CHAPTER XXII.A SCENE IN COURT.
Miss Prudence Semaphore, in after years describing her sensations when placed in the witness box, was accustomed to say she didn’t know whether she stood on her head or her heels. If any desire to experience the feeling, without enduring the varied miseries that a cruel fate inflicted on the unhappy lady, let them, if unaccustomed to public speaking, be called on for an afterdinner speech. The swimming in the head, the sea of faces dimly seen, the weakness in the knees, dryness of the tongue and throat, confusion of thought and general helplessness experienced, will help them to realise her emotions. The impossibility of dying suddenly then and there, ere forced to break silence, will appear a hardship, but they will be spared the terror of having somehow brought themselves within the clutches of thelaw, that appalled Miss Prudence. Speechmaking is not penal. Would that it were; but a respectable spinster, mixed up in a baby farming case, the only witness to her truth andbonâ fidesa helpless, speechless infant, can scarcely hope to clear herself satisfactorily.
Prudence knew that her story was wild and improbable; her illness had further disheartened her. She felt sure that no one would believe her on her oath, and this conviction gave a hesitation to her manner, an uncertainty to her statements, that branded her in the eyes of all as an audacious but unskilful liar.
“Come! she might ’ave told a better one thanthat!” was the whispered remark in the gallery when, in answer to a question, she declared that the infant handed over by her to the prisoner was her sister.
“Do you mean your step-sister?” asked the magistrate. “She is very much younger than you.”
“No, sir. She is my sister. My elder sister.”
There was a roar of laughter at this extraordinary statement.
“Youreldersister?”
“Yes, your worship.”
“Are your parents living?”
“No, your worship.”
“When did they die?”
“My mother died sixteen years ago, my father three years later.”
“And yet you say this infant is your elder sister?”
“Oh, sir, my lord, your worship,” said the weeping Prudence, “I assure you I am speaking the truth. I know I can’t expect anyone to believe me, but indeed it is true.”
There was movement and merriment at the solicitors’ table, and a voice said in a whisper,
“Queer delusion! Mad as a hatter!”
Prudence heard the words, and drew herself up with some dignity.
“No,” she said, “I am not mad; it is no delusion. Will you allow me to make a plain statement, your worship? The child I handed to that wicked woman is my sister, and is older than I. We bought a bottle of the Water of Youth that we saw advertised in theLady’s Pictorial. She should have drunk very little, but unfortunately she took an overdose, and you may believe me or not,but I found her changed into the infant you see in the middle of that same night.”
A roar of laughter drowned her words.
The counsel for the prosecution was very stern.
“I do not know, madam,” he said, “what may be the state of your mind, though I should advise your relatives to have it enquired into, but we cannot have the time of the court taken up in listening to such ridiculous and impossible statements. Remember, please, that you are on your oath, and give truthful replies to the questions put.”
“I am speaking the truth,” wailed Prudence. She was desperate, careless of consequences, driven into a corner. “You may put me in prison if you like, but I can say nothing else. My sister bought the Water from a Mrs. Geldheraus, of 194, Handel Street, on the 27th of June last, at three o’clock in the afternoon. She took a dose of it that same night, broke the bottle, I think, by accident, and unwilling to lose the wonderful water—at least, so I conclude, for I was not present—drank up all that was left. I heard her crying in the night, and found her turned into a baby. I could not keepher at the boarding-house, for the sake of my own good name. Everyone was prying and questioning about her, so I gave her to the prisoner to take care of, believing that she was a good and honest woman.”
“And where is this Mrs. Geldheraus now? Does she know you? Can she give any evidence as to your mental condition?”
“Alas!” said Prudence, weeping profusely, though even the prisoner at the bar wore an incredulous grin, “she has gone away to Paris. She was on the point of leaving London when my sister called on her.”
The counsel for the prosecution looked triumphantly at the magistrate. The woman was an absolute Bedlamite. No mere liar would invent so lame, so preposterous a story.
