THE first question (Did the Woman Die Poisoned?) had been answered,
positively. The second question (Who Poisoned Her?) had been answered,
apparently. There now remained the third and final question--What was
His Motive? The first evidence called in answer to that inquiry was the
evidence of relatives and friends of the dead wife.
Lady Brydehaven, widow of Rear-Admiral Sir George Brydehaven, examined
by Mr. Drew (counsel for the Crown with the Lord Advocate), gave
evidence as follows:
“The deceased lady (Mrs. Eustace Macallan) was my niece. She was the
only child of my sister, and she lived under my roof after the time of
her mother’s death. I objected to her marriage, on grounds which were
considered purely fanciful and sentimental by her other friends. It is
extremely painful to me to state the circumstances in public, but I am
ready to make the sacrifice if the ends of justice require it.
“The prisoner at the bar, at the time of which I am now speaking, was
staying as a guest in my house. He met with an accident while he was
out riding which caused a serious injury to one of his legs. The leg had
been previously hurt while he was serving with the army in India. This
circumstance tended greatly to aggravate the injury received in the
accident. He was confined to a recumbent position on a sofa for many
weeks together; and the ladies in the house took it in turns to sit with
him, and while away the weary time by reading to him and talking to him.
My niece was foremost among these volunteer nurses. She played admirably
on the piano; and the sick man happened--most unfortunately, as the
event proved--to be fond of music.
“The consequences of the perfectly innocent intercourse thus begun were
deplorable consequences for my niece. She became passionately attached
to Mr. Eustace Macallan, without awakening any corresponding affection
on his side.
“I did my best to interfere, delicately and usefully, while it was still
possible to interfere with advantage. Unhappily, my niece refused
to place any confidence in me. She persistently denied that she was
actuated by any warmer feeling toward Mr. Macallan than a feeling of
friendly interest. This made it impossible for me to separate them
without openly acknowledging my reason for doing so, and thus producing
a scandal which might have affected my niece’s reputation. My husband
was alive at that time; and the one thing I could do under the
circumstances was the thing I did. I requested him to speak privately
to Mr. Macallan, and to appeal to his honor to help us out of the
difficulty without prejudice to my niece.
“Mr. Macallan behaved admirably. He was still helpless. But he made an
excuse for leaving us which it was impossible to dispute. In two days
after my husband had spoken to him he was removed from the house.
“The remedy was well intended; but it came too late, and it utterly
failed. The mischief was done. My niece pined away visibly; neither
medical help nor change of air and scene did anything for her. In
course of time--after Mr. Macallan had recovered from the effects of his
accident--I found that she was carrying on a clandestine correspondence
with him by means of her maid. His letters, I am bound to say, were most
considerately and carefully written. Nevertheless, I felt it my duty to
stop the correspondence.
“My interference--what else could I do but interfere?--brought matters
to a crisis. One day my niece was missing at breakfast-time. The next
day we discovered that the poor infatuated creature had gone to Mr.
Macallan’s chambers in London, and had been found hidden in his bedroom
by some bachelor friends who came to visit him.
“For this disaster Mr. Macallan was in no respect to blame. Hearing
footsteps outside, he had only time to take measures for saving her
character by concealing her in the nearest room--and the nearest room
happened to be his bedchamber. The matter was talked about, of course,
and motives were misinterpreted in the vilest manner. My husband
had another private conversation with Mr. Macallan. He again behaved
admirably. He publicly declared that my niece had visited him as his
betrothed wife. In a fortnight from that time he silenced scandal in the
one way that was possible--he married her.
“I was alone in opposing the marriage. I thought it at the time what it
has proved to be since--a fatal mistake.
“It would have been sad enough if Mr. Macallan had only married her
without a particle of love on his side. But to make the prospect more
hopeless still, he was at that very time the victim of a misplaced
attachment to a lady who was engaged to another man. I am well aware
that he compassionately denied this, just as he compassionately affected
to be in love with my niece when he married her. But his hopeless
admiration of the lady whom I have mentioned was a matter of fact
notorious among his friends. It may not be amiss to add that _her_
marriage preceded _his_ marriage. He had irretrievably lost the woman
he really loved--he was without a hope or an aspiration in life--when he
took pity on my niece.
