THE TRIAL.
The trial of Lady Longueville for the wilful murder of Amanda Eastwood
came on about the 2nd of April, after some unimportant business had been
got over. The trial was one which was not only interesting in itself,
but doubly attractive to the district in which the Eastwoods had their
ancestral home, and where Miss Vane had set up so remarkable an
establishment. Sterborne, like every other place, had very strong
opinions about the semi-conventual life of the community which had
possession of the High Lodge. Some wished the sisters and their strange
lady abbess well, thinking that, whether wisely or not, they were women
really attempting a great piece of work while so many of us content
ourselves with saying that work ought to be done. But a great many were
virulent against Miss Vane, especially among the lower classes, and
these felt themselves almost flattered in their _amour propre_ by the
discovery that a niece or a relative of the mistress of the High Lodge
was to be tried for her life. Many of them thought it served her right,
many more that it was the natural result of nunneries, and that, on the
whole, it was rather a good thing that light should thus be thrown on
the doings habitual to them. Of others, and better-informed people, many
were curious on behalf of the Eastwoods, and some on behalf of the
Vanes. Sterrington, the county town, was sufficiently near Sterborne to
be affected by the strong feeling on the question which naturally
existed there: and the county itself attended the Assizes almost in a
body, half-glad and half-sorry that Innocent had never belonged to its
“set.” Batty’s daughter, too, was very well known in the district, her
beauty, her violent temper, and the match she had made having each and
all of them attracted public attention to her. Thus the ordinary
attractions of a trial in which the romantic element was involved, and
dark stories of love and mystery promised to be unfolded, were enhanced
by everything that local interest could add to it. The court was
thronged. There was as distinguished an audience as if the Queen herself
had come to Sterrington, or as if Titiens or Patti had been about to
sing; and the anxiety to get places was more eager than it would have
been on either of these occasions, for it was a real tragedy, at which
all the good people intended to assist, and which thrilled them with the
liveliest emotions of sympathy, horror, and fear.
Thus the court was crowded from an early hour in the morning when people
went to take their places as for a spectacle; every seat was filled,
almost from the floor to the roof, the Town Hall was one throng and sea
of faces, and it was with difficulty that the judge himself made his way
to the bench. Within the last week it had been expected that Mr. Justice
Waterhouse, Molyneux’s colleague, would try the case; but the day before
Sir Edward Waterhouse took ill, and there was no escape for the other,
whose usually good-humoured countenance looked gloomy enough on this
particular occasion. When Innocent appeared, who was the chief object of
the popular curiosity, there was that thrill through the place which
testified to the tension of excited nerves and highly-strained feelings.
She came in very quietly, with a wondering, scared look in her eyes, but
no other sentiment. She was not abashed, nor afraid to meet the gaze of
so many. Why should she shrink from their gaze? Innocent had been by
many supposed to be shy, but she had never really been shy--she had not
enough imagination for that painful feeling. Therefore she was not
abashed nor shame-faced, though a faint additional colour came upon her
colourless face. Her eyes had a look of fright because she did not know
what was going to happen to her, but of the scene she saw, or the people
who looked at her, Innocent was not afraid. She was in the same dress of
clinging white cashmere which she had worn on the day when she was
arrested, and had the little gray-blue cloak upon her shoulders. A very
light little bonnet, more like a white veil arranged about her head, and
throwing up her pathetic face against its white background--a bonnet
which had been made by a fanciful milliner to suit the strange beauty of
the poor young bride--was on her head. There had been many consultations
about this dress. Mrs. Eastwood had desired that her niece should wear
black, as being less subject “to be remarked;” but Innocent had been
unusually obstinate. She had carried her point, and accordingly made her
appearance in a costume which was quite bridelike, and certain “to be
remarked.” Nelly sat near the bar, as close to it as she could be
permitted to place herself, so that Innocent might see her, and feel the
support of a friend at hand if her heart failed her. Sir Alexis was on
the other side. She was surrounded at least by those who loved her best,
and perhaps no young woman ever stood in such a terrible position who
was less deeply impressed by it. She believed herself to be guilty, but
her mind was not weighed down by the sense of guilt. She had a vague
consciousness that something terrible might be done to her, she scarcely
knew what; but she was not given to forecasting the future, and for the
present moment perhaps Innocent was the least painfully excited of all
the family. She could do nothing, she was in the hands of those people
who surrounded her, billows of faces which indeed she did not know, but
who looked on her, some with visible pity, some even with tears, few
