A High Wind in Jamaica - Richard Hughes [82]
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