“In conclusion, I can only repeat that no evil which could have happened
(if she had remained a single woman) would have been comparable, in
my opinion, to the evil of such a marriage as this. Never, I sincerely
believe, were two more ill-assorted persons united in the bonds of
matrimony than the prisoner at the bar and his deceased wife.”
The evidence of this witness produced a strong sensation among
the audience, and had a marked effect on the minds of the jury.
Cross-examination forced Lady Brydehaven to modify some of her opinions,
and to acknowledge that the hopeless attachment of the prisoner to
another woman was a matter of rumor only. But the facts in her narrative
remained unshaken, and, for that one reason, they invested the crime
charged against the prisoner with an appearance of possibility, which it
had entirely failed to assume during the earlier part of the Trial.
Two other ladies (intimate friends of Mrs. Eustace Macallan) were
called next. They differed from Lady Brydehaven in their opinions on the
propriety of the marriage but on all the material points they supported
her testimony, and confirmed the serious impression which the first
witness had produced on every person in Court.
The next evidence which the prosecution proposed to put in was the
silent evidence of the letters and the Diary found at Gleninch.
In answer to a question from the Bench, the Lord Advocate stated that
the letters were written by friends of the prisoner and his deceased
wife, and that passages in them bore directly on the terms on which the
two associated in their married life. The Diary was still more valuable
as evidence. It contained the prisoner’s daily record of domestic
events, and of the thoughts and feelings which they aroused in him at
the time.
A most painful scene followed this explanation.
Writing, as I do, long after the events took place, I still cannot
prevail upon myself to describe in detail what my unhappy husband said
and did at this distressing period of the Trial. Deeply affected
while Lady Brydehaven was giving her evidence, he had with difficulty
restrained himself from interrupting her. He now lost all control
over his feelings. In piercing tones, which rang through the Court,
he protested against the contemplated violation of his own most sacred
secrets and his wife’s most sacred secrets. “Hang me, innocent as I am!”
he cried, “but spare me _that!_” The effect of this terrible outbreak on
the audience is reported to have been indescribable. Some of the women
present were in hysterics. The Judges interfered from the Bench,
but with no good result. Quiet was at length restored by the Dean of
Faculty, who succeeded in soothing the prisoner, and who then addressed
the Judges, pleading for indulgence to his unhappy client in most
touching and eloquent language. The speech, a masterpiece of impromptu
oratory, concluded with a temperate yet strongly urged protest against
the reading of the papers discovered at Gleninch.
The three Judges retired to consider the legal question submitted to
them. The sitting was suspended for more than half an hour.
As usual in such cases, the excitement in the Court communicated itself
to the crowd outside in the street. The general opinion here--led, as it
was supposed, by one of the clerks or other inferior persons connected
with the legal proceedings--was decidedly adverse to the prisoner’s
chance of escaping a sentence of death. “If the letters and the Diary
are read,” said the brutal spokesman of the mob, “the letters and the
Diary will hang him.”
On the return of the Judges into Court, it was announced that they had
decided, by a majority of two to one, on permitting the documents in
dispute to be produced in evidence. Each of the Judges, in turn, gave
his reasons for the decision at which he had arrived. This done, the
Trial proceeded. The reading of the extracts from the letters and the
extracts from the Diary began.
The first letters produced were the letters found in the Indian cabinet
in Mrs. Eustace Macallan’s room. They were addressed to the deceased
lady by intimate (female) friends of hers, with whom she was accustomed
to correspond. Three separate extracts from letters written by three
different correspondents were selected to be read in Court.
