I am a solicitor of considerable standing and practice in a large
provincial town in Ireland, the name of which it is here unnecessary to
mention. On the evening of the 31st of December some twenty-five years
ago, I was in the aforesaid town sitting in my study. The day had been
one of unusual inclemency; rain had alternated with sleet and snow; and
the cold and cutting wind had blown with a rude strength which made
its chilly touch at once incisive. As the shades of night had begun
to fall, the storm, instead of abating, had risen in turbulence and
height; and at the hour of which I am about to speak, the spasmodic
energy of the elements seemed like the last convulsions of the dying
year. I had been reading some legal documents during the evening; but
perceiving from a glance at my watch that it was fast approaching
twelve o’clock, I laid my papers aside and drew my chair nearer to the
fire. The hail beat violently against the windows, the wind sighed
amongst the trees outside, and the keyhole of my study-door expressed
its feelings in tones if possible more melancholy.
The feeling of which I was conscious, as I sat thus gazing into the
blazing comfort before me, was one of selfish satisfaction that I
was not at the mercy of the tempest outside. Forms of various human
sufferers presented themselves to my mental vision, and seemed to take
the shape of the red coals in the fire; while the wind and my sorrowing
keyhole seemed vocal with the burden of their woe. I was soon plunged
in a deep moralising on the misery which we see around us—on that
strange invisible link between sorrow and sin; and the last moments of
the passing year were just landing me in one of those good resolutions
which we are told form such excellent paving-stones, when I was aroused
from my moral reverie by a knock at my study-door. Pushing my chair
back a little distance from the fire, and assuming a more professional
air, I articulated the well-known ‘Come in;’ and this mandate was duly
obeyed by my servant, who informed me that a gentleman outside was
particularly anxious to see me.
A moment afterwards, a figure which in all but size resembled our old
friend the ‘drowned rat,’ entered my study, and making a courteous bow,
said: ‘I fear this is a very unreasonable hour to intrude upon you,
sir.’ My visitor was very tall, had a pale thoughtful face, and when he
unbuttoned the coat which covered him from head to foot, I perceived
that he was a clergyman.
‘Won’t you take a seat by the fire?’ I said, ‘for you must be very cold
and wet such a night as this.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ he replied; ‘I am too wet to sit down. I had better
tell you at once the cause of this unseasonable visit. I have been
attending in my capacity as a Christian minister a young lady who has
been very ill, and is now, I believe, dying. She sent for me to-night
about ten o’clock, and when I went to her, she entreated me to go for
a solicitor. I had heard of you, sir, as a man of standing in that
profession, and I have accordingly come to ask you to drive over with
me to her.’
I suggested that the lady very probably wanted to make her will, and
wished for professional assistance.
‘I cannot tell,’ he replied. ‘I asked her if no one but a solicitor
would do, and she said not. She said she _must_ see a solicitor before
she died. She seemed terribly distressed, and pressed her request so
earnestly upon me that I felt I dare not neglect it.’
‘How far is the young lady’s residence from this?’ I asked, wishing to
bring the matter to a practical issue.
‘About ten miles,’ replied the clergyman.
‘Ten miles on a night such as this is no joke!’
‘It is, sir, a long drive, and I know that the night is very severe;
but I would take it as a great favour if you would come with me. I
know not where to go or what to do, if you decline. I will drive you
there, and send my car back with you; and you will of course hold me
responsible for your fees.’
The last sentence decided my wavering resolve and gained the
clergyman’s object; for what attorney ever remained inactive where he
had a good mark for costs? So shrugging my shoulders, I said: ‘Well, I
suppose I had better go with you, though I should much prefer going to
bed.’
‘Thank you,’ he replied; ‘it is very good of you to consent.’
Having provided myself with the writing materials necessary to draft
a will, and having wrapped myself from head to foot in waterproof,
I accompanied the clergyman to the hall-door. There we ascended the
conveyance which was to take us to our destination, and soon were
cutting our way through the driving sleet and snow. Being of an
inquisitive turn of mind, I thought it would be wise to elicit from
the clergyman some little information about the young lady whose will
I supposed that I was about to draw; and with that view I began to
examine him. I, however, found that he could tell me very little. He
only knew that she was a Miss M——; that she had been staying with an
aunt of hers who lived in his parish; that she had become dangerously
ill some four or five days previously; that he believed she was an
only daughter; that her mother was dead; and that her father had been
telegraphed for, and was expected to arrive in the morning. He added
earnestly: ‘He will never see his daughter alive, poor man!’
