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A Rogue's Life-Part22_WILKIE COLLINS (1824-1899)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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autograph--dozens of people asked for mine. Nobody ever put my

father's portrait in the frontispiece of a magazine, or described



his personal appearance and manners with anxious elaboration, in

the large type of a great newspaper--I enjoyed both those honors.



Three official individuals politely begged me to be sure and make

complaints if my position was not perfectly comfortable. No



official individual ever troubled his head whether my father was

comfortable or not. When the day of my trial came, the court was



thronged by my lovely countrywomen, who stood up panting in the

crowd and crushing their beautiful dresses, rather than miss the



pleasure of seeing the dear Rogue in the dock. When my father

once stood on the lecturer's rostrum, and delivered his excellent



discourse, called "Medical Hints to Maids and Mothers on Tight

Lacing and Teething," the benches were left empty by the



ungrateful women of England, who were not in the slightest degree

anxious to feast their eyes on the sight of a learnedadviser and



respectable man. If these facts led to one inevitableconclusion,

it is not my fault. We Rogues are the spoiled children of



Society. We may not be openly acknowledged as Pets, but we all

know, by pleasant experience, that we are treated like them.



The trial was deeply affecting. My defense --or rather my

barrister's--was the simple truth. It was impossible to overthrow



the facts against us; so we honestly owned that I got into the

scrape through love for Alicia. My counsel turned this to the



best possible sentimentalaccount. He cried; the ladies cried;

the jury cried; the judge cried; and Mr. Batterbury, who had



desperately come to see the trial, and know the worst, sobbed

with such prominentvehemence, that I believe him, to this day,



to have greatly influenced the verdict. I was strongly

recommended to mercy and got off with fourteen years'



transportation" target="_blank" title="n.运输；运送；运费">transportation. The unfortunate Mill, who was tried after me,

with a mere dry-eyed barrister to defend him, was hanged.



POSTSCRIPT.

WITH the record of my sentence of transportation" target="_blank" title="n.运输；运送；运费">transportation, my life as a



Rogue ends, and my existence as a respectable man begins. I am

sorry to say anything which may disturb popular delusions on the



subject of poetical justice, but this is strictly the truth.

My first anxiety was about my wife's future.



Mr. Batterbury gave me no chance of asking his advice after the

trial. The moment sentence had been pronounced, he allowed



himself to be helped out of court in a melancholy state of

prostration, and the next morning he left for London. I suspect



he was afraid to face me, and nervously impatient, besides, to

tell Annabella that he had saved the legacy again by another



alarming sacrifice. My father and mother, to whom I had written

on the subject of Alicia, were no more to be depended on than Mr.



Batterbury. My father, in answering my letter, told me that he

conscientiously believed he had done enough in forgiving me for



throwing away an excellent education, and disgracing a

respectable name. He added that he had not allowed my letter for



my mother to reach her, out of pitying regard for her broken

health and spirits; and he ended by telling me (what was perhaps



very true) that the wife of such a son as I had been, had no

claim upon her father-in-law's protection and help. There was an



end, then, of any hope of finding resources for Alicia among the

members of my own family.



The next thing was to discover a means of providing for her

without assistance. I had formed a project for this, after



meditating over my conversations with the returned transport in

Barkingham jail, and I had taken a reliable opinion on the



chances of successfully executing my design from the solicitor

who had prepared my defense.



Alicia herself was so earnestly in favor of assisting in my

experiment, that she declared she would prefer death to its



abandonment. Accordingly, the necessary preliminaries were




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