As soon as he could bring his distracted thoughts to bear upon the
present scene, he perceived that the trial of James Wilson for the murder
of Henry Carson was just commencing. The clerk was gabbling over the
indictment, and in a minute or two there was the accustomed question,
“How say you, Guilty or not Guilty?”
Although but one answer was expected—was customary in all cases—there was
a pause of dead silence, an interval of solemnity even in this hackneyed
part of the proceeding; while the prisoner at the bar stood with
compressed lips, looking at the judge with his outward eyes, but with
far other and different scenes presented to his mental vision; a sort of
rapid recapitulation of his life—remembrances of his childhood—his father
(so proud of him, his first-born child)—his sweet little playfellow,
Mary—his hopes, his love—his despair, yet still, yet ever and ever, his
love—the blank, wide world it had been without her love—his mother—his
childless mother—but not long to be so—not long to be away from all
she loved—nor during that time to be oppressed with doubt as to his
innocence, sure and secure of her darling’s heart;—he started from his
instant’s pause, and said in a low, firm voice:
“Not guilty, my lord.”
The circumstances of the murder, the discovery of the body, the causes
of suspicion against Jem, were as well known to most of the audience as
they are to you, so there was some little buzz of conversation going on
among the people while the leading counsel for the prosecution made his
very effective speech.
“That’s Mr. Carson, the father, sitting behind Serjeant Wilkinson!”
“What a noble-looking old man he is! so stern and inflexible, with such
classical features! Does he not remind you of some of the busts of
Jupiter?”
“I am more interested by watching the prisoner. Criminals always interest
me. I try to trace in the features common to humanity some expression of
the crimes by which they have distinguished themselves from their kind.
I have seen a good number of murderers in my day, but I have seldom seen
one with such marks of Cain on his countenance as the man at the bar.”
“Well, I am no physiognomist, but I don’t think his face strikes me
as bad. It certainly is gloomy and depressed, and not unnaturally so,
considering his situation.”
“Only look at his low, resolute brow, his downcast eye, his white
compressed lips. He never looks up—just watch him.”
“His forehead is not so low if he had that mass of black hair removed,
and is very square, which some people say is a good sign. If others are
to be influenced by such trifles as you are, it would have been much
better if the prison barber had cut his hair a little previous to the
trial; and as for downcast eye and compressed lip, it is all part and
parcel of his inward agitation just now; nothing to do with character, my
good fellow.”
Poor Jem! His raven hair (his mother’s pride, and so often fondly
caressed by her fingers), was that, too, to have its influence against
him?
The witnesses were called. At first they consisted principally of
policemen, who, being much accustomed to giving evidence, knew what were
the material points they were called on to prove, and did not lose the
time of the court in listening to anything unnecessary.
“Clear as day against the prisoner,” whispered one attorney’s clerk to
another.
“Black as night, you mean,” replied his friend; and they both smiled.
“Jane Wilson! who’s she? Some relation, I suppose, from the name.”
“The mother—she that is to prove the gun part of the case.”
“Oh, ay—I remember! Rather hard on her, too, I think.”
They both were silent, as one of the officers of the court ushered Mrs.
Wilson into the witness-box. I have often called her the “old woman,”
and “an old woman,” because, in truth, her appearance was so much beyond
her years, which could not be many above fifty. But partly owing to her
accident in early life, which left a stamp of pain upon her face, partly
owing to her anxious temper, partly to her sorrows, and partly to her
limping gait, she always gave me the idea of age. But now she might have
seemed more than seventy; her lines were so set and deep, her features
so sharpened, and her walk so feeble. She was trying to check her sobs
into composure, and (unconsciously) was striving to behave as she thought
would best please her poor boy, whom she knew she had often grieved by
her uncontrolled impatience. He had buried his face in his arms, which
rested on the front of the dock (an attitude he retained during the
greater part of his trial, and which prejudiced many against him).
The counsel began the examination.
“Your name is Jane Wilson, I believe?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The mother of the prisoner at the bar?”
“Yes, sir,” with quivering voice, ready to break out into weeping, but
earning respect by the strong effort at self-control, prompted as I have
said before, by her earnest wish to please her son by her behaviour.
The barrister now proceeded to the important part of the examination,
tending to prove that the gun found on the scene of the murder was the
prisoner’s. She had committed herself so fully to the policeman that she
could not well retract; so without much delay in bringing the question
round to the desired point, the gun was produced in court, and the
inquiry made:
“That gun belongs to your son, does it not?”