with an angry aspect. When the jury came in to whom she had been told to
look as the arbitrators of her fate, none of them appeared to Innocent
to be angry; and from the presiding seat, where sat the man to whom
everybody looked, and to whom the privilege of finding fault with
everybody seemed allotted, there appeared to her a countenance she
recognized, not awful, scarcely severe. And her husband and Nelly were
close by her, to take care of, to speak for, to prevent her from being
scolded. She knew vaguely that there was something worse than scolding
to be apprehended, but poor Innocent had never known anything worse, and
therefore her fears were not lively on this point. To be sure she had
already been imprisoned, which was worse than scolding; but the effect
the prison had upon her was much more that of highly disagreeable
lodgings than anything worse. She did not like them, she longed to go
home; but still she had been brought there in preparation for this
trial, and the very unpleasant room in which she had to live was one of
the circumstances rather than any positive infliction in itself. She
came into the court with these subdued feelings, and looked round her
wistfully with an appealing, pitiful look, in which, however, there was
neither terror nor overwhelming shame. Nelly felt the shame a great deal
more deeply, and so did Miss Vane, who was trying hard to accept and
subdue it as a mortification of the flesh, but who kept murmuring to
herself in her corner, “A Vane! one of our family!” with humiliation
unspeakable. Innocent did not feel the humiliation. She was scared, but
not abashed, and as she got used to the faces, her eyes grew more and
more piteous, wistful, appealing. When would they make up their minds,
all these strangers, and say to her what had to be said, and do to her
what had to be done, and let her go home?
Before I begin this part of my story, I have to confess to the gentle
reader that I was not there, and that I am very little learned in the
mode of conducting such tragical inquiries. Everybody knows how confused
are the narratives which those who have taken part in such a scene give
to the historian. Sometimes one informant will lose all general sense of
what was going on in a mere detail, or another burst forth into laments
of mournful shame over a foolish answer he or she has given, instead of
making the unfortunate narrator aware what that answer was. Under these
disadvantages I have to set forth this scene, which is the most
important in poor Innocent’s history, and I trust the kind reader who
knows better will forgive me when I go wrong.
There was some difficulty to start with in getting Innocent to utter the
plea of “Not Guilty,” a difficulty which had been foreseen, and which
indeed could only be overcome by the exertions of all her friends, who
had exacted a pledge from her that she should say the words, which were,
they explained eagerly, a “matter of form,” and profoundly true, at all
events, so far as her intention went. All her immediate supporters drew
a long breath when this danger was safely surmounted. It was, indeed,
more than a relief, for the pathetic way in which she replied to the
question, “What is your name?” by her ordinary, simple answer, “I am
Innocent,” went to the hearts of the multitude, and produced one of
those altogether unreasoning but most powerful moments of popular
sympathy which transcend all argument. A distinct pause had to be made
to permit the general emotion to subside before the first formal
evidence could be heard, and vain and foolish hopes of foolish acquittal
by acclamation swelled the breast of Nelly, at least, who, poor girl,
with old Alice alone to support, her mother being a witness, sat
searching for sympathy with her anxious eyes through all the eager
crowd.
The first important witness called was Aunty, who came into the
witness-box in her deep mourning, subdued yet triumphant, feeling
something of that fierce pleasure in having the life of another in her
power, which seems to move humanity so strangely. She was by nature a
kind soul. Under any other circumstances she would have cried over
Innocent, and followed her fate with hysterical interest. But now she
could not keep herself from feeling a certain elation--a certain
satisfaction and superiority--at having the girl’s life, as it were, in
her hands, and being able to crush the family who had been unfriendly to
Amanda--the “other side.” She came fortified with a large white
handkerchief and a large double smelling-bottle, ruby and gold, which
had been one of Amanda’s properties, picked up during the unhappy visit
to Frederick’s house. Aunty, otherwise Miss Johnson, proved all the
particulars of the death in her examination-in-chief. She related the
unexpected arrival of Innocent--the sudden determination of Amanda to be
attended by her husband’s young cousin--and the preliminary scene in the
afternoon, before dinner. The witness had no intention of saying
anything untrue, but unconsciously she gave to her account of Innocent’s
behaviour in the sick-room an air of hostility and evil purpose.
“Mrs. Eastwood was in so little danger at this moment that you could
feel it right to confide her to the charge of a young girl?” said the
counsel for the prosecution.
“Bless you, she was in no danger at all!” said Aunty. “She was as she
had been often and often before.”
“And the young lady came, knowing she was ill, to help to nurse her?”