FIRST CORRESPONDENT: “I despair, my dearest Sara, of being able to tell
you how your last letter has distressed me. Pray forgive me if I own to
thinking that your very sensitive nature exaggerates or misinterprets,
quite unconsciously, of course, the neglect that you experience at the
hands of your husband. I cannot say anything about _his_ peculiarities
of character, because I am not well enough acquainted with him to know
what they are. But, my dear, I am much older than you, and I have had a
much longer experience than yours of what somebody calls ‘the lights and
shadows of married life.’ Speaking from that experience, I must tell you
what I have observed. Young married women, like you, who are devotedly
attached to their husbands, are apt to make one very serious mistake. As
a rule, they all expect too much from their husbands. Men, my poor Sara,
are not like _us._ Their love, even when it is quite sincere, is not
like our love. It does not last as it does with us. It is not the
one hope and one thought of their lives, as it is with us. We have no
alternative, even when we most truly respect and love them, but to make
allowance for this difference between the man’s nature and the woman’s.
I do not for one moment excuse your husband’s coldness. He is wrong,
for example, in never looking at you when he speaks to you, and in
never noticing the efforts that you make to please him. He is worse than
wrong--he is really cruel, if you like--in never returning your kiss
when you kiss him. But, my dear, are you quite sure that he is always
_designedly_ cold and cruel? May not his conduct be sometimes the
result of troubles and anxieties which weigh on his mind, and which are
troubles and anxieties that you cannot share? If you try to look at his
behavior in this light, you will understand many things which puzzle
and pain you now. Be patient with him, my child. Make no complaints,
and never approach him with your caresses at times when his mind is
preoccupied or his temper ruffled. This may be hard advice to follow,
loving him as ardently as you do. But, rely on it, the secret of
happiness for us women is to be found (alas! only too often) in such
exercise of restraint and resignation as your old friend now recommends.
Think, my dear, over what I have written, and let me hear from you
again.”
SECOND CORRESPONDENT: “How can you be so foolish, Sara, as to waste your
love on such a cold-blooded brute as your husband seems to be? To be
sure, I am not married yet, or perhaps I should not be so surprised at
you. But I shall be married one of these days, and if my husband ever
treat me as Mr. Macallan treats you, I shall insist on a separation. I
declare, I think I would rather be actually beaten, like the women among
the lower orders, than be treated with the polite neglect and contempt
which you describe. I burn with indignation when I think of it. It must
be quite insufferable. Don’t bear it any longer, my poor dear. Leave
him, and come and stay with me. My brother is a lawyer, as you know. I
read to him portions of your letter, and he is of opinion that you might
get what he calls a judicial separation. Come and consult him.”
THIRD CORRESPONDENT: “YOU know, my dear Mrs. Macallan, what _my_
experience of men has been. Your letter does not surprise me in the
least. Your husband’s conduct to you points to one conclusion. He is in
love with some other woman. There is Somebody in the dark, who gets from
him everything that he denies to you. I have been through it all--and I
know! Don’t give way. Make it the business of your life to find out who
the creature is. Perhaps there may be more than one of them. It doesn’t
matter. One or many, if you can only discover them, you may make his
existence as miserable to him as he makes your existence to you. If you
want my experience to help you, say the word, and it is freely at your
service. I can come and stay with you at Gleninch any time after the
fourth of next month.”
With those abominable lines the readings from the letters of the women
came to an end. The first and longest of the Extracts produced the
most vivid impression in Court. Evidently the writer was in this case
a worthy and sensible person. It was generally felt, however, that all
three of the letters, no matter how widely they might differ in tone,
justified the same conclusion. The wife’s position at Gleninch (if the
wife’s account of it were to be trusted) was the position of a neglected
and an unhappy woman.
The correspondence of the prisoner, which had been found, with his
Diary, in the locked bed-table drawer, was produced next. The letters in
this case were with one exception all written by men. Though the tone of
them was moderation itself as compared with the second and third of the
women’s letters, the conclusion still pointed the same way. The life of
the husband at Gleninch appeared to be just as intolerable as the life
of the wife.
