"Our suspicions still point to young Bourdon; but the persons of both
mother and son have been secured."
"Apart?"
"Yes; and I have despatched a servant to request the presence of a
neighbor--a county magistrate. I expect him momently."
After a brief consultation, we all three directed our steps to the
summer-house which contained young Bourdon's laboratory. In the room
itself nothing of importance was discovered; but in an enclosed recess,
which we broke open, we found a curiously-fashioned glass bottle half
full of iodine.
"This is it!" said Mr. ----; "and in a powdered state too--just ready
for mixing with brandy or any other available dissolvent." The powder had
somewhat the appearance of fine black lead. Nothing further of any
consequence being observed, we returned to the house, where the
magistrate had already arrived.
Alfred Bourdon was first brought in; and he having been duly cautioned
that he was not obliged to answer any question, and that what he did say
would be taken down, and, if necessary, used against him, I proposed the
following questions:--
"Have you the key of your laboratory?"
"No; the door is always open."
"Well, then, of any door or cupboard in the room?"
At this question his face flushed purple: he stammered, "There is
no"--and abruptly paused.
"Do I understand you to say there is no cupboard or place of concealment
in the room?"
"No: here is the key."
"Has any one had access to the cupboard or recess of which this is the
key, except yourself?"
The young man shook as if smitten with ague: his lips chattered, but no
articulate sound escaped them.
"You need not answer the question," said the magistrate, "unless you
choose to do so. I again warn you that all you say will, if necessary,
be used against you."
"No one," he at length gasped, mastering his hesitation by a strong
exertion of the will--"no one can have had access to the place but
myself. I have never parted with the key."
Mrs. Bourdon was now called in. After interchanging a glance of intense
agony, and, as it seemed to me, of affectionate intelligence with her
son, she calmly answered the questions put to her. They were unimportant,
except the last, and that acted upon her like a galvanic shock. It was
this--"Did you ever struggle with your son on the landing leading to the
bedroom of the deceased for the possession of this bottle?" and I held up
that which we had found in the recess.
A slight scream escaped her lips; and then she stood rigid, erect,
motionless, glaring alternately at me and at the fatal bottle with eyes
that seemed starting from their sockets. I glanced towards the son; he
was also affected in a terrible manner. His knees smote each other, and a
clammy perspiration burst forth and settled upon his pallid forehead.
"Again I caution you," iterated the magistrate, "that you are not bound
to answer any of these questions."
The woman's lips moved. "No--never!" she almost inaudibly gasped, and
fell senseless on the floor.
As soon as she was removed, Jane Withers was called. She deposed that
three days previously, as she was, just before dusk, arranging some linen
in a room a few yards distant from the bedroom of her late mistress, she
was surprised at hearing a noise just outside the door, as of persons
struggling and speaking in low but earnest tones. She drew aside a corner
of the muslin curtain of the window which locked upon the passage or
corridor, and there saw Mrs. Bourdon striving to wrest something from her
son's hand. She heard Mrs. Bourdon say, "You shall not do it, or you
shall not have it"--she could not be sure which. A noise of some sort
seemed to alarm them: they ceased struggling, and listened attentively
for a few seconds: then Alfred Bourdon stole off on tip-toe, leaving the
object in dispute, which witness could not see distinctly, in his
mother's hand. Mrs. Bourdon continued to listen, and presently Miss
Armitage, opening the door of her mother's chamber, called her by name.
She immediately placed what was in her hand on the marble top of a
side-table standing in the corridor, and hastened to Miss Armitage.
Witness left the room she had been in a few minutes afterwards, and,
curious to know what Mrs. Bourdon and her son had been struggling for,
went to the table to look at it. It was an oddly-shaped glass bottle,
containing a good deal of a blackish-gray powder, which, as she held it
up to the light, looked like black-lead!
"Would you be able to swear to the bottle if you saw it?"
"Certainly I should."
"By what mark or token?"
"The name of Valpy or Vulpy was cast into it--that is, the name was in
the glass itself."
"Is this it?"
"It is: I swear most positively."
A letter was also read which had been taken from Bourdon's pocket. It was
much creased, and was proved to be in the handwriting of Mrs. Armitage.