She clenched the sides of the witness-box in her efforts to make her
parched tongue utter words. At last she moaned forth:
“Oh! Jem, Jem! what mun I say?”
Every one bent forward to hear the prisoner’s answer; although, in fact,
it was of little importance to the issue of the trial. He lifted up his
head; and with a face brimming full of pity for his mother, yet resolved
into endurance, said:
“Tell the truth, mother!”
And so she did, and with the fidelity of a little child. Every one felt
that she did; and the little colloquy between mother and son did them
some slight service in the opinion of the audience. But the awful judge
sat unmoved; and the jurymen changed not a muscle of their countenances;
while the counsel for the prosecution went triumphantly through this part
of the case, including the fact of Jem’s absence from home on the night
of the murder, and bringing every admission to bear right against the
prisoner.
It was over. She was told to go down. But she could no longer compel her
mother’s heart to keep silence, and suddenly turning towards the judge
(with whom she imagined the verdict to rest), she thus addressed him with
her choking voice:
“And now, sir, I’ve telled you the whole truth, as _he_ bid me; but don’t
you let what I have said go for to hang him; oh, my lord judge, take my
word for it, he’s as innocent as the child as has yet to be born. For
sure, I, who am his mother, and have nursed him on my knee, and been
gladdened by the sight of him every day since, ought to know him better
than yon pack of fellows” (indicating the jury, while she strove against
her heart to render her words distinct and clear for her dear son’s
sake), “who, I’ll go bail, never saw him before this morning in all their
born days. My lord judge, he’s so good I often wondered what harm there
was in him; many is the time when I’ve been fretted (for I’m frabbit
enough at times), when I’ve scold’t myself, and said, ‘You ungrateful
thing, the Lord God has given you Jem, and isn’t that blessing enough for
you?’ But He has seen fit to punish me. If Jem is—if Jem is—taken from
me, I shall be a childless woman; and very poor, having nought left to
love on earth, and I cannot say ‘His will be done.’ I cannot, my lord
judge, oh, I cannot!”
While sobbing out these words she was led away by the officers of the
court, but tenderly and reverently, with the respect which great sorrow
commands.
The stream of evidence went on and on, gathering fresh force from every
witness who was examined, and threatening to overwhelm poor Jem. Already
they had proved that the gun was his, that he had been heard not many
days before the commission of the deed to threaten the deceased; indeed
that the police had, at that time, been obliged to interfere, to prevent
some probable act of violence. It only remained to bring forward a
sufficient motive for the threat and the murder. The clue to this had
been furnished by the policeman, who had overheard Jem’s angry language
to Mr. Carson; and his report in the first instance had occasioned the
subpœna to Mary.
And now she was to be called on to bear witness. The court was by this
time almost as full as it could hold; but fresh attempts were being made
to squeeze in at all the entrances, for many were anxious to see and hear
this part of the trial.
Old Mr. Carson felt an additional beat at his heart at the thought of
seeing the fatal Helen, the cause of all—a kind of interest and yet
repugnance, for was not she beloved by the dead; nay, perhaps in her way,
loving and mourning for the same being that he himself was so bitterly
grieving over? And yet he felt as if he abhorred her and her rumoured
loveliness, as if she were the curse against him; and he grew jealous
of the love with which she had inspired his son, and would fain have
deprived her of even her natural right of sorrowing over her lover’s
untimely end; for, you see, it was a fixed idea in the minds of all that
the handsome, bright, gay, rich young gentleman must have been beloved in
preference to the serious, almost stern-looking smith, who had to toil
for his daily bread.
Hitherto the effect of the trial had equalled Mr. Carson’s most sanguine
hopes, and a severe look of satisfaction came over the face of the
avenger—over that countenance whence a smile had departed, never more to
return.
All eyes were directed to the door through which the witnesses entered.
Even Jem looked up to catch one glimpse, before he hid his face from her
look of aversion. The officer had gone to fetch her.
She was in exactly the same attitude as when Job Legh had seen her two
hours before through the half-open door. Not a finger had moved. The
officer summoned her, but she did not stir. She was so still, he thought
she had fallen asleep, and he stepped forward and touched her. She
started up in an instant, and followed him with a kind of rushing, rapid
motion into the court, into the witness-box.
