Kitabı oku: «Roland Cashel, Volume II (of II)», sayfa 24

“No, no,” broke in Linton, passionately; “he’ll not break one tittle of his word, even to save his life! When he promised me that all should be secret between us, he made no reservations, and you ‘ll see that he ‘ll not avail himself of such privileges now. I do know him thoroughly.”

“Then what, or whence, is your fear?”

Linton made no other answer than a gesture of his hand, implying some vague and indistinct dread. “But go,” said he, “and go quickly. You ought never to have left the court. Had you remained, perhaps this might have been prevented. If all goes right, you ‘ll be here by daybreak at furthest, and Keane along with you. Take care of that, Jones; don’t lose sight of him. If – if – we are unfortunate – and do you think such possible?”

“Everything is possible with a jury.”

“True,” said he, thoughtfully; “it is an issue we should never have left it to. But away; hasten back. Great Heaven! only to think how much hangs upon the next half-hour!”

“To Cashel, you mean?” said Jones, as he prepared himself for the road.

“No; I mean to me, I do know him thoroughly; and well I know the earth would be too narrow to live upon, were that man once more free and at liberty.”

In his eagerness for Jones’s departure, he almost pushed him from the room; and then, when he had closed and locked the door again, he sat down beside the low flickering fire, and as the fitful light played upon his features, all the appliances of disguise he wore could not hide the terrible ravages that long corroding anxiety had made in him. Far more did he resemble the arraigned criminal than he who now stood in the dock, and with a cheek blanched only by imprisonment, waited calm, collected, and erect – “Equal to either fortune.”

Linton had often felt all the terrible suspense which makes the paradise or the hell of the gambler: he had known what it was to have his whole fortune on the issue, at a moment when the rushing mob of horsemen and foot concealed the winning horse from view, and mingled in their mad cheers the names of those whose victory had been his ruin and disgrace. He had watched the rolling die, on whose surface, as it turned, all he owned in the world was staked; he had sat gazing on the unturned card, on which his destiny was already written; – and yet all these moments of agonizing suspense were as nothing compared to that he now suffered, as he sat with bent down head trying to catch the sounds which from time to time the wind bore along from the town.

As if to feed his mind with hope, he would recapitulate to himself all the weighty and damnatory details which environed Cashel, and which, by their singular consistency and coherence, seemed irrefutable. He would even reckon them upon his fingers, as “so many chances against him.” He would try to imagine himself one of the jury, listening to the evidence and the charge; and asked himself “were it possible to reject such proofs?” He pictured to his mind Cashel addressing the Court with all that rash and impetuous eloquence so characteristic of him, and which, to more trained and sober tempers, would indicate a nature little subject to the cold discipline of restraint; and from all these speculative dreams he would start suddenly up, to lean out of the window and listen. Other thoughts, too, would cross his mind, scarcely less distracting. What would become of himself should Cashel escape? Whither should he retire? If, at one moment, he half resolved to “stand his ground” in the world, and trust to his consummate skill in secret calumny to ruin him, another reflection showed that Cashel would not play out the game on these conditions. A duel, in which one at least must fall, would be inevitable; and although this was an ordeal he had braved oftener than most men, he had no courage to dare it now. Through all this tangled web of harassing hope and fear, regrets deep and poignant entered, that he had not worked his ruin by slower and safer steps. “I might have been both judge and jury – ay, and executioner too,” muttered he, “had I been patient.” And here he gave a low, sardonic laugh. “When the hour of confiscation came, I might have played the Crown’s part also.” But so is it: there is no halting in the downward course of wickedness; the very pleadings of self-interest cannot save men from the commission of crimes, by which they are to hide follies.

The slow hours of the night dragged heavily on; the fire had gone out, and the candle too – unnoticed, and Linton sat in the dark, brooding over his gloomy thoughts. At one moment he would start up, and wonder if the whole were not a terrible dream, – the nightmare of his own imagination; and it was only after an effort he remembered where he was, and with what object. He could not see his watch to tell the hour, but he knew it must be late, since the fire had long since died out, and the room was cold and chill. The agony of expectation became at last too great to endure; he felt his way to the door and passed out, and groping down the narrow stair, reached the outer door, and the road.

