THE WIDOW GIBBERTY'S TRIAL
The following day, with all the masquerading that the Law delights in,
Master Nathaniel was pronounced in the Senate to be dead. His robes
of office were taken off him, and they were donned by Master Polydore
Vigil, the new Mayor. As for Master Nathaniel--was wrapped in a shroud,
laid on a bier and carried to his home by four of the Senators, the
populace lining the streets and greeting the mock obsequies with
catcalls and shouts of triumph.
But the ceremony over, when Master Ambrose, boiling with indignation at
the outrage, came to visit his friend, he found a very cheerful corpse
who greeted him with a smack on the back and a cry of "Never say die,
Brosie! I've something here that should interest you," and he thrust
into his hand an open in-folio.
"What's this?" asked the bewildered Master Ambrose.
There was a certain solemnity in Master Nathaniel's voice as he
replied, "It's the Law, Ambrose--the homoeopathic antidote that our
forefathers discovered to delusion. Sit down this very minute and read
that trial through."
As Master Ambrose knew well, it was useless trying to talk to Nat about
one thing when his mind was filled with another. Besides, his curiosity
was aroused, for he had come to realize that Nat's butterfly whims were
sometimes the disguise of shrewd and useful intuitions. So, through
force of long habit, growling out a protest about this being no time
for tomfoolery and rubbish, he settled down to read the volume at the
place where Master Nathaniel had opened it, namely, at the account of
the trial of the widow Gibberty for the murder of her husband.
The plaintiff, as we have seen, was a labourer, Diggory Carp by name,
who had been in the employ of the late farmer. He said he had been
suddenly dismissed by the defendant just after harvest, when it was not
easy to find another job.
No reason was given for his dismissal, so Diggory went to the farmer
himself, who, he said, had always been a kind and just master, to beg
that he might be kept on. The farmer practically admitted that there
was no reason for his dismissal except that the mistress had taken a
dislike to him. "Women are kittle cattle, Diggory," he had said, with
an apologetic laugh, "and it's best humouring them. Though it's hard
on the folks they get their knife into. So I fear it will be best for
every one concerned that you should leave my service, Diggory."
But he gave him a handful of florins over and above his wages, and
told him he might take a sack of lentils from the granary--if he were
careful that the mistress did not get wind of it.
Now, Diggory had a shrewd suspicion as to why the defendant wanted to
get rid of him. Though she was little more than a girl--she was the
farmer's second wife and more like his daughter's elder sister than her
stepdame--she had the reputation of being as staid and sensible as a
woman of forty. But Diggory knew better. He had discovered that she had
a lover. One evening he had come on her in the orchard, lying in the
arms of a young foreigner, called Christopher Pugwalker, a herbalist,
who had first appeared in the neighbourhood just before the great
drought.
"And from that time on," said Diggory, "she had got her knife into me,
and everything I did was wrong. And I believe she hadn't a moment's
peace till she'd got rid of me. Though, if she'd only known, I was no
blab, and not one for blaming young blood and a wife half the age of
her husband."
So he and his wife and his children were turned out on the world.
The first night they camped out in a field, and when they had lighted
a fire Diggory opened the sack that, with the farmer's permission, he
had taken from the granary, in order that his wife might make them some
lentil soup for supper. But lo and behold! instead of lentils the sack
contained fruit--fruit that Diggory Carp, as a west countryman, born
and bred near the Elfin Marches, recognised at the first glance to be
of a kind that he would not dream of touching himself or of allowing
his wife and children to touch ... the sack, in fact, contained fairy
fruit. So they buried it in the field, for, as Diggory said, "Though
the stuff be poison for men, they do say as how it's a mighty fine
manure for the crops."
For a week or so they tramped the country, living from hand to mouth.
Sometimes Diggory would earn a little by doing odd jobs for the
farmers, or by playing the fiddle at village weddings, for Diggory, it
would seem, was a noted fiddler.
But with the coming of winter they began to feel the pinch of poverty,
and his wife bethought her of the trade of basket-making she had
learned in her youth; and, as they were camping at the time at the
place where grew the best osiers for the purpose, she determined to
see if her fingers had retained their old cunning. As the sap of these
particular osiers was a deadly poison, she would not allow the children
to help her to gather them.
