The Dead Alive
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Wilkie Collins >> The Dead Alive
I tried, honestly tried, to put the confession before her in its least
unfavorable light.
"His resolution has given way," I said. "He has done this, despairing
of proving his innocence, in terror of the scaffold."
She rose, with an angry stamp of her foot. She turned her face on me
with the deep-red flush of shame in it, and the big tears glistening in
her eyes.
"No more of him!" she said, sternly. "If he is not a murderer, what
else is he? A liar and a coward! In which of his characters does he
disgrace me most? I have done with him forever! I will never speak to
him again!" She pushed me furiously away from her; advanced a few steps
toward her own door; stopped, and came back to me. The generous nature
of the girl spoke in her next words. "I am not ungrateful to _you_,
friend Lefrank. A woman in my place is only a woman; and, when she is
shamed as I am, she feels it very bitterly. Give me your hand! God
bless you!"
She put my hand to her lips before I was aware of her, and kissed it,
and ran back into her room.
I sat down on the place which she had occupied. She had looked at me
for one moment when she kissed my hand. I forgot Ambrose and his
confession; I forgot the coming trial; I forgot my professional duties
and my English friends. There I sat, in a fool's elysium of my own
making, with absolutely nothing in my mind but the picture of Naomi's
face at the moment when she had last looked at me!
I have already mentioned that I was in love with her. I merely add this
to satisfy you that I tell the truth.
CHAPTER XI.
THE PEBBLE AND THE WINDOW.
MISS MEADOWCROFT and I were the only representatives of the family at
the farm who attended the trial. We went separately to Narrabee.
Excepting the ordinary greetings at morning and night, Miss Meadowcroft
had not said one word to me since the time when I had told her that I
did _not_ believe John Jago to be a living man.
I have purposely abstained from encumbering my narrative with legal
details. I now propose to state the nature of the defense in the
briefest outline only.
We insisted on making both the prisoners plead not guilty. This done,
we took an objection to the legality of the proceedings at starting. We
appealed to the old English law, that there should be no conviction for
murder until the body of the murdered person was found, or proof of its
destruction obtained beyond a doubt. We denied that sufficient proof
had been obtained in the case now before the court.
The judges consulted, and decided that the trial should go on.
We took our next objection when the confessions were produced in
evidence. We declared that they had been extorted by terror, or by
undue influence; and we pointed out certain minor particulars in which
the two confessions failed to corroborate each other. For the rest, our
defense on this occasion was, as to essentials, what our defense had
been at the inquiry before the magistrate. Once more the judges
consulted, and once more they overruled our objection. The confessions
were admitted in evidence. On their side, the prosecution produced one
new witness in support of their case. It is needless to waste time in
recapitulating his evidence. He contradicted himself gravely on
cross-examination. We showed plainly, and after investigation proved,
that he was not to be believed on his oath.
The chief-justice summed up.
He charged, in relation to the confessions, that no weight should be
attached to a confession incited by hope or fear; and he left it to the
jury to determine whether the confessions in this case had been so
influenced. In the course of the trial, it had been shown for the
defense that the sheriff and the governor of the prison had told
Ambrose, with his father's knowledge and sanction, that the case was
clearly against him; that the only chance of sparing his family the
disgrace of his death by public execution lay in making a confession;
and that they would do their best, if he did confess, to have his
sentence commuted to imprisonment for life. As for Silas, he was proved
to have been beside himself with terror when he made his abominable
charge against his brother. We had vainly trusted to the evidence on
these two points to induce the court to reject the confessions: and we
were destined to be once more disappointed in anticipating that the
same evidence would influence the verdict of the jury on the side of
mercy. After an absence of an hour, they returned into court with a
verdict of "Guilty" against both the prisoners.
Being asked in due form if they had anything to say in mitigation of
their sentence, Ambrose and Silas solemnly declared their innocence,
and publicly acknowledged that their respective confessions had been
wrung from them by the hope of escaping the hangman's hands. This
statement was not noticed by the bench. The prisoners were both
sentenced to death.
On my return to the farm, I did not see Naomi. Miss Meadowcroft
informed her of the result of the trial. Half an hour later, one of the
women-servants handed to me an envelope bearing my name on it in
Naomi's handwriting.
The envelope inclosed a letter, and with it a slip of paper on which
Naomi had hurriedly written these words: "For God's sake, read the
letter I send to you, and do something about it immediately!"
I looked at the letter. It assumed to be written by a gentleman in New
York. Only the day before, he had, by the merest accident, seen the
advertisement for John Jago cut out of a newspaper and pasted into a
book of "curiosities" kept by a friend. Upon this he wrote to Morwick
Farm to say that he had seen a man exactly answering to the description
of John Jago, but bearing another name, working as a clerk in a
merchant's office in Jersey City. Having time to spare before the mail
went out, he had returned to the office to take another look at the man
before he posted his letter. To his surprise, he was informed that the
clerk had not appeared at his desk that day. His employer had sent to
his lodgings, and had been informed that he had suddenly packed up his
hand-bag after reading the newspaper at breakfast; had paid his rent
honestly, and had gone away, nobody knew where!