“Mrs. Frederick didn’t take it in that way; she wanted no new nurses;
she made the young lady stay with her to keep her from Mr. Eastwood, as
was a gentleman with taking ways. That is the truth, if I should die for
it! It was thought by his poor wife, and many more than her, as the
prisoner was fonder of Mr. Frederick than ought to be between
cousins----”
“I must appeal to the Court,” said Mr. Serjeant Ryder, “that this is the
introduction of an entirely new element not at all to the purpose.”
“If my learned brother will wait a little he will see that it is very
much to the purpose,” said the other. “I must really be allowed to
examine my witnesses in my own way. I have no doubt he will afterwards
make them as uncomfortable as possible in his cross-examination.--The
deceased had, then, a strong reason for retaining the prisoner with
her?”
“As strong as a woman can have,” said Aunty. “She knew as her husband
was no better than making love to his cousin. I have seen it myself over
and over. She kept knocking all the time of dinner for them to come up.
And then they went into the garden. My poor dear was angry. I don’t know
who wouldn’t have been; lying there ill, not able to move, and knowing
as your husband was carrying on in the garden with a silly young girl.”
“It must be acknowledged that the position was disagreeable. When the
prisoner was finally summoned did she show symptoms of displeasure? Did
she resist the call?”
“She was not one as showed much of anything,” said the witness. “She did
something or said something as quieted poor ’Manda. I was sent away for
quietness, as I told you, sir; and the prisoner got the book as I had
been reading, and read her to sleep.”
Then there followed a description of the next two hours, to which the
court listened with rapt attention. Aunty was not eloquent; but she had
a homely natural flow of words, and for this part at least of her story
the veracity of an eye-witness. She described the silence which
gradually fell over the room--how the patient dropped to sleep, not all
at once, but after repeated dozes, as was her custom, during which time
the reading went on; how at last all was still--how she, half dozing too
in the passage outside, went softly, and, looking in at the door, saw
Innocent also asleep, or feigning sleep, with her head on her breast,
the book lying on her knee, and the little table, with all its medicine
bottles, illuminated by the lamp beside her. This silence lasted so far
as she could judge for about an hour and a half, when she was suddenly
aroused by a loud outburst of voices from the sick room. “I was not
frightened--not to say more frightened than usual,” said Aunty. “She
often did wake up like that, all in a flurry. I heard the prisoner’s
voice, so I know she was awake, and Mrs. Frederick a-crying and
screaming for something. No, I wasn’t frightened even then; that was her
way; when she did not get what she wanted that very moment, she would
scream and go into a passion. It was through never being crossed. The
house was all still, everybody gone to bed but me; I heard the Minster
clock strike, and then I could hear her calling for her drops. I
couldn’t make out nothing else. Then I heard a moving about and a
rustling, and then all at once, all in a moment, everything was still. I
can’t say as I took fright even then, for now and again the passion
would go off like that all in a moment. I waited and waited, listening;
at first I thought as she had gone to sleep again. I said to myself, Now
she’s dropped off, she’ll have a good sleep, and the worst of the
night’s over.”
“Did anything occur then to excite your suspicions?” said the counsel,
as the witness paused.
“Oh, sir, nothing as I could put into words,” cried Aunty. “There was a
creepy sort of feeling, as went all over you, like as if it was a chill,
cold and quiet, both at once. I felt it, but I didn’t say nothing till
Mary the cook came slipping down-stairs in a fright. Then I took fright
as well, for she was always subject to fainting fits was poor ’Manda,
and the doctor had warned us. I dashed into the room, and there was the
poor darling lying back with her mouth open, and her big blue eyes wide
and staring, and oh! I’ll never forget that night as long as I live.”
The witness hid her face in her handkerchief. The feeling was perfectly
spontaneous and natural, and it affected the audience as natural feeling
always does.
“Compose yourself,” said the counsel soothingly. “Take your time; no
one wishes to hurry you. What was the demeanour of the prisoner during
the sad event?”
“I hadn’t no time to think of her,” said Aunty, sobbing. “She stood
about, that’s all I know, while Mary called up the other servants, and
we tried cold water, and everything I could think of. I can’t tell you
either how long it was before I ran to my poor child, or how long it was
before I saw that nothing was of any good. It felt like hours and hours.
The prisoner stood about in the way of the maids, and never did nothing
to help us. I think she asked me what was the matter, but I can’t swear
to it. The only thing I can swear to was as I saw her stealing quietly
out of the room when nobody was looking. I thought, perhaps, she was
going to call some one. I never thought as she intended to run away.”
“And that was the last you saw of her? She did not wait to see Mr.
Eastwood? She did not make any explanation, or offer any help?”
