Walter Besant
The Orange Girl
During the whole time of the trial the eyes of everybody in court, I observed, were turned upon the prisoner. Never before, I am sure, did a more lovely prisoner stand in the Dock: never was there one whose position was more commiserated: they were all, I verily believe, ready to set her free at once: but for the act and deed of the prisoner herself. Her attitude: her face: her dress all proclaimed aloud the words which I have written down above. Everybody had seen her on the stage playing principally the coquette, the woman of fashion and folly, the hoyden, the affected prude – but not a part like this. 'Ye gods!' I heard a young barrister exclaim. 'She looks like an angel: an angel sent down to Newgate!' The strange, new, unexpected look of virginal innocence stamped on the brow of the once daring and headlong actress startled the people: it went to the heart of everyone: it made everybody present feel that they were assisting at a martyrdom: nay, as if they were themselves, unwillingly, bringing faggots to pile the fire. Before the trial began many an eye was dim, many a cheek was humid.
The Court entered: the people rose: the Counsel bowed to the Bench: the Lord Mayor took his seat: beside him the Judge: with him the Aldermen and the Sheriffs: the prisoner also did reverence to the Court like a gentlewoman receiving company. One would not have been surprised had my Lord Mayor stepped down and kissed her on the cheek in City fashion. But neither in her look nor in her actions was there betrayed the least sign of degradation, fear, or shame.
When a somewhat lengthy indictment had been read, she raised her head. 'My Lord, I would first desire to ask for my name to be amended.'
'What amendment do you desire?'
'I am described as Madame Vallance, alias Jenny Wilmot, actress. It is true that Jenny Wilmot was my maiden name, and that I assumed the name of Madame Vallance when I left the stage and opened the Assembly Rooms. My true name is Jenny Halliday, and I am the wife of Mr. Matthew Halliday, son of Sir Peter Halliday, Alderman, and partner in the House of Halliday Brothers, West India Wharf, by the Steel Yard in the Parish of All Hallows the Great.'
The Judge, whom nothing could surprise, answered with the awful coldness which becomes a Judge and so terrifies a prisoner. 'There is no dispute concerning identity. Plead in your married name, if you will.'
'Then, my Lord, I plead Guilty.'
She had done it, then. With a case so strong: with an assurance of acquittal, she had pleaded Guilty. My heart sank. Yet I knew what she would do. The Lord Mayor whispered the judge again.
'You are ignorant of law and procedure in Courts of Justice,' he said. 'I will allow you to withdraw that plea. Have you no Counsel?'
'I need none, my Lord. I plead Guilty.'
The people all held their breath. Then the 'Case of Clarinda' was true after all.
'I am anxious,' the Judge went on, 'that you should have a fair trial. Appoint a Counsel. Advise with him.'
'I plead Guilty' she repeated.
The Judge threw himself back in his seat 'Let the trial proceed,' he said.
The Counsel for the Prosecution opened the case. It was, he said a remarkable case, because there seemed no sufficient reason or temptation for breaking the law, or for receiving stolen property. The information was laid by a woman living in the purlieus of St. Giles's Parish: she was, very probably, a person of no character at all: but character was not wanted in this case because her information would be supplemented by the evidence of several persons of the highest respectability who would swear to certain articles as their own property. The woman in fact, would depose to the conveyance of stolen goods to the house in question: she gave information the goods were actually found there: and other witnesses would claim as their own many things among the property so found.