It was late in the evening when I read these lines. I had time for
reflection before it would be necessary for me to act.
Assuming the letter to be genuine, and adopting Naomi's explanation of
the motive which had led John Jago to absent himself secretly from the
farm, I reached the conclusion that the search for him might be
usefully limited to Narrabee and to the surrounding neighborhood.
The newspaper at his breakfast had no doubt given him his first
information of the "finding" of the grand jury, and of the trial to
follow. It was in my experience of human nature that he should venture
back to Narrabee under these circumstances, and under the influence of
his infatuation for Naomi. More than this, it was again in my
experience, I am sorry to say, that he should attempt to make the
critical position of Ambrose a means of extorting Naomi's consent to
listen favorably to his suit. Cruel indifference to the injury and the
suffering which his sudden absence might inflict on others was plainly
implied in his secret withdrawal from the farm. The same cruel
indifference, pushed to a further extreme, might well lead him to press
his proposals privately on Naomi, and to fix her acceptance of them as
the price to be paid for saving her cousin's life.
To these conclusions I arrived after much thinking. I had determined,
on Naomi's account, to clear the matter up; but it is only candid to
add that my doubts of John Jago's existence remained unshaken by the
letter. I believed it to be nothing more nor less than a heartless and
stupid "hoax."
The striking of the hall-clock roused me from my meditations. I counted
the strokes--midnight!
I rose to go up to my room. Everybody else in the farm had retired to
bed, as usual, more than an hour since. The stillness in the house was
breathless. I walked softly, by instinct, as I crossed the room to look
out at the night. A lovely moonlight met my view; it was like the
moonlight on the fatal evening when Naomi had met John Jago on the
garden walk.
My bedroom candle was on the side-table; I had just lighted it. I was
just leaving the room, when the door suddenly opened, and Naomi herself
stood before me!
Recovering the first shook of her sudden appearance, I saw instantly in
her eager eyes, in her deadly-pale cheeks, that something serious had
happened. A large cloak was thrown over her; a white handkerchief was
tied over her head. Her hair was in disorder; she had evidently just
risen in fear and in haste from her bed.
"What is it?" I asked, advancing to meet her.
She clung, trembling with agitation, to my arm.
"John Jago!" she whispered.
You will think my obstinacy invincible. I could hardly believe it, even
then!
"Where?" I asked.
"In the back-yard," she replied, "under my bedroom window!"
The emergency was far too serious to allow of any consideration for the
small proprieties of every-day life.
"Let me see him!" I said.
"I am here to fetch you," she answered, in her frank and fearless way.
"Come upstairs with me."
Her room was on the first floor of the house, and was the only bedroom
which looked out on the back-yard. On our way up the stairs she told me
what had happened.
"I was in bed," she said, "but not asleep, when I heard a pebble strike
against the window-pane. I waited, wondering what it meant. Another
pebble was thrown against the glass. So far, I was surprised, but not
frightened. I got up, and ran to the window to look out. There was John
Jago looking up at me in the moonlight!"
"Did he see you?"
"Yes. He said, 'Come down and speak to me! I have something serious to
say to you!'"
"Did you answer him?"
"As soon as I could catch my breath, I said, 'Wait a little,' and ran
downstairs to you. What shall I do?"
"Let _me_ see him, and I will tell you."
We entered her room. Keeping cautiously behind the window-curtain, I
looked out.
There he was! His beard and mustache were shaved off; his hair was
close cut. But there was no disguising his wild, brown eyes, or the
peculiar movement of his spare, wiry figure, as he walked slowly to and
fro in the moonlight waiting for Naomi. For the moment, my own
agitation almost overpowered me; I had so firmly disbelieved that John
Jago was a living man!
"What shall I do?" Naomi repeated.
"Is the door of the dairy open?" I asked.
"No; but the door of the tool-house, round the corner, is not locked."
"Very good. Show yourself at the window, and say to him, 'I am coming
directly.'"
The brave girl obeyed me without a moment's hesitation.
There had been no doubt about his eyes and his gait; there was no doubt
now about his voice, as he answered softly from below--"All right!"
"Keep him talking to you where he is now," I said to Naomi, "until I
have time to get round by the other way to the tool-house. Then pretend
to be fearful of discovery at the dairy, and bring him round the
corner, so that I can hear him behind the door."
We left the house together, and separated silently. Naomi followed my
instructions with a woman's quick intelligence where stratagems are
concerned. I had hardly been a minute in the tool-house before I heard
him speaking to Naomi on the other side of the door.
