Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (932 page)

“Yes, uncle; I have thought of that. I shall first try to form some conclusion (after reading the Trial) as to the guilty person who really committed the crime. Then I shall make out a list of the witnesses who spoke in my husband’s defense. I shall go to those witnesses, and tell them who I am and what I want. I shall ask all sorts of questions which grave lawyers might think it beneath their dignity to put. I shall be guided, in what I do next, by the answers I receive. And I shall not be discouraged, no matter what difficulties are thrown in my way. Those are my plans, uncle, so far as I know them now.”

The vicar and Benjamin looked at each other as if they doubted the evidence of their own senses. The vicar spoke.

“Do you mean to tell me,” he said, “that you are going roaming about the country to throw yourself on the mercy of strangers, and to risk whatever rough reception you may get in the course of your travels? You! A young woman! Deserted by your husband! With nobody to protect you! Mr. Benjamin, do you hear her? And can you believe your ears? I declare to Heaven
I
don’t know whether I am awake or dreaming. Look at her — just look at her! There she sits as cool and easy as if she had said nothing at all extraordinary, and was going to do nothing out of the common way! What am I to do with her? — that’s the serious question — what on earth am I to do with her?”

“Let me try my experiment, uncle, rash as it may look to you,” I said. “Nothing else will comfort and support me; and God knows I want comfort and support. Don’t think me obstinate. I am ready to admit that there are serious difficulties in my way.”

The vicar resumed his ironical tone.

“Oh!” he said. “You admit that, do you? Well, there is something gained, at any rate.”

“Many another woman before me,” I went on, “has faced serious difficulties, and has conquered them — for the sake of the man she loved.”

Doctor Starkweather rose slowly to his feet, with the air of a person whose capacity of toleration had reached its last limits.

“Am I to understand that you are still in love with Mr. Eustace Macallan?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered.

“The hero of the great Poison Trial?” pursued my uncle. “The man who has deceived and deserted you? You love him?”

“I love him more dearly than ever.”

“Mr. Benjamin,” said the vicar, “if she recover her senses between this and nine o’clock to-morrow morning, send her with her luggage to Loxley’s Hotel, where I am now staying. Good-night, Valeria. I shall consult with your aunt as to what is to be done next. I have no more to say.”

“Give me a kiss, uncle, at parting.”

“Oh yes, I’ll give you a kiss. Anything you like, Valeria. I shall be sixty-five next birthday; and I thought I knew something of women, at my time of life. It seems I know nothing. Loxley’s Hotel is the address, Mr. Benjamin. Good-night.”

Benjamin looked very grave when he returned to me after accompanying Doctor Starkweather to the garden gate.

“Pray be advised, my dear,” he said. “I don’t ask you to consider
my
view of this matter, as good for much. But your uncle’s opinion is surely worth considering?”

I did not reply. It was useless to say any more. I made up my mind to be misunderstood and discouraged, and to bear it. “Good-night, my dear old friend,” was all I said to Benjamin. Then I turned away — I confess with the tears in my eyes — and took refuge in my bedroom.

The window-blind was up, and the autumn moonlight shone brilliantly into the little room.

As I stood by the window, looking out, the memory came to me of another moonlight night, when Eustace and I were walking together in the Vicarage garden before our marriage. It was the night of which I have written, many pages back, when there were obstacles to our union, and when Eustace had offered to release me from my engagement to him. I saw the dear face again looking at me in the moonlight; I heard once more his words and mine. “Forgive me,” he had said, “for having loved you — passionately, devotedly loved you. Forgive me, and let me go.”

And I had answered, “Oh, Eustace, I am only a woman — don’t madden me! I can’t live without you. I must and will be your wife!” And now, after marriage had united us, we were parted! Parted, still loving each as passionately as ever. And why? Because he had been accused of a crime that he had never committed, and because a Scotch jury had failed to see that he was an innocent man.

I looked at the lovely moonlight, pursuing these remembrances and these thoughts. A new ardor burned in me. “No!” I said to myself. “Neither relations nor friends shall prevail on me to falter and fail in my husband’s cause. The assertion of his innocence is the work of my life; I will begin it to-night.”

I drew down the blind and lighted the candles. In the quiet night, alone and unaided, I took my first step on the toilsome and terrible journey that lay before me. From the title-page to the end, without stopping to rest and without missing a word, I read the Trial of my husband for the murder of his wife.

PART II. PARADISE REGAINED.

CHAPTER XV. THE STORY OF THE TRIAL. THE PRELIMINARIES.

LET me confess another weakness, on my part, before I begin the Story of the Trial. I cannot prevail upon myself to copy, for the second time, the horrible title-page which holds up to public ignominy my husband’s name. I have copied it once in my tenth chapter. Let once be enough.

Turning to the second page of the Trial, I found a Note, assuring the reader of the absolute correctness of the Report of the Proceedings. The compiler described himself as having enjoyed certain special privileges. Thus, the presiding Judge had himself revised his charge to the jury. And, again, the chief lawyers for the prosecution and the defense, following the Judge’s example, had revised their speeches for and against the prisoner. Lastly, particular care had been taken to secure a literally correct report of the evidence given by the various witnesses. It was some relief to me to discover this Note, and to be satisfied at the outset that the Story of the Trial was, in every particular, fully and truly given.

