“When you say your life, you mean probably more, do you not?” inquired the barrister who was examining her; and she answered him simply, “I do—I mean that which to a woman is dearer than life itself;” and at the words a sort of shiver of suppressed excitement ran through that packed and crowded court—a shiver that made as though one heart-throb of sympathy and of admiration. But more than all else did Fenella owe her salvation to the man who stood up for a whole hour to defend her.
Clitheroe Jacynth, it was said afterward, made his professional reputation over the defense of Lady Francis Onslow. He had been known to be clever, he had been reckoned among the rising men of his day, but never until now had the world quite realized the power that was in him. He had all the eloquence, the fire, the passionate pleading of a man whose whole soul was in the cause that he advocated, and his arguments carried all before them by the sheer force of will and talent. No one who saw the dark, passionate face—the eyes that shone with righteous wrath—who listened to the strong, sinuous words that seemed to burn into the hearts of his hearers as they fell, like living fire, from his lips, ever forgot Jacynth as he was that day. And when, at the last, he looked round the court, and, after a moment of silence, more eloquent than words, began with a deep and low-voiced impressiveness; “I see around me here a crowd of men—fathers, husbands, and brothers—men who have women they love at home, and whose honor lies in the hands of those women. Which of us, my brothers—my fellow-men,” he cried suddenly, aloud, stretching forth his right arm in a passionate appeal to those before him, “which of us all, did those women whom we love stand where my unfortunate client stood upon that fatal night, alone in the darkness, with no arm to defend her, no ear to hear her cry, with nothing but a certain and a shameful dishonor before her—which of us, I say, would not desire that the women we love and hold sacred, you and I, and every true man in all England, should do as this woman did; and save her honor at all costs?”
There was a murmur of applause that ran round the court as he sat down. Then the judge summed up strongly in her favor. There had been no evidence to contradict the prisoner’s own statement. No eye save her own had been in that chamber of death in the darkness of the night. Something, indeed, had been said about signs of more force having been used than it was in the power of a woman’s frail hands to employ, but there had been no evidence in support of that theory; not a vestige of any other presence in the prisoner’s chamber, save that of her would-be destroyer, had come to light; and the jury must bear in mind that a desperate woman is often given an almost miraculous strength in such moments of horror and of fear, and that if the blow with the silver dagger had been, as it appeared, struck first, the victim would necessarily have become much weakened, and was probably in a partial state of collapse.
There was much more of it, but it was all in her favor, and almost before the jury retired it was felt that their decision was a foregone conclusion. No one could righteously condemn a woman to death for murder who had taken a man’s life under such circumstances as these. So the horror of it all came to an end, and Lady Francis Onslow was told that she was free; that she could go where she pleased, and do as she liked.
One thing there was, however, that not all the judges and the juries in the land could do for her; they could not wash the stain of blood from her hands.
It was when Clitheroe Jacynth came that night to visit her at her hotel in Dover Street (she had left for London immediately after the trial), that this terrible fact first came home to her in all its dreadful reality. As he entered the room, she ran gladly to meet him, impulsively reaching out both her small hands to him.
“It is to you I owe my life!” she cried; “it is you who have saved me. How can I ever repay you, or ever thank you enough?”
But Jacynth stood with a grave, sad face, and downcast eyes, and arms folded together across his breast, and took no notice whatever of those little white hands stretched out to him.
A dull sense of dismay crept over her; something—she hardly knew why or wherefore—struck a cold chill to her heart, and her hands sank nervelessly down again to her side.
“Won’t you shake hands with me, Mr. Jacynth?—you, who have just saved my life?”