Armadale — Book the third- chapter XV, pt 2

“Did she go into the convent?

” asked Mr. Bashwood.

“Did they let her go in, so friendless and so young, with nobody to advise her for the best?

” “The Blanchards were consulted, as a matter of form,” pursued Bashwood the younger.

“_They_ had no objection to her shutting herself up in a convent, as you may well imagine.

The pleasantest letter they ever had from her, I’ll answer for it, was the letter in which she solemnly took leave of them in this world forever.

The people at the convent were as careful as usual not to commit themselves.

Their rules wouldn’t allow her to take the veil till she had tried the life for a year first, and then, if she had any doubt, for another year after that.

She tried the life for the first year, accordingly, and doubted.

She tried it for the second year, and was wise enough, by that time, to give it up without further hesitation.

Her position was rather an awkward one when she found herself at liberty again.

The sisters at the convent had lost their interest in her; the mistress at the school declined to take her back as teacher, on the ground that she was too nice-looking for the place; the priest considered her to be possessed by the devil.

There was nothing for it but to write to the Blanchards again, and ask them to start her in life as a teacher of music on her own account.

She wrote to her former mistress accordingly.

Her former mistress had evidently doubted the genuineness of the girl’s resolution to be a nun, and had seized the opportunity offered by her entry into the convent to cut off all further communication between her ex-waiting-maid and herself.

Miss Gwilt’s letter was returned by the post-office.

She caused inquiries to be made; and found that Mr. Blanchard was dead, and that his daughter had left the great house for some place of retirement unknown.

The next thing she did, upon this, was to write to the heir in possession of the estate.

The letter was answered by his solicitors, who were instructed to put the law in force at the first attempt she made to extort money from any member of the family at Thorpe Ambrose.

The last chance was to get at the address of her mistress’s place of retirement.

The family bankers, to whom she wrote, wrote back to say that they were instructed not to give the lady’s address to any one applying for it, without being previously empowered to do so by the lady herself.

That last letter settled the question--Miss Gwilt could do nothing more.

With money at her command, she might have gone to England and made the Blanchards think twice before they carried things with too high a hand.

Not having a half-penny at command, she was helpless.

Without money and without friends, you may wonder how she supported herself while the correspondence was going on.

She supported herself by playing the piano-forte at a low concert-room in Brussels.

The men laid siege to her, of course, in all directions; but they found her insensible as adamant.

One of these rejected gentlemen was a Russian; and he was the means of making her acquainted with a countrywoman of his, whose name is unpronounceable by English lips.

Let us give her her title, and call her the baroness.

The two women liked each other at their first introduction; and a new scene opened in Miss Gwilt’s life.

She became reader and companion to the baroness.

Everything was right, everything was smooth on the surface.

Everything was rotten and everything was wrong under it.

” “In what way, Jemmy?

Please to wait a little, and tell me in what way.

” “In this way.

The baroness was fond of traveling, and she had a select set of friends about her who were quite of her way of thinking.

They went from one city on the Continent to another, and were such charming people that they picked up acquaintances everywhere.

The acquaintances were invited to the baroness’s receptions, and card-tables were invariably a part of the baroness’s furniture.

Do you see it now?

or must I tell you, in the strictest confidence, that cards were not considered sinful on these festive occasions, and that the luck, at the end of the evening, turned out to be almost invariably on the side of the baroness and her friends?

Swindlers, all of them; and there isn’t a doubt on my mind, whatever there may be on yours, that Miss Gwilt’s manners and appearance made her a valuable member of the society in the capacity of a decoy.

Her own statement is that she was innocent of all knowledge of what really went on; that she was quite ignorant of card-playing; that she hadn’t such a thing as a respectable friend to turn to in the world; and that she honestly liked the baroness, for the simple reason that the baroness was a hearty good friend to her from first to last.

Believe that or not, as you please.

For five years she traveled about all over the Continent with these card-sharpers in high life, and she might have been among them at this moment, for anything I know to the contrary, if the baroness had not caught a Tartar at Naples, in the shape of a rich traveling Englishman, named Waldron.

Aha!

that name startles you, does it?

You’ve read the Trial of the famous Mrs. Waldron, like the rest of the world?

And you know who Miss Gwilt is now, without my telling you?

” He paused, and looked at his father in sudden perplexity.

Far from being overwhelmed by the discovery which had just burst on him, Mr. Bashwood, after the first natural movement of surprise, faced his son with a self-possession which was nothing short of extraordinary under the circumstances.

There was a new brightness in his eyes, and a new color in his face.

If it had been possible to conceive such a thing of a man in his position, he seemed to be absolutely encouraged instead of depressed by what he had just heard.