It consisted of a severe rebuke at the young man's presumption in seeking
to address himself to her daughter, which insolent ingratitude, the
writer said, she should never, whilst she lived, either forget or
forgive. This last sentence was strongly underlined in a different ink
from that used by the writer of the letter.
The surgeon deposed to the cause of death. It had been brought on by the
action of iodine, which, administered in certain quantities, produced
symptoms as of rapid atrophy, such as had appeared in Mrs. Armitage. The
glass bottle found in the recess contained iodine in a pulverized state.
I deposed that, on entering the library on the previous evening I
overheard young Mr. Bourdon, addressing his mother, say, "Now that it is
done past recall, I will not shrink from any consequences, be they what
they may!"
This was the substance of the evidence adduced; and the magistrate at
once committed Alfred Bourdon to Chelmsford jail, to take his trial at
the next assize for "wilful murder." A coroner's inquisition a few days
after also returned a verdict of "wilful murder" against him on the
same evidence.
About an hour after his committal, and just previous to the arrival of
the vehicle which was to convey him to the county prison, Alfred Bourdon
requested an interview with me. I very reluctantly consented; but steeled
as I was against him, I could not avoid feeling dreadfully shocked at the
change which so brief an interval had wrought upon him. It had done the
work of years. Despair--black, utter despair--was written in every
lineament of his expressive countenance.
"I have requested to see you," said the unhappy culprit, "rather than Dr.
Curteis, because he, I know, is bitterly prejudiced against me. But _you_
will not refuse, I think, the solemn request of a dying man--for a dying
man I feel myself to be--however long or short the interval which stands
between me and the scaffold. It is not with a childish hope that any
assertion of mine can avail before the tribunal of the law against the
evidence adduced this day, that I, with all the solemnity befitting a man
whose days are numbered, declare to you that I am wholly innocent of the
crime laid to my charge. I have no such expectation; I seek only that
you, in pity of my youth and untimely fate, should convey to her whom I
have madly presumed to worship this message: 'Alfred Bourdon was mad, but
not blood-guilty; and of the crime laid to his charge he is innocent as
an unborn child.'"
"The pure and holy passion, young man," said I, somewhat startled by his
impressive manner, "however presumptuous, as far as social considerations
are concerned, it might be, by which you affect to be inspired, is
utterly inconsistent with the cruel, dastardly crime of which such
damning evidence has an hour since been given"--
"Say no more, sir," interrupted Bourdon, sinking back in his seat, and
burying his face in his hands: "it were a bootless errand; she _could_
not, in the face of that evidence, believe my unsupported assertion! It
were as well perhaps she did not. And yet, sir, it is hard to be
trampled into a felon's grave, loaded with the maledictions of those
whom you would coin your heart to serve and bless! Ah, sir," he
continued, whilst tears of agony streamed through his firmly-closed
fingers, "you cannot conceive the unutterable bitterness of the pang
which rends the heart of him who feels that he is not only despised,
but loathed, hated, execrated, by her whom his soul idolizes! Mine was
no boyish, transient passion: it has grown with my growth, and
strengthened with my strength. My life has been but one long dream of
her. All that my soul had drunk in of beauty in the visible earth and
heavens--the light of setting suns--the radiance of the silver
stars--the breath of summer flowers, together with all which we imagine
of celestial purity and grace, seemed to me in her incarnated,
concentrated, and combined! And now lost--lost--forever lost!" The
violence of his emotions choked his utterance; and deeply and painfully
affected, I hastened from his presence.
Time sped as ever onwards, surely, silently; and justice, with her feet
of lead, but hands of iron, closed gradually upon her quarry. Alfred
Bourdon was arraigned before a jury of his countrymen, to answer finally
to the accusation of wilful murder preferred against him.
