Nevermore Part 10

Cross-examined by Mr. England: 'Hev a sorter dislike to swear positively to prisoner as having been in company with Lawless on that Friday. To the best of my belief he was the man. (Has the prisoner any objection to look at me for a moment.)' Then Lance turned suddenly and looked at the witness with a determined and sternly interrogatory expression. The witness changed front noticeably. 'I now swear to the prisoner as the man I saw with Lawless on Friday; positively and plum-centre. Know his eyes anywhere. First day I saw him was the Wednesday before. He and Lawless both carried stock-whips.'

Senior-Constable Donnellan deposed: 'I am a mounted trooper, at present stationed at Balooka. I know the prisoner, and have been observing him closely at Balooka for the last three weeks. Frequently saw him in company with Edward Lawless and his sister. As they were suspicious characters, or, at any rate, had a name for finding horses that were not lost, I thought it my duty to watch them.

'On the morning of Wednesday, 18th instant, I saw Lawless and prisoner ride out early from the former's camp; they went for some miles up a gully, and on reaching the top, where there is a small plain, I saw two men meet them with a small lot (ten, I believe) of riding horses. They drove them to the camp and put them into a yard. I have ascertained that nearly all of them were stolen, and have since been identified by miners. Saw prisoner several times with Kate Lawless at Balooka; am certain that prisoner is the same man. Sent a messenger to Ballarat express to communicate with Sergeant Dayrell, who came over and arrested both prisoners.'

By Mr. England: 'Took particular notice of prisoner's appearance--prisoner is tall and broad-shouldered, with dark curly hair and dark complexion. Has no ill-will against prisoner, Trevanion. If it is sworn that prisoner was in another place, near Ballarat, at the time mentioned by me, would not believe it. It was impossible, unless a man could be in two places at once. Never spoke to prisoner at Balooka but once; noticed that he had remarkable eyes. Was at the Lawlesses' camp when he rode up with Kate Lawless; had seen him leave Balooka with her early that morning. He was riding the horse prisoner led back. Can't account for prisoner returning with a different horse and saddle, unless he "shook" it. Beg the Bench's pardon--meant he may have picked it up on the road. Thought prisoner looked slightly different, and was differently dressed. Spoke differently, a little, not much. Attributed this to seeing the Lawlesses, Ned and Dan, in the hands of the police when he returned; and was dressed differently from what he had on in the morning; had several times noticed him change his dress more than once in a day. Would swear to the prisoner; would know him by his eyes and general appearance anywhere.'

Several other witnesses--miners, stock-riders, and small farmers--were examined. They swore to owners.h.i.+p of various horses found in Ned Lawless's 'mob' or drove, now in charge of the police.

'Is that your case, sergeant?' inquired the police magistrate, when the last of these witnesses had, at some personal inconvenience, signed the depositions. 'I have but one other witness, your wors.h.i.+p,' answered Dayrell with an air of great deference, 'rather a material one, however.

Call Catharine Lawless.'

From whatever cause, the utterance of this witness's name produced a profound and universal sensation in the crowded court. Every miner knew that the young Englishman had foolishly, as most people thought,--very naturally, in the opinion of others,--admired the girl, and made no secret of his feelings. For what reason was she now to be called as a witness for the Crown? Had she turned traitress? Would she betray her sweetheart in the hour of his peril? Far from immaculate, vain, violent, and reckless as she was, the girls of her cla.s.s and country were proverbially as true as steel to their lovers--clinging to them more closely in adversity, ready even to stand by them on the scaffold if need were.

CHAPTER XI

'Catharine Lawless!' Thrice was her name called outside of the court, as by law directed. As the echo of the last summons died away, a tall woman closely veiled issued from a side door and walked composedly over to the witness-box. Every eye was directed towards her; no sound was audible, save some involuntary exclamation as the most sensational character of the _corps dramatique_ appeared on the stage. Quietly and becomingly dressed, _bien gantee_ and in all respects accurately finished as to each personal detail, she moved forward with an air of haughty indifference to her surroundings, including the court, prisoners, and spectators. These last might have deemed that she was some interesting stranger, an eye-witness by chance of deeds concerning which she was compelled to testify.

