The Legacy of Cain

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Etext by James Rusk (jrusk@cyberramp.net)
Italics are indicated by the underscore character

The Legacy of Cain

by Wilkie Collins

To

MRS. HENRY POWELL BARTLEY:

Permit me to add your name to my name, in publishing this novel.
The pen which has written my books cannot be more agreeably
employed than in acknowledging what I owe to the pen which has
skillfully and patiently helped me, by copying my manuscripts for
the printer.

WILKIE COLLINS.

Wimpole Street, 6th December, 1888.

--------

THE LEGACY OF CAIN.

First Period: 1858-1859.

EVENTS IN THE PRISON, RELATED BY THE GOVERNOR.

----

CHAPTER I.

THE GOVERNOR EXPLAINS.

AT the request of a person who has claims on me that I must not
disown, I consent to look back through a long interval of years
and to describe events which took place within the walls of an
English prison during the earlier period of my appointment as
Governor.

Viewing my task by the light which later experience casts on it,
I think I shall act wisely by exercising some control over the
freedom of my pen.

I propose to pass over in silence the name of the town in which
is situated the prison once confided to my care. I shall observe
a similar discretion in alluding to individuals--some dead, some
living, at the present time.

Being obliged to write of a woman who deservedly suffered the
extreme penalty of the law, I think she will be sufficiently
identified if I call her The Prisoner. Of the four persons
present on the evening before her execution three may be
distinguished one from the other by allusion to their vocations
in life. I here introduce them as The Chaplain, The Minister, and
The Doctor. The fourth was a young woman. She has no claim on my
consideration; and, when she is mentioned, her name may appear.
If these reserves excite suspicion, I declare beforehand that
they influence in no way the sense of responsibility which
commands an honest man to speak the truth.

CHAPTER II.

THE MURDERESS ASKS QUESTIONS.

THE first of the events which I must now relate was the
conviction of The Prisoner for the murder of her husband.

They had lived together in matrimony for little more than two
years. The husband, a gentleman by birth and education, had
mortally offended his relations in marrying a woman of an
inferior rank of life. He was fast declining into a state of
poverty, through his own reckless extravagance, at the time when
he met with his death at his wife's hand.

Without attempting to excuse him, he deserved, to my mind, some
tribute of regret. It is not to be denied that he was profligate
in his habits and violent in his temper. But it is equally true
that he was affectionate in the domestic circle, and, when moved
by wisely applied remonstrance, sincerely penitent for sins
committed under temptation that overpowered him. If his wife had
killed him in a fit of jealous rage--under provocation, be it
remembered, which the witnesses proved--she might have been
convicted of manslaughter, and might have received a light
sentence. But the evidence so undeniably revealed deliberate and
merciless premeditation, that the only defense attempted by her
counsel was madness, and the only alternative left to a righteous
jury was a verdict which condemned the woman to death. Those
mischievous members of the community, whose topsy-turvy
sympathies feel for the living criminal and forget the dead
victim, attempted to save her by means of high-flown petitions
and contemptible correspondence in the newspapers. But the Judge
held firm; and the Home Secretary held firm. They were entirely
right; and the public were scandalously wrong.

Our Chaplain endeavored to offer the consolations of religion to
the condemned wretch. She refused to accept his ministrations in
language which filled him with grief and horror.

On the evening before the execution, the reverend gentleman laid
on my table his own written report of a conversation which had
passed between the Prisoner and himself.

"I see some hope, sir," he said, "of inclining the heart of this
woman to religious belief, before it is too late. Will you read
my report, and say if you agree with me?"

I read it, of course. It was called "A Memorandum," and was thus
written:

"At his last interview with the Prisoner, the Chaplain asked her
if she had ever entered a place of public worship. She replied
that she had occasionally attended the services at a
Congregational Church in this town; attracted by the reputation
of the Minister as a preacher. 'He entirely failed to make a
Christian of me,' she said; 'but I was struck by his eloquence.
Besides, he interested me personally--he was a fine man.'

"In the dreadful situation in which the woman was placed, such
language as this shocked the Chaplain; he appealed in vain to the
Prisoner's sense of propriety. 'You don't understand women,' she
answered. 'The greatest saint of my sex that ever lived likes to
look at a preacher as well as to hear him. If he is an agreeable
man, he has all the greater effect on her. This preacher's voice
told me he was kind-hearted; and I had only to look at his
beautiful eyes to see that he was trustworthy and true.'

