"Wilkie Collins - The Legacy of Cain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Collins Wilkie)

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