Kitabı oku: «Sir Jasper Carew: His Life and Experience», sayfa 12

I have been obliged to dwell even to tediousness on these traits of the Grinder; for if they be not borne in mind, his actions and motives will seem destitute of any satisfactory explanation. And I now return to the chamber where he sat with Crowther as they compared impressions together, and bartered suspicions about my father’s marriage.

“Now that I begin to consider the matter in this light,” said Crowther, “it is curious what an explanation it affords to many things that used to puzzle me formerly: all that coldness and reserve towards Carew that his neighbors showed; the way his former acquaintances fell off from him, one by one; and, lastly, those strange hints about him in the newspapers. I suppose we should see the meaning of every one of them now easily enough?”

Fagan made no reply; his mind was travelling along over the road it had entered upon, and would not be turned away by any call whatsoever.

“Yes,” muttered he to himself, “the little cottage at Fallrach, in the Killeries, – that’s the place! and the only thing now is to get him down there. I must go up and see how he gets on, Crowther. I ‘m half afraid that he ought to see a surgeon.” And, so saying, he arose and left the room.

My father was still sleeping as he entered, but less tranquilly than before, with a feverish flush upon his face, and his lips dry and dark-colored.

With a noiseless hand, Fagan drew back the curtain, and, seating himself close to the bed, bent down to gaze on him. The uneasy motions of the sleeper denoted pain; and more than once his hand was pressed against his side, as if it was the seat of some suffering. Fagan watched every gesture eagerly, and tried, but in vain, to collect some meaning from the low and broken utterance. Rapidly speaking at intervals, and at times moaning painfully, he appeared to labor either under some mental or bodily agony, in a paroxysm of which, at last, he burst open his vest, and clutched his embroidered shirt-frill with a violence that tore it in fragments.

As he did so, Fagan caught sight of a handkerchief stained with blood, which, with cautious gesture, he slowly removed, and, walking to the window, examined it carefully. This done, he folded it up, and, enveloping it in his own, placed it in his pocket. Once more he took his place at the bedside, and seemed to listen with intense anxiety for every sound of the sleeper’s lips. The fever appeared to gain ground, for the flush now covered the face and forehead, and the limbs were twitched with short convulsive motions.

At last, as the paroxysm had reached its height, he bounded up from the bed and awoke.

“Where am I?” cried he, wildly. “Who are all these? What do they allege against me?”

“Lie down; compose yourself, Mr. Carew. You are amongst friends, who wish you well, and will treat you kindly,” said Fagan, mildly.

“But it was not of my seeking, – no one can dare to say so. Fagan will be my back to any amount, – ten thousand, if they ask it.”

“That will I, – to the last penny I possess.”

“There, I told you so. I often said I knew the Grinder better than any of you. You laughed at me for it; but I was right, for all that.”

“I trust you were right, sir,” said Fagan, calmly.

“What I said was this,” continued he, eagerly: “the father of such a girl as Polly must be a gentleman at heart. He may trip and stumble, in his imitations of your modish paces; but the soul of a gentleman must be in him. Was I right there, or not?”

“Pray, calm yourself; lie down, and take your rest,” said Fagan, gently pushing him back upon the pillow.

“You are quite right,” said he; “there is nothing for it now but submission. MacNaghten, Harvey, Burton, – all who have known me from boyhood, – can testify if I were one to do a dishonorable action. I tell you again and again, I will explain nothing; life is not worth such a price, – such ignominy is too great!”

He paused, as if the thought was too painful to pursue; and then, fixing his eyes on Fagan, he laughed aloud, and added, —

“Eh, Fagan! that would be like one of your own contracts, – a hundred per cent!”

“I have not treated you in this wise, Mr. Carew,” said he, calmly..

“No, my boy! that you have not. To the last hour of my life – no great stretch of time, perhaps – I ‘ll say the same. You have been a generous fellow with me – the devil and yourself may perhaps know why, – I do not; nay, more, Fagan – I never cared to know. Perhaps you thought I ‘d marry Polly. By George! I might have done worse; and who knows what may be yet on the cards? Ay, just so – the cards – the cards!”

He did not speak again for several minutes; but when he did, his voice assumed a tone of greater distinctness and accuracy, as if he would not that a single word were lost.

“I knew your scheme about the Papists, Tony; I guessed what you were at then. I was to have emancipated you!”

A wild laugh broke from him, and he went on, —

“Just fancy the old trumpeter’s face, that hangs up in the dinner-room at Castle Carew! Imagine the look he would bestow on his descendant as I sat down to table. Faith! Old Noll himself would have jumped out of the canvas at the tidings. If you cannot strain your fancy that far, Tony, think what your own father would have said were his degenerate son to be satisfied with lawful interest! – imagine him sorrowing over the lost precepts of his house!”

