Down to the date of the trial, suspense and expectation lay in so crushing a burden upon me that life was hardly supportable. In this time I ceased to wonder that people had the courage to perish by their own hands. Twice after that first visit I saw Tom in Newgate, but those interviews were restricted by the rules of the place to a quarter of an hour, and always the bell sounded and the rude voice of the warder broke in at the moment when I had most to say and most to hearken to.
The trial of my sweetheart took place at the Central Criminal Court on April 17th. The judge was the stony-hearted Maule—memory may deceive me, but I am almost sure it was Mr. Justice Maule. For Tom’s defence my uncle had secured the services of the celebrated Mr. Sergeant Shee, with whom were Mr. Doane and Mr. C. Jones. I drove down to the Old Bailey with my aunt early in the morning. The court was not inconveniently crowded. It was one of those cases which do not excite much attention. A Cash-man or a Bishop would have blocked the court with eager spectators of both sexes, but the perils and crimes of the ocean do not appeal to the land-going public.
The judge took his seat at ten o’clock, and Tom was brought in and placed at the bar, charged by indictment that ‘he endeavoured, feloniously and maliciously, to cast away and destroy a certain vessel called the Arab Chief on the high sea, within the jurisdiction of the Admiralty of England, and also of the Central Criminal Court, with intent to prejudice divers persons as part owners of or underwriters to the same vessel.’ He pleaded ‘Not guilty.’ He spoke very low, but his tones were steady. He looked ill, haggard, and wasted. A great number of persons who were to appear as witnesses were in court, and I searched the many faces with burning eyes for the two wretches who had brought my sweetheart and me to this horrible pass. But my aunt did not know them, and there was no one at hand to tell me which among those men were Rotch and Nodder.
The case against Tom, as stated at the opening of the prosecution, was merely an elaborate version of the narrative of the facts which he had himself briefly related to me in Newgate. Though nobody had been defrauded, since the ship had not been sunk and no money claimed or paid, yet as much emphasis was laid by the prosecution upon the number of offices in which Tom had insured as though my sweetheart’s guilt were beyond question, as though the prosecution indeed had seen him make holes in the ship and sink her, as though he had then arrived in England and received three or four thousand pounds in excess of the worth of the property.
The person who addressed the Court for the prosecution had a very clear, musical voice; he had handsome eyes, and would pause at every pointed passage of his opening with an eloquent, appealing, concerned look at the jury. His sweet, persuasive tones and looks doubled to my fear the horrible significance of his statements, and I abhorred him whilst I watched him and listened, and could have killed him in my concealed fright and rage for his cool and coaxing and polished utterance of what I knew to be hellish lies. Often would I watch the jury with a devouring gaze. They were in two rows, six in a row, in a box, and one or another who was above would sometimes lean over and whisper, and one would take a note, and one would sit for ten minutes at a time motionless, with his eyes upon the person speaking. The counsel and gentlemen in wigs and gowns sat around a big table loaded with books and papers. A crowd of people hung about outside this sort of well, formed by the table and its circular benches and backs, and whispered and stared and grinned and took snuff. The judge sat, stern and heavily wigged, not far from the jury. Sometimes he took notes; sometimes his chin sank upon his breast. He seemed to see nothing, and if ever he spoke he appeared to address a vision in midair.
I’ll not trouble you with the particulars of this trial. I am passing rapidly now into another scene of life. One witness after another stepped into the box to prove the several insurances which had been effected by Tom; others to testify to the value of the Arab Chief and her lading. The name of Samuel Rotch was then pronounced, and the man came out of a group of people and briskly ascended to give evidence. The hot blood stung in my cheeks when I saw him. My heart beat as though I was stricken with fever. Tom looked at him and kept his eyes upon him all the while that the wretch was answering questions and giving his evidence, but I never once observed that he even so much as glanced at my sweetheart.
I had expected—nay, indeed, I had prayed—to behold an ill-looking villain, and I believe it told heavily against us that he was an exceedingly good-looking man. His features were regular; his eyes of dark blue, bright and steadfast in their gaze. His white and regular teeth shone like light when he parted his lips. He was coloured by the sun to the manly complexion of the seaman, and he was about Tom’s height, well built, but without my sweetheart’s fine, upright, commanding carriage. His voice had a frank note. His replies were quickly delivered, and there was not the least stammer or hesitation in his statements. Added to all this, he spoke with an educated accent.
