Bred in the Bone; Or, Like Father, Like Son Part 29

"Yes, dear. She will not fail us, never fear. Keep heart and hope; and as for me, you will be sure that not a moment of my waking thoughts is wasted upon aught but you. I shall see you again, once more at least, before your--before the trial comes on; and Mr. Weasel will be here next week again. Is there any thing, my own dear boy, that I can do for you?"

"One moment, mother. Carew has not punished _you_ on my account, I trust? He has not cut off--"

"The annuity? Yes; he has stopped that."

"May he rot on earth, and perish everlastingly!"

"Hush, hush, dear; pray be calm; there is no need to fret. I can support myself without his aid; indeed I can; and perhaps he may relent when he gets sane, for he was like a madman at my coming to Crompton. Mr.

Whymper will do all he can, I am sure. How cruel it was of me to heed your words, and tell you--Look to him, warder, look to my son!" she screamed.

Richard had indeed turned deadly pale, and though his fingers still mechanically clutched the iron rail, was swaying to and fro; the warder unlocked the pa.s.sage-gate, and ran to him just in time to save his falling headlong on the pavement.

"Are you a man," said the agonized woman, "or iron like this"--and she beat against the railing pa.s.sionately--"that you will not let a mother kiss her son when he is dying?"

"Nay, nay, ma'am; it's not so bad as that," said the warder, good-naturedly; "see, he's a-coming round agen all right. I've seen a many took like that. In half a minute he'll be himself again. It's his trouble as does it, bless you. If you'll take my advice, you'll spare both your son and yourself the pain of parting, and leave him as he is.

I'd go bail for it, it's just a faint, that's all."

"Let me kiss him once," implored the unhappy woman. "Oh, man, if you have ever known a mothers love, let me kiss him once! Here is a five-pound note--take it, and leave me still your debtor--but one kiss."

"Nay, ma'am, I can't take your money; of which, as I couldn't help hearing you say, you have not got too much to spare. But you shall kiss your bonnie boy, and welcome;" and with that the stout warder took the unconscious lad up in his arms, and bore him within the pa.s.sage; and his, mother put her lips between the bars and pressed them to his forehead once, twice, thrice.

"There, there, ma'am; that will do," muttered the man, impatiently; "and even that is as much as my place is worth. Now, just tap at yonder door, and they'll let you out."

Mrs. Yorke obeyed him without a word. She had heard the heavy fluttering sigh that betokened Richard's return to consciousness, and knew that the worst was over; unless, indeed, the coming back to life might not be the worst of all.

CHAPTER XXIX.

IN THE COURT-HOUSE.

It is proposed by some elevators of the public mind to make us all philosophers, and to abolish the morbid interest which mankind at present entertains in the issues of life and death. They hold it weakness that we should become excited by incident, or enthralled by mystery, and prophesy a future when intelligence shall reign supreme, to the extinction of the vulgar pa.s.sion for sensation. In the mean time, however, the sympathetic hopes and fears of humanity remain pretty much as they have been within all living memory; and one of the greatest treats that can be provided for the popular palate is a criminal trial.

There are many reasons why this should be the case; the courts of law are free, and a sight that can be seen for nothing is of itself attractive, since we are, at all events, not losing our time and money too. Again, the most popular drama, the most popular novel, are those to which the denouements can not easily be guessed; and in the court-house we see drama and novel realized with the verdict of the jury and the sentence of the judge--a matter of anxious speculation to the very last.

Where theatres and books are rare the pa.s.sion for such scenes is proportionally stronger, and perhaps there is no periodical event which so deeply stirs the agricultural interest--speaking socially, and not politically--as the advent of the Judges of a.s.size.

At Cross Key, at all events, there was nothing else talked of for weeks beforehand; and the case which above all others was canva.s.sed, and prejudged, and descanted upon over all sorts of boards--from the mahogany one in the dining-room at Cross Key Park to the deal tripod which held the pots and pipes at the road-side beer-house--was that of Richard Yorke, the young gentleman-painter, who had run away with old John Trevethick of Gethin's h.o.a.rded store. The rumor had got abroad that he had almost run away with his daughter also, and this intensified the interest immensely. The whole female population, from the high-sheriff's wife down to the woman who kept the apple-stall in the market-place, was agog to see this handsome young Lothario, and especially to hear the evidence of his (clandestinely) betrothed, who was known to have been subpoenaed for the defense.

There were innumerable biographies of the prisoner to be had for nothing. He was a n.o.ble-man in disguise; he was the illegitimate son of the prime minister; he was indirectly but immediately connected with royalty itself; he could speak every European language (except Polish), and painted landscapes like an angel; he had four thousand a year in land, only waiting for him to come of age, which carried with it half the representation of a Whig borough; he had not a penny in the world, but had hitherto supported himself in luxury by skillful forgeries; young as he was, he was a married man, and had a wife (three times his age) alive. All these particulars were insisted upon and denied forty times a day. The least sc.r.a.ps of trust-worthy intelligence concerning him were greedily devoured. The turnpike-man who had opened gate to let him through on the night he came to the jail was cross-examined as to his appearance and demeanor. The rural policeman of the district (who had never had a chance of seeing him) was treated to pots of ale, and suddenly found himself the best of company. The _Castle_ at Gethin was thronged by local tourists, who, under pretense of being attracted by the scenery, came to stare at Harry, and, having seen her, returned to Cross Key with marvelous stories of her charms. As the time drew on the applications for admittance to the court-house made the life of the under-sheriff a burden, and caused the hearts of his subordinates (who got the half-crowns) to sing for joy.

