The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 25: what you’re looking at

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ee OP OE ea eI eeresmemaamtat emeasendane—en eee ee THE MYSTERIES OF THE COURT. 13 - 24 we erewre eee Ge fore be very difficult to find out where she had eome from. Nevertheless, she had evidently been walking far; for her shoes were worn right through—her stockings also—and the soles of her feet were cut and bleeding.” . Here Crazy Jane gave a deep convulsive moan ; and staggering against the grave-stone, with the | courag contise inscription, she leant over it weeping bit- terly. Several minutes thus elapsed, until she suddenly raised her countenance again; and then it wore a look so altered—so wild—that the old sexton felt convinced the creature was now no longer in a frame of mind to listen to his story. And she herself speedily made him aware that he was perfectly right. “ No more now!” she ejaculated: “not another word for the present! What you have said is im- pressed here [’—and she pointed vehemently three or four times to her forehead: “but my brain could bear no more!”—and there was a maniac wildness in her eyes, “Oh, I have already heard too much—too much! Another time, old man, I will come back and hear what more you have to say. Ah! you took me for a beggar and a mendi- cant,” she ejaculated, suddenly stopping short es she was just on the very point of coming away : then, diving her hand down into her pocket, she brought forth three or fuur shillings; and flinging them towards him, cried, “ Go drink to the health of Crazy Jane !” With these words she hurried away; and turn- ing the angle of the church, was lost to the view of the old sexton, who stood gazing after her until she thus disappeared. “She is a strange creature,” he muttered to himeelf, as he stooped down and picked up the coins: “I hope she will keep her word and come back—for she evidently knows something about the poor lady. Or perhaps after all it may only be a portion of her madness? Yet it would be strange, though, that she should know the colour of her hair and eyes: for now that I bethink me, when the poor lady’s hair did grow again, it was black. I wonder whether——But we shall see all in good time, no doubt. Crazy Jane is pretty sure to return. But where is that precious assistant of mine all this while ?” We will explain the real cause of the Burker’s somewhat abrupt disappearance and prolonged absence, under the pretext of fetching a mattock from old Carnabie’s cottage, though he knew per- fectly well that the implement had been left along with others, on the previous evening, inside the _ Chureh-porch. The fact is, Mr. Barnes did not hike the ap ce of the mad woman. On the; night that she had so suddenly presented herself . to him and the sexton, he was smitten with a cer- tain suspicion; and therefore he had taken very good care not to speak a single word, for fear his voice should be recognised. When she had fled 80 precipitately, he buoyed himeelf up with the hope that she would not return again into that neighbourhood—but that her steps, as wayward and unsettled as her own brain, would carry her elsewhere. Now therefore that she re-appeared in the same place, he was again seized with alarm; and yielding to that terror, had suddenly absented himeelf under the pretext which we havé described. Hrom the window of old Carnabie’s cottage, he watched the woman and the sexton as they stood in discourse together in the churchyard; and as he perceived by her manner and her gesticuldtions that she was much excited, he feared lest the con- versation regarded himself; but when she so preci- pitately hurried off again, and the sexton stood in @ musing manner for a few minutes, the Burker’s @ revived. “If it was me they was talking of,” he said to himself, “ they would have gone off at once to raise the whole willageand hunt me down like a mad dog.” The Burker thereupon issued forth from the cottage, and hastened to rejoin old Carnabie : but we will interrupt the progress of our narrative for a few moments, to depict the précise nature of the Burker’s epprehensiona. He had of course read the newspaper-accounts of Lettice Rodney’s trial at Liverpool ; — and beyond what we ourselves have recorded on that subject in our narrative, the journals had given several minute particulars in respect to the female who without being brought forward in Court, had nevertheless, through the medium of another spe-. cies of deposition, given so important a turn to the proceedings. The caterers for the public press had described her as a poor wandering maniac who had for some years been known in the neighbour- hood of Liverpool: they had delineated her per- sonal appearance, and had added that she was usually known by the denomination of Crasy Jane. All these particulars had Barney the Burker read at the time, for they were transferred from the pro- vincial to the London papers; and thus when the woman so suddenly appeared befvre old Carnabie and himself in Woodbridge church-yard, he had been amitten with the apprehension that she was the whose testimony, presented in writing to the Court, had led to the acquittal of Lettice Rodney, the incarceration of Mrs. Webber, and the subsequent arrest of himeelf. Still the Barker was not completely suro that this woman who now haunted the neighbourhood of Woodbridge, was in reality Crazy Jane—though he had certainly little doubt on the subject. He rejoined the old sexton, as we have already said; and a furtive look, hastily flung upon Car- nabie’s countenance, convinced the miscreant that nothing disagreeable or threatening had transpired in reference to himself. “Well, where is the mattock ?’ asked Jonathan, somewhat surlily: “‘and what made you such « long time in looking for it f’ “It was just because I could not find it that I stayed so long,” answered the Burker; “and now I recollect, it’s along with t’other things in the porch yonder. But you've had that poor mad creetur’ a chattering away with you at a gallows’ rate!” “T can’t rightly make her out,” reeponded the sexton: “she is as demented as one can be in some respects—and yet she seems as if she had a sort of lucidity on one subject.” : “ And what's that?” inguired the Barker, as if with an air of indifference. “Why, about the poor lady that {s buried here,” replied Jonathan, pointing to the grave headed by the stone with the concise inscription. “It appears as if she knew that lady; and so I was telling her the sad romantic story—which, by the bye, I pro- mised to narrate to.you one of thel® days———” “Well, but she bdlted away again like mad,” ine GDoo <S co