"It was useless to repeat a protest which had already failed.
Recklessly and flippantly as she had described it, an impression
had been produced on her. It occurred to the Chaplain that he
might at least make the attempt to turn this result to her own
religious advantage. He asked whether she would receive the
Minister, if the reverend gentleman came to the prison. 'That
will depend,' she said, 'on whether you answer some questions
which I want to put to you first.' The Chaplain consented;
provided always that he could reply with propriety to what she
asked of him. Her first question only related to himself.

"She said: 'The women who watch me tell me that you are a
widower, and have a family of children. Is that true?'

"The Chaplain answered that it was quite true.

"She alluded next to a report, current in the town, that the
Minister had resigned the pastorate. Being personally acquainted
with him, the Chaplain was able to inform her that his
resignation had not yet been accepted. On hearing this, she
seemed to gather confidence. Her next inquiries succeeded each
other rapidly, as follows:

" 'Is my handsome preacher married?'

" 'Yes.'

" 'Has he got any children?'

" 'He has never had any children.'

" 'How long has he been married?'

" 'As well as I know, about seven or eight years.

" 'What sort of woman is his wife?'

" 'A lady universally respected.'

" 'I don't care whether she is respected or not. Is she kind?'

" 'Certainly!'

" 'Is her husband well off?'

" 'He has a sufficient income.'

"After that reply, the Prisoner's curiosity appeared to be
satisfied. She said, 'Bring your friend the preacher to me, if
you like'--and there it ended.

"What her object could have been in putting these questions, it
seems to be impossible to guess. Having accurately reported all
that took place, the Chaplain declares, with heartfelt regret,
that he can exert no religious influence over this obdurate
woman. He leaves it to the Governor to decide whether the
Minister of the Congregational Church may not succeed, where the
Chaplain of the Jail has failed. Herein is the one last hope of
saving the soul of the Prisoner, now under sentence of death!"

In those serious words the Memorandum ended. Although not
personally acquainted with the Minister I had heard of him, on
all sides, as an excellent man. In the emergency that confronted
us he had, as it seemed to me, his own sacred right to enter the
prison; assuming that he was willing to accept, what I myself
felt to be, a very serious responsibility. The first necessity
was to discover whether we might hope to obtain his services.
With my full approval the Chaplain left me, to state the
circumstances to his reverend colleague.

CHAPTER III.

THE CHILD APPEARS.

DURING my friend's absence, my attention was claimed by a sad
incident--not unforeseen.

It is, I suppose, generally known that near relatives are
admitted to take their leave of criminals condemned to death. In
the case of the Prisoner now waiting for execution, no person a
pplied to the authorities for permission to see her. I myself
inquired if she had any relations living, and if she would like
to see them. She answered: "None that I care to see, or that care
to see me--except the nearest relation of all."

In those last words the miserable creature alluded to her only
child, a little girl (an infant, I should say), who had passed
her first year's birthday by a few months. The farewell interview
was to take place on the mother's last evening on earth; and the
child was now brought into my rooms, in charge of her nurse.

I had seldom seen a brighter or prettier little girl. She was
just able to walk alone, and to enjoy the first delight of moving
from one place to another. Quite of her own accord she came to
me, attracted I daresay by the glitter of my watch-chain. Helping
her to climb on my knee, I showed the wonders of the watch, and
held it to her ear. At that past time, death had taken my good
wife from me; my two boys were away at Harrow School; my domestic
life was the life of a lonely man. Whether I was reminded of the
bygone days when my sons were infants on my knee, listening to
the ticking of my watch--or whether the friendless position of
the poor little creature, who had lost one parent and was soon to
lose the other by a violent death, moved me in depths of pity not
easily reached in my later experience--I am not able to say. This
only I know: my heart ached for the child while she was laughing
and listening; and something fell from me on the watch which I
don't deny might have been a tear. A few of the toys, mostly
broken now, which my two children used to play with are still in
my possession; kept, like my poor wife's favorite jewels, for old
remembrance' sake. These I took from their repository when the
attraction of my watch showed signs of failing. The child pounced
on them with her chubby hands, and screamed with pleasure. And
the hangman was waiting for her mother--and, more horrid still,
the mother deserved it!

