Convict B 14: A Novel

by R. K. Weekes

General thrill in court. Dorothea had resumed her widow's weeds together with her married name; and very young she looked, and fair, and pathetic, under the flowing veil. From Hancock's point of view, this was as it should be. It would take a deal of sentiment to make her past proceedings go down with the jury. Perhaps Dorothea knew this. Perhaps she was playing to the gallery. Perhaps, on the other hand, she was only playing to herself—acting what she knew she ought to feel, in order to persuade herself that she did feel it. Dorothea was a great hand at believing what she wanted to. However that might be, she was undoubtedly pathetic; and with her romantic story fresh in their minds from Hancock's opening speech, the jury were duly impressed.

She struck the right note at once. "My husband was not intoxicated!" she said indignantly. "He was only very, very anxious for my comfort!" Half-a-dozen credible witnesses had sworn that Trent was intoxicated, but no matter; the point was that, after nearly a year of marriage, he appeared as still a hero to his wife. Next came Dorothea's own part in the drama. She described the scene: the lamp on the floor, the confusion of both men, Denis's attempt to keep her out, Gardiner's unconcealed terror. "I told him he had murdered my husband, and he didn't deny it. He cowered back against the wall with his arm across his eyes, so, but he never attempted to deny it!" She told how, kneeling on the floor beside her dead husband, she had come upon the chisel. "I slipped it under my cloak. No, I didn't mean to hide it. It was only that I—I—I couldn't speak just then. I was thinking of my husband." Was it art that made her voice fail, or nature? "I don't know what happened next. I don't remember speaking to my maid. I don't remember anything. I think I fainted. I was ill afterwards. No, I didn't accuse the prisoner later on because I knew it wouldn't be any good. I was sure in my own mind that he had killed my husband, but I had no proof. I knew people would say it was just my fancy. So then I set myself to get proofs—"

Because he knew it was bound to come out, Hancock took her through the story of her attempt on Gardiner. That gun must be surrendered to the enemy, but he would see that it was spiked first. Dorothea's behavior must be palliated by showing her fanatical devotion to her husband. No need to dwell on the scene at the crucifix, what Gardiner himself called the shilling-shocker part of the affair. Both sides were equally anxious to leave that in a decent obscurity. "Yes, I did pretend to be friends with him, and I did ask him, as a friend, to tell me the truth," Dorothea defiantly avowed. "Yes, I did know I was being hateful, and mean, and contemptible. But what did that matter? I had to see justice done!" Jael, and Judith, and Charlotte Corday—and Dorothea Trent? Her story ended in a storm of tears, which broke, strange to say, after she had done with Gardiner and was telling of her sojourn at Dent-de-lion. But no one in court dreamed of connecting her emotion with that part of her tale.

"I'd be sorry to be a Broad Churchman and not believe in hell," Mr. Gardiner commented with gusto. "Who's this now, Tom?"

"That? Oh, that's Merion-Smith—poor beggar!"

Another general stir. This was due partly to Denis's profession (for airmen weren't so common in the Lakes then as they have since become), and partly to his dramatic share in the story. A whisper went round, which was the well-informed telling the ignorant about the inquest. Denis's chin went up a shade higher. He had set his back against his family tree, and looked down arrogantly through his eyeglass on the court and all therein. It was plain he meant to give trouble.

The beginning ran smoothly. He told of Trent's intrusion, bending aside the questions to show how Gardiner had gone out of his way to avoid a quarrel. This was familiar ground; not so the conversation that had followed. Counsel would fain have passed over the details of Trent's discourse, but Denis intended the court to hear as much as he could possibly get in. Out came the story of the little girl at Chatham, sounding twice as bad by contrast on Denis's lips. The prisoner grinned. While ostensibly giving his evidence with distaste and reluctance (and indeed both sentiments were genuine enough), Denis was supplying the best, the only excuse for his friend. Vainly did his questioner try to show him as the straight-laced Puritan, to whom the mildest of jokes is an offense. Denis would not fit into the part.

"At last, when we had stood as much as we could, the prisoner suggested it was gettin' late. Trent made a joking answer. What he said was grossly offensive, worse than anything before. The prisoner caught up a chisel and flung it at his head. No, it was not premeditated. No, there had been no quarrel. Simply, the man was saying indecencies that had to be stopped, and the prisoner took the first way of stoppin' them—and if he hadn't, I'd've done it myself," Denis put in, unasked. "No, I cann't remember what it was he said—"

Instantly Hancock pricked up his ears. "You don't remember what Major Trent said?"

"I do not. Not the exact words."