“There; I’ll close the curtains, and leave you to take a sleep,” said Fagan.

“But I have no time for this, man,” cried the other, again starting up; “I must be up and away. You must find some place of concealment for me till I can reach the Continent. Understand me well, Fagan, I cannot, I will not, make a defence; as little am I disposed to die like a felon! There’s the whole of it! Happily, if the worst should come, Tony, the disgrace dies with me; that’s something, – eh?”

“You will make yourself far worse by giving way to this excitement, Mr. Carew; you must try and compose yourself.”

“So I will, Fagan; I’ll be as obedient as you wish. Only tell me that you will watch for my safety, assure me of that, and I ‘m content.”

As though the very words he had just uttered had brought a soothing influence to his mind, he had scarcely finished speaking when he fell off into a deep sleep, unbroken by even a dream. Fagan stood long enough at the bedside to assure himself that all was quiet, and then left the room, locking the door as he passed out, and taking the key with him.

CHAPTER XV. CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE

In these memoirs of my father, I have either derived my information from the verbal accounts of his friends and contemporaries, or taken it from his own letters and papers. Many things have I omitted, as irrelevant to his story, which, in themselves, might not have been devoid of interest; and of some others, the meaning and purport being somewhat obscure, I have abstained from all mention. I make this apology for the incompleteness of my narrative; and the reader will probably accept my excuses the more willingly since he is spared the infliction of my discursiveness on topics only secondary and adventitious.

I now, however, come to a period the most eventful of his story, but, by an unhappy accident, the least illustrated by any record of its acts. MacNaghten, my chief source of information hitherto, is here unable to guide or direct me. He knew nothing of my father’s movements, nor did he hold any direct intercourse with him. Whatever letters may have been written by my father himself, I am unable to tell, none of them having ever reached me. My difficulty is therefore considerable, having little to guide me beyond chance paragraphs in some of Fagan’s letters to his daughter, and some two or three formal communications on business matters to my mother.

There is yet enough even in these scattered notices to show that Fagan’s hopes of realizing the great ambition of his life had been suddenly and unexpectedly renewed. Not alone was he inclined to believe that my father might become the political leader of his own peculiar party, and take upon him the unclaimed position of an Irish champion, but, further still, he persuaded himself that my father was not really married, and that the present conjuncture offered a favorable prospect of making him his son-in-law.

The reader has already seen from what a slight foundation this edifice sprung, – a random word spoken by my father at a moment of great excitement; a half-muttered regret, wrung from him in a paroxysm of wounded self-love.

He was not the first, nor will he be the last, who shall raise up a structure for which the will alone supplies material; mayhap, too, in his case, the fire of hope had never been totally extinguished in his heart, and from its smouldering embers now burst out this new and brilliant flame.

It was about an hour after midnight that a chaise, with four horses, drew up at Fagan’s door; and, after a brief delay, a sick man was assisted carefully down the stairs and deposited within the carriage. Raper took his place beside him, and, with a speed that denoted urgency, the equipage drove away, and, passing through many a narrow lane and alley, emerged from the city at last, and took the great western road.

Fallrach, even in our own day of universal travel and research, is a wild and lonely spot; but at the time I refer to, it was as utterly removed from all intercourse with the world as some distant settlement of Central America. Situated in a little bend or bight of coast where the Killeries opens to the great ocean, backed by lofty mountains, and flanked either by the sea or the still less accessible crags of granite, this little cottage was almost concealed from view. Unpretending as it was without, its internal arrangements included every comfort; and my father found himself not only surrounded with all the appliances of ease and enjoyment, but in the very midst of objects well known and dear to him from old associations. It had been in our family for about a century; but up to this moment my father had never seen it, nor was he aware of the singular beauty of the neighboring coast scenery.

At first, he could do no more than sit at an open window that looked over the sea, enjoying, with dreamy languor, the calm influences of a solitude so thoroughly unbroken. To an overwrought and excited mind, this interval of quiet was a priceless luxury; and far from experiencing weariness in his lonely life, the days glided past unnoticed.

Raper was not of a nature to obtrude himself on any one; and as my father neither sought nor needed a companion, they continued to live beneath the same roof almost without meeting. While, therefore, there was the most scrupulous attention to all my father’s wants, and a watchfulness that seemed even to anticipate a wish on his part, his privacy was never invaded nor disturbed. A few words each morning between Raper and himself provided for all the arrangements of the day, and there ended their intercourse.

