10

I

Emily grew quite a lot during the passage to England on the steamer: suddenly shot up, as children will at that age. But she did it without any gawkiness: instead, an actual increase of grace. Her legs and arms, though longer, did not lose any of the nicety of their shape; and her grave face lost none of its attractiveness by being a fraction nearer your own. The only drawback was that she used to get pains in the calves of her legs, now, and sometimes in her back: but those of course did not show. (They were all provided with clothes by a general collection, so it did not matter that she grew out of her old ones.)

She was a nice child: and being a little less shy than formerly, was soon the most popular of all of them. Somehow, no one seemed to care very much for Margaret: old ladies used to shake their heads over her a good deal. At least, any one could see that Emily had infinitely more sense.

You would never have believed that Edward after a few days’ washing and combing would look such a little gentleman.

After a short while Rachel threw Harold over, to be uninterrupted in her peculiar habits of parthenogenesis, eased now a little by the many presents of real dolls. But Harold became soon just as firm friends with Laura, young though she was.

Most of the steamer children had made friends with the seamen, and loved to follow them about at their romantic occupations—swabbing decks, and so on. One day, one of these men actually went a short way up the rigging (what little there was), leaving a glow of admiration on the deck below. But all this had no glamour for the Thorntons. Edward and Harry liked best to peer in at the engines: but what Emily liked best was to walk up and down the deck with her arm round the waist of Miss Dawson, the beautiful young lady with the muslin dresses: or stand behind her while she did little watercolor compositions of toppling waves with wrecks foundering in them, or mounted dried tropical flowers in wreaths round photographs of her uncles and aunts. One day Miss Dawson took her down to her cabin and showed her all her clothes, every single item—it took hours. It was the opening of a new world to Emily.

The captain sent for Emily, and questioned her: but she added nothing to that first, crucial burst of confidence to the stewardess. She seemed struck dumb—with terror, or something: at least, he could get nothing out of her. So he wisely let her alone. She would probably tell her story in her own time: to her new friend, perhaps. But this she did not do. She would not talk about the schooner, or the pirates, or anything concerning them: what she wanted was to listen, to drink in all she could learn about England, where they were really going at last—that wonderfully exotic, romantic place.

Louisa Dawson was quite a wise young person for her years. She saw that Emily did not want to talk about the horrors she had been through: but considered it far better that she should be made to talk than that she should brood over them in secret. So when the days passed and no confidences came, she set herself to draw the child out. She had, as everybody has, a pretty clear idea in her own head of what life is like in a pirate vessel. That these little innocents should have come through it alive was miraculous, like the three Hebrews in the fiery furnace.

“Where used you to live when you were on the schooner?” she asked Emily one day suddenly.

“Oh, in the hold,” said Emily nonchalantly. “Is that your Great-uncle Vaughan , did you say?”

In the hold. She might have known it. Chained, probably, down there in the darkness like blacks, with rats running over them, fed on bread and water.

“Were you very frightened when there was a battle going on? Did you hear them fighting over your head?”

Emily looked at her with her gentle stare: but kept silence.

Louisa Dawson was very wise in thus trying to ease the load on the child’s mind. But also she was consumed with curiosity. It exasperated her that Emily would not talk.

There were two questions which she particularly wanted to ask. One, however, seemed insuperably difficult of approach. The other she could not contain.

“Listen, darling,” she said, wrapping her arms round Emily. “Did you ever actually see any one killed?”

Emily stiffened palpably. “Oh no,” she said. “Why should we?”

“Didn’t you ever even see a body?” she went on: “A dead one?”

“No,” said Emily, “there weren’t any.” She seemed to meditate a while. “There weren’t many,” she corrected.

“You poor, poor little thing,” said Miss Dawson, stroking her forehead.

But though Emily was slow to talk, Edward was not. Suggestion was hardly necessary. He soon saw what he was expected to say. It was also what he wanted to say. All these rehearsals with Harry, these springings into the main rigging, these stormings of the galley...they had seemed real enough at the time. Now, he had soon no doubt about them at all. And Harry backed him up.

It was wonderful for Edward that every one seemed ready to believe what he said. Those who came to him for tales of bloodshed were not sent empty away.

Nor did Rachel contradict him. The pirates were wicked—deadly wicked, as she had good reason to know. So they had probably done all Edward said: probably when she was not looking.

Miss Dawson did not always press Emily like this: she had too much sense. She spent a good deal of her time simply in tying more firmly the knots of the child’s passion for her.

She was ready enough to tell her about England. But how strange it seemed that these humdrum narrations should interest any one who had seen such romantic, terrible things as Emily had!

She told her all about London, where the traffic was so thick things could hardly pass, where things drove by all day, as if the supply of them would never come to an end. She tried also to describe trains, but Emily could not see them, somehow: all she could envisage was a steamer like this one, only going on land—but she knew that was not right.