The evidence, as given before the committing magistrate, and the
coroner's inquisition, was repeated with some addition of passionate
expressions used by the prisoner indicative of a desire to be avenged on
the deceased. The cross-examination by the counsel for the defense was
able, but failed to shake the case for the prosecution. His own
admission, that no one but himself had access to the recess where the
poison was found, told fatally against him. When called upon to address
the jury, he delivered himself of a speech rather than a defense; of an
oratorical effusion, instead of a vigorous, and, if possible, damaging
commentary upon the evidence arrayed against him. It was a labored, and
in part eloquent, exposition of the necessary fallibility of human
judgment, illustrated by numerous examples of erroneous verdicts. His
peroration I jotted down at the time:--"Thus, my lord and gentlemen of
the jury, is it abundantly manifest, not only by these examples, but by
the testimony which every man bears in his own breast, that God could not
have willed, could not have commanded, his creatures to perform a
pretended duty, which he vouchsafed them no power to perform righteously.
Oh, be sure that if he had intended, if he had commanded you to pronounce
irreversible decrees upon your fellow-man, quenching that life which is
his highest gift, he would have endowed you with gifts to perform that
duty rightly. Has he done so? Ask not alone the pages dripping with
innocent blood which I have quoted, but your own hearts! Are you,
according to the promise of the serpent-tempter, 'gods, knowing good from
evil?' of such clear omniscience, that you can hurl an unprepared soul
before the tribunal of its Maker, in the full assurance that you have
rightly loosed the silver cord which he had measured, have justly broken
the golden bowl which he had fashioned! Oh, my lord," he concluded, his
dark eyes flashing with excitement, "it is possible that the first
announcement of my innocence of this crime, to which you will give
credence, may be proclaimed from the awful tribunal of him who alone
cannot err! How if he, whose eye is even now upon us, should then
proclaim, '_I_ too, sat in judgment on the day when you presumed to doom
your fellow-worm; and _I_ saw that the murderer was not in the dock, but
on the bench!' Oh, my lord, think well of what you do--pause ere you
incur such fearful hazard; for be assured, that for all these things God
will also bring _you_ to judgment!"
He ceased, and sank back exhausted. His fervid declamation produced a
considerable impression upon the auditory; but it soon disappeared before
the calm, impressive charge of the judge, who re-assured the startled
jury, by reminding them that their duty was to honestly execute the law,
not to dispute about its justice. For himself, he said, sustained by a
pure conscience, he was quite willing to incur the hazard hinted at by
the prisoner. After a careful and luminous summing up, the jury, with
very slight deliberation, returned a verdict of "Guilty."
As the word passed the lips of the foreman of the jury, a piercing shriek
rang through the court. It proceeded from a tall figure in black, who,
with closely-drawn veil, had sat motionless during the trial, just before
the dock. It was the prisoner's mother. The next instant she rose, and
throwing back her veil wildly exclaimed, "He is innocent--innocent, I
tell ye! I alone"--
"Mother! mother! for the love of Heaven be silent!" shouted the prisoner
with frantic vehemence, and stretching himself over the front of the
dock, as if to grasp and restrain her.
"Innocent, I tell you!" continued the woman. "I--I alone am the guilty
person! It was I alone that perpetrated the deed! He knew it not,
suspected it not, till it was too late. Here," she added, drawing a sheet
of paper from her bosom--"here is my confession, with each circumstance
detailed!"
As she waved it over her head, it was snatched by her son, and, swift as
lightning, torn to shreds. "She is mad! Heed her not--believe her not!"
He at the same time shouted at the top of his powerful voice, "She is
distracted--mad! Now, my lord, your sentence! Come!"
The tumult and excitement in the court no language which I can employ
would convey an adequate impression of. As soon as calm was partially
restored, Mrs. Bourdon was taken into custody: the prisoner was removed;
and the court adjourned, of course without passing sentence.
It was even as his mother said! Subsequent investigation, aided by her
confessions, amply proved that the fearful crime was conceived and
perpetrated by her alone, in the frantic hope of securing for her
idolized son the hand and fortune of Miss Armitage. She had often been
present with him in his laboratory, and had thus become acquainted with
the uses to which certain agents could be put. She had purloined the key
of the recess; and he, unfortunately too late to prevent the perpetration
of the crime, had by mere accident discovered the abstraction of the
poison. His subsequent declarations had been made for the determined
purpose of saving his mother's life by the sacrifice of his own!
