Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (54 page)

Chapter XLI
I

The Morning of the Tria
l

AT one o’clock the next day, Adam was alone in his dull upper room; his watch lay before him on the table, as if he were counting the long minutes. He had no knowledge of what was likely to be said by the witnesses on the trial, for he had shrunk from all the particulars connected with Hetty’s arrest and accusation. This brave active man, who would have hastened towards any danger or toil to rescue Hetty from an apprehended wrong or misfortune, felt himself powerless to contemplate irremediable evil and suffering. The susceptibility which would have been an impelling force where there was any possibility of action became helpless anguish when he was obliged to be passive, or else sought an active outlet in the thought of inflicting justice on Arthur. Energetic natures, strong for all strenuous deeds, will often rush away from a hopeless sufferer, as if they were hard-hearted. It is the overmastering sense of pain that drives them. They shrink by an ungovernable instinct, as they would shrink from laceration. Adam had brought himself to think of seeing Hetty, if she would consent to see him, because he thought the meeting might possibly be a good to her — might help to melt away this terrible hardness they told him of. If she saw he bore her no ill will for what she had done to him, she might open her heart to him. But this resolution had been an immense effort — he trembled at the thought of seeing her changed face, as a timid woman trembles at the thought of the surgeon’s knife, and he chose now to bear the long hours of suspense rather than encounter what seemed to him the more intolerable agony of witnessing her trial.

Deep unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state. The yearning memories, the bitter regret, the agonized sympathy, the struggling appeals to the Invisible Right — all the intense emotions which had filled the days and nights of the past week, and were compressing themselves again like an eager crowd into the hours of this single morning, made Adam look back on all the previous years as if they had been a dim sleepy existence, and he had only now awaked to full consciousness. It seemed to him as if he had always before thought it a light thing that men should suffer, as if all that he had himself endured and called sorrow before was only a moment’s stroke that had never left a bruise. Doubtless a great anguish may do the work of years, and we may come out from that baptism of fire with a soul full of new awe and new pity.

“O God,” Adam groaned, as he leaned on the table and looked blankly at the face of the watch, “and men have suffered like this before...and poor helpless young things have suffered like her....Such a little while ago looking so happy and so pretty...kissing ‘em all, her grandfather and all of ‘em, and they wishing her luck....O my poor, poor Hetty...dost think on it now?”

Adam started and looked round towards the door. Vixen had begun to whimper, and there was a sound of a stick and a lame walk on the stairs. It was Bartle Massey come back. Could it be all over?

Bartle entered quietly, and, going up to Adam, grasped his hand and said, “I’m just come to look at you, my boy, for the folks are gone out of court for a bit.”

Adam’s heart beat so violently he was unable to speak — he could only return the pressure of his friend’s hand — and Bartle, drawing up the other chair, came and sat in front of him, taking off his hat and his spectacles.

“That’s a thing never happened to me before,” he observed, “to go out o’ the door with my spectacles on. I clean forgot to take ‘em off.”

The old man made this trivial remark, thinking it better not to respond at all to Adam’s agitation: he would gather, in an indirect way, that there was nothing decisive to communicate at present.

“And now,” he said, rising again, “I must see to your having a bit of the loaf, and some of that wine Mr. Irwine sent this morning. He’ll be angry with me if you don’t have it. Come, now,” he went on, bringing forward the bottle and the loaf and pouring some wine into a cup, “I must have a bit and a sup myself. Drink a drop with me, my lad — drink with me.”

Adam pushed the cup gently away and said, entreatingly, “Tell me about it, Mr. Massey — tell me all about it. Was she there? Have they begun?”