The first words which I caught distinctly related to his motive for
secretly leaving the farm. Mortified pride--doubly mortified by Naomi's
contemptuous refusal and by the personal indignity offered to him by
Ambrose--was at the bottom of his conduct in absenting himself from
Morwick. He owned that he had seen the advertisement, and that it had
actually encouraged him to keep in hiding!
"After being laughed at and insulted and denied, I was glad," said the
miserable wretch, "to see that some of you had serious reason to wish
me back again. It rests with you, Miss Naomi, to keep me here, and to
persuade me to save Ambrose by showing myself and owning to my name."
"What do you mean?" I heard Naomi ask, sternly.
He lowered his voice; but I could still hear him.
"Promise you will marry me," he said, "and I will go before the
magistrate to-morrow, and show him that I am a living man."
"Suppose I refuse?"
"In that case you will lose me again, and none of you will find me till
Ambrose is hanged."
"Are you villain enough, John Jago, to mean what you say?" asked the
girl, raising her voice.
"If you attempt to give the alarm," he answered, "as true as God's
above us, you will feel my hand on your throat! It's my turn now, miss;
and I am not to be trifled with. Will you have me for your husband--yes
or no?"
"No!" she answered, loudly and firmly.
I burst open the door, and seized him as he lifted his hand on her. He
had not suffered from the nervous derangement which had weakened me,
and he was the stronger man of the two. Naomi saved my life. She struck
up his pistol as he pulled it out of his pocket with his free hand and
presented it at my head. The bullet was fired into the air. I tripped
up his heels at the same moment The report of the pistol had alarmed
the house. We two together kept him on the ground until help arrived.
CHAPTER XII.
THE END OF IT.
JOHN JAGO was brought before the magistrate, and John Jago was
identified the next day.
The lives of Ambrose and Silas were, of course, no longer in peril, so
far as human justice was concerned. But there were legal delays to be
encountered, and legal formalities to be observed, before the brothers
could be released from prison in the characters of innocent men.
During the interval which thus elapsed, certain events happened which
may be briefly mentioned here before I close my narrative.
Mr. Meadowcroft the elder, broken by the suffering which he had gone
through, died suddenly of a rheumatic affection of the heart. A codicil
attached to his will abundantly justified what Naomi had told me of
Miss Meadowcroft's influence over her father, and of the end she had in
view in exercising it. A life income only was left to Mr. Meadowcroft's
sons. The freehold of the farm was bequeathed to his daughter, with the
testator's recommendation added, that she should marry his "best and
dearest friend, Mr. John Jago."
Armed with the power of the will, the heiress of Morwick sent an
insolent message to Naomi, requesting her no longer to consider herself
one of the inmates at the farm. Miss Meadowcroft, it should be here
added, positively refused to believe that John Jago had ever asked
Naomi to be his wife, or had ever threatened her, as I had heard him
threaten her, if she refused. She accused me, as she accused Naomi, of
trying meanly to injure John Jago in her estimation, out of hatred
toward "that much-injured man;" and she sent to me, as she had sent to
Naomi, a formal notice to leave the house.
We two banished ones met the same day in the hall, with our
traveling-bags in our hands.
"We are turned out together, friend Lefrank," said Naomi, with her
quaintly-comical smile. "You will go back to England, I guess; and I
must make my own living in my own country. Women can get employment in
the States if they have a friend to speak for them. Where shall I find
somebody who can give me a place?"
I saw my way to saying the right word at the right moment.
"I have got a place to offer you," I replied.
She suspected nothing, so far.
"That's lucky, sir," was all she said. "Is it in a telegraph-office or
in a dry-goods store?"
I astonished my little American friend by taking her then and there in
my arms, and giving her my first kiss.
"The office is by my fireside," I said; "the salary is anything in
reason you like to ask me for; and the place, Naomi, if you have no
objection to it, is the place of my wife."
I have no more to say, except that years have passed since I spoke
those words and that I am as fond of Naomi as ever.
Some months after our marriage, Mrs. Lefrank wrote to a friend at
Narrabee for news of what was going on at the farm. The answer informed
us that Ambrose and Silas had emigrated to New Zealand, and that Miss
Meadowcroft was alone at Morwick Farm. John Jago had refused to marry
her. John Jago had disappeared again, nobody knew where.
NOTE IN CONCLUSION.--The first idea of this little story was suggested
to the author by a printed account of a trial which actually took
place, early in the present century, in the United States. The
published narrative of this strange case is entitled "The Trial,
Confessions, and Conviction of Jesse and Stephen Boorn for the Murder
of Russell Colvin, and the Return of the Man supposed to have been
murdered. By Hon. Leonard Sargeant, Ex-Lieutenant Governor of Vermont.
(Manchester, Vermont, _Journal_ Book and Job Office, 1873.)" It may not
be amiss to add, for the benefit of incredulous readers, that all the
"improbable events" in the story are matters of fact, taken from the
printed narrative. Anything which "looks like truth" is, in nine cases
out of ten, the invention of the author.--W. C.