“From a child,” said Aunty. “When she was a baby she had to have everything she wanted, or she’d have cried herself into fits. So every doctor told us; it was not her fault, poor dear. It was something as affected her heart. She could not put up with things as other folks have got to put up with. She had very fine feelings, had poor Amanda,” the witness said, once more hiding her face in her handkerchief. The feeling, however, was fictitious here, and consequently did not tell.
“But it is sometimes highly inconvenient to have very fine feelings,” said Serjeant Ryder. “You have said that she did not approve of the friendship between her husband and his cousin. Was this the chief cause of the excitement which brought on those fainting fits?——”
“Oh, bless you, sir, anything would do,” cried the witness incautiously. “I have seen her fly out at myself for opening the door too quick or too slow, or for putting a thing down on a table or for pinning my collar wrong. It didn’t matter what it was!”—— Here Aunty discovered her mistake, and added falteringly,—“I mean since she was married. When a lady is married she is in the way of being put out, more than a young girl at home in her father’s house——”
“How is that, now,—tell me,—I should like some information on that subject,” said the bland lawyer. “Is it because a lady who is married gets so much more of her own way? or less?”
“Lord, sir, what a question,—less of course. She was never put out, nor allowed to be put out when she was at home with us; but when a girl goes into the world, and has to be troubled with servants, and bills, and all that,—not to say with a husband as would be enough to try a saint——”
(Episodes of this kind are amusing and exhilarating, I suppose, to both the witnesses and the counsel, as well as to the audience, whose feelings are thus preserved from undue tension,—but they are somewhat hard upon the persons principally concerned,—Innocent’s friends looked on with blank and rigid faces at this encounter of wits.)
“Are we to understand, then, that the deceased was cruelly tried by her husband?”
“I don’t know what you mean by cruelly tried—between cruelty as you can go to law for, and the way a man ought to behave as is fond of his wife, there’s a deal of difference,” said the witness, feeling that she had the best of it. “All I have got to say against him is, that he was aggravating in his ways,—most gentlemen is.”
At this there was a laugh,—notwithstanding the pale, piteous face of Innocent at the bar—notwithstanding the tremendous issues involved to a creature so young and so simple—and notwithstanding all the blank faces, almost awful in their indignation, of her friends, the court and the jury relieved their feelings by momentary laughter. Mr. Justice Molyneux kindly allowed his features to relax; even in the midst of a tragedy it is well to have a little buffoonery to lighten the strain. The cross-examination went on, and Serjeant Ryder elicited many details of the life of Frederick and Amanda, which proved conclusively that no suppositious Rosamond was necessary to awaken her jealousy, and that indeed jealousy itself, or any such intense feeling, was not needed to rouse the excitement which was followed by those dangerous faints. A large proportion of the audience present had some knowledge beforehand of Amanda Batty’s temper, so that the revelation was very complete; and it was a highly-interesting revelation, and gratified the curious. Every popular assembly is greedy of such details of those exceptional human lives which are separated by misfortune or crime from the decorum of ordinary privacy, and delivered over to the gaze of the world. But though it was thus interesting as a revelation, it did not advance the cause of the prisoner at the bar, whose conduct in that mysterious moment when she was with the sick woman was neither explained nor affected by any of the details of Amanda’s previous life. Much less interesting to the general mind were Serjeant Ryder’s attempts to elicit distinct information from the witness as to the time which had elapsed between Amanda’s last outburst of passion and the moment when Aunty rushed into the room—“It felt like hours,” she said, and she thought, but could not swear, that the hour which she heard strike while Amanda was talking must have been eleven; or perhaps the chimes for the half-hour after ten. This discussion, however, wearied the public which had been allowed to taste more exciting fare.
After Miss Johnson’s examination terminated, the maids were called to confirm her evidence, one of whom gave a picturesque account of the sudden appearance of Innocent at the open door in a flood of moonlight, while she was looking out for the doctor. She was herself standing in the deep shadow on the other side, looking down the lane by which the doctor must come. She described her own fright and wonder as the noiseless figure paused, looked round, and then glided along through the moonlight, until the next bank of shadow swallowed it up. She thought it was a ghost, and could not scream for very terror; and it was not until she knew that the young lady had disappeared that she identified the noiseless, gliding figure. The maids both thought Innocent’s disappearance thus very odd, but they both confessed that they had given no importance to it at the time. Nor were either of these witnesses clear about the time. One was of opinion with Aunty that it was eleven o’clock which struck; while the other, who had not heard the clock, concluded the hour to be later. These were the chief witnesses to the event itself, for neither Batty nor Frederick were called. The former had held himself ready up to the last moment, but his vindictive impulse was so visible and so tremendous that the gentleman who held his brief had almost thrown it up after an interview with him, and had insisted upon excluding him from the witness-box.