"My lord," she cried, "I abhorred that rebellion as much as any woman in the world!"
Jeffreys leaned forward with a restraining gesture.
"Look you, Mrs. Lisle," he admonished her sweetly, "because we must observe the common and usual methods of trial in your case I must interrupt you now." And upon that he promised that she should be fully heard in her own defence at the proper time, and that himself he would instruct her in the forms of law to her advantage. He reassured her by reverent allusions to the great Judge of Heaven and Earth, in whose sight they stood, that she should have justice. "And as to what you say concerning yourself," he concluded, "I pray God with all my heart you may be innocent."
He was benign and reassuring. But she had the first taste of his true quality in the examination of Dunne—a most unwilling witness.
Reluctantly, under the pressure put upon him, did Dunne yield up the tale of how he had conducted the two absconders to my lady's house with her consent, and it was sought to prove that she was aware of their connection with the rebellion. The stubbornly evasive Dunne was asked at last:
"Do you believe that she knew Mr. Hicks before?"
He returned the answer that already he had returned to many questions of the sort.
"I cannot tell truly."
Jeffreys stirred in his scarlet robes, and his wistful eyes grew terrible as they bent from under beetling brows upon the witness.
"Why," he asked, "dost thou think that she would entertain any one she had no knowledge of merely upon thy message? Mr. Dunne, Mr. Dunne! Have a care. It may be more is known to me of this matter than you think for."
"My lord, I speak nothing but the truth!" bleated the terrified Dunne.
"I only bid you have a care," Jeffreys smiled; and his smile was more terrible than his frown. "Truth never wants a subterfuge; it always loves to appear naked; it needs no enamel nor any covering. But lying and snivelling and canting and Hicksing always appear in masquerade. Come, go on with your evidence."
But Dunne was reluctant to go on, and out of his reluctance he lied foolishly, and pretended that both Hicks and Nelthorp were unknown to him. When pressed to say why he should have served two men whom he had never seen before, he answered:
"All the reason that induced me to it was that they said they were men in debt, and desired to be concealed for a while."
Then the thunder was heard in Jeffreys' voice.
"Dost thou believe that any one here believes thee? Prithee, what trade art thou?"
"My lord," stammered the unfortunate, "I—I am a baker by trade."
"And wilt thou bake thy bread at such easy rates? Upon my word, then, thou art very kind. Prithee, tell me. I believe thou dost use to bake on Sundays, dost thou not?"
"No, my lord, I do not!" cried Dunne indignantly.
"Alackaday! Art precise in that," sneered the judge. "But thou canst travel on Sundays to lead rogues into lurking-holes."
Later, when to implicate the prisoner, it was sought to draw from Dunne a full account of the reception she had given his companions, his terror under the bullying to which he was subjected made him contradict himself more flagrantly than ever. Jeffreys addressed the jury.
"You see, gentlemen, what a precious fellow this is; a very pretty tool to be employed upon such an errand; a knave that nobody would trust for half a crown. A Turk has more title to an eternity of bliss than these pretenders to Christianity."
And as there was no more to be got from Dunne just then, he was presently dismissed, and Barter's damning evidence was taken. Thereafter the wretched Dunne was recalled, to be bullied by Jeffreys in blasphemous terms that may not be printed here.
Barter had told the Court how my lady had come into the kitchen with Dunne, and how, when he had afterwards questioned Dunne as to why they had whispered and laughed together, Dunne told him she had asked "If he knew aught of the business." Jeffreys sought now to wring from Dunne what was this business to which he had so mysteriously alluded—this with the object of establishing Lady Lisle's knowledge of Hicks's treason.
Dunne resisted more stubbornly than ever. Jeffreys, exasperated—since without the admission it would be difficult to convict her ladyship—invited the jury to take notice of the strange, horrible carriage of the fellow, and heaped abuse upon the snivelling, canting sect of which he was a member. Finally, he reminded Dunne of his oath to tell the truth, and addressed him with a sort of loving ferocity.
"What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" bellowed that terrible judge, his eyes aflame. "Is not this the voice of Scripture itself? And wilt thou hazard so dear and precious a thing as thy soul for a lie? Thou wretch! All the mountains and hills of the world heaped upon one another will not cover thee from the vengeance of the Great God for this transgression of false-witness bearing."
"I cannot tell what to say, my lord," gasped Dunne.
In his rage to see all efforts vain, the judge's language became that of the cockpit. Recovering at last, he tried gentleness again, and very elaborately invited Dunne, in my lady's own interest, to tell him what was the business to which he had referred to Barter.
"She asked me whether I did not know that Hicks was a Nonconformist."
"That cannot be all. There must be something more in it."
"Yes, my lord," Dunne protested, "it is all. I know nothing more."
"Was there ever such an impudent rascal?" roared the judge. "Dolt think that, after all the pains I have been at to get an answer, thou canst banter me with such sham stuff as this? Hold the candle to his brazen face, that we may see it clearly."
Dunne stood terrified and trembling under the glance of those terrible eyes.
"My lord," he cried, "I am so baulked, I am cluttered out of my senses."
Again he was put down whilst Colonel Penruddock gave his evidence of the apprehension of the rebels. When he had told how he found Hicks and Dunne concealed under some stuff in the malt-house, Dunne was brought back yet again, that Jeffreys might resume his cross-examination.
"Dunne, how came you to hide yourself in the malthouse?"
"My lord," said Dunne foolishly, "I was frighted by the noise."
"Prithee, what needest thou be afraid of, for thou didst not know Hicks nor Nelthorp; and my lady only asked thee whether Hicks were a Nonconformist parson. Surely, so very innocent a soul needed no occasion to be afraid. I doubt there was something in the case of that business we were talking of before. If we could but get out of thee what it was."
But Dunne continued to evade.
"My lord, I heard a great noise in the house, and did not know what it meant. So I went and hid myself."
"It is very strange thou shouldst hide thyself for a little noise, when thou knewest nothing of the business."
Again the witness, with a candle still held close to his nose, complained that he was quite cluttered out of his senses, and did not know what he was saying.
"But to tell the truth would not rob thee of any of thy senses, if ever thou hadst any," Jeffreys told him angrily. "But it would seem that neither thou nor thy mistress, the prisoner, had any; for she knew nothing of it either, though she had sent for them thither."
"My lord," cried her ladyship at that, "I hope I shall not be condemned without being heard."
"No, God forbid, Mrs. Lisle," he answered; and then viciously flashed forth a hint of the true forces of Nemesis at work against her. "That was a sort of practice in your late husband's time—you know very well what I mean—but God be thanked it is not so now."
Came next the reluctant evidence of Carpenter and his wife, and after that there was yet a fourth equally futile attempt to drag from Dunne an admission that her ladyship was acquainted with Hicks's share in the rebellion. But if stupid, Dunne at least was staunch, and so, with a wealth of valedictory invective, Jeffreys dismissed him, and addressed at last the prisoner, inviting her to speak in her own defence.