What a wonderful person her Miss Dawson was! What marvels she had seen! Emily had again the feeling she had in the schooner’s cabin: how time had slipped by, been wasted. Now she would be eleven in a few months: a great age: and in all that long life, how little of interest or significance had happened to her! There was her Earthquake, of course, and she had slept with an alligator: but what were these compared with the experiences of Miss Dawson, who knew London so well it hardly seemed any longer wonderful to her, who could not even count the number of times she had traveled in a train?

Her Earthquake...it was a great possession. Dared she tell Miss Dawson about it? Was it possible that it would raise her a little in Miss Dawson’s esteem, show that even she, little Emily, had had experiences? But she never dared. Suppose that to Miss Dawson earthquakes were as familiar as railway trains: the fiasco would be unbearable. As for the alligator, Miss Dawson had told Harold to take it away as if it was a worm.

Sometimes Miss Dawson sat silently fondling Emily, looking now at her, now at the other children at play. How difficult it was to imagine that these happy-looking creatures had been, for months together, in hourly danger of their lives! Why had they not died of fright? She was sure that she would have. Or at least gone stark, staring, raving mad?

She had always wondered how people survived even a moment of danger without dropping dead with fear: but months and months...and children.... Her head could not swallow it.

As for that other question, how dearly she would have liked to ask it, if only she could have devised a formula delicate enough.

Meanwhile Emily’s passion for her was nearing its crisis; and one day this was provoked. Miss Dawson kissed Emily three times, and told her in future to call her Lulu. Emily jumped as if shot. Call this goddess by her Christian name? She burnt a glowing vermilion at the very thought. The Christian names of all grown-ups were sacred: something never to be uttered by childish lips: to do so, the most blasphemous disrespect.

For Miss Dawson to tell her to do so was as embarrassing as if she had seen written up in church,

PLEASE SPIT.

Of course, if Miss Dawson told her to call her Lulu, at least she must not call her Miss Dawson any more. But say...the Other Word aloud, her lips refused.

And so for some time, by elaborate subterfuges, she managed to avoid calling her anything at all. But the difficulty of this increased in geometrical progression: it began to render all intercourse an intolerable strain. Before long she was avoiding Miss Dawson.

Miss Dawson was terribly wounded: what could she have done to offend this strange child? (“Little Fairygirl,” she used to call her.) The darling had seemed so fond of her, but now...

So Miss Dawson used to follow her about the ship with hurt eyes, and Emily used to escape from her with scarlet cheeks. They had never had a real talk, heart to heart, again, by the time the steamer reached England.

II

When the steamer took in her pilot, you may imagine that her news traveled ashore; and also, that it quickly reached the Times newspaper.

Mr. and Mrs. Bas-Thornton, after the disaster, unable to bear Jamaica any longer, had sold Ferndale for a song and traveled straight back to England, where Mr. Thornton soon got posts as London dramatic critic to various Colonial newspapers, and manipulated rather remote influences at the Admiralty in the hope of getting a punitive expedition sent against the whole island of Cuba. It was thus the Times which, in its quiet way, broke the news to them, the very morning that the steamer docked at Tilbury. She was a long time doing it, owing to the fog, out of which the gigantic noises of dockland reverberated unintelligibly. Voices shouted things from the quays. Bells ting-a-linged. The children welded themselves into a compact mass facing outwards, an improvised Argus determined to miss nothing whatever. But they could not gather really what anything was about, much less everything.

Miss Dawson had taken charge of them all, meaning to convey them to her Aunt’s London house till their relations could be found. So now she took them ashore, and up to the train, into which they climbed.

“What are we getting into this box for?” asked Harry: “Is it going to rain?”

It took Rachel several journeys up and down the steep steps to get all her babies inside.

The fog, which had met them at the mouth of the river, was growing thicker than ever. So they sat there in semidarkness at first, till a man came and lit the light. It was not very comfortable, and horribly cold: but presently another man came, and put in a big flat thing which was hot: it was full of hot water, Miss Dawson said, and for you to put your feet on.

Even now that she was in a train, Emily could hardly believe it would ever start. She had become quite sure it was not going to when at last it did, jerking along like a cannon-ball would on a leash.

Then their powers of observation broke down. For the time they were full. So they played Up-Jenkins riotously all the way to London: and when they arrived hardly noticed it. They were quite loath to get out, and finally did so into as thick a pea-soup fog as London could produce at the tail end of the season. At this they began to wake up again, and jog themselves to remember that this really was England , so as not to miss things.

They had just realized that the train had run right inside a sort of enormous house, lit by haloed yellow lights and full of this extraordinary orange-colored air, when Mrs. Thornton found them.

“Mother!” cried Emily. She had not known she could be so glad to see her. As for Mrs. Thornton, she was far beyond the bounds of hysteria. The little ones held back at first, but soon followed Emily’s example, leaping on her and shouting: indeed it looked more like Actaeon with his hounds than a mother with her children: their monkey-like little hands tore her clothes in pieces, but she didn’t care a hoot. As for their father, he had totally forgotten how much he disliked emotional scenes.