While we were speaking, the joy-bells had begun to ring out their merry
peals, welcoming in the new year. In a few moments, however, after the
clergyman’s last remark, they ceased, and a dead silence ensued. ‘How
ironical was the tone of those bells!’ said the clergyman with a sigh,
as the last peal was dying away. I answered half-unconsciously ‘Yes;’
but I little knew how fully I would comprehend his meaning before many
hours had passed away.
After a long and bitter drive, the conveyance at last drew up at a
large old-fashioned house, with the appearance of which I was well
acquainted, and which I knew to be the residence of an old lady
of property, though I had never been inside it. The clergyman, on
alighting, brought me round to a side-door, at which he knocked very
gently. After he had knocked two or three times, the door was at length
opened to us by an elderly woman, whom I afterwards learned to be
the nurse, and who conducted us, by the aid of a lantern, up an old
winding-stair into a long corridor. Stopping before a door at the end
of it, the nurse motioned us to wait while she entered the room. She
had been only a few seconds inside, when I heard a low moan, and a
female voice exclaim almost in a cry: ‘Oh, has the time come?’ A moment
afterwards the clergyman and myself had entered the room, and lying on
a bed in the middle of it I saw the form of a young girl apparently
about twenty-four or twenty-five years of age. As we approached her
bedside, the clergyman said to her: ‘I have brought the solicitor with
me;’ but she did not answer him, and gently waved her hand for the
nurse and himself to leave the room.
After they had left, she looked at me earnestly for a minute and then
said in a faint voice: ‘Are you a solicitor, sir?’
I answered: ‘I am;’ and added: ‘I suppose you wish me to draw your will
for you?’
‘My will!’ she said with evident surprise. ‘Ah no! I have nothing to
leave, except perhaps my heart.’ She remained for some time after this
without speaking, her silence being only broken by moans such as I had
heard from the corridor. After a little while I heard her murmur: ‘O my
father, my poor dear father! must it be?’ then clasping her two almost
fleshless hands, she closed her eyes for a few moments. At last, with
evident effort, she turned round on her pillow, and looking straight
at me, said in a voice tremulous with weakness and emotion: ‘I want,
sir, to make a statement to you which I feel it my duty to make before
I die. It has tortured me for months, and I dare not meet my Maker if I
did not tell all, though it breaks my very heart to do so.’
Fearing that she was going to confess some crime, or make some other
important criminal declaration, I said to her: ‘If you are about to
make any statement which may be of importance afterwards, I had better
go for a magistrate, and you can make it before him.’
‘O no, sir; no magistrate!’ she cried out earnestly. ‘What I have to
tell concerns my poor father, and I dare not state it to a magistrate,
for it might ruin him. If you will not hear me and try to save my poor
father, I shall die with sealed lips. O my father! my good kind father!
it is too, too cruel that I must tell of your sin.’ The last words
were pronounced almost in a cry; the tears filled her eyes, and she
began to sob piteously. Her racking cough soon followed; and I feared
that she must indeed die ‘with sealed lips,’ as she had said; for to
me it seemed that every succeeding cough must be her last. After a
little while, however, a slight respite came, and she tried to resume
her statement. She gasped out: ‘The insurance—the Blank Insurance’
(mentioning the name of a well-known Company); ‘it’s not my’—— But
before she could get any farther, the cough again seized her, and this
time with such terrible power that the poor creature fell back utterly
exhausted.
Fearing that her life was now really waning, I went to the door of
the room for the nurse, who at once came in. When she had settled the
sufferer in a more easy position, she turned to me and whispered:
‘Very little longer, sir!’ I, however, remained in the room, in the
hope that after a little time she might have strength to resume her
statement; but when half an hour had nearly elapsed without bringing
with it any sign of returning strength, I saw that the statement must
remain in its unfinished condition. I therefore wrote down carefully
all that had occurred, put it into an envelope, sealed it, placed it in
my pocket, and prepared to go away. Before doing so, I took one look at
the form that lay on the bed before me. To describe her face, I cannot,
though I seem to see it as distinctly to-day as I saw it then—one of
those strangely exquisite flowers, whose tender growth so often kindles
the selfish craving of the old reaper, Death. I had stood by many a
death-bed; my profession had inured me to scenes of anguish and pain;
but as I looked on that pale beautiful woman, and read on her features
the impression which told only too plainly of a conflict of racking
reality within, my cold heart softened, and my whole nature went forth
in one great yearning to comfort and to soothe her. I breathed a prayer
for the soul that was passing—earnest, as I had never known earnestness
before; and with feelings too sad to portray, but too real to be
forgotten, I left the room and the house.
