In the meantime, the footman dispatched in pursuit of Mr. Peters speedily overtook that feeble gentleman. The old man stopped when he heard the sound of pursuing steps, but any alarms that may have crossed his mind seemed to disappear on his recognising the livery. He very gratefully accepted the proferred assistance, and placed his tremulous arm within the servant’s for support. They had not gone far, however, when the old man stopped suddenly, saying,
“Dear me! as I live, I have dropped it. You heard it fall. My eyes, I fear, won’t serve me, and I’m unable to stoop low enough; but if you will look, you shall have half the find. It is a guinea; I carried it in my glove.”
The street was silent and deserted. The footman had hardly descended to what he termed his “hunkers,” and begun to search the pavement about the spot which the old man indicated, when Mr. Peters, who seemed very much exhausted, and breathed with difficulty, struck him a violent blow, from above, over the back of the head with a heavy instrument, and then another; and leaving him bleeding and senseless in the gutter, ran like a lamplighter down a lane to the right, and was gone.
When, an hour later, the watchman brought the man in livery home, still stupid and covered with blood, Judge Harbottle cursed his servant roundly, swore he was drunk, threatened him with an indictment for taking bribes to betray his master, and cheered him with a perspective of the broad street leading from the Old Bailey to Tyburn, the cart’s tail, and the hangman’s lash.
Notwithstanding this demonstration, the Judge was pleased. It was a disguised “affidavit man,” or footpad, no doubt, who had been employed to frighten him. The trick had fallen through.
A “court of appeal,” such as the false Hugh Peters had indicated, with assassination for its sanction, would be an uncomfortable institution for a “hanging judge” like the Honourable Justice Harbottle. That sarcastic and ferocious administrator of the criminal code of England, at that time a rather pharisaical, bloody, and heinous system of justice, had reasons of his own for choosing to try that very Lewis Pyneweck, on whose behalf this audacious trick was devised. Try him he would. No man living should take that morsel out of his mouth.
Of Lewis Pyneweck of course, so far as the outer world could see, he knew nothing. He would try him after his fashion, without fear, favour, or affection.
But did he not remember a certain thin man, dressed in mourning, in whose house, in Shrewsbury, the Judge’s lodgings used to be, until a scandal of his ill-treating his wife came suddenly to light? A grocer with a demure look, a soft step, and a lean face as dark as mahogany, with a nose sharp and long, standing ever so little awry, and a pair of dark steady brown eyes under thinly-traced black brows — a man whose thin lips wore always a faint unpleasant smile.
Had not that scoundrel an account to settle with the Judge? had he not been troublesome lately? and was not his name Lewis Pyneweck, some time grocer in Shrewsbury, and now prisoner in the jail of that town?
The reader may take it, if he pleases, as a sign that Judge Harbottle was a good Christian, that he suffered nothing ever from remorse. That was undoubtedly true. He had nevertheless done this grocer, forger, what you will, some five or six years before, a grievous wrong; but it was not that, but a possible scandal, and possible complications, that troubled the learned Judge now.
Did he not, as a lawyer, know, that to bring a man from his shop to the dock, the chances must be at least ninety-nine out of a hundred that he is guilty.
A weak man like his learned brother Withershins was not a judge to keep the highroads safe, and make crime tremble. Old Judge Harbottle was the man to make the evil-disposed quiver, and to refresh the world with showers of wicked blood, and thus save the innocent, to the refrain of the ancient saw he loved to quote:
Foolish pity
Ruins a city.
In hanging that fellow he could not be wrong. The eye of a man accustomed to look upon the dock could not fail to read “villain” written sharp and clear in his plotting face. Of course he would try him, and no one else should.
A saucy-looking woman, still handsome, in a mob-cap gay with blue ribbons, in a saque of flowered silk, with lace and rings on, much too fine for the Judge’s housekeeper, which nevertheless she was, peeped into his study next morning, and, seeing the Judge alone, stepped in.
“Here’s another letter from him, come by the post this morning. Can’t you do nothing for him?” she said wheedlingly, with her arm over his neck, and her delicate finger and thumb fiddling with the lobe of his purple ear.
“I’ll try,” said Judge Harbottle, not raising his eyes from the paper he was reading.
“I knew you’d do what I asked you,” she said.
The Judge clapt his gouty claw over his heart, and made her an ironical bow.
“What,” she asked, “will you do?”
“Hang him,” said the Judge with a chuckle.
“You don’t mean to; no, you don’t, my little man,” said she, surveying herself in a mirror on the wall.
“I’m d —— d but I think you’re falling in love with your husband at last!” said Judge Harbottle.
“I’m blest but I think you’re growing jealous of him,” replied the lady with a laugh. “But no; he was always a bad one to me; I’ve done with him long ago.”