“I slept with an alligator!” Emily was shouting at intervals. “Mother! I’ve slept with an alligator!”

Margaret stood in the background holding all their parcels. None of her relations had appeared at the station. Mrs. Thornton’s eye at last took her in.

“Why, Margaret...” she began vaguely.

Margaret smiled and came forward to kiss her.

“Get out!” cried Emily fiercely, punching her in the chest. “She’s my mother!”

“Get out!” shouted all the others. “She’s our mother!”

Margaret fell back again into the shadows: and Mrs. Thornton was too distracted to be as shocked as she would normally have been.

Mr. Thornton, however, was just sane enough to take in the situation. “Come on, Margaret!” he said. “Margaret’s my pal! Let’s go and look for a cab!”

He took the girl’s arm, bowing his fine shoulders, and walked off with her up the platform.

They found a cab, and brought it to the scene, and they all got in, Mrs. Thornton just remembering to say “Howd’you-do-good-bye” to Miss Dawson.

Packing themselves inside was difficult. It was in the middle of it all that Mrs. Thornton suddenly exclaimed:

“But where’s John?”

The children fell immediately silent.

“Where is he?—Wasn’t he on the train with you?”

“No,” said Emily, and went as dumb as the rest.

Mrs. Thornton looked from one of them to another.

“John! Where is John?” she asked the world at large, a faint hint of uneasiness beginning to tinge her voice.

It was then that Miss Dawson showed a puzzled face at the window.

“ John? ” she asked. “Why, who is John?”

III

The children passed the spring at the house their father had taken in Hammersmith Terrace, on the borders of Chiswick: but Captain Jonsen, Otto, and the crew passed it in Newgate.

They were taken there as soon as the gunboat which apprehended them reached the Thames.

The children’s bewilderment lasted. London was not what they had expected, but it was even more astounding. From time to time, however, they would realize how this or that did chime in with something they had been told, though not at all with the idea that the telling had conjured up. On these occasions they felt something as Saint Matthew must have felt when, after recounting some trivial incident, he adds: “That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Prophet So-and-So.”

“Why look!” exclaimed Edward. “There’s only toys in this store!”

“Why, don’t you remember...” began Emily.

Yes, their mother had told them, on a visit to their father’s general store in St. Anne’s, that in London there were stores which not only sold toys but which sold toys only. At that time they hardly knew what toys were. A cousin in England had once sent them out some expensive wax dolls, but even before the box was opened the wax had melted: consequently the only dolls they had were empty bottles, which they clothed with bits of rag. These had another advantage over the wax kind: you could feed them, poking it into the neck. If you put in some water too, in a day or so the food began to digest, visibly. The bottles with square shoulders they called Hebeasties, and the bottles with round shoulders they called She-beasties.

Their other toys were mostly freakish sticks, and different kinds of seeds and berries. No wonder it seemed strange to them to imagine these things in a shop. But the idea engaged them, nevertheless. Down by the bathinghole there were several enormous cotton-trees, which lift themselves on their roots right out of the earth, as on stilts, making a big cage. One of these they dubbed their toy-shop: decorated it up with lacebark, and strings of bright-colored seeds, and their other toys: then they would go inside and take turns to sell them to each other. So now this was the picture the phrase “toy-shop” evoked in them. No wonder the London kind was a surprise to them, seemed a very far-fetched fulfilment of the prophecy.

The houses in Hammersmith are tall, roomy, comfortable houses, though not big or aristocratic, with gardens running right down to the river.

It was a shock to them to find how dirty the river was. The litter-strewn mud when the tide was out somehow offended them much less than the sewery water when it was up. At low tide they would often climb down the wall and scrounge about in the mud for things of value to them happily enough. They stank like polecats when they came up again. Their father was sensible about dirt. He ordered a tub of water to be kept permanently outside the basement door, in which they must wash before entering the house: but none of the other children in the terrace were allowed to play in the mud at all.

Emily did not play in the mud either: it was only the little ones.

Mr. Thornton was generally at a theater till the small hours; and when he came home used to sit and write, and then he would go out, about dawn, to the post. The children were often awake in time to hear him going to bed. He drank whisky while he worked, and that helped him to sleep all the morning (they had to be quiet too). But he got up for luncheon, and then he often had battles with their mother about the food. She would try to make him eat it.

All that spring they were an object of wonder to their acquaintances, as they had been on the steamer; and also an object of pity. In the wide world they had become almost national figures: but it was easier to hide this from them then than it would be nowadays. But people—friends—would often come and tell them about the pirates: what wicked men they were, and how cruelly they had maltreated them. Children would generally ask to see Emily’s scar. They were especially sorry for Rachel and Laura, who, as being the youngest, must have suffered most. These people used also to tell them about John’s heroism, and that he had died for his country just the same as if he had grown up and become a real soldier: that he had shown himself a true English gentleman, like the knights of old were and the martyrs. They were to grow up to be very proud of John, who though still a child had dared to defy these villains and die rather than allow anything to happen to his sisters.