My duty required me to let the Prisoner know that her little
daughter had arrived. Did that heart of iron melt at last? It
might have been so, or it might not; the message sent back kept
her secret. All that it said to me was: "Let the child wait till
I send for her."

The Minister had consented to help us. On his arrival at the
prison, I received him privately in my study.

I had only to look at his face--pitiably pale and agitated--to
see that he was a sensitive man, not always able to control his
nerves on occasions which tried his moral courage. A kind, I
might almost say a noble face, and a voice unaffectedly
persuasive, at once prepossessed me in his favor. The few words
of welcome that I spoke were intended to compose him. They failed
to produce the impression on which I had counted.

"My experience," he said, "has included many melancholy duties,
and has tried my composure in terrible scenes; but I have never
yet found myself in the presence of an unrepentant criminal,
sentenced to death--and that criminal a woman and a mother. I
own, sir, that I am shaken by the prospect before me."

I suggested that he should wait a while, in the hope that time
and quiet might help him. He thanked me, and refused.

"If I have any knowledge of myself," he said, "terrors of
anticipation lose their hold when I am face to face with a
serious call on me. The longer I remain here, the less worthy I
shall appear of the trust that has been placed in me--the trust
which, please God, I mean to deserve."

My own observation of human nature told me that this was wisely
said. I led the way at once to the cell.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MINISTER SAYS YES.

THE Prisoner was seated on her bed, quietly talking with the
woman appointed to watch her. When she rose to receive us, I saw
the Minister start. The face that confronted him would, in my
opinion, have taken any man by surprise, if he had first happened
to see it within the walls of a prison.

Visitors to the picture-galleries of Italy, growing weary of Holy
Families in endless succession, observe that the idea of the
Madonna, among the rank and file of Italian Painters, is limited
to one changeless and familiar type. I can hardly hope to be
believed when I say that the personal appearance of the murderess
recalled that type. She presented the delicate light hair, the
quiet eyes, the finely-shaped lower features and the correctly
oval form of face, repeated in hundreds on hundreds of the
conventional works of Art to which I have ventured to allude. To
those who doubt me, I can only declare that what I have here
written is undisguised and absolute truth. Let me add that daily
observation of all classes of criminals, extending over many
years, has considerably diminished my faith in physiognomy as a
safe guide to the discovery of character. Nervous trepidation
looks like guilt. Guilt, firmly sustained by insensibility, looks
like innocence. One of the vilest wretches ever placed under my
charge won the sympathies (while he was waiting for his trial) of
every person who saw him, including even the persons employed in
the prison. Only the other day, ladies and gentlemen coming to
visit me passed a body of men at work on the road. Judges of
physiognomy among them were horrified at the criminal atrocity
betrayed in every face that they noticed. They condoled with me
on the near neighborhood of so many convicts to my official place
of residence. I looked out of the window and saw a group of
honest laborers (whose only crime was poverty) employed by the
parish!

Having instructed the female warder to leave the room--but to
take care that she waited within call--I looked again at the
Minister.

Confronted by the serious responsibility that he had undertaken,
he justified what he had said to me. Still pale, still
distressed, he was now nevertheless master of himself. I turned
to the door to leave him alone with the Prisoner. She called me
back.

"Before this gentleman tries to convert me," she said, "I want
you to wait here and be a witness."

Finding that we were both willing to comply with this request,
she addressed herself directly to the Minister. "Suppose I
promise to listen to your exhortations," she began, "what do you
promise to do for me in return?"

The voice in which she spoke to him was steady and clear; a
marked contrast to the tremulous earnestness with which he
answered her.

"I promise to urge you to repentance and the confession of your
crime. I promise to implore the divine blessing on me in the
effort to save your poor guilty soul."

She looked at him, and listened to him, as if he was speaking to
her in an unknown tongue, and went on with what she had to say as
quietly as ever.

"When I am hanged to-morrow, suppose I die without confessing,
without repenting--are you one of those who believe I shall be
doomed to eternal punishment in another life?"

"I believe in the mercy of God."

