Sir Jasper Carew Part 72

"Gentleman Jack was the individual selected by a friend of mine,"

said he, "and who should succeed in winning his Royal Highnesses good opinion, so as to obtain a flattering estimate of his manners and good-breeding. To what precise extent the praise was to go was not specified. There was nothing beyond a gentleman-like understanding that if Jack pa.s.sed muster as a man of fas.h.i.+on and ton, his backer was to have won; if, on the contrary, the Prince should detect any anomalies in his breeding, so as to throw suspicion upon his real rank, then the wager was lost.

"I was present," said the Colonel, "when the ceremony of presenting him to the Prince took place; I did not know the man myself, nor had I the slightest suspicion of any trick being practised. I had recently returned from foreign service, and was almost a stranger to all the company. Standing close beside Colonel O'Kelly, however, I overheard what pa.s.sed, and as the words were really very remarkable, under the circ.u.mstances, I have not forgotten them." Being asked to relate the incident, he went on:

"There was a doubt in what manner--I mean rather by what name--the stranger should be presented to his Royal Highness: some suggesting one name,--others, a different one; and O'Kelly grew impatient, almost angry, at the delay, and said, 'D----n it all him something: what shall it be, Sheridan?' 'The King of the Beggars, say I,' cried Sheridan, and in a voice, as I thought, to be easily heard all around. 'Who was he?'

asked O'Kelly. 'Bamfield Moore Carew,' answered the other. 'So be it, then,' said O'Kelly. 'Your Royal Highness will permit me to present a very distinguished friend of mine, recently arrived in England, and who, like every true Englishman, feels that his first homage is due to the Prince who rules in all our hearts.'--'Your friend's name?'--'Carew, your Royal Highness; but being a wanderer and a vagabond, he has gone by half-a-dozen names.' The Prince laughed, and turned to hear the remainder of a story that some one at his side was relating. Meanwhile the stranger had gone through his introduction, and as Mr. Carew was in succession presented to the other members of the company--"

"Was he never addressed by any other designation, Colonel?" asked the lawyer.

"Certainly not,--on that evening, at least."

"Were you acquainted with his real name?" "No; O'Kelly told me, the day after the dinner, that the fellow had made his escape from London, doubtless dreading the consequences of his freak, and all trace of him was lost."

"Should you be able to recognize him were you to see him again, Colonel Morris?"

"Unquestionably; his features were very marked, and I took especial notice of him as he sat at the card-table."

"Will you cast your eyes about you through the court, and inform us if you see him here at present?"

The Colonel turned, and, putting his gla.s.s to his eye, scanned the faces in the gallery and along the crowded ranks beneath it. He then surveyed the body of the court, and at length fixed his glance on the inner bar, where, seated beside Mr. Foxley, I sat, pale and almost breathless with terror. "There he is! that man next but one to the pillar; that is the man!"

It was the second time that I had stood beneath the concentrated stare of a vast crowd of people; but oh, how differently this from the last time! No longer with aspects of compa.s.sionate interest and kind feeling, every glance now was the triumphant sparkle over detected iniquity, the haughty look of insolent condemnation.

"Tell me of this--what does this mean?" wrote my adviser, on a slip of paper, and handed it, unperceived, to me.

"It is true!" whispered I, in an accent that almost rent my heart to utter.

The commotion in the court was now great; the intense anxiety to catch a sight of me, added to the expressions of astonishment making up a degree of tumult that the officers essayed vainly to suppress. That the evidence thus delivered had been a great shock to my advisers was easily seen; and though Foxley proceeded to cross-examine the Colonel, the statement was not to be shaken.

"We purpose to afford my learned friend a further exercise for his ingenuity," said M'Clelland; "for we shall now summon to the table a gentleman who has known the plaintiff long and intimately; who knew him in his real character of secret political agent abroad; and who will be able not alone to give a correct history of the individual, but also to inform the jury by what circ.u.mstances the first notion of this most audacious fraud was first suggested, and how it occurred to him to a.s.sume the character and name he had dared to preface this suit by taking. Before the witness shall leave that table I pledge myself to establish, beyond the possibility of a cavil, one of the most daring, most outrageous, and consummate pieces of rascality that has ever come before the notice of a jury. It is needless that I should say one word to exonerate my learned friends opposite,--they could, of course, know nothing of the evidence we shall produce here this day; the worst that can be alleged against them will be, the insufficiency of their own searches, and the inadequacy of the proofs on which they began this suit I can afford to reflect, however, upon their professional skill, as the recompense for not aspersing their reputation; and I will say that a more baseless, unsupported action never was introduced into a court of justice. Call Count Anatole Ysaffich!"

I shall not attempt to describe a scene, the humiliation of which no vindication of my honor can ever erase. For nearly three hours I listened to such details, not one of which I could boldly deny, and yet not one of which was the pure truth, that actually made me feel a perfect monster of treachery and corruption. Of that life which my own lawyer had given such a picturesque account, a new version was now to be heard; the history of my birth I had once given to Ysafflch was all related circ.u.mstantially.

