SIR JOHN GETS ANGRY
It was remarked that Sir John never looked at the prisoner all the time
he was giving evidence. He was, however, perfectly at home before his
brother magistrates, and showed none of that nervousness and restraint
which ordinary mortals feel in similar circumstances. The story he told
was simple and straightforward. He had not an enemy in the parish, as
far as he knew, except the prisoner, who had made no secret of his
hatred and of his desire for revenge.
He admitted that fortune had been unkind to the elder Penlogan, but in
the chances of life it was inevitable that some should come out at the
bottom. As the ground landlord, he had acted with every consideration,
and had given David Penlogan plenty of time to realise to the best
advantage. Hence he felt quite sure that their worships would acquit him
of any intention of being either harsh or unjust.
A general nodding of heads on the part of the magistrates satisfied him
on that point.
He then went on to tell the story of the prisoner's visit to Hamblyn
Manor, and how he had the effrontery to charge him with killing his
father.
"Gentlemen, he had murder in his eyes when he came to see me; but,
fortunately, he had no opportunity of doing me harm."
Sir John waved his right hand dramatically when he uttered these words,
the effect of which--in the language of the local reporter--was
"Sensation in Court."
He then went on to describe the events of the afternoon when the shot
was fired.
He was not likely to be mistaken in the prisoner's face. He had no wish
to take an oath that it was the prisoner, but he was morally certain
that it was he.
Then followed a good deal of collateral evidence that the police had
gathered up and spliced together. The prisoner had been seen by a number
of people that afternoon with a gun under his arm. He wore a cloth cap,
such as Sir John had described. He had been seen crossing Polskiddy
Downs, which, as everyone knew, abutted on Treliskey Plantation. He had
expressed himself very bitterly on several occasions respecting Sir
John, and had talked vaguely about being quits with him some day.
Footprints near the hedge behind which the shot was fired tallied with a
pair of boots in the prisoner's house; also, the prisoner returned to
his own house within an hour of the shot being fired.
The magistrates looked more and more grave as the chain of evidence
lengthened out, though most of them had quite made up their minds before
the proceedings began.
Ralph, in spite of all advice to the contrary, pleaded "not guilty," and
being allowed to speak in his own defence, availed himself of the
opportunity.
"Why should I want to kill the squire?" he said, in a tone of scorn.
"God will punish him soon enough." (More sensation in court.) "That he
has behaved badly to us," Ralph went on, "no unprejudiced person will
deny, though you, being landowners yourselves, approve. I don't deny
that he acted within his legal rights. So did Shylock. But had he the
heart of a savage, to say nothing of a Christian, he could not have
acted more oppressively. I told him that he killed my father--and I
repeat it to-day!" (Renewed sensation.) "I did go out shooting on that
day in question. My gun licence has not expired yet. Mr. Hooker told me
I could shoot over Dingley Bottom any time I liked, and I was glad of
the opportunity, for our larder was not overstocked, as you may imagine.
I crossed Polskiddy Downs, I admit--it is the one bit of common land
that you gentry have not filched from us----" (Profound sensation,
during which the chairman protested that if prisoner did not keep
himself strictly to his defence, the privilege of speaking further would
be taken from him.) "As you will, gentlemen," Ralph said indifferently.
"I do not expect justice or a fair hearing in a court of this kind."
"Order, order!" shouted the magistrates' clerk. The chairman intimated,
after a few moments of silence, that the prisoner might proceed if he
would promise not to insult the Bench.
"I have very little more to add," Ralph went on, quite calmly.
"Unfortunately, no one saw me in Dingley Bottom, and yet I went straight
there from home, and came straight back again. I did not go within half
a mile of Treliskey Plantation. Moreover, if I wanted to meet Sir John,
I should go to his house, as I have done more than once, and not wander
through miles of wood on the off-chance of meeting him. Nor is that all.