“Yes, my boy, yes — it’s taken all the time since I first went; but they’re slow, they’re slow; and there’s the counsel they’ve got for her puts a spoke in the wheel whenever he can, and makes a deal to do with cross-examining the witnesses and quarrelling with the other lawyers. That’s all he can do for the money they give him; and it’s a big sum — it’s a big sum. But he’s a ‘cute fellow, with an eye that ‘ud pick the needles out of the hay in no time. If a man had got no feelings, it ‘ud be as good as a demonstration to listen to what goes on in court; but a tender heart makes one stupid. I’d have given up figures for ever only to have had some good news to bring to you, my poor lad.”

“But does it seem to be going against her?” said Adam. “Tell me what they’ve said. I must know it now — I must know what they have to bring against her.”

“Why, the chief evidence yet has been the doctors; all but Martin Poyser — poor Martin. Everybody in court felt for him — it was like one sob, the sound they made when he came down again. The worst was when they told him to look at the prisoner at the bar. It was hard work, poor fellow — it was hard work. Adam, my boy, the blow falls heavily on him as well as you; you must help poor Martin; you must show courage. Drink some wine now, and show me you mean to bear it like a man.”

Bartle had made the right sort of appeal. Adam, with an air of quiet obedience, took up the cup and drank a little.

“Tell me how SHE looked,” he said presently.

“Frightened, very frightened, when they first brought her in; it was the first sight of the crowd and the judge, poor creatur. And there’s a lot o’ foolish women in fine clothes, with gewgaws all up their arms and feathers on their heads, sitting near the judge: they’ve dressed themselves out in that way, one ‘ud think, to be scarecrows and warnings against any man ever meddling with a woman again. They put up their glasses, and stared and whispered. But after that she stood like a white image, staring down at her hands and seeming neither to hear nor see anything. And she’s as white as a sheet. She didn’t speak when they asked her if she’d plead ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty,’ and they pleaded ‘not guilty’ for her. But when she heard her uncle’s name, there seemed to go a shiver right through her; and when they told him to look at her, she hung her head down, and cowered, and hid her face in her hands. He’d much ado to speak poor man, his voice trembled so. And the counsellors — who look as hard as nails mostly — I saw, spared him as much as they could. Mr. Irwine put himself near him and went with him out o’ court. Ah, it’s a great thing in a man’s life to be able to stand by a neighbour and uphold him in such trouble as that.”

“God bless him, and you too, Mr. Massey,” said Adam, in a low voice, laying his hand on Bartle’s arm.

“Aye, aye, he’s good metal; he gives the right ring when you try him, our parson does. A man o’ sense — says no more than’s needful. He’s not one of those that think they can comfort you with chattering, as if folks who stand by and look on knew a deal better what the trouble was than those who have to bear it. I’ve had to do with such folks in my time — in the south, when I was in trouble myself. Mr. Irwine is to be a witness himself, by and by, on her side, you know, to speak to her character and bringing up.”

“But the other evidence...does it go hard against her!” said Adam. “What do you think, Mr. Massey? Tell me the truth.”

“Yes, my lad, yes. The truth is the best thing to tell. It must come at last. The doctors’ evidence is heavy on her — is heavy. But she’s gone on denying she’s had a child from first to last. These poor silly women-things — they’ve not the sense to know it’s no use denying what’s proved. It’ll make against her with the jury, I doubt, her being so obstinate: they may be less for recommending her to mercy, if the verdict’s against her. But Mr. Irwine ‘ull leave no stone unturned with the judge — you may rely upon that, Adam.”

“Is there nobody to stand by her and seem to care for her in the court?” said Adam.

“There’s the chaplain o’ the jail sits near her, but he’s a sharp ferrety-faced man — another sort o’ flesh and blood to Mr. Irwine. They say the jail chaplains are mostly the fag-end o’ the clergy.”

“There’s one man as ought to be there,” said Adam bitterly. Presently he drew himself up and looked fixedly out of the window, apparently turning over some new idea in his mind.

“Mr. Massey,” he said at last, pushing the hair off his forehead, “I’ll go back with you. I’ll go into court. It’s cowardly of me to keep away. I’ll stand by her — I’ll own her — for all she’s been deceitful. They oughtn’t to cast her off — her own flesh and blood. We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves. I used to be hard sometimes: I’ll never be hard again. I’ll go, Mr. Massey — I’ll go with you.”