He tracked me as the "adventurer" through every event and incident of my career,--ever aiming at fortune, ever failing; the hired spy of a party, the corrupt partisan of the press,--a fellow, in fact, without family, friends, or country, and just as bereft of every principle of honor.

Ysafflch went on to say that, having shown me Raper's letters and memoranda on one occasion, I had, on reading them, originated the notion of this suit, suggesting my own obscure birth and origin as sufficient to defy all inquiry or investigation. He represented me as stating that such actions were constantly brought, and as constantly successful; and even where the best grounds of defence existed, they who were in possession frequently preferred to compromise a claim rather than to contest it in open litigation. Though the Count always endeavored to screen himself behind his ignorance of English law and justice, he made no scruple of avowing his own complicity in the scheme. He detailed all the earliest steps of the venture,--where the family crest had been obtained; by whom it had been 'engraved on my visiting-cards. He mentioned, with strict accuracy, the very date I had first a.s.sumed the name of Carew; he actually exhibited a letter written by me on the evening before, and in which I signed myself "Paul Gervois." With these matters of fact he mixed up other details, totally untrue,--such as a mock certificate of my father's marriage at a small town in Normandy, and which I had never seen nor heard of till that moment. He convulsed the court with laughter by describing the way in which I used to rehea.r.s.e the part of heir and descendant of Walter Carew before him; and after a vast variety of details, either wholly or partially untrue, he produced my written promise to pay him an enormous sum, in the event of the success of the present action. Truly had the lawyer said, "Such an exposure was never before witnessed in a court of justice." And now for above an hour did he continue to acc.u.mulate evidences of fraud and deception,--in the allegations made by me before officials of the court; affidavits sworn to; doc.u.ments attested before consuls in Holland; inaccuracies of expression; faults even of spelling,--not very difficult to account for in one whose education and life for the most part had been spent abroad,--were all quoted and adduced, as showing the actual insolence of presumption which had marked every step of this imposture.

The Court interrupted the counsel at this conjuncture by an observation which I could not hear, to which the lawyer replied, "It shall be as your Lords.h.i.+p suggests; though, were I permitted a choice, I should infinitely prefer to probe this foul wound to its last depth. I would far rather display this consummate impostor to the world, less as a punishment to himself than as a warning and a terror to others."

Here my counsel rose, and said that he had conferred with his learned friends in the case as to the course he ought to pursue. He could not express the emotions which he felt at the exposures they had just witnessed; nor did he deem it necessary to say for himself and his brother-barristers, as well as for the respectable solicitors employed, that the revelations then made had come upon them entirely by surprise.

Well weighing the responsible position they occupied towards the plaintiff, whose advocates they were, they still felt, after the appalling exhibition they had witnessed,--an exposure unparalleled in a court of justice,--it would be unbefitting their station as gentlemen, and unworthy of their duty as barristers, any longer to continue this contest.

A low murmur of approbation ran through the court as the words were concluded, and the Judge solemnly added, "You have shown a very wise discretion, sir, and which completely exonerates you from any foreknowledge of this fraud."

The defendant's counsel then requested that the Court would not permit the plaintiff to leave.

"We intend to prefer charges of forgery and perjury against him, my Lord," said he; "and meanwhile I desire that the various doc.u.ments we have seen may be impounded."

On an order from the Judge, the plaintiff was now taken into custody; and after, as it appeared, one or two vain efforts to address the Court, in which his voice utterly failed him, he was removed.

Mr. M'Clelland could not take his farewell of the case without expressing his full concurrence in the opinion expressed by the Court regarding his learned friends opposite, whose ability during the contest was only to be equalled by the integrity with which they guided their conduct when defence had become worse than hopeless.

The defence of this remarkable suit will cost Mr. Curtis, it is said, upwards of seven thousand pounds.

A very few words will now complete this history. Let him who writes them be permitted to derive them from the public journals of the time, since it is no longer without deep humiliation he can venture to speak of himself. Alas and alas! too true is it, the penalties of crime are as stigmatizing as crime itself! The stripes upon the back, the brand upon the brow, are more enduring than the other memories of vice. Be innocent of all offence, appeal to your own heart with conscious rect.i.tude, yet say, if the chain has galled your ankle, and the iron bar has divided the sunlight that streamed into your cell,--say, if you can, that self-esteem came out intact and unwounded, after such indignity.

I speak this with no malice to my fellow-men--I bear no grudge against those who sentenced me; too deeply conscious am I of my many offences against the world to a.s.sume even to myself the pretension of martyr; but I do a.s.sert that vindication of character, rest.i.tution to fair fame, comes late when once the terrible ordeal of public condemnation has been pa.s.sed. The very pity men extend to you humiliates--their compa.s.sion savors of mercy; and mercy is the attribute of One alone!

The "Morning Advertiser" informed its readers, amidst its paragraphs of events, "That, on Wednesday last, Paul Gervois, the celebrated claimant to the estates of the late Walter Carew, was forwarded to Cork, previous to embarking on board the transport-s.h.i.+p 'Craven Castle,' in pursuance of the sentence pa.s.sed upon him last a.s.sizes, of banishment beyond the seas for the term of his natural life. The wretched man, who since the discovery that marked the concluding scene of his trial, has scarcely uttered a word, declined all defence, and while obstinately rejecting any a.s.sistance from counsel, still persisted in pleading not guilty, to the last.

