Having given vent to my resentment, I left Mr. Spurrel motionless, and
unable to utter a word. Gines and his companion attended me. It is
unnecessary to repeat all the insolence of this man. He alternately
triumphed in the completion of his revenge, and regretted the loss of
the reward to the shrivelled old curmudgeon we had just quitted, whom
however he swore he would cheat of it by one means or another. He
claimed to himself the ingenuity of having devised the halfpenny legend,
the thought of which was all his own, and was an expedient that was
impossible to fail. There was neither law nor justice, he said, to be
had, if Hunks who had done nothing were permitted to pocket the cash,
and his merit were left undistinguished and pennyless.
I paid but little attention to his story. It struck upon my sense, and I
was able to recollect it at my nearest leisure, though I thought not of
it at the time. For the present I was busily employed, reflecting on my
new situation, and the conduct to be observed in it. The thought of
suicide had twice, in moments of uncommon despair, suggested itself to
my mind; but it was far from my habitual meditations. At present, and in
all cases where death was immediately threatened me from the injustice
of others, I felt myself disposed to contend to the last.
My prospects were indeed sufficiently gloomy and discouraging. How much
labour had I exerted, first to extricate myself from prison, and next to
evade the diligence of my pursuers; and the result of all, to be brought
back to the point from which I began! I had gained fame indeed, the
miserable fame to have my story bawled forth by hawkers and
ballad-mongers, to have my praises as an active and enterprising villain
celebrated among footmen and chambermaids; but I was neither an
Erostratus nor an Alexander, to die contented with that species of
eulogium. With respect to all that was solid, what chance could I find
in new exertions of a similar nature? Never was a human creature pursued
by enemies more inventive or envenomed. I could have small hope that
they would ever cease their persecution, or that my future attempts
would be crowned with a more desirable issue.
They were considerations like these that dictated my resolution. My mind
had been gradually weaning from Mr. Falkland, till its feeling rose to
something like abhorrence. I had long cherished a reverence for him,
which not even animosity and subornation on his part could utterly
destroy. But I now ascribed a character so inhumanly sanguinary to his
mind; I saw something so fiend-like in the thus hunting me round the
world, and determining to be satisfied with nothing less than my blood,
while at the same time he knew my innocence, my indisposition to
mischief, nay, I might add, my virtues; that henceforth I trampled
reverence and the recollection of former esteem under my feet. I lost
all regard to his intellectual greatness, and all pity for the agonies
of his soul. I also would abjure forbearance. I would show myself bitter
and inflexible as he had done. Was it wise in him to drive me into
extremity and madness? Had he no fears for his own secret and atrocious
offences?
I had been obliged to spend the remainder of the night upon which I had
been apprehended, in prison. During the interval I had thrown off every
vestige of disguise, and appeared the next morning in my own person. I
was of course easily identified; and, this being the whole with which
the magistrates before whom I now stood thought themselves concerned,
they were proceeding to make out an order for my being conducted back to
my own county. I suspended the despatch of this measure by observing
that I had something to disclose. This is an overture to which men
appointed for the administration of criminal justice never fail to
attend.
I went before the magistrates, to whose office Gines and his comrade
conducted me, fully determined to publish those astonishing secrets of
which I had hitherto been the faithful depository; and, once for all, to
turn the tables upon my accuser. It was time that the real criminal
should be the sufferer, and not that innocence should for ever labour
under the oppression of guilt.
I said that "I had always protested my innocence, and must now repeat
the protest."
"In that case," retorted the senior magistrate abruptly, "what can you
have to disclose? If you are innocent, that is no business of ours! We
act officially."
"I always declared," continued I, "that I was the perpetrator of no
guilt, but that the guilt wholly belonged to my accuser. He privately
conveyed these effects among my property, and then charged me with the
robbery. I now declare more than that, that this man is a murderer, that
I detected his criminality, and that, for that reason, he is determined
to deprive me of life. I presume, gentlemen, that you do consider it as
your business to take this declaration. I am persuaded you will be by no
means disposed, actively or passively, to contribute to the atrocious
injustice under which I suffer, to the imprisonment and condemnation of
an innocent man, in order that a murderer may go free. I suppressed this
story as long as I could. I was extremely averse to be the author of the
unhappiness or the death of a human being. But all patience and
submission have their limits."
"Give me leave, sir," rejoined the magistrate, with an air of affected
moderation, "to ask you two questions. Were you any way aiding,
abetting, or contributing to this murder?"
"No."
"And pray, sir, who is this Mr. Falkland? and what may have been the
nature of your connection with him?"
"Mr. Falkland is a gentleman of six thousand per annum. I lived with him
as his secretary."
"In other words, you were his servant?"
"As you please."
"Very well, sir; that is quite enough for me. First, I have to tell you,
as a magistrate, that I can have nothing to do with your declaration. If
you had been concerned in the murder you talk of, that would alter the
case. But it is out of all reasonable rule for a magistrate to take an
information from a felon, except against his accomplices. Next, I think
it right to observe to you, in my own proper person, that you appear to
me to be the most impudent rascal I ever saw. Why, are you such an ass
as to suppose, that the sort of story you have been telling, can be of
any service to you, either here or at the assizes, or any where else? A
fine time of it indeed it would be, if, when gentlemen of six thousand a
year take up their servants for robbing them, those servants could trump
up such accusations as these, and could get any magistrate or court of
justice to listen to them! Whether or no the felony with which you stand
charged would have brought you to the gallows, I will not pretend to
say: but I am sure this story will. There would be a speedy end to all
order and good government, if fellows that trample upon ranks and
distinctions in this atrocious sort were upon any consideration suffered
to get off."
"And do you refuse, sir, to attend to the particulars of the charge I
allege?"