“And he with you, by George! When he took your fortune and your spoons and your earrings, he had all he wanted of you. He drove you from his house; and when he discovered you had made yourself comfortable, and found a good situation, he’d have taken your guineas and your silver and your earrings over again, and then allowed you half-a-dozen years more to make a new harvest for his mill. You don’t wish him good; if you say you do, you lie.”
She laughed a wicked saucy laugh, and gave the terrible Rhadamanthus a playful tap on the chops.
“He wants me to send him money to fee a counsellor,” she said, while her eyes wandered over the pictures on the wall, and back again to the looking-glass; and certainly she did not look as if his jeopardy troubled her very much.
“Confound his impudence, the scoundrel!” thundered the old Judge, throwing himself back in his chair, as he used to do in furore on the bench, and the lines of his mouth looked brutal, and his eyes ready to leap from their sockets. “If you answer his letter from my house to please yourself, you’ll write your next from somebody else’s to please me. You understand, my pretty witch, I’ll not be pestered. Come, no pouting; whimpering won’t do. You don’t care a brass farthing for the villain, body or soul. You came here but to make a row. You are one of Mother Carey’s chickens; and where you come, the storm is up. Get you gone, baggage! get you gone!” he repeated with a stamp; for a knock at the hall-door made her instantaneous disappearance indispensable.
I need hardly say that the venerable Hugh Peters did not appear again. The Judge never mentioned him. But oddly enough, considering how he laughed to scorn the weak invention which he had blown into dust at the very first puff, his white-wigged visitor and the conference in the dark front parlour was often in his memory.
His shrewd eye told him that allowing for change of tints and such disguises as the playhouse affords every night, the features of this false old man, who had turned out too hard for his tall footman, were identical with those of Lewis Pyneweck.
Judge Harbottle made his registrar call upon the crown solicitor, and tell him that there was a man in town who bore a wonderful resemblance to a prisoner in Shrewsbury jail named Lewis Pyneweck, and to make inquiry through the post forthwith whether any one was personating Pyneweck in prison, and whether he had thus or otherwise made his escape.
The prisoner was safe, however, and no question as to his identity.
CHAPTER IV.
INTERRUPTION IN COURT.
In due time Judge Harbottle went circuit; and in due time the judges were in Shrewsbury. News travelled slowly in those days, and newspapers, like the wagons and stagecoaches, took matters easily. Mrs. Pyneweck, in the Judge’s house, with a diminished household — the gr
eater part of the Judge’s servants having gone with him, for he had given up riding circuit, and travelled in his coach in state — kept house rather solitarily at home.
In spite of quarrels, in spite of mutual injuries — some of them, inflicted by herself, enormous — in spite of a married life of spited bickerings — a life in which there seemed no love or liking or forbearance, for years — now that Pyneweck stood in near danger of death, something like remorse came suddenly upon her. She knew that in Shrewsbury were transacting the scenes which were to determine his fate. She knew she did not love him; but she could not have supposed, even a fortnight before, that the hour of suspense could have affected her so powerfully.
She knew the day on which the trial was expected to take place. She could not get it out of her head for a minute; she felt faint as it drew towards evening.
Two or three days passed; and then she knew that the trial must be over by this time. There were floods between London and Shrewsbury, and news was long delayed. She wished the floods would last for ever. It was dreadful waiting to hear; dreadful to know that the event was over, and that she could not hear till self-willed rivers subsided; dreadful to know that they must subside and the news come at last.
She had some vague trust in the Judge’s goodnature, and much in the resources of chance and accident. She had contrived to send the money he wanted. He would not be without legal advice and energetic and skilled support.
At last the news did come — a long arrear all in a gush: a letter from a female friend in Shrewsbury; a return of the sentences, sent up for the Judge; and most important, because most easily got at, being told with great aplomb and brevity, the long-deferred intelligence of the Shrewsbury Assizes in the Morning Advertiser. Like an impatient reader of a novel, who reads the last page first, she read with dizzy eyes the list of the executions.
Two were respited, seven were hanged; and in that capital catalogue was this line:
“Lewis Pyneweck — forgery.”
She had to read it half-a-dozen times over before she was sure she understood it. Here was the paragraph:
“Sentence, Death — 7.
“Executed accordingly, on Friday the 13th instant, to wit:
“Thomas Primer, alias Duck — highway robbery.
“Flora Guy — stealing to the value of 11s. 6d.
“Arthur Pounden — burglary.
“Matilda Mummery — riot.
“Lewis Pyneweck — forgery, bill of exchange.”
And when she reached this, she read it over and over, feeling very cold and sick. This buxom housekeeper was known in the house as Mrs. Carwell — Carwell being her maiden name, which she had resumed.
No one in the house except its master knew her history. Her introduction had been managed craftily. No one suspected that it had been concerted between her and the old reprobate in scarlet and ermine.
