THE CONFESSION.
MY replies to the lawyer accurately expressed the conviction in my
mind. The narrative related by Ambrose had all the appearance, in my
eyes, of a fabricated story, got up, and clumsily got up, to pervert
the plain meaning of the circumstantial evidence produced by the
prosecution. I reached this conclusion reluctantly and regretfully, for
Naomi’s sake. I said all I could say to shake the absolute confidence
which she felt in the discharge of the prisoners at the next
examination.
The day of the adjourned inquiry arrived.
Naomi and I again attended the court together. Mr. Meadowcroft was
unable, on this occasion, to leave the house. His daughter was present,
walking to the court by herself, and occupying a seat by herself.
On his second appearance at the “bar,” Silas was more composed, and
more like his brother. No new witnesses were called by the prosecution.
We began the battle over the medical evidence relating to the charred
bones; and, to some extent, we won the victory. In other words, we
forced the doctors to acknowledge that they differed widely in their
opinions. Three confessed that they were not certain. Two went still
further, and declared that the bones were the bones of an animal, not
of a man. We made the most of this; and then we entered upon the
defense, founded on Ambrose Meadowcroft’s story.
Necessarily, no witnesses could be called on our side. Whether this
circumstance discouraged him, or whether he privately shared my opinion
of his client’s statement, I cannot say. It is only certain that the
lawyer spoke mechanically, doing his best, no doubt, but doing it
without genuine conviction or earnestness on his own part. Naomi cast
an anxious glance at me as he sat down. The girl’s hand, as I took it,
turned cold in mine. She saw plain signs of the failure of the defense
in the look and manner of the counsel for the prosecution; but she
waited resolutely until the presiding magistrate announced his
decision. I had only too clearly foreseen what he would feel it to be
his duty to do. Naomi’s head dropped on my shoulder as he said the
terrible words which committed Ambrose and Silas Meadowcroft to take
their trial on the charge of murder.
I led her out of the court into the air. As I passed the “bar,” I saw
Ambrose, deadly pale, looking after us as we left him: the magistrate’s
decision had evidently daunted him. His brother Silas had dropped in
abject terror on the jailer’s chair; the miserable wretch shook and
shuddered dumbly, like a cowed dog.
Miss Meadowcroft returned with us to the farm, preserving unbroken
silence on the way back. I could detect nothing in her bearing which
suggested any compassionate feeling for the prisoners in her stern and
secret nature. On Naomi’s withdrawal to her own room, we were left
together for a few minutes; and then, to my astonishment, the outwardly
merciless woman showed me that she, too, was one of Eve’s daughters,
and could feel and suffer, in her own hard way, like the rest of us.
She suddenly stepped close up to me, and laid her hand on my arm.
“You are a lawyer, ain’t you?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Have you had any experience in your profession?”
“Ten years’ experience.”
“Do _you_ think--” She stopped abruptly; her hard face softened; her
eyes dropped to the ground. “Never mind,” she said, confusedly. “I’m
upset by all this misery, though I may not look like it. Don’t notice
me.”
She turned away. I waited, in the firm persuasion that the unspoken
question in her mind would sooner or later force its way to utterance
by her lips. I was right. She came back to me unwillingly, like a woman
acting under some influence which the utmost exertion of her will was
powerless to resist.
“Do _you_ believe John Jago is still a living man?”
She put the question vehemently, desperately, as if the words rushed
out of her mouth in spite of her.
“I do _not_ believe it,” I answered.
“Remember what John Jago has suffered at the hands of my brothers,” she
persisted. “Is it not in your experience that he should take a sudden
resolution to leave the farm?”
I replied, as plainly as before,
“It is _not_ in my experience.”
She stood looking at me for a moment with a face of blank despair; then
bowed her gray head in silence, and left me. As she crossed the room to
the door, I saw her look upward; and I heard her say to herself softly,
between her teeth, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.”
It was the requiem of John Jago, pronounced by the woman who loved him.
When I next saw her, her mask was on once more. Miss Meadowcroft was
herself again. Miss Meadowcroft could sit by, impenetrably calm, while
the lawyers discussed the terrible position of her brothers, with the
scaffold in view as one of the possibilities of the “case.”