"Answer my question, if you please. Is an impenitent sinner
eternally punished? Do you believe that?"

"My Bible leaves me no other alternative."

She paused for a while, evidently considering with special
attention what she was about to say next.

"As a religious man," she resumed, "would you be willing to make
some sacrifice, rather than let a fellow-creature go--after a
disgraceful death--to everlasting torment?"

"I know of no sacrifice in my power," he said, fervently, "to
which I would not rather submit than let you die in the present
dreadful state of your mind."

The Prisoner turned to me. "Is the person who watches me waiting
outside?"

"Yes."

"Will you be so kind as to call her in? I have a message for
her."

It was plain that she had been leading the way to the delivery of
that message, whatever it might be, in all that she had said up
to the present time. So far my poor powers of penetration helped
me, and no further.

The warder appeared, and received her message. "Tell the woman
who has come here with my little girl that I want to see the
child."

Taken completely by surprise, I signed to the attendant to wait
for further instructions.

In a moment more I had sufficiently recovered myself to see the
impropriety of permitting any obstacle to interp ose between the
Minister and his errand of mercy. I gently reminded the Prisoner
that she would have a later opportunity of seeing her child.
"Your first duty," I told her, "is to hear and to take to heart
what the clergyman has to say to you."

For the second time I attempted to leave the cell. For the second
time this impenetrable woman called me back.

"Take the parson away with you," she said. "I refuse to listen to
him."

The patient Minister yielded, and appealed to me to follow his
example. I reluctantly sanctioned the delivery of the message.

After a brief interval the child was brought to us, tired and
sleepy. For a while the nurse roused her by setting her on her
feet. She happened to notice the Minister first. Her bright eyes
rested on him, gravely wondering. He kissed her, and, after a
momentary hesitation, gave her to her mother. The horror of the
situation overpowered him: he turned his face away from us. I
understood what he felt; he almost overthrew my own self-command.

The Prisoner spoke to the nurse in no friendly tone: "You can
go."

The nurse turned to me, ostentatiously ignoring the words that
had been addressed to her. "Am I to go, sir, or to stay?" I
suggested that she should return to the waiting-room. She
returned at once in silence. The Prisoner looked after her as she
went out, with such an expression of hatred in her eyes that the
Minister noticed it.

"What has that person done to offend you?" he asked.

"She is the last person in the whole world whom I should have
chosen to take care of my child, if the power of choosing had
been mine. But I have been in prison, without a living creature
to represent me or to take my part. No more of that; my troubles
will be over in a few hours more. I want you to look at my little
girl, whose troubles are all to come. Do you call her pretty? Do
you feel interested in her?"

The sorrow and pity in his face answered for him.

Quietly sleeping, the poor baby rested on her mother's bosom. Was
the heart of the murderess softened by the divine influence of
maternal love? The hands that held the child trembled a little.
For the first time it seemed to cost her an effort to compose
herself, before she could speak to the Minister again.

"When I die to-morrow," she said, "I leave my child helpless and
friendless--disgraced by her mother's shameful death. The
workhouse may take her--or a charitable asylum may take her." She
paused; a first tinge of color rose on her pale face; she broke
into an outburst of rage. "Think of _my_ daughter being brought
up by charity! She may suffer poverty, she may be treated with
contempt, she may be employed by brutal people in menial work. I
can't endure it; it maddens me. If she is not saved from that
wretched fate, I shall die despairing, I shall die cursing--"

The Minister sternly stopped her before she could say the next
word. To my astonishment she appeared to be humbled, to be even
ashamed: she asked his pardon: "Forgive me; I won't forget myself
again. They tell me you have no children of your own. Is that a
sorrow to you and your wife?"

Her altered tone touched him. He answered sadly and kindly: "It
is the one sorrow of our lives."

The purpose which she had been keeping in view from the moment
when the Minister entered her cell was no mystery now. Ought I to
have interfered? Let me confess a weakness, unworthy perhaps of
my office. I was so sorry for the child--I hesitated.

My silence encouraged the mother. She advanced to the Minister
with the sleeping infant in her arms.

"I daresay you have sometimes thought of adopting a child?" she
said. "Perhaps you can guess now what I had in my mind, when I
asked if you would consent to a sacrifice? Will you take this
wretched innocent little creature home with you?" She lost her
self-possession once more. "A motherless creature to-morrow," she
burst out. "Think of that."

