THE EVIDENCE.
“But it is true--I killed Frederick’s wife,” said Innocent.
Her voice was tranquil as usual; but her eyes were dilated and full of
woe, like the eyes of a dumb creature hardly used. The scene had
strangely changed for her. Instead of the sunny terrace at Longueville,
the sunny garden at The Elms, the four gray walls of a prison-cell
surrounded her. I will confess to the gentle reader that I never was in
a prison, and I do not know how it looked; but I never heard that there
were special hardships in poor Innocent’s case, and I believe, indeed,
that she was allowed many relaxations of the ordinary prison rules. She
was seated on her little bed, Mrs. Eastwood was with her, her husband,
and Mr. Pennefather, the solicitor, who had visited Sir Alexis at
Longueville, had come down to Sterrington with the eminent lawyer who
was to defend poor Innocent, to have a personal interview with her.
These two learned persons were subjecting the poor girl to a private
examination, and straining all their faculties to get at the exact facts
of the case.
“Oh, Innocent,” said Mrs. Eastwood, “how often have I told you, dear,
that you are mistaken. Do not give this gentleman a false idea. It is a
delusion, a mere delusion----”
“Let her tell me her own story,” said Mr. Serjeant Ryder, the lawyer. He
was impatient of interference, and it seemed to him that a woman in
tears, ready to interrupt his unfortunate client’s story by weak denials
of a guilt which the culprit confessed, was a most undesirable assistant
at this interview. “Let her tell me her own story,” he repeated, “there
is nothing so important as that I should know the whole truth.”
He had heard the story already, and had been led to believe the case
simple enough. But an experimental lawyer, accustomed to all the
subtilities of crime, does not easily believe in the most obvious story.
“Mere delusion” might, indeed, tempt a fool to accuse himself, but it
was not enough to explain a criminal prosecution, and all the
solemnities involved. I cannot describe the feelings with which the two
bystanders kept silence, and listened to Innocent’s story, which she
repeated as she had so often repeated it. Sir Alexis did not say a word,
and he put his hand on Mrs. Eastwood’s arm, restraining her when she
would have spoken. Innocent was left free to tell her own tale, which
she did in her simplicity, giving all the details with absolute
exactness and that curious matter-of-fact truth which was as
characteristic of her as her visionary looks. She forgot nothing, she
left out no circumstances. It was not until the second time of going
over it that she even interposed that gentle profession of innocence, “I
did not mean it,” in the midst of her full confession of guilt.
“You did not mean it?”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Eastwood, unable to keep silence, “how can you ask her
such a question? She mean it! She did not even do it, though she thinks
so--but mean it? Oh, Sir Alexis, this is too much.”
“I must take my own way,” said the lawyer. “I beg your pardon, but I
cannot be interrupted. You did not mean what? To hurt the sick woman, or
to put more than twenty drops in the glass? These, you perceive, are two
different things. Pray let me put my questions my own way. If I could be
permitted to see Lady Longueville alone, it would be much better. Your
feelings, I am sure, are perfectly natural, but if I could see her
alone----”
Innocent put out her hand and caught at her aunt’s dress with a low cry.
“Oh, do not go away!” she cried, roused out of her usual calm. “It would
be better to kill me than to leave me here alone. Oh, if you knew what
it is to be alone!--all strange faces--nothing you ever saw before--and
not even the window as there used to be in Pisa, and Niccolo to come in
before he went away. Oh, Niccolo, Niccolo!” cried the girl, her voice
rising in a cry of such loneliness as went to the heart even of the men
who questioned her. She calmed down next moment, and looked with a faint
smile from one to another--from her aunt to her husband. “When it is day
and you are here it is different; but at night it is all a mist and
dark, and there seems no one but Niccolo in all the world, and Niccolo
is not here.”
“Oh, Innocent, my darling,” said Mrs. Eastwood, “if they would but let
me stay with you night and day----”
“Niccolo never stayed the night,” said Innocent, wandering off, with a
vague smile, into her recollections. “When he had put down the salad and
said, ‘Felicissima notte,’ he went away. I could hear his steps all the
way down the stairs; but I never was frightened. If he would but come in
and say, ‘Good-night,’ I should be happier--for sometimes I think I am
in Pisa now, only the room is smaller and there is no window,” she said,
looking up wistfully at the high window in the wall, which, with all her
exertions, she could not reach. While she was thus gazing with her head
turned away, the two lawyers exchanged significant glances. Mr. Serjeant
Ryder looked at Sir Alexis with a faint elevation of his eyebrows, and
shut his note-book with something between impatience and despair.
