Chapter XLVII: 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.