There was a decision in Adam’s manner which would have prevented Bartle from opposing him, even if he had wished to do so. He only said, “Take a bit, then, and another sup, Adam, for the love of me. See, I must stop and eat a morsel. Now, you take some.”

Nerved by an active resolution, Adam took a morsel of bread and drank some wine. He was haggard and unshaven, as he had been yesterday, but he stood upright again, and looked more like the Adam Bede of former days.

Chapter XLII
I

The Verdic
t

THE place fitted up that day as a court of justice was a grand old hall, now destroyed by fire. The midday light that fell on the close pavement of human heads was shed through a line of high pointed windows, variegated with the mellow tints of old painted glass. Grim dusty armour hung in high relief in front of the dark oaken gallery at the farther end, and under the broad arch of the great mullioned window opposite was spread a curtain of old tapestry, covered with dim melancholy figures, like a dozing indistinct dream of the past. It was a place that through the rest of the year was haunted with the shadowy memories of old kings and queens, unhappy, discrowned, imprisoned; but to-day all those shadows had fled, and not a soul in the vast hall felt the presence of any but a living sorrow, which was quivering in warm hearts.

But that sorrow seemed to have made it itself feebly felt hitherto, now when Adam Bede’s tall figure was suddenly seen being ushered to the side of the prisoner’s dock. In the broad sunlight of the great hall, among the sleek shaven faces of other men, the marks of suffering in his face were startling even to Mr. Irwine, who had last seen him in the dim light of his small room; and the neighbours from Hayslope who were present, and who told Hetty Sorrel’s story by their firesides in their old age, never forgot to say how it moved them when Adam Bede, poor fellow, taller by the head than most of the people round him, came into court and took his place by her side.

But Hetty did not see him. She was standing in the same position Bartle Massey had described, her hands crossed over each other and her eyes fixed on them. Adam had not dared to look at her in the first moments, but at last, when the attention of the court was withdrawn by the proceedings he turned his face towards her with a resolution not to shrink.

Why did they say she was so changed? In the corpse we love, it is the likeness we see — it is the likeness, which makes itself felt the more keenly because something else was and is not. There they were — the sweet face and neck, with the dark tendrils of hair, the long dark lashes, the rounded cheek and the pouting lips — pale and thin, yes, but like Hetty, and only Hetty. Others thought she looked as if some demon had cast a blighting glance upon her, withered up the woman’s soul in her, and left only a hard despairing obstinacy. But the mother’s yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the debased, degraded man; and to Adam, this pale, hard-looking culprit was the Hetty who had smiled at him in the garden under the apple-tree boughs — she was that Hetty’s corpse, which he had trembled to look at the first time, and then was unwilling to turn away his eyes from.

But presently he heard something that compelled him to listen, and made the sense of sight less absorbing. A woman was in the witness-box, a middle-aged woman, who spoke in a firm distinct voice. She said, “My name is Sarah Stone. I am a widow, and keep a small shop licensed to sell tobacco, snuff, and tea in Church Lane, Stoniton. The prisoner at the bar is the same young woman who came, looking ill and tired, with a basket on her arm, and asked for a lodging at my house on Saturday evening, the 27th of February. She had taken the house for a public, because there was a figure against the door. And when I said I didn’t take in lodgers, the prisoner began to cry, and said she was too tired to go anywhere else, and she only wanted a bed for one night. And her prettiness, and her condition, and something respectable about her clothes and looks, and the trouble she seemed to be in made me as I couldn’t find in my heart to send her away at once. I asked her to sit down, and gave her some tea, and asked her where she was going, and where her friends were. She said she was going home to her friends: they were farming folks a good way off, and she’d had a long journey that had cost her more money than she expected, so as she’d hardly any money left in her pocket, and was afraid of going where it would cost her much. She had been obliged to sell most of the things out of her basket, but she’d thankfully give a shilling for a bed. I saw no reason why I shouldn’t take the young woman in for the night. I had only one room, but there were two beds in it, and I told her she might stay with me. I thought she’d been led wrong, and got into trouble, but if she was going to her friends, it would be a good work to keep her out of further harm.”