“I don’t think,” he said, “that I need trouble Lady Longueville any
further to-day.”
“Go and ask him what he thinks,” said Mrs. Eastwood anxiously in the ear
of Sir Alexis; but Longueville, too, shook his head. He saw well enough
what Innocent’s counsel thought; he had no desire to have his conclusion
put into words. He himself could not banish from his mind a chill sense
that Innocent had retrograded, that she had gone back ever so far from
the mental condition to which she had reached when he read to her on the
terrace at Longueville. A chill dread struck his heart that this
terrible event in her life would contradict all his hopes, would put a
final end to all her possibilities of development, and reduce the simple
unopened mind into mere idiocy. This horror of doubt being in his own
mind, it may be supposed that he had no wish to have it confirmed and
forced upon him by the voice of another. He shook his head and threw
himself down in the languor of despondency upon the wooden stool from
which his counsel had risen. This was almost the most bitter moment he
had yet gone through. She for whom he had hoped so much, his crowning
glory, his rare, unique blossom of humanity, would this be her
conclusion? She would be acquitted--on the score of idiocy! It seemed
the most hopeful, the only prospect before them.
Mrs. Eastwood happily did not give herself up to any such thoughts. Her
office for the moment was to cheer Innocent, not to forecast what was
coming. She sat down beside her on the bed, and told her everything she
could think of which would amuse her. She told her minutely how Nelly
and herself had found lodgings opposite the prison. “You cannot see us,
my darling; but we can see you,” she said, with a show of cheerfulness,
“at least we can see your window. One of us is always watching you,
Innocent. Is not that a little comfort to think of? If we cannot say
good-night, so that you can hear, we say it in our hearts. Nelly sat
half the night through watching, looking up at the window. What a pity
it is so high--if it were not so high you could look across the road to
us, and then you would feel as if you were at home. But when you say
your prayers, dear, then you can make sure that we are with you; for I
don’t think there is one hour--not an hour, my darling--that Nelly and I
are not praying for you.” Here for a moment Mrs. Eastwood broke down.
“Yes,” said Innocent, pleased, like a child. “I will do so too. Saying
your prayers is a very good way; but I wish I could go down-stairs and
across to the Spina as I used to do. I liked the chapel at the High
Lodge; the minster is too great. It is so strange,” she went on, with a
smile. “I cannot get it out of my heart that the Arno is down there, and
the Spina Church just as it used to be. It is because I cannot look out
of the window.”
“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Eastwood caressingly; “but of course you know
that the Spina is not there.”
“Oh, yes,” said Innocent; “and sometimes I think it must be Longueville
and the great trees stretching for miles--it is so strange not to see;
but I never think it is _home_. I do not feel that it could be home.”
“Listen,” said Mrs. Eastwood in Longueville’s ear. “She is as sensible
as any one can be--full of imagination, poor darling; but nothing else.
God bless her! she was fond of Niccolo, and all that. And it has a very
strange effect upon one, when one cannot see out of the window. She is
as sensible as you or me.”
Longueville shook his head still, but took comfort. I think, however,
that when he went away it was, on the whole, better for the poor
prisoner; for though the anxiety of the watch he kept upon her was
disguised as far as he could do it, it still disturbed vaguely the
absolute confidence which alone made Innocent happy. The doubt disturbed
her--she could not have told why. It was only when she knew that she was
entirely in possession of the sympathy of her surroundings, a knowledge
which she attained by no intellectual process, but by something in the
air, that Innocent lost her look of woe. Even the prison, the terrible
loneliness of the night which she had to look forward to; the shock of
this dreadful event which had taken place in her life did not prevent
her smile from regaining much of its simple sweetness when her aunt
talked to her alone, prattled to her--Heaven help them!--of subjects
much unlike those which one would expect to be discussed in a prison
cell, of every gentle folly that occurred to her, and trifles far enough
from her aching heart.
