Orley Farm

by Anthony Trollope

"Will you swear you wrote one of those you have before you? You can read, can't you?"

"Oh yes, I can read."

"Then look at them." Again she turned her eyes on them for half a moment. "Will you swear that you wrote either of those?"

"Not if there's another anywhere else," said Bridget, at last.

"Another anywhere else," said Chaffanbrass, repeating her words; "what do you mean by another?"

"If you've got another that anybody else has done, I won't say which of the three is mine. But I did one, and I didn't do no more."

Mr. Chaffanbrass continued at it for a long time, but with very indifferent success. That affair of the signatures, which was indeed the only point on which evidence was worth anything, he then abandoned, and tried to make her contradict herself about old Usbech. But on this subject she could say nothing. That Usbech was present she remembered well, but as to his signing the deed, or not signing it, she would not pretend to say anything.

"I know he was cram full of gout," she said; "but I don't remember nothing more."

But it may be explained that Mr. Chaffanbrass had altogether altered his intention and the very plan of his campaign with reference to this witness, as soon as he saw what was her nature and disposition. He discovered very early in the affair that he could not force her to contradict herself and reduce her own evidence to nothing, as Furnival had done with the man. Nothing would flurry this woman, or force her to utter words of which she herself did not know the meaning. The more he might persevere in such an attempt, the more dogged and steady she would become. He therefore soon gave that up. He had already given it up when he threatened to accuse her of perjury, and resolved that as he could not shake her he would shake the confidence which the jury might place in her. He could not make a fool of her, and therefore he would make her out to be a rogue. Her evidence would stand alone, or nearly alone; and in this way he might turn her firmness to his own purpose, and explain that her dogged resolution to stick to one plain statement arose from her having been specially instructed so to do, with the object of ruining his client. For more than half an hour he persisted in asking her questions with this object; hinting that she was on friendly terms with Dockwrath; asking her what pay she had received for her evidence; making her acknowledge that she was being kept at free quarters, and on the fat of the land. He even produced from her a list of the good things she had eaten that morning at breakfast, and at last succeeded in obtaining information as to that small but indiscreet glass of spirits. It was then, and then only, that poor Bridget became discomposed. Beefsteaks, sausages, and pigs' fry, though they were taken three times a day, were not disgraceful in her line of life; but that little thimble of brandy, taken after much pressing and in the openness of good fellowship, went sorely against the grain with her. "When one has to be badgered like this, one wants a drop of something more than ordinary," she said at last. And they were the only words which she did say which proved any triumph on the part of Mr. Chaffanbrass. But nevertheless Mr. Chaffanbrass was not dissatisfied. Triumph, immediate triumph over a poor maid-servant could hardly have been the object of a man who had been triumphant in such matters for the last thirty years. Would it not be practicable to make the jury doubt whether that woman could be believed? That was the triumph he desired. As for himself, Mr. Chaffanbrass knew well enough that she had spoken nothing but the truth. But had he so managed that the truth might be made to look like falsehood,—or at any rate to have a doubtful air? If he had done that, he had succeeded in the occupation of his life, and was indifferent to his own triumph.