Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1744 page)

As I afterwards discovered, we witnesses had not been agreed. The labourers declared that the girl was Dina. The parson, who had seen Dina hundreds of times at his school, said exactly what I had said. Other competent witnesses were sought for and found the next day. Their testimony was our testimony repeated again and again. Later still, the abominable father and mother who had sold their child for purposes of deception were discovered, and were afterwards punished, along with the people who had paid the money.

Driven to the wall, the prisoner owned that he had failed to find his runaway niece; and that, in terror of being condemned to die on the scaffold for murder, he had made this desperate attempt to get himself acquitted by deceiving the law. His confession availed him nothing; his solemn assertion of innocence availed him nothing. Farmer Fairweather was hanged.
*

With the passing away of time the memory of things passes away too. I was beginning to be an old woman, and the trial was only remembered by elderly people like myself, when I got a letter relating to my sister. It was written for her by the English consul at the French town in which she lived. he informed me that she had been a widow for some years past; and he summoned me instantly to her bedside if I wished to see her again before she died.

I was just in time to find her living. She was past speaking to me but, thank God, she understood what I meant when I kissed her and asked her to forgive me. Towards evening the poor soul passed away quietly, with her head resting on my breast.

The consul had written down what she had wanted to say to me. I leave the persons who may read this to judge what my feelings were when I discovered that my sister’s husband was the wretch who had assisted the escape of Dina Coomb, and who had thus been the means of condemning an innocent man to death on the scaffold.

On one of those visits on business to England of which I have already spoken , he had met a little girl sitting under a hedge at the side of the high road, lost, footsore, and frightened, and had spoken to her. She owned that she had run away from home after a most severe beating. She showed the marks. A worthy man would have put her under the protection of the nearest magistrate.

My rascally brother-in-law noticed her valuable watch, and, suspecting that she might be connected with wealthy people, he encouraged her to talk. When he was well assured of her expectations, and of the use to which he might put them in her friendless situation, he offered to adopt her, and he took her away with him to France.

My sister, having no child of her own took a liking to Dina, and readily believed what her husband chose to tell her. For three years the girl lived with them. She cared little for the good woman who was always kind to her, but she was most unreasonably fond of the villain who had kidnapped her.

After his death this runaway creature — then aged fifteen — was missing again. She left a farewell letter to my sister, saying that she had found another friend: and from that time forth nothing more had been heard of her, for years on years. This had weighed on my sister’s mind, and this was what she had wanted to tell me on her deathbed. Knowing nothing of the trial, she was aware that Dina belonged to the neighbourhood of Betminster, and she thought in her ignorance that I might communicate with Dina’s friends, if such persons existed.

On my return to England I thought it a duty to show to the Mayor of Betminster what the consul had written from my sister’s dictation. He read it and heard what I had to tell him. Then he reckoned up the years that had passed. says he, ‘The girl must be of age by this time: I shall cause inquiries to be made in London.’

In a week more we did hear of Dina Coomb. She had returned to her own country, with a French husband at her heels, had proved her claim, and had got her money.

*
This terrible miscarriage of justice happened before the time when trials were reported in the newspapers, and led to one valuable result: Since that time it has been a first and foremost condition of a trial for murder that the body of the slain person shall have been discovered and identified. — W. C.

A STORY IN TWO PARTS.

PART THE FIRST.

I.

ONE fine morning more than three months since, you were riding with your brother, Miss Anstell, in Hyde Park. It was a hot day, and you had allowed your horses to fall into a walking pace. As you passed the railing on the right-hand side, near the eastern extremity of the lake in the park, neither you nor your brother noticed a solitary woman loitering on the footpath to look at the riders as they went by.

The solitary woman was my old nurse, Nancy Connell. And these were the words she heard exchanged between you and your brother, as you slowly passed her:

Your brother said, “Is it true that Mary Brading and her husband have gone to America?”

You laughed, as if the question amused you, and answered, “Quite true.”

“How long will they be away?” your brother asked next.

“As long as they live,” you answered, with another laugh.

By this time you had passed beyond Nancy Connell’s hearing. She owns to having followed your horses a few steps to hear what was said next. She looked particularly at your brother. He took your reply seriously; he seemed to be quite astonished by it.

“Leave England and settle in America!” he exclaimed. “Why should they do that?”

“Who can tell why?” you answered. “Mary Brading’s husband is mad, and Mary Brading herself is not much better.”

You touched your horse with the whip, and in a moment more you and your brother were out of my old nurse’s hearing. She wrote and told me what I here tell you, by a recent mail. I have been thinking of those last words of yours, in my leisure hours, more seriously than you would suppose. The end of it is that I take up my pen, on behalf of my husband and myself, to tell you the story of our marriage, and the reason for our emigration to the United States of America.