The witness then stated that in the night a child was born, and she identified the baby-clothes then shown to her as those in which she had herself dressed the child.

“Those are the clothes. I made them myself, and had kept them by me ever since my last child was born. I took a deal of trouble both for the child and the mother. I couldn’t help taking to the little thing and being anxious about it. I didn’t send for a doctor, for there seemed no need. I told the mother in the day-time she must tell me the name of her friends, and where they lived, and let me write to them. She said, by and by she would write herself, but not to-day. She would have no nay, but she would get up and be dressed, in spite of everything I could say. She said she felt quite strong enough; and it was wonderful what spirit she showed. But I wasn’t quite easy what I should do about her, and towards evening I made up my mind I’d go, after Meeting was over, and speak to our minister about it. I left the house about half-past eight o’clock. I didn’t go out at the shop door, but at the back door, which opens into a narrow alley. I’ve only got the ground-floor of the house, and the kitchen and bedroom both look into the alley. I left the prisoner sitting up by the fire in the kitchen with the baby on her lap. She hadn’t cried or seemed low at all, as she did the night before. I thought she had a strange look with her eyes, and she got a bit flushed towards evening. I was afraid of the fever, and I thought I’d call and ask an acquaintance of mine, an experienced woman, to come back with me when I went out. It was a very dark night. I didn’t fasten the door behind me; there was no lock; it was a latch with a bolt inside, and when there was nobody in the house I always went out at the shop door. But I thought there was no danger in leaving it unfastened that little while. I was longer than I meant to be, for I had to wait for the woman that came back with me. It was an hour and a half before we got back, and when we went in, the candle was standing burning just as I left it, but the prisoner and the baby were both gone. She’d taken her cloak and bonnet, but she’d left the basket and the things in it....I was dreadful frightened, and angry with her for going. I didn’t go to give information, because I’d no thought she meant to do any harm, and I knew she had money in her pocket to buy her food and lodging. I didn’t like to set the constable after her, for she’d a right to go from me if she liked.”

The effect of this evidence on Adam was electrical; it gave him new force. Hetty could not be guilty of the crime — her heart must have clung to her baby — else why should she have taken it with her? She might have left it behind. The little creature had died naturally, and then she had hidden it. Babies were so liable to death — and there might be the strongest suspicions without any proof of guilt. His mind was so occupied with imaginary arguments against such suspicions, that he could not listen to the cross-examination by Hetty’s counsel, who tried, without result, to elicit evidence that the prisoner had shown some movements of maternal affection towards the child. The whole time this witness was being examined, Hetty had stood as motionless as before: no word seemed to arrest her ear. But the sound of the next witness’s voice touched a chord that was still sensitive, she gave a start and a frightened look towards him, but immediately turned away her head and looked down at her hands as before. This witness was a man, a rough peasant. He said:

“My name is John Olding. I am a labourer, and live at Tedd’s Hole, two miles out of Stoniton. A week last Monday, towards one o’clock in the afternoon, I was going towards Hetton Coppice, and about a quarter of a mile from the coppice I saw the prisoner, in a red cloak, sitting under a bit of a haystack not far off the stile. She got up when she saw me, and seemed as if she’d be walking on the other way. It was a regular road through the fields, and nothing very uncommon to see a young woman there, but I took notice of her because she looked white and scared. I should have thought she was a beggar-woman, only for her good clothes. I thought she looked a bit crazy, but it was no business of mine. I stood and looked back after her, but she went right on while she was in sight. I had to go to the other side of the coppice to look after some stakes. There’s a road right through it, and bits of openings here and there, where the trees have been cut down, and some of ‘em not carried away. I didn’t go straight along the road, but turned off towards the middle, and took a shorter way towards the spot I wanted to get to. I hadn’t got far out of the road into one of the open places before I heard a strange cry. I thought it didn’t come from any animal I knew, but I wasn’t for stopping to look about just then. But it went on, and seemed so strange to me in that place, I couldn’t help stopping to look. I began to think I might make some money of it, if it was a new thing. But I had hard work to tell which way it came from, and for a good while I kept looking up at the boughs. And then I thought it came from the ground; and there was a lot of timber-choppings lying about, and loose pieces of turf, and a trunk or two. And I looked about among them, but could find nothing, and at last the cry stopped. So I was for giving it up, and I went on about my business. But when I came back the same way pretty nigh an hour after, I couldn’t help laying down my stakes to have another look. And just as I was stooping and laying down the stakes, I saw something odd and round and whitish lying on the ground under a nut-bush by the side of me. And I stooped down on hands and knees to pick it up. And I saw it was a little baby’s hand.”

At these words a thrill ran through the court. Hetty was visibly trembling; now, for the first time, she seemed to be listening to what a witness said.

“There was a lot of timber-choppings put together just where the ground went hollow, like, under the bush, and the hand came out from among them. But there was a hole left in one place and I could see down it and see the child’s head; and I made haste and did away the turf and the choppings, and took out the child. It had got comfortable clothes on, but its body was cold, and I thought it must be dead. I made haste back with it out of the wood, and took it home to my wife. She said it was dead, and I’d better take it to the parish and tell the constable. And I said, ‘I’ll lay my life it’s that young woman’s child as I met going to the coppice.’ But she seemed to be gone clean out of sight. And I took the child on to Hetton parish and told the constable, and we went on to Justice Hardy. And then we went looking after the young woman till dark at night, and we went and gave information at Stoniton, as they might stop her. And the next morning, another constable came to me, to go with him to the spot where I found the child. And when we got there, there was the prisoner a-sitting against the bush where I found the child; and she cried out when she saw us, but she never offered to move. She’d got a big piece of bread on her lap.”

Adam had given a faint groan of despair while this witness was speaking. He had hidden his face on his arm, which rested on the boarding in front of him. It was the supreme moment of his suffering: Hetty was guilty; and he was silently calling to God for help. He heard no more of the evidence, and was unconscious when the case for the prosecution had closed — unconscious that Mr. Irwine was in the witness-box, telling of Hetty’s unblemished character in her own parish and of the virtuous habits in which she had been brought up. This testimony could have no influence on the verdict, but it was given as part of that plea for mercy which her own counsel would have made if he had been allowed to speak for her — a favour not granted to criminals in those stern times.

At last Adam lifted up his head, for there was a general movement round him. The judge had addressed the jury, and they were retiring. The decisive moment was not far off Adam felt a shuddering horror that would not let him look at Hetty, but she had long relapsed into her blank hard indifference. All eyes were strained to look at her, but she stood like a statue of dull despair.

‘There was a mingled rustling, whispering, and low buzzing throughout the court during this interval. The desire to listen was suspended, and every one had some feeling or opinion to express in undertones. Adam sat looking blankly before him, but he did not see the objects that were right in front of his eyes — the counsel and attorneys talking with an air of cool business, and Mr. Irwine in low earnest conversation with the judge — did not see Mr. Irwine sit down again in agitation and shake his head mournfully when somebody whispered to him. The inward action was too intense for Adam to take in outward objects until some strong sensation roused him.

It was not very long, hardly more than a quarter of an hour, before the knock which told that the jury had come to their decision fell as a signal for silence on every ear. It is sublime — that sudden pause of a great multitude which tells that one soul moves in them all. Deeper and deeper the silence seemed to become, like the deepening night, while the jurymen’s names were called over, and the prisoner was made to hold up her hand, and the jury were asked for their verdict.