The wretched woman was not reserved to fall before the justice of her
country. The hand of God smote her ere the scaffold was prepared for
her. She was smitten with frenzy, and died raving in the Metropolitan
Lunatic Asylum. Alfred Bourdon, after a lengthened imprisonment, was
liberated. He called on me, by appointment, a few days previous to
leaving this country forever; and I placed in his hands a small
pocket-Bible, on the fly-leaf of which was written one word--"Ellen!"
His dim eye lighted up with something of its old fire as he glanced at
the characters; he then closed the book, placed it in his bosom, and
waving me a mute farewell--I saw he durst not trust himself to
speak--hastily departed. I never saw him more!
"THE WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS."
In the month of February of the year following that which witnessed the
successful establishment of the claim of Sir Harry Compton's infant son
to his magnificent patrimony, Mr. Samuel Ferret was traveling post with
all the speed he could command towards Lancashire, in compliance with a
summons from Lady Compton, requesting, in urgent terms, his immediate
presence at the castle. It was wild and bitter weather, and the roads
were in many places rendered dangerous, and almost impassable, by the
drifting snow. Mr. Ferret, however, pressed onwards with his habitual
energy and perseverance; and, spite of all elemental and postboy
opposition, succeeded in accomplishing his journey in much less time
than, under the circumstances, could have been reasonably expected. But
swiftly as, for those slow times, he pushed on, it is necessary I should
anticipate, by a brief period, his arrival at his destination, in order
to put the reader in possession of the circumstances which had occasioned
the hurried and pressing message he had received.
Two days before, as Lady Compton and her sister, who had been paying a
visit to Mrs. Arlington at the Grange, were returning home towards nine
o'clock in the evening, they observed, as the carriage turned a sharp
angle of the road leading through Compton Park, a considerable number of
lighted lanterns borne hurriedly to and fro in various directions, by
persons apparently in eager but bewildered pursuit of some missing
object. The carriage was stopped, and in answer to the servants'
inquiries, it was replied that Major Brandon's crazy niece had escaped
from her uncle's house; and although traced by the snow-tracks as far as
the entrance to the park, had not yet been recovered. Mrs. Brandon had
offered a reward of ten pounds to whoever should secure and reconduct her
home; hence the hot pursuit of the fugitive, who, it was now supposed,
must be concealed in the shrubberies. Rumors regarding this unfortunate
young lady, by no means favorable to the character of her relatives as
persons of humanity, had previously reached Lady Compton's ears; and she
determined to avail herself, if possible, of the present opportunity to
obtain a personal interview with the real or supposed lunatic. The men
who had been questioned were informed that only the castle servants could
be allowed to search for the missing person, either in the park or
shrubberies; and that if there, she would be taken care of, and restored
to her friends in the morning. The coachman was then ordered to drive on;
but the wheels had not made half-a-dozen revolutions, when a loud shout
at some distance, in the direction of the park, followed by a succession
of piercing screams, announced the discovery and capture of the object of
the chase. The horses were urged rapidly forward; and ere more than a
minute had elapsed, the carriage drew up within a few yards of the hunted
girl and her captors. The instant it stopped, Clara Brandon, liberating
herself by a frenzied effort from the rude grasp in which she was held by
an athletic young man, sprang wildly towards it, and with passionate
intreaty implored mercy and protection. The young man, a son of Mrs.
Brandon's by a former husband, immediately re-seized her; and with fierce
violence endeavored to wrench her hand from the handle of the carriage
door, which she clutched with desperate tenacity. The door flew open,
the sudden jerk disengaged her hold, and she struggled vainly in her
captor's powerful grasp. "Save me! save me!" she frantically exclaimed,
as she felt herself borne off. "You who are, they say, as kind and good
as you are beautiful and happy, save me from this cruel man!"
Lady Compton, inexpressibly shocked by the piteous spectacle presented by
the unhappy girl--her scanty clothing soiled, disarrayed, and torn by the
violence of her struggles; her long flaxen tresses flowing disorderly
over her face and neck in tangled dishevelment; and the pale, haggard,
wild expression of her countenance--was for a few moments incapable of
speech. Her sister was more collected: "Violet," she instantly
remonstrated, "do not permit this brutal violence."