All was dark and lonely; not a sound of horseman or foot-traveller broke the dreary stillness of the hour, as Linton, urged on by an impulse he could not restrain, took his way towards the town. The distance was scarcely above a mile, but his progress was slow, for the road was wet and slippery, and the darkness very great. At last he reached the long straggling suburb, with its interminable streets of wretched hovels; but even here none were yet astir, and not a light was seen to glimmer. To this succeeded the narrow streets of the town itself, – where, at long intervals, a dusky yellow haze glimmered by way of lamplight. Stopping beneath one of these, Linton examined his watch, and found that it was near five o’clock. The lateness of the hour, and the unbroken stillness on every side, half induced him to believe that “all was over,” and Cashel’s fate sealed for good or evil; but then Jones would have hastened back to bring the tidings! There could not be a doubt on this head. Urged onward to greater speed by emotions which now were scarcely supportable, he traversed street after street in frantic haste; when suddenly, on turning a corner, he came in front of a large building, from whose windows, dimmed by steam, a great blaze of light issued, and fell in long columns upon the “Square” in front. A dense, dark mass of human figures crowded the wide doorway, but they were silent and motionless all. Within the court, too, the stillness was unbroken; for as Linton listened he could now hear a cough, which resounded through the building.

“The jury are in deliberation,” thought he, and sat down upon the step of a door, his eyes riveted upon the court-house, and his heart beating so that he could count its strokes. Not far from him, as he sat there, scarcely a hundred paces off, within the building, there sat another man, waiting with a high throbbing heart for that word to be uttered which should either open the door of his prison, or close that of the grave upon him forever. The moments of expectancy were terrible to both! they were life-long agonies distilled to seconds; and he who could live through their pains must come forth from the trial a changed man forever after.

CHAPTER XXXI. “NOT GUILTY”

Free to go forth once more, but oh, How changed!

Harold.

A slight movement in the crowd near the door – a kind of waving motion like the quiet surging of the sea – seemed to-indicate some commotion within the court; and although Linton saw this, and judged it rightly, as the evidence of something eventful about to happen, he sat still to await the result with the dogged firmness with which he would have awaited death itself.

As we are less interested spectators of the scene, let us press our way through the tired and exhausted crowd that fill the body of the building. And now we stand beneath the gallery, and immediately behind a group of about half a dozen, whose dress and demeanor at once proclaim them of the world of fashion. These are Lord Charles Frobisher and his friends, who, with memorandum-books and timepieces before them, sit in eager anxiety, for they have wagers on everything: on the verdict – how the judge will charge – if the prisoner will confess – if he will attempt a defence; and even the length of time the jury will sit in deliberation, is the subject of a bet!

This anxiety was now at its climax, for, directly in front of them, a small door had just opened, and a crowd of men entered, and took their seats in the gallery.

Their grave countenances, marked by watching and eager discussion, at once proclaimed that they were the jury.

There was a low murmur heard throughout the court as they took their seats; and instinctively many an eye was turned towards the dock, to watch how he bore himself in that trying moment With a steady gaze fixed upon the spot from which his doom was to be spoken, he stood erect, with arms folded and his head high. He was deathly pale; but not a trace of anything like fear in the calm lineaments of his manly features.

“The jury seem very grave,” whispered Upton to Frobisher.

“I wish that stupid old judge would bestir himself,” replied Lord Charles, looking at his watch; “it wants four minutes to five: he ‘ll scarcely be in court before it strikes, and I shall lose a pony through it.”

“Here he comes! – here he comes!” said another; and the Chief Baron entered the court, his face betraying that he had been aroused from sleep.

“Are you agreed, gentlemen of the jury?” asked the judge, in a low voice.

“Not perfectly, my Lord,” said the foreman. “We want your Lordship to decide a point for us; which is – If we should be of opinion that any grave provocation led to the death of Kennyfeck, whether our verdict could be modified, and our finding be, in consequence, for manslaughter, and not murder?”

“The indictment,” said the judge, “does not give you that option. It is framed without any count for the minor offence. I ought, perhaps, also to observe, that nothing has transpired in the evidence given here, this day, to warrant the impression you seem inclined to entertain. Your verdict must be one of Guilty or Not Guilty.”

