Why is it that at moments there creeps over us an awe, a terror,
overpowering but undefined? Why is it that we shudder without a
cause, and feel the warm life-blood stand still in its courses?
Are the dead too near?
FALKLAND
Ha! sayest thou! Hideous thought, I feel it twine
O'er my iced heart, as curls around his prey
The sure and deadly serpent!
. . . . . . . . . . . .
What! in the hush and in the solitude
Passed that dread soul away?
Love and Hatred.
The evening prior to that morning in which the above conversation
occurred, Brandon passed alone in his lodging at --------. He had felt
himself too unwell to attend the customary wassail, and he sat indolently
musing in the solitude of the old-fashioned chamber to which he was
consigned. There, two wax-candles on the smooth, quaint table dimly
struggled against the gloom of heavy panels, which were relieved at
unfrequent intervals by portraits in oaken frames, dingy, harsh, and
important with the pomp of laced garments and flowing wigs. The
predilection of the landlady for modern tastes had, indeed, on each side
of the huge fireplace suspended more novel masterpieces of the fine arts.
In emblematic gorgeousness hung the pictures of the four Seasons, buxom
wenches all, save Winter, who was deformedly bodied forth in the likeness
of an aged carle. These were interspersed by an engraving of Lord
Mauleverer, the lieutenant of the neighbouring county, looking extremely
majestical in his peer's robes; and by three typifications of Faith,
Hope, and Charity,--ladies with whom it may be doubted if the gay earl
ever before cultivated so close an intimacy. Curtains, of that antique
chintz in which fasces of stripes are alternated by rows of flowers,
filled the interstices of three windows; a heavy sideboard occupied the
greater portion of one side of the room; and on the opposite side, in the
rear of Brandon, a vast screen stretched its slow length along, and
relieved the unpopulated and as it were desolate comfort of the
apartment.
Pale and imperfectly streamed the light upon Brandon's face, as he sat in
his large chair, leaning his cheek on one hand, and gazing with the
unconscious earnestness of abstraction on the clear fire. At that moment
a whole phalanx of gloomy thought was sweeping in successive array across
his mind. His early ambition, his ill-omened marriage, the causes of his
after-rise in the wrong-judging world, the first dawn of his reputation,
his rapid and flattering successes, his present elevation, his aspiring
hope of far higher office, and more patrician honours,--all these
phantoms passed before him in checkered shadow and light; but ever with
each stalked one disquieting and dark remembrance,--the loss of his only
son.
Weaving his ambition with the wish to revive the pride of his hereditary
name, every acquisition of fortune or of fame rendered him yet more
anxious to find the only one who could perpetuate these hollow
distinctions to his race.
"I shall recover him yet!" he broke out suddenly and aloud. As he spoke,
a quick, darting, spasmodic pain ran shivering through his whole frame,
and then fixed for one instant on his heart with a gripe like the talons
of a bird; it passed away, and was followed by a deadly sickness.
Brandon rose, and filling himself a large tumbler of water, drank with
avidity. The sickness passed off like the preceding pain; but the
sensation had of late been often felt by Brandon, and disregarded,--for
few persons were less afflicted with the self-torture of hypochondria;
but now, that night, whether it was more keen than usual, or whether his
thought had touched on the string that jars naturally on the most
startling of human anticipations, we know not, but, as he resumed his
seat, the idea of his approaching dissolution shot like an ice-bolt
through his breast.
So intent was this scheming man upon the living objects of the world, and
so little were his thoughts accustomed to turn toward the ultimate goal
of all things, that this idea obtruding itself abruptly upon him,
startled him with a ghastly awe. He felt the colour rush from his cheek,
and a tingling and involuntary pain ran wandering through the channels of
his blood, even from the roots of the hair to the soles of his feet. But
the stern soul of Brandon was not one which shadows could long affright.
He nerved himself to meet the grim thought thus forced upon his mental
eye, and he gazed on it with a steady and enduring look.
"Well," thought he, "is my hour coming, or have I yet the ordinary term
of mortal nature to expect? It is true, I have lately suffered these
strange revulsions of the frame with somewhat of an alarming frequency;
perhaps this medicine, which healed the anguish of one infirmity, has
produced another more immediately deadly. Yet why should I think this?
My sleep is sound and calm, my habits temperate, my mind active and clear
as in its best days. In my youth I never played the traitor with my
constitution; why should it desert me at the very threshold of my age?
Nay, nay, these are but passing twitches, chills of the blood that begins
to wax thin. Shall I learn to be less rigorous in my diet? Perhaps wine
may reward my abstinence in avoiding it for my luxuries, by becoming a
cordial to my necessities! Ay, I will consult,--I will consult, I must
not die yet. I have--let me see, three--four grades to gain before the
ladder is scaled. And, above all, I must regain my child! Lucy married
to Mauleverer, myself a peer, my son wedded to-whom? Pray God he be not
married already! My nephews and my children nobles! the house of Brandon
restored, my power high in the upward gaze of men, my fame set on a more
lasting basis than a skill in the quirks of law,--these are yet to come;
these I will not die till I have enjoyed! Men die not till their
destinies are fulfilled. The spirit that swells and soars within me says
that the destiny of William Brandon is but half begun!"
With this conclusion, Brandon sought his pillow. What were the
reflections of the prisoner whom he was to judge? Need we ask? Let us
picture to ourselves his shattered health, the languor of sickness
heightening the gloom which makes the very air of a jail; his certainty
of the doom to be passed against him; his knowledge that the uncle of
Lucy Brandon was to be his judge, that Mauleverer was to be his accuser,
and that in all human probability the only woman he had ever loved must
sooner or later learn the criminality of his life and the ignominy of his
death; let us but glance at the above blackness of circumstances that
surrounded him, and it would seem that there is but little doubt as to
the complexion of his thoughts! Perhaps, indeed, even in that terrible
and desolate hour one sweet face shone on him, "and dashed the darkness
all away." Perhaps, too, whatever might be the stings of his conscience,
one thought, one remembrance of a temptation mastered and a sin escaped,
brought to his eyes tears that were sweet and healing in their source.
But the heart of a man in Clifford's awful situation is dark and
inscrutable; and often when the wildest and gloomiest external
circumstances surround us, their reflection sleeps like a shadow, calm
and still upon the mind.