The glorious deeds which Edward would occasionally confess to were still received with an admiration hardly at all tempered with incredulity. He had the intuition, by now, to make them always done in defiance of Jonsen and his crew, not, as formerly, in alliance with or superseding them.

The children listened to all they were told: and according to their ages believed it. Having as yet little sense of contradiction, they blended it quite easily in their minds with their own memories; or sometimes it even cast their memories out. Who were they, children, to know better what had happened to them than grown-ups?

Mrs. Thornton was a feeling, but an essentially Christian woman. The death of John was a blow to her from which she would never recover, as indeed the death of all of them had once been. But she taught the children in saying their prayers to thank God for John’s noble end and let it always be an example to them: and then she taught them to ask God to forgive the pirates for all their cruelty to them. She explained to them that God could only do this when they had been properly punished on earth. The only one who could not understand this at all was Laura—she was, after all, rather young. She used the same form of words as the others, yet contrived to imagine that she was praying to the pirates, not for them; so that it gradually came about that whenever God was mentioned in her hearing the face she imagined for Him was Captain Jonsen’s.

Once more a phase of their lives was receding into the past, and crystallizing into myth.

Emily was too old to say her prayers aloud, so no one could know whether she put in the same phrase as the others about the pirates or not. No one, in point of fact, knew much what Emily was thinking about anything, at that time.

IV

One day a cab came for the whole family, and they drove together right into London. The cab took them into the Temple: and then they had to walk through twisting passages and up some stairs.

It was a day of full spring, and the large room into which they were ushered faced south. The windows were tall and heavily draped with curtains. After the gloomy stairs it seemed all sunshine and warmth. There was a big fire blazing, and the furniture was massive and comfortable, the dark carpet so thick it clung to their shoes.

A young man was standing in front of the fire when they came in. He was very correctly, indeed beautifully dressed: and he was very handsome as well, like a prince. He smiled at them all pleasantly, and came forward and talked like an old friend. The suspicious eyes of the Liddlies soon accepted him as such. He gave their parents cake and wine: and then he insisted on the children being allowed a sip too, with some cake, which was very kind of him. The taste of the wine recalled to all of them that blowy night in Jamaica: they had had none since.

Soon some more people arrived. They were Margaret and Harry, with a small, yellow, fanatical-looking aunt. The two lots of children had not seen each other for a long time: so they only said Hallo to each other very perfunctorily. Mr. Mathias, their host, was just as kind to the new arrivals.

Every one was at great pains to make the visit appear a casual one; but the children all knew more or less that it was nothing of the sort, that something was presently going to happen. However, they could play-act too. Rachel climbed onto Mr. Mathias’s knee. They all gathered round the fire, Emily sitting bolt upright on a foot-stool, Edward and Laura side by side in a capacious arm-chair.

In the middle of every one talking there was a pause, and Mr. Thornton, turning to Emily, said, “Why don’t you tell Mr. Mathias about your adventures?”

“Oh yes!” said Mr. Mathias, “do tell me all about it. Let me see, you’re...”

“Emily,” whispered Mr. Thornton.

“Age?”

“Ten.”

Mr. Mathias reached for a piece of clean paper and a pen.

“What adventures?” asked Emily clearly.

“Well,” said Mr. Mathias, “you started for England on a sailing-ship, didn’t you? The Clorinda ?”

“Yes. She was a barque.”

“And then what happened?”

She paused before answering.

“There was a monkey,” she said judicially.

“A monkey?”

“And a lot of turtles,” put in Rachel.

“Tell him about the pirates,” prompted Mrs. Thornton. Mr. Mathias frowned at her slightly: “Let her tell it in her own words, please.”

“Oh yes,” said Emily dully, “we were captured by pirates, of course.”

Both Edward and Laura had sat up at the word, stiff as spokes.

“Weren’t you with them too, Miss Fernandez?” Mr. Mathias asked.

Miss Fernandez! Every one turned to see who he could mean. He was looking at Margaret.

“Me?” she said suddenly, as if waking up.

“Yes, you! Go on!” said her aunt.

“Say yes,” prompted Edward. “You were with us, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” said Margaret, smiling.

“Then why couldn’t you say so?” hectored Edward.

Mr. Mathias silently noted this curious treatment of the eldest: and Mrs. Thornton told Edward he mustn’t speak like that.

“Tell us what you remember about the capture, will you?” he asked, still of Margaret.

“The what?”

“Of how the pirates captured the Clorinda .”

She looked round nervously and laughed, but said nothing.

“The monkey was in the rigging, so they just came on the ship,” Rachel volunteered.