For example, one of the prisoner’s male friends wrote inviting him to
make a yacht voyage around the world. Another suggested an absence
of six months on the Continent. A third recommended field-sports and
fishing. The one object aimed at by all the writers was plainly to
counsel a separation, more or less plausible and more or less complete,
between the married pair.
The last letter read was addressed to the prisoner in a woman’s
handwriting, and was signed by a woman’s Christian name only.
“Ah, my poor Eustace, what a cruel destiny is ours!” the letter began.
“When I think of your life, sacrificed to that wretched woman, my heart
bleeds for you. If _we_ had been man and wife--if it had been _my_
unutterable happiness to love and cherish the best, the dearest of
men--what a paradise of our own we might have lived in! what delicious
hours we might have known! But regret is vain; we are separated in this
life--separated by ties which we both mourn, and yet which we must both
respect. My Eustace, there is a world beyond this. There our souls will
fly to meet each other, and mingle in one long heavenly embrace--in
a rapture forbidden to us on earth. The misery described in your
letter--oh, why, why did you marry her?--has wrung this confession of
feeling from me. Let it comfort you, but let no other eyes see it. Burn
my rashly written lines, and look (as I look) to the better life which
you may yet share with your own
“HELENA.”
The reading of this outrageous letter provoked a question from the
Bench. One of the Judges asked if the writer had attached any date or
address to her letter.
In answer to this the Lord Advocate stated that neither the one nor the
other appeared. The envelope showed that the letter had been posted in
London. “We propose,” the learned counsel continued, “to read certain
passages from the prisoner’s Diary, in which the name signed at the
end of the letter occurs more than once; and we may possibly find other
means of identifying the writer, to the satisfaction of your lordships,
before the Trial is over.”
The promised passages from my husband’s private Diary were now read. The
first extract related to a period of nearly a year before the date of
Mrs. Eustace Macallan’s death. It was expressed in these terms:
“News, by this morning’s post, which has quite overwhelmed me. Helena’s
husband died suddenly two days since of heart-disease. She is free--my
beloved Helena is free! And I?
“I am fettered to a woman with whom I have not a single feeling in
common. Helena is lost to me, by my own act. Ah! I can understand now,
as I never understood before, how irresistible temptation can be, and
how easily sometimes crime may follow it. I had better shut up these
leaves for the night. It maddens me to no purpose to think of my
position or to write of it.”
The next passage, dated a few days later, dwelt on the same subject.
“Of all the follies that a man can commit, the greatest is acting on
impulse. I acted on impulse when I married the unfortunate creature who
is now my wife.
“Helena was then lost to me, as I too hastily supposed. She had married
the man to whom she rashly engaged herself before she met with me. He
was younger than I, and, to all appearance, heartier and stronger
than I. So far as I could see, my fate was sealed for life. Helena had
written her farewell letter, taking leave of me in this world for good.
My prospects were closed; my hopes had ended. I had not an aspiration
left; I had no necessity to stimulate me to take refuge in work. A
chivalrous action, an exertion of noble self-denial, seemed to be all
that was left to me, all that I was fit for.
“The circumstances of the moment adapted themselves, with a fatal
facility, to this idea. The ill-fated woman who had become attached to
me (Heaven knows--without so much as the shadow of encouragement on my
part!) had, just at that time, rashly placed her reputation at the mercy
of the world. It rested with me to silence the scandalous tongues that
reviled her. With Helena lost to me, happiness was not to be expected.
All women were equally indifferent to me. A generous action would be
the salvation of this woman. Why not perform it? I married her on that
impulse--married her just as I might have jumped into the water and
saved her if she had been drowning; just as I might have knocked a man
down if I had seen him ill-treating her in the street!
“And now the woman for whom I have made this sacrifice stands between me
and my Helena--my Helena, free to pour out all the treasures of her love
on the man who adores the earth that she touches with her foot!
“Fool! madman! Why don’t I dash out my brains against the wall that I
see opposite to me while I write these lines?