'Gentlemen of the Jury,' he went on, 'this is a case of a painful nature. The prisoner who pleads guilty – who rejects the clemency – the kindly benevolence – of the Court – is a person who, as you know, a year or two ago was delighting the town by the vivacity of her acting and the beauty of her person: she left the stage, the world knew not why, or what had become of her: it now appears that she took a certain house in Soho Square, where she carried on assemblies, masquerades, and other amusements still delighting the town: there is nothing to make one believe that she was in pecuniary embarrassments: and we now learn that she is actually the wife of a City merchant of great wealth and reputation.' Here his neighbour hurriedly wrote something on a paper: and handed it to him. 'My learned friend,' he said correcting himself, 'informs me that this House, until recently in the highest repute, has fallen into evil times and is now bankrupt. But, gentlemen, whether the prisoner attempted to stave off her husband's bankruptcy or not, the property which she received was of so trifling a character that it would seem as if she was breaking the Law for the sake of a few shillings. The things found in her possession were not those which we are accustomed to regard as the booty of robbers: there are no jewels, gold chains, silver cups, lace, silks or anything at all but things belonging to poor people or to people just raised above poverty. There are women's petticoats, men's nightcaps: watches in tortoise-shell cases: knives and forks: small spoons, handkerchiefs: stockings, even: wigs, and so forth. I expected, I confess when I surveyed this rubbish, to hear a defence on the ground that such a person in a position so responsible – with friends so numerous, some of them of high rank, could not condescend to countenance the mean and sordid traffic. I confess that I looked forward to this trial as a means of finding out the real criminal who had taken advantage of access to the house and impudently used the rooms in Madame Vallance's premises for their own dishonest purposes. That expectation must be now disappointed: that hope must be abandoned. By her own repeated confession, the prisoner has assured the Court that she is guilty.
'The case,' he went on, 'has grown out of one recently heard before this Court. It was one in which the present prisoner exerted herself very actively in the cause of a man named Halliday, presumably a connection of her own by marriage. Halliday was charged with highway robbery. The evidence was clear and direct. The prisoner before us, however, with great activity and courage, brought together an overwhelming mass of evidence which proved that the charge was a conspiracy of the blackest and foulest kind. The conspirators are now undergoing their sentence. By this brave action an innocent life was saved and four villains were sent to prison. I mention the fact because it shows that the prisoner possesses many noble qualities, which make it the more marvellous that she should be guilty of acts so mean, so paltry, so sordid. The woman who will appear before you was the mistress of one of these conspirators. Her information was doubtless laid as an act of revenge. Yet we cannot weigh motives.' And so on.
It appeared that the evidence was of a merely formal character and that the witnesses would not be cross-examined. The first witness was the woman of whom you know. She, among other women prisoners in Newgate, had been kept from starvation by Jenny; this fact might have softened her heart: but unfortunately the recent sufferings of her lover in pillory re-awakened her desire for revenge. She was an eager witness: she wanted to begin at once and to tell her tale her own way. The main point now was a statement invented since her evidence before the magistrate. She now declared that she herself was engaged by the prisoner to carry the property to the Assembly Rooms. This abominable perjury she stoutly maintained. The Counsel for the Prosecution questioned her apparently in order to elicit the facts: in reality, as I now believe, in order to make her contradict herself. She was asked where she put the things: why in the garret: what servants helped her: who received her: who carried candles for her: why the prisoner selected her for the job: what share she had in the riots: whether she was in prison on that account: and so on. She was a poor ignorant creature, thirsting for revenge: therefore she maintained stoutly that the prisoner had paid her for moving the goods into her house.
Whether by accident or design, nothing was said about the Black Jack or about the landlady of that establishment. I suppose that the Prosecution was only anxious to establish the bare facts to which the prisoner had pleaded Guilty.
The manner in which the witness gave her evidence: the fire in her eyes and in her cheeks: the dirty slovenly look of the woman: her uncombed hair: her voice: her gestures: her manifest perjuries and contradictions: disgusted all who looked on: the Judge laid down his pen and leaned back in his chair as if what she said was of no concern: the Aldermen looked at the Judge as much as to ask how long this was to be permitted: the Jury whispered and shook their heads: the ladies present knotted their brows and fanned themselves and whispered each other angrily. At last she sat down flaming and vehement to the end. Her evidence had in fact ruined the case. Why, she had the impudence to allege that the property she had herself carried to the house was received by Madame herself, who ordered her footmen to carry it to the garrets.