He told his story plainly, and was not to be shaken. He gave a reason for going into the lazarette which my sweetheart’s counsel seemed unable to challenge. It was shown through his evidence that the size of the holes (an inch and a quarter) which were found plugged in the inner skin exactly corresponded with the diameter of the tree-nail auger which had been discovered in Tom’s cabin. His evidence was that whilst in the lazarette he had heard the sound of water running into the ship betwixt the lining and the side; he took his lantern to the place of the noise and saw the plugged holes. He went on deck and called to Benjamin Nodder, who acted as second mate and carpenter; he likewise summoned others of the crew and they all went into the lazarette and saw the plugged holes and heard the water coming in. Then to preserve their lives and save the ship from sinking they ripped up the plank and plugged the outer holes, thus stopping the leaks, and afterwards repaired in a body to the captain’s cabin. Captain Butler threatened to shoot the witness. He was secured, and the cabin searched and the auger found. They proceeded to Rio, and on their arrival Rotch called upon the British Consul, who on the evidence sworn before him thought proper to give the charge of the ship to a new captain and send home the prisoner, together with Rotch, Nodder, and two of the seamen who had descended into the lazarette.
The witness was asked why he suspected the captain of attempting to scuttle the ship instead of any other of the crew.
He answered:
‘Because I had seen the captain go into the lazarette.’
‘Was it unusual for a captain to enter the lazarette of his own vessel?’
‘No captain,’ the fellow answered, ‘would think of entering a lazarette.’
‘What other grounds for suspicion had he?’
The man replied, the captain had told him that his share in the ship, together with his venture in the cargo and freight, were heavily insured; also, on one occasion, the captain had talked to him about a ship whose master had been sentenced and executed for casting her away; and he had added significantly that it was a good job the law had been changed, and that a man might now venture for a fortune without jeopardising his life.
Tom steadfastly regarded Rotch whilst he gave his evidence; and I knew by the look in my sweetheart’s face that the villain in the witness-box fiendishly lied in every syllable he uttered.
Many questions in cross-examination were asked, and all of them Rotch answered steadily, bowing respectfully whenever the judge put a question; and he always looked very straight, with a fine air of candour and honesty, at the person who interrogated him. He was asked if he had not quarrelled with Captain Butler at Valparaiso. He answered yes. The particulars of that quarrel were dramatically related by Sergeant Shee. Rotch said that every word was true, but that he and Captain Butler had long ago shaken hands over that affair and dismissed it from their memory. He was asked if the prisoner had not reported him on one occasion for insubordination and neglect of duty, and if he had not been dismissed in consequence, though subsequently another berth had been procured for him by the prisoner? He answered yes, it was quite true. He was asked if it was the fact that one of the owners of the Arab Chief had promised him the berth of captain of that ship in any case, since, whether guilty or innocent, Captain Butler would not, after this accusation, be again employed? He replied it was true; but then the other side qualified what was to me a damning admission by saying that the fellow was distantly connected with the owner aforesaid.
The next witness was Benjamin Nodder. This fellow was a rough seaman of a commonplace type, hunched about the shoulders and bandy-legged, with red hair falling about his ears in coarse raw streaks, like slices of carrot; he was wall-eyed, that is, one eye looked away when the other gazed straight. His voice was harsh as the noise of an axe sharpened on a grindstone, and when he stood up in the box he leered unsteadily around him with an effort to stand with dignity, as though he was tipsy. His examination was little more than a repetition of what had been gone through with Rotch.
He was followed by two seamen who had no further evidence to give than that they had helped to stop the leaks and had seen the captain draw a pistol upon Rotch in his cabin; they also testified to the discovery of the auger, one of them saving that he recollected Mr. Nodder telling the men that Captain Butler had come forward and borrowed an auger.
‘Mr. Nodder,’ said this witness, ‘told us men that he couldn’t imagine what the capt’n wanted an auger for; two days after the hole was found bored in the lazarette.’
Thus ran the questions and the answers. Tom looked steadily at the witnesses as they spoke; but he made no sign; his arms lay motionless, folded upon his breast. Twice or thrice I saw his eyebrows faintly lift, and his lips part as though to a deep breath of irrepressible horror and amazement.