Two days after this eventful night, my friend the clergyman (whom
I subsequently discovered to be the newly appointed rector of a
neighbouring parish) again entered my study. He told me that the poor
young girl was dead, that she had passed away about half an hour after
I had left the room, never having spoken a word after that terrible fit
of coughing to which I had been a witness.
The question then came to be decided as to the meaning of the broken
statement made by the young girl, and what was my duty with regard to
it. I have since frequently questioned the wisdom and propriety of the
course which I then pursued; but whether right or wrong, my action
was the result of much deliberation. I wrote in the first instance to
the insurance Company, asking them if they would kindly inform me,
as solicitor for the late Miss M——, whether any insurance had been
effected on her life with that Company; and if so, when and by whom
it was effected, what was the amount of it, and to whom it had become
payable by the fall of Miss M——’s life. I received a letter in reply
from the secretary of the Company, informing me that my young friend
had herself, about a year previously, effected an insurance on her own
life in two policies of five thousand pounds each, and that if she had
not otherwise assigned the policies during her lifetime, the sum of ten
thousand pounds was payable to her executors or administrators, as the
case might be.
The receipt of this information led me to believe, what I had suspected
before, that there was something wrong about this insurance, though I
could not exactly determine the nature of that something. I therefore
wrote a second time to the Company, stating that I had reason to
believe that it would be wise for the Company to make careful inquiries
with reference to the Policy, before surrendering its value. The
secretary at once wrote back to me asking me to state the information
which led me to form this belief; but I replied that I was not in
possession of any information whatever bearing on the matter, but that
from what took place at an interview which I had had with the late Miss
M—— a short time before her death, I had been led to suspect that there
was something wrong about the insurance.
I heard no more of the matter till one morning some two or three months
afterwards, when I was honoured with a visit from the secretary and
solicitor of the insurance Company. They told me that the father of my
poor young friend had threatened them with legal proceedings if they
did not pay the amount of the insurance at once, and asked me to tell
them exactly what had passed at the interview to which I had alluded
in my letter. At first I hesitated as to whether I ought to do so or
not, but ultimately I gave them a true account of all that had taken
place on that fatal 31st of December. They thanked me warmly, said they
thought I had only done my duty in disclosing the matter to them, and
went away.
What use the Company made of this information, or what means they
adopted to probe the mystery to its source, I do not know; but about
six months after my interview with the secretary and solicitor, when
I was beginning to hope that I should never hear of the case again, I
received a summons to attend at an assizes to be shortly holden in the
county town of a northern shire. There was no means of refusing this
command, though I would have given a good deal to be able to evade it.
I therefore found myself, about a fortnight after its receipt, quietly
sitting in the crowded court-house of the aforesaid town, a witness in
the case of ‘M—— _versus_ The Blank Insurance Company.’
I had but little difficulty as I looked round the court in identifying
the plaintiff; for my eyes soon rested on a manly form bearing an
unmistakable resemblance to the young girl by whose death-bed I had
stood about a year before. The beauty of her face was there moulded
in lines of masculine firmness and power; and though her father’s
expression was far from pleasing, there was nothing about him at all
indicative of the character subsequently exhibited to the court. He
appeared to be a gentleman of good birth and position; and as I looked
at him before the case began, I was very curious to know what was his
real position with reference to the insurance, and how far it would be
disclosed on the evidence.
His counsel, in opening the plaintiffs case, said that it was one of
the simplest cases ever ushered into a court of justice. The facts,
he said, were simply these: ‘Two years previously, the late Miss M——
insured her life with the defendants, the Blank Insurance Company,
in two policies of five thousand pounds each. A year after, she had
effected these insurances, Miss M—— had died, without having assigned
or disposed of the policies in any way. Her father, the plaintiff,
was her only next of kin and her administrator, and was now entitled
absolutely to the ten thousand pounds; which the Company, however,
had refused to pay.’ To an uninitiated spectator, the evidence for
the plaintiff certainly seemed to bear out the counsel’s statement;
but when the plaintiff’s case had closed, the counsel on behalf of
the Company rose and said that they were in a position to prove by
a connected chain of evidence that every word of the plaintiff’s
case was valueless, and that this insurance had been effected under
circumstances of the grossest fraud and crime.
