After describing the manner of Mr.James Smith's arrival at the Hall, the witness, Josephine Durand, confessed that she had been led to listen at the music-room door by hearing angry voices inside, and she then described, truly enough, the latter part of the altercation between husband and wife.Fearing, after this, that something serious might happen, she had kept watch in her room, which was on the same floor as her mistress's.She had heard her mistress's door open softly between one and two in the morning--had followed her mistress, who carried a small lamp, along the passage and down the stairs into the hall--had hidden herself in the porter's chair--had seen her mistress take a dagger in a green sheath from a collection of Eastern curiosities kept in the hall--had followed her again, and seen her softly enter the Red Room--had heard the heavy breathing of Mr.James Smith, which gave token that he was asleep--had slipped into an empty room, next door to the Red Roam, and had waited there about a quarter of an hour, when her mistress came out again with the dagger in her hand--had followed her mistress again into the hall, where she had put the dagger back into its place--had seen her mistress turn into a side passage that led to my room--had heard her knock at my door, and heard me answer and open it--had hidden again in the porter's chair--had, after a while, seen me and my mistress pass together into the passage that led to the Red Room--had watched us both into the Red Room--and had then, through fear of being discovered and murdered herself, if she risked detection any longer, stolen back to her own room for the rest of the night.
After deposing on oath to the truth of these atrocious falsehoods, and declaring, in conclusion, that Mr.James Smith had been murdered by my mistress, and that I was an accomplice, the quadroon had further asserted, in order to show a motive for the crime, that Mr.Meeke was my mistress's lover; that he had been forbidden the house by her husband, and that he was found in the house, and alone with her, on the evening of Mr.James Smith's return.Here again there were some grains of truth cunningly mixed up with a revolting lie, and they had their effect in giving to the falsehood a look of probability.
I was cautioned in the usual manner and asked if I had anything to say.
I replied that I was innocent, but that I would wait for legal assistance before I defended myself.The justice remanded me and the examination was over.Three days later my unhappy mistress was subjected to the same trial.I was not allowed to communicate with her.All I knew was that the lawyer had arrived from London to help her.Toward the evening he was admitted to see me.He shook his head sorrowfully when I asked after my mistress.
"I am afraid," he said, "that she has sunk under the horror of the situation in which that vile woman has placed her.Weakened by her previous agitation, she seems to have given way under this last shock, tenderly and carefully as Mr.Philip Nicholson broke the bad news to her.All her feelings appeared to be strangely blunted at the examination to-day.She answered the questions put to her quite correctly, but at the same time quite mechanically, with no change in her complexion, or in her tone of voice, or in her manner, from beginning to end.It is a sad thing, William, when women cannot get their natural vent of weeping, and your mistress has not shed a tear since she left Darrock Hall.""But surely, sir," I said, "if my examination has not proved Josephine's perjury, my mistress's examination must have exposed it?""Nothing will expose it," answered the lawyer, "but producing Mr.
James Smith, or, at least, legally proving that he is alive.
Morally speaking, I have no doubt that the justice before whom you have been examined is as firmly convinced as we can be that the quadroon has perjured herself.Morally speaking, he believes that those threats which your mistress unfortunately used referred (as she said they did to-day) to her intention of leaving the Hall early in the morning, with you for her attendant, and coming to me, if she had been well enough to travel, to seek effectual legal protection from her husband for the future.Mr.Nicholson believes that; and I, who know more of the circumstances than he does, believe also that Mr.James Smith stole away from Darrock Hall in the night under fear of being indicted for bigamy.But if I can't find him--if I can't prove him to be alive--if I can't account for those spots of blood on the night-gown, the accidental circumstances of the case remain unexplained--your mistress's rash language, the bad terms on which she has lived with her husband, and her unlucky disregard of appearances in keeping up her intercourse with Mr.Meeke, all tell dead against us--and the justice has no alternative, in a legal point of view, but to remand you both, as he has now done, for the production of further evidence.""But how, then, in Heaven's name, is our innocence to be proved, sir?" I asked.
"In the first place," said the lawyer, "by finding Mr.James Smith; and, in the second place, by persuading him, when he is found, to come forward and declare himself.""Do you really believe, sir," said I, "that he would hesitate to do that, when he knows the horrible charge to which his disappearance has exposed his wife? He is a heartless villain, Iknow; but surely--"