Leaving him, therefore, in the indulgence of this placid existence, I must now turn to another scene, where very different actors and interests were engaged.

The death of Barry Rutledge had created the most intense excitement, not alone in Dublin, but throughout the country generally. He was almost universally known. His acquaintanceship embraced men of every shade of opinion, and of all parties; and if his character did not suggest any feelings of strong attachment or regard, there were social qualities about him which, at least, attracted admiration, and made him welcome in society.

Such men are often regretted by the world more deeply than is their due. Their amusing faculties are frequently traced back to some imaginary excellence in their natures, and there mingles with the sorrow for their loss a sort of tender compassion for the fate of abilities misapplied, and high gifts wasted. This was exactly the case here. Many who did not rank amongst his intimates while he lived, now affected to deplore his death most deeply; and there was a degree of sympathy felt, or assumed to be felt, for his fate, widely disproportioned to his claims upon real regard.

The manner of his death still remained a profound mystery. The verdict of the coroner’s jury was simply to the effect that “he had died of wounds inflicted by a person or persons unknown,” but without an attempt at explanation. The witnesses examined deposed to very little more than the state in which the body was found, and the prints of footsteps discovered in its vicinity. These, indeed, and other marks about the spot seemed to indicate that a struggle had taken place; but a strange and unaccountable apathy prevailed as to all investigation, and the public was left to the very vaguest of speculations as they appeared from time to time in the columns of the newspapers.

Amongst those who accompanied Rutledge into the street there was a singular discrepancy of opinion, some averring that they heard him called on by his name, and others equally positive in asserting that the provocation was uttered only in the emphatic monosyllable, “a lie.” They were all men of standing and position in the world; they were persons of indisputable honor; and yet, strange to say, upon a simple matter of fact which had occupied but a few seconds, they could not be brought to anything like agreement. The most positive of all in maintaining his opinion was a Colonel Vereker, who persisted in alleging that he stood side by side with Rutledge the whole time he was speaking; that he could swear not only to the words used by the unknown speaker, but that he would go so far as to say, that such was the impression made upon his senses that he could detect the voice were he ever to hear it again.

This assertion, at first uttered in the small circle of intimacy, at last grew to be talked of abroad, and many were of opinion it would one day or other give the clew to this mysterious affair. As to Vereker himself, he felt that he was to a certain extent pledged to the proof of what he had maintained so persistently. His opinions had gained currency, and were discussed by the press, which, in the dearth of other topics of interest, devoted a large portion of their columns to commentary on this event.

Any one now looking back to the pages of the Dublin “Express” or “Falkner” of that date will scarcely fail to find that each day contributed some new and ingenious suggestion as to the manner of Rutledge’s death. Some of these were arrayed with great details and the most minute arrangement of circumstances; others were constructed of materials the least probable and likely. Every view had, however, its peculiar advocates, and it was curious to see to what violence was carried the war of controversy upon the subject.

By the publicity which accompanies such events as these, the ends of justice are mainly sustained and aided. Discussion suggests inquiry, and by degrees the general mind is turned with zeal to an investigation which, under ordinary circumstances, had only occupied the attention of the authorities.

To any one who has not witnessed a similar movement of popular anxiety, it would be difficult to believe how completely this topic engrossed the thoughts of the capital; and through every grade of society the same intense desire prevailed to unravel this mystery. Amongst the many facts adduced, was one which attracted a large share of speculation, and this was the track of footsteps from the very opposite corner of the “Green” to the fatal spot, and their issue at the little wicket gate of which we have already spoken. These traces were made by a large foot, and were unmistakably those of a heavy man, wearing boots such as were usually worn by gentlemen. One peculiarity of them, too, was, that the heels were studded with large nails, rarely worn save by the peasantry. A shoemaker who served on the inquest was heard to remark that a very few country gentlemen still persisted in having their boots thus provided, and that he himself had only one such customer, for whom he had just finished a new pair that were then ready to be sent home.

The remark attracted attention, and led to an examination of the boots, which, strange to say, were found exactly to correspond with the tracks in the clay. This fact, coupled with another, that the person for whom they were made, and who had been impatient to obtain them, had not even called at the shop or made any inquiry since the night of Rutledge’s death, was of so suspicious a nature, that the boots were taken possession of by the authorities, and the maker strictly enjoined to the most guarded secrecy as to the name of him by whom they were ordered.

