Читать книгу The Reminiscences of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) - Baron Henry Hawkins Brampton - Страница 20

Maule's eyes were now riveted on the clergyman as though he were an accessory to the murder.

"Five thousand three hundred and four," he repeated, "by the same person, however respectable and beloved as a pastor he might be, was what few of us could have gone through unless we were endowed with as much strength of mind as power of endurance. I was going to ask you, sir, did the idea ever strike you when you talked of this unhappy being suddenly leaving your ministrations and turning Sabbath-breaker, that after thirty-four years he might want a little change? Would it not be reasonable to suppose that the man might think he had had enough of it?"

"It might, my lord."

"And would not that in your judgment, instead of showing that he was insane, prove that he was a very sensible man?"

The Vicar did not quite assent to this, and as he would not dissent from the learned Judge, said nothing.

"And," continued Maule, "that he was perfectly sane, although he murdered his wife?"

All this was very clever, not to say facetious, on the part of the learned Judge; but as I had yet to address the jury, I was resolved to take the other view of the effect of the Vicar's sermons, and I did so. I worked Maule's quarry, I think, with some little effect: for after all his most strenuous exertions to secure a conviction, the jury believed, probably, that no man's mind could stand the ordeal; and, further, that any doubt they might have, after seeing the two children of the prisoner in court dressed in little black frocks, and sobbing bitterly while I was addressing them, would be given in the prisoner's favour, which it was.

This incident in my life is not finished. On the same evening I was dining at the country house of a Mr. Hardcastle, and near me sat an old inhabitant of the village where the tragedy had been committed.

"You made a touching speech, Mr. Hawkins," said the old inhabitant.

"Well," I answered, "it was the best thing I could do in the circumstances."

"Yes," he said; "but I don't think you would have painted the little home in such glowing colours if you had seen what I saw last week when I was driving past the cottage. No, no; I think you'd have toned down a bit."

"What was it?" I asked.

"Why," said the old inhabitant, "the little children who sobbed so violently in court this morning, and to whom you made such pathetic reference, were playing on an ash-heap near their cottage; and they had a poor cat with a string round its neck, swinging backwards and forwards, and as they did so they sang—

This is the way poor daddy will go!

This is the way poor daddy will go!'

Such, Mr. Hawkins, was their excessive grief!"

Yes, but it got the verdict.