The unhappy Richard was wholly ignorant of all this excitement. When he pictured the court-house to himself, as he often did, he only beheld a crowd of indifferent persons, who would pay no more attention to his own case than to that of Balfour, or any other that might follow or precede it. He saw himself taken out in custody, and carried in some conveyance, such as he had arrived in, through the gaping street; but the idea of that ordeal gave him no uneasiness. Those who saw him would forget him the next moment, or confuse him with some other in the same wretched plight. His mind always reverted from such reflections, as comparatively trivial, to the issue of the trial itself. Indeed, that thought might be said to be constant, though others intruded on it occasionally without obscuring it, like light clouds that cross the moon. As to the details of the scene of which he was about to be so prominent an actor, he knew nothing; for the warders never opened their lips to him, except officially, and Mr. Balfour had never happened to come to grief in the course of his professional practice in that particular locality before.

But the fact was that the jail of Cross Key, though situated in so out-of-the-way a spot, was a model establishment in its way, and built upon the very highest principles of architecture, as connected with the administration of the criminal law. No prisoner was ever taken out of it for trial at all, but was conducted by an underground pa.s.sage into the court-house itself--indeed, into the very heart of it, for a flight of steps, with a trap-door at the top, led straight into the dock, in which he made his appearance like a Jack-in-the-box, but much more to his own astonishment than to that of the spectators.

Imagine the unhappy Richard thus confronted, wholly unexpectedly, with a thousand eager eyes! They devoured him on the right hand and on the left, before him and behind him; they looked down upon him from the galleries above with a hunger that was increased by distance. Even the barristers in the s.p.a.ce between him and the judge turned round to gaze at him, and the judge himself adjusted his spectacles upon his nose to regard him with a searching look. Not a sound was to be heard except the monotonous voice of the clerk reading the indictment; it was plain that every one of that vast concourse knew him, and needed not that his neighbor should whisper, "That is he." Was his mother there? thought Richard, and above all, Was Harry there? He looked round once upon that peering throng; but he could catch sight of neither. The former, with a thick veil over her features, was, indeed, watching him from a corner of the court; but the only face he recognized was that of his attorney, seated immediately behind a man with a wig, whom he rightly concluded to be Mr. Sergeant Balais.

There was a sudden silence, following upon the question, "How say you, Richard Yorke, are you guilty of this felony, or not guilty?" The turnkey by the prisoner's side muttered harshly behind his hand, "They have called on you to plead."

"Not guilty," answered Richard, in a loud, firm voice, and fixing his eyes upon the judge.

A murmur of satisfaction ran softly through the court-house. His hesitation had alarmed the curious folks; they were afraid that he might have pleaded "Guilty," and robbed them of their treat. Not a few of them, and perhaps all the women, were also pleased upon his own account.

He was so young and handsome that they could not choose but wish him well, and out of his peril.

Then Mr. Smoothbore rose, and was some time about it. He was six feet four inches high, and it seemed as though you would never see the last of him. ("Oh, Jerryusalem, upon wheels!" was the remark that Mr. Robert Balfour muttered to himself when some hours afterward _he_ found himself confronted by the same gigantic counsel, instructed specially by the crown to prosecute so notorious a marauder.) The twelve men in the box opposite at once became all ear. Some leaned forward, as though to antic.i.p.ate by the millionth of a second the silvery accents of Mr.

Smoothbore; others leaned back with head aside, as though to concentrate their intelligence upon them; and the foreman held his head with both his hands, as though that portion of his person was not wholly under control, but might make some erratic twist, and thereby lose him some pregnant sentence. These honest men did not know Mr. Smoothbore, and thought (for the first five minutes) that they could sit and listen to him forever; before they had done with him they began to think that they should have to do it.