The next morning, the whole town of (a town in which, we regret to say,
an accident once detained ourself for three wretched days, and which we
can, speaking therefore from profound experience, assert to be in
ordinary times the most melancholy and peopleless-looking congregation of
houses that a sober imagination can conceive) exhibited a scene of such
bustle, animation, and jovial anxiety as the trial for life or death to a
fellow-creature can alone excite in the phlegmatic breasts of the
English. Around the court the crowd thickened with every moment, until
the whole marketplace in which the townhall was situated became one
living mass. The windows of the houses were filled with women, some of
whom had taken that opportunity to make parties to breakfast; and little
round tables, with tea and toast on them, caught the eyes of the grinning
mobists as they gaped impatiently upwards.
"Ben," said a stout yeoman, tossing up a halfpenny, and catching the said
coin in his right hand, which he immediately covered with the left,--
"Ben, heads or tails that Lovett is hanged; heads hanged, tails not, for
a crown."
"Petticoats, to be sure," quoth Ben, eating an apple; and it was heads!
"Damme, you've lost!" cried the yeoman, rubbing his rough hands with
glee.
It would have been a fine sight for Asmodeus, could he have perched on
one of the house tops of the market-place of --------, and looked on the
murmuring and heaving sea of mortality below. Oh! the sight of a crowd
round a court of law or a gibbet ought to make the devil split himself
with laughter.
While the mob was fretting, and pushing, and swearing, and grinning, and
betting, and picking pockets, and trampling feet, and tearing gowns, and
scrambling nearer and nearer to the doors and windows of the court,
Brandon was slowly concluding his abstemious repast, preparatory to
attendance on his judicial duties. His footman entered with a letter.
Sir William glanced rapidly over the seal (one of those immense
sacrifices of wax used at that day), adorned with a huge coat-of-arms,
surmounted with an earl's coronet, and decorated on either side with
those supporters so dear to heraldic taste. He then tore open the
letter, and read as follows:--
MY DEAR SIR WILLIAM,--You know that in the last conversation I had
the Honour to hold with you I alluded, though perhaps somewhat
distantly, to the esteem which his Majesty had personally expressed
for your principles and talents, and his wish to testify it at the
earliest opportunity. There will be, as you are doubtless aware, an
immediate creation of four peerages. Your name stands second on the
list. The choice of title his Majesty graciously leaves to you; but
he has hinted that the respectable antiquity of your family would
make him best pleased were you to select the name of your own
family-seat, which, if I mistake not, is Warlock. You will instruct
me at your leisure as to the manner in which the patent should be
made out, touching the succession, etc. Perhaps (excuse the license
of an old friend) this event may induce you to forsake your long-
cherished celibacy. I need not add that this accession of rank will
be accompanied by professional elevation. You will see by the
papers that the death of --------leaves vacant the dignity of Chief
Baron; and I am at length empowered to offer you a station
proportioned to your character and talents.
With great consideration, believe me, my dear Sir, Very truly yours,
Private and Confidential.
Brandon's dark eye glanced quickly from the signature of the premier,
affixed to this communication, towards the mirror opposite him. He
strode to it, and examined his own countenance with a long and wistful
gaze. Never, we think, did youthful gallant about to repair to the
trysting-spot, in which fair looks make the greatest of earthly
advantages, gaze more anxiously on the impartial glass than now did the
ascetic and scornful judge; and never, we ween, did the eye of the said
gallant retire with a more satisfied and triumphant expression.
"Yes, yes!" muttered the judge, "no sign of infirmity is yet written
here; the blood flows clear and warm enough; the cheek looks firm too,
and passing full, for one who was always of the lean kine. Aha! this
letter is a cordial, an elixir vitro. I feel as if a new lease were
granted to the reluctant tenant. Lord Warlock, the first Baron of
Warlock, Lord Chief Baron,--what next?"
As he spoke, he strode unconsciously away, folding his arms with that
sort of joyous and complacent gesture which implies the idea of a man
hugging himself in a silent delight. Assuredly had the most skilful
physician then looked upon the ardent and all-lighted face, the firm
step, the elastic and muscular frame, the vigorous air of Brandon, as he
mentally continued his soliloquy, he would have predicted for him as fair
a grasp on longevity as the chances of mortal life will allow. He was
interrupted by the servant entering.
"It is twenty-five minutes after nine, sir," said he, respectfully.
"Sir,--sir!" repeated Brandon. "Ah, well! so late!"
"Yes, sir, and the sheriff's carriage is almost at the door."
"Humph! Minister,--Peer,--Warlock,--succession. My son, my son! would
to God that I could find thee!"
Such were Brandon's last thoughts as he left the room. It was with great
difficulty, so dense was the crowd, that the judge drove up to the court.
As the carriage slowly passed, the spectators pressed to the windows of
the vehicle, and stood on tiptoe to catch a view of the celebrated
lawyer. Brandon's face, never long indicative of his feelings, had now
settled into its usual gravity; and the severe loftiness of his look
chilled, while it satisfied, the curiosity of the vulgar. It had been
ordered that no person should be admitted until the judge had taken his
seat on the bench; and this order occasioned so much delay, owing to the
accumulated pressure of the vast and miscellaneous group, that it was
more than half an hour before the court was able to obtain that decent
order suiting the solemnity of the occasion. At five minutes before ten
a universal and indescribable movement announced that the prisoner was
put to the bar. We read in one of the journals of that day, that "on
being put to the bar, the prisoner looked round with a long and anxious
gaze, which at length settled on the judge, and then dropped, while the
prisoner was observed to change countenance slightly. Lovett was dressed
in a plain dark suit; he seemed to be about six feet high; and though
thin and worn, probably from the effect of his wound and imprisonment, he
is remarkably well made, and exhibits the outward appearance of that
great personal strength which he is said to possess, and which is not
unfrequently the characteristic of daring criminals. His face is
handsome and prepossessing, his eyes and hair dark, and his complexion
pale, possibly from the effects of his confinement; there was a certain
sternness in his countenance during the greater part of the trial. His
behaviour was remarkably collected and composed. The prisoner listened
with the greatest attention to the indictment, which the reader will find
in another part of our paper, charging him with the highway robbery of
Lord Mauleverer, on the night of the of last. He occasionally inclined
his body forward, and turned his ear towards the court; and he was
observed, as the jury were sworn, to look steadily in the face of each.
