Authors: George W. M. Reynolds,James Malcolm Rymer
his
bread and have been to him as a wife; and I should be guilty of a
vile deed of treachery were I to denounce him and his companions. Besides - who
would believe my testimony, unsupported by facts, against the indignant denial
of a man of rank, family, and title? I must stifle my resentment for the present.
The hour of retribution will no doubt arrive, sooner or later; and
Harborough shall yet repent the cruel - the cowardly insults he has heaped on
my head this day!"
She paused, and again appeared to reflect profoundly.
Suddenly a gleam of satisfaction passed over her countenance, and she started
up to a sitting posture upon the sofa. The ample skirts of her dress were
partly raised by her attitude, and revealed an exquisitely turned leg to the
middle of the swell of the calf. The delicate foot, imprisoned in the
flesh-coloured stocking of finest silk, tapped upon the carpet, in an agitated
manner, with the tip of the glossy leather shoe.
That gleam of satisfaction which had suddenly appeared upon
her countenance, gradually expanded into a glow of delight, brilliant and
beautiful.
"Perhaps he thinks that I shall endeavour to win him
back again to my arms," she said, musing aloud; -"perhaps he imagines
that his countenance and support are imperatively necessary to me? Oh! no - Sir
Rupert Harborough," she exclaimed, with a smile of triumph; "you may
vainly await self-humiliation from me! To-morrow - yes, so soon as to-morrow
shall you see that I can command a position more splendid than the one in which
you placed me!"
Obeying the impulse of her feelings, she hastened to unlock
an elegant rosewood writing-desk, edged with silver; and from a secret drawer
she took several letters - or rather notes - written upon paper of different
colours. Upon the various envelopes were seals impressed with armorial
bearings, some of which were surrounded by coronets.
She glanced over each in a cursory manner, which
showed she was already tolerably familiar with their contents. The greater
portion she tossed contemptuously into the fire;- a few she placed one upon the
other, quite in a business-like way, upon the table.
When she had gone through the entire file, she again
directed her attention to those which she had reserved; and as she perused them
one after the other, she mused in the following manner:-
"Count do Lestranges is brilliant in his offers, and
immensely rich - no doubt; but he is detestably conceited, and would think more
of himself than of his mistress. His appeal must be rejected;"
and she threw the French nobleman's perfumed epistle into the
fire.
"This," she continued, taking up another, "is
from Lord Templeton. Five thousand a-year is certainly handsome; but then he
himself is so old and ugly! Away with this suitor at once." The English
Peer's
billet-doux
followed that of the French
Count.
"Here is a beautiful specimen of calligraphy,"
resumed Diana, taking up a third letter; "but all the sentiments are
copied, word for word, out of the love-scenes in Anne Radcliffe's romances.
Never was such gross plagiarism! He merits the punishment I thus inflict upon
him;" and her plump white hand crushed the epistle ere she threw it into
the fire.
"But what have we here? Oh! the German baron's killing
address - interspersed with remarks upon the philosophy of love. Ah! my lord,
love was not made for philosophers - and philosophers are Incapable of love; so
we will have none of you."
Another offering to the fire.
"Here is the burning address of the Greek
attaché
with a hard name. It is prettily written;- but who could possibly
enter upon terms with an individual of the name of
Thesaurochrysonichochrysides?"
To the flames went the Greek lover's note also.
"Ah! this seems as if it were to be the successful
candidate," said Diana, carefully perusing the last remaining letter.
"It is written upon a plain sheet of white paper, and without scent. But
then the style - how manly! Yes - decidedly, the Earl of Warrington has gained
the prize. He is rich - un-married - handsome - and still in the prime of life!
There is no room for hesitation."
The Enchantress immediately penned the following note:
"I should have replied without delay to your lordship's
letter of yesterday week, but have been suffering severely from cold and bad
spirits. The former has been expelled by my physician: the latter can only be
forced to decamp by the presence of your
lordship.
"DIANE ARLINGTON."
Having despatched this note to the Earl of Warrington, the
Enchantress retired to her bed-room, to prepare her toilette for the arrival of
the nobleman around whom she had thus suddenly decided upon throwing her magic
spells.
At eight o'clock that evening, a
brilliant equipage stopped at the door of the house in which Mrs. Arlington
resided.
The Earl of Warrington alighted, and was forthwith conducted
into the presence of the Enchantress.
And never was she more bewitching:- never had she appeared
more transcendently lovely.
