"You flew! What do you mean by saying that you flew?"
"I am the inventor of a flying machine, which, for thirty years, I have labored at and striven to bring to perfection. On that one night, as I was experimenting with it, where I usually did, inside the waste land bordering on the _Hit or Miss_, the machine actually worked, and I was projected in the machine, as it were, to some height in the air, coming down with a fluttering motion, like a falling feather, on the roof of the _Hit or Miss_."
Here the learned counsel for the defence smiled with infinite expression at the jury.
"My lord," said the counsel for the prosecution, noting the smile, and the significant grin with which it was reflected on the countenances of the twelve good men and true, "I may state that we are prepared to bring forward a large ma.s.s of scientific evidence--including a well-known man of science, the editor of _Wisdom_, a popular journal which takes all knowledge for its province--to prove that there is nothing physically impossible in the facts deposed to by this witness. He is at present suffering, as you see, from a serious accident caused by the very machine of which he speaks, and which can be exhibited, with a working model, to the Court."
"It certainly requires corroboration," said the judge. "At present, so far as I am aware, it is contrary to scientific experience. You can prove, perhaps, that, in the opinion of experts, these machines have only to take one step further to become practical modes of locomotion.
But _that_ is the very step _qui coute_. Nothing but direct evidence that the step has been taken--that a flying machine, on this occasion, actually _flew_ (they appear to be styled _volantes, a non volando_)--would really help your case, and establish the credibility of this witness."
"With your lordship"s learned remarks," replied the counsel for the crown, "I am not the less ready to agree, because I _have_ an actual eye-witness, who not only saw the flight deposed to by the witness, but reported it to several persons, who are in court, on the night of its occurrence, so that her statement, though disbelieved, was the common talk of the neighborhood."
"Ah! that is another matter," said the judge.
"Call Eliza Gullick," said the counsel.
Eliza was called, and in a moment was curtsying, with eagerness, but perfect self-possession.
After displaying an almost technical appreciation of the nature of an oath, Eliza was asked:
"You remember the night of the 7th of February?"
"I remember it very well, sir."
"Why do you remember it so well, Eliza?"
"Becos such a mort o" things happened, sir, that night."
"Will you tell his lordship what happened?"
"Certainly, my lord. Mr. Toopny gave us a supper, us himps, my lord, at the _Hilarity_; for he said--"
"Never mind what he said, tell us what happened as you were coming home."
"Well, sir, it was about eleven o"clock at night, and I was turning the lane into the _Hit or Miss_, when I heard an awful flapping and hissing and whirring, like wings working by steam, in the waste ground at the side of the lane. And, as I was listening--oh, it frightens me now to think of it--oh, sir--"
"Well, don"t be alarmed, my good child! What occurred?"
"A great thing like a bird, sir, bigger than a man, flew up over my head, higher than the houses. And then--did you ever see them j.a.panese toys, my lord, them things with two feathers and a bit of India-rubber as you twist round and round and toss them up and they fly--"
"Well, my girl, I have seen them."
"Well, just as if it had been one of them things settling down, the bird"s wings turned round and fluttered and shook, and at last it all lighted, quite soft like, on the roof of our house, the _Hit or Miss_.
And there I saw it crouching when I went to bed, and looked out o" the window, but they wouldn"t none o" them believe me, my lord."
There was a dead silence in the Court as Eliza finished this extraordinary confirmation of Winter"s evidence, and wove the net inextricably round the prisoner.
Then the silence was broken by a soft crashing sound, as if something heavy had dropped a short distance on some hard object.
All present turned their eyes from staring at Eliza to the place whence the sound had come.
The prisoner"s head had fallen forward on the railing in front of him.
One of the officers of the Court touched him on the shoulder.
He did not stir. They lifted him. He moved not.
The faint heart of the man had fluttered with its last pulsation. The evidence had sufficed for him without verdict or sentence. As he had slain his victim, so Fate slew him, painlessly, in a moment!
EPILOGUE.
And what became of them all?
He who does not tell, on the plea that he is "competing with Life,"
which never knits up a plot, but leaves all the threads loose, acts unfairly.
Mrs. St. John Deloraine is now Mrs. Maitland, and the happy couple are visiting the great Colonies, seeking a site for a new settlement of the unemployed, who should lead happy lives under the peaceful sway of happy Mrs. Maitland.
Barton and Mrs. Barton have practised the endowment of research, in the case of Winter, who has quite recovered from his injuries, and still hopes to fly. But he has never trusted himself again on his machine, which, moreover, has never flown again. Winter, like the alchemist who once made a diamond by chance, in Balzac"s novel, has never recovered the creative moment. But he makes very interesting models, in which Mrs.
Barton"s little boy begins to take a lively interest.
Eliza Gullick, declining all offers of advancement unconnected with the British drama, clings to the profession for which, as Mrs. Gullick maintains, she has a hereditary genius.
"We hear," says the _Athenaeum_, "that the long promised edition of "Demetrius of Scepsis," by Mr. Bielby, of St. Gatien"s, is in the hands of the delegates of the Clarendon Press."
But Fiction herself is revolted by the improbability of the statement that an Oxford Don has finished his _magnum opus!_
EXPLICIT.