With every precaution to secure secrecy, the story of the boots got noised about, and letters poured forth in print to show that the custom of wearing such heels as were described was by no means so limited as was at first assumed. In the very thick of discussion on this subject, there came a post letter one evening to the bootmaker’s house, requesting him to send the boots lately ordered by an old customer, J. C, to the “Blue Balls,” at Clontarf, addressed, “George J. Grogan, Esq.”

The shopkeeper, on receiving this epistle, immediately communicated it to the authorities, who could not fail to see in it another circumstance of deep suspicion. From the first moment of having learned his name, they had prosecuted the most active inquiries, and learned that he had actually been in town the evening of Rutledge’s death, and suddenly taken his departure on the morning after. The entire of the preceding evening, too, he had been absent from his hotel, to which he returned late at night, and instead of retiring to bed, immediately occupied himself with preparations for his departure.

As the individual was one well known, and occupying a prominent position in society, it was deemed to be a step requiring the very gravest deliberation in what manner to proceed. His political opinions, and even his personal conduct, being strongly opposed to the Government, rather increased than diminished this difficulty, since the Liberal papers would be sure to lay hold of any proceedings as a gross insult to the national party.

The advice of the law officers, however, overruled all these objections; a number of circumstances appeared to concur to inculpate him, and it was decided on issuing a warrant for his arrest at the place which he had named as his address.

Secrecy was now no longer practicable; and to the astonishment of all Dublin was it announced in the morning papers that Mr. Curtis was arrested the preceding night, on a judge’s warrant, charged with the murder of Barry Rutledge.

Terrible as such an accusation must always sound, there is something doubly appalling when uttered against one whose rank in society would seem to exempt him from the temptations of such guilt. The natural revulsion to credit a like imputation is, of course, considerable; but, notwithstanding this, there were circumstances in Curtis’s character and habits that went far to render the allegation not devoid of probability. He was a rash, impetuous, and revengeful man, always involved in pecuniary difficulties, and rarely exempt from some personal altercation. Harassed by law, disappointed, and, as he himself thought, persecuted by the Government, his life was a continual conflict. Though not without those who recognized in him traits of warm-hearted and generous devotion, the number of these diminished as he grew older, and, by the casualties of the world, he lived to fancy himself the last of a bygone generation far superior in every gift and attribute to that which succeeded it.

When arrested, and charged with the crime of wilful murder, so far from experiencing the indignant astonishment such an allegation might naturally lead to, he only accepted it as another instance of the unrelenting hate with which the Government, or, as he styled it, “the Castle,” had, through his life long, pursued him.

“Who is it,” cried he, with sarcastic bitterness, “that I have murdered?”

“You are charged with being accessory to the death of Mr. Barry Rutledge, sir,” said the other.

“Barry Rutledge! – the Court-jester, the Castle-mimic, the tale-bearer of the Viceroy’s household, the hireling scoffer at honest men, and the cringing supplicant of bad ones. The man who crushed such a reptile would have deserved well of his country, if it were not that the breed is too large to be extirpated.”

“Take care what you say, Mr. Curtis,” said the other, respectfully; “your words may be used to your disadvantage.”

“Take care what I say! Who are you speaking to, sirrah? Is the caution given to Joe Curtis? Is it to the man that has braved your power and laughed at your Acts of Parliament these fifty years? Are you going to teach me discretion now? Hark ye, my man, tell your employers not to puzzle their heads with plots and schemes about a conviction; they need neither bribe a witness, corrupt a judge, nor pack a jury. Familiar as such good actions are to them, their task will still be easier here. Tell them this; and tell them also that the score they must one day be prepared to settle would be lighter if Joe Curtis was the last man they had sent innocently to the scaffold.”

As though he had disburdened his mind by this bitter speech, Curtis never again adverted to the dreadful accusation against him. He was committed to Newgate; and while treated with a certain deference to his position in life, he never relaxed in the stern and unbending resolve neither to accept any favor, nor even avail himself of the ordinary means of legal defence.

“Prison diet and a straw mattress!” cried he; “such you cannot deny me; and they will be the extent of the favors I’ll receive at your hands.”

As the day fixed for the trial approached, the popular excitement rose to a high degree. Curtis was not a favorite even with his own party; his temper was sour, and his disposition unconciliatory; so that even by the Liberal press, his name was mentioned with little sympathy or regard. Besides this feeling, there was another, and a far more dangerous one, then abroad. The lower classes had been of late reflected on severely for the crimes which disgraced the county calendars, and the opportunity of retaliating against the gentry, by a case which involved one of their order, was not to be neglected. While, therefore, the daily papers accumulated a variety of strange and seemingly convincing circumstances, the street literature did not scruple to go further, and Curtis was the theme of many a ballad, wherein his guilt was depicted in all the glowing colors of verse.