“Not a thing, sir, not a word, as I’m a living woman. She went right off
like a ghost. Mary, the cook, saw her a-standing at the door in the
moonlight, and she says----”
“May I ask if Mary, the cook, is to appear as a witness?” asked Mr.
Ryder.
“Certainly, a most important witness. We will, therefore, wait for
Mary’s own appearance to hear what she said.--In the meantime, I
suppose, you perceived the opiate had been administered?”
“That wasn’t till some time after,” said Aunty, with a little confusion.
“There was the glass on the bed as had rolled out of her poor dear hand,
and a drop or two of black stuff on the coverlet.”
“Was the opiate black?”
“Not as it ought to have been given,” said Aunty; “many and many’s the
time I give it, so I ought to know. It didn’t ought to have coloured the
water----”
“You did not attach so much importance to these circumstances at the
time--for what reason? The deceased, you have informed us, was not
dangerously ill?”
“It was along of them fainting fits,” said Aunty. “She was subject to
them--the doctors had always warned us as she might go off in one any
day, if we didn’t take care. We had to be very careful not to cross her.
As long as she was at home she was never crossed; but when a lady’s
married it’s different. I had been frightened for the faintings so long
that I never thought of nothing else--that’s the truth. If I’d had my
wits about me, I’d have seen in a minute; but being as it was, with all
them warnings against the faints, and knowing as she had been crossed
badly, and in a temper just before----the other was never put into my
head in a moment like; though it would have been, if I’d had my wits
about me,” she concluded, in a tone of defiance, facing the eager
listeners round her. The wary prosecution perceived coming danger, and
dismissed her with soothing compliments.
“You have given your evidence with great distinctness; that will do,
Miss Johnson. For the present I will not trouble you any more.”
Mr. Serjeant Ryder was peremptory in ordinary life, but he could be very
suave and sweet to a witness. He began his cross-examination with the
same compliments.
“You have given your evidence with so much distinctness,” he said, “and
discharged your onerous duty so well, that I am sure there are a few
further particulars with which you can favour us.--May I ask, for
instance, how your suspicions were first directed against the accused?”
This was an embarrassing question, with which the witness was scarcely
prepared to cope; but she got through it by a vigorous exercise of
mother wit, and told, not ineffectively, how Jane’s story cleared up to
her many difficulties which had dwelt in her mind in respect to Amanda’s
death, and how she felt at once that a flood of light had been poured
upon that event which, ever since it happened, she had been brooding
over, feeling that there was something inexplainable in it.
“I saw it all as clear as daylight,” she said; and as here again the
feeling was natural, she carried the audience with her, as every
practised eye could see.
“Still you felt no necessity at the time for any other explanation
except the faulting fits to which the deceased was liable. How long had
she been subject to these fainting fits?”
“From a child,” said Aunty. “When she was a baby she had to have
everything she wanted, or she’d have cried herself into fits. So every
doctor told us; it was not her fault, poor dear. It was something as
affected her heart. She could not put up with things as other folks have
got to put up with. She had very fine feelings, had poor Amanda,” the
witness said, once more hiding her face in her handkerchief. The
feeling, however, was fictitious here, and consequently did not tell.
“But it is sometimes highly inconvenient to have very fine feelings,”
said Serjeant Ryder. “You have said that she did not approve of the
friendship between her husband and his cousin. Was this the chief cause
of the excitement which brought on those fainting fits?----”
“Oh, bless you, sir, anything would do,” cried the witness incautiously.
“I have seen her fly out at myself for opening the door too quick or too
slow, or for putting a thing down on a table or for pinning my collar
wrong. It didn’t matter what it was!”---- Here Aunty discovered her
mistake, and added falteringly,--“I mean since she was married. When a
lady is married she is in the way of being put out, more than a young
girl at home in her father’s house----”
“How is that, now,--tell me,--I should like some information on that
subject,” said the bland lawyer. “Is it because a lady who is married
gets so much more of her own way? or less?”
“Lord, sir, what a question,--less of course. She was never put out, nor
allowed to be put out when she was at home with us; but when a girl goes
into the world, and has to be troubled with servants, and bills, and all
that,--not to say with a husband as would be enough to try a saint----”
(Episodes of this kind are amusing and exhilarating, I suppose, to both
the witnesses and the counsel, as well as to the audience, whose
feelings are thus preserved from undue tension,--but they are somewhat
hard upon the persons principally concerned,--Innocent’s friends looked
on with blank and rigid faces at this encounter of wits.)
“Are we to understand, then, that the deceased was cruelly tried by her
husband?”