He breathed thick and hard when the various aliases he had assumed--
Howard, Cavendish, Jackson, etc.,--were read; but smiled with an
unaccountable expression when the list was completed, as if exulting at
the varieties of his ingenuity. At twenty-five minutes past ten Mr.
Dyebright, the counsel for the crown, stated the case to the jury."
Mr. Dyebright was a lawyer of great eminence; he had been a Whig all his
life, but had latterly become remarkable for his insincerity, and
subservience to the wishes of the higher powers. His talents were
peculiar and effective. If he had little eloquence, he had much power;
and his legal knowledge, was sound and extensive. Many of his brethren
excelled him in display; but no one, like him, possessed the secret of
addressing a jury. Winningly familiar; seemingly candid to a degree that
scarcely did justice to his cause, as if he were in an agony lest he
should persuade you to lean a hair-breadth more on his side of the case
than justice would allow; apparently all made up of good, homely,
virtuous feeling, a disinterested regard for truth, a blunt yet tender
honesty, seasoned with a few amiable fireside prejudices, which always
come home to the hearts of your fathers of families and thorough-bred
Britons; versed in all the niceties of language, and the magic of names;
if he were defending crime, carefully calling it misfortune; if attacking
misfortune, constantly calling it crime,--Mr. Dyebright was exactly the
man born to pervert justice, to tickle jurors, to cozen truth with a
friendly smile, and to obtain a vast reputation as an excellent advocate.
He began with a long preliminary flourish on the importance of the case.
He said that he should with the most scrupulous delicacy avoid every
remark calculated to raise unnecessary prejudice against the prisoner.
He should not allude to his unhappy notoriety, his associations with the
lowest dregs. (Here up jumped the counsel for the prisoner, and Mr.
Dyebright was called to order.) "God knows," resumed the learned
gentleman, looking wistfully at the jury, "that my learned friend might
have spared himself this warning. God knows that I would rather fifty of
the wretched inmates of this county jail were to escape unharmed than
that a hair of the prisoner you behold at the bar should be unjustly
touched. The life of a human being is at stake; we should be guilty
ourselves of a crime which on our deathbeds we should tremble to recall,
were we to suffer any consideration, whether of interest or of prejudice,
or of undue fear for our own properties and lives, to bias us even to the
turning of a straw against the unfortunate prisoner. Gentlemen, if you
find me travelling a single inch from my case,--if you find me saying a
single word calculated to harm the prisoner in your eyes, and unsupported
by the evidence I shall call,--then I implore you not to depend upon the
vigilance of my learned friend, but to treasure these my errors in your
recollection, and to consider them as so many arguments in favour of the
prisoner. If, gentlemen, I could by any possibility imagine that your
verdict would be favourable to the prisoner, I can, unaffectedly and from
the bottom of my heart, declare to you that I should rejoice; a case
might be lost, but a fellow-creature would be saved! Callous as we of
the legal profession are believed, we have feelings like you; and I ask
any one of you, gentlemen of the jury, any one who has ever felt the
pleasures of social intercourse, the joy of charity, the heart's reward
of benevolence,--I ask any one of you, whether, if he were placed in the
arduous situation I now hold, all the persuasions of vanity would not
vanish at once from his mind, and whether his defeat as an advocate would
not be rendered dear to him by the common and fleshly sympathies of a
man. But, gentlemen" (Mr. Dyebright's voice at once deepened and
faltered), "there is a duty, a painful duty, we owe to our country; and
never, in the long course of my professional experience, do I remember an
instance in which it was more called forth than in the present. Mercy,
gentlemen, is dear, very dear to us all; but it is the deadliest injury
we can inflict on mankind when it is bought at the expense of justice."
The learned gentleman then, after a few further prefatory observations,
proceeded to state how, on the night of ------- last, Lord Mauleverer was
stopped and robbed by three men masked, of a sum of money amounting to
above L350, a diamond snuff-box, rings, watch, and a case of most
valuable jewels,--how Lord Mauleverer, in endeavouring to defend himself,
had passed a bullet through the clothes of one of the robbers,--how it
would be proved that the garments of the prisoner, found in a cave in
Oxfordshire, and positively sworn to by a witness he should produce,
exhibited a rent similar to such a one as a bullet would produce,--how,
moreover, it would be positively sworn to by the same witness, that the
prisoner Lovett had come to the cavern with two accomplices not since
taken up, since their rescue by the prisoner, and boasted of the robbery
he had just committed; that in the clothes and sleeping apartment of the
robber the articles stolen from Lord Mauleverer were found; and that the
purse containing the notes for L300, the only thing the prisoner could
probably have obtained time to carry off with him, on the morning on
which the cave was entered by the policemen, was found on his person on
the day on which be had attempted the rescue of his comrades, and had
been apprehended in that attempt. He stated, moreover, that the dress
found in the cavern, and sworn to by one witness he should produce as
belonging to the prisoner, answered exactly to the description of the
clothes worn by the principal robber, and sworn to by Lord Mauleverer,
his servant, and the postilions. In like manner the colour of one of the
horses found in the cavern corresponded with that rode by the highwayman.
On these circumstantial proofs, aided by the immediate testimony of the
king's evidence (that witness whom he should produce) he rested a case
which could, he averred, leave no doubt on the minds of an impartial
jury. Such, briefly and plainly alleged, made the substance of the
details entered into by the learned counsel, who then proceeded to call
his witnesses. The evidence of Lord Mauleverer (who was staying at
Mauleverer Park, which was within a few miles of--) was short and clear
(it was noticed as a singular circumstance, that at the end of the
evidence the prisoner bowed respectfully to his lordship). The witness
of the postilions and of the valet was no less concise; nor could all the
ingenuity of Clifford's counsel shake any part of their evidence in his
cross-examination. The main witness depended on by the crown was now
summoned, and the solemn countenance of Peter MacGrawler rose on the eyes
of the jury. One look of cold and blighting contempt fell on him from
the eye of the prisoner, who did not again deign to regard him during the
whole of his examination.
The witness of MacGrawler was delivered with a pomposity worthy of the
ex-editor of the "Asinaeum." Nevertheless, by the skill of Mr.