The Court adjourned for lunch after the two seamen had given their evidence; I remained in the court with my aunt. Mr. Johnstone came to us, and I asked him what he thought the verdict would be.
‘Wait for it! Wait for it!’ he exclaimed, petulant with worry and doubts. ‘Did not I tell Butler that he had heavily blundered in over-insuring? And how well Rotch gave his evidence! How frank were the devil’s admissions! Never a wink or a stutter with him from beginning to end! But the twelve have yet to hear the sergeant. Keep up your spirits, Marian!’ And he abruptly left us, but not without exchanging a look with his wife. I caught that look, and my heart sank and turned cold, as though the hand of death had grasped it.
When the Court reassembled, five witnesses were called to speak to Tom’s character. It was shortly before four when the judge had finished summing up. I had followed Sergeant Shee’s address with impassioned attention, eagerly watching the faces of the jurymen as he spoke, and detesting the judge for the sleepy air with which he listened and the barristers at the table and the people round about for their inattention and frequent whispers and passing of papers one to another on business of their own, as though the drama of life or death to me which had nearly filled the day had grown tiresome, and they were waiting for the curtain. Then I had followed with a maddening conflict of emotion, but with an ever-gaining feeling of sickness and faintness, like to the sense of a poisoned and killing conviction slowly creeping to the heart against its maddest current of hopes and protests—thus had I listened to the address of the counsel for the prosecution who replied upon the whole case; and now I listened to Mr. Justice Maule’s summing-up, a tedious and inconclusive address. He made little of the points which I believed he would have insisted upon. He talked like a tired man, he retold the testimony, and I seemed to find a prejudice against Tom throughout his delivery.
Then it was left to the jury, and the jury, after an absence of twenty minutes, returned with the verdict of ‘Guilty’ against the prisoner.
My aunt clutched my hand. I felt a shock as though the blood in my veins had been arrested in ice in its course. Mr. Justice Maule proceeded to pass sentence. He spoke in a sing-song voice, as though at every instant he must interrupt himself with a yawn. He said that the prisoner had been found guilty, after a fair and impartial trial, of the offence of having feloniously and wilfully attempted to destroy the ship Arab Chief for the purpose of defrauding the underwriters. That was the conclusion the jury had arrived at, and he was perfectly satisfied with this verdict. And then he pointed out the gravity of the offence, and how such acts tended to check the spirit of mercantile adventure, and how impossible it would be for insurance companies to exist if they were not protected by the law. He rejoiced that the penalty applied to this crime was no longer capital. At the same time it was his duty to inflict a severe punishment. The sentence of the Court was that the prisoner should be transported beyond the seas for the term of fourteen years.
My aunt sprang to her feet and shrieked aloud when this awful sentence was delivered. I sat dumb and motionless. Never once throughout the day had Tom looked in our direction. Now, on my aunt shrieking, he turned his head, saw me, and pointed upward, as though surrendering our love to God. The next moment he had stepped out of sight.
My uncle came to us. He was white and terribly agitated and shocked.
‘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.’
‘No, dear, not yet.’
I was about to speak, to say that I believed my going to the house where my father and mother had lived—to the house that was full of old associations, where I had thought to dwell with Tom when we were married—would soothe and do me good. I was about to tell her this, but could not for giving way; and, hiding my face in my hands, I bowed my head upon the table, neither of them speaking nor attempting in any way to arrest the passion of tears.
I felt better after this dreadful outbreak; it seemed to have cleansed my brain and to give room for my heart to beat and for my spirits to stir in. I looked at the good things upon the table, the eggs and bacon, the ham and the rest, and said:
‘How do they feed prisoners in jail?’
‘Now, don’t trouble about that, Marian,’ said my uncle. ‘Captain Butler has been a sailor, and he has been bred up on food compared to which the worst fare in the worst jail in England is delicious.’
‘What will they do with him?’
‘Until they despatch him across the seas they’ll keep him in prison at Newgate, perhaps, or they’ll send him to Millbank or to the Hulks. No man can tell.’
‘Don’t fret yourself now with these inquiries, Marian,’ said my aunt.
‘How do they treat convicts in jail, uncle?’