“Did they—er—fight with the sailors? Did you see them hit anybody? Or threaten anybody?”

“Yes!” cried Edward, and jumped up from his chair, his eyes wide and inspired. “ Bing! Bang! Bong! ” he declared, thumping the seat at each word; then sat down again.

“They didn’t,” said Emily. “Don’t be silly, Edward.”

“Bing, bang, bong,” he repeated, with less conviction.

“ Bung! ” contributed Harry to his support, from under the arm of the fanatical aunt.

“Bim-bam, bim-bam,” sing-songed Laura, suddenly waking up and starting a tattoo of her own.

“Shut up!” cried Mr. Thornton. “Did you, or did you not, any of you, see them hit anybody?”

“Cut off their heads!” cried Edward. “And throw them in the sea!—Far, far...” his eyes became dreamy and sad.

“They didn’t hit anybody,” said Emily. “There wasn’t any one to hit.”

“Then where were all the sailors?” asked Mr. Mathias.

“They were all up the rigging,” said Emily.

“I see,” said Mr. Mathias. “Er—didn’t you say the monkey was in the rigging?”

“He broke his neck,” said Rachel. She wrinkled up her nose disgustedly: “He was drunk.”

“His tail was rotted,” explained Harry.

“Well,” said Mr. Mathias, “when they came on board, what did they do?”

There was a general silence.

“Come, come! What did they do?—What did they do, Miss Fernandez?”

“I don’t know.”

“Emily?”

“ I don’t know.”

He sat back in despair: “But you saw them!”

“No we didn’t,” said Emily, “we went in the deckhouse.”

“And stayed there?”

“We couldn’t open the door.”

“ Bang-bang-bang! ” Laura suddenly rapped out.

“Shut up!”

“And then, when they let you out?”

“We went on the schooner.”

“Were you frightened?”

“What of?”

“Well: them.”

“Who?”

“The pirates.”

“Why should we?”

“They didn’t do anything to frighten you?”

“To frighten us?”

“Coo! José did belch!” Edward interjected merrily, and began giving an imitation. Mrs. Thornton chid him.

“Now,” said Mr. Mathias gravely, “there’s something I want you to tell me, Emily. When you were with the pirates, did they ever do anything you didn’t like? You know what I mean, something nasty ?”

“Yes!” cried Rachel, and every one turned to her. “He talked about drawers,” she said in a shocked voice.

“What did he say?”

“He told us once not to toboggan down the deck on them,” put in Emily uncomfortably.

“Was that all?”

“He shouldn’t have talked about drawers,” said Rachel.

“Don’t you talk about them, then,” cried Edward: “Smarty!”

“Miss Fernandez,” said the lawyer diffidently, “have you anything to add to that?”

“What?”

“Well...what we are talking about.”

She looked from one person to another, but said nothing.

“I don’t want to press you for details,” he said gently, “but did they ever—well, make suggestions to you?”

Emily fixed her glowing eyes on Margaret, catching hers.

“It’s no good questioning Margaret,” said the Aunt morosely; “but it ought to be perfectly clear to you what has happened.”

“Then I am afraid I must,” said Mr. Mathias. “Another time, perhaps.”

Mrs. Thornton had for some while been frowning and pursing her lips, to stop him.

“Another time would be much better,” she said: and Mr. Mathias turned the examination back to the capture of the Clorinda .

But they seemed to have been strangely unobservant of what went on around them, he found.

V

When the others had all gone, Mathias offered Thornton, whom he liked, a cigar: and the two sat together for a while over the fire.

“Well,” said Thornton, “did the interview go as you had expected?”

“Pretty much.”

“I noticed you questioned them chiefly about the Clorinda . But you have got all the information you need on that score, surely?”

“Naturally I did. Anything they affirmed I could check exactly by Marpole’s detailed affidavit. I wanted to test their reliability.”

“And you found?”

“What I have always known. That I would rather have to extract information from the devil himself than from a child.”

“But what information, exactly, do you want?”

“Everything. The whole story.”

“You know it.”

Mathias spoke with a dash of exasperation:

“Do you realize, Thornton, that without considerable help from them we may even fail to get a conviction?”

“What is the difficulty?” asked Thornton in a peculiar, restrained tone.

“We could get a conviction for piracy, of course. But since ’37, piracy has ceased to be a hanging offense unless it is accompanied by murder.”

“And is the killing of one small boy insufficient to count as murder?” asked Thornton in the same cold voice.

Mathias looked at him curiously.

“We can guess at the probabilities of what happened,” he said. “The boy was undoubtedly taken onto the schooner; and now he can’t be found. But, strictly speaking, we have no proof that he is dead.”

“He may, of course, have swum across the Gulf of Mexico and landed at New Orleans.”

Thornton’s cigar, as he finished speaking, snapped in two.

“I know this is...” began Mathias with professional gentleness, then had the sense to check himself. “I am afraid there is no doubt that we can personally entertain that the lad is dead: but there is a legal doubt: and where there is a legal doubt a jury might well refuse to convict.”