“Go on, Jemmy,” he said, quietly;

“I am one of the few people who didn’t read the trial; I only heard of it.

” Still wondering inwardly, Bashwood the younger recovered himself, and went on.

“You always were, and you always will be, behind the age,” he said.

“When we come to the trial, I can tell you as much about it as you need know.

In the meantime, we must go back to the baroness and Mr. Waldron.

For a certain number of nights the Englishman let the card-sharpers have it all their own way; in other words, he paid for the privilege of making himself agreeable to Miss Gwilt.

When he thought he had produced the necessary impression on her, he exposed the whole confederacy without mercy.

The police interfered; the baroness found herself in prison; and Miss Gwilt was put between the two alternatives of accepting Mr. Waldron’s protection or being thrown on the world again.

She was amazingly virtuous, or amazingly clever, which you please.

To Mr. Waldron’s astonishment, she told him that she could face the prospect of being thrown on the world; and that he must address her honorably or leave her forever.

The end of it was what the end always is, where the man is infatuated and the woman is determined.

To the disgust of his family and friends, Mr. Waldron made a virtue of necessity, and married her.

” “How old was he?

” asked Bashwood the elder, eagerly.

Bashwood the younger burst out laughing.

“He was about old enough, daddy, to be your son, and rich enough to have burst that precious pocket-book of yours with thousand-pound notes!

Don’t hang your head.

It wasn’t a happy marriage, though he _was_ so young and so rich.

They lived abroad, and got on well enough at first.

He made a new will, of course, as soon as he was married, and provided handsomely for his wife, under the tender pressure of the honey-moon.

But women wear out, like other things, with time; and one fine morning Mr. Waldron woke up with a doubt in his mind whether he had not acted like a fool.

He was an ill-tempered man; he was discontented with himself; and of course he made his wife feel it.

Having begun by quarreling with her, he got on to suspecting her, and became savagely jealous of every male creature who entered the house.

They had no incumbrances in the shape of children, and they moved from one place to another, just as his jealousy inclined him, till they moved back to England at last, after having been married close on four years.

He had a lonely old house of his own among the Yorkshire moors, and there he shut his wife and himself up from every living creature, except his servants and his dogs.

Only one result could come, of course, of treating a high-spirited young woman in that way.

It may be her fate, or it may be chance; but, whenever a woman is desperate, there is sure to be a man handy to take advantage of it.

The man in this case was rather a ‘dark horse,’ as they say on the turf.

He was a certain Captain Manuel, a native of Cuba, and (according to his own account) an ex-officer in the Spanish navy.

He had met Mr. Waldron’s beautiful wife on the journey back to England; had contrived to speak to her in spite of her husband’s jealousy; and had followed her to her place of imprisonment in Mr. Waldron’s house on the moors.

The captain is described as a clever, determined fellow--of the daring piratical sort--with the dash of mystery about him that women like--” “She’s not the same as other women!

” interposed Mr. Bashwood, suddenly interrupting his son.

“Did she--?

” His voice failed him, and he stopped without bringing the question to an end.

“Did she like the captain?

” suggested Bashwood the younger, with another laugh.

“According to her own account of it, she adored him.

At the same time her conduct (as represented by herself) was perfectly innocent.

Considering how carefully her husband watched her, the statement (incredible as it appears) is probably true.

For six weeks or so they confined themselves to corresponding privately, the Cuban captain (who spoke and wrote English perfectly) having contrived to make a go-between of one of the female servants in the Yorkshire house.

How it might have ended we needn’t trouble ourselves to inquire--Mr. Waldron himself brought matters to a crisis.

Whether he got wind of the clandestine correspondence or not, doesn’t appear.

But this is certain, that he came home from a ride one day in a fiercer temper than usual; that his wife showed him a sample of that high spirit of hers which he had never yet been able to break; and that it ended in his striking her across the face with his riding-whip.

Ungentlemanly conduct, I am afraid we must admit; but, to all outward appearance, the riding-whip produced the most astonishing results.

From that moment the lady submitted as she had never submitted before.

For a fortnight afterward he did what he liked, and she never thwarted him; he said what he liked, and she never uttered a word of protest.

Some men might have suspected this sudden reformation of hiding something dangerous under the surface.

Whether Mr. Waldron looked at it in that light, I can’t tell you.

All that is known is that, before the mark of the whip was off his wife’s face, he fell ill, and that in two days afterward he was a dead man.

What do you say to that?

” “I say he deserved it!

” answered Mr. Bashwood, striking his hand excitedly on the table, as his son paused and looked at him.