A dress of the richest black velvet, very low in the
corsage
set off her voluptuous charms and displayed the pure and brilliant
whiteness of the skin to the highest advantage. Her ears were adorned with
pendants of diamonds; and a tiara glittering with the same precious stones,
encircled her brow. There was a soft and languishing melancholy in her deep
blue eyes and in the expression of her countenance, which formed an agreeable
contrast to the dazzling loveliness of her person and the splendour of her
attire.
She was enchanting indeed.
Need we say that the nobleman, who had already been introduced
to her and admired her, was enraptured with the prize that thus surrendered
itself to him?
Diana became the mistress of the Earl of Warrington, and the
very next day removed to a splendid suite of apartments in Albemarle Street,
while his lordship's upholsterers furnished a house for her reception.
NEWGATE
NEWGATE! what an ominous sound has that word. And yet the horror
exists not in the name itself; for it is a very simple compound, and would not
grate upon the ear nor produce a shudder throughout the frame, were it applied
to any other kind of building.
It is, then, its associations and the ideas which it
conjures up that render the word NEWGATE fearful and full of dark menace.
At the mere mention of this name, the mind instantaneously
becomes filled with visions of vice in all its most hideous forms, and crime in
all its most appalling shapes;- wards and court-yards filled with a population
peculiar to themselves, - dark gloomy passages, where the gas burns all day
long, and beneath the pavement of which are interred the remains of murderers
and other miscreants who have expiated their crimes upon the scaffold,- shelves
filled with the casts of the countenances of those wretches, taken the moment
after they were cut down from the gibbet, - condemned cells, - the chapel in
which funeral sermons are preached upon men yet alive to hear them, but who are
doomed to die on the morrow, - the clanking of chains, the banging of huge
doors, oaths, prayers, curses, and ejaculations of despair!
Oh! if it were true that the spirits of the departed are
allowed to revisit the earth for certain purposes and on particular occasions,
- if the belief of superstition were well founded, and night could be peopled a
with the ghosts and spectres of those who sleep in. troubled graves, - what a
place of ineffable horrors - what a scene of terrible sights, would Newgate be
at midnight! The huge flag-stones of the pavement. would rise, to permit the
phantoms of the murderers to issue from their graves. Demons would erect a
gibbet at the debtor's door; and, amidst the sinister glare of torches, an
executioner from hell would hang those miscreants over again. This would be
part of their posthumous punishment, and would occur in the long - long nights
of winter. There would be no moon; but all the windows of Newgate looking upon
the court-yards (and there are none commanding the streets) would be
brilliantly lighted with red flames, coming from an unknown source. And
throughout the long passages of the prison would resound the orgies of hell;
and skeletons wrapped in winding sheets would shake their fetters; and
Greenacre and Good - Courvoisier and Pegsworth - Blakesley and Marchant, with
all their predecessors in the walks of murder, would come in fearful procession
from the gibbet, returning by the very corridors which they traversed in their
way to death on the respective mornings of their execution. Banquets would be
served up to them in the condemned cells; demons would minister to them; and
their food should be the flesh, and their drink the gore, of the victims whom
they had assassinated upon earth!
All would be horrible - horrible!
But, heaven be thanked! such scenes are impossible; and
never can it be given to the shades of the departed to revisit the haunts which
they loved or hated - adored or desecrated, upon earth!
NEWGATE! - fearful name!
And Richard Markham was now in Newgate.
He found, when the massive gates of that terrible prison
closed behind him, that the consciousness of innocence will not afford entire
consolation, in the dilemma in which unjust suspicions may involve the victim
of circumstantial evidence. He scarcely knew in what manner to grapple with the
difficulties that beset him;- he dared not contemplate the probability of a
condemnation to some infamous punishment;- and he could scarcely hope for an
acquittal in the face of the testimony that conspired against him.
He recalled to mind all the events of his infancy and his
boyish years, and contrasted his present position with that which he once
enjoyed in the society of his father and Eugene.
His brother? - aye - what had become of his brother? - that
brother, who had left the paternal roof to seek his own fortunes, and who had
made so strange an appointment for a distant date, upon the hill-top where the
two trees were planted? Four years and four months had passed away since the
day on which that appointment was made; and in seven years and eight mouths it
was to be kept.
They were then to compare notes of their adventures and
success in life, and decide who was the more prosperous of the two, - Eugene,
who was dependent upon his own resources, and had to climb the ladder of
fortune step by step;- or Richard, who, placed by his father's love half-way up
that ladder, had only to avail himself, it would have seemed, of his
advantageous position to reach the top at his leisure?