“Unless they were carried away by an attack of common sense.”

Mathias paused for a moment before asking:

“And the other children have dropped, as yet, no hint as to what precisely did happen to him?”

“None.”

“Their mother has questioned them?”

“Exhaustively.”

“Yet they must surely know.”

“It is a great pity,” said Thornton, deliberately, “that when the pirates decided to kill the child, they did not invite in his sisters to watch.”

Mathias was ready to make allowances. He merely shifted his position and cleared his voice.

“Unless we can get definite evidence of murder, either of your boy or the Dutch captain, I am afraid there is a very real danger of these men escaping with their lives: though they would of course be transported.—It’s all highly unsatisfactory, Thornton,” he went on confidentially. “We do not, as lawyers, like aiming at a conviction for piracy alone. It is too vague. The most eminent jurists have not even yet decided on a satisfactory definition of piracy. I doubt, now, if they ever will. One school holds that it is any felony committed on the High Seas. But that does little except render a separate term otiose. Moreover, it is not accepted by other schools of thought.”

“To the layman, at least, it would seem to be a queer sort of piracy to commit suicide in one’s cabin, or perform an illegal operation on the captain’s daughter!”

“Well, you see the difficulties. Consequently we always prefer to make use of it simply as a make-weight with another more serious charge. Captain Kidd, for instance, was not, strictly speaking, hanged for piracy. The first count in his indictment, on which he was condemned, sets forth that he feloniously, intentionally, and with malice aforethought hit his own gunner on the head with a wooden bucket value eightpence. That is something definite. What we need is something definite. We have not got it. Take the second case, the piracy of the Dutch steamer. We are in the same difficulty there: a man is taken on board the schooner, he disappears. What happened? We can only surmise.”

“Isn’t there such a thing as turning King’s Evidence?”

“Another most unsatisfactory proceeding, to which I should be loath to have recourse. No, the natural and proper witnesses are the children. There is a kind of beauty in making them, who have suffered so much at these men’s hands, the instruments of justice upon them.”

Mathias paused, and looked at Thornton narrowly.

“You haven’t been able, in all these weeks, to get the smallest hint from them with regard to the death of Captain Vandervoort either?”

“None.”

“Well, is it your impression that they do truly know nothing, or that they have been terrorized into hiding something?”

Thornton gave a gentle sigh, almost of relief.

“No,” he said, “I don’t think they have been terrorized. But I do think they may know something they won’t tell.”

“But why?”

“Because, during the time they were on the schooner, it is plain they got very fond of this man Jonsen, and of his lieutenant, the man called Otto.”

Mathias was incredulous.

“Is it possible for children to be mistaken in a man’s whole nature like that?”

The look of irony on Thornton’s face attained an intensity that was almost diabolical.

“I think it is possible,” he said, “even for children to make such a mistake.”

“But this...affection: it is highly improbable.”

“It is a fact.”

Mathias shrugged. After all, a criminal lawyer is not concerned with facts. He is concerned with probabilities. It is the novelist who is concerned with facts, whose job it is to say what a particular man did do on a particular occasion: the lawyer does not, cannot be expected to go further than to show what the ordinary man would be most likely to do under presumed circumstances.

Mathias, as he conned these paradoxes, smiled to himself a little grimly. It would never do to give utterance to them.

“I think if they know anything I shall be able to find it out,” was all he said.

“D’you mean to put them in the box?” Thornton asked suddenly.

“Not all of them, certainly: Heaven forbid! But we shall have to produce one of them at least, I am afraid.”

“Which?”

“Well. We had intended it to be the Fernandez girl. But she seems...unsatisfactory?”

“Exactly.” Then Thornton added, with a characteristic forward jerk: “She was sane enough when she left Jamaica.—Though always a bit of a fool.”

“Her aunt tells me that she seems to have lost her memory: or a great part of it. No, if I call her it will simply be to exhibit her condition.”

“Then?”

“I think I shall call your Emily.”

Thornton stood up.

“Well,” he said, “you’ll have to settle with her yourself what she’s to say. Write it out, and make her learn it by heart.”

“Certainly,” said Mathias, looking at his finger-nails. “I am not in the habit of going into court unprepared.—It’s bad enough having a child in the box anyway,” he went on. Thornton paused at the door.

“—You can never count on them. They say what they think you want them to say. And then they say what they think the opposing counsel wants them to say too—if they like his face.”

Thornton gesticulated—a foreign habit.

“I think I will take her to Madame Tussaud’s on Thursday afternoon and try my luck,” ended Mathias: and the two bade each other good-bye.

VI

Emily enjoyed the wax-works; even though she did not know that a wax-work of Captain Jonsen, his scowling face bloody and a knife in his hand, was already in contemplation. She got on well with Mr. Mathias. She felt very grown-up, going out at last without the little ones endlessly tagging. Afterwards he took her to a bun-shop in Baker Street, and tried to persuade her to pour out his tea for him: but she turned shy at that, and he had in the end to do it for himself.