“We are of opinion, my Lord,” said a juryman, “that great latitude in the expression of temper should be conceded to a young man reared and educated as the prisoner has been.”

“These sentiments, honorable to you as they are, cannot be indulged at the expense of justice, however they may find a fitting place in a recommendation to mercy; and even this must be accompanied by something more than sympathies.”

“Well said, old boy!” muttered Frobisher to himself. “My odds are looking up again.”

“In that case, my Lord, we must retire again,” said the foreman; and the jury once more quitted the court, whose occupants at once resumed all the lounging attitudes from which the late scene had aroused them. Exhaustion, indeed, had overcome all save the prisoner himself, who paced the narrow limits of the dock with slow and noiseless steps, raising his head at intervals, to watch the gallery where the jury were to appear.

In less than half an hour the creaking of a door awoke the drowsy court, and the jury were seen re-entering the box. They continued to talk among each other as they took their seats, and seemed like men still under the influence of warm discussion.

“Not agreed!” muttered Frobisher, looking at his book. “I stand to win, even on that.”

To the formal question of the Court, the foreman for an instant made no reply, for he was still in eager conversation with another juror.

“How say you, gentlemen of the jury? Are you agreed?”

“We are, my Lord,” said the foreman; “that is to say, some of the jury have conceded to the rest for the sake of a verdict.”

“This does not seem to me like agreement,” interposed the judge. “If you be not of the same mind, it will be your duty to retire once more, and strive by the use of argument and reason to bring the minority to your opinion; or, in failure of such result, to avow that you are not like-minded.”

“We have done all that is possible in that respect, my Lord; and we beg you will receive our verdict.”

“If it be your verdict, gentlemen,” said the judge, “I desire nothing more.”

“We say, Not Guilty, my Lord,” said the foreman.

There was a solemn pause followed the words, and then a low murmur arose, which gradually swelled till it burst forth into a very clamor, that only the grave rebuke of the Bench reduced to the wonted decorum of a court of justice.

“I am never disposed, gentlemen of the jury, to infringe upon the sacred prerogative which environs your office. You are responsible to God and your own consciences for the words you have uttered here, this day; but my duty requires that I should be satisfied that you have come to your conclusion by a due understanding of the facts laid before you in evidence, by just and natural inferences from those facts, and by weighing well and dispassionately all that you have heard here, to the utter exclusion of anything you may have listened to outside of this court. Is your verdict in accordance with these conditions?”

“So far, my Lord, as the mysterious circumstances of this crime admit, I believe it is. We say ‘Not Guilty,’ from a firm conviction on our minds that we are saying the truth.”

“Enough,” said the judge. “Clerk, record the verdict.” Then turning to the dock, towards which every eye was now bent, he continued: “Roland Cashel, a jury of your countrymen, solemnly sworn to try you on the charge of murder, have this day pronounced you ‘Not Guilty.’ You go, therefore, free from this dock, to resume that station you occupied in society, without stain upon your character or blemish upon your fame. The sworn verdict we have recorded obliterates the accusation. But, for the sake of justice, for the interests of the glorious prerogative we possess in trial by jury, for the sacred cause of truth itself, I implore you, before quitting this court, to unravel the thread of this dark mystery, so far as in you lies, – to fill up those blanks in the narrative you have already given us, – to confirm, to the extent in your power, the justice of that sentence by which you are restored once more to the society of your friends and family. This, I say, is now your duty; and the example you will give, in performing it, will reflect credit upon yourself, and do service to the cause of truth, when you and I and those around us shall be no more.”

It was with stronger show of emotion than Cashel had yet displayed that he leaned over the dock and said, —

“My Lord, when life, and something more than life, were in peril, I deemed it right to reserve certain details from the notoriety of this court. I did so, not to involve any other in the suspicion of this guilt, whose author I know not. I did not do so from any caprice, still less from that misanthropic affectation the counsel was ungenerous enough to ascribe to me. I believe that I had good and sufficient reasons for the course I adopted. I still think I have such. As to the rest, the discovery of this guilt is now become the duty of my life, – I owe it to those whose words have set me free, and I pledge myself to the duty.”