God knows how I still shrunk from it! But there was no
alternative now; I was bound to remember my duty to the excellent
man, whose critical position at that moment was, in some degree
at least, due to my hesitation in asserting my authority. Could I
allow the Prisoner to presume on his compassionate nature, and to
hurry him into a decision which, in his calmer moments, he might
find reason to regret? I spoke to _him._ Does the man live
who--having to say what I had to say--could have spoken to the
doomed mother?

"I am sorry to have allowed this to go on," I said. "In justice
to yourself, sir, don't answer!"

She turned on me with a look of fury.

"He shall answer," she cried.

I saw, or thought I saw, signs of yielding in his face. "Take
time," I persisted--"take time to consider before you decide."

She stepped up to me.

"Take time?" she repeated. "Are you inhuman enough to talk of
time, in my presence?"

She laid the sleeping child on her bed, and fell on her knees
before the Minister: "I promise to hear your exhortations--I
promise to do all a woman can to believe and repent. Oh, I know
myself! My heart, once hardened, is a heart that no human
creature can touch. The one way to my better nature--if I have a
better nature--is through that poor babe. Save her from the
workhouse! Don't let them make a pauper of her!" She sank
prostrate at his feet, and beat her hands in frenzy on the floor.
"You want to save my guilty soul," she reminded him furiously.
"There's but one way of doing it. Save my child!"

He raised her. Her fierce tearless eyes questioned his face in a
mute expectation dreadful to see. Suddenly, a foretaste of
death--the death that was so near now!--struck her with a
shivering fit: her head dropped on the Minister's shoulder. Other
men might have shrunk from the contact of it. That true Christian
let it rest.

Under the maddening sting of suspense, her sinking energies
rallied for an instant. In a whisper, she was just able to put
the supreme question to him.

"Yes? or No?"

He answered: "Yes."

A faint breath of relief, just audible in the silence, told me
that she had heard him. It was her last effort. He laid her,
insensible, on the bed, by the side of her sleeping child. "Look
at them," was all he said to me; "how could I refuse?"

CHAPTER V.

MISS CHANCE ASSERTS HERSELF.

THE services of our medical officer were required, in order to
hasten the recovery of the Prisoner's senses.

When the Doctor and I left the cell together, she was composed,
and ready (in the performance of her promise) to listen to the
exhortations of the Minister. The sleeping child was left
undisturbed, by the mother's desire. If the Minister felt tempted
to regret what he had done, there was the artless influence which
would check him! As we stepped into the corridor, I gave the
female warder her instructions to remain on the watch, and to
return to her post when she saw the Minister come out.

In the meantime, my companion had walked on a little way.

Possessed of ability and experience within the limits of his
profession, he was in other respects a man with a crotchety mind;
bold to the verge of recklessness in the expression of his
opinion; and possessed of a command of language that carried
everything before it. Let me add that he was just and merciful in
his intercourse with others, and I shall have summed him up
fairly enough. When I joined him he seemed to be absorbed in
reflection.

"Thinking of the Prisoner?" I said.

"Thinking of what is going on, at this moment, in the condemned
cell," he answered, "and wondering if any good will come of it."

I was not without hope of a good result, and I said so.

The Doctor disagreed with me. "I don't believe in that woman's
penitence," he remarked; "and I look upon the parson as a poor
weak creature. What is to become of the child?"

There was no reason for concealing from one of my colleagues the
benevolent decision, on the part of the good Minister, of which I
had been a witness. The Doctor listened to me with the first
appearance of downright astonishment that I had ever observed in
his face. When I had done, he made an extraordinary reply:

"Governor, I retract what I said of the parson just now. He is
one of the boldest men that ever stepped into a pulpit."

Was the doctor in e arnest? Strongly in earnest; there could be
no doubt of it. Before I could ask him what he meant, he was
called away to a patient on the other side of the prison. When we
parted at the door of my room, I made it a request that my
medical friend would return to me and explain what he had just
said.

"Considering that you are the governor of a prison," he replied,
"you are a singularly rash man. If I come back, how do you know I
shall not bore you?"

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