“I don’t know what you mean by cruelly tried--between cruelty as you can
go to law for, and the way a man ought to behave as is fond of his wife,
there’s a deal of difference,” said the witness, feeling that she had
the best of it. “All I have got to say against him is, that he was
aggravating in his ways,--most gentlemen is.”
At this there was a laugh,--notwithstanding the pale, piteous face of
Innocent at the bar--notwithstanding the tremendous issues involved to a
creature so young and so simple--and notwithstanding all the blank
faces, almost awful in their indignation, of her friends, the court and
the jury relieved their feelings by momentary laughter. Mr. Justice
Molyneux kindly allowed his features to relax; even in the midst of a
tragedy it is well to have a little buffoonery to lighten the strain.
The cross-examination went on, and Serjeant Ryder elicited many details
of the life of Frederick and Amanda, which proved conclusively that no
suppositious Rosamond was necessary to awaken her jealousy, and that
indeed jealousy itself, or any such intense feeling, was not needed to
rouse the excitement which was followed by those dangerous faints. A
large proportion of the audience present had some knowledge beforehand
of Amanda Batty’s temper, so that the revelation was very complete; and
it was a highly-interesting revelation, and gratified the curious. Every
popular assembly is greedy of such details of those exceptional human
lives which are separated by misfortune or crime from the decorum of
ordinary privacy, and delivered over to the gaze of the world. But
though it was thus interesting as a revelation, it did not advance the
cause of the prisoner at the bar, whose conduct in that mysterious
moment when she was with the sick woman was neither explained nor
affected by any of the details of Amanda’s previous life. Much less
interesting to the general mind were Serjeant Ryder’s attempts to
elicit distinct information from the witness as to the time which had
elapsed between Amanda’s last outburst of passion and the moment when
Aunty rushed into the room--“It felt like hours,” she said, and she
thought, but could not swear, that the hour which she heard strike while
Amanda was talking must have been eleven; or perhaps the chimes for the
half-hour after ten. This discussion, however, wearied the public which
had been allowed to taste more exciting fare.
After Miss Johnson’s examination terminated, the maids were called to
confirm her evidence, one of whom gave a picturesque account of the
sudden appearance of Innocent at the open door in a flood of moonlight,
while she was looking out for the doctor. She was herself standing in
the deep shadow on the other side, looking down the lane by which the
doctor must come. She described her own fright and wonder as the
noiseless figure paused, looked round, and then glided along through the
moonlight, until the next bank of shadow swallowed it up. She thought it
was a ghost, and could not scream for very terror; and it was not until
she knew that the young lady had disappeared that she identified the
noiseless, gliding figure. The maids both thought Innocent’s
disappearance thus very odd, but they both confessed that they had given
no importance to it at the time. Nor were either of these witnesses
clear about the time. One was of opinion with Aunty that it was eleven
o’clock which struck; while the other, who had not heard the clock,
concluded the hour to be later. These were the chief witnesses to the
event itself, for neither Batty nor Frederick were called. The former
had held himself ready up to the last moment, but his vindictive impulse
was so visible and so tremendous that the gentleman who held his brief
had almost thrown it up after an interview with him, and had insisted
upon excluding him from the witness-box.
Mrs. Eastwood was then called. This poor lady had been more unhappy than
I can tell ever since she was aware that her testimony would be called
for against poor Innocent. “What shall I say?” she had asked, with
clasped hands and streaming eyes, of Innocent’s counsel, from whom first
she learned the real gravity of her position.
“Tell the truth, ma’am,” that functionary had said sharply; for he was
prepossessed against the aunt, who had, he thought, endeavoured to keep
Innocent from speaking freely, and who had, no doubt, forced the poor
girl into a marriage which destroyed what little mind she had. Poor Mrs.
Eastwood tried to dry her tears and smother her indignation. And now the
dreadful moment had come when she must tell that truth in all its naked
bareness, without the explanations which she knew changed its character
so completely. Her appearance was for the public at least the most
exciting event of the day.
“You remember the morning of the 21st of October?” said the counsel for
the prosecution.
“Oh, indeed, alas! I do,” said the poor woman, the tears coming to her
eyes. This injudicious warmth of assent was indicated to her as
something wrong by the sharp cough of Mr. Serjeant Ryder, who, however,
did not look at her; but Sir Alexis did, and Nelly, who clasped her
hands and fixed an entreating glance on her mother, full of unutterable
things. These warnings did, I think, less good than harm, for they
confused the unfortunate witness beyond description.
“Something remarkable, then, happened on that morning? The prisoner was
absent from home, so far as I understand, on the day before?”
“She was on a visit at her cousin’s, near Sterborne,” said Mrs.