The next page interested me more nearly still. It enumerated the actors in the Judicial Drama — the men who held in their hands my husband’s honour and my husband’s life. Here is the List:

    
THE LORD JUSTICE CLERK,}

        
LORD DRUMFENNICK, }Judges on the Bench.

          
LORD NOBLEKIRK, }

             
THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mintlaw), } DONALD DREW, Esquire

    
(Advocate-Depute).} Counsel for the Crown.

    
MR. JAMES ARLISS, W. S., Agent for the Crown.

       
THE DEAN OF FACULTY (Farmichael), } Counsel for the Panel

    
ALEXANDER CROCKET, Esquire (Advocate),} (otherwise the Prisoner)

    
MR. THORNIEBANK, W. S.,}

     
MR. PLAYMORE, W. S., } Agents for the Panel.

The Indictment against the prisoner then followed. I shall not copy the uncouth language, full of needless repetitions (and, if I know anything of the subject, not guiltless of bad grammar as well), in which my innocent husband was solemnly and falsely accused of poisoning his first wife. The less there is of that false and hateful Indictment on this page, the better and truer the page will look, to
my
eyes.

To be brief, then, Eustace Macallan was “indicted and accused, at the instance of David Mintlaw, Esquire, Her Majesty’s Advocate, for Her Majesty’s interest,” of the Murder of his Wife by poison, at his residence called Gleninch, in the county of Mid-Lothian. The poison was alleged to have been wickedly and feloniously given by the prisoner to his wife Sara, on two occasions, in the form of arsenic, administered in tea, medicine, “or other article or articles of food or drink, to the prosecutor unknown.” It was further declared that the prisoner’s wife had died of the poison thus administered by her husband, on one or other, or both, of the stated occasions; and that she was thus murdered by her husband. The next paragraph asserted that the said Eustace Macallan, taken before John Daviot, Esquire, advocate, Sheriff-Substitute of Mid-Lothian, did in his presence at Edinburgh (on a given date, viz., the 29th of October), subscribe a Declaration stating his innocence of the alleged crime: this Declaration being reserved in the Indictment — together with certain documents, papers and articles, enumerated in an Inventory — to be used in evidence against the prisoner. The Indictment concluded by declaring that, in the event of the offense charged against the prisoner being found proven by the Verdict, he, the said Eustace Macallan, “ought to be punished with the pains of the law, to deter others from committing like crimes in all time coming.”

So much for the Indictment! I have done with it — and I am rejoiced to be done with it.

An Inventory of papers, documents, and articles followed at great length on the next three pages. This, in its turn, was succeeded by the list of the witnesses, and by the names of the jurors (fifteen in number) balloted for to try the case. And then, at last, the Report of the Trial began. It resolved itself, to my mind, into three great Questions. As it appeared to me at the time, so let me present it here.

CHAPTER XVI. FIRST QUESTION — DID THE WOMAN DIE POISONED?

THE proceedings began at ten o’clock. The prisoner was placed at the Bar, before the High Court of Justiciary, at Edinburgh. He bowed respectfully to the Bench, and pleaded Not Guilty, in a low voice.

It was observed by every one present that the prisoner’s face betrayed traces of acute mental suffering. He was deadly pale. His eyes never once wandered to the crowd in the Court. When certain witnesses appeared against him, he looked at them with a momentary attention. At other times he kept his eyes on the ground. When the evidence touched on his wife’s illness and death, he was deeply affected, and covered his face with his hands. It was a subject of general remark and general surprise that the prisoner, in this case (although a man), showed far less self-possession than the last prisoner tried in that Court for murder — a woman, who had been convicted on overwhelming evidence. There were persons present (a small minority only) who considered this want of composure on the part of the prisoner to be a sign in his favor. Self-possession, in his dreadful position, signified, to their minds, the stark insensibility of a heartless and shameless criminal, and afforded in itself a presumption, not of innocence, but of guilt.

The first witness called was John Daviot, Esquire, Sheriff-Substitute of Mid-Lothian. He was examined by the Lord Advocate (as counsel for the prosecution); and said:

“The prisoner was brought before me on the present charge. He made and subscribed a Declaration on the 29th of October. It was freely and voluntarily made, the prisoner having been first duly warned and admonished.”

Having identified the Declaration, the Sheriff-Substitute — being cross-examined by the Dean of Faculty (as counsel for the defense) — continued his evidence in these words:

“The charge against the prisoner was Murder. This was communicated to him before he made the Declaration. The questions addressed to the prisoner were put partly by me, partly by another officer, the procurator-fiscal. The answers were given distinctly, and, so far as I could judge, without reserve. The statements put forward in the Declaration were all made in answer to questions asked by the procurator-fiscal or by myself.”

A clerk in the Sheriff-Clerk’s office then officially produced the Declaration, and corroborated the evidence of the witness who had preceded him.

The appearance of the next witness created a marked sensation in the Court. This was no less a person than the nurse who had attended Mrs. Macallan in her last illness — by name Christina Ormsay.

After the first formal answers, the nurse (examined by the Lord Advocate) proceeded to say: