Part 10

She had no very high respect for Mr. Green's character,--yet she had no aversion to him. He was, indeed, one of those easy-going, even-natured men, who neither arouse affection nor excite the opposite of love. He was by no means the ideal which she had formed of a husband. Yet how could she, who had been a poor daily governess all her life, release her ambition in this respect? She had indulged the hope, as I dare say most young women have hoped, to marry a man handsome, educated, and of gentlemanly training--with a fortune. She would have been satisfied with a man of good standing or prospects in either one of the liberal professions--the army, navy, the law, or even the church. But a dispassionate consideration of Mr. Green's letter drove away all the phantasms of such ambition. She came, by a process of the severest reasoning, to the conclusion, in the first place, that, if she rejected the merchant's intended proposal, she might offend him. That was not, after all, so very serious a matter, as she was not very largely dependent upon his bounty; yet she could hardly afford to lose a friend. This conclusion led her to survey the bright side of Mr. Green's intended proposal. She would certainly, as Mrs. Green, be mistress of a liberal establishment. His years denied the reasonable prospect of her ever having a child. Yet this young woman, hardened by experience, saw a compensation for that denial of a true woman's hope in the freedom from a mother's cares and troubles. It was something to get rid of the drudgery of toil, and escape the snubbing and rebuffs of her present vocation. "Yes," at length she said to herself, in forming her resolution, "I might do worse than become Mrs. Green."

There was only one small difficulty--there was a prior attachment. "Well," she said to herself, "I shall have to get rid of Edward. That is not so very difficult either. I do not think he would break his heart about it. I know I should not break mine if he were to throw me off. I do not believe in broken hearts. He cannot bring an action against me for breach of promise of marriage. That is a pleasant thing to know. I heard Mr. Jones, who is a lawyer, telling his wife at the tea-table only the other evening, that a gentleman never got any good by that, and I think he said a farthing was about the price a gentleman's damages would always be assessed at. Well, I could pay that sum without much injury to my own purse; and if any proceedings should be brought against my husband after I have married him. I suppose he would be responsible for them, among my other obligations, but I would pay that sum out of my pin-money."

Miss Thomson agreed within herself to become Mrs. Green, and had so far realised this speculation in the lottery of life, that she began to sketch her future home, make arrangements for her bridal trousseau, &c., within ten minutes after forming her resolution.

Miss Thomson's anticipations were correct. Her benefactor told her he had noticed she had been a very hard-working girl. The way she had striven to keep herself as a lady out of her own earnings, with such little assistance as he had felt bound to render her, reflected the highest possible credit upon her. He had noticed her conduct--he might say with admiration. He had never beheld such a combination of all the virtues which make up a good woman as he had seen in her. Now, he hoped he should not frighten or startle her by a communication that he was going to make. He had been living a lonely life, she was aware. He was not married. She knew he had no sister who could manage his household, and secure him those attentions and comforts in which he thought he might reasonably indulge after having been, he might say, a very successful man in trade.

During his speech Mr. Green stammered a little, and betrayed an unusual hesitation. At this point he had greater difficulty in articulation.

However, he proceeded to say that his admiration for her, and his belief in her virtues, and the other circumstances he had mentioned, had led him to offer her his hand and his heart.

The lady behaved as all ladies can, and I believe do, in such circumstances.

She delivered a very nice speech, which had been many times rehearsed in her bedchamber, and on the pavement as she trudged to and from the house of Mr. Jones, which, as a daily governess, she was in the habit of traversing, and at other times and places. Gratitude was a word that thickly interlarded her periods. She said that she did not know how to accept the proposal he made her, and, after a skilful pause or two, having come to the conclusion that there was no danger in a little delay (and, aside with the reader let me add, become convinced that there was no prospect of his withdrawing the offer), she craved time to consider his most noble proposal--not on her own account, because, if she was a selfish thing, he would see that she must at once say yes--but because she scarcely felt equal to the position, and because the prospect of such an elevation dazzled and bewildered her little brain.

This was the sum and substance of Miss Thomson's speech.

The reader has already been informed that Mr. Green and Miss Thomson were married, and his imagination will supply the links in the narrative between the last interview and the realisation of that event.

During the almost monotonous life Mr. and Mrs. Green lived, there would of course occasionally arise small vexations. Not that they quarrelled. Nothing of that sort marred their happiness.

The vexations I speak of were of the most simple and ordinary kind. A friend promised to come and dine with them, and did not keep that promise. The tradesmen were not punctual in the delivery of their goods. The wine-merchant occasionally deceived Mr. Green, which caused him annoyance. The dressmaker or the milliner was not so exact as he or she ought perhaps to have been in executing Mrs. Green's orders. And those sort of things annoyed the one or the other of them.

Another annoyance in this house arose from--what Mr. Henry Mayhew has entitled the greatest plague in life--a bad servant. They had one or two bad servants, and on several occasions Mrs. Green made the observation, not, I think, quite unique--a sort of remark, on the other hand, which had been made by other ladies, and I believe will be again--that it was impossible to get a good servant.

However, one good servant was at last obtained. She was a young woman about twenty-four or twenty-five years of age. She was, to say the least about her merits, somewhat pretty. I have heard her described as beautiful. When I last saw her, I thought her exceedingly beautiful. She was, moreover, by no means an illiterate girl. She had received a fair amount of education--a much better education than girls in her station usually receive.

In consequence of the superior manners of this girl she was admitted to a considerable share of the confidence and respect of both her master and her mistress, and was allowed an amount of discretion in the arrangements of the household which is not usually given or permitted in such cases. Mrs. Green contemplated, with her husband's approval, the extension of their establishment by the engagement of a third servant, and elevating this young woman to the position of a recognised companion to the lady.

Some time after this notion had been formed, there was discovered a new series of annoyances in the house of Mr. Green. A number of portable articles of value were missed. How they went appeared one of the greatest of all possible human mysteries. Discovery seemed impossible, and the irritation of the husband was excessive. His wife, moreover, inveighed in the bitterest terms against the undetected thief.

It was agreed between Mr. and Mrs. Green to lay all sorts of traps. They did so, but did not succeed in fixing any body with the crime.

The reader will imagine how such an affair operated. Not only did suspicion begin with the lowest and end with the highest of the three servants in the household, but it embraced every one of the few friends who came to see Mr. or Mrs. Green; and in the failure to discover the delinquent, or get the foundation for a rational and decided suspicion, even supernatural agencies were beginning to be hinted at by the wife. She, however, always prefaced her hints of this kind to her husband as women do their ideas of that sort, by a declaration that she was not superstitious, but if she was, &c. &c.

At length the loss of a gold watch, which Mr. Green had presented to his wife on her marriage, with a gold chain, drove that man pretty near the boundary of madness. When he first heard of it, he was frantic. He raved and he cursed, uttering language such as his wife had never heard from his lips before against some person or persons unknown, and vowing the direst vengeance against the offender. He declared that if he or she were his own brother or sister (which obviously could not be, as he had no brother or sister), he would transport him or hang him or her. And he also said that the worst feature of the case was the total impossibility in tracing the thief. He did not like to be beaten in that manner. It was so deuced aggravating not to know what had become of the things; that is, who had stolen them. It was such a hard thing to be suspecting all the servants and their friends. Was he to dismiss all the servants? If so, how did he know that he should then get rid of the thief? Was he to banish all his friends from his house? How did he know that it was some pretended friend that was robbing them? He finished in mutterings, which, although not capable of being accurately embalmed in printer's ink, may be safely interpreted as imprecations and direful threats.

In this mode his conversation with his wife one evening rambled; and at the conclusion of his incoherent ejaculations, he started to his feet as if he had made a grand discovery. "By G--, it must be somebody in the house. It must be one of the servants. It must be that girl you have so fondled and caressed. The ungrateful wretch! If I find it out to be her, and I must find it out, I will have her arrested, prosecuted, transported."

His wife was terrified. The idea of prosecuting this poor girl, whose life in many respects resembled her own,--the chief point of difference being, in fact, that she had not been able to catch a merchant husband,--told on Mrs. Green's sympathies. Yet, as she said to her husband--if he were right--it was horrid ingratitude in that girl to rob them so--if she had done it.

"But suppose," suggested the wife, "we should be mistaken, how cruel will be the suspicions we have engendered!"

"Cruel!" exclaimed the husband; "yes, if we are mistaken. But how can we be mistaken?"

He ran through the circumstances under which several articles of value had been lost, to show that no friend or acquaintance could have robbed them.

Burglary was impossible, because of the frequency, the width of time and occasion, and the comparative smallness, of the plunder.

It must, at all events, be one or other of the servants; and he felt it to be his duty to investigate the matter thoroughly. He was determined to do this. It was a duty they owed to themselves, and the other servants, and all their friends, and to the world, that this thief should be detected.

Mrs. Green said she could not bring her mind to a prosecution. She said that, at all events, the most she would do was to turn away either of the servants who was discovered. The case was certainly very bad, and the thief deserved all he or she got.

The husband reserved his decision. Perhaps, if the wretch confessed, he might be disposed to listen to her appeal for mercy. If that girl (for he persisted it must be her) dared to belie the evidence which must be got against her, he would have no compunction in hanging her.

With that kind of rashness or folly which men under such circumstances commit, he turned to his wife, and most unreasonably said to her, "Now, Helen, my dear, you must find out the thief for me. I know it must be that girl. Now, find her out."

Among the little trinkets Mrs. Green possessed were a bracelet and a locket, neither ofwhich had hitherto been missed.

Both of them had been seen by her and her husband within two days before the present conversation. She missed them, as she afterwards explained, the day following this conversation. It was very strange that they should have disappeared just at that time. For her part, she would, if she could, screen the culprit; but her husband's mandate left her no discretion. She was to find out the thief. What to do she did not know. She thought of searching the girl's boxes--or of having them searched by a policeman. No, she would not do that. She hoped that her husband would not prosecute. She therefore contented herself by communicating this further loss to Mr. Green, and explaining to him the reasons which had stayed her in the extreme means of discovery.

Mr. Green, on his return home, was uneasy and excited. Something had seemingly crossed him in the City. I believe an advice his house received that morning told the firm of the bankruptcy of a Hamburg correspondent. This fact had soured the merchant's temper, and inflamed his desire for vengeance.

When his wife communicated her suspicions, he at once insisted upon a search of the girl and of her trunks.

Just at this moment, or before the resolution was carried out, a friend dropped in to see them. He observed a gloom on the countenance of the merchant, and began to rally him. The visitor wanted to know whether the firm of Green and Schnackwether were going to appear in next Tuesday's _Gazette_, and what the devil was the matter with him. He did not care to avow his loss in the City, and found an adequate explanation in his losses at home.

This friend suggested that examining the trunks was perhaps not an unwise thing; but he also joined in the wife's appeal for mercy, said that he thought the better plan would be to send the girl off to her friends, if she had any, and that he would not advise the expense and trouble of a prosecution.

The merchant, however, fully explained his reasons for not acceding to the last suggestion, and resolved upon the search.

The three servants were called into the room which Mr. Green denominated his library, and, in the presence of his friend and his wife, they were catechised. They all stoutly denied the crime. They all shed tears, and sobbed, and demanded an investigation. They each resented the suspicion as cruel and unjust. A boy engaged as page and kitchen-assistant was defiant, and hinted vaguely that his father and mother would not stand it; that Mr. Green would hear about it; and that he would not stay in the house another moment after his boxes were searched--which they might be at once.

The search began with the boxes of the young male servant, and nothing was traced in them.

The trunks of the favoured young woman of superior beauty and accomplishments were next searched. In one of them was found one of these trinkets and a duplicate of the other.

Mr. Green's rage knew no bounds. In vain the girl protested her innocence, and declared it was the wicked device of some wretch for her destruction, or horrid conspiracy by some dreadful enemy to blast her reputation and dishonour her poor parents, which planted the evidence against her.

The merchant told her that if she confessed her crime he might forgive her. She would not admit a crime that, she said, she had not committed.

Mrs. Green remonstrated with the girl about her obstinacy, and advised her that it would be better to confess an offence which was so fairly brought home to her, and against the evidence of which it was impossible for a single moment to contend. The girl threw herself upon her mistress's sympathy, hoping that _she_ at least could not think her guilty of the crime attributed to her, although appearances were so much against her.

At last, under the cross-fire from these accusers, the young woman, who still refused to confess, dropped into a chair, and, in tones of agony, implored God to witness that she had never taken a thing that did not belong to her from any human being.

Mr. Green said this was more than he could stand. Such frightful hypocrisy, such horrid cant, such blasphemy, was the grossest outrage upon Heaven he had ever beheld. He told the boy to fetch a policeman, which service the lad rendered with alacrity. The already-convicted thief was given into the custody of the officer, taken to the station-house, and locked up.

The next day at the police-court the evidence of these facts was laid before the magistrate. The pawnbroker who had taken in the pledge was not able to identify the prisoner as the female who had pawned the article; but said that she was about the height, age, and appearance of the prisoner, although he would not swear to her. It was pledged, he said, about the hour of twelve in the morning; and Mrs. Green being called upon to give evidence as to the movements of her servant, with a view of confirming or breaking down the pawnbroker's suspicion--as the case might be--was obliged to say that Eliza had been out on an errand for her mistress between eleven and twelve o'clock on the day referred to.

The scene in that police-court was one of the most painful things ever witnessed. The prisoner had no professional assistance. No expert attorney was there to help or mar her defence. All she did, and all she said, was a repetition of what she had told her mistress and master and their friend the night before. She protested that she was as innocent as an unborn child; that her hands had been trained by parents (whose memory she revered, and who tenderly loved her) to honest industry; and that she had no more perpetrated these thefts than the worthy magistrate. She appealed to her mistress to bear evidence of her general character. (Mr. Green was not in court.) Her mistress gave her a general good character, and expressed the grief of herself and her husband at the discovery in the servant's boxes.

The magistrate put a question or two to the mistress, who seemed to betray an idea that one of the other servants, or some friend, had been the thief; or that, at least, the accused had not been, although she did not say as much in distinct terms.

The tone and manner of the girl had evidently impressed the magistrate with the belief that she was not in her proper place when in that dock before him as a criminal. He, however, remarked that the case was one of very grave suspicion, and that he should remand her for a week, in order that inquiries might be made, with a view to getting further evidence upon the case.

The accused had looked forward to her appearance in court as the ordeal which would establish her innocence. She had never doubted for a moment that a police magistrate would unravel the mystery, and turn the tide of false suspicion from her. When she heard the last words fall from the lips of the presiding justice, and ascertained that she was to be sent back to something like the loathsome cell she had passed the previous night in, her spirits gave way. She uttered one heart-rending shriek, swooned, and was carried down from the dock--senseless.

Mrs. Green narrated circumstantially to Mr. Green what had taken place in court that afternoon, with a minute exactness, as he sipped his wine after dinner. As she did so, I believe he half repented the prosecution of this poor girl, although not a shadow of a doubt rested upon his mind as to her guilt. He said he thought it was a pity she had not confessed. As the hours rolled on, and bedtime approached, and he was about entering the solemnity of night--when, I am inclined to think, men's better thoughts usually gain the ascendency (that is, unless the thinker be _intent_ on the perpetration of crime)--he confessed that he did not know what to do; that he thought the poor girl ought to have an attorney employed for her; and that he would see his lawyer about it in the morning.

Next morning after having perused his letters, Mr. Green went to consult Mr. Scrowle, his private solicitor, about the engagement of some other attorney for the defence of the girl. Mr. Scrowle, however, put rather a new complexion on the affair. When he heard the previous good character of the accused; when he was informed of her solemn protestations of innocence in the house; when it transpired that the boy had run for a policeman with such pleasant, not to say indecent, haste; and was told that the magistrate was impressed by the girl's declaration of innocence,--Mr. Scrowle suggested to his client, Mr. Green, that his servant had possibly been the victim of what is called by thieves a "plant;" that one of the servants (perhaps that boy) might have been the thief, and might have placed the things in the girl's box for the purpose of directing suspicion upon her. Mr. Green did not think it likely that his attorney was correct, because of the difficulty the boy would have in getting at the room from which the trinkets were taken; but his lawyer, in reply, said he did not think much of such an argument, because thieves found opportunities of getting what they wanted under the most adverse or difficult circumstances. The attorney then suggested that Mr. Green might possibly get into trouble over the matter himself.

Many reasons, but particularly the last reason, inclined Mr. Scrowle to endorse the suggestion of his client, that the girl should be provided with legal assistance, procured at the cost of the prosecutor; and, when this point had been settled, Mr. Green told his lawyer he thought that, after all, the girl had been punished enough, and that he should not have any objection whatever to letting her off, if it could be arranged, although she was an ungrateful and an obstinate minx for not confessing.

Mr. Green, who was a somewhat careful, not to say a penurious man, with great reluctance consented to give his solicitor authority to take what steps he might deem necessary,--either to pursue or to withdraw from the prosecution, to defend the girl, to unravel the mystery of the case, and to arrange it if possible, or thought that step expedient.

Mr. Green's solicitor, at this stage of the business, sent for me. I got leave to accompany the attorney who was employed for the defence (acting in the capacity of his clerk) to the house of detention, where we had an interview with the poor girl. It was one of the most painful scenes I have ever gone through. She had completely fascinated the matron and the female warders, who, accustomed to deal uniformly with crime, were slow to believe in any theory of a prisoner's innocence; yet they believed this girl perfectly innocent; and relying upon my experience of human nature, I almost immediately wrote her down as innocent.

It was evident to me, as I told her legal adviser, that a "plant" had been made upon her.