“The doctor who attended the dying man was not of your way of thinking,” remarked Bashwood the younger, dryly.

“He called in two other medical men, and they all three refused to certify the death.

The usual legal investigation followed.

The evidence of the doctors and the evidence of the servants pointed irresistibly in one and the same direction; and Mrs. Waldron was committed for trial, on the charge of murdering her husband by poison.

A solicitor in first-rate criminal practice was sent for from London to get up the prisoner’s defense, and these ‘Instructions’ took their form and shape accordingly.

--What’s the matter?

What do you want now?

” Suddenly rising from his chair, Mr. Bashwood stretched across the table, and tried to take the papers from his son.

“I want to look at them,” he burst out, eagerly.

“I want to see what they say about the captain from Cuba.

He was at the bottom of it, Jemmy--I’ll swear he was at the bottom of it!

” “Nobody doubted that who was in the secret of the case at the time,” rejoined his son.

“But nobody could prove it.

Sit down again, dad, and compose yourself.

There’s nothing here about Captain Manuel but the lawyer’s private suspicions of him, for the counsel to act on or not, at the counsel’s discretion.

From first to last she persisted in screening the captain.

At the outset of the business she volunteered two statements to the lawyer--both of which he suspected to be false.

In the first place she declared that she was innocent of the crime.

He wasn’t surprised, of course, so far; his clients were, as a general rule, in the habit of deceiving him in that way.

In the second place, while admitting her private correspondence with the Cuban captain, she declared that the letters on both sides related solely to a proposed elopement, to which her husband’s barbarous treatment had induced her to consent.

The lawyer naturally asked to see the letters.

‘He has burned all my letters, and I have burned all his,’ was the only answer he got.

It was quite possible that Captain Manuel might have burned _her_ letters when he heard there was a coroner’s inquest in the house.

But it was in her solicitor’s experience (as it is in my experience too) that, when a woman is fond of a man, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, risk or no risk, she keeps his letters.

Having his suspicions roused in this way, the lawyer privately made some inquiries about the foreign captain, and found that he was as short of money as a foreign captain could be.

At the same time, he put some questions to his client about her expectations from her deceased husband.

She answered, in high indignation, that a will had been found among her husband’s papers, privately executed only a few days before his death, and leaving her no more, out of all his immense fortune, than five thousand pounds.

‘Was there an older will, then,’ says the lawyer, ‘which the new will revoked?

’ Yes, there was; a will that he had given into her own possession--a will made when they were first married.

‘Leaving his widow well provided for?

’ Leaving her just ten times as much as the second will left her.

‘Had she ever mentioned that first will, now revoked, to Captain Manuel?

’ She saw the trap set for her, and said, ‘No, never!

’ without an instant’s hesitation.

That reply confirmed the lawyer’s suspicions.

He tried to frighten her by declaring that her life might pay the forfeit of her deceiving him in this matter.

With the usual obstinacy of women, she remained just as immovable as ever.

The captain, on his side, behaved in the most exemplary manner.

He confessed to planning the elopement; he declared that he had burned all the lady’s letters as they reached him, out of regard for her reputation; he remained in the neighborhood; and he volunteered to attend before the magistrates.

Nothing was discovered that could legally connect him with the crime, or that could put him into court on the day of the trial, in any other capacity than the capacity of a witness.

I don’t believe myself that there’s any moral doubt (as they call it) that Manuel knew of the will which left her mistress of fifty thousand pounds; and that he was ready and willing, in virtue of that circumstance, to marry her on Mr. Waldron’s death.

If anybody tempted her to effect her own release from her husband by making herself a widow, the captain must have been the man.

And unless she contrived, guarded and watched as she was, to get the poison for herself, the poison must have come to her in one of the captain’s letters.

” “I don’t believe she used it, if it did come to her!

” exclaimed Mr. Bashwood.

“I believe it was the captain himself who poisoned her husband!

” Bashwood the younger, without noticing the interruption, folded up the Instructions for the Defense, which had now served their purpose, put them back in his bag, and produced a printed pamphlet in their place.

“Here is one of the published Reports of the Trial,” he said, “which you can read at your leisure, if you like.

We needn’t waste time now by going into details.

I have told you already how cleverly her counsel paved his way for treating the charge of murder as the crowning calamity of the many that had already fallen on an innocent woman.

The two legal points relied on for the defense (after this preliminary flourish) were: First, that there was no evidence to connect her with the possession of poison; and, secondly, that the medical witnesses, while positively declaring that her husband had died by poison, differed in their conclusions as to the particular drug that had killed him.

Both good points, and both well worked; but the evidence on the other side bore down everything before it.