Mr. Ryder and Mr. Pennefather remained in Sterrington that night, and
there was a long and solemn consultation held after the prison was
closed to Innocent’s relations in the little sitting-room opposite the
jail where the Eastwoods were living. The Spring Assizes were
approaching very closely, and Innocent’s anxious defenders were divided
upon one important subject--whether to seek for delay and gain time to
collect all the evidence they could in her favour, including that of the
doctor’s, who had left Sterborne after Amanda’s death, and who was
naturally a most important witness, or whether to allow the case to come
on at the Assizes which was to be held in less than three weeks, and for
which the quiet country town of Sterrington was already preparing with
unusual flutter of anticipation, for an exciting and interesting trial,
a very romance in real life, which would draw the eyes of the world upon
it, was no common occurrence. Both the lawyers were anxious for delay,
but the family more immediately concerned were equally anxious that the
trial might be got over as speedily as possible; partly, perhaps,
because it was impossible for them to believe in any but a favourable
issue as soon as the case was fully gone into, and partly from the more
serious and substantial reason that all felt the impossibility of
Innocent bearing up against a lengthened interval of loneliness and
suspense. “The child will die,” Mrs. Eastwood said. Sir Alexis did not
explain his fears, but they were of a still more miserable kind. Whether
she lived or died, she would probably, he believed, have fallen into a
blank idiocy even before these three terrible weeks were over, and if
the three weeks were lengthened into three months, there could be no
hope for her whatever. “The trial must come on as soon as possible,” he
said, with an obstinacy which his confidential adviser, Mr. Pennefather,
who flattered himself that he knew Sir Alexis to the very depths of his
soul, could not understand, and no argument could move him from his
position. Altogether, the lawyers, I fear, were not satisfied with the
unhappy “relations.” It is true that relations are apt to be either
over-confident or over-frightened, and to insist illogically upon the
innocence of the accused, when the thing to be done is to prove that
innocence--a very different matter from believing in it. But their
obstinacy on the point of the trial, their indifference to the necessity
of the doctor’s presence, and the irrelevant interruptions made by the
ladies, at last provoked Mr. Ryder, who was not famed for his temper.
“These matters ought to be left entirely in our hands,” he said
peremptorily. “The doctor, so far as I can see at present, is the only
witness on whom we could depend.”
“But when I tell you,” cried Mrs. Eastwood, “that I was there--that no
one thought of such a thing--that it was a mere delusion----”
“What was a mere delusion?” said the lawyer sharply. “Did Lady
Longueville give the draught or not? Is she under a delusion as to the
actual opiate, or simply as to having killed the patient? If it is
certain that she gave the draught, then the medical evidence is all
important. We must discriminate between these two points. Is there any
proof, except her confession that she gave the draught at all?”
Mrs. Eastwood looked up quickly, with a hard, sudden drawing of her
breath. She looked round the men, who were none of them in her
confidence, and a sudden sense of fright sealed her lips. “They have no
proof that I know of,” she answered, faltering, and, taking courage,
bore the steady look which Mr. Ryder gave her without shrinking. As for
Alexis, his mind was absorbed in his own gloomy thoughts, and he paid no
attention to this little episode. Vane, for his part, had not heard of
the trial. Mrs. Eastwood withdrew soon after, trembling from head to
foot, and went to the little room, in which Nelly was sitting, gazing up
at poor Innocent’s high window with tender superstition, and threw
herself upon her child’s shoulder, sobbing and sick with misery.
Frederick had taken the phial out of her desk, and had thrown it into
the fire at the first rumour of doubt about Amanda’s death. She had
suffered him to do it, she could not tell why, and now how was she to
explain? What was she to do? To say that he had done it would be to
involve him, already, unhappily, too much involved, for whose sake it
would be the effort of the prosecution to prove the deed had been done.
And it was easier to be silent about it altogether than to tell how so
fatal a mistake had been made. The more Mrs. Eastwood thought of it, the
more she felt how serious a mistake it was; and if she could have said
truly that she herself had done it, I think she would have gone back at
once and told her story. But to say that Frederick had interfered, that
he had destroyed the only tangible proof of poor Innocent’s wild
tale--he whom everybody thought badly of already, who was supposed the
cause of all; who to every vulgar imagination, even to his own, supplied
the motive necessary to make Innocent’s guilt possible,--how could she
mention his name? how involve him doubly, making him, as it were, an
accomplice? With dismal confidence in chance, she said to herself that
no one knew anything about the phial; that it would not be thought of
unless she herself mentioned it. But after this she shrank from
discussion of the subject. She avoided any encounter with the lawyers.
