THAT same evening sat over their tea, in Norfolk Street, Strand, another
couple, who were also father and son; but, in this pair, the Wardlaws
were reversed. Michael Penfold was a reverend, gentle creature, with
white hair, blue eyes and great timidity; why, if a stranger put to him a
question he used to look all round the room before he ventured to answer.
Robert, his son, was a young man with a large brown eye, a mellow voice,
square shoulders and a prompt and vigorous manner. Cricketer. Scholar.
Parson.
They were talking hopefully together over a living Robert was going to
buy. It was near Oxford, he said, and would not prevent his continuing to
take pupils. "But, father," said he, "it will be a place to take my wife
to if I ever have one; and, meantime, I hope you will run down now and
then, Saturday to Monday."
"That I will, Robert. Ah! how proud _she_ would have been to hear you
preach; it was always her dream, poor thing."
"Let us think she _can_ hear me," said Robert. "And I have got _you_
still; the proceeds of this living will help me to lodge you more
comfortably."
"You are very good, Robert. I would rather see you spend it upon
yourself; but, dear me, what a manager you must be to dress so
beautifully as you do, and send your old father presents as you do, and
yet put by fourteen hundred pounds to buy this living."
"You are mistaken, sir, I have only saved four hundred; the odd
thousand-- But that is a secret for the present."
"Oh, I am not inquisitive. I never was."
They then chatted about things of no importance whatever, and the old
gentleman was just lighting his candle to go to bed, when a visitor was
ushered into the room.
The Penfolds looked a little surprised, but not much. They had no street
door all to themselves; no liveried dragons to interpose between them and
unseasonable or unwelcome visitors.
The man was well dressed, with one exception; he wore a gold chain. He
had a hooked nose, and a black, piercing eye. He stood at the door and
observed every person and thing in the room minutely before he spoke a
word.
Then he said, quietly, "Mr. Michael Penfold, I believe."
"At your service, sir.
"And Mr. Robert Penfold."
"I am Robert Penfold. What is your business?"
"Pray is the 'Robert Penfold' at the back of this note your writing?"
"Certainly it is; they would not cash it without that."
"Oh, you got the money, then?"
"Of course I did."
"You have not parted with it, have you?"
"No."
"All the better." He then turned to Michael and looked at him earnestly a
moment. "The fact is, sir," said he, "there is a little irregularity
about this bill which must be explained, or your son might be called on
to refund the cash."
"'Irregularity about--a bill?" cried Michael Penfold, in dismay "Who is
the drawer? Let me see it. Oh, dear me, something wrong about a bill
indorsed by you, Robert?" and the old man began to shake piteously.
"Why, father," said Robert, "what are you afraid of? If the bill is
irregular I can but return the money. It is in the house."
"The best way will be for Mr. Robert Penfold to go at once with me to the
bill-broker; he lives but a few doors off. And you, sir, must stay here
and be responsible for the funds, till we return."
Robert Penfold took his hat directly, and went off with this mysterious
visitor.
They had not gone many steps, when Robert's companion stopped, and,
getting in front of him, said, "We can settle this matter here." At the
same time a policeman crossed the way and joined them; and another man,
who was, in fact, a policeman in plain clothes, emerged from a doorway
and stood at Robert Penfold's back.
The detective, having thus surrounded him, threw off his disguise. "My
man," said he, "I ought to have done this job in your house. But I looked
at the worthy old gentleman and his gray hairs. I thought I'd spare him
all I could. I have a warrant to arrest you for forgery!"
"Forgery! arrest me for forgery!" said Robert Penfold, with some
amazement, but little emotion; for he hardly seemed to take it in, in all
its horrible significance.
The next moment, however, he turned pale, and almost staggered under the
blow.
"We had better go to Mr. Wardlaw," said he. "I entreat you to go to him
with me."
"Can't be done," said the detective. "Wardlaw has nothing to do with it.
The bill is stopped. You are arrested by the gent that cashed it. Here is
the warrant; will you go quietly with us, or must I put the darbies on?"