She was followed by the shopkeepers who had been robbed. They swore to certain goods of no great value, which had been stolen from them. Their evidence was quickly given. There was, in fact, no evidence really implicating the prisoner except that of the woman. There was clearly something behind: something not explained, which everybody was whispering to each other – it had been revealed in the famous paper called 'The Case of Clarinda.' And now I understood what Jenny meant when she said that her defence would bring her mother into the business. For Counsel would have inquired into the Black Jack story and asked what the things were doing there: how they came there: who was the landlord: with many other particulars, some of which would have brought out the truth. As for the woman, whether by feminine cunning or by accident, she concealed the relationship between Jenny and the Black Jack: she had really seen the sister and the mother carrying things to the house in Soho Square: she did not then know that Madame Vallance was Jenny: she found out the fact at the trial: she then invented the story of being hired for carrying the property because she knew it was there. All that the Court knew, however, was the fact that such a woman as stood before them, this angel of loveliness this woman of position: had actually confessed to the crime of receiving the miserable odds and ends – the rags and tawdry finery – stolen from quite poor people. It was amazing: it was incredible.
'That is my case, my Lord,' said the Counsel with a sigh, as if he was ashamed of having conducted it at all.
'Prisoner at the Bar,' said the Judge, 'you have heard the verdict of the Jury. You may now say anything you wish in explanation or extenuation.'
'What can I have to say, my Lord,' she replied simply but with dignity, 'since I pleaded guilty? Nevertheless, I have to thank the Counsel for the Prosecution, who almost proved my pleading impossible.'
The Judge summed up in a few words. The verdict of the Jury included a recommendation to mercy.
The Judge assumed the black cap: he pronounced sentence of Death: the Ordinary appeared in his robes and prayed that the Lord would have mercy on her soul: the warder tied the usual slip of string about the prisoner's thumb to show what hanging meant. The only person unaffected by the sentence was the prisoner herself. Never before had she acted so finely: never before, indeed, had Jenny been called upon to play such a part. She stood with clasped hands gazing into the face of the Judge, not with defiance, not with wonder: not with resentment: but with a meek acceptance. The women in the court, the great ladies behind the Lord Mayor wept and sobbed without restraint: even the younger members of the outer Bar were affected to unmanly humidity of the eyes.
Now when the verdict of the Jury was pronounced, and before the sentence of the Judge, Jenny did a strange thing, which moved the people almost more than the words of the sentence. She took up a small roll which lay before her. It was a black lace veil. She threw this over her head: it fell down upon her shoulders nearly to her waist. She held it up while the Judge was speaking: when he finished she dropped it over her face. So with the veil of Death falling over her spotless robes of Innocence she stepped down from the dock and followed the men in blue back to the prison. 'Ye Gods!' cried one of the barristers, 'she is nothing less than the Virgin Martyr!' Indeed she seemed nothing less than one of the Christian martyrs, the confessors faithful to the end whom no tortures and no punishment could turn aside from the path of martyrdom.
I hurried round to the prison. 'Ah! Sir,' sighed a turnkey, 'she must now go to the condemned cell. Pity! Pity!' They were all her friends – every one of these officers, hardened by years of daily contact with the scum of the people. 'But they won't hang her. They can't.'
'And all for her mother,' said another. 'I remember old Sal of the Black Jack, also her sister Dolly. All to save that fat old carrion carcass. Well, well. You can go in, sir.'
Jenny was standing by the table. She greeted me with a sad smile. 'It is all over at last,' she said. 'It is harder to play a part on a real stage than in a theatre. Did I play well, Will?'
'You left a House in tears, Jenny. Oh!' I cried impatiently, 'Is this what you wanted?'
'Yes, I am quite satisfied. I really was afraid at one time that the Counsel would throw up the case because his leading witness was so gross and impudent a liar. Didst ever hear a woman perjure herself so roundly and so often? What next?'
'Yes, Jenny. What next?'
'I don't know, Will. The Assembly Rooms which are taken in my name are seized, I hear, by my husband's creditors. But all the furniture and fittings have been destroyed already. That is done with, then. Am I to begin again in order to have everything seized again?' She talked as if her immediate enlargement was certain. I could not have the heart to whisper discouragement.
'There is still the stage, Jenny. The world will welcome you back again.'
'Do you think so? The Orange Girl they could stand; it pleased the Pit to remember how they used to buy my oranges. But the woman who has come out of a condemned cell? The woman who pleaded guilty to receiving stolen goods? I doubt it will.'
'What does that matter? Everybody knows why you pleaded Guilty. You are Clarinda.'