“You may stand down,” he said abruptly.
“Please may I say one word?” asked the distressed witness. She looked full at the magistrate. He was a soft-hearted man, and something in her pathetic, tear-stained face touched him.
“Well,” he said, “what is it? You must be brief.”
“Would you mind having my sister—the child—brought forward?”
The woman in charge of Augusta stood up, and exhibited the quaint, weird-eyed infant.
At sight of her an extraordinary change came over the face of good Mrs. Brown. She whispered eagerly and excitedly to the barrister engaged for the defence, pointing at Augusta, and accenting her remarks by beating her closed fist on the edge of the dock.
In a moment he was on his feet.
“Your worship! On behalf of my client, I beg to say she disclaims all responsibility for the child now produced in court. She knows nothing about it, and has never seen it in her life before. She desires me to say that the baby committed to her care by this lady was evidently under a month old. I appeal to every mother in court if that child is not between two and three years of age at the least.”
Great excitement followed this statement.
“Is that the child you gave her, or is it not?” asked the magistrate.
“Yes, my lord—your worship, I mean—that is the child, my sister, I’d know her anywhere. Her eyes are the same, and she always had that little wart on her forehead—but she looks bigger, certainly.”
Sal vehemently protested from the dock.
“Your worship,” said her counsel, “I emphatically deny that that is the child. The witness has already shown herself unworthy of belief, and has tried to palm off a ridiculous cock-and-bull story on the court. As men of the world, we can all see her motive for that, but what her reason for insisting that this child, which is quite two years older than the other, is hers, I confess I do not understand.”
“Is this the child that was placed in your care?” asked the magistrate of the workhouse matron.
“Yes, your worship. They was all identified wen they was brought into the ’ouse, and I put a kyard on each with its given name. This ’ere child is Augusta, or some such name. She ’as never been out of my keeping since.”
“How old was she supposed to be at the time?”
“Three weeks or a month, I b’lieve, yer wusshup, though I do think now”—doubtfully—“she looks a deal older than that; but the light wasn’t, so to say, good when she was brought in.”
“This is very extraordinary,” said themagistrate. “Who gave particulars as to the child’s apparent age?”
“The prisoner, I b’lieve, yer wushup, an’ two of her neighbours that identified the children, and gave the names by which they was known.”
“Let me look at it.”
Augusta was held up for the magistrate’s nearer inspection.
“Well,” said he, hesitatingly, “I’m not much of a judge of babies, but that child does seem to me to be quite three years old. When was she born?” he asked Prudence.
“Fifty-three years ago—on the 21st of April, 18—.”
Another roar of laughter greeted this reply, but the magistrate was annoyed. The woman was too ridiculous, for it was easy to see she was not as mad as she pretended.
“Madam,” he said severely, “you must be aware of the impression I have formed with regard to the ridiculous story you have thought fit to tell, and I would warn you, in your own interests, to remember that it is advisable to speak the truth.”
At any other time, his stern tone and frowning brows would have frightened poorPrudence out of such little wits as she possessed. Now, however, she seemed to be paying no attention, but, with dilated eyes, kept staring at Augusta, who was certainly conducting herself in a very extraordinary fashion. To the dismay of the nurse, she was bending, wriggling, and stretching in her arms.
As the magistrate ceased speaking, there was a sudden sound of rent material, a shower of buttons flew about the heads of the junior counsel, and Augusta’s sloppy workhouse frock and pinafore, that had been gradually tightening to bursting point, split explosively up the back and sleeves.
“Look, look!” cried Prudence, in a fever of anxiety. “It is passing off. I told you so. She is growing older. Oh! wait a little, your worship. Before long perhaps she will be able to speak. She will confirm what I’ve told you. Augusta dear, for heaven’s sake, speak if you can. They don’t believe me.”