It matters little or nothing to him or to me whether our friends in England think us both mad or not. Their opinions, hostile or favorable, are of no sort of importance to us. But you are an exception to the rule. In bygone days at school we were fast and firm friends; and — what weighs with me even more than this — you were heartily loved and admired by my dear mother. She spoke of you tenderly on her death-bed. Events have separated us of late years. But I cannot forget the old times; and I cannot feel indifferent to your opinion of me and of my husband, though an ocean does separate us, and though we are never likely to look on one another again. It is very foolish of me, I dare say, to take seriously to heart what you said in one of your thoughtless moments. I can only plead in excuse that I have gone through a great deal of suffering, and that I was always (as you may remember) a person of sensitive temperament, easily excited and easily depressed.

Enough of this. Do me the last favor I shall ever ask of you. Read what follows, and judge for yourself whether my husband and I are quite so mad as you were disposed to think us when Nancy Connell heard you talking to your brother in Hyde Park.

II.

IT is now more than a year since I went to Eastbourne, on the coast of Sussex, with my father and my brother James.

My brother had then, as we hoped, recovered from the effects of a fall in the hunting-field. He complained, however, at times of pain in his head; and the doctors advised us to try the sea-air. We removed to Eastbourne, without a suspicion of the serious nature of the injury that he had received. For a few days all went well. We liked the place; the air agreed with us; and we determined to prolong our residence for some weeks to come.

On our sixth day at the sea-side — a memorable day to me, for reasons which you have still to hear — my brother complained again of the old pain in his head. He and I went out together to try what exercise would do toward relieving him. We walked through the town to the fort at one end of it, and then followed a footpath running by the side of the sea, over a dreary waste of shingle, bounded at its inland extremity by the road to Hastings and by the marshy country beyond.

We had left the fort at some little distance behind us. I was walking in front, and James was following me. He was talking as quietly as usual, when he suddenly stopped in the middle of a sentence. I turned round in surprise, and discovered my brother prostrate on the path, in convulsions terrible to see.

It was the first epileptic fit I had ever witnessed. My presence of mind entirely deserted me. I could only wring my hands in horror, and scream for help. No one appeared either from the direction of the fort or of the highroad. I was too far off, I suppose, to make myself heard. Looking ahead of me along the path, I discovered, to my infinite relief, the figure of a man running toward me. As he came nearer, I saw that he was unmistakably a gentleman — young, and eager to be of service to me.

“Pray compose yourself,” he said, after a look at my brother. “It is very dreadful to see, but it is not dangerous. We must wait until the convulsions are over, and then I can help you.”

He seemed to know so much about it that I thought he might be a medical man. I put the question to him plainly.

He coloured, and looked a little confused.

“I am not a doctor,” he said. “I happen to have seen persons afflicted with epilepsy; and I have heard medical men say that it is useless to interfere until the fit is over. See!” he added. “Your brother is quieter already. He will soon feel a sense of relief which will more than compensate him for what he has suffered. I will help him to get to the fort, and, once there, we can send for a carriage to take him home.”

In five minutes more we were on our way to the fort; the stranger supporting my brother as attentively and tenderly as if he had been an old friend. When the carriage had been obtained, he insisted on accompanying us to our own door, on the chance that his services might still be of some use. He left us, asking permission to call and inquire after James’s health the next day. A more modest, gentle, and unassuming person I never met with. He not only excited my warmest gratitude; he interested me at my first meeting with him.

I lay some stress on the impression which this young man produced on me — why, you will soon find out.

The next day the stranger paid his promised visit of inquiry. His card, which he sent upstairs, informed us that his name was Roland Cameron. My father — who is not easily pleased — took a liking to him at once. His visit was prolonged, at our request. He said just enough about himself to satisfy us that we were receiving a person who was at least of equal rank with ourselves. Born in England, of a Scotch family, he had lost both his parents. Not long since, he had inherited a fortune from one of his uncles. It struck us as a little strange that he spoke of this fortune, with a marked change to melancholy in his voice and his manner. The subject was, for some inconceivable reason, evidently distasteful to him. Rich as he was, he acknowledged that he led a simple and solitary life. He had little taste for society, and no sympathies in common with the average young men of his age. But he had his own harmless pleasures and occupations; and past sorrow and suffering had taught him not to expect too much from life. All this was said modestly, with a winning charm of look and voice which indescribably attracted me. His personal appearance aided the favorable impression which his manner and his conversation produced. He was of the middle height, lightly and firmly built; his complexion pale; his hands and feet small, and finely shaped; his brown hair curling naturally; his eyes large and dark, with an occasional indecision in their expression which was far from being an objection to them, to my taste. It seemed to harmonize with an occasional indecision in his talk; proceeding, as I was inclined to think, from some passing confusion in his thoughts which it always cost him a little effort to discipline and overcome. Does it surprise you to find how closely I observed a man who was only a chance acquaintance, at my first interview with him? Or do your suspicions enlighten you, and do you say to yourself, She has fallen in love with Mr. Roland Cameron at first sight? I may plead in my own defense that I was not quite romantic enough to go that length. But I own I waited for his next visit with an impatience which was new to me in my experience of my sober self. And, worse still, when the day came, I changed my dress three times before my newly-developed vanity was satisfied with the picture which the looking-glass presented to me of myself.