Robert was violently agitated. "There is no need to arrest me," he cried;
"I shall not run from my accuser. Hands off, I say. I'm a clergyman of
the Church of England, and you shall not lay hands on me."
But one of the policemen did lay hands on him. Then the Reverend Robert
Penfold shook him furiously off, and, with one active bound, sprang into
the middle of the road.
The officers went at him incautiously, and the head detective, as he
rushed forward, received a heavy blow on the neck and jaw that sounded
along the street, and sent him rolling in the mud; this was followed by a
quick succession of staggering facers, administered right and left on the
eyes and noses of the subordinates. These, however, though bruised and
bleeding, succeeded at last in grappling their man, and all came to the
ground together, and there struggled furiously; every window in the
street was open by this time, and at one the white hair and reverend face
of Michael Penfold looked out on this desperate and unseemly struggle
with hands that beat the air in helpless agony and inarticulate cries of
terror.
The detective got up and sat upon Robert Penfold's chest; and at last the
three forced the handcuffs upon him and took him in a cab to the
station-house.
Next day, before the magistrate, Wardlaw senior proved the note was a
forgery, and Mr. Adams's partner swore to the prisoner as the person who
had presented and indorsed the note. The officers attended, two with
black eyes apiece, and one with his jaw bound up, and two sound teeth in
his pocket, which had been driven from their sockets by the prisoner in
his desperate attempt to escape. Their evidence hurt the prisoner, and
the magistrate refused bail.
The Reverend Robert Penfold was committed to prison, to be tried at the
Central Criminal Court on a charge of felony.
Wardlaw senior returned home, and told Wardlaw junior, who said not a
word. He soon received a letter from Robert Penfold, which agitated him
greatly, and he promised to go to the prison and see him.
But he never went.
He was very miserable, a prey to an inward struggle. He dared not offend
his father on the eve of being made partner. Yet his heart bled for
Robert Penfold.
He did what might perhaps have been expected from that pale eye and
receding chin--he temporized. He said to himself, "Before that horrible
trial comes on, I shall be the house of Wardlaw, and able to draw a check
for thousands. I'll buy off Adams at any price, and hush up the whole
matter."
So he hoped, and hoped. But the accountant was slow, the public
prosecutor unusually quick; and, to young Wardlaw's agony, the
partnership deed was not ready when an imploring letter was put into his
hands, urging him, by all that men hold sacred, to attend at the court as
the prisoner's witness.
This letter almost drove young Wardlaw mad. He went to Adams and
entreated him not to carry the matter into court. But Adams was
inexorable. He had got his money, but would be revenged for the fright.
Baffled here, young Wardlaw went down to Oxford and shut himself up in
his own room, a prey to fear and remorse. He sported his oak, and never
went out. All his exercise was that of a wild beast in its den, walking
restlessly up and down.
But all his caution did not prevent the prisoner's solicitor from getting
to him. One morning, at seven o'clock, a clerk slipped in at the heels of
his scout, and, coming to young Wardlaw's bedside, awoke him out of an
uneasy slumber by serving him with a subpoena to appear as Robert
Penfold's witness.
This last stroke finished him. His bodily health gave way under his
mental distress. Gastric fever set in, and he was lying tossing and
raving in delirium, while Robert Penfold was being tried at the Central
Criminal Court.
The trial occupied six hours, and could easily be made rather
interesting. But, for various reasons, with which it would not be good
taste to trouble the reader, we decide to skim it.
The indictment contained two counts; one for forging the note of hand,
the other for uttering it knowing it to be forged.
On the first count, the Crown was weak, and had to encounter the evidence
of Undercliff, the distinguished expert, who swore that the hand which
wrote "Robert Penfold" was not, in his opinion, the hand that had written
the body of the instrument. He gave many minute reasons in support of
this. And nothing of any weight was advanced contra. The judge directed
the jury to acquit the prisoner on that count.
But, on the charge of uttering, the evidence was clear, and on the
question of knowledge it was, perhaps, a disadvantage to the prisoner
that he was tried in England, and could not be heard in person, as he
could have been in a foreign court; above all, his resistance to the
officers eked out the presumption that he knew the note had been forged
by some person or other, who was probably his accomplice.