Left by myself, I began to feel uneasy about Naomi. I went upstairs,
and, knocking softly at her door, made my inquiries from outside. The
clear young voice answered me sadly, “I am trying to bear it: I won’t
distress you when we meet again.” I descended the stairs, feeling my
first suspicion of the true nature of my interest in the American girl.
Why had her answer brought the tears into my eyes? I went out, walking
alone, to think undisturbedly. Why did the tones of her voice dwell on
my ear all the way? Why did my hand still feel the last cold, faint
pressure of her fingers when I led her out of court?
I took a sudden resolution to go back to England.
When I returned to the farm, it was evening. The lamp was not yet
lighted in the hall. Pausing to accustom my eyes to the obscurity
indoors, I heard the voice of the lawyer whom we had employed for the
defense speaking to some one very earnestly.
“I’m not to blame,” said the voice. “She snatched the paper out of my
hand before I was aware of her.”
“Do you want it back?” asked the voice of Miss Meadowcroft.
“No; it’s only a copy. If keeping it will help to quiet her, let her keep
it by all means. Good evening.”
Saying these last words, the lawyer approached me on his way out of the
house. I stopped him without ceremony; I felt an ungovernable curiosity
to know more.
“Who snatched the paper out of your hand?” I asked, bluntly.
The lawyer started. I had taken him by surprise. The instinct of
professional reticence made him pause before he answered me.
In the brief interval of silence, Miss Meadowcroft replied to my
question from the other end of the hall.
“Naomi Colebrook snatched the paper out of his hand.”
“What paper?”
A door opened softly behind me. Naomi herself appeared on the
threshold; Naomi herself answered my question.
“I will tell you,” she whispered. “Come in here.”
One candle only was burning in the room. I looked at her by the dim
light. My resolution to return to England instantly became one of the
lost ideas of my life.
“Good God!” I exclaimed, “what has happened now?”
She handed me the paper which she had taken from the lawyer’s hand.
The “copy” to which he had referred was a copy of the written
confession of Silas Meadowcroft on his return to prison. He accused his
brother Ambrose of the murder of John Jago. He declared on his oath
that he had seen his brother Ambrose commit the crime.
In the popular phrase, I could “hardly believe my own eyes.” I read the
last sentences of the confession for the second time:
“...I heard their voices at the lime-kiln. They were having words about
Cousin Naomi. I ran to the place to part them. I was not in time. I saw
Ambrose strike the deceased a terrible blow on the head with his
(Ambrose’s) heavy stick. The deceased dropped without a cry. I put my
hand on his heart. He was dead. I was horribly frightened. Ambrose
threatened to kill _me_ next if I said a word to any living soul. He
took up the body and cast it into the quicklime, and threw the stick in
after it. We went on together to the wood. We sat down on a felled tree
outside the wood. Ambrose made up the story that we were to tell if
what he had done was found out. He made me repeat it after him, like a
lesson. We were still at it when Cousin Naomi and Mr. Lefrank came up
to us. They know the rest. This, on my oath, is a true confession. I
make it of my own free-will, repenting me sincerely that I did not make
it before.”
(Signed)
“SILAS MEADOWCROFT.”
I laid down the paper, and looked at Naomi once more. She spoke to me
with a strange composure. Immovable determination was in her eye;
immovable determination was in her voice.
“Silas has lied away his brother’s life to save himself,” she said. “I
see cowardly falsehood and cowardly cruelty in every line on that
paper. Ambrose is innocent, and the time has come to prove it.”
“You forget,” I said, “that we have just failed to prove it.”
“John Jago is alive, in hiding from us and from all who know him,” she
went on. “Help me, friend Lefrank, to advertise for him in the
newspapers.”
I drew back from her in speechless distress. I own I believed that the
new misery which had fallen on her had affected her brain.
“You don’t believe it,” she said. “Shut the door.”
I obeyed her. She seated herself, and pointed to a chair near her.
“Sit down,” she proceeded. “I am going to do a wrong thing; but there
is no help for it. I am going to break a sacred promise. You remember
that moonlight night when I met him on the garden walk?”
“John Jago?”
“Yes. Now listen. I am going to tell you what passed between John Jago
and me.”