But, alas! probably Eugene was a miserable wanderer upon the
face of the earth; perhaps he was mouldering beneath the sod that no parental
nor fraternal tears had watered ;- or haply he was languishing in some
loathsome dungeon the doors of which served as barriers between him and all
communion with his fellow-men!
It was strange - passing strange that Eugene had never written
since his, departure; and that from the fatal evening of his separation an the
hill-top all traces of him should have been so suddenly lost.
Peradventure he had been frustrated, in his sanguine
expectations, at his very outset in life! - perchance he had terminated in
disgust an existence which was blighted by disappointment?
Such were the topics of Markham's thoughts, as he walked up and
dawn the large paved court-yard belonging to that department of the prison to
which he had been consigned;- and, of a surety, they were of no pleasurable
description. Uncertainty with regard to his own fate - anxiety in respect to
his brother - and the dread that his prospects in this life were irretrievably
blighted - added to a feverish impatience of a confinement totally unmerited -
all these oppressed his mind.
That night he had nothing but a basin of gruel and a piece
of bread for his supper. He slept in the same ward with a dozen other
prisoners, also awaiting their trials: his couch was hard, cold, and wretched;
and he was compelled to listen to the ribald talk and vaunts of villany of
several of his companions. Their conversation was only varied by such remarks
as these:- "Well," said one, "I hope I shan't get before the
Common-Serjeant: he's certain to give me toko for yam."
"I shall be sure to go up the first day of sessions,
and most likely before the Recorder, as mine is rather a serious matter,"
observed a second. "He won't give me more than seven years of it, I
know."
"For my part," said a third. "I'd much sooner
wait till the Wednesday, when the Judges comedown: they never give it so severe
as them City beaks."
"I tell you what," exclaimed a fourth, "I
shouldn't like to have my meat hashed at evening sittings before the
Commissioner in the New Court. He's always so devilish sulky, because he has
been disturbed at his wine."
"Well, you talk of the regular judges that come down on
a Wednesday," cried a fifth; "I can only tell you that Baron Griffin
and Justice Spikeman are on the rota for next sessions; and I'm blowed if I
wouldn't sooner go before the Common-Serjeant a thousand times, than have old
Griffin meddle in my case. Why- if you only look at him, he'll transport
you for twenty years."
At this idea, all the prisoners who had taken part in this
conversation, burst out into a loud guffaw - but not a whit the more hearty for
being so boisterous.
"Is it possible," asked Markham, who had listened
with some interest to the above discourse,- "is it possible that there can
be any advantage to a prisoner to be tried by a particular judge?"
"Why, of course there is," answered one of the
prisoners. "If a swell like you gets before Justice Spikeman, he'll let
you off with half or a quarter of what the Recorder or Common-Serjeant would
give you: but Baron Griffin would give you just double, because you happened to
be well-dressed."
"Indeed!" ejaculated Markham, whose ideas of the
marvellous equality and admirable even-handedness of English justice, were a
little shocked by these revelations.
"Oh! yes," continued his informant, "all the
world knows these things. If I go before Spikeman, I shall plead Guilty, and
whimper a bit, and he'll be very lenient indeed; but if I'm heard by Griffin.
I'll let the case take its chance, because he wouldn't be softened by any show
of penitence. So you see, in these matters, one must shape one's conduct
according to the judge that one goes before."
"I understand," said Markham: "even justice
is influenced by all kinds of circumstances."
The conversation then turned upon the respective merits of
the various counsel practising at the Central Criminal Court.
"I have secured Whiffins," said one: "he's a
capital fellow - for if he can't make anything out of your case, he instantly
begins to bully the judge."
"Ah! but that produces a bad effect," observed a
second; "and old Griffin would soon put him down. I've got Chearnley -
he's such a capital fellow to make the witnesses contradict themselves."
"Well, I prefer Barkson," exclaimed a third;
"his voice alone frightens a prosecutor into fits."
"Smouch and Slike are the worst," said a fourth:
"the judges always read the paper, or fall asleep when they address
them."
"Yes - because they are such low fellows, and will take
a brief from any one," exclaimed a fifth; "whereas it is totally
contrary to etiquette for a barrister to receive instructions from any one but
an attorney."
"The fact is that such men as Smouch and Slike do a
case more harm than good, with the judges," observed a sixth. "They
haven't the ear of the court - and that's the real truth of it."
These remarks diminished still more the immense respect
which Markham had hitherto entertained for English justice; and he now saw that
the barrister who detailed plain and simple facts, did not stand half such a
good chance of saving his client as the favoured one "who possessed the
ear of the Court."
By a very natural transition, the discourse turned upon
petty juries.