The Bench now conferred with the Crown lawyers as to the proceedings necessary for the discharge of the prisoner; and already the crowds, wearied and exhausted, began to withdraw. The interest of the scene was over; and in the various expressions of those that passed might be read the feelings with which they regarded the result. Many reprobated the verdict as against law and all the facts; some attributed the “finding” to the force of caprice; others even hinted the baser motive, that they didn’t like “to hang a man who spent his income at home;” and others, again, surmised that bribery might have had “something to do with it.” Few believed in Cashel’s innocence of the crime; and even they said nothing, for their convictions were more those of impulse than reason.

“Who could have thought it!” muttered Upton, as, with a knot of others, he stood waiting for the crowd to pass out.

Frobisher shrugged his shoulders, and went on totting a line of figures in his memorandum-book.

“Better off than I thought!” said he to himself; “seven to five taken that he would not plead – eight to three that he would not call Linton. Long odds upon time won: lost by verdict four hundred and fifty. Well, it might have been worse; and I ‘ve got a lesson – never to trust a Jury.”

“I say, Charley,” whispered Upton, “what are you going to do?”

“How do you mean?”

“Will you go up and speak to him?” said he, with a motion of his head towards the dock.

Frobisher’s sallow cheek grew scarlet. Lost and dead to every sense of honorable feeling for many a day, the well had not altogether dried up, and it was with a look of cutting insolence he said, —

“No, sir; if I did not stand by him before, I ‘ll not be the hound to crawl to his feet now.”

“By Jove! I don’t see the thing in that light. He’s all right now, and there ‘s no reason why we should n’t know him as we used to do.”

“Are you so certain that he will know you?” was Fro-bisher’s sharp reply as he turned away.

The vast moving throng pressed forward, and now all were speedily commingled, – spectators, lawyers, jurors, witnesses. The spectacle was over, and the empty court stood silent and noiseless, where a few moments back human hopes and passions had surged like the waves of a sea.

The great space in front of the court-house, filled for a few moments by the departing crowd, grew speedily silent and empty, – for day had not yet broken, and all were hastening homeward to seek repose. One figure alone was seen to stand in that spot, and then move slowly, and to all seeming irresolutely, onward. It was Cashel himself, who, undecided whither to turn, walked listlessly and carelessly on.

As he turned a corner of a street, a jaunting-car, around which some travellers stood, stopped the way, and he heard the words of the driver.

“There’s another place to spare.”

“Where for?” asked Cashel.

“Limerick, sir,” said the man.

“Drive on, b – t you,” cried a deep voice from the other side of the vehicle; and the fellow’s whip descended with a heavy slash, and the beast struck out into a gallop, and speedily was out of sight.

“Did n’t you see who it was?” muttered the speaker to the man beside him.

“No.”

“It was Cashel himself, – I knew him at once; and I tell you, Jones, he would have known me, too, for all this disguise, when a gleam of day came to shine.”

As for Cashel, he stood gazing after the departing vehicle, with a strange chaos of thought working within.

“Am I then infamous?” said he at last, “that these men will not travel in my company? Is it to this the mere accusation of crime has brought me!” And, slight as the incident was, it told upon him as some acrid substance would irritate and corrode an open wound, – festering the tender surface.

“Better thus dreaded than the ‘dupe’ I have been!” said he, boldly, and entered the inn, where now the preparations for the coming day had begun. He ordered his breakfast, and post-horses for Killaloe, resolved to see Tubbermore once again, ere he left it forever.

It was a bright morning in the early spring as Cashel drove through the wide-spreading park of Tubbermore. Dewdrops spangled the grass, amid which crocus and daffodil flowers were scattered. The trees were topped with fresh buds; the birds were chirping and twittering on the branches; the noiseless river, too, flowed past, its circling eddies looking like blossoms on the stream. All was joyous and redolent of promise, save him whose humbled spirit beheld in everything around him the signs of self-reproach.