'An audience at a theatre, Will, sometimes shows neither pity nor consideration for an actress. They say what they like: they shout what they like: they insult her as they please – an actress is fair game: to make an actress run off the stage in a flood of tears is what they delight in. They would be pleased to ask what I have done with the stolen goods.'
'What will you do then, Jenny?'
There came along, at this point, another visitor. It was none other than the Counsel for the Prosecution. He stood at the door of the cell, but seeing me, he hesitated.
'Come in, Sir,' said Jenny. 'You wish to speak to me. Speak. This gentleman, my husband's first cousin, can hear all that you have to ask or I to reply.'
'Madame,' he bowed as to a Countess. 'This is a wretched place for you. I trust, however that it will not be for long. The recommendation of the Jury will certainly have weight: the Judge is benevolently disposed: you have many friends.'
'I hope, Sir, that I have some friends who will not believe that I have bought a parcel of stolen petticoats?'
'Your friends will stand by you: of that I am certain. Madame, I venture here to ask you, if I may do so without the charge of impertinent curiosity – believe me – I am not so actuated – '
'Surely, Sir. Ask what you will.'
'I would ask you then, why you pleaded Guilty. The case was certain from the outset to break down. I might have pressed the witness as to the property itself, but I refrained because her perjuries were manifest. Why then, Madame – if I may ask – why?'
'Perhaps I had learned that certain things had been sent to my garrets, but I paid no thought to any risk or danger – '
'That might have been pleaded.'
'The case being over, that property can bring no other person into trouble, I believe?'
'I should think not. The case is ended.'
'Then, Sir, I pray you to consider this question. If some person very closely connected with yourself were actually guilty of this crime: if you yourself were charged with it: if your acquittal would lead to that person's conviction, what would you do?'
'That is what they whisper,' he replied. 'Madame, I hope that such a choice may never be made to me. Is this true – what you suggest – what people whisper?'
'Many things are whispered concerning me,' said Jenny proudly. 'I do not heed those whispers. Well, Sir, such a choice has been presented to me. It is part of the penalty of my birth that such a choice could be possible.'
'Then it is true?' he insisted; 'the "Case of Clarinda" is true?'
'Sir, it is true in many points. I was once an Orange Girl of Drury Lane. My people were residents of St. Giles's in the Fields. I was brought up in the courts and lanes of that quarter. You, Sir, are a lawyer. Need I explain further the nature of that choice?'
'Madam,' said the lawyer, 'I think you are the best woman in the world as you are the loveliest.' So saying he lifted her hand to his lips, bowing low, and left us.
'Well,' said Jenny, 'I think I have done pretty well for my mother and for Doll. Their slate is clean again. They can begin fair. Receiving has been her principal trade so long that she is not likely to be satisfied with drawing beer. But the past is wiped out. And as for myself – ' She sighed. 'What next? Matthew is where the wicked can no longer trouble. Merridew, poor wretch! has also ceased from troubling. My friends of St. Giles's will be satisfied because I have now done what I told you I should do, and gone through the fiery furnace. Why,' she looked around the bare and narrow walls, 'I believe I am in it still. But the flames do not burn, nor does the hot air scorch – believe me, dear Will – oh! believe me – I would do it all again – all again – I regret nothing – Will, nothing. Assure Alice that I would do it all again – exactly as I have done.'
With a full heart I left her. What next? What next?
CHAPTER XXII
FROM THE CONDEMNED CELL
And now, indeed, began the time of endurance and suspense. To the bravest of women came moments of depression – what else could be expected when her days and nights were spent in a condemned cell? In this gloomy apartment Jenny was now compelled to live. The place lies in a corner of the women's yard or Court; it contains two rooms, one of them a small bedroom, the other, when there are only one or two in residence, a living room. One other prisoner was already in this cell, awaiting her time for execution. Alas! she was a mere child, not more than sixteen, and looking younger: a poor, ignorant creature who had never learned the difference between right and wrong: who had been brought up, as was Jenny herself, among children of rogues, themselves rogues from infancy. The law was going to kill this child because the law itself had found no way to protect her. Alas for our humanity! Alas for our statesmen! Alas for our Church! Will there never arise a Prophet in the land to show us how much better it is to teach than to kill?