The absence of his witness, Wardlaw junior, was severely commented on by
his counsel; indeed, he appealed to the judge to commit the said Wardlaw
for contempt of court. But Wardlaw senior was recalled, and swore that he
had left his son in a burning fever, not expected to live. And declared,
with genuine emotion, that nothing but a high sense of public duty had
brought _him_ hither from his dying son's bedside. He also told the court
that Arthur's inability to clear his friend had really been the first
cause of his illness, from which he was not expected to recover.
The jury consulted together a long time; and, at last, brought in a
verdict of "GUILTY"; but recommended him to mercy on grounds which might
fairly have been alleged in favor of his innocence; but, if guilty,
rather aggravated his crime.
Then an officer of the court inquired, in a sort of chant or recitative,
whether the prisoner had anything to say why judgment should not be given
in accordance with the verdict.
It is easy to divest words of their meaning by false intonation; and
prisoners in general receive this bit of singsong in dead silence. For
why? the chant conveys no idea to their ears, and they would as soon
think of _replying_ to the notes of a cuckoo.
But the Reverend Robert Penfold was in a keen agony that sharpened all
his senses; he caught the sense of the words in spite of the speaker, and
clung wildly to the straw that monotonous machine held out. "My lord! my
lord!" he cried, "I'll tell you the real reason why young Wardlaw is not
here."
The judge put up his hand with a gesture that enforced silence.
"Prisoner," said he, "I cannot go back to facts; the jury have dealt with
them. Judgment can be arrested only on grounds of law. On these you can
be heard. But, if you have none to offer, you must be silent and submit
to your sentence." He then, without a pause, proceeded to point out the
heinous character of the offense, but admitted there was one mitigating
circumstance; and, in conclusion, he condemned the culprit to five years'
penal servitude.
At this the poor wretch uttered a cry of anguish that was fearful, and
clutched the dock convulsively.
Now a prisoner rarely speaks to a judge without revolting him by bad law,
or bad logic, or hot words. But this wild cry was innocent of all these,
and went straight from the heart in the dock to the heart on the judgment
seat. And so his lordship's voice trembled for a moment, and then became
firm again, but solemn and humane.
"But," said he, "my experience tells me this is your first crime, and may
possibly be your last. I shall therefore use my influence that you may
not be associated with more hardened criminals, but may be sent out of
this country to another, where you may begin life afresh, and, in the
course of years, efface this dreadful stain. Give me hopes of you; begin
your repentance where now you stand, by blaming yourself, and no other
man. No man constrained you to utter a forged note, and to receive the
money; it was found in your possession. For such an act there can be no
defense in law, morality, or religion."
These words overpowered the culprit. He burst out crying with great
violence.
But it did not last long. He became strangely composed all of a sudden;
and said, "God forgive all concerned in this--but one--but one."
He then bowed respectfully, and like a gentleman, to the judge and the
jury, and walked out of the dock with the air of a man who had parted
with emotion, and would march to the gallows now without flinching.
The counsel for the Crown required that the forged document should be
impounded.
"I was about to make the same demand," said the prisoner's counsel.
The judge snubbed them both, and said it was a matter of course.
Robert Penfold spent a year in separate confinement, and then, to cure
him of its salutary effect (if any), was sent on board the hulk
_Vengeance,_ and was herded with the greatest miscreants in creation.
They did not reduce him to their level, but they injured his mind. And,
before half his sentence had expired, he sailed for a penal colony, a man
with a hot coal in his bosom, a creature imbittered, poisoned; hoping
little, believing little, fearing little, and hating much.
He took with him the prayer-book his mother had given him when he was
ordained deacon. But he seldom read beyond the fly-leaf. There the poor
lady had written at large her mother's heart, and her pious soul aspiring
heavenward for her darling son. This, when all seemed darkest, he would
sometimes run to with moist eyes. For he was sure of his mother's love,
but almost doubted the justice of his God.