So she set to and make wicker urns in which the farmers' wives could
keep their grain in winter, and baskets of fancy shapes for lads to
give to their sweethearts to hold their ribbands and fal-lals. The
children peddled them about the countryside, and thus they managed to
keep the pot boiling.
The following summer, shortly before harvest, Diggory's eldest girl
went to try and sell some baskets in the village of Swan. There she
met the defendant, whom she asked to look at her wares, relying on not
being recognised as a daughter of Diggory's, through having been in
service at another farm when her father was working at the Gibbertys'.
The defendant seemed pleased with the baskets, bought two or three, and
got into talk with the girl about the basket-making industry, in the
course of which she learned that the best osiers for the purpose were
very poisonous. Finally she asked the girl to bring her a bundle of the
osiers in question, as making baskets, she said, would make a pleasant
variety, of an evening, from the eternal spinning; and in the course of
a few days the girl brought her, as requested, a bundle of the osiers,
and was well paid for them.
Not long afterwards came the news that the farmer Gibberty had died
suddenly in the night, and with it was wafted the rumour of foul play.
There was an old custom in that part of the country that whenever there
was a death in the house all the inmates should march in procession
past the corpse. It was really a sort of primitive inquest, for it
was believed that in the case of foul play the corpse would bleed at
the nose as the murderer passed it. This custom, said Diggory, was
universally observed in that part of the country, even in cases as free
from all suspicion as those of women dying in child-bed. And in all the
taverns and farm-houses of the neighbourhood it was being whispered
that the corpse of the farmer Gibberty, on the defendant's walking past
it, had bled copiously, and when Christopher Pugwalker's turn had come
to pass it, it had bled a second time.
And knowing what he did, Diggory Carp came to feel that it was his duty
to lodge an accusation against the widow.
His two reasons, then, for thinking her guilty were that the corpse
had bled when she passed it, and that she had bought from his daughter
osiers the sap of which was poisonous. The motive for the crime he
found in her having a young lover, whom she wished should stand in her
dead husband's shoes. It was useless for the defendant to deny that
Pugwalker was her lover--the fact had for months been the scandal of
the neighbourhood, and she had finally lost all sense of shame and had
actually had him to lodge in the farm for several months before her
husband's death. This was proved beyond a shadow of a doubt by the
witnesses summoned by Diggory.
As for the bleeding of the corpse: vulgar superstitions did not fall
within the cognizance of the Law, and the widow ignored it in her
defence. However, with regard to that other vulgar superstition to
which the plaintiff had alluded, fairy fruit, she admitted, in passing,
that very much against her wishes her late husband had sometimes used
it as manure--though she had never discovered how he procured it.
As to the osiers--she allowed that she had bought a bundle from the
plaintiff's daughter; but that it was for no sinister purpose she was
able conclusively to prove. For she summoned various witnesses--among
others the midwife from the village, who was always called in in cases
of sickness--who had been present during the last hours of the farmer,
and who all of them swore that his death had been a painless one. And
various physicians, who were summoned as expert witnesses, all
maintained that the victim of the poisonous sap of osiers always died
in agony.
Then she turned the tables on the plaintiff. She proved that Diggory's
dismissal had been neither sudden nor unjust; for, owing to his
thieving propensities, he had often been threatened with it by her late
husband, and several of the farm-servants testified to the truth of her
words.
As to the handful of florins and the sack of lentils, all she could say
was that it was not like the farmer to load a dishonest servant with
presents. But nothing had been said about two sacks of corn, a pig,
and a valuable hen and her brood, which had disappeared simultaneously
with the departure of the plaintiff. Her husband, she said, had been
very angry about it, and had wanted to have Diggory pursued and clapped
into gaol; but she had persuaded him to be merciful. The long and the
short of it was that the widow left the court without a stain on her
character, and that a ten years' sentence for theft was passed on
Diggory.
As for Christopher Pugwalker, he had disappeared shortly before the
trial, and the widow denied all knowledge of his whereabouts.