'Swear the witness,' said the magistrate, as the book was placed in her right hand, 'and will she be pleased to remove her veil?'

Thus admonished, the girl threw back her veil with a half-petulant gesture, and touching the sacred book lightly with her lips, as the solemn formula was recited, gazed around the court with an air of insouciance apparently as unstudied and natural as if she had come direct from Arcadia.

For one moment her clear gray eyes, unheeding every other creature in the crowd of spectators, rested on the two men in the dock. Those who knew her--and there were many such in the congregation--looked eagerly for some softened expression, some sign of regret, as might any woman wear when beholding her lover and her brother in the place set apart for felons, who knew them to be charged with a serious offence, and liable to years of degrading imprisonment, from which, perchance, a word from her lips might save one--might even alleviate their lot--so great is the sympathy felt for the power exercised by a handsome woman, even in the temple of justice.

Those who thus reasoned were doomed to disappointment. Her gaze pa.s.sed coldly over her brother's lounging form and tranquil features, but when she encountered the stern interrogation which was written on the frowning brow and set lips of Lance Trevanion, she drew back for an instant, and then slightly raising her head and drawing herself up, an action which displayed to perfection the symmetrical moulding of her figure, returned his regard with a glance as fierce and unfaltering as his own. For one moment only did the mental duel appear to last, for one moment was each antagonistic electric current propelled along the mutual course. Then, with an impatient gesture, she turned half round and awaited the official questioning.

The oppressive silence which up to that moment had pervaded the court ceased, as by a broken spell, and comments were audible to those immediately around the speaker, more than one of which went as follows--

'She's going to swear up, you bet your life. Never saw a woman look like her that didn't. Sooner have her on my side than against me, that's all _I_ know.'

'Dayrell's been working a point to set her against him, that's where he'll score the odd trick, you'll see,' observed his equally philosophic friend. 'She's been dead nuts on that new chum, that's why she's thirsting for his blood now. I think I knows 'em.'

'What is your name?' commenced the sergeant, who in the preliminary examination was, as the police officer in charge of the case, permitted to officiate in Courts of Petty Sessions as Acting Crown Prosecutor.

'Catharine Lawless.' This answer was given in a low but distinct voice.

'You are the sister of Edward Lawless, one of the prisoners now before the Court; and you have been residing with him at Balooka, and recently at Growlers' Gully?'

'Yes. We have all been living with him since father died.'

'Just so. And you know the other prisoner, Launcelot Trevanion?' Here the sergeant feigned to examine his notebook, ostensibly to refresh his memory, but really in order to afford witness and prisoner opportunity to look at each other. Also that the court, the spectators, the magistrate, and lastly he, Francis Dayrell, might appreciate their mutual discomfort.

This Mephistophelian design was set at naught by the self-possession of the witness, who after one glance, brief as the jagged lightning and as scathing, answered deliberately--'Yes, I do know Lance Trevanion, _I know him well_.'

There was not much in this apparently harmless Saxon sentence, chiefly monosyllabic, but those who were close enough to hear the last words thrilled for long days after as they recalled the concentrated venom with which they were saturated.

'When you say you know the prisoner, Trevanion, well,' queried Dayrell, with an air of respectful interest, 'you mean, I suppose, that he was a great friend of your brothers, and of the family generally. Your brother Dan, your cousin Harry, and his sister Tessie--you are rather a large family, I believe--were all friendly towards him, as he to you?'

'Yes; very friendly; we all thought no end of him.'

'Of course, of course; most natural on your part and his. He was often at your camp, at Growlers'. Used to play a game or two of cards sometimes with your brothers--a little euchre--eh?'

'Yes; I believe so.'

'You believe so? Don't you know it, Miss Lawless? Were not the stakes rather heavy sometimes?'

'They may have been. I never played for money. The boys may have had a gamble now and then.'