Dyebright, it was rendered sufficiently clear a story to leave an
impression on the jury damnatory to the interests of the prisoner. The
counsel on the opposite side was not slow in perceiving the ground
acquired by the adverse party; so, clearing his throat, he rose with a
sneering air to the cross-examination.
"So, so," began Mr. Botheram, putting on a pair of remarkably large
spectacles, wherewith he truculently regarded the witness,--"so, so, Mr.
MacGrawler,--is that your name, eh, eh? Ah, it is, is it? A very
respectable name it is too, I warrant. Well, sir, look at me. Now, on
your oath, remember, were you ever the editor of a certain thing
published every Wednesday, and called the 'Athenaeum,' or the 'Asinaeum,'
or some such name?"
Commencing with this insidious and self-damnatory question, the learned
counsel then proceeded, as artfully as he was able, through a series of
interrogatories calculated to injure the character, the respectable
character, of MacGrawler, and weaken his testimony in the eyes of the
jury. He succeeded in exciting in the audience that feeling of merriment
wherewith the vulgar are always so delighted to intersperse the dull
seriousness of hanging a human being. But though the jury themselves
grinned, they were not convinced. The Scotsman retired from the witness-
box "scotched," perhaps, in reputation, but not "killed" as to testimony.
It was just before this witness concluded, that Lord Mauleverer caused to
be handed to the judge a small slip of paper, containing merely these
words in pencil:--
DEAR BRANDON,--A dinner waits you at Mauleverer Park, only three
miles hence. Lord--and the Bishop of--meet you. Plenty of news
from London, and a letter about you, which I will show to no one
till we meet. Make haste and hang this poor fellow, that I may see
you the sooner; and it is bad for both of us to wait long for a
regular meal like dinner. I can't stay longer, it is so hot, and my
nerves were always susceptible.
Yours, MAULEVERER.
If you will come, give me a nod. You know my hour,--it is always
the same.
The judge, glancing over the note, inclined his head gravely to the earl,
who withdrew; and in one minute afterwards, a heavy and breathless
silence fell over the whole court. The prisoner was called upon for his
defence: it was singular what a different sensation to that existing in
their breasts the moment before crept thrillingly through the audience.
Hushed was every whisper, vanished was every smile that the late cross-
examination had excited; a sudden and chilling sense of the dread
importance of the tribunal made itself abruptly felt in the minds of
every one present.
Perhaps, as in the gloomy satire of Hogarth (the moral Mephistopheles of
painters), the close neighbourhood of pain to mirth made the former come
with the homelier shock to the heart; be that as it may, a freezing
anxiety, numbing the pulse and stirring through the air, made every man
in that various crowd feel a sympathy of awe with his neighbour,
excepting only the hardened judge and the hackneyed lawyers, and one
spectator,--an idiot who had thrust himself in with the general press,
and stood, within a few paces of the prisoner, grinning unconsciously,
and every now and then winking with a glassy eye at some one at a
distance, whose vigilance he had probably eluded.
The face and aspect, even the attitude, of the prisoner were well fitted
to heighten the effect which would naturally have been created by any man
under the same fearful doom. He stood at the very front of the bar, and
his tall and noble figure was drawn up to its full height; a glow of
excitement spread itself gradually over features at all times striking,
and lighted an eye naturally eloquent, and to which various emotions at
that time gave a more than commonly deep and impressive expression. He
began thus:--
"My lord, I have little to say, and I may at once relieve the anxiety of
my counsel, who now looks wistfully upon me, and add that that little
will scarcely embrace the object of defence. Why should I defend myself?
Why should I endeavour to protract a life that a few days, more or less,
will terminate, according to the ordinary calculations of chance? Such
as it is and has been, my life is vowed to the law, and the law will have
the offering. Could I escape from this indictment, I know that seven
others await me, and that by one or the other of these my conviction and
my sentence must come. Life may be sweet to all of us, my lord; and were
it possible that mine could be spared yet a while, that continued life
might make a better atonement for past actions than a death which, abrupt
and premature, calls for repentance while it forbids redress.
"But when the dark side of things is our only choice, it is useless to
regard the bright; idle to fix our eyes upon life, when death is at hand;
useless to speak of contrition, when we are denied its proof. It is the
usual policy of prisoners in my situation to address the feelings and
flatter the prejudices of the jury; to descant on the excellence of our
laws, while they endeavour to disarm them; to praise justice, yet demand
mercy; to talk of expecting acquittal, yet boast of submitting without a
murmur to condemnation. For me, to whom all earthly interests are dead,
this policy is idle and superfluous. I hesitate not to tell you, my lord
judge,--to proclaim to you, gentlemen of the jury,--that the laws which I
have broken through my life I despise in death! Your laws are but of two
classes; the one makes criminals, the other punishes them. I have
suffered by the one; I am about to perish by the other.
