“You were surprised, however, on this particular morning? Come, madam, the court is waiting. I understand you were not up when the prisoner burst suddenly into your room?”
“She did not burst into my room at all,” said Mrs. Eastwood with indignation. “When I opened my eyes, roused by the sound of the door opening, I saw her by my side.”
“This was at a very early hour in the morning, before the other members of the household were up?”
“It was about seven o’clock. The housemaid had let my poor child in as soon as she went down-stairs. She came to me, naturally—”
“And when you woke under these unusual circumstances, and saw her by your bedside, what did the prisoner say?”
Again Mrs. Eastwood paused. She threw once more a bewildered look round the court. Then recovering herself, she turned with the dignity of sorrow to the judge himself. “My lord,” she said firmly, “I don’t know what to do. The words I have to repeat will shock and startle every one who hears them; they will convey a false impression—they will create a prejudice——”
“The witness has no power of choice in the matter,” said the judge. “It is for the jury to decide what is true and what is false. The facts are what we must exact from you.”
Mrs. Eastwood grew very pale, so pale that all the women in the court believed she was going to faint, and the greater part of them grew sick with sympathy. “Then,” she said, in a very low voice, which, however, was heard everywhere, so great was the silence, “if I must tell it, this was what she said: ‘I have killed Frederick’s wife.’”
A long-drawn, sobbing breath of spent excitement, so universal as to reach to a subdued but distinct sound, came from the crowd. The witness stood for a moment leaning upon the front of the box, seeing nothing but a mist of white faces—her brain whirling, her mind confused, with the shock. It did not occur to her—how should it?—that her reluctance, her paleness, her misery, were all so many additions to the force of her testimony. What more terrible witness could have appeared against Innocent than one out of whom this terrible testimony had to be dragged as from the bottom of her heart?
Some few moments elapsed before she knew very well what she was saying after this. She replied mechanically to the questions put to her, but she did not wake up to a full sense of what she was doing till she found herself narrating her visit to Sterborne on the next day. Then as she recovered her senses gradually, and began to discriminate once more out of the sea of faces those which interested herself most deeply, she awoke to the importance of all she was saying. She threw herself into this easier narrative. She remembered everything—her confusion and bewilderment passed away. It is so much easier to recollect, to explain, to record fully, events which are not against you, which are rather in your favour! Her account of all she saw and heard was so clear that it did much to neutralize the damning effect of her former testimony. Yet what could neutralize such a confession—“I have killed Frederick’s wife”? Why should the girl say such a thing, was asked on every side, if it was not true?