Eastwood, “or at least so I thought.”
“I see from the depositions,” continued the counsel, “that the prisoner
arrived suddenly at your house on the morning of the 21st. Will you be
good enough to inform the court of the circumstances attending her
return home?”
Mrs. Eastwood paused; she gave an anxious look round, to her daughter,
to Sir Alexis, finally to the familiar countenance of the judge, who
seemed to look at her with that twinkle in his eye of incipient sarcasm
and amusement which she had encountered before. She met, too, from a
distant corner the frowning, peremptory look of Frederick, who, being
far off, raised a finger to her in warning--warning of what? She drew a
long breath of reluctance and fear.
“I hope I need not tell a lady of your education,” said the counsel
peremptorily, “that hesitation can only harm the unfortunate prisoner.
No prevarication will help her. Everybody must feel for your very
painful position; but you are pledged, I must remind you, to conceal
nothing, to inform the court of the truth. The prisoner came home
suddenly on the morning of Sunday, the 21st of October. You did not
expect her, believing her to be safe with her relation?”
“I did not expect her,” said Mrs. Eastwood, faltering; “she was to have
stayed for some weeks; still, as she was a little peculiar in her ways
of acting, and very fond of home, and frightened of strangers, I should
not have been surprised, at any time----”
“You were surprised, however, on this particular morning? Come, madam,
the court is waiting. I understand you were not up when the prisoner
burst suddenly into your room?”
“She did not burst into my room at all,” said Mrs. Eastwood with
indignation. “When I opened my eyes, roused by the sound of the door
opening, I saw her by my side.”
“This was at a very early hour in the morning, before the other members
of the household were up?”
“It was about seven o’clock. The housemaid had let my poor child in as
soon as she went down-stairs. She came to me, naturally--”
“And when you woke under these unusual circumstances, and saw her by
your bedside, what did the prisoner say?”
Again Mrs. Eastwood paused. She threw once more a bewildered look round
the court. Then recovering herself, she turned with the dignity of
sorrow to the judge himself. “My lord,” she said firmly, “I don’t know
what to do. The words I have to repeat will shock and startle every one
who hears them; they will convey a false impression--they will create a
prejudice----”
“The witness has no power of choice in the matter,” said the judge. “It
is for the jury to decide what is true and what is false. The facts are
what we must exact from you.”
Mrs. Eastwood grew very pale, so pale that all the women in the court
believed she was going to faint, and the greater part of them grew sick
with sympathy. “Then,” she said, in a very low voice, which, however,
was heard everywhere, so great was the silence, “if I must tell it, this
was what she said: ‘I have killed Frederick’s wife.’”
A long-drawn, sobbing breath of spent excitement, so universal as to
reach to a subdued but distinct sound, came from the crowd. The witness
stood for a moment leaning upon the front of the box, seeing nothing but
a mist of white faces--her brain whirling, her mind confused, with the
shock. It did not occur to her--how should it?--that her reluctance, her
paleness, her misery, were all so many additions to the force of her
testimony. What more terrible witness could have appeared against
Innocent than one out of whom this terrible testimony had to be dragged
as from the bottom of her heart?
Some few moments elapsed before she knew very well what she was saying
after this. She replied mechanically to the questions put to her, but
she did not wake up to a full sense of what she was doing till she found
herself narrating her visit to Sterborne on the next day. Then as she
recovered her senses gradually, and began to discriminate once more out
of the sea of faces those which interested herself most deeply, she
awoke to the importance of all she was saying. She threw herself into
this easier narrative. She remembered everything--her confusion and
bewilderment passed away. It is so much easier to recollect, to explain,
to record fully, events which are not against you, which are rather in
your favour! Her account of all she saw and heard was so clear that it
did much to neutralize the damning effect of her former testimony. Yet
what could neutralize such a confession--“I have killed Frederick’s
wife”? Why should the girl say such a thing, was asked on every side, if
it was not true?
Jane, the housemaid--the cause of the trial--the traitor who had
betrayed Innocent, came next to corroborate Mrs. Eastwood’s testimony;
but with so very different an intention! and Jane produced a little
reaction in Innocent’s favour by her evident desire to exaggerate, and
anxiety to improve upon her former evidence. The lawyers fought over her
for some time, and Mr. Serjeant Ryder managed to elicit several facts
very detrimental to Jane’s private character, although noways affecting
her story, for when she was done that story remained plain enough.