The nurse, with alarm depicted on every feature, and drops of perspiration standing on her brow, gave up her efforts to hold the child, whose weight had increased amazingly, and put her sitting on the bench beside her,watching her the while with undisguised trepidation.
Everyone saw that something extraordinary was going on. Augusta choked, whooped, gurgled, turned red and spotty, purple and white, alternately. She seemed passing every minute through months of childish growth, long-past croups, convulsions, measles, and so forth, sweeping over her in flashes, as she began once more her painful, and in this case, rapid, journey towards maturity.
The public in the gallery roseen masse. Business was a standstill. The juniors stood on benches. The magistrate, bewildered and confounded at the unexpected turn of events, wiped his spectacles with the air of a man who sees the end of all things.
The women round the children were rigid with fright, and dared not lay a finger on the prodigy. The matron was the first to recover. Her sense of propriety awoke, and rapidly taking off her long cloak, she passed it round the struggling, elderly child, who each instant was outgrowing her garments more and more.
“Oh! speak, Augusta, do speak if you can!” implored Prudence.
“Don’t you see I’m trying to?” replied Augusta, suddenly and sharply, in a clear, childish treble. “Of course what you said is true, though, as usual, you have said a great many things you were not called on to tell. I did take an overdose of that dreadful stuff, and now the effect is passing off, I am in great agony, as anyone might see, and will you please take me away at once? This is a most disagreeable position for a lady. Call a cab and take me away; what I have suffered in that woman’s clutches no tongue can tell.”
The magistrate turned pale, Sal Brown shrank into the farthest corner of the prisoner’s dock, and, with a scared face, listened to the words of her rapidly-developingprotégé. Beneath the matron’s ample cloak the form of Augusta was waxing ever longer and wider, like the melon plant beneath the cloth of an Eastern juggler.
“I think, madam,” said the magistrate in broken accents, “you had better take the—it home.”
“Your worship,” hastily interposed the counsel for the prosecution, “this child, I mean lady, is a valuable witness for us. I propose that before she is permitted toleave the precincts of this court she shall be examined. The examination shall be as brief as possible. I suppose she understands the nature of an oath?”
“Of course I do. I understand everything, but really cannot undergo examination now,” said Augusta squeakily but crossly. “I do not feel able for it to-day. Some other time I shall have no objection to put your worship in possession of the facts of my compulsory residence with Mrs. Brown. There are also certain circumstances in connection with the workhouse management of infants that I should like to bring before you. At present, however, I must beg leave to retire, and seek that repose I so much need.”
“Well, in all my experience,” said the magistrate solemnly, “I never heard or imagined such a case as this; it is quite unprecedented. I really am at a loss how to act. To my mind, the best course is to grant another remand, to admit of the appearance of the child—a—I mean lady, in the witness box. I think what she says is reasonable. Under the extraordinary circumstances, we could barely expect her to give evidence to-day. She must be shaken byher unparalleled experiences. As for you, madam,” he continued, addressing Prudence, who was still weeping hysterically, “I must express my regret for having doubted what I now perceive to have been a truthful and unvarnished narrative. My excuse must be that your sister’s experience has been so exceptional, that neither I nor anyone who heard it could be expected to believe it without positive confirmation. This has been unexpectedly supplied, and I think I may say you leave this court without the smallest suspicion on yourbonâ fides.”
There was a round of applause from the gallery, instantly suppressed, and Prudence, weeping, blushing, smiling, and bridling, all at the same time, walked out of court with the shivering Augusta.
By this time the latter had assumed the appearance of a girl about eight, with bare feet, and toes to which still adhered the rent fragments of a baby’s knitted woollen bootees. The news had spread, and a dense crowd had collected at the door of the police court to see them pass. Prudence drew back terrified at the sight, and a friendly policeman, seeing her agitation, summoned a cab to a side door, and placed the sisters in it. Asthey drove off, the baulked and excited crowd perceived them, and a tremendous round of cheering woke the echoes of Arrow Street.