Miss Arnott's Marriage
Copyright© 2024 by Richard Marsh
Chapter 37: What Was Written
She expired that same night without having uttered an intelligible word. In a sense her end could hardly have been called an unfortunate one. It is certain that, had she lived, she would have had a bad time, even if she had escaped the gallows. She had left behind her the whole story, set forth in black and white by her own hand. It was a sufficiently unhappy one. It is not impossible that, having heard it, a jury would have recommended her to mercy. In which case the capital sentence would probably have been commuted to one of penal servitude for life. It is a moot question whether it is not better to hang outright rather than endure a living death within the four walls of a gaol.
The story of her life as recounted by herself--and there is no reason to doubt the substantial accuracy of her narrative--was this.
Agatha Linfield, a spinster past her first prime, possessed of some means of her own, met at a Brighton boarding-house a young man who called himself Douglas Plummer. Possibly believing her to be better off than she was he paid her attentions from the first moment of their meeting. Within a month he had married her. In much less than another month she had discovered what kind of a man she had for a husband. He inflicted on her all sorts of indignities, subjecting her even to physical violence, plundering her of all the money he could. When he had brought her to the verge of beggary he fell into the hands of the police; as he was destined to do again at a later period in his career. Hardly had he been sentenced to a term of imprisonment than his wife became the recipient of another small legacy, on the strength of which she went abroad, and, by its means, managed to live. Her own desire was never to see or hear of her husband again. She even went so far as to inform her relatives that he had died and left her a sorrowing widow. He, probably having wearied of a woman so much older than himself and knowing nothing of the improvement in her fortunes, seems to have made no effort on his release to ascertain her whereabouts. In short, for some years each vanished out of the other’s existence.
On the night of the Saturday on which they returned from abroad, when Miss Arnott went for her woodland stroll, Mrs Plummer, whose curiosity had been previously aroused as to the true inwardness of her proceedings, after an interval followed to see what possible inducement there could be to cause her, after a long and fatiguing journey, to immediately wander abroad at such an uncanonical hour. She was severely punished for her inquisitiveness. Exactly what took place her diary did not make clear; details were omitted, the one prominent happening was alone narrated in what, under the circumstances, were not unnaturally vague and somewhat confused terms. She came upon the man who was known to Miss Arnott as Robert Champion, and to her as Douglas Plummer, all in a moment, without having had, the second before, the faintest suspicion that he was within a hundred miles. She had hoped--had tried to convince herself--that he was dead. The sight of him, as, without the least warning he rose at her--like some spectre of a nightmare--from under the beech tree, seems to have bereft her for a moment of her senses. He must have been still writhing from the agony inflicted by Jim Baker’s “peppering” so that he himself was scarcely sane. He had in his hand Hugh Morice’s knife, which he had picked up, almost by inadvertence, as he staggered to his feet at the sound of someone coming. It may be that he supposed the newcomer to have been the person who had already shot at him, that his intention was to defend himself with the accidentally-discovered weapon from further violence. She only saw the knife. She had set down in her diary that he was waiting there to kill her; which, on the face of it, had been written with an imperfect knowledge of the facts. As he lurched towards her--probably as much taken by surprise as she was--she imagined he meant to strike her with the knife. Scarcely knowing what she did she snatched it from him and killed him on the spot
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