If I wanted to kill the gentleman, I should have killed him, and not
sprinkled a few shots on his coat sleeve. I have two barrels to my gun,
and I do not often miss what I aim at. If I had intended to murder him,
do you think I should have been such a fool as to first show my face and
then let him escape? I went out in broad daylight; I returned in broad
daylight. Is it conceivable that if I intended to shoot the gentleman I
should have been seen carrying a gun? or that, having done the deed, I
should have returned in sight of all the village? It has been suggested
that, having been caught trespassing in the plantation, I was seized
with a sudden desire for revenge. If that had been the case, do you
think I would have half completed the task? As all the parish can
testify, I am no indifferent shot. If I was alone in the plantation with
him, and wanted to kill him, I could have done it. But, gentlemen, I
swear before God I was not in the plantation, nor even near it. I have
never lifted a finger against this man, nor would I do it if I had the
opportunity. That he has treated me and mine with cruel oppression is
common knowledge. But vengeance is God's, and I have no desire, nor ever
had any desire, to take the law into my own hands."
Many opinions were expressed afterwards as to the effect produced by
Ralph's speech, but the general impression was that he did no good for
himself. The Bench was by no means impressed in his favour. They
detected a socialistic flavour in some of the things he flung at them.
He had not been respectful--indeed, in plain English, he had been
insulting. They would not have tolerated him, only he was on his trial,
and they were anxious to avoid any suspicion of unfairness. They
flattered themselves afterwards that they displayed a spirit of great
Christian forbearance, and as they had almost to a man made up their
minds beforehand, they had no hesitation in committing him to take his
trial at the next Assizes on the charge of shooting at Sir John Hamblyn
with intent to do him grievous bodily harm.
The question of bail was not mentioned, and Ralph went back to his cell
to meditate once more on the tender mercies of the rich and the justice
of the strong.
Sir John returned to his home very well pleased with the result of the
morning's proceedings. The decision of the magistrates seemed a
compliment to himself. To make it an Assize case indicated a due
appreciation of his position and importance.
Also he was pleased because he believed the decision would completely
destroy any romantic attachment that Dorothy might cherish for the
accused. It had come to his knowledge that at the very time Mr.
Tregonning was at his bedside taking his depositions, she was at the
cottage of the Penlogans interviewing the accused himself. This
knowledge had made Sir John more angry than he had been for a very long
time. It was not merely the indiscretion that angered him, it was what
the indiscretion implied.
However, he believed that the decision of the magistrates would put an
end to all this nonsense, and that in the revulsion of feeling Lord
Probus would again have his opportunity.
Dorothy asked him the result of the trial on his return, and when he
told her she made no reply whatever. Neither did he enlarge on the
matter. He concluded that it would be the wiser policy to let the simple
facts of the case make their own impression. Women, he knew, were
proverbially stubborn, and not always reasonable, while the more they
were opposed, the more doggedly determined they became.
Such fears and suspicions as he had he wisely kept to himself. Dorothy
was only a foolish girl, who would grow wiser with time. The teaching of
experience and the pressure of circumstances would in the end, he
believed, compel her to go the way he wished her to take. In the
meanwhile, his cue was to watch and wait, and not too obtrusively show
his hand.
Dorothy was as reticent on the matter as her father. That she had become
keenly interested in the fate of Ralph Penlogan she did not attempt to
hide from herself. That a cruel wrong had been done to him she honestly
believed. That her sympathies went out to him in his undeserved
sufferings was a fact she had no wish to dispute, and that in some way
he had influenced her in her decision not to marry Lord Probus was also,
to her own mind, too patent to be contested.
But she saw no danger in any of these simple facts. The idea of being in
love with a small working farmer's son did not enter her head. She
belonged to a different world socially, and such a proposition would not
occur to her. But social position could not prevent her admiring good
looks, and physical strength, and manly ways, and a generous
disposition, when they were brought under her notice.
On the day following the decision of the magistrates she read a full
account of the proceedings in the local newspaper, and for the first
time was made aware of the fact that it was not Lord St. Goram who had
so unmercifully oppressed the Penlogans, but her own father.
For a few minutes she felt quite stunned.
It had never occurred to her that her father was the lord of the manor.
In her mind he was not a lord at all. He was simply a baronet.
How short-sighted she had been! Slowly the full meaning and significance
of the fact worked its way into her brain, and her face flushed with
shame and indignation. Why had not her father the courage to tell her
the truth? Why had he allowed her to wrong Lord St. Goram even in
thought? Why was he so relentless in his pursuit of the people he had
treated so harshly? Was it true that people never forgave those they had
wronged? Then her thoughts turned unconsciously to the Penlogans. How
they must hate her father, and yet how sensitive they had been not to
hurt her feelings. Even Ralph had allowed her to think that Lord St.
Goram was the oppressor.
"He ought not to have deceived me," she said to herself, and yet she
liked him all the more for his chivalry.
Her thoughts went back to that first day of their meeting, when she
mistook him for a country yokel. Considering the fact that she was a
lady, and on horseback, he had undoubtedly been rude to her, and yet he
was rude in a manly sort of way. She liked him even then, and liked him
all the more because he did not cringe to her.
But since then his every word and act had evinced the very soul of
chivalry. In many ways he was much more a gentleman than Lord Probus.
Indeed, she was inclined to think that in every way he was more of a
gentleman. Lord Probus had wealth--fabulous wealth, it was believed--and
a thin veneer of polish. But, stripped of the outer shell, she felt
quite certain that the farmer's son was much more the gentleman of the
two.
It was inevitable, however, that the subject should sooner or later crop
up between the father and daughter, and when it did crop up, Sir John
was quite unable to hide the bias of his mind.
"In tracking down a crime," he said, with quite a magisterial air, "the
first thing to discover, if possible, is a motive. Given a motive, the
rest is often comparatively easy. Now in this case I kept the motive
from you, as I had no wish to prejudice the young man in your eyes. But
in the preliminary trial, as you will have observed, the motive came
out. Why he shot me is clear enough. Why he did not complete the work is
due probably to failure of nerve; or possibly he thought I was dead, for
I fell to the ground like a log."
"Why, father, you said you took to your heels and ran like the wind, and
so got out of his reach."
"That was after I recovered myself, Dorothy. I admit I ran then."
"And you still believe that it was he who fired the shot?"
"Why, of course I do."
"With intent to kill?"
"There is not the least doubt of it."
"You think he had good reason for hating you?"
"From his point of view he may think that I ought to have foregone my
rights."
"He thinks you ought not to have pushed them to extremes, as you did. It
was a cruel thing to do, father, and you know it."
"The Penlogans have never been desirable people. They have never known
their place, or kept it. I wouldn't have leased the downs to them if I
had known their opinions. No man did so much to turn the last election
as David Penlogan."
"I suppose he had a perfect right to his opinions?"
"And I have the right to exercise any influence or power I possess in
any way I please," he retorted angrily. "And if I chose to accept a more
suitable tenant for one of my farms, that's my business and no one
else's."
"I have no wish to argue the question, father," she answered quietly.
"But I suppose you will own that the fellow is guilty?"
"No, father. I am quite sure that he is no more guilty than I am."
"What folly!" he ejaculated angrily.
"I do not think it is folly at all. I know Ralph Penlogan better than
you do, and I know he is incapable of such a thing. At the Assizes you
will be made to look incredibly foolish."
"What? what?" he ejaculated.
"Here, all the magistrates belong to your set. They had made up their
minds beforehand. No unprejudiced jury in the world would ever convict
on such evidence."
"Child," he said angrily, "you don't know what you are talking about."
"And even if he were convicted," she went on, with flashing eyes, "I
should know all the same that he is innocent."
He looked at her almost aghast. This was worse than his worst
suspicions.
"Then you have made up your mind," he said, with a brave effort to
control himself, "to believe that he is innocent, whatever judge or jury
may say?"
"I know he is innocent," she answered quietly.
"You are a little simpleton," he said, clenching and unclenching his
hands; "a foolish, headstrong girl. I am grieved at you, ashamed of you!
I did expect ordinary common sense in my daughter."
"I am sorry you are angry with me," she said demurely. "But think again.
Are you not biased and prejudiced? You are not sure it was his face you
saw. In all probability the gun going off was pure accident. Have you
not been hard enough on the Penlogans already, that you persist in
having this on your conscience also?"
"Silence!" he almost screamed, and he advanced a step towards her with
clenched hand. "Go to your room," he cried, "and don't show your face
again to-day! To-morrow I will talk to you, and not only talk but act."