Flora Carwell ran up the stairs now, and snatched her little girl, hardly seven years of age, whom she met on the lobby, hurriedly up in her arms, and carried her into her bedroom, without well knowing what she was doing, and sat down, placing the child before her. She was not able to speak. She held the child before her, and looked in the little girl’s wondering face, and burst into tears of horror.
She thought, the Judge could have saved him. I daresay he could. For a time she was furious with him; and hugged and kissed her bewildered little girl, who returned her gaze with large round eyes.
That little girl had lost her father, and knew nothing of the matter. She had been always told that her father was dead long ago.
A woman, coarse, uneducated, vain, and violent, does not reason, or even feel, very distinctly; but in these tears of consternation were mingling a self-upbraiding. She felt afraid of that little child.
But Mrs. Carwell was a person who lived not upon sentiment, but upon beef and pudding; she consoled herself with punch; she did not trouble herself long even with resentments; she was a gross and material person, and could not mourn over the irrevocable for more than a limited number of hours, even if she would.
Judge Harbottle was soon in London again. Except the gout, this savage old epicurean never knew a day’s sickness. He laughed and coaxed and bullied away the young woman’s faint upbraidings, and in a little time Lewis Pyneweck troubled her no more; and the Judge secretly chuckled over the perfectly fair removal of a bore, who might have grown little by little into something very like a tyrant.
It was the lot of the Judge whose adventures I am now recounting to try criminal cases at the Old Bailey shortly after his return. He had commenced his charge to the jury in a case of forgery, and was, after his wont, thundering dead against the prisoner, with many a hard aggravation and cynical gibe, when suddenly all died away in silence, and, instead of looking at the jury, the eloquent Judge was gaping at some person in the body of the court.
Among the persons of small importance who stand and listen at the sides was one tall enough to show with a little prominence; a slight mean figure, dressed in seedy black, lean and dark of visage. He had just handed a letter to the crier, before he caught the Judge’s eye.
That Judge descried, to his amazement, the features of Lewis Pyneweck. He has the usual faint thin-lipped smile; and with his blue chin raised in air, and as it seemed quite unconscious of the distinguished notice he has attracted, he was stretching his low cravat with his crooked fingers, while he slowly turned his head from side to side — a process which enabled the Judge to see distinctly a stripe of swollen blue round his neck, which indicated, he thought, the grip of the rope.
This man, with a few others, had got a footing on a step, from which he could better see the court. He now stepped down, and the Judge lost sight of him.
His lordship signed energetically with his hand in the direction in which this man had vanished. He turned to the tipstaff. His first effort to speak ended in a gasp. He cleared his throat, and told the astounded official to arrest that man who had interrupted the court.
“He’s but this moment gone down there. Bring him in custody before me, within ten minutes’ time, or I’ll strip your gown from your shoulders and fine the sheriff!” he thundered, while his eyes flashed round the court in search of the functionary.
Attorneys, counsellors, idle spectators, gazed in the direction in which Mr. Justice Harbottle had shaken his gnarled old hand. They compared notes. Not one had seen any one making a disturbance. They asked one another if the Judge was losing his head.
Nothing came of the search. His lordship concluded his charge a great deal more tamely; and when the jury retired, he stared round the court with a wandering mind, and looked as if he would not have given sixpence to see the prisoner hanged.
CHAPTER V.
CALEB SEARCHER.
The Judge had received the letter; had he known from whom it came, he would no doubt have read it instantaneously. As it was he simply read the direction:
To the Honourable
The Lord Justice
Elijah Harbottle,
One of his Majesty’s Justices of
the Honourable Court of Common Pleas.
It remained forgotten in his pocket till he reached home.
When he pulled out that and others from the capacious pocket of his coat, it had its turn, as he sat in his library in his thick silk dressing-gown; and then he found its contents to be a closely-written letter, in a clerk’s hand, and an enclosure in ‘secretary hand,’ as I believe the angular scrivinary of law-writings in those days was termed, engrossed on a bit of parchment about the size of this page. The letter said:
“Mr. Justice Harbottle, — My Lord,
“I am ordered by the High Court of Appeal to acquaint your lordship, in order to your better preparing yourself for your trial, that a true bill hath been sent down, and the indictment lieth against your lordship for the murder of one Lewis Pyneweck of Shrewsbury, citizen, wrongfully executed for the forgery of a bill of exchange, on the — the day of —— last, by reason of the wilful
perversion of the evidence, and the undue pressure put upon the jury, together with the illegal admission of evidence by your lordship, well knowing the same to be illegal, by all which the promoter of the prosecution of the said indictment, before the High Court of Appeal, hath lost his life.
“And the trial of the said indictment, I am farther ordered to acquaint your lordship is fixed for the 10th day of —— next ensuing, by the right honourable the Lord Chief-Justice Twofold, of the court aforesaid, to wit, the High Court of Appeal, on which day it will most certainly take place. And I am farther