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.
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 révulsions 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.
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 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 Méphistophélès 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.
DummieDunnaker.
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.
“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.”
“So I hear,” said Mauleverer. “Heavens,
how hungry I am!”
A groan from the bishop echoed the complaint.
“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!