"What right has she or any one to interfere with us?" demanded the young
man savagely. "This girl is Major Brandon's ward, as well as niece, and
_shall_ return to her lawful home! Stand back," continued he, addressing
the servants, who, at a gesture from Miss Dalston, barred his progress.
"Withstand me at your peril!"
"Force her from him!" exclaimed Lady Compton, recovering her
voice. "Gently! gently! I will be answerable for her safe custody
till the morning."
The athletic fellow struggled desperately; but however powerful and
determined, he was only one man against a score, nearly all the
bystanders being tenants or laborers on the Compton estates; and spite of
his furious efforts, and menaces of law and vengeance, Clara was torn
from him in a twinkling, and himself hurled with some violence prostrate
on the road. "Do not let them hurt the man," said Lady Compton, as the
servants placed the insensible girl in the carriage (she had fainted);
"and tell him that if he has really any legal claim to the custody of
this unfortunate person, he must prefer it in the morning."
Immediately on arrival at the castle, the escaped prisoner was conveyed
to bed, and medical aid instantly summoned. When restored to
consciousness, whether from the effect of an excess of fever producing
temporary delirium, or from confirmed mental disease, her speech was
altogether wild and incoherent--the only at all consistent portions of
her ravings being piteously--iterated appeals to Lady Compton not to
surrender her to her aunt in-law, Mrs. Brandon, of whom she seemed to
entertain an overpowering, indefinable dread. It was evident she had been
subjected to extremely brutal treatment--such as, in these days of
improved legislation in such matters, and greatly advanced knowledge of
the origin and remedy of cerebral infirmity, would not be permitted
towards the meanest human being, much less a tenderly-nurtured, delicate
female. At length, under the influence of a composing draught, she sank
gradually to sleep; and Lady Compton having determined to rescue her, if
possible, from the suspicious custody of her relatives, and naturally
apprehensive of the legal difficulties which she could not doubt would
impede the execution of her generous, if somewhat Quixotic project,
resolved on at once sending off an express for Mr. Ferret, on whose
acumen and zeal she knew she could place the fullest reliance.
Clara Brandon's simple history may be briefly summed up. She was the only
child of a Mr. Frederick Brandon, who, a widower in the second year of
his marriage, had since principally resided at the "Elms," a handsome
mansion and grounds which he had leased of the uncle of the late Sir
Harry Compton. At his decease, which occurred about two years previous to
poor Clara's escape from confinement, as just narrated, he bequeathed
his entire fortune, between two and three thousand pounds per annum,
chiefly secured on land, to his daughter; appointed his elder brother,
Major Brandon, sole executor of his will, and guardian of his child; and
in the event of her dying before she had attained her majority--of which
she wanted, at her father's death, upwards of three years--or without
lawful issue, the property was to go to the major, to be by him willed at
his pleasure. Major Brandon, whose physical and mental energies had been
prematurely broken down--he was only in his fifty-second year--either by
excess or hard service in the East, perhaps both, had married late in
life the widow of a brother officer, and the mother of a grown-up son.
The lady, a woman of inflexible will, considerable remains of a somewhat
masculine beauty, and about ten years her husband's junior, held him in a
state of thorough pupilage; and, unchecked by him, devoted all her
energies to bring about, by fair or foul means, a union between Clara and
her own son, a cub of some two or three-and-twenty years of age, whose
sole object in seconding his mother's views upon Clara was the
acquisition of her wealth. According to popular surmise and report, the
young lady's mental infirmity had been brought about by the persecutions
she had endured at the hands of Mrs. Brandon, with a view to force her
into a marriage she detested. The most reliable authority for the truth
of these rumors was Susan Hopley, now in the service of Lady Compton, but
who had lived for many years with Mr. Frederick Brandon and his daughter.