Outside, the yard was all day long filled with women either convicted or waiting to be tried: some of them were in prison for short sentences: some were waiting to be whipped: some were waiting for ships to carry them to the plantations: all alike were foul in language; unwashed, uncombed and draggled; rough and coarse and common. Such women, gathered together in one place, make each other worse: they swear like men: they fight like men: they drink like men: their hair hangs loose over their shoulders: the 'loose jumps' of leather which they use for stays are never changed: the ragged kerchief over their shoulders is never washed: the linsey-woolsey frock is foul with every kind of stain: their loud harsh voices have no feminine softness: their red brawny arms terrify the spectator: in their faces, even of the youngest, is no look of Venus.
Taken to this place, Jenny had to wait, expectant, for the relief that was promised her by Lord Brockenhurst. Her cheek grew pale and thin: her eyes became unnaturally bright: I feared gaol fever but happily she was spared this dreadful malady. Yet she kept up the appearance of cheerfulness, and greeted me every day with a smile that was never forced, and a grasp that was never chilled.
For exercise Jenny had the crowded yard. There, with no one to protect her, she walked a little every morning, the women falling back, right and left, to let her pass. They offered her no molestation. To save her fancy man – so ran the legend – she had compassed the ruin of her old friends: with this object ('twas the only one they could understand) she put up her mother to bear witness against her own customers. Well: it was to save her fancy man – the same came every day to see her in the prison: that was some excuse for her: would not any woman do as much for her man? And now she was herself condemned all through the other woman whose man she had put in prison and in pillory. So far, then, they were quits, and might all become friends again. And they remembered as a point in Jenny's favour that the noble welcome with which the thief-taker was received – a thing at which all Roguery rejoiced – was entirely due to her exertions. These things passed from one to the other clothed in the language peculiar to such people.
Jenny took two or three turns in the yard, every morning when the prison air is freshest, and then went back to her cell, where she remained for the rest of the day.
In those days she talked to me more freely than before and a great deal about herself. She was forced to talk and to think about herself, for the first time in her life. Her thoughts went back to the past when all she could expect was to become such as the poor creatures with her in the prison. Yet these poor women, whom I found so terrible to look upon and to hear, she regarded with a tenderness which I thought excessive. I now understand that it was more humane than at that time was within my comprehension.
'They are not terrible to me,' she said. 'I know them – what they are and what has made them so. I can speak their language, but I must not let them know that I understand. It is the Thieves' tongue made up of Gipsy and of Tinkers' talk. They talk about me all day – even when I am in their midst. Poor wretches! They are not so bad as they look.'
'Nay, Jenny, but to see them beside you!'
'If we grow up among people, Will, and are used to them, we do not think much of their manners and their looks. When I was a child I played among them. Many a cuff have I had: many a slap for getting in their way: but many a bit of gingerbread and many an apple. You think them terrible. If they were clean and had their hair dressed they would not be terrible any longer. Oh! Will, they are not very far from the fine ladies – no – nor so very much below the best of good women, even Alice. They are women, though you flog them at Bridewell and hang them at Tyburn – they are still women. And they love – in their poor fond faithful way – the very hand that knocks them down and the very foot that kicks them. They love – Oh! the poor women – they love.'
She broke off, with a sob in her voice. I marvelled at the time because I had always looked upon the creatures as something below humanity: as belonging to a tribe of savages such as Swift called the Yahoos. Afterwards, I understood; and then I marvelled more.
Another time she talked about her profession as an actress. 'Acting,' she said, 'cannot be otherwise than delightful – but it takes an actor away from himself. When one has been two or three years on the stage nothing is left but the stage and the dressing-room: the company behind the scenes and the audience in front. Nothing is real. Everything that happens is but a scene in a play. When the curtain drops upon this Act, that is, when they let me go, I shall rest for five minutes while the next Act is getting ready: the play of Clarinda, or the Orange Girl, has some excellent scenes. You remember that scene when the mob wrecked the house: and the scene when the mob pelted Mr. Merridew – well, I should not be in the least surprised to meet Mr. Merridew himself walking along Holborn with one eye on a young thief in training for a shoplifter: and I might look in at the Black Jack and see my mother taking her morning dram and Doll adding up the scores upon the slate. In five minutes after the curtain has dropped what has happened is little more to me than the last scene in the play at Drury. Why, if I were put into the cart and carried out to Tyburn I should still be the heroine playing my part to a breathless house. And I believe I should enjoy that part of the performance as much as anything. You saw how I played the Virgin Martyr in Court.'