"It is a.s.serted, we know not with what authority, that the eminent leader of the Western Circuit is fully persuaded not only of Gervois'

innocence, but actually of his right to the vast property to which he pretended to be the heir; and had it not been for a severe attack of gout, Mr. Hanchett would have defended him on his late trial."

Amidst the fas.h.i.+onable intelligence of the same day, we read that "a very large and brilliant company are pa.s.sing the Easter holidays at the hospitable seat of Joseph Curtis, Castle Carew, amongst whom we recognized Lord and Lady Ogletown, Sir Ma.s.sy Digby, the Right Hon.

Francis Malone, Major-General Count Ysaffich, Knight of various orders, and Augustus Clifford, etc."

I was on board of a convict hulk in Cork harbor from March till the latter end of November, not knowing, nor indeed caring, why my sentence of transportation had not been carried out. The shock under which I had fallen still stunned me. Life was become a dreary, monotonous dream, but I had no wish to awake from it; on the contrary, the only acute suffering I can trace to that period was, when the unhappy fate which attached to me excited sentiments of either compa.s.sion or curiosity in others. Prison discipline had not, at the time I speak of, received the development it has since attained; greater freedom of action was permitted to those in charge of prisoners, who, provided that their safety was a.s.sured, were suffered to treat them with any degree of severity or harshness that they fancied.

The extraordinary features of the trial in which I had figured--the "outrageous daring of my pretensions," as the newspapers styled it--attracted towards me some of that half-morbid interest which, somehow, attaches to any remarkable crime. Scarcely a week pa.s.sed without some visitor or other desiring to see me; and I was ordered to come up on deck, or to "walk aft on the p.o.o.p," to be stared at and surveyed, as though I had been some newly discovered animal of the woods.

These were very mortifying moments to me, and as I well knew that their humiliation formed no part of my sentence, I felt disposed to rebel against this infliction. The resolution required more energy, however, than I possessed, nor was it till after long and painful endurance that I resolved finally to resist. As I could not refuse to walk up on deck when ordered, the only resistance in my power was to maintain silence, and not reply to a single question of those whose vulgar and heartless curiosity prompted them to make an amus.e.m.e.nt of my suffering.

"The fellow won't speak, gentlemen," said the superintendent one morning to a very numerous party, who, in all the joyousness of life and liberty, came to heighten their zest for pleasure by the sight of sorrow and pain. "He was never very communicative about himself, but latterly he refuses to utter a word."

"He still persists in a.s.serting his innocence?" asked one of the strangers, but in a voice easily overheard by me.

"Not to any of us, sir," replied the turnkey, gruffly; "he may do so with his fellows below in the hold, but he knows better than to try on that gammon with us."

"I must say," said one, in a half-whisper, "that, even in that dress, he has the look of a gentleman about him."

"Good heavens!" exclaimed another, "if his story were to be true!"

I know not what chord in my heart responded to that sudden burst of feeling. I am fully convinced that, to anything like systematic condolence or well-worded compa.s.sion, I should have been cold as a stone; and yet I burst into tears as he spoke, and sobbed convulsively.

"Ah! he's a deep one," muttered the turnkey. "Take him down with you, corporal;" and I was marched away, glad to hide my shame and my sorrow in secret.

Various drafts had been made of those who had been my companions, until at last not one remained of those originally sentenced at the same a.s.sizes with myself. What this might portend I knew not. Was I destined to end my days on board of this dark and dismal hulk?--was I never to press earth once more with my feet? How simply that sounds; but let me tell you, there is some strange, high instinct in the heart of man that attaches him to the very soil of earth. That clay of which we came, and to which we are one day to return, has a powerful hold upon our hearts.

He who toils in it loves it with a fonder love than the great lord who owns it. Its varied aspects in suns.h.i.+ne and in shade, its changeful hues of season, its fragrance and its barrenness, are the books in which he reads; its years of fruitfulness are the joyous episodes of his existence. The mother earth is the parent that makes all men akin, and teaches us to love each other like brethren.

"Well, Gervois," said the turnkey to me one morning, "you are to go at last, they say. Old Hanchett has argued your case till there is no more to be said of it; but the Lords have decided against you, and now you are to sail with the next batch."

The announcement gave me neither pleasure nor pain; even this evidence of Hanchett's kindness towards me did not touch my feelings, for I had outlived every sentiment of regard or esteem, and lay cold and apathetic to whatever might betide me.

Possibly this indifference of mine might have piqued him, for he tried to stimulate me to some show of interest, or even of curiosity about my own case, by dropping hints of the points of law on which the appeal was grounded, and the ingenuity by which counsel endeavored to rescue me.

But all his efforts failed; I was dead to the past, and careless for the future.

"Here's another order come about you," said he to me about a week after this; "you are not to be s.h.i.+pped off next time. They 've found something else in your case now, which, they say, will puzzle the twelve judges.

Mayhap you 'd like to read it, if I could get you the newspaper?"