Far be it from us to emulate the prolixity with which the learned counsel set forth his case; it must be conceded that he did not hang over it; his words ran as smoothly as oil, and with perfect distinctness, and if any body missed his meaning, it was not for want of its being sufficiently expressed. To a listener of average ability, however, he became insupportable by repet.i.tion, which is, unhappily, not exclusively "the vice of the pulpit." We will take care to avoid his error. It will be sufficient to say that when he had finished Richard stood accused not only of having stolen two thousand pounds from John Trevethick, but of having compa.s.sed that crime under circ.u.mstances of peculiar baseness. He had taken advantage of his superior education, manners, and appearance, to impose himself upon the honest Cornishman as the legitimate son of his landlord, and secured within that humble home a footing of familiarity, only the better to compa.s.s a scheme of villainy, which must have occurred to him at a very early period of their acquaintance. Indeed, Mr. Smoothbore hinted that the prisoner's profession of landscape-painting was a mere pretense and pretext, and that it was more than probable that, having heard by some means of Trevethick's h.o.a.rd, he had come down to Gethin with the express intention of becoming possessed of it, which his accidental discovery of the secret of the letter padlock enabled him to do. In short, by artful innuendo at this or that part of the story, Richard was painted as a common thief, whose possession of such faculties as dexterity and _finesse_ only made him a more dangerous enemy of society. There had been rumors, Mr. Smoothbore admitted, of certain romantic circ.u.mstances connected with the case, but he was instructed to say that they were wholly baseless, and that the matter which the jury would have to decide upon was simply an impudent and audacious robbery, committed in a manner that he might stigmatize as being quite exceptionally void of extenuation.

The speech for the prosecution immensely disappointed the general public, already half-convinced, in spite of themselves, by Mr.

Smoothbore's impa.s.sioned clearness and straightforward simplicity, while it pleased the jury, who were glad to hear that the matter in hand was, after all, an ordinary one, which would necessitate no deprivation of victuals, nor absence of fire and candle. The witnesses for the prosecution appeared, as usual, in an order in inverse ratio to the interest and importance of their respective testimonies--the clerk of the Miners' Bank into whose hands the notes had been paid, policemen, Mr. Dodge, and others, who only repeated what we already know. Even the appearance of Solomon Coe was marked by nothing especial, save to the eyes of the accused. In the triumphant bearing of this witness, and in the malignant glance which he had shot toward him ere he began his tale, Richard read that the charge against him was to be pushed to the bitter end. It was in this man's power, more than in any other's (save one), to extenuate or to set down in malice; and there was no doubt in his rival's mind (though his rancor took so blunt a form that it might well have been mistaken by others for outspoken candor) which of the two courses Solomon had chosen. He showed neither scruple nor hesitation; every word was distinct and decisive, and on one occasion (though the repet.i.tion of it was forbidden by the judge) even accompanied by a blow with his sledge-hammer fist in the way of corroboration. It seemed that the story he had to tell was, after all, a very plain one.

When John Trevethick, who was the last witness examined for the prosecution, strode into the box, this feeling was intensified. His giant frame and ma.s.sive features seemed, somehow, to a.s.sociate themselves with a plain story; and his evidence was as much in consonance with his counsel's speech as evidence could be with pleading.

But when he had quite done with his unvarnished tale, and when Mr.

Smoothbore had given him a parting nod in sign that _he_ had done with him, Sergeant Balais rose, for the first time, with an uplifted finger, as though, but for that signal of delay, the honest landlord would have fled incontinently, and hanged himself, like another Judas.

"You have a daughter, I believe, Mr. Trevethick?" and the Sergeant looked at the jury, with elevated eyebrows, as though he would have said, "If we can get even that admission out of this h.o.a.ry miscreant, we may consider ourselves fortunate."

And indeed John Trevethick did hesitate for one instant ere he replied.

He had not even looked at the prisoner before, but at that question he gave an involuntary glance toward him, and met Richard's answering look.

When two men are fighting, each with his hands upon the throat of the other, not for dear life, but for the longed-for death of his foe, it is possible that in their faces some such inextinguishable lurid fire of hatred may be seen burning as then flashed from witness-box to dock, from dock to witness-box; but scarcely under any other circ.u.mstances could such a look of deadly malice be exchanged between man and man. It pa.s.sed, however, in an instant, like the electric fire, and was gone, leaving no trace behind it.

"I _have_ a daughter," replied Trevethick; and as he spoke his face, though somewhat pale, became as blank and hard and meaningless as a wall of stone.

"This man is about to perjure himself," thought the experienced Mr.

Balais; and he looked around him with the air of one who was convinced of the fact.

"The prisoner at the bar was, I believe, your daughter's lover, was he not?"

"Not that I knew of."

"Not that you know of?" repeated Mr. Balais. "Will you venture to repeat that?"

"The witness said _knew_," interposed the judge, demurely, and ordered a sky-light to be closed, the draught from which inconvenienced him. Every body looked at the officer of the court who pulled the string and shut the sky-light, as though it had been the most ingenious contrivance known to man. Not that it was a relief to them to do so, but from that inexplicable motive which prompts us all to observe trivial circ.u.mstances with which we have nothing whatever to do, on any occasion of engrossing interest. Even Richard regarded this little process of ventilation with considerable concern, and wondered whether the judge would feel himself better after it.

"Oh, you didn't know of this attachment between the prisoner and your daughter at the time it was going on under your roof, but you knew of it afterward, did you? You read of it in the papers, I suppose, eh?"

"I heard of it, after the robbery was discovered, from my daughter herself."

"And, upon your oath, you did not know of it before then?"

"I did not."

"Nor suspect it even, perhaps?"

"Nor even suspect it."