Mr. Mathias, like Miss Dawson, spent a good deal of his time and energy in courting the child’s liking. He was at least sufficiently successful for it to come as a complete surprise to her when presently he began to throw out questions about the death of Captain Vandervoort. Their studied casualness did not deceive her for a moment. He learnt nothing: but she was hardly home, and his carriage departed, than she was violently sick. Presumably she had eaten too many cream buns. But, as she lay in bed sipping from a tumbler of water in that mood of fatalism which follows on the heels of vomiting, Emily had a lot to think over, as well as an opportunity of doing so without emotion.

Her father was spending a rare evening at home: and now he stood unseen in the shadows of her bedroom, watching her. To his fantastic mind, the little chit seemed the stage of a great tragedy: and while his bowels of compassion yearned towards the child of his loins, his intellect was delighted at the beautiful, the subtle combination of the contending forces which he read into the situation. He was like a powerless stalled audience, which pities unbearably, but would not on any account have missed the play.

But as he stood now watching her, his sensitive eyes communicated to him an emotion which was not pity and was not delight: he realized, with a sudden painful shock, that he was afraid of her!

But surely it was some trick of the candle-light, or of her indisposition, that gave her face momentarily that inhuman, stony, basilisk look?

Just as he was tiptoeing from the room, she burst out into a sudden, despairing moan, and leaning half out of her bed began again an ineffectual, painful retching. Thornton persuaded her to drink off her tumbler of water, and then held her hot moist temples between his hands till at last she sank back, exhausted, in a complete passivity, and slipped off to sleep.

There were several occasions after this when Mr. Mathias took her out on excursions, or simply came and examined her at the house. But still he learnt nothing.

What was in her mind now? I can no longer read Emily’s deeper thoughts, or handle their cords. Henceforth we must be content to surmise.

As for Mathias, there was nothing for it but to accept defeat at her hands, and then explain it away to himself. He ceased to believe that she had anything to hide, because, if she had, he was convinced she could not have hidden it.

But if she could not give him any information, she remained, spectacularly speaking, a most valuable witness. So, as Thornton had suggested, he set his clerk to copy out in his beautiful hand a sort of Shorter Catechism: and this he gave to Emily and told her to learn it.

She took it home and showed it to her mother, who said Mr. Mathias was quite right, she was to learn it. So Emily pinned it to her looking-glass, and learnt the answers to two new questions every morning. Her mother heard her these with her other lessons, and badgered her a lot for the sing-song way she repeated them. But how can one speak naturally anything learnt by heart, Emily wondered? It is impossible. And Emily knew this catechism backwards and forwards, inside and out, before the day came.

Once more they drove into town: but this time it was to the Central Criminal Court. The crowd outside was enormous, and Emily was bundled in with the greatest rapidity. The building was impressive, and full of policemen, and the longer she had to wait in the little room where they were shown, the more nervous she became. Would she remember her piece, or would she forget it? From time to time echoing voices sounded down the corridors, summoning this person or that. Her mother stayed with her, but her father only looked in occasionally, when he would give some news to her mother in a low tone. Emily had her catechism with her, and read it over and over.

Finally a policeman came, and conducted them into the court.

A criminal court is a very curious place. The seat of a ritual quite as elaborate as any religious one, it lacks in itself any impressiveness or symbolism of architecture. A robed judge in court looks like a catholic bishop would if he were to celebrate mass in some municipal bath-house. There is nothing to make one aware that here the Real Presence is: the presence of death.

As Emily came into court, past the many men in black gowns writing with their quill pens, she did not at first see judge, jury, or prisoners. Her eye was caught by the face of the Clerk, where he sat below the Bench. It was an old and very beautiful face, cultured, unearthly refined. His head laid back, his mouth slightly open, his eyes closed, he was gently sleeping.

That face remained etched on her mind as she was shown her way into the box. The Oath, which formed the opening passages of her catechism, was administered; and with its familiar phrases her nervousness vanished, and with complete confidence she sang out her responses to the familiar questions which Mr. Mathias, in fancy dress, was putting to her. But until he had finished she kept her eyes fixed on the rail in front of her, for fear something should confuse her. At last, however, Mr. Mathias sat down; and Emily began to look around her. High above the sleeping man sat another, with a face even more refined, but wide awake. His voice, when now he spoke a few words to her, was the kindest she had ever heard. Dressed in his strange disguise, toying with a pretty nosegay, he looked like some benign old wizard who spent his magic in doing good.

Beneath her was the table where so many other wigged men were sitting. One was drawing funny faces: but his own was grave. Two more were whispering together.

Now another man was on his feet. He was shorter than Mr. Mathias, and older, and in no way good-looking or even interesting. He in turn began to ask her questions.