I myself was the first witness called on behalf of the Company; and
after much objection, I was allowed to give a plain unvarnished
description of the scene which I have already depicted on that sad
night. You could have heard a pin drop while I was speaking, and the
sensation which was produced in court was manifest. I was of course
severely cross-examined; but as I had nothing to conceal, my testimony
was not shaken.
The next witness for the Company was an eminent London physician, who
stated that in the beginning of March, two years previously, Mr M——
had come to him in London, and had brought with him a young lady, who
he said was his daughter, to have her examined by him. He then made a
careful examination of the young lady, and found her to be in rapid
consumption, of which result he told Mr M——, and added at the same time
that she could not in his opinion live for six months. The Company’s
own doctor was next called, and stated that at the end of the same
month of March, Mr M—— had come to him in London, and told him that
his daughter was anxious to effect an insurance on her life with the
Blank Company, and asked him to appoint a day to examine her. He had
known Mr M—— for many years, but had never seen his daughter. Mr M——,
however, told him that she was a healthy country girl, and he would
have no difficulty in passing her for the Company. It was then agreed
that he should call upon Mr M—— the next day at the hotel at which
they were staying and examine his daughter. He did so; and Mr M—— then
introduced to him as his daughter a handsome healthy-looking girl, with
all the appearance of having lived in the country. The girl looked so
very healthy, that he did not think it necessary to make any minute
examination of her, and merely questioned her as to what diseases—if
any—she had had. She seemed very much confused, but this he attributed
to her natural shyness. He recommended the Company to insure her life
at the ordinary rate for her age, which was then twenty-four. The
doctor was then told to look round the court and say if he saw any one
like the young girl whom on that occasion he had examined; and after a
little while he pointed to a young girl, and said that he believed that
she was the person whom he had then examined.
The excitement in court at this announcement can scarcely be imagined.
Every eye was turned on the young girl, who a few minutes afterwards
ascended the witness-table. As I gazed at her, I was painfully reminded
of the poor creature whom I had seen lying in such trouble less than a
year before; for the likeness to her was strangely great. There was,
however, a robustness, a glow of health about the girl whom I now saw
for the first time, which was sadly wanting in my young friend, and
which served to conceal a resemblance otherwise manifest. She said that
she lived in the south of England with her father, who was a well-to-do
farmer. Two years and a half previously, Mr M—— and his daughter had
come to lodge at their farm for the benefit of Miss M——’s health, as
she was then very delicate. Every one noticed a very strong likeness
between herself and Miss M——, and a firm friendship arose between
them. Mr and Miss M—— stayed about six months at the farm; and when
they were about to go away to London, Mr M—— proposed that she should
go up with them as a companion to his daughter, which she did. On the
day before they left London, Miss M—— went out with her father to pay a
visit, and she was left by herself in the hotel. She was sitting alone
in their private room reading, when suddenly Mr M—— returned alone,
rushed into the room, and said in a threatening manner: ‘You must say
you are my daughter! There is a gentleman coming in now; and mind you
_must_ say you are my daughter! If you don’t, we’ll all be ruined.
Remember!’ He then hastened back, and in less than a minute re-entered
with the Company’s doctor, the last witness. She was so completely
taken by surprise and overcome with alarm, that she did not know what
she was doing, but nevertheless felt completely under the influence of
Mr M——. He introduced her to the doctor as his daughter; the doctor
shook hands with her, and said he was glad to see her looking so strong
and well. He asked her whether she had lived much in the country; and
said he thought it would be a mere farce to go through the form of
examining any one who looked so completely the essence of health as
she did. He mentioned a great number of diseases, and asked her if she
ever had had any of them; and after some other remarks he concluded
with: ‘Well, I think I may now tell them that you’re not going to die
yet awhile.’ He then talked a little to Mr M——; they had wine together;
he bade adieu to her, and the two gentlemen quitted the house. All was
mystery to her. She now began to entertain a confused sort of dread of
Mr M——. When his daughter came home, she told her all about it, and
asked her what it meant; but Miss M—— said that she did not know—that
perhaps it was a joke of her father’s. She, however, forced Miss M—— to
promise never to say anything about it.
