Kabanata Kabanata 57 · 第57章

My poor afflicted governess was now as much concerned as I, and a great

deal more truly penitent, though she had no prospect of being brought

to trial and sentence. Not but that she deserved it as much as I, and

so she said herself; but she had not done anything herself for many

years, other than receiving what I and others stole, and encouraging us

to steal it. But she cried, and took on like a distracted body,

wringing her hands, and crying out that she was undone, that she

believed there was a curse from heaven upon her, that she should be

damned, that she had been the destruction of all her friends, that she

had brought such a one, and such a one, and such a one to the gallows;

and there she reckoned up ten or eleven people, some of which I have

given account of, that came to untimely ends; and that now she was the

occasion of my ruin, for she had persuaded me to go on, when I would

have left off. I interrupted her there. “No, mother, no,” said I,

“don’t speak of that, for you would have had me left off when I got the

mercer’s money again, and when I came home from Harwich, and I would

not hearken to you; therefore you have not been to blame; it is I only

have ruined myself, I have brought myself to this misery”; and thus we

spent many hours together.

Well, there was no remedy; the prosecution went on, and on the Thursday

I was carried down to the sessions-house, where I was arraigned, as

they called it, and the next day I was appointed to be tried. At the

arraignment I pleaded “Not guilty,” and well I might, for I was

indicted for felony and burglary; that is, for feloniously stealing two

pieces of brocaded silk, value £46, the goods of Anthony Johnson, and

for breaking open his doors; whereas I knew very well they could not

pretend to prove I had broken up the doors, or so much as lifted up a

latch.

On the Friday I was brought to my trial. I had exhausted my spirits

with crying for two or three days before, so that I slept better the

Thursday night than I expected, and had more courage for my trial than

indeed I thought possible for me to have.

When the trial began, the indictment was read, I would have spoke, but

they told me the witnesses must be heard first, and then I should have

time to be heard. The witnesses were the two wenches, a couple of

hard-mouthed jades indeed, for though the thing was truth in the main,

yet they aggravated it to the utmost extremity, and swore I had the

goods wholly in my possession, that I had hid them among my clothes,

that I was going off with them, that I had one foot over the threshold

when they discovered themselves, and then I put t’ other over, so that

I was quite out of the house in the street with the goods before they

took hold of me, and then they seized me, and brought me back again,

and they took the goods upon me. The fact in general was all true, but

I believe, and insisted upon it, that they stopped me before I had set

my foot clear of the threshold of the house. But that did not argue

much, for certain it was that I had taken the goods, and I was bringing

them away, if I had not been taken.

But I pleaded that I had stole nothing, they had lost nothing, that the

door was open, and I went in, seeing the goods lie there, and with

design to buy. If, seeing nobody in the house, I had taken any of them

up in my hand it could not be concluded that I intended to steal them,

for that I never carried them farther than the door to look on them

with the better light.

The Court would not allow that by any means, and made a kind of a jest

of my intending to buy the goods, that being no shop for the selling of

anything, and as to carrying them to the door to look at them, the

maids made their impudent mocks upon that, and spent their wit upon it

very much; told the Court I had looked at them sufficiently, and

approved them very well, for I had packed them up under my clothes, and

was a-going with them.

In short, I was found guilty of felony, but acquitted of the burglary,

which was but small comfort to me, the first bringing me to a sentence

of death, and the last would have done no more. The next day I was

carried down to receive the dreadful sentence, and when they came to

ask me what I had to say why sentence should not pass, I stood mute a

while, but somebody that stood behind me prompted me aloud to speak to

the judges, for that they could represent things favourably for me.

This encouraged me to speak, and I told them I had nothing to say to

stop the sentence, but that I had much to say to bespeak the mercy of

the Court; that I hoped they would allow something in such a case for

the circumstances of it; that I had broken no doors, had carried

nothing off; that nobody had lost anything; that the person whose goods

they were was pleased to say he desired mercy might be shown (which

indeed he very honestly did); that, at the worst, it was the first

offence, and that I had never been before any court of justice before;

and, in a word, I spoke with more courage that I thought I could have

done, and in such a moving tone, and though with tears, yet not so many

tears as to obstruct my speech, that I could see it moved others to

tears that heard me.