She had been discharged about six months after her master's decease by
Mrs. Major Brandon for alleged impertinence; and so thoroughly convinced
was Susan that the soon-afterwards alleged lunacy of Clara was but a
juggling pretence to excuse the restraint under which her aunt-in-law,
for the furtherance of her own vile purposes, had determined to keep
her, that although out of place at the time, she devoted all the savings
of her life, between eighty and ninety pounds, to procure "justice" for
the ill-used orphan. This article, Susan was advised, could be best
obtained of the lord chancellor; and proceedings were accordingly taken
before the keeper of the king's conscience, in order to change the
custody of the pretended lunatic. The affidavits filed in support of the
petition were, however, so loose and vague, and were met with such
positive counter-allegations, that the application was at once dismissed
with costs; and poor Susan--rash suitor for "justice"--reduced to
absolute penury. These circumstances becoming known to Lady Compton,
Susan was taken into her service; and it was principally owing to her
frequently-iterated version of the affair that Clara had been forcibly
rescued from Mrs. Brandon's son.
On the following morning the patient was much calmer, though her mind
still wandered somewhat. Fortified by the authority of the physician, who
certified that to remove her, or even to expose her to agitation, would
be dangerous, if not fatal, Lady Compton not only refused to deliver her
up to Major and Mrs. Brandon, but to allow them to see her. Mrs. Brandon,
in a towering rage, posted off to the nearest magistrate, to demand the
assistance of peace-officers in obtaining possession of the person of the
fugitive. That functionary would, however, only so far comply with the
indignant lady's solicitations, as to send his clerk to the castle to
ascertain the reason of the young lady's detention; and when his
messenger returned with a note, enclosing a copy of the physician's
certificate, he peremptorily decided that the conduct of Lady Compton was
not only perfectly justifiable, but praiseworthy, and that the matter
must remain over till the patient was in a condition to be moved. Things
were precisely in this state, except that Clara Brandon had become
perfectly rational; and but for an irrepressible nervous dread of again
falling into the power of her unscrupulous relative, quite calm, when Mr.
Samuel Ferret made his wished-for appearance on the scene of action.
Long and anxious was the conference which Mr. Ferret held with his
munificent client and her interesting protégée, if conference that may be
called in which the astute attorney enacted the part of listener only,
scarcely once opening his thin, cautious lips. In vain did his eager
brain silently ransack the whole armory of the law; no weapon could he
discern which afforded the slightest hope of fighting a successful battle
with a legally-appointed guardian for the custody of his ward. And yet
Mr. Ferret felt, as he looked upon the flashing eye and glowing
countenance of Lady Compton, as she recounted a few of the grievous
outrages inflicted upon the fair and helpless girl reclining beside
her--whose varying cheek and meek suffused eyes bore eloquent testimony
to the truth of the relation--that he would willingly exert a vigor even
_beyond_ the law to meet his client's wishes, could he but see his way to
a safe result. At length a ray of light, judging from his
suddenly-gleaming eyes, seemed to have broken upon the troubled chambers
of his brain, and he rose somewhat hastily from his chair.
"By the by, I will just step and speak to this Susan Hopley, if your
ladyship can inform me in what part of the lower regions I am likely to
meet with her?"
"Let me ring for her."
"No; if you please not. What I have to ask her is of very little
importance; still, to summon her here might give rise to surmises,
reports, and so on, which it may be as well to avoid. I had much rather
see her accidentally, as it were."
"As you please. You will find her somewhere about the housekeeper's
apartments. You know her by sight, I think?"
"Perfectly; and with your leave I'll take the opportunity of directing
the horses to be put to. I must be in London by noon to-morrow if
possible;" and away Mr. Ferret bustled.
"Susan," said Mr. Ferret a few minutes afterwards, "step this way; I want
to have a word with you. Now, tell me are you goose enough to expect you
will ever see the money again you so foolishly threw into the bottomless
pit of chancery?"
"Of course I shall, Mr. Ferret, as soon as ever Miss Clara comes to her
own. She mentioned it only this morning, and said she was sorry she could
not repay me at once."
"You are a sensible girl, Susan, though you _did_ go to law with the lord
chancellor! I want you to be off with me to London; and then perhaps we
may get your money sooner than you expect."
"Oh, bother the money! Is that _all_ you want me to go to Lunnon for?"
Mr. Ferret replied with a wink of such exceeding intelligence, that
Susan at once declared she should be ready to start in ten minutes at
the latest.