'Yet this is real enough, God knows,' I said, looking round the place.
'I dare say it looks so to you. To me, it is part of the Play. Will, the Play is nearly over. I knew all along that disaster was coming upon me. But the worst is over – the worst is over. I know that the worst is over. I can now foretell what is coming next.' She looked straight before her, her eyes luminous in the dark cell. 'I can see,' she said, 'a time of peace and calm. Well, Will, reality or not, that scene will be pleasant. I shall go out of this place very soon – But I know not when, and I cannot see myself at any time again upon the boards of Drury. I am certain that I shall never go back there. I cannot see myself in Soho Square either. I shall never go back there. I see fields and hills and woods' – she shuddered and with a gesture pushed the vision from her. 'Will – it is strange, all is strange: it is a beautiful country, but I know it not – I cannot understand it.'
It was not the first time, as you have seen, that she showed this strange power of peering into the future. Whether this fair-haired and blue-eyed woman was really a child of the gipsies, or, as Lord Brockenhurst conjectured, a stolen child, she had the powers that we commonly find in gipsy women who are fortune-tellers all the world over. That she compelled all men to become her servants you have seen: that she could also compel women to follow and obey her was proved by what she did during that three or four weeks which she spent in the condemned cell: the same magic arts – yet she was no witch: and she could read the future – a gift which is marvellous in our eyes.
Her power over others, even the most savage people, was shown by the changed behaviour of the poor girl waiting for execution. I have mentioned her: she was at first a wild creature: she fled to the darkest corner of the cell and there crouched with eyes of suspicion and terror: she snatched her food and ran into her corner to eat it: she was altogether unwashed and altogether in rags: she was bare-footed, bare-legged and bare-armed: her hair which should have been light – like Jenny's own hair, was matted with dirt: it looked as if it had never known a comb: yet long and beautiful hair: her eyes were blue, large and limpid. She had never known kindness, or love, or care since the day when her mother was marched away to Newgate wearing handcuffs. She was, I say, a mere savage. The child might have been sixteen, but she looked thirteen. Still, sixteen is young for Tyburn. Jenny found this child in her cell: condemned like herself; and she tamed her. Not in a single day, but in a few days. She tamed her with kindness; with soft words in the language which the child understood best: with soft touches: with gifts of pretty things: I suppose she gave her sweetmeats – I know not what she did, but in a few days I found the savage wild creature converted into a shy, timid girl – clinging to Jenny and following her about like a favourite spaniel. She was washed and combed and dressed from head to foot: she wore stockings and shoes: her hair, just confined by a ribbon, hung over her shoulders in lovely tresses: she had become an interesting child who promised to grow into a lovely maiden. And yet she was to be carried out to Tyburn and there hanged.
Then, when the girl had assumed a civilized look, Jenny began to lament her approaching fate of which the poor creature seemed herself unconscious. Indeed, I think the child understood nothing at her trial or her sentence except that she was horribly frightened and was carried out of court crying.
'Is it not terrible,' she asked, 'that we must hang children – ignorant children?'
'It is the law of the land, Jenny. Judges have only to administer the law of the land.'
'Then it is a cruel law, and the Judges ought to say so. A man is a murderer who condemns a child to death, even if it is the law, without declaring against it.'
'Nay, Jenny' – this she could not understand for the reasons I have already given – 'we must remember that the children suffer for the sins of the fathers, unto the third and fourth generation.'
She stared. 'Why,' she said, 'the poor child has been taught no better.' And, indeed, there seems no answer to this plea. If in the mysteries of Providence we must so suffer, the Law of men should not punish ignorance. 'To hang children!' she insisted. 'To destroy their lives before they have well begun! And for what? For taking something not their own – Oh! Will, it is monstrous. Just for a bit of cloth – only a bit of cloth off a counter. Oh! the poor child! the poor child!'