And amid all that sea of faces, misty and swimming before her eyes, she
saw but two clear bright spots, distinct and fixed: the judge, who might
have to condemn; and the prisoner, who might have to die.
The mellow sunlight streamed down that high window on her head, and fell
on the rich treasure of her golden hair, stuffed away in masses under her
little bonnet-cap; and in those warm beams the motes kept dancing up and
down. The wind had changed—had changed almost as soon as she had given up
her watching; the wind had changed, and she heeded it not.
Many who were looking for mere flesh and blood beauty, mere colouring,
were disappointed; for her face was deadly white, and almost set in its
expression, while a mournful, bewildered soul looked out of the depths of
those soft, deep grey eyes. But others recognised a higher and a stranger
kind of beauty; one that would keep its hold on the memory for many after
years.
I was not there myself; but one who was, told me that her look, and
indeed her whole face, was more like the well-known engraving from
Guido’s picture of “Beatrice Cenci” than anything else he could give
me an idea of. He added that her countenance haunted him, like the
remembrance of some wild sad melody, heard in childhood; that it would
perpetually recur with its mute imploring agony.
With all the court reeling before her (always save and except those awful
two) she heard a voice speak, and answered the simple inquiry (something
about her name) mechanically, as if in a dream. So she went on for two or
three more questions with a strange wonder in her brain, at the reality
of the terrible circumstances in which she was placed.
Suddenly she was roused, she knew not how or by what. She was conscious
that all was real, that hundreds were looking at her, that true-sounding
words were being extracted from her; that that figure, so bowed down,
with the face concealed with both hands, was really Jem. Her face flushed
scarlet, and then paler than before. But in dread of herself with the
tremendous secret imprisoned within her, she exerted every power she had
to keep in the full understanding of what was going on, of what she was
asked, and of what she answered. With all her faculties preternaturally
alive and sensitive, she heard the next question from the pert young
barrister, who was delighted to have the examination of this witness.
“And pray, may I ask, which was the favoured lover? You say you knew both
these young men. Which was the favoured lover? Which did you prefer?”
And who was he, the questioner, that he should dare so lightly to ask of
her heart’s secrets? That he should dare to ask her to tell, before that
multitude assembled there, what woman usually whispers with blushes and
tears, and many hesitations, to one ear alone?
So, for an instant, a look of indignation contracted Mary’s brow, as
she steadily met the eyes of the impertinent counsellor. But, in that
instant, she saw the hands removed from a face beyond, behind; and a
countenance revealed of such intense love and woe—such a deprecating
dread of her answer; and suddenly her resolution was taken. The present
was everything; the future, that vast shroud, it was maddening to think
upon; but _now_ she might own her fault, but _now_ she might even own her
love. Now, when the beloved stood thus, abhorred of men, there would be
no feminine shame to stand between her and her avowal. So she also turned
towards the judge, partly to mark that her answer was not given to the
monkeyfied man who questioned her, and likewise that the face might be
averted from, and her eyes not gaze upon, the form that contracted with
the dread of the words he anticipated.
“He asks me which of them two I liked best. Perhaps I liked Mr. Harry
Carson once—I don’t know—I’ve forgotten; but I loved James Wilson, that’s
now on trial, above what tongue can tell—above all else on earth put
together; and I love him now better than ever, though he has never known
a word of it till this minute. For you see, sir, mother died before I was
thirteen, before I could know right from wrong about some things; and I
was giddy and vain, and ready to listen to any praise of my good looks;
and this poor young Mr. Carson fell in with me, and told me he loved me;
and I was foolish enough to think he meant me marriage: a mother is a
pitiful loss to a girl, sir; and so I used to fancy I could like to be
a lady, and rich, and never know want any more. I never found out how
dearly I loved another till one day, when James Wilson asked me to marry
him, and I was very hard and sharp in my answer—for, indeed, sir, I’d a
deal to bear just then—and he took me at my word and left me; and from
that day to this, I’ve never spoken a word to him, or set eyes on him;
though I’d fain have done so, to try and show him we had both been too
hasty; for he’d not been gone out of my sight above a minute, before I
knew I loved—far above my life,” said she, dropping her voice as she came
to this second confession of the strength of her attachment. “But if the
gentleman asks me which I loved the best, I make answer, I was flattered
by Mr. Carson, and pleased with his flattery; but James Wilson, I——”
She covered her face with her hands, to hide the burning scarlet blushes,
which even dyed her fingers.