‘Very well, indeed. Better than the majority of them deserve. They feed them, clothe them, and teach them trades to enable them to live honestly by-and-by.’
‘In what sort of ships do the convicts sail?’
‘Oh, in average merchantmen. Owners tender, and a ship is hired. There were twenty-one of them chartered last year at about four p’un’ ten a ton.’
‘Twenty-one!’ cried my aunt. ‘I wonder there are any rascals left in England. Twenty-one! Only think! And perhaps two hundred rogues in each ship.’
‘At least,’ exclaimed my uncle.
‘Are they passenger ships?’ I asked.
‘Many of them.’
‘Could one take one’s passage in a convict ship?’
‘Love you, no! No more than one could take one’s passage in a man-of-war.’
‘Marian, you are making no breakfast,’ said my aunt.
‘What do they do with the convicts when they arrive at their destination?’ I inquired.
‘Why,’ said my uncle, passing his cup for more tea, ‘I can only tell you what I have read. The convicts are lent out as servants to persons in want of labour on their farms, houses, shops, and so on; some of them are sent up country to make roads. I don’t know whether they are paid for their work. They are well fed. It commonly ends in their setting up in business for themselves; and ninety-nine out of every hundred felons, after they have been out in the colonies for a few years, wouldn’t come home—to stay at home, I mean—on any account whatever. If I were a poor man, I should not at all object to being transported.’
‘Don’t say such things!’ exclaimed my aunt.
‘I shall follow Tom wherever he is sent,’ said I, pushing my chair from the table.
‘What! To Norfolk Island, for instance? What would you do there?’ said my uncle. ‘Far better wait in this country, my dear, until Captain Butler returns. They’ll be giving him a ticket-of-leave before long. He’s bound to behave himself well.’
I stepped to the window and looked out. There had been a note of coldness in my uncle’s pronunciation of the words, ‘Captain Butler.’ I had also caught a startled look, which was nearly horror, in my aunt when I said that I would follow my sweetheart wherever he was sent. I turned presently and said:
‘When shall I be able to see Tom?’
‘Once only every three months, I am afraid,’ answered my uncle. ‘The rules vary with the prisons, but I think you will find that letters and visits are allowed once every three months only. I’ll inquire.’
‘Shall we hear if he is sent to another place?’
‘We shall always be able to learn where he is.’
He was growing tired of my questions and left the table, having finished his breakfast.
‘I shall want to know what his defence has cost,’ said I; ‘I wish to pay.’
He nodded, and, pulling out his watch, said that he must go to business downstairs. I ran after him as he was leaving the room, and, grasping him by the arm, cried impetuously: ‘Uncle, do you believe Tom guilty?’
‘I’d not say so if I thought so,’ he answered looking at me, and I guessed by my feelings that my eyes sparkled and my cheeks were red. ‘Let me go, my girl. Everything passes, and to all of us comes a day when we discover that there is nothing under the sun which is worth a tear.’
I dropped my hand, and we walked out of the room. My aunt eyed me strenuously as I paced the floor. I could not sit, my heart was full of rage, and all the while a resolution was forming and hardening in me; indeed I caught myself thinking aloud, and often I’d halt with my hand clenched like one distraught. My aunt presently said:
‘Why not sit down, dear, and nurse your strength a little? You have been sorely tried. Cannot we arrange for another trip to the seaside?’
‘And leave——’ I cried, and broke short off and forced myself to say softly: ‘No, aunt.’
‘But what do you mean to do? I wish to act as a mother to you, Marian. I thank God you are not his wife.’
‘Don’t say that!’
‘But I must say it!’ she exclaimed, bridling. ‘It’s through me that you are not his wife, and I rejoice heartily that I advised you as I did. What! Would you, with your means and your beauty and your opportunities, be the wife of a convict?’
I felt the temper in me swelling into madness. I durst not stay, for I dreaded myself then, and flung out of the room, leaving her talking. I ran upstairs to put on my outdoor clothes, and when I returned my aunt was on the landing. She exclaimed that she had not meant what she said. I looked her earnestly in the face, for I did not believe her; but already my temper was gone. Ill-temper lives but a short time when there is great misery. I kissed her and thanked her for her kindness and love, and, telling her I must go home to look after things, I left the house.