolutely unconscious of that subtle chemistry of things that transcends all written law and makes for the spirit and, beyond that, the inutility of all law, as all wise judges know.
You could have looked at his lean, pedantic body, his frizzled gray hair, his fishy, blue-gray eyes, without any depth of speculation in them, and his nicely modeled but unimportant face, and told him that he was without imagination; but he would not have believed you—would have fined you for contempt of court.
By the careful garnering of all his little opportunities, the furbishing up of every meager advantage; by listening slavishly to the voice of party, and following as nearly as he could the behests of intrenched property, he had reached his present state.
It was not very far along, at that.
His salary was only six thousand dollars a year. His little fame did not extend beyond the meager realm of local lawyers and judges.
But the sight of his name quoted daily as being about his duties, or rendering such and such a decision, was a great satisfaction to him.
He thought it made him a significant figure in the world.
"Behold I am not as other men," he often thought, and this comforted him.
He was very much flattered when a prominent case came to his calendar; and as he sat enthroned before the various litigants and lawyers he felt, as a rule, very significant indeed.