“My gun is there in the corner. I have only to tie a string to the
trigger and to put the muzzle to my mouth--No! My mother is alive; my
mother’s love is sacred. I have no right to take the life which she gave
me. I must suffer and submit. Oh, Helena! Helena!”
The third extract--one among many similar passages--had been written
about two months before the death of the prisoner’s wife.
“More reproaches addressed to me! There never was such a woman for
complaining; she lives in a perfect atmosphere of ill-temper and
discontent.
“My new offenses are two in number: I never ask her to play to me now;
and when she puts on a new dress expressly to please me, I never notice
it. Notice it! Good Heavens! The effort of my life is _not_ to notice
her in anything she does or says. How could I keep my temper, unless I
kept as much as possible out of the way of private interviews with
her? And I do keep my temper. I am never hard on her; I never use harsh
language to her. She has a double claim on my forbearance---she is
a woman, and the law has made her my wife. I remember this; but I am
human. The less I see of her--except when visitors are present--the
more certain I can feel of preserving my self-control.
“I wonder what it is that makes her so utterly distasteful to me? She
is a plain woman; but I have seen uglier women than she whose caresses
I could have endured without the sense of shrinking that comes over me
when I am obliged to submit to _her_ caresses. I keep the feeling hidden
from her. She loves me, poor thing--and I pity her. I wish I could do
more; I wish I could return in the smallest degree the feeling with
which she regards me. But no--I can only pity her. If she would
be content to live on friendly terms with me, and never to exact
demonstrations of tenderness, we might get on pretty well. But she wants
love. Unfortunate creature, she wants love!
“Oh, my Helena! I have no love to give her. My heart is yours.
“I dreamed last night that this unhappy wife of mine was dead. The dream
was so vivid that I actually got out of my bed and opened the door of
her room and listened.
“Her calm, regular breathing was distinctly audible in the stillness of
the night. She was in a deep sleep: I closed the door again and lighted
my candle and read. Helena was in all my thoughts; it was hard work to
fix my attention on the book. But anything was better than going to bed
again, and dreaming perhaps for the second time that I too was free.
“What a life mine is! what a life my wife’s is! If the house were to
take fire, I wonder whether I should make an effort to save myself or to
save her?”
The last two passages read referred to later dates still.
“A gleam of brightness has shone over this dismal existence of mine at
last.
“Helena is no longer condemned to the seclusion of widowhood. Time
enough has passed to permit of her mixing again in society. She is
paying visits to friends in our part of Scotland; and, as she and I are
cousins, it is universally understood that she cannot leave the North
without also spending a few days at my house. She writes me word
that the visit, however embarrassing it may be to us privately, is
nevertheless a visit that must be made for the sake of appearances.
Blessings on appearances! I shall see this angel in my purgatory--and
all because Society in Mid-Lothian would think it strange that my cousin
should be visiting in my part of Scotland and not visit Me!
“But we are to be very careful. Helena says, in so many words, ‘I come
to see you, Eustace, as a sister. You must receive me as a brother, or
not receive me at all. I shall write to your wife to propose the day
for my visit. I shall not forget--do you not forget--that it is by your
wife’s permission that I enter your house.’
“Only let me see her! I will submit to anything to obtain the
unutterable happiness of seeing her!”
The last extract followed, and consisted of these lines only:
“A new misfortune! My wife has fallen ill. She has taken to her bed with
a bad rheumatic cold, just at the time appointed for Helena’s visit
to Gleninch. But on this occasion (I gladly own it!) she has behaved
charmingly. She has written to Helena to say that her illness is not
serious enough to render a change necessary in the arrangements, and to
make it her particular request that my cousin’s visit shall take place
upon the day originally decided on.
“This is a great sacrifice made to me on my wife’s part. Jealous of
every woman under forty who comes near me, she is, of course, jealous of
Helena--and she controls herself, and trusts me!
“I am bound to show my gratitude for this and I will show it. From this
day forth I vow to live more affectionately with my wife. I tenderly
embraced her this very morning, and I hope, poor soul, she did not
discover the effort that it cost me.”