The judges sat grave and mute, gave me an easy hearing, and time to say

all that I would, but, saying neither Yes nor No to it, pronounced the

sentence of death upon me, a sentence that was to me like death itself,

which, after it was read, confounded me. I had no more spirit left in

me, I had no tongue to speak, or eyes to look up either to God or man.

My poor governess was utterly disconsolate, and she that was my

comforter before, wanted comfort now herself; and sometimes mourning,

sometimes raging, was as much out of herself, as to all outward

appearance, as any mad woman in Bedlam. Nor was she only disconsolate

as to me, but she was struck with horror at the sense of her own wicked

life, and began to look back upon it with a taste quite different from

mine, for she was penitent to the highest degree for her sins, as well

as sorrowful for the misfortune. She sent for a minister, too, a

serious, pious, good man, and applied herself with such earnestness, by

his assistance, to the work of a sincere repentance, that I believe,

and so did the minister too, that she was a true penitent; and, which

is still more, she was not only so for the occasion, and at that

juncture, but she continued so, as I was informed, to the day of her

death.

It is rather to be thought of than expressed what was now my condition.

I had nothing before me but present death; and as I had no friends to

assist me, or to stir for me, I expected nothing but to find my name in

the dead warrant, which was to come down for the execution, the Friday

afterwards, of five more and myself.

In the meantime my poor distressed governess sent me a minister, who at

her request first, and at my own afterwards, came to visit me. He

exhorted me seriously to repent of all my sins, and to dally no longer

with my soul; not flattering myself with hopes of life, which, he said,

he was informed there was no room to expect, but unfeignedly to look up

to God with my whole soul, and to cry for pardon in the name of Jesus

Christ. He backed his discourses with proper quotations of Scripture,

encouraging the greatest sinner to repent, and turn from their evil

way, and when he had done, he kneeled down and prayed with me.

It was now that, for the first time, I felt any real signs of

repentance. I now began to look back upon my past life with abhorrence,

and having a kind of view into the other side of time, and things of

life, as I believe they do with everybody at such a time, began to look

with a different aspect, and quite another shape, than they did before.

The greatest and best things, the views of felicity, the joy, the

griefs of life, were quite other things; and I had nothing in my

thoughts but what was so infinitely superior to what I had known in

life, that it appeared to me to be the greatest stupidity in nature to

lay any weight upon anything, though the most valuable in this world.

The word eternity represented itself with all its incomprehensible

additions, and I had such extended notions of it, that I know not how

to express them. Among the rest, how vile, how gross, how absurd did

every pleasant thing look!—I mean, that we had counted pleasant

before—especially when I reflected that these sordid trifles were the

things for which we forfeited eternal felicity.

With these reflections came, of mere course, severe reproaches of my

own mind for my wretched behaviour in my past life; that I had

forfeited all hope of any happiness in the eternity that I was just

going to enter into, and on the contrary was entitled to all that was

miserable, or had been conceived of misery; and all this with the

frightful addition of its being also eternal.

I am not capable of reading lectures of instruction to anybody, but I

relate this in the very manner in which things then appeared to me, as

far as I am able, but infinitely short of the lively impressions which

they made on my soul at that time; indeed, those impressions are not to

be explained by words, or if they are, I am not mistress of words

enough to express them. It must be the work of every sober reader to

make just reflections on them, as their own circumstances may direct;

and, without question, this is what every one at some time or other may

feel something of; I mean, a clearer sight into things to come than

they had here, and a dark view of their own concern in them.

But I go back to my own case. The minister pressed me to tell him, as

far as I thought convenient, in what state I found myself as to the

sight I had of things beyond life. He told me he did not come as

ordinary of the place, whose business it is to extort confessions from

prisoners, for private ends, or for the further detecting of other

offenders; that his business was to move me to such freedom of

discourse as might serve to disburthen my own mind, and furnish him to

administer comfort to me as far as was in his power; and assured me,

that whatever I said to him should remain with him, and be as much a

secret as if it was known only to God and myself; and that he desired

to know nothing of me, but as above to qualify him to apply proper

advice and assistance to me, and to pray to God for me.