'Really, your wors.h.i.+p,' interposed Mr. England, 'I can't see what these trivialities have to do with the case. The witness is an extremely prepossessing young woman--outwardly. We admit at once that she exercised a certain fascination over my client. Why shouldn't she? _Nemo omnibus horis sapit, etc._, particularly on the diggings. But the sergeant, apparently, will proceed to ask her if she ever sewed on a b.u.t.ton for my client, and I appeal to your wors.h.i.+p, if we are to sit here all day and listen to this mode of examination?'

'I must ask your wors.h.i.+p's permission to conduct the case in my own way,' returned the sergeant. 'I guarantee that these apparently trivial details are of material importance to the case.'

'You may proceed, Sergeant Dayrell. I trust to you not to enc.u.mber the depositions with needless details.'

'I shall bear in mind your wors.h.i.+p's directions; and now, Miss Lawless, please to attend to me, and be careful in answering the next question.'

Here he fixed his eyes meaningly upon her countenance.

'You remember the evening of Monday, the 23d of this month, when I saw you ride into your brother's camp at Balooka, in company with the prisoner, Trevanion?'

'Yes; I do.'

'Had he been with you and Ned at Balooka for some time previously?'

There was a pause after the sergeant's measured and distinct words sounded through the court, and the witness trembled slightly when they first reached her ear. Then she raised her head, looked full at the two prisoners in the dock, and answered--

'Yes; he had.'

As the words left her lips, the face of Lance Trevanion worked like that of a man about to fall down in a fit. His eyes blazed with wrath and unrestrained pa.s.sion. Wonder and scorn, anger and despair, struggled together in every feature, as if in a stage of demoniac possession.

Placing his strong hand upon the rail of the dock, he shook the stout structure until it swayed and rattled again.

'You lie, traitress!' he said, in vibrating tones. 'I never saw Balooka before that evening, and you know it. Your words--like yourself--are false as h.e.l.l!'

'I submit, your wors.h.i.+p, that the witness must be protected,' Dayrell made haste to interpose. 'If she is to be intimidated, I cannot guarantee her most important evidence.'

A curious phase of human nature is it,--well worthy of the attention of physiologists, but none the less known to those in the habit of attending criminal courts,--that you may with tolerable certainty detect a man deliberately swearing falsely when giving evidence on oath.

Villain as he may be,--scoundrel of the deepest dye,--even _he_ does not altogether enjoy the sensation of, in cold blood, committing perjury before a crowd of comrades, every one of whom knows that he is forswearing himself. Thus feeling, there is generally some token of uneasiness or shamefacedness by which the experienced magistrate or judge, and most certainly his friends and fellows, can perceive his perjury.

But, strange and mysterious as it may seem, _it is not so_ in the case of a female witness. She may be deposing to the truth of the most atrocious falsehood, to what the greater part of her hearers, as well as herself, _know to be false_, and not the quiver of an eyelid nor the tremor of a muscle reveals that she has called upon the Supreme Being to witness her deliberate betrayal of the truth. For all that can be discerned in the countenance--in her mien and manner she may be clinging to the truth with the constancy of a martyr.

There was a murmur in the court from more than one voice as Lance Trevanion's heart-felt exclamation burst forth. This being promptly suppressed, the magistrate, with a more sympathetic tone of voice than he had as yet used, 'requested the prisoner not to injure his case by intemperate language. Possibly the outburst of conscious innocence, the Bench admitted, but he would warn him, in his own interest, to reserve his defence till the evidence was completed.' Lance apparently saw the force of his argument, for after one withering glance at the witness-box, he bowed his head without speaking, and resigned himself apparently to listen unmoved to all further statements.

'Did you--now consider carefully and _make no mistake_'--here the sergeant fixed his eye sternly, even menacingly, upon the girl, who stood calm and resolved before him--'did you know of your own knowledge that the prisoner, Trevanion, met your brother Ned at the Swampy Plain tableland and a.s.sisted him to drive certain horses into the yard?'

The girl looked again across to the figures in the dock, neither of whom apparently saw her, as they, by accident or otherwise, had averted their faces. Then a mysterious darksome look of pride and revenge came over Kate Lawless's face as she coolly scrutinised them both. Slowly she answered--

'Yes; I was at home when he and Ned came in from Swampy Plains with ten horses and put them into the yard.'