What the effect of this evidence was on the occupants of the court,
I can hardly say, for I was too much absorbed in my own thoughts to
notice any manifestation of feeling in others. The truth was now only
too plain. The father of my young friend, knowing that his daughter’s
health was failing, had resolved to profit by her death, and with that
intent had secured a simple country girl and brought her up to London,
to be the unwitting means of accomplishing his unfeeling design. In
London he had learned on the best authority that his daughter could not
live for six months, and within a month afterwards he had insured her
life in her own name, without her knowledge, for a large sum of money,
which he knew must be paid to him on her death; and to secure the lucre
for which he craved, he had passed off for his poor dying daughter a
healthy country girl; he had lied to his old friend, and caused an
innocent girl to perpetrate a fraud. As these facts came home to my
mind in their horrid reality, I gazed across the court to see the man
who had conceived this mighty inhumanity. The coil of truth, as it had
been gradually unravelled by the witnesses, seemed to have wound itself
serpent-like round the frame of its foe; for the form which a little
while before had been erect and defiant was now humbly prone, the eye
which had glanced restlessly round the court was now fixed on the
ground, and a death-like pallor lay on his countenance.
The jury without leaving their box pronounced their verdict for
the Company, and the judge thereupon solemnly announced that he
would direct a criminal prosecution to be instituted against the
plaintiff for the crimes disclosed in that most painful case. At this
announcement, I rose and entreated the judge not to adopt that course.
I reminded him of the dying anxiety of the poor daughter to have her
father saved, and urged that the plaintiff would be sufficiently
punished by the loss of position which must be consequent on the
verdict. But my solicitations were all in vain. The judge said that
he sat there to protect society, and that if such crimes as had been
that day disclosed were allowed to pass unpunished, he would fail in
the duty which he sat there to discharge. A few minutes afterwards Mr
M—— left the court in custody; and as I saw him thus committed to the
pitiless mercy of the law, compassion—which can look on the wicked as
well as the good—seemed to rise within me, and I almost regretted that
I had put the insurance Company on the track which they had followed
with such fatal accuracy.
The law, however, though very powerful, is not omnipotent; and in
this case its power was destined to be futile. It was found not to
be convenient to try Mr M—— at the same assizes; and his trial was
therefore postponed till the following one, and he himself allowed out
on bail. The next assizes came round, and everything was ready for the
trial; but the prisoner was nowhere to be found. They called him in the
court, they called him outside; but in vain. It was soon found that the
prisoner had absconded—vanished no one knew where; and the individuals
who had been kind enough to stake a portion of their worldly goods
on his reappearance, were asked to shew their affection for him by
paying the penalty which the law so properly attaches to such misplaced
philanthropy. The following comment on the case appeared a day or two
afterwards in the local newspaper: ‘We can only say that justice has
been defeated, and a very bad type of criminal has escaped unpunished.
The inscrutable wisdom of Providence has reserved his punishment for
another world.’
* * * * *
More than twenty years after the events above narrated, the course
of my professional business led me to cross the Atlantic and visit
the city of New York. It happened in the course of that visit, as I
was returning to my hotel at a late hour one night, that I became
conscious that a human form was following me. I at once looked round,
and saw within a yard of me an old man with a long white beard
and weather-beaten face, dressed in ragged attire, shoeless and
stockingless. Something in his face caught my attention, and on looking
at it more closely, I recognised it as one which I had seen before,
though I could not then tell where. When I turned round, the old man
muttered in an earnest, almost savage manner: ‘Give me some money; I
want it badly—very badly;’ but as I did not feel quite easy at finding
so questionable a creature so close to me at such an hour of the night
and in a strange city, I made no reply to his request, but hastened my
steps. He, however, followed me, and again craved for money; and this
time I answered in our English stereotyped form: ‘I have nothing for
you, my good man.’
I suppose, however, that he did not catch my reply, for he added
sharply: ‘What do you say?’ To which I answered: ‘I say that I have no
money for you.’
‘Do you indeed?’ he said with fury. ‘Then keep it, and perish with it.
I hope it may drag you down, as it did me.’ With these words he turned
away, and I heard his steps behind me no more; but I had not gone very
far when I recollected on what former occasion I had seen the old man’s
face. I remembered that it was the same face which twenty years before
I had seen in that northern court-house—the face that had known a
death-like pallor when the heavy chain of Truth clanked forth its tale
of hidden guilt. I at once stopped and turned round; but I could only
distinguish faintly the outline of his figure in the distance; and as I
gazed at that ragged form, retreating I knew not whither, there flashed
with vivid reality through my mind the events which I have endeavoured
here to relate, and I remembered the words of a thoughtful modern
writer: ‘The secrets of men’s lives are rarely held inviolate till
eternity—there is a reckoning here without the aid of eternal books.’