It is one of the gravest inconveniences which accompany the liberty of free discussion that an accused man is put upon his trial before the bar of public opinion, and his guilt or innocence pronounced upon, long before he takes his place in presence of his real judges; and although, in the main, popular opinion is rarely wrong, still there are moments of rash enthusiasm, periods of misguided zeal or unbridled bigotry, in which such decisions are highly perilous. Too frequently, also, will circumstances quite foreign to the matter at issue be found to influence the opinions expressed upon it.

So far had the popular verdict gone against the accused in the present case that there was a considerable time spent on the morning of the trial, before a jury could be empanelled which should not include any one who had already pronounced strongly on the case.

Curtis, as I have mentioned, declined all means of defence; he thought, or affected to think, that every member of the bar was open to Government corruption, and that as the whole was an organized plot for his destruction, resistance was perfectly vain and useless. When asked, therefore, to whom he had intrusted his case, he advanced to the front of the dock, and said: “Gentlemen of the jury, the disagreeable duties you are sworn to discharge shall not be protracted by anything on my part. Whatever falsehoods the counsel for the Crown may advance, and the witnesses swear to, shall meet neither denial nor refutation from me. The Castle scoundrels shall play the whole game themselves, and whenever you agree ‘what ‘s to pay,’ I ‘ll settle the score without flinching.”

This extraordinary address, uttered in a tone of half-savage jocularity, excited a strange mixture of emotion in those who heard it, which ultimately ended in half-subdued laughter throughout the court, repressing which at once, the judge gravely reprimanded the prisoner for the aspersions he had thrown on the administration of justice, and appointed one of the most distinguished members of the bar to conduct his defence.

It was late in the day when the Crown counsel rose to open his case. His address was calm and dispassionate. It was divested of what might seem to be any ungenerous allusion to the peculiar character or temperament of the accused, but it promised an amount of circumstantial evidence which, were the credit of the witnesses to stand unimpeached, would be almost impossible to reconcile with anything short of the guilt of the prisoner in the dock.

“We shall show you, gentlemen of the jury,” said he, “first of all that there was a manifest motive for this crime, – at least, what to a man of the prisoner’s temper and passions might adequately represent a motive. We shall produce evidence before you to prove his arrival secretly in Dublin, where he lodged in an obscure and little-frequented locality, avoiding all occasion of recognition, and passing under an assumed name. We shall show you that on each evening he was accustomed to visit an acquaintance – a solicitor, whom we shall produce on the table – whose house is situated at the very opposite end of the city; returning from which, it was his habit to pass through Stephen’s Green, and that he took this path on the night of the murder, having parted from his friend a little before midnight. We shall next show you that the traces of the footsteps correspond exactly with his boots, even to certain peculiarities in their make. And, lastly, we shall prove his immediate and secret departure from the capital on this very night in question; his retirement to a distant part of the country, where he remained till within a few days previous to his arrest.

“Such are the brief outlines of a case, the details of which will comprise a vast number of circumstances, – slight, perhaps, and trivial individually, but which, taken collectively, and considered in regard to their bearing on the matter before us, will make up a mass of evidence that the most sceptical cannot reject.

“Although it may not be usual to advert to the line of conduct which the prisoner has adopted, in refusing to name a counsel for his defence, I cannot avoid warning the jury that such a course may bear an interpretation very remote from that which at first sight it seems to convey. He would wish you to accept this position as the strongest evidence of innocence; as if, relying on the justice of his cause, he requires neither guidance nor counsel!

“It will be for you, gentlemen, to determine if the evidence placed before you admit of such a construction; or whether, on the contrary, it be not of such a nature that would foil the skill of the craftiest advocate to shake, and be more effectually rebutted by a general and vague denial, than by any systematic endeavors to impeach.

“You are not, therefore, to accept this rejection of aid as by any means a proof of conscious innocence. Far from it. The more correct reading might show it to be the crafty policy of a man who throughout his whole life has been as remarkable for self-reliance as for secrecy; who, confiding in his own skill to direct him in the most difficult circumstances, places far more reliance on his personal adroitness than upon the most practised advocacy; and whose depreciatory estimate of mankind is but the gloomy reflection of a burdened conscience.”

It was so late when the counsel had concluded that the court adjourned its proceedings till the following morning; and the vast assembly which thronged the building dispersed, deeply impressed with the weighty charge against the prisoner, and with far less of sympathy than is usually accorded to those who stand in like predicament.