Mary Jane Married: Tales of a Village Inn

by George R. Sims

They didn’t look anything very dreadful in the daylight, and they were certainly very pleasant with me, though a bit more jokey than I felt inclined for.

They said they’d have dinner at five o’clock; and then they asked me all about the village and the neighbourhood, and they were on again about that silent pool. There had been a murder committed there years and years ago, and they must have heard about it somehow, for they asked me all about it, and I told them the story as well as I could remember it.

There was a young woman, the daughter of a farmer, who lived near the wood, and she was engaged to be married to a young fellow who was a farmer’s son. But it seems that she had been carrying on with a young gentleman of quality, who lived in a fine mansion some miles away. The young farmer had his suspicions, and watched her, and one moonlight night he saw her go out, and meet her gentleman lover in the wood near this pool. The lovers parted at the pool, after a very stormy scene, the poor girl saying that he had broken her heart, and that she would drown herself. An old man, a farm labourer, who was going through the wood, heard the girl say that she would drown herself. He didn’t see her, he only heard those words.

The next morning the poor girl was found lying drowned in the pool, and it was supposed to be suicide. The old man’s evidence of what he had heard, and something that the doctor said at the inquest, made it quite clear why the poor thing should have done so. But after the inquest was over and it had been brought in suicide, the rumour got about that it wasn’t a suicide after all, but a murder. Some people said that the young farmer had pushed her in, in a mad fit of jealousy and revenge, and others that the young gentleman had done it, because the poor girl had threatened to tell everything, and make a scandal; and it seems he was dreadfully in debt, and engaged to be married to a very rich young lady.

The rumour got so strong, and such a lot of evidence kept being found out by the girl’s father, that the young gentleman was arrested—arrested on the very morning that he was to have been married—and was charged with the murder. The pool had been dragged, and at the bottom of the pool was found, among other things, a piece of linen, with a small diamond pin still in it. It was in the days when gentlemen wore frill shirts, with a diamond pin in them—sometimes one pin and a little chain, and a smaller pin attached to that. I dare say you remember them, because it is not so long ago that some old-fashioned gentlemen wore them still. It was said that this belonged to the man who had pushed the poor girl in—that there had been a struggle, and she had clung to him, and the shirt-front had been torn away, and the girl had gone into the pool with it in her hand, and opening her hands struggling in the water, it had gone to the bottom.

At the trial, when the gentleman’s servants were examined, it was proved that he had come home that night very excited, and one of them had noticed that he wore his coat buttoned over his chest, and it was found out that a pin, which he was known to have had, had not been seen since—that he could not produce it, though he swore he was innocent.

He was committed for trial, I think—at any rate, after the examination before the magistrates there was another grand trial at the assizes, and everybody thought he would be found guilty, when suddenly the young farmer came into the court, and made a tremendous sensation by saying that he had murdered the girl himself, in a fit of passion.

He had overheard the conversation between the lovers, and he had sprung out on them, and attacked the young gentleman. The poor girl had clung to him to protect him, badly as he had used her, and that was how the piece of shirt and the diamond pin came away in her hand. The young gentleman, who was a coward, or he could never have treated a trusting girl as he did, slunk away, for the farmer threatened he would kill him like a dog if he did not. And as soon as he was gone, leaving the girl half-fainting, the young farmer turned on her, and she answered him, and said she hated him, and upbraided him for attacking the man she loved; and this made him so mad that he pushed her into the pool, and she was drowned.

I couldn’t tell the gentlemen all the details, because I didn’t know them, but that was the story as I had heard it. The young farmer was put in the dock in the place of the young gentleman, and was found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged; but he managed to hang himself in his cell before the day of execution. The young gentleman lost his rich bride, and went away abroad, and they say that he was stabbed soon afterwards in a row in a low gambling-house, which was a terrible tragedy, and three young lives lost because a man was wicked and a woman was weak; but I suppose there will be tragedies of that sort as long as the world lasts.

The gentlemen seemed very interested in what I told them, and I began to think better of them, because it is always nice to tell a story to intelligent people, and to see that you have made an impression.