The prisoner was proved to have had no less than three excellent reasons for killing her husband.

He had treated her with almost unexampled barbarity; he had left her in a will (unrevoked so far as she knew) mistress of a fortune on his death; and she was, by her own confession, contemplating an elopement with another man.

Having set forth these motives, the prosecution next showed by evidence, which was never once shaken on any single point, that the one person in the house who could by any human possibility have administered the poison was the prisoner at the bar.

What could the judge and jury do, with such evidence before them as this?

The verdict was Guilty, as a matter of course; and the judge declared that he agreed with it.

The female part of the audience was in hysterics; and the male part was not much better.

The judge sobbed, and the bar shuddered.

She was sentenced to death in such a scene as had never been previously witnessed in an English court of justice.

And she is alive and hearty at the present moment; free to do any mischief she pleases, and to poison, at her own entire convenience, any man, woman, or child that happens to stand in her way.

A most interesting woman!

Keep on good terms with her, my dear sir, whatever you do, for the Law has said to her in the plainest possible English, ‘My charming friend, I have no terrors for _you_!

’” “How was she pardoned?

” asked Mr. Bashwood, breathlessly.

“They told me at the time, but I have forgotten.

Was it the Home Secretary?

If it was, I respect the Home Secretary!

I say the Home Secretary was deserving of his place.

” “Quite right, old gentleman!

” rejoined Bashwood the younger.

“The Home Secretary was the obedient humble servant of an enlightened Free Press, and he _was_ deserving of his place.

Is it possible you don’t know how she cheated the gallows?

If you don’t, I must tell you.

On the evening of the trial, two or three of the young buccaneers of literature went down to two or three newspaper offices, and wrote two or three heart-rending leading articles on the subject of the proceedings in court.

The next morning the public caught light like tinder; and the prisoner was tried over again, before an amateur court of justice, in the columns of the newspapers.

All the people who had no personal experience whatever on the subject seized their pens, and rushed (by kind permission of the editor) into print.

Doctors who had _not_ attended the sick man, and who had _not_ been present at the examination of the body, declared by dozens that he had died a natural death.

Barristers without business, who had _not_ heard the evidence, attacked the jury who had heard it, and judged the judge, who had sat on the bench before some of them were born.

The general public followed the lead of the barristers and the doctors, and the young buccaneers who had set the thing going.

Here was the law that they all paid to protect them actually doing its duty in dreadful earnest!

Shocking!

shocking!

The British Public rose to protest as one man against the working of its own machinery; and the Home Secretary, in a state of distraction, went to the judge.

The judge held firm.

He had said it was the right verdict at the time, and he said so still.

‘But suppose,’ says the Home Secretary, ‘that the prosecution had tried some other way of proving her guilty at the trial than the way they did try, what would you and the jury have done then?

’ Of course it was quite impossible for the judge to say.

This comforted the Home Secretary, to begin with.

And, when he got the judge’s consent, after that, to having the conflict of medical evidence submitted to one great doctor; and when the one great doctor took the merciful view, after expressly stating, in the first instance, that he knew nothing practically of the merits of the case, the Home Secretary was perfectly satisfied.

The prisoner’s death-warrant went into the waste-paper basket; the verdict of the law was reversed by general acclamation; and the verdict of the newspapers carried the day.

But the best of it is to come.

You know what happened when the people found themselves with the pet object of their sympathy suddenly cast loose on their hands?

A general impression prevailed directly that she was not quite innocent enough, after all, to be let out of prison then and there!

Punish her a little--that was the state of the popular feeling--punish her a little, Mr. Home Secretary, on general moral grounds.

A small course of gentle legal medicine, if you love us, and then we shall feel perfectly easy on the subject to the end of our days.

” “Don’t joke about it!

” cried his father.

“Don’t, don’t, don’t, Jemmy!

Did they try her again?

They couldn’t!

They durs’n’t!

Nobody can be tried twice over for the same offense.

” “Pooh!

pooh!

she could be tried a second time for a second offense,” retorted Bashwood the younger--“and tried she was.

Luckily for the pacification of the public mind, she had rushed headlong into redressing her own grievances (as women will), when she discovered that her husband had cut her down from a legacy of fifty thousand pounds to a legacy of five thousand by a stroke of his pen.

The day before the inquest a locked drawer in Mr. Waldron’s dressing-room table, which contained some valuable jewelry, was discovered to have been opened and emptied; and when the prisoner was committed by the magistrates, the precious stones were found torn out of their settings and sewed up in her stays.

The lady considered it a case of justifiable self-compensation.

The law declared it to be a robbery committed on the executors of the dead man.

