THE SECOND DAY OF THE TRIAL.

Bennet knew from previous information, before she went to Crowminster the next day, what the further theory of the prosecution would be. The lawyers would seek to establish, and would have considerable materials to their hand, that the South American bonds belonging to Major Coplestone which had not been recovered were not taken along with the Bank of England notes from the safe. They had been removed, as Parsons held, some time before, with an irresistible presumption that they had been withdrawn for the purpose of money being raised upon them by the person who took them. He could represent himself as the agent for the owner, acting for him as the banker had the power to act in the transaction. The near prospect of the return of Major Coplestone had rendered it absolutely necessary, in order to prevent exposure, that the pledged bonds should be redeemed at any cost. Other resources having failed, the desperate step was resorted to of the robbery of the bank, professedly in the absence of the banker, by his wife, backed by the active assistance or passive connivance of her brother. Independent witnesses would be called to show that when, according to the statement of Mr. and Mrs. Crabtree, he had left the volunteer ball, in order to take the last train to London, and ought to have been many miles from Newton, he was seen, between three and four o’clock on the morning of June 20--the morning of the day when the robbery was discovered--waiting in the shadow of the trees overhanging Mr. Lewis’s garden wall, on the opposite side of the way from the Bank House. Had the theft been successfully carried out, and the bank-notes conveyed to the accomplice without by ‘the woman’ or ‘the man’ within, it would have been quite possible for Lambert Crabtree, if he had been in the streets of Newton that morning, as was represented, to travel by the earliest train to town, and, before the robbery was known and the circulation of the notes stopped, to pay in the money and recover the bonds. As to the business men who might hold the bonds in pledge, it was well known there were shady firms that entered into such doubtful transactions, and would not inquire too closely either in reference to the bonds or to the money. Even when suspicions were roused, even when losses were incurred, such gentlemen were generally silent for their own sake, not to spoil their own little game. So much was presumptive.

On the other hand, the conclusion was inevitable that whoever were the depredators they were stopped in their work, and scared by the appearance of so humble an instrument of detection as the washerwoman on the scene. The fact that Ann Smith came in the regular course of her duty, and that her presence at so early an hour was a weekly occurrence at the Bank House, had been overlooked by one of those simple stupid blunders that frequently disarm, as if by the interposition of Providence, the elaborate precautions of the most skilful and daring of criminals. It was not pretended that these were skilful burglars, but skilled or not, they must have found themselves baffled in the attempt, and called upon to come to an immediate decision with regard to the disposal of the bank-notes taken from the safe without an opportunity to return them after the house was awake and aroused. Accordingly, some of the money was dropped into the water-butt, some was stitched into the mattress of Mrs. Crabtree’s bed, and the rest was tossed from the window into the street below, without reaching the watcher on the other side of the road, who had doubtless taken the alarm and made off at the noise made by the washerwoman.

In like manner the keys of the hall door and of the door of communication with the bank, which had been secured by the persons engaged in the robbery, could not be returned to their accustomed places, and had been found thrust under the stand of a looking-glass in a bedroom in the Bank House. That bedroom had been occupied over night and during the previous night by Mr. John Prior, who had vacated the room early on the following morning, when he had not waited for breakfast, before starting on a journey of several hours. Yet he had been apparently at a loss how to dispose of his time quite recently, since he had loitered for two days and nights at his sister’s house without going to his home, which was within a walk or a ride, after his return from a protracted absence. This indifference might or might not be explained by the fact that, as it was well known, he was on bad terms with his father, the squire of Redcot. There had been no plea of the young man’s attendance at the volunteer ball to account for his stay at Newton. His going to the ball might have implied his going home first. Certainly he had not gone to the ball, and it had seemed as if he did not care to be seen during his stay at the Bank House.

Mrs. Crabtree had been as early a riser as her brother on this particular morning, according to the evidence of the housemaid and gardener, though the practice was not in accordance with her usual habits, and was not to be looked for, as she had herself remarked, on the day after a ball.

Bennet had learned all this argument long before it was to be delivered from the report of Jack Prior’s lawyer. She suspected that there was an additional influence at work. She felt that the course of the case the previous day, and the particulars it had brought to light, had revived in full the excitement of the time of the robbery and the failure. It had renewed all the animus against the Lambert Crabtrees which had taken the place of their popularity, and was virulent and wide-spread in proportion to what had been the strength and extent of the opposite feeling. Bennet was sure that the assize town was ringing with stories comparatively fresh there of her extravagance and his irregularities and vices. Among the husband and wife’s old admirers and worshippers there were doubtless few indeed who at that moment did not secretly blush for having been gulled by the pair, and were not inclined to protest against the tools ever having been really taken in or capable of entertaining the least sentiment of sincere regard for their victimisers. It was with such a couple that Jack Prior must stand or fall.

Bennet, in her comparative ignorance of legal rules, had a haunting dread that Lambert Crabtree might have been arrested in the middle of the case, and might now sit with Susie and Jack in the dock--not as a devoted husband countenancing his aspersed wife, but as a fellow-prisoner, the guiltiest of the three. The dread was not confirmed by the note which was handed to her from Mat Crabtree, containing only the words ‘nothing new,’ or by any knowledge which could be imparted by Miss Hopkins, by whom Bennet again had a seat.

But Lambert Crabtree did not come in with his wife as he had come yesterday. She entered alone, save for Jack and the officials, and, while her brother’s bearing was little altered, the strange, shrunk, aged look, which had been more than once before remarked in Susie, had come over her again. The great eyes were dilated as with fright and anguish--like those of a creature at bay. There were dark lines underneath the eyes. The rich colour was altogether fled, and had left a sallow olive in its place. Her very lips looked bloodless and dry--the gliding, tripping walk was exchanged for a stumbling half run as of a hunted fugitive. Bennet glanced once towards Susie, and could not bear to look twice. She had not been five minutes in the box, when a loud, regardless ‘Oh, I say!’ from Jack, as he tried to reach his sister, and a quick movement on the part of the experienced female warder, who caught the sinking figure in her arms, showed that Susie had fainted outright.

Miss Hopkins, though she screamed, was too much overpowered by her own feelings to do more, far less to ‘tear’ through the crowd, as she had proposed, to the aid of her niece by marriage. Happily there was no occasion. Though deprived of the support of her husband, Mrs. Lambert Crabtree’s womanly weakness was treated with every consideration. Judges, jury, audience were ready to wait, even to hang breathless on her recovery.

Indeed, Susie’s fainting fit was one of those extraordinary turning points, contrary ebbs of the current, and strong reactions, which sway and master popular emotion, and are not uninfluential in directing the very course of law and justice. It was something undreamt of and marvellous to Bennet Gray to note the change that came over the spirit of the scene, even before the conviction grew and matured--not that Lambert Crabtree was arrested, but that overnight, without the knowledge of the authorities and of his brother, the ex-banker had quitted the town, and was hastening to quit the country, never to return.

How it happened exactly Bennet could never say. She was told that, even in the most favourable circumstances, Lambert Crabtree, though he had not been accused either as a principal or an accessory in the robbery, and was at liberty both before and during the trial, ought to have been under the surveillance of the Crown lawyers. He should have been detained by them till the end of the case in which his wife was tried, which concerned him so nearly. Bennet was never sure whether there had been culpable negligence or connivance advisedly on the part of the prosecution; whether, as in more illustrious instances, there had been a painful puzzle what was to be done with the ‘high-class misdemeanant,’ according to Miss Hopkins’s definition. Or there might have been a vague, illogical, not strictly moral, yet common-sense, idea that, as the Bank of England notes had been recovered and Crabtree’s Bank had ceased to exist, enough had been done to vindicate the outraged majesty of the law without pushing matters to the last extremity. Such unacknowledged anomalies and ‘uncovenanted mercies’ are not absolutely unknown even in countries with model Governments. It was by a happy precaution providing for such contingencies that not one of the ‘gentlemen of the jury’ was a shareholder, or so much as a depositor, in the unfortunate Crabtree’s Bank, when the greatest victim of Lambert Crabtree’s dishonesty sat before them with her fate to be weighed in Justice’s scales.

For it was not to be believed that Mrs. Lambert Crabtree, the pretty, delicate little creature on whom one day in court had worked such a grievous change, who was fainting with the terror and disgrace of her position before the eyes of the jury--could have robbed the bank except at her husband’s instigation. Yet here was she left to pay the penalty. Her deserted, miserable situation tugged more and more at the hearts of men learned and men unlearned in the law, who did not appear to waste a thought on the possible betrayal and self-abandonment of Jack Prior, sitting by his sister, in his honest, manly ugliness, more pathetic to those who could appreciate it than Susie’s beauty.

A quick sense of the turning of the scales caused a gleam of hope to flash across Bennet’s mind. She was roused to hail fresh marvels.

The counsel for the prosecution was ending his case with a nameless languor, against which he was powerless to struggle. It was bred by the vivid comprehension of a transfer of men’s sympathies, which were now ranged on the opposite side.

Susie, restored to consciousness, was recognising with a swiftness of intuition that had genius in it, the transformation. She saw what the opportunity was to which she must rise, and how she must adapt herself to the new standard presented to her. She was no longer the innocent victim--she was the repentant transgressor--a touching sacrifice so complete that it was well-nigh heroic to a mistaken sense of the obedience required from a wife. She was no longer rendered calm and fearless by her husband’s presence. She was bathed in tears. It could be plainly seen, since her bonnet had been removed in her faintness, that her silken hair was straying disregarded and dishevelled about her weeping eyes, like that of a Magdalene.

How could men fail to be moved to the core of their hearts by such a spectacle? How could they resist the desperate inclination to do something to redress the cruel wrong inflicted by a brother man? How could they avoid taking into account every jot and tittle in her favour--her social position, her former popularity, her winsome personal attractions, her present forlornness, each lapse and flaw in the chain of proof? All were to be eagerly remembered, seized, and acted upon by every man who had a heart in his bosom.

The counsel for the defence marshalled his witnesses and arranged his points with renewed hope and spirit. He indicated delicately, but forcibly, the respectable standing and high character of the Crabtree and Prior families, with the great improbability that their ranks would supply common criminals. He had no difficulty in bringing witnesses to show that the Bank House had lately been full of workmen, the cupidity of any one of whom might have been excited, and those workmen had not all been Newton men, well known in the place; some of them had been strangers, brought down from London to execute the more delicate parts of the commission.

Stress was laid on the fact that the night or morning of the robbery was the night of the volunteer ball, and the morning after it when the town, and especially the railway station, were in a state of confusion, and little attention would be paid to arrivals and departures. It was hardly worth calling witnesses to show it could only be by an extraordinary strain put on the circumstance that a purely domestic incident so simple and natural as the cursory visit of a brother to his sister on the return of the gentleman from a voyage to Australia, should be brought prominently forward and dwelt upon as it had been by the counsel’s learned friend. There was, however, one direct allegation which ought to be immediately contradicted, though Mr. John Prior’s counsel would dispose of it effectually. So far from Mr. John Prior being on bad terms with his father and family, Susie’s counsel could furnish abundant testimony to the contrary, even after the unfounded charge had been made against the young man.

The maid-servant who had admitted Jack to the Bank House on the night of his arrival in England was recalled to prove that his visit had been wholly unexpected by her mistress. No preparations had been made for it. Mrs. Lambert Crabtree was taken by surprise when she found her brother in her drawing-room.

There was a general feeling, increasing in significance and weight, that the less that was said of Mr. Lambert Crabtree the better for him and everybody connected with him. But his wife’s counsel condescended to produce contradictory evidence of Newtonians who, according to their own account, had been parading the streets of their native town early on the morning succeeding the volunteer ball. They had seen no mysterious man lurking in the shade of the trees, opposite the Bank House, hours after Mr. Lambert Crabtree had quitted the drill hall. What had been said to the opposite effect was ridiculously slight and transparently delusive.

Yet neither was the fact lost sight of that even if the banker had been found implicated in the robbery, it did not follow that his wife was guilty. Nobody had seen Mrs. Crabtree break open the bank--one had only to look at her to be struck with the preposterousness of the accusation. True, some of the Bank of England notes taken from the safe were found stitched in the mattress of her bed, and the silk with which they were stitched corresponded with silk found in her work-basket. But that was at the best presumptive evidence. Mrs. Lambert Crabtree had, with the perfect candour of an innocent woman, volunteered the statement that she was absent from her room, having been startled by the real thieves during a portion of the night. Why might not the depredators have entered the bedroom during the lady’s absence and made use of the silk from her work-basket which stood in the adjoining room? And after all, this was ignoring an obvious explanation of a suspicious coincidence--namely, the similarity of much of the silk in ordinary use.

After the first bold flight of imagination, it was a much lower and tamer excursion of fancy to cite a more reasonable hypothesis in Mrs. Lambert Crabtree’s favour. A considerable number of hours--a whole half day--had intervened, during which she had acted as most ladies in the trying circumstances would have done, she had gone with her children, in the absence of her husband, from the unpleasantness of the scene of the robbery, to her father’s house at Redcot. It was not till then, after ample time had been given for many persons to have entered and quitted Mrs. Crabtree’s bedroom unobserved, that at the instance of the detectives from London the local police had made a rigorous search for the missing money, and recovered it in the manner described.

On the missing bonds, of which so much had been made in the theory of a sufficient motive for the crime, the counsel became almost supercilious. He declined to deal with what he protested was irrelevant matter, and would say nothing with regard to a line of argument which he considered from first to last supposititious. It was acknowledged by the prosecution that it was uncertain whether the bonds were or were not in the bank safe at the time of the robbery. Unless it could be shown that they were in the safe, which, of course, would have demolished the theory of a motive for the felony, he submitted that they ought not to have been brought into the case.

The counsel had been prepared to play a trump card by calling a witness sure to produce a sensation in the court. Had he been summoned the first day, he would have served to complete the family tableau, which had certainly occurred to Bennet Gray’s mind, as an effective representation to set before the British public. But after the master of the ceremonies was conscious that the tide of public opinion had turned, and was running strongly for his client, he was so confident of getting her off that he risked relinquishing the advantage he could command. For reasons which could be easily understood and appreciated, he refrained from calling the child Piers Crabtree to give evidence to save his mother. The lawyer contented himself with reserving the child’s figure for his speech alone. It was admitted that one of Mrs. Crabtree’s children had slept in her room on the night of the robbery. Now, though the sleep of childhood was proverbially sound, was it conceivable that a sane woman, projecting a burglary, would have voluntarily provoked the additional peril caused by the presence of a child? Was there a father or a mother present who could believe that, of her own choice, even the most desperate and degraded of women would commit a crime, and secrete the fruits of her dishonesty, close to the little bed on which her innocent, unconscious child lay sleeping?

Mrs. Lambert Crabtree’s fine eyes swimming in tears protested emphatically against the unnatural inference.

But, indeed, cleverly-selected witnesses examined in a masterly manner, forensic eloquence, the Judge’s summing up with a leaning to mercy’s side, were so much valuable stock-in-trade thrown away to induce what was in the end a foregone conclusion. It was a singular item in the combination of causes which worked for Susie that even the hard-hearted people who professed to see through a millstone, who, if they had believed in anybody, would have been inclined to believe rather in Jack than in his sister, who called Lambert Crabtree’s wife ‘a devilish handsome little humbug,’ were still unanimous on the advisability of not bringing her to book and of letting her off, were it only for her pluck and finished acting.

Jack Prior’s counsel’s opinion coincided with that of his professional brother, since Jack would stand or fall with his sister. It was idle to waste the time of the Court with a greater demonstration on young Prior’s part than what was necessary in re-establishing his character as a well-liked, in the main trustworthy, fellow, not practically disowned by his father, and in reiterating the circumstances of his position and education, with the incredibility of his employing them in the abetting of a palpably violent and desperate crime. There remained nothing farther to do than to remind the jury that the sole evidence against John Prior, younger, of Redcot, consisted of the small items that he happened to have slept at the Bank House--his sister’s house--the night before and the night or morning of the robbery, that he had left betimes the same morning, and that the missing keys of the hall door and the door of communication with the bank, supposed to have been secured by the burglars, were found under the frame of the looking-glass in his bedroom, where other hands than his might have put them. The jury brought in a unanimous verdict of ‘Not Guilty,’ and the court received it with loud applause, which could not be suppressed.

Again the Court House and its crowd seemed to rock and sway round Bennet Gray, but she was still able to meet and return one eager, half-incredulous look of relief and thankfulness from Jack as he left the dock with very much the same air that he had worn when he entered it, though people were now pressing round him to congratulate him. Miss Hopkins was not among them--she did not like her verdict to be upset. She continued to reflect grudgingly in the distance that she was still sure the young scamp, who had not his unprepossessing face for nothing, had something to do with the robbery. His poor dear sister had known of his complicity, and been punished for the knowledge. He ought not to get off so easily, but it was the way with men--they always favoured each other; they never failed to have the best of it. Miss Hopkins’s temper was thrown off its balance by Jack’s unwarrantable release.

In spite of Miss Hopkins’s hostile judgment, Jack retired, holding his head as high as his stature would admit of, while his nostrils were inflated and contracted spasmodically at intervals--an attitude and an action which said, ‘I am where I ought never to have been, and, having been brought here, I don’t think I shall ever forget it.’

But as for Susie--the true heroine of the occasion--she withdrew in the midst of her throng of satellites, in a sort of subdued triumph. When one came to think over everything, it was slightly incongruous in the wife of a bankrupt banker, a deserter from his post, a fugitive who dared not meet the charges that might be brought against him.

Susie still maintained the character of that sweetest of popular heroines--a confiding, ill-used woman, betrayed by her very tenderness, and by the conflicting duties which she had owed to an unworthy husband on the one hand and to society and the laws of her country on the other--Susie could not be said to recognise a tribunal higher than that of human authority. She promptly elected, without waiting for an invitation, to go with her brother and Miss Gray to Redcot. Mrs. Lambert Crabtree would not repair, even for a few minutes, to the Bank House, Newton--not to fetch away the children she had insisted on keeping with her. She became all at once and for the time indifferent to their company, telling Mat Crabtree that he might either take them with him to Haybridge, where she declined to accompany him, or send them over to her at Redcot, as he thought fit. She mortified Miss Hopkins by refusing alike her condolence and her congratulations civilly--it was very difficult for Susie to be uncivil--but with decision.

All the way to Redcot Susie sought to usurp the attention of her companions, bewailing her maiden days and pleading the pathetic palliations of such misbehaviour as she had been betrayed into. ‘Who would have thought it?’ she asked wistfully. ‘I was such a happy, envied girl--to come to what I have just barely escaped from. Oh! Miss Gray, no girl is so well off and so much thought of as to be entirely beyond the reach of danger. She should be so careful, so guarded in her choice! What can a poor wife do? You cannot tell her feelings. I am not going to blame my poor, unhappy husband--he was always good to me, in one sense, but, oh! what can a wife and mother do?’

Bennet did not answer, she did not even hear the question. She was content to sit in the dusk of another summer evening with her hand clasped in Jack Prior’s, and let tears of infinite gratitude course down her cheeks, because his deliverance from a miserable fate was compassed, because they were not to be separated till death--nay, please God, death itself should not long sunder them.

When the party arrived at Redcot Susie seemed to awake to some deeper consciousness and to a shade of genuine feeling. She shrank from meeting her father and Jane. She shook herself free from the others, forbidding them with a certain peevish impatience to follow her. ‘I don’t want you. I cannot bear any more to-night. How can you expect it? I only want mam-ma. Nobody’s to come near me except mam-ma.’

Mrs. Prior responded to the imperious, selfish call. She only stayed to kiss her son, to see his father grasp his hand, then went to shut herself up for the night with her prodigal, to listen sadly to her hollow confidences, to comply patiently with her fantastic caprices.