"My lord, it was the turn of a straw which made me what I am. Seven
years ago I was sent to the house of correction for an offence which I
did not commit. I went thither, a boy who had never infringed a single
law; I came forth, in a few weeks, a man who was prepared to break all
laws! Whence was this change? Was it my fault, or that of my
condemners? You had first wronged me by a punishment which I did not
deserve; you wronged me yet more deeply when (even had I been guilty of
the first offence) I was sentenced to herd with hardened offenders, and
graduates in vice and vice's methods of support. The laws themselves
caused me to break the laws: first, by implanting within me the goading
sense of injustice; secondly, by submitting me to the corruption of
example. Thus, I repeat,--and I trust my words will sink solemnly into
the hearts of all present,--your legislation made me what I am; and it
now destroys me, as it has destroyed thousands, for being what it made
me! But for this, the first aggression on me, I might have been what the
world terms honest,--I might have advanced to old age and a peaceful
grave through the harmless cheateries of trade or the honoured falsehoods
of a profession. Nay, I might have supported the laws which I have now
braved; like the counsel opposed to me, I might have grown sleek on the
vices of others, and advanced to honour by my ingenuity in hanging my
fellow-creatures! The canting and prejudging part of the Press has
affected to set before you the merits of 'honest ability,' or 'laborious
trade,' in opposition to my offences. What, I beseech you, are the props
of your 'honest' exertion,--the profits of 'trade'? Are there no bribes
to menials? Is there no adulteration of goods? Are the rich never duped
in the price they pay? Are the poor never wronged in the quality they
receive? Is there honesty in the bread you eat, in a single necessity
which clothes or feeds or warms you? Let those whom the law protects
consider it a protector: when did it ever protect me? When did it ever
protect the poor man? The government of a State, the institutions of
law, profess to provide for all those who 'obey.' Mark! a man hungers,--
do you feed him? He is naked,--do you clothe him? If not, you break
your covenant, you drive him back to the first law of nature, and you
hang him, not because he is guilty, but because you have left him naked
and starving! [A murmur among the mob below, with great difficulty
silenced.] One thing only I will add, and that not to move your mercy,--
no, nor to invest my fate with an idle and momentary interest,--but
because there are some persons in this world who have not known me as
the criminal who stands before you, and whom the tidings of my fate may
hereafter reach; and I would not have those persons view me in blacker
colours than I deserve. Among all the rumours, gentlemen, that have
reached you, through all the tales and fables kindled from my unhappy
notoriety and my approaching doom, I put it to you, if you have heard
that I have committed one sanguinary action or one ruinous and deliberate
fraud. You have heard that I have lived by the plunder of the rich,--I
do not deny the charge. From the grinding of the poor, the habitual
overreaching, or the systematic pilfering of my neighbours, my conscience
is as free as it is from the charge of cruelty and bloodshed. Those
errors I leave to honest mediocrity or virtuous exertion! You may
perhaps find, too, that my life has not passed through a career of
outrage without scattering some few benefits on the road. In destroying
me, it is true that you will have the consolation to think that among the
benefits you derive from my sentence will be the salutary encouragement
you give to other offenders to offend to the last, degree, and to divest
outrage of no single aggravation! But if this does not seem to you any
very powerful inducement, you may pause before you cut off from all
amendment a man who seems neither wholly hardened nor utterly beyond
atonement. My lord, my counsel would have wished to summon witnesses,--
some to bear testimony to redeeming points in my own character, others to
invalidate the oath of the witness against me,--a man whom I saved from
destruction in order that he might destroy me. I do not think either
necessary. The public Press has already said of me what little good does
not shock the truth; and had I not possessed something of those qualities
which society does not disesteem, you would not have beheld me here at
this hour! If I had saved myself as well as my companions, I should have
left this country, perhaps forever, and commenced a very different career
abroad. I committed offences; I eluded you; I committed what, in my
case, was an act of duty: I am seized, and I perish. But the weakness of
my body destroys me, not the strength of your malice. Had I" (and as the
prisoner spake, the haughty and rapid motion, the enlarging of the form,
produced by the passion of the moment, made impressively conspicuous to
all the remarkable power of his frame),--"had I but my wonted health, my
wonted command over these limbs and these veins, I would have asked no
friend, no ally, to favour my escape. I tell you, engines and guardians
of the law, that I would have mocked your chains and defied your walls,
as ye know that I have mocked and defied them before. But my blood
creeps now only in drops through its courses; and the heart that I had of
old stirs feebly and heavily within me." The prisoner paused a moment,
and resumed in an altered tone: "Leaving, then, my own character to the
ordeal of report, I cannot perhaps do better than leave to the same
criterion that of the witness against me. I will candidly own that under
other circumstances it might have been otherwise. I will candidly avow
that I might have then used such means as your law awards me to procure
an acquittal and to prolong my existence,--though in a new scene; as it
is, what matters the cause in which I receive my sentence? Nay, it is
even better to suffer by the first than to linger to the last. It is
some consolation not again to stand where I now stand; to go through the
humbling solemnities which I have this day endured; to see the smile of
some, and retort the frown of others; to wrestle with the anxiety of the
heart, and to depend on the caprice of the excited nerves. It is
something to feel one part of the drama of disgrace is over, and that I
may wait unmolested in my den until, for one time only, I am again the
butt of the unthinking and the monster of the crowd. My lord, I have now
done! To you, whom the law deems the prisoner's counsel,--to you,
gentlemen of the jury, to whom it has delegated his fate,--I leave the
chances of my life."
The prisoner ceased; but the same heavy silence which, save when broken
by one solitary murmur, had lain over the court during his speech, still
continued even for several moments after that deep and firm voice had
died on the ear. So different had been the defence of the prisoner from
that which had been expected; so assuredly did the more hackneyed part of
the audience, even as he had proceeded, imagine that by some artful turn
he would at length wind into the usual courses of defence,--that when his
unfaltering and almost stern accents paused, men were not prepared to
feel that his speech was finished, and the pause involuntarily jarred on
them as untimeous and abrupt. At length, when each of the audience
slowly awoke to the conviction that the prisoner had indeed concluded his
harangue, a movement, eloquent of feelings released from a suspense,
which had been perhaps the more earnest and the more blended with awe,
from the boldness and novelty of the words on which it hung, circled
round the court. The jurors looked confusedly at each other, but not one
of them spoke, even by a whisper; their feelings, which had been aroused
by the speech of the prisoner, had not from its shortness, its
singularity, and the haughty impolicy of its tone, been so far guided by
its course as to settle into any state of mind clearly favourable to him,
or the reverse; so that each man waited for his neighbour to speak first,
in order that he might find, as it were, in another, a kind of clew to
the indistinct and excited feelings which wanted utterance in himself.
The judge, who had been from the first attracted by the air and aspect of
the prisoner, had perhaps, notwithstanding the hardness of his mind, more
approvingly than any one present listened to the defence; for in the
scorn of the hollow institutions and the mock honesty of social life, so
defyingly manifested by the prisoner, Brandon recognized elements of mind
remarkably congenial to his own; and this sympathy was heightened by the
hardihood of physical nerve and moral intrepidity displayed by the
prisoner,--qualities which among men of a similar mould often form the
strongest motive of esteem, and sometimes (as we read of in the Imperial
Corsican and his chiefs) the only point of attraction! Brandon was,
however, soon recalled to his cold self by a murmur of vague applause
circling throughout the common crowd, among whom the general impulse
always manifests itself first, and to whom the opinions of the prisoner,
though but imperfectly understood, came more immediately home than they
did to the better and richer classes of the audience. Ever alive to the
decorums of form, Brandon instantly ordered silence in the court; and
when it was again restored, and it was fully understood that the
prisoner's defence had closed, the judge proceeded to sum up.