He, Watkin, the defending counsel, was no fool. He had not failed to notice that, among all the questions Mathias had put to her, there had been no reference to the death of Captain Vandervoort. That must mean that either the child knew nothing of it—itself a valuable lacuna in the evidence to establish, or that what she did know was somehow in his clients’ favor. Up till now he had meant to pursue the obvious tactics—question her on the evidence she had already given, perhaps frighten her, at any rate confuse her and make her contradict herself. But any one, even a jury, could see through that. Nor was there any hope, under any circumstances, of a total acquittal: the most he could hope for was escape from the murder charge.

He suddenly decided to change his whole policy. When he spoke, his voice too was kind (though it lacked perforce the full benign timbre of the judge’s). He made no attempt to confuse her. By his sympathy with her, he hoped for the sympathy, himself, of the court. His first few questions were of a general nature: and he continued them until her answers were given with complete confidence.

“Now, my dear young lady,” he said at last. “There is just one more question I want to ask you: and please answer it loudly and clearly, so that we can all hear. We have been told about the Dutch steamer, which had the animals on board. Now a very horrible thing has been suggested. It has been said that a man was taken off the steamer, the captain of it in fact, onto the schooner, and that he was murdered there. Now what I want to ask you is this. Did you see any such thing happen?”

Those who were watching the self-contained Emily saw her turn very white and begin to tremble. Suddenly she gave a shriek: then after a second’s pause she began to sob. Every one listened in an icy stillness, their hearts in their mouths. Through her tears they heard, they all heard, the words: “...He was all lying in his blood...he was awful! He...he died, he said something and then he died !”

That was all that was articulate. Watkin sat down, thunderstruck. The effect on the court could hardly have been greater. As for Mathias, he did not show surprise: he looked more like a man who has digged a pit into which his enemy has fallen.

The judge leant forward and tried to question her: but she only sobbed and screamed. He tried to soothe her: but by now she had become too hysterical for that. She had already, however, said quite enough for the matter in hand: and they let her father come forward and lift her out of the box.

As he stepped down with her she caught sight for the first time of Jonsen and the crew, huddled up together in a sort of pen. But they were much thinner than the last time she had seen them. The terrible look on Jonsen’s face as his eye met hers, what was it that it reminded her of?

Her father hurried her home. As soon as she was in the cab she became herself again with a surprising rapidity. She began to talk about all she had seen, just as if it had been a party: the man asleep, and the man drawing funny faces, and the man with the bunch of flowers, and had she said her piece properly?

“Captain was there,” she said. “Did you see him?”

“What was it all about?” she asked presently. “Why did I have to learn all those questions?”

Mr. Thornton made no attempt to answer her questions: he even shrank back, physically, from touching his child Emily. His mind reeled with the many possibilities. Was it conceivable she was such an idiot as really not to know what it was all about? Could she possibly not know what she had done? He stole a look at her innocent little face, even the tear-stains now gone. What was he to think?

But as if she read his thoughts, he saw a faint cloud gather.

“What are they going to do to Captain?” she asked, a faint hint of anxiety in her voice.

Still he made no answer. In Emily’s head the Captain’s face, as she had last seen it...what was it she was trying to remember?

Suddenly she burst out:

“Father, what happened to Tabby in the end, that dreadful windy night in Jamaica?”

VII

Trials are quickly over, once they begin. It was no time before the judge had condemned these prisoners to death and was trying some one else with the same concentrated, benevolent, individual attention.

Afterwards, a few of the crew were reprieved and transported.

The night before the execution, Jonsen managed to cut his throat: but they found out in time to bandage him up. He was unconscious by the morning, and had to be carried to the gallows in a chair: indeed, he was finally hanged in it. Otto bent over once and kissed his forehead; but he was completely insensible.

It was the negro cook, however, according to the account in the Times , who figured most prominently. He showed no fear of death himself, and tried to comfort the others.

“We have all come here to die,” he said. “ That ” (pointing to the gallows) “was not built for nothing. We shall certainly end our lives in this place: nothing can now save us. But in a few years we should die in any case. In a few years the judge who condemned us, all men now living, will be dead. You know that I die innocent: anything I have done, I was forced to do by the rest of you. But I am not sorry. I would rather die now, innocent, than in a few years perhaps guilty of some great sin.”

VIII

It was a few days later that term began, and Mr. and Mrs. Thornton took Emily to her new school at Blackheath. While they remained to tea with the head mistress, Emily was introduced to her new playmates.

“Poor little thing,” said the mistress, “I hope she will soon forget the terrible things she has been through. I think our girls will have an especially kind corner in their hearts for her.”

In another room, Emily with the other new girls was making friends with the older pupils. Looking at that gentle, happy throng of clean innocent faces and soft graceful limbs, listening to the ceaseless, artless babble of chatter rising, perhaps God could have picked out from among them which was Emily: but I am sure that I could not.