“I have killed Frederick’s wife!” These words were simple enough to
remain in any one’s memory, and terrible enough to require no
aggravation. “She was a-kneeling by the bedside,” said Jane, “holding
her aunt by the arm. Neither on ’em saw me. She had something clasped
tight in her hand----”
“Something in her hand? What was that?” the counsel for the prosecution
demanded eagerly.
“I don’t know what it was,” said Jane. “No, I didn’t name it before. I
didn’t think as it could be of any importance. I saw as she had her hand
clasped tight when I let her in; but I couldn’t see what it was----”
Mrs. Eastwood was recalled, and desired to explain this previously
unnoted circumstance. She came back into the witness-box very pale,
knowing by instinct what was coming. And bit by bit the damning parts
were dragged from her. Faltering and pale, and reluctant, she described
the little phial which Innocent herself had held out to her, to prove
her wild story, and admitted that she had put it away, feeling it to be
of importance. Afterwards, when her drawers were put in order, some one,
“by accident,” had thrown it away. It had been done against her will.
She had been much distressed--but it was by accident. To this story she
clung with a kind of blank despair. All that she knew when she tottered
out of the box was that she had not committed Frederick, or involved him
in the matter. But it would be impossible to exaggerate the fatal effect
of this confused and faltering story. For the first time the audience
and the jury began to believe in Innocent’s guilt----
There was a momentary instinctive pause after this momentous piece of
evidence, and then the doctors were called who had examined poor
Amanda’s remains. Into the terrible details of such an examination I
need not enter. They had been able to add nothing to the elucidation of
the mystery; time had extinguished all trace of the poison, if poison
there was. The only medical witness whose evidence was of any importance
was young Mr. Sweteson, of Sterborne, who had been the assistant partner
of the doctor whom Jenny Eastwood was now pursuing across Europe--and
had once or twice visited Mrs. Frederick Eastwood. He was aware that she
had suffered from a disease of the heart, which gave his former
principal much anxiety. For his own part, the young man said, with the
confidence of youth, he had not shared that alarm. This young doctor had
no prejudice against Innocent; he was, on the contrary, touched by her
pathetic history. But he was on “the other side.” Though the witnesses
at such a trial are called in the interest of truth only, and though
humanity, justice, and natural feeling all urge upon them the necessity
of bearing their testimony without bias, it is, I think, certain that
every man summoned for the prosecution has a natural tendency to make
the worst, and every man summoned for the defence a disposition to make
the best, of the case. The present witness yielded quite unconsciously
to this natural impulse. He did not agree, he said (not informing the
court how small were his opportunities of forming an opinion), with his
former colleague. He believed Mrs. Frederick Eastwood’s complaint to be
chiefly fanciful--the vapours of a foolish and high-tempered
woman--dangerous enough to the comfort of her family, if you liked, but
not dangerous to her, unless indeed she had broken a blood-vessel in one
of her fits of passion, he added, somewhat contemptuously, or done
herself bodily harm in some other way. Serjeant Ryder examined this
witness closely as to the time necessary for the operation of an
overdose of opium, a question in which the court in general did not show
itself greatly interested. The day had been warm, the court was very
full, the interest of the great audience waned as the drowsy afternoon
drooped towards evening; and it became apparent that no decision could
be arrived at. The cross-examination of the doctor delayed the
proceedings in a way which the audience thought tiresome, and which
puzzled the honest jury, who did not see what was meant by it. The same
feeling of weariness which had come upon the audience in general, and
which was evinced by all those restless movements, coughs, and
flutterings of going and coming, which prove to every public speaker
when interest begins to fail, had come, I suppose, upon Innocent too,
though she had not followed the proceedings with any intellectual
attention to speak of. She was roused, however--I cannot tell how--by
all that had occurred. What Aunty had said of her, and what the maids
had said of her, had penetrated vaguely, taking some time to do so, into
her torpid brain. And quite suddenly, while the young doctor and the
counsel for the defence were still carrying on their duel on the
scientific question, the whole assembly was suddenly thrilled,
electrified, galvanized back again into interest. The people behind
stood up, those in front bent forward, the official persons roused
themselves in a sudden flutter, the usher of the court rushed to the
rescue, the counsel started to their feet in dismay, the very judge on
the bench began to telegraph wildly. The cause of this commotion was
that Innocent herself had spoken. She was called to on all hands, as if
the soft girlish voice could revolutionize the state. “Silence!”
“Prisoner at the bar, you cannot be allowed to speak.” “You must be
silent, Lady Longueville.” “Innocent, hush! hush! you must not
speak!”--all these addresses were made to her loud and low, in every
accent of authority, persuasion, and tenderness. Innocent took no
notice. She went on--her clear, youthful voice sounding through theirs
as the song of a bird sounds through the clang of an explosion. She paid
no attention to the looks any more than the words addressed to her.