"I think it will go hard with me," said one,
"because I am tried in the City. I wish I had been committed for the
Middlesex Sessions at Clerkenwell."
"Why so!" demanded another prisoner.
"Because, you see, I'm accused of robbing my master;
and as all the jurymen are substantial shopkeepers, they're sure to convict a
man in my position, - even if the evidence isn't complete."
"I'm here for swindling tradesmen at the West-End of
the town," said another.
"Well," exclaimed the first speaker, "the
jury will let you off, if there's the slightest pretence, because they're
all City tradesmen, and hate the West-End ones."
"And I'm here for what is called '
a murderous
assault upon a police-constable.
'
said a third prisoner.
"Was he a Metropolitan or a City-Policeman?"
"A Metropolitan."
"Oh! well - you're safe enough; the jury are sure to
believe that he assaulted you first."
"Thank God for that blessing!"
"I tell you what goes a good way with Old Bailey Juries
- a good appearance. If a poor devil, clothed in rags and very ugly, appears at
the bar, the Foreman of the Jury just says, '
Well, gentlemen, I think we may
say
GUILTY
; for my part I never saw such a hang-dog
countenance in my life.
' But if a well-dressed and good-looking fellow
is placed in the dock, the Foreman is most likely to say, '
Well, gentlemen,
for
my
part I never can nor will believe
that the prisoner could be guilty of such meanness; so I suppose we may say
NOT GUILTY,
gentlemen.
'"
"Can this be true?" ejaculated Markham.
"Certainly it is," was the reply. "I will
tell you more, too. If a prisoner's counsel don't tip the jury plenty of soft
sawder, and tell them that they are enlightened Englishmen, and that they are
the main prop, not only of justice, but also of the crown itself, they will be
certain to find a verdict of
Guilty.
"
"What infamy!" cried
Markham, perfectly astounded at these revelations.
"Ah! and what's worse still," added his informant,
"is that Old Baily juries always, as a matter of course, convict those
poor devils who have no counsel."
"And this is the vaunted palladium of justice and
liberty!" said Richard.
In this way did the prisoners in Markham's ward contrive to
pass away an hour or two, for they were allowed no candle and no fire, and had
consequently been forced to retire to their wretched couches immediately after
dusk.
The night was thus painfully long and wearisome.
Markham found upon enquiry that there were two methods
of living in Newgate. One was to subsist upon the gaol allowance: the other to
provide for oneself. Those who received the allowance were not permitted to
have beer, nor were their friends suffered to add the slightest comfort to
their sorry meals; and those who paid for their own food were restricted as to
quantity and quality.
Such is the treatment prisoners experience
before
they are tried; - and yet there is an old saying,
that every one must be deemed
innocent until he be proved guilty.
The old saying is a detestable mockery. Of course Markham
determined upon paying for his own food; and when Whittingham called in the
morning, he was sent to make the necessary arrangements with the coffee-house
keeper in the Old Bailey who enjoyed the monopoly of supplying that compartment
of the prison.
The most painful ordeal which Richard had to undergo during
his captivity in Newgate, was his first interview with Mr. Monroe. This
gentleman was profoundly affected at the situation of his youthful ward, though
not for one moment did he doubt his innocence.
And here let us mention another revolting humiliation, and
unnecessary cruelty to which the
untried
prisoner is compelled to submit. In each yard is a small
enclosure, or cage, of thick iron bars, covered with wire-work; and beyond this
fence, at a distance of about two feet, is another row of bars similarly
interwoven with wire. The visitor is compelled to stand in this cage to
converse with his relative or friend, who is separated from him by the two
gratings. All private discourse is consequently impossible.
What can recompense the prisoner who is acquitted, for all
the mortifications, insults, indignities, and privations he has undergone in
Newgate previous to that trial which triumphantly proclaims his innocence?
Relative to the interview between Markham and Monroe, all that
it is necessary to state is that the young man's guardian promised to adopt all
possible means to prove his innocence, and spare no expense in securing the
most intelligent and influential legal assistance. Mr. Monroe moreover
intimated his intention of removing the case from the hands of Mac Chizzle to
those of a well-known and highly respectable solicitor. Richard declared that
he left himself entirely in his guardian's hands, and expressed his deep
gratitude for the interest thus demonstrated by that gentleman in his behalf.
Thus terminated the first interview in Newgate between
Markham and his late father's confidential friend.
He felt somewhat relieved by this visit, and entertained
strong hopes of being enabled to prove his innocence upon the day of trial.
But it then wanted a whole month to the next sessions -
thirty horrible days which he would be compelled to pass in Newgate!