It is worthy of remark that many of the qualities of mind which seem most
unamiable in private life often conduce with a singular felicity to the
ends of public; and thus the stony firmness characteristic of Brandon was
a main cause which made him admirable as a judge,--for men in office err
no less from their feelings than their interests.
Glancing over his notes, the judge inclined himself to the jury, and
began with that silver ringing voice which particularly distinguished
Brandon's eloquence, and carried with it in high stations so majestic and
candid a tone of persuasion. He pointed out, with a clear brevity, the
various points of the evidence; he dwelt for a moment on the attempt to
cast disrepute upon the testimony of MacGrawler, but called a proper
attention to the fact that the attempt had been unsupported by witnesses
or proof. As he proceeded, the impression made by the prisoner on the
minds of the jury slowly melted away; and perhaps, so much do men soften
when they behold clearly the face of a fellow-man dependent on them for
life, it acted disadvantageously on the interests of Clifford, that
during the summing up he leaned back in the dock, and prevented his
countenance from being seen. When the evidence had been gone through,
the judge concluded thus:--
"The prisoner, who in his defence (on the principles and opinions of
which I now forbear to comment) certainly exhibited the signs of a
superior education, and a high though perverted ability, has alluded to
the reports circulated by the public Press, and leaned some little stress
on the various anecdotes tending to his advantage, which he supposes have
reached your ears. I am by no means willing that the prisoner should be
deprived of whatever benefit may be derivable from such a source; but it
is not in this place, nor at this moment, that it can avail him. All you
have to consider is the evidence before you. All on which you have to
decide is, whether the prisoner be or be not guilty of the robbery of
which he is charged. You must not waste a thought on what redeems or
heightens a supposed crime,--you must only decide on the crime itself.
Put away from your minds, I beseech you, all that interferes with the
main case. Put away also from your motives of decision all forethought
of other possible indictments to which the prisoner has alluded, but with
which you are necessarily unacquainted. If you doubt the evidence,
whether of one witness or of all, the prisoner must receive from you the
benefit of that doubt. If not, you are sworn to a solemn oath, which
ordains you to forego all minor considerations,--which compels you to
watch narrowly that you be not influenced by the infirmities natural to
us all, but criminal in you, to lean towards the side of a mercy that
would be rendered by your oath a perjury to God, and by your duty as
impartial citizens a treason to your country. I dismiss you to the grave
consideration of the important case you have heard; and I trust that He
to whom all hearts are open and all secrets are known, will grant you the
temper and the judgment to form a right decision!"
There was in the majestic aspect and thrilling voice of Brandon something
which made the commonest form of words solemn and impressive; and the
hypocrite, aware of this felicity of manner, generally, as now, added
weight to his concluding words by a religious allusion or a Scriptural
phraseology. He ceased; and the jury, recovering the effect of his
adjuration, consulted for a moment among themselves. The foreman then,
addressing the court on behalf of his fellow-jurors, requested leave to
retire for deliberation. An attendant bailiff being sworn in, we read in
the journals of the day, which noted the divisions of time with that
customary scrupulosity rendered terrible by the reflection how soon all
time and seasons may perish for the hero of the scene, that "it was at
twenty-five minutes to two that the jury withdrew."
Perhaps in the whole course of a criminal trial there is no period more
awful than that occupied by the deliberation of the jury. In the present
case the prisoner, as if acutely sensible of his situation, remained in
the rear of the dock, and buried his face in his hands. They who stood
near him observed, however, that his breast did not seem to swell with
the convulsive emotion customary to persons in his state, and that not
even a sigh or agitated movement escaped him. The jury had been absent
about twenty minutes, when a confused noise was heard in the court. The
face of the judge turned in commanding severity towards the quarter
whence it proceeded. He perceived a man of a coarse garb and mean
appearance endeavouring rudely and violently to push his way through the
crowd towards the bench, and at the same instant he saw one of the
officers of the court approaching the disturber of its tranquillity with
no friendly intent. The man, aware of the purpose of the constable,
exclaimed with great vehemence, "I vill give this to my lord the judge,
blow me if I von't!" and as he spoke he raised high above his head a
soiled scrap of paper folded awkwardly in the shape of a letter. The
instant Brandon's eye caught the rugged features of the intrusive
stranger, he motioned with rather less than his usual slowness of gesture
to one of his official satellites. "Bring me that paper instantly!" he
whispered.
The officer bowed and obeyed. The man, who seemed a little intoxicated,
gave it with a look of ludicrous triumph and self-importance.
"Stand avay, man!" he added to the constable, who now laid hand on his
collar. "You'll see vot the judge says to that 'ere bit of paper; and so
vill the prisoner, poor fellow!"
This scene, so unworthy the dignity of the court, attracted the notice
and (immediately around the intruder) the merriment of the crowd; and
many an eye was directed towards Brandon, as with calm gravity he opened
the note and glanced over the contents. In a large school-boy hand-it
was the hand of Long Ned--were written these few words:
MY LORD JUDGE,--I make bold to beg you will do all you can for the
prisoner at the barre, as he is no other than the "Paul" I spoke to
your Worship about. You know what I mean.
DUMMIE DUNNAKER.
As he read this note, the judge's head was observed to droop suddenly, as
if by a sickness or a spasm; but he recovered himself instantly, and
whispering the officer who brought him the note, said, "See that that
madman be immediately removed from the court, and lock him up alone. He
is so deranged as to be dangerous!"
The officer lost not a moment in seeing the order executed. Three stout
constables dragged the astounded Dummie from the court in an instant, yet
the more ruthlessly for his ejaculating,--
"Eh, sirs, what's this? I tells you I have saved the judge's hown flesh
and blood! Vy, now, gently, there; you'll smart for this, my fine
fellow! Never you mind, Paul, my 'arty; I 'se done you a pure good--"
"Silence!" proclaimed the voice of the judge; and that voice came forth
with so commanding a tone of power that it awed Dummie, despite his
intoxication. In a moment more, and ere he had time to recover, he was
without the court. During this strange hubbub, which nevertheless
scarcely lasted above two or three minutes, the prisoner had not once
lifted his head, nor appeared aroused in any manner from his revery; and
scarcely had the intruder been withdrawn before the jury returned.
The verdict was, as all had foreseen, "Guilty;" but it was coupled with a
strong recommendation to mercy.
