‘Come!’ he exclaimed. ‘Come along out of this now. We have had enough of it.’
He took me by the hand, and I arose, but I could not speak; I seemed to have been deprived of sensation in the limbs; indeed, I do not know what had come to me. I looked towards the bar where Tom had been standing and sighed, and then walked with my uncle, my aunt following. We passed out of the court and got into the Old Bailey; and when in Ludgate Hill, my uncle called a coach, and we were driven to his home. Nothing was said saving that my uncle once asked, ‘Who cried out?’ My aunt answered:
‘I did.’
I sat rigid, looking with blind eyes at the passing show of the streets. But how am I to describe my feelings! Ask a mother whose child has suddenly died upon her lap; ask a wife whose husband has fallen dead at her feet; ask an adoring lover whose sweetheart, taking refuge with him from a summer thunder-cloud, is slain by a bolt; ask such people so smitten to tell you what they feel! Nor can my tongue utter what was in me as we drove to my uncle’s home after the trial.
When we were arrived my manner frightened my aunt; she feared I’d do myself a mischief and would not lose sight of me. I sat in a chair and never spoke, though I answered when I was addressed, and obeyed mechanically; as, for example, if my aunt entreated me to come to the table and eat I quitted my chair and took up the knife and fork, but without eating. My gaze was fixed! I saw nothing but Tom standing at the bar of the Old Bailey, hearkening to his sentence, lifting up his hand to me and looking upward. If I turned my eyes toward my aunt, Tom was behind her. If my uncle sat before me and addressed me, the vision of Tom painted in bright colours receiving sentence and lifting his hand was behind him.
Once during the evening of the day of the trial, when my uncle came into the parlour, my aunt turned to him and said:
‘If she would only cry!’
She took me to her bed that night, and I lay without speech, seeing Tom as in a vision, and hearing the sentence over and over again repeated. I may have slept; I cannot tell. My aunt wished me to remain in bed next morning, but when she was dressed I got up and followed her to the parlour.
My uncle sat by a glowing fire; he was deeply interested in a newspaper and was probably reading a report of the trial.
‘Aunt,’ I said, speaking for the first time, and in a voice so harsh and unmusical that my uncle, not knowing that I had entered, looked up with gesture of surprise and dropped the newspaper, ‘I wish to go home.’