The lighter offense--which had been passed over when such a charge as murder was brought against her--was just the thing to revive, to save appearances in the eyes of the public.

They had stopped the course of justice, in the case of the prisoner, at one trial; and now all they wanted was to set the course of justice going again, in the case of the prisoner, at another!

She was arraigned for the robbery, after having been pardoned for the murder.

And, what is more, if her beauty and her misfortunes hadn’t made a strong impression on her lawyer, she would not only have had to stand another trial, but would have had even the five thousand pounds, to which she was entitled by the second will, taken away from her, as a felon, by the Crown.

” “I respect her lawyer!

I admire her lawyer!

” exclaimed Mr. Bashwood.

“I should like to take his hand, and tell him so.

” “He wouldn’t thank you, if you did,” remarked Bashwood the younger.

“He is under a comfortable impression that nobody knows how he saved Mrs. Waldron’s legacy for her but himself.

” “I beg your pardon, Jemmy,” interposed his father.

“But don’t call her Mrs. Waldron.

Speak of her, please, by her name when she was innocent, and young, and a girl at school.

Would you mind, for my sake, calling her Miss Gwilt?

” “Not I!

It makes no difference to me what name I give her.

Bother your sentiment!

let’s go on with the facts.

This is what the lawyer did before the second trial came off.

He told her she would be found guilty _again_, to a dead certainty.

‘And this time,’ he said, ‘the public will let the law take its course.

Have you got an old friend whom you can trust?

’ She hadn’t such a thing as an old friend in the world.

‘Very well, then,’ says the lawyer, you must trust me.

Sign this paper; and you will have executed a fictitious sale of all your property to myself.

When the right time comes, I shall first carefully settle with your husband’s executors; and I shall then reconvey the money to you, securing it properly (in case you ever marry again) in your own possession.

The Crown, in other transactions of this kind, frequently waives its right of disputing the validity of the sale; and, if the Crown is no harder on you than on other people, when you come out of prison you will have your five thousand pounds to begin the world with again.

’ Neat of the lawyer, when she was going to be tried for robbing the executors, to put her up to a way of robbing the Crown, wasn’t it?

Ha!

ha!

what a world it is!

” The last effort of the son’s sarcasm passed unheeded by the father.

“In prison!

” he said to himself.

“Oh me, after all that misery, in prison again!

” “Yes,” said Bashwood the younger, rising and stretching himself, “that’s how it ended.

The verdict was Guilty; and the sentence was imprisonment for two years.

She served her time; and came out, as well as I can reckon it, about three years since.

If you want to know what she did when she recovered her liberty, and how she went on afterward, I may be able to tell you something about it--say, on another occasion, when you have got an extra note or two in your pocket-book.

For the present, all you need know, you do know.

There isn’t the shadow of a doubt that this fascinating lady has the double slur on her of having been found guilty of murder, and of having served her term of imprisonment for theft.

There’s your money’s worth for your money--with the whole of my wonderful knack at stating a case clearly, thrown in for nothing.

If you have any gratitude in you, you ought to do something handsome, one of these days, for your son.

But for me, I’ll tell you what you would have done, old gentleman.

If you could have had your own way, you would have married Miss Gwilt.

” Mr. Bashwood rose to his feet, and looked his son steadily in the face.

“If I could have my own way,” he said, “I would marry her now.

” Bashwood the younger started back a step.

“After all I have told you?

” he asked, in the blankest astonishment.

“After all you have told me.

” “With the chance of being poisoned, the first time you happened to offend her?

” “With the chance of being poisoned,” answered Mr. Bashwood, “in four-and-twenty hours.

” The Spy of the Private Inquiry Office dropped back into his chair, cowed by his father’s words and his father’s looks.

“Mad!

” he said to himself.

“Stark mad, by jingo!

” Mr. Bashwood looked at his watch, and hurriedly took his hat from a side-table.

“I should like to hear the rest of it,” he said.

“I should like to hear every word you have to tell me about her, to the very last.

But the time, the dreadful, galloping time, is getting on.

For all I know, they may be on their way to be married at this very moment.

” “What are you going to do?

” asked Bashwood the younger, getting between his father and the door.

“I am going to the hotel,” said the old man, trying to pass him.

“I am going to see Mr. Armadale.

” “What for?

” “To tell him everything you have told me.

” He paused after making that reply.

The terrible smile of triumph which had once already appeared on his face overspread it again.

“Mr. Armadale is young; Mr. Armadale has all his life before him,” he whispered, cunningly, with his trembling fingers clutching his son’s arm.

“What doesn’t frighten _me_ will frighten _him_!

”