There the readings from the Diary came to an end.
The most unpleasant pages in the whole Report of the Trial were--to
me--the pages which contained the extracts from my husband’s Diary.
There were expressions here and there which not only pained me, but
which almost shook Eustace’s position in my estimation. I think I would
have given everything I possessed to have had the power of annihilating
certain lines in the Diary. As for his passionate expressions of love
for Mrs. Beauly, every one of them went through me like a sting. He had
whispered words quite as warm into my ears in the days of his courtship.
I had no reason to doubt that he truly and dearly loved me. But the
question was, Had he just as truly and dearly loved Mrs. Beauly before
me? Had she or I--won the first love of his heart? He had declared to
me over and over again that he had only fancied himself to be in love
before the day when we met. I had believed him then. I determined to
believe him still. I did believe him. But I hated Mrs. Beauly!
As for the painful impression produced in Court by the readings from
the letters and the Diary, it seemed to be impossible to increase it.
Nevertheless it _was_ perceptibly increased. In other words, it was
rendered more unfavorable still toward the prisoner by the evidence of
the next and last witness called on the part of the prosecution.
William Enzie, under-gardener at Gleninch, was sworn, and deposed as
follows:
On the twentieth of October, at eleven o’clock in the forenoon, I was
sent to work in the shrubbery, on the side next to the garden called the
Dutch Garden. There was a summer-house in the Dutch Garden, having its
back set toward the shrubbery. The day was wonderfully fine and--warm
for the time of year.
“Passing to my work, I passed the back of the summer-house. I heard
voices inside--a man’s voice and a lady’s voice. The lady’s voice was
strange to me. The man’s voice I recognized as the voice of my master.
The ground in the shrubbery was soft, and my curiosity was excited. I
stepped up to the back of the summer-house without being heard, and I
listened to what was going on inside.
“The first words I could distinguish were spoken in my master’s voice.
He said, ‘If I could only have foreseen that you might one day be free,
what a happy man I might have been!’ The lady’s voice answered, ‘Hush!
you must not talk so.’ My master said upon that, ‘I must talk of what is
in my mind; it is always in my mind that I have lost you.’ He stopped
a bit there, and then he said on a sudden, ‘Do me one favor, my angel!
Promise me not to marry again.’ The lady’s voice spoke out thereupon
sharply enough, ‘What do you mean?’ My master said, ‘I wish no harm to
the unhappy creature who is a burden on my life; but suppose--’ ‘Suppose
nothing,’ the lady said; ‘come back to the house.’
“She led the way into the garden, and turned round, beckoning my master
to join her. In that position I saw her face plainly, and I knew it for
the face of the young widow lady who was visiting at the house. She was
pointed out to me by the head-gardener when she first arrived, for the
purpose of warning me that I was not to interfere if I found her picking
the flowers. The gardens at Gleninch were shown to tourists on certain
days, and we made a difference, of course, in the matter of the flowers
between strangers and guests staying in the house. I am quite certain of
the identity of the lady who was talking with my master. Mrs. Beauly
was a comely person--and there was no mistaking her for any other than
herself. She and my master withdrew together on the way to the house. I
heard nothing more of what passed between them.”
This witness was severely cross-examined as to the correctness of his
recollection of the talk in the summer-house, and as to his capacity for
identifying both the speakers. On certain minor points he was shaken.
But he firmly asserted his accurate remembrance of the last words
exchanged between his master and Mrs. Beauly; and he personally
described the lady in terms which proved that he had corruptly
identified her.
With this the answer to the third question raised by the Trial--the
question of the prisoner’s motive for poisoning his wife--came to an
end.
The story for the prosecution was now a story told. The staunchest
friends of the prisoner in Court were compelled to acknowledge that
the evidence thus far pointed clearly and conclusively against him. He
seemed to feel this himself. When he withdrew at the close of the third
day of the Trial he was so depressed and exhausted that he was obliged
to lean on the arm of the governor of the jail.