She was to be, poor soul, one of the principal witnesses, and many a
miserable, anxious prayer did the poor woman make that God would direct
the minds of her questioners away from this one point upon which she had
gone astray. It seemed easier to her to trust to a miracle for
deliverance than to confess the truth.
During the interval which followed it would be impossible to describe
the alternations of hope and of misery which swept over the unhappy
family, who kept together in their little lodging opposite the prison.
They were allowed to be with poor Innocent during the greater portion of
the day, and then the ladies put on a semblance of ease, and even
gaiety, which was far from real. But in the dreary evenings they were
apart from her--and the evenings of March are still long--the
vicissitudes of feeling to which they were subject were like the
changes of a fever. Sometimes it seemed so impossible to them that any
one could for a moment believe so incredible an accusation; and again
all the horrible accumulation of proof would gather round their souls.
The love of the poor girl for her cousin--love which they had themselves
believed, and of which they but dimly now had come to recognize the real
character; her dislike, openly professed, for Amanda; her strange vigil
by Amanda’s side, brought about in so simply accidental a way, yet which
might be made to bear the aspect of a deliberate plot; her sudden and
unaccountable flight; her confession. When they recollected all these
things, horror would come over them, dismay, and almost despair.
These and a great many other particulars were in all the papers,
reported and dwelt upon with all the avidity natural when the public
mind has a story so interesting presented to it--a romance in real life.
There had been the usual horrible preliminaries, into which it is not
necessary for me to enter, before the warrant was produced for
Innocent’s arrest. Poor Amanda’s last repose had been disturbed to
furnish evidence, though, owing to the lapse of time, with little or no
result; but the circumstantial evidence had seemed so strong to the
magistrates before whom Innocent was first examined as to warrant her
immediate committal. All that the public knew in her favour was mere
supposition and hearsay, while the facts on the other side were very
apparent. One dismal feature in the case, however, which appalled all
who heard of it, was that while all Innocent’s friends were called for
the prosecution, it was by some cursed spite of fate only her enemies,
with one exception, who could be called for her defence. Frederick was
the only witness capable of saying anything about Amanda’s death who
would not be the personal enemy of the unhappy girl, and every one was
aware under what difficulties, and with what prejudices against him, the
man whom the public supposed the cause of the whole would appear before
a British jury. In such cases women have the best of it. A woman who has
been the cause of a deadly struggle between two men is not discredited,
but rather gains a fictitious interest by it. But a man for whom two
women have appeared to contend bears always a miserable aspect. Men
despise him, and women hate him; his evidence in favour of a culprit is
worth nothing, for he is supposed bound in honour to perjure himself, if
necessary, to shield the creature who has risked her life for him. The
public, as was natural, regarded Frederick with scorn and disgust. And
yet, with the exception of Frederick, only Innocent’s enemies, the
father, the nurse, the women servants, all committed to proceed against
her, could be called for her defence--a thought which might well have
appalled the stoutest heart.
Jenny Eastwood had started at once in search of the doctor, whose
evidence it was believed was of so much importance, and who had gone,
not to the Colonies, as Frederick said, but to Transylvania, and other
remote parts of Europe, with a scientific expedition. It was hoped that
he might be brought back in time for the trial. And the anxious days
went on--terrible days, but so full of eager consultation, of anxious
reviewing of every circumstance, of the efforts made by all to keep each
other up, and to support the poor girl herself, whose mind certainly
seemed to weaken under the effects of her confinement, that they fled as
if on wings. The unhappy family living at the prison gates, going to and
fro constantly, identifying themselves with the poor young prisoner, yet
probably destined to prove her guilt, became the object of much public
compassion. The newspapers enlarged greatly on the attractive theme, and
some graphic and eloquent journals went out of their way to paint this
striking picture of family devotion and suffering. But there were some
facts which even the _Semaphore_ itself was not aware of, which deepened
every stroke of pain. Batty pursued the prosecution like a fiend,
calling, as I have said, Innocent’s dearest friends to convict her, to
prove her foolish love, her wild expressions of dislike, her distracted
avowal of guilt; and the case, thus complicated and embittered, would
naturally fall to be tried by the youngest judge on the bench, the
well-known and justly-celebrated Mr. Justice Molyneux. Could there be
any bitterer drop in that cup of tears?