"Yes, sir, I do.--But, if I did not, pray what witnesses have you of the
murder?"
This question staggered me.
"None. But I believe I can make out a circumstantial proof, of a nature
to force attention from the most indifferent hearer."
"So I thought.--Officers, take him from the bar!"
Such was the success of this ultimate resort on my part, upon which I
had built with such undoubting confidence. Till now, I had conceived
that the unfavourable situation in which I was placed was prolonged by
my own forbearance; and I had determined to endure all that human nature
could support, rather than have recourse to this extreme recrimination.
That idea secretly consoled me under all my calamities: it was a
voluntary sacrifice, and was cheerfully made. I thought myself allied to
the army of martyrs and confessors; I applauded my fortitude and
self-denial; and I pleased myself with the idea, that I had the power,
though I hoped never to employ it, by an unrelenting display of my
resources, to put an end at once to my sufferings and persecutions.
And this at last was the justice of mankind! A man, under certain
circumstances, shall not be heard in the detection of a crime, because
he has not been a participator of it! The story of a flagitious murder
shall be listened to with indifference, while an innocent man is hunted,
like a wild beast, to the furthest corners of the earth! Six thousand a
year shall protect a man from accusation; and the validity of an
impeachment shall be superseded, because the author of it is a servant!
I was conducted back to the very prison from which a few months before I
had made my escape. With a bursting heart I entered those walls,
compelled to feel that all my more than Herculean labours served for my
own torture, and for no other end. Since my escape from prison I had
acquired some knowledge of the world; I had learned by bitter
experience, by how many links society had a hold upon me, and how
closely the snares of despotism beset me. I no longer beheld the world,
as my youthful fancy had once induced me to do, as a scene in which to
hide or to appear, and to exhibit the freaks of a wanton vivacity. I saw
my whole species as ready, in one mode or other, to be made the
instruments of the tyrant. Hope died away in the bottom of my heart.
Shut up for the first night in my dungeon, I was seized at intervals
with temporary frenzy. From time to time, I rent the universal silence
with the roarings of unsupportable despair. But this was a transient
distraction. I soon returned to the sober recollection of myself and my
miseries.
My prospects were more gloomy, and my situation apparently more
irremediable, than ever. I was exposed again, if that were of any
account, to the insolence and tyranny that are uniformly exercised
within those walls. Why should I repeat the loathsome tale of all that
was endured by me, and is endured by every man who is unhappy enough to
fall under the government of these consecrated ministers of national
jurisprudence? The sufferings I had already experienced, my anxieties,
my flight, the perpetual expectation of being discovered, worse than the
discovery itself, would perhaps have been enough to satisfy the most
insensible individual, in the court of his own conscience, if I had even
been the felon I was pretended to be. But the law has neither eyes, nor
ears, nor bowels of humanity; and it turns into marble the hearts of all
those that are nursed in its principles.
I however once more recovered my spirit of determination. I resolved
that, while I had life, I would never be deserted by this spirit.
Oppressed, annihilated I might be; but, if I died, I would die
resisting. What use, what advantage, what pleasurable sentiment, could
arise from a tame surrender? There is no man that is ignorant, that to
humble yourself at the feet of the law is a bootless task; in her courts
there is no room for amendment and reformation.
My fortitude may to some persons appear above the standard of human
nature. But if I draw back the veil from my heart they will readily
confess their mistake. My heart bled at every pore. My resolution was
not the calm sentiment of philosophy and reason. It was a gloomy and
desperate purpose: the creature, not of hope, but of a mind austerely
held to its design, that felt, as it were, satisfied with the naked
effort, and prepared to give success or miscarriage to the winds. It was
to this miserable condition, which might awaken sympathy in the most
hardened bosom, that Mr. Falkland had reduced me.
In the mean time, strange as it may seem, here, in prison, subject to
innumerable hardships, and in the assured expectation of a sentence of
death, I recovered my health. I ascribe this to the state of my mind,
which was now changed, from perpetual anxiety, terror, and alarm, the
too frequent inmates of a prison, but which I upon this occasion did not
seem to bring along with me, to a desperate firmness.
I anticipated the event of my trial. I determined once more to escape
from my prison; nor did I doubt of my ability to effect at least this
first step towards my future preservation. The assizes however were
near, and there were certain considerations, unnecessary to be detailed,
that persuaded me there might be benefit in waiting till my trial should
actually be terminated, before I made my attempt.
It stood upon the list as one of the latest to be brought forward. I was
therefore extremely surprised to find it called out of its order, early
on the morning of the second day. But, if this were unexpected, how
much greater was my astonishment, when my prosecutor was called, to
find neither Mr. Falkland, nor Mr. Forester, nor a single individual of
any description, appear against me! The recognizances into which my
prosecutors had entered were declared to be forfeited; and I was
dismissed without further impediment from the bar.
The effect which this incredible reverse produced upon my mind it is
impossible to express. I, who had come to that bar with the sentence of
death already in idea ringing in my ears, to be told that I was free to
transport myself whithersoever I pleased! Was it for this that I had
broken through so many locks and bolts, and the adamantine walls of my
prison; that I had passed so many anxious days, and sleepless,
spectre-haunted nights; that I had racked my invention for expedients of
evasion and concealment; that my mind had been roused to an energy of
which I could scarcely have believed it capable; that my existence had
been enthralled to an ever-living torment, such as I could scarcely have
supposed it in man to endure? Great God! what is man? Is he thus blind
to the future, thus totally unsuspecting of what is to occur in the next
moment of his existence? I have somewhere read, that heaven in mercy
hides from us the future incidents of our life. My own experience does
not well accord with this assertion. In this instance at least I should
have been saved from insupportable labour and undescribable anguish,
could I have foreseen the catastrophe of this most interesting
transaction.