Simple as she was, I suppose the thrill of sudden interest about
her--the immediate turning of every eye upon her--stimulated and
encouraged her mind. She put out her hand and gently pushed away the
woman from the prison who attended her, and whose zeal to stop her was
vehement. She said what she had to say through all the cries and
remonstrances addressed to her. Whosoever does so singly and steadily is
sure, I suppose, of a hearing at the end.
“You have asked them things they do not know,” she said; “why do not you
ask me? I know more. It was I that was with her. I will tell you if you
will listen to me. Please tell them to be still, please! for what I want
is to save you trouble. No, please go away! I will go with you when I
have told them. (This was to the prison matron, who had again clutched
at her.) It is quite true, except that I never wanted to be with her, to
be in the room at all. When I went up to her without Frederick she was
very angry and scolded. I said to her, ‘Do not be angry, it does not
hurt any one so much as you. They say it will kill you, if you do not
stop; and it cannot kill any one else.’ Then she was quiet, and I read
to her; and then she fell asleep, and I suppose I fell asleep too. Mr.
Molyneux, will you tell them to be quiet, please! I woke when she shook
me, holding my arm. I tried to drop the drops for her, as she told me. I
tried twice, and emptied it out, for I could not. Then I went again
close to the bed to try if I could do it--(Oh, silence, please! silence,
as you say.) She caught hold of my arm again. She shook me. Almost all
the bottle went into the glass. She took it out of my hand and drank it.
That is how it was. Yes, I will be silent now, if you wish it. I will go
away if you wish it. That is how it was.”
The cries all died into silence as Innocent’s voice ended. Her unlawful
interposition had woke the hubbub, and it ceased when she ceased. Not
half the audience could possibly have heard, but that half was in wild
excitement, while the rest, who had not, struggled with equally wild
determination to get better places, or to ask from those who had heard
it what she had said. An indescribable scene of confusion followed. The
afternoon air was stifling and heavy, the long day was at an end, a
thunder-cloud had come over the sun, which was near its setting, and
darkened one side of the court-house, while the light came in pale and
weird on the other, pouring in a gleam of illumination from the pallid
sky out of which the storm was about to break. This gleam fell full
upon Innocent’s pale face, still tremulous with the excitement--if
excitement it could be called--of her self-revelation, and upon that of
Nelly, who stood up unawares in her agitation near her, and whose
likeness to her cousin--invisible in happier moments--came out now with
the most curious force. After that one amazed, affrighted pause, which
was not unlike the pause before the storm outside, renewed cries of
“Silence!” and “Clear the court!” were heard. The whole scene was like
the brewing of a popular tumult.
“Remove the prisoner,--the court will adjourn till to-morrow,” said the
powerful voice of the judge, and the papers added that he made an
indignant remonstrance as to the failure of the officials in keeping
order, and the extraordinary breach of decorum which they had just
witnessed. But if such remarks were made, no one heard them. The court
broke up. Mr. Justice Molyneux, with a solemn face, went to his solemn
lodging, devoting Innocent in his heart to all the infernal gods, and
groaning over the unhappy destiny which had brought her case into his
hands, while the streets about suddenly filled with a buzzing crowd, all
the inns swarming with groups eager for the discussion of the case--and
their dinner. Torrents of rain, pouring down out of the black skies,
soon swept from the streets all the eager clusters of people who
discussed out of doors the one only subject of the day. Carriages stood
under shelter through the storm, or lingered in the courtyards of the
hotels in the High Street, till the worst of the thunder was over; but,
going or coming on the ways, there was nothing talked of, nor thought
of, but Innocent. Was she innocent?--was she guilty? Was it accident, a
mistake, the misadventure of a frightened child; or was it the crime of
a wildly passionate woman, to secure to herself the man she loved? In
all Sterrington there was nothing talked of but the trial. The entire
population fought over it, taking different sides, and waiting with an
excitement which had something pleasurable in it for the morrow which
should decide.
How the Eastwoods and the Vanes waited for that morrow, crowding
together in the little sitting-room opposite the prison, one or another
of the women sitting constantly at the window, watching with eyes full
of tears the other high window opposite, with messengers coming and
going from the lawyers--from the railway and telegraph office, to see if
there was any news from Jenny--I cannot venture to record. But to tell
how Innocent spent the night is easy. She slept--such sleep as comes to
the beloved of heaven--and woke in the morning with a smile upon her
lips, thinking she was in the little church of the Spina and saying “Our
Father” before she woke.