"That's a good creature; and, Susan, as there's not the slightest
occasion to let all the world know who's going to run off with you, it
may be as well for you to take your bundle and step on a mile or so on
the road, say to the turn, just beyond the first turnpike." Susan nodded
with brisk good-humor, and disappeared in a twinkling.
An hour afterwards, Mr. Ferret was on his way back to London, having
first impressed upon Lady Compton the necessity of immediately relieving
herself of the grave responsibility she had incurred towards Major
Brandon for the safe custody of his ward, by sending her home
immediately. He promised to return on the third day from his departure;
but on the nature of the measures he intended to adopt, or the hopes he
entertained of success, he was inflexibly silent; and he moreover
especially requested that no one, not even Miss Brandon, should know of
Susan Hopley's journey to the metropolis.
Mr. Ferret, immediately on his arrival in town, called at my chambers,
and related with his usual minuteness and precision as many of the
foregoing particulars as he knew and thought proper to communicate to me.
For the rest I am indebted to subsequent conversations with the different
parties concerned.
"Well," said I, as soon as he had concluded, "what course do you propose
to adopt?"
"I wish you to apply, on this affidavit, for a writ of _habeas ad sub._,
to bring up the body of Clara Brandon. Judge Bailey will be at chambers
at three o'clock: it is now more than half-past two, and I can be off on
my return by four at latest."
"A writ of habeas!" I exclaimed with astonishment. "Why, what end can
that answer? The lady will be remanded, and you and I shall be laughed at
for our pains."
This writ of _habeas corpus "ad subjiciendum,_" I had better explain to
the non-professional reader, is the great _prerogative_ writ, the
operation of which is sometimes suspended by the legislature during
political panics. It is grounded on the principle that the sovereign has
at all times a right to inquire, through the judges of the superior
courts, by what authority his or her subject is held in constraint. It
issues, as a matter of right, upon the filing of an affidavit, averring
that to the best of the belief of the deponent the individual sought to
be brought up is illegally confined; and it is of the essence of the
proceeding, that the person alleged to be suffering unlawful constraint
should actually be brought before the "queen herself;" that is, before
one or more of the judges of the court which has issued the writ, who, if
they find _the detention illegal_, the only question at issue upon this
writ may discharge or bail the party. It was quite obvious, therefore,
that in this case such a proceeding would be altogether futile, as the
detention in the house of her guardian, under the sanction, too, of the
lord chancellor, the _ex-officio_ custodier of all lunatics--of a ward of
alleged disordered intellect--was clearly legal, at least _prima facie_
so, and not to be disturbed under a _habeas ad sub_. at all events.
"Perhaps so," replied Ferret quite coolly in reply to my exclamation;
"but I am determined to try every means of releasing the unfortunate
young lady from the cruel thraldom in which she is held by that harridan
of an aunt-in-law. She is no more really insane than you are; but at the
same time so excitable upon certain topics, that it might be perhaps
difficult to disabuse the chancellor or a jury of the impression so
industriously propagated to her prejudice. The peremptory rejection by
her guardian of young Burford's addresses, though sanctioned by her
father: you know the Burfords?"
"Of Grosvenor Street you mean--the East India director?"
"Yes, his son; and that reminds me that the declaration in that
everlasting exchequer case must be filed to-morrow. Confound it, how this
flying about the country puts one out! I thought some one had kidnapped
her son, or fired Compton Castle at least. By the way, I am much deceived
if there isn't a wedding there before long."
"Indeed!"
"Yes, Miss Dalston with Sir Jasper's eldest hope."
"You don't mean it?"
"_They_ do at all events, and that is much more to the purpose. A fine
young fellow enough, and sufficiently rich too"--
"All which rambling talk and anecdote," cried I, interrupting him,
"means, if I have any skill in reading Mr. Ferret, that that gentleman,
having some ulterior purpose in view, which I cannot for the moment
divine, is determined to have this writ, and does not wish to be pestered
with any argument on the subject. Be it so: it is your affair, not mine.
And now, as it is just upon three o'clock, let me see your affidavit."