The prisoner was then asked, in the usual form, whether he had to say
anything why sentence of death should not be passed against him.
As these dread words struck upon his ear, slowly the prisoner rose. He
directed first towards the jury a brief and keen glance, and his eyes
then rested full, and with a stern significance, on the face of his
judge.
"My lord," he began, "I have but one reason to advance against the
sentence of the law. If you have interest to prevent or mitigate it,
that reason will, I think, suffice to enlist you on my behalf. I said
that the first cause of those offences against the law which brings me to
this bar was the committing me to prison on a charge of which I was
wholly innocent! My lord judge, you were the man who accused me of that
charge, and subjected me to that imprisonment! Look at me well, my lord,
and you may trace in the countenance of the hardened felon you are about
to adjudge to death the features of a boy whom, some seven years ago, you
accused before a London magistrate of the theft of your watch. On the
oath of a man who has one step on the threshold of death, the accusation
was unjust. And, fit minister of the laws you represent! you, who will
now pass my doom,--You were the cause of my crimes! My lord, I have
done. I am ready to add another to the long and dark list of victims who
are first polluted and then sacrificed by the blindness and the injustice
of human codes!"
While Clifford spoke, every eye turned from him to the judge, and every
one was appalled by the ghastly and fearful change which had fallen over
Brandon's face. Men said, afterwards, that they saw written there, in
terrible distinctness, the characters of death; and there certainly
seemed something awful and preternatural in the bloodless and haggard
calmness of his proud features. Yet his eye did not quail, nor the
muscles of his lip quiver; and with even more than his wonted loftiness,
he met the regard of the prisoner. But, as alone conspicuous throughout
the motionless and breathless crowd the judge and criminal gazed upon
each other, and as the eyes of the spectators wandered on each, a
thrilling and electric impression of a powerful likeness between the
doomed and the doomer, for the first time in the trial, struck upon the
audience, and increased, though they scarcely knew why, the sensation of
pain and dread which the prisoner's last words excited. Perhaps it might
have chiefly arisen from a common expression of fierce emotion conquered
by an iron and stern character of mind; or perhaps, now that the ashy
paleness of exhaustion had succeeded the excited flush on the prisoner's
face, the similarity of complexion thus obtained made the likeness more
obvious than before; or perhaps the spectators had not hitherto fixed so
searching, or, if we may so speak, so alternating a gaze upon the two.
However that be, the resemblance between the men, placed as they were in
such widely different circumstances,--that resemblance which, as we have
hinted, had at certain moments occurred startlingly to Lucy,--was plain
and unavoidably striking: the same the dark hue of their complexions; the
same the haughty and Roman outline of their faces; the same the height of
the forehead; the same even a displeasing and sarcastic rigidity of
mouth, which made the most conspicuous feature in Brandon, and which was
the only point that deteriorated from the singular beauty of Clifford.
But, above all, the same inflexible, defying, stubborn spirit, though in
Brandon it assumed the stately cast of majesty, and in Clifford it seemed
the desperate sternness of the bravo, stamped itself in both. Though
Clifford ceased, he did not resume his seat, but stood in the same
attitude as that in which he had reversed the order of things, and merged
the petitioner in the accuser; and Brandon himself, without speaking or
moving, continued still to survey him; so, with erect fronts and marble
countenances, in which what was defying and resolute did not altogether
quell the mortal leaven of pain and dread, they looked as might have
looked the two men in the Eastern story who had the power of gazing each
other unto death.
What at that moment was raging in Brandon's heart, it is in vain to
guess. He doubted not for a moment that he beheld before him his long
lost, his anxiously demanded son! Every fibre, every corner of his
complex and gloomy soul, that certainly reached, and blasted with a
hideous and irresistible glare. The earliest, perhaps the strongest,
though often the least acknowledged principle of his mind was the desire
to rebuild the fallen honours of his house; its last scion he now beheld
before him, covered with the darkest ignominies of the law! He had
coveted worldly honours; he beheld their legitimate successor in a
convicted felon! He had garnered the few affections he had spared from
the objects of pride and ambition, in his son. That son he was about to
adjudge to the gibbet and the hangman! Of late he had increased the
hopes of regaining his lost treasure, even to an exultant certainty. Lo!
the hopes were accomplished! How? With these thoughts warring, in what
manner we dare not even by an epithet express, within him, we may cast
one hasty glance on the horror of aggravation they endured, when he heard
the prisoner accuse Him as the cause of his present doom, and felt
himself at once the murderer and the judge of his son!
Minutes had elapsed since the voice of the prisoner ceased; and Brandon
now drew forth the black cap. As he placed it slowly over his brows, the
increasing and corpse-like whiteness of his face became more glaringly
visible, by the contrast which this dread head-gear presented. Twice as
he essayed to speak his voice failed him, and an indistinct murmur came
forth from his hueless lips, and died away like a fitful and feeble wind.
But with the third effort the resolution and long self-tyranny of the man
conquered, and his voice went clear and unfaltering through the crowd,
although the severe sweetness of its wonted tones was gone, and it
sounded strange and hollow on the ears that drank it.
"Prisoner at the bar! it has become my duty to announce to you the close
of your mortal career. You have been accused of a daring robbery, and
after an impartial trial a jury of your countrymen and the laws of your
country have decided against you. The recommendation to mercy" (here,
only throughout his speech, Brandon gasped convulsively for breath) "so
humanely added by the jury, shall be forwarded to the supreme power; but
I cannot flatter you with much hope of its success." (The lawyers looked
with some surprise at each other; they had expected a far more
unqualified mandate, to abjure all hope from the jury's recommendation.)
"Prisoner, for the opinions you have expressed, you are now only
answerable to your God; I forbear to arraign them. For the charge you
have made against me, whether true or false, and for the anguish it has
given me, may you find pardon at another tribunal! It remains for me
only--under a reserve too slight, as I have said, to afford you a fair
promise of hope--only to--to" (all eyes were on Brandon; he felt it,
exerted himself for a last effort, and proceeded)--"to pronounce on you
the sharp sentence of the law! It is, that you be taken back to the
prison whence you came, and thence (when the supreme authority shall
appoint) to the place of execution, to be there hanged by the neck till
you are dead; and the Lord God Almighty have mercy on your soul!"
With this address concluded that eventful trial; and while the crowd, in
rushing and noisy tumult, bore towards the door, Brandon, concealing to
the last with a Spartan bravery the anguish which was gnawing at his
entrails, retired from the awful pageant. For the next half-hour he was
locked up with the strange intruder on the proceedings of the court. At
the end of that time the stranger was dismissed; and in about double the
same period Brandon's servant re-admitted him, accompanied by another
man, with a slouched hat and in a carman's frock. The reader need not be
told that the new comer was the friendly Ned, whose testimony was indeed
a valuable corroborative to Dummie's, and whose regard for Clifford,
aided by an appetite for rewards, had induced him to venture to the town
of -----, although he tarried concealed in a safe suburb, until reassured
by a written promise from Brandon of safety to his person, and a sum for
which we might almost doubt whether he would not have consented (so long
had he been mistaking means for an end) to be hanged himself. Brandon
listened to the details of these confederates; and when they had
finished, he addressed them thus: "I have heard you, and am convinced you
are liars and impostors. There is the money I promised you" (throwing
down a pocket-book),--"take it; and, hark you, if ever you dare whisper,
ay, but a breath of the atrocious lie you have now forged, be sure I will
have you dragged from the recess or nook of infamy in which you may hide
your heads, and hanged for the crimes you have already committed. I am
not the man to break my word. Begone! quit this town instantly! If in
two hours hence you are found here, your blood be on your own heads!
Begone, I say!"
These words, aided by a countenance well adapted at all times to
expressions of a menacing and ruthless character, at once astounded and
appalled the accomplices. They left the room in hasty confusion; and
Brandon, now alone, walked with uneven steps (the alarming weakness and
vacillation of which he did not himself feel) to and fro the apartment.
The hell of his breast was stamped upon his features, but he uttered only
one thought aloud,--
"I may,--yes, yes,--I may yet conceal this disgrace to my name!"
His servant tapped at the door to say that the carriage was ready, and
that Lord Mauleverer had bid him remind his master that they dined
punctually at the hour appointed.
"I am coming!" said Brandon, with a slow and startling emphasis on each
word. But he first sat down and wrote a letter to the official quarter,
strongly aiding the recommendation of the Jury; and we may conceive how
pride clung to him to the last, when he urged the substitution for death
of transportation for life! As soon as he had sealed this letter, he
summoned an express, gave his orders coolly and distinctly, and attempted
with his usual stateliness of step to walk through a long passage which
led to the outer door. He found himself fail. "Come hither," he said to
his servant, "give me your arm!"
All Brandon's domestics, save the one left with Lucy, stood in awe of
him; and it was with some hesitation that his servant ventured to inquire
if his master felt well.
Brandon looked at him, but made no reply. He entered his carriage with
slight difficulty, and telling the coachman to drive as fast as possible,
pulled down (a general custom with him) all the blinds of the windows.
Meanwhile Lord Mauleverer, with six friends, was impatiently awaiting the
arrival of the seventh guest.
"Our August friend tarries!" quoth the Bishop of -------, with his hands
folded across his capacious stomach. "I fear the turbot your lordship
spoke of may not be the better for the length of the trial."
"Poor fellow!" said the Earl of --------, slightly yawning.
"Whom do you mean?" asked Lord Mauleverer, with a smile,--"the bishop,
the judge, or the turbot?"
"Not one of the three, Mauleverer,--I spoke of the prisoner."
"Ah, the fine dog! I forgot him," said Mauleverer. "Really, now you
mention him, I must confess that he inspires me with great compassion;
but, indeed, it is very wrong in him to keep the judge so long!"
"Those hardened wretches have such a great deal to say," mumbled the
bishop, sourly.
"True!" said Mauleverer; "a religious rogue would have had some bowels
for the state of the church esurient."
"Is it really true, Mauleverer," asked the Earl of ------, "that Brandon
is to succeed?"
"So I hear," said Mauleverer. "Heavens, how hungry I am!"
A groan from the bishop echoed the complaint.
"I suppose it would be against all decorum to sit down to dinner without
him?" said Lord --------.
"Why, really, I fear so," returned Mauleverer. "But our health--our
health is at stake; we will only wait five minutes more. By Jove,
there's the carriage! I beg your pardon for my heathen oath, my lord
bishop."
"I forgive you!" said the good bishop, smiling.
The party thus engaged in colloquy were stationed at a window opening on
the gravel road, along which the judge's carriage was now seen rapidly
approaching; this window was but a few yards from the porch, and had been
partially opened for the better reconnoitring the approach of the
expected guest.
"He keeps the blinds down still! Absence of mind, or shame at
unpunctuality,--which is the cause, Mauleverer?" said one of the party.
"Not shame, I fear!" answered Mauleverer. "Even the indecent immorality
of delaying our dinner could scarcely bring a blush to the parchment skin
of my learned friend."
Here the carriage stopped at the porch; the carriage door was opened.
"There seems a strange delay," said Mauleverer, peevishly. "Why does not
he get out?"
As he spoke, a murmur among the attendants, who appeared somewhat
strangely to crowd around the carriage, smote the ears of the party.
"What do they say,--what?" said Mauleverer, putting his hand to his ear.
The bishop answered hastily; and Mauleverer, as he heard the reply,
forgot for once his susceptibility to cold, and hurried out to the
carriage door. His guests followed.
They found Brandon leaning against the farther corner of the carriage,--a
corpse. One hand held the check-string, as if he had endeavoured
involuntarily but ineffectually to pull it. The right side of his face
was partially distorted, as by convulsion or paralysis; but not
sufficiently so to destroy that remarkable expression of loftiness and
severity which had characterized the features in life. At the same time
the distortion which had drawn up on one side the muscles of the mouth
had deepened into a startling broadness the half sneer of derision that
usually lurked around the lower part of his face. Thus unwitnessed and
abrupt had been the disunion of the clay and spirit of a man who, if he
passed through life a bold, scheming, stubborn, unwavering hypocrite, was
not without something high even amidst his baseness, his selfishness, and
his vices; who seemed less to have loved sin than by some strange
perversion of reason to have disdained virtue, and who, by a solemn and
awful suddenness of fate (for who shall venture to indicate the judgment
of the arch and unseen Providence, even when it appears to mortal eye the
least obscured?), won the dreams, the objects, the triumphs of hope, to
be blasted by them at the moment of acquisition!