“These,” thought he, “were the rich gifts of fortune that I have squandered. This was the paradise I have laid waste! Here, where I might have lived happy, honored, and respected, I see myself wretched and shunned! The defeats we meet with in hardy and hazardous enterprise are softened down by having dared danger fearlessly, – by having combated manfully with the enemy. But what solace is there for him whose reverses spring from childlike weakness and imbecility, – whose life becomes the plaything of parasites and flatterers! Could I ever have thought I would become this? What should I have once said of him who would have prophesied me such as I now am?”

These gloomy reveries grew deeper and darker as he wandered from place to place, and marked the stealthy glances and timid reverences of the peasants as they passed him. “It is only the jury have called me ‘Not Guilty,’” said he to himself; “the world has pronounced another verdict. I have come from that dock as one might have risen from an unhonored grave, to be looked on with fear and sorrow. Be it so; mine must be a lonely existence.”

Every room he entered recalled some scene of his past life. Here was the spacious hall, where, in all the excesses of the banquet, laughter had rung and wit had sparkled, loud toasts were proffered, and high-spirited mirth had once held sway. Here was the drawing-room, where grace and female loveliness were blended, mingling their odors like flowers in a “bouquet.” Here, the little chamber he had often sought to visit Lady Kilgoff, and passed those hours of “sweet converse” wherein his whole nature became changed, and his rude spirit softened by the tender influences of a woman’s mind. Here was his own favorite room, – the spot from which, in many an hour snatched from the cares of host, he had watched the wide-flowing river, and thought of the current of his own life, mingling with his reveries many a high hope and many a glorious promise. And now the whole scene was changed. The mirth, the laughter, the guests, the hopes, were fled, and he stood alone in those silent halls, that never again were to echo with the glad voice of pleasure.

The chief object of his return to Tubbermore was to regain possession of that document which he had concealed in the cleft of a beech-tree, before scaling the approach to the window. He found the spot without difficulty, and soon possessed himself of the paper, the contents of which, however, from being conveyed in a character he was not familiar with, he could not master.

He next proceeded to the gate-lodge, desirous to see Keane, and make some arrangement for his future support before he should leave Tubbermore. The man, however, was absent; his wife, whose manner betrayed considerable emotion, said that her husband had returned in company with another, who remained without, while he hastily packed a few articles of clothing in a bundle, and then left the house, whither to she knew not.

Roland’s last visit was to Tiernay’s house; but he, too, was from home. He had accompanied Corrigan to Dublin, intending to take leave of him there; but a few hurried lines told that he had resolved to proceed further with his friends, and darkly hinting that his return to the village was more than doubtful.

Wherever Cashel turned, desertion and desolation met him; and the cutting question that ever recurred to his mind was, “Is this my doing? Are these the consequences of my folly?” The looks of the villagers seemed to tally with the accusation, as in cold respect they touched their hats as he passed, but never spoke: “not one said God bless him.”

He twice set out for the cottage, and twice turned back, – his over-full heart almost choked with emotion. The very path that led thither reminded him too fully of the past, and he turned from it into the wood, to wander about for hours long, lost in thought.

He sought and found relief in planning out something for his future life. The discovery of the murderer – the clearing up of the terrible mystery that involved that crime – had become a duty, and he resolved to apply himself to it steadily and determinedly. His unacquitted debt of vengeance on Linton, too, was not forgotten. These accomplished, he resolved again to betake himself to the “new world beyond seas.” Wealth had become distasteful to him; it was associated with all that lowered and humiliated him. He felt that with poverty his manly reliance, his courageous daring to confront danger, would return, – that once more upon the wild prairie, or the blue waters of the Pacific, he would grow young of heart, and high in spirit, forgetting the puerile follies into which a life of affluence had led him. “Would that I could believe it all a dream!” thought he. “Would that this whole year were but a vision, and that I could go back to what I once was, even as ‘the buccaneer,’ they called me!”

His last hours in Tubbermore were spent in arrangements that showed he never intended to return there. His household was all discharged; his equipages and horses despatched to the capital to be sold; his books, his plate, and all that was valuable in furniture, were ordered to be packed up, and transmitted to Dublin. He felt a kind of malicious pleasure in erasing and effacing, as it were, every trace of the last few months.

“I will leave it,” muttered he, “to become the wreck I found it – would that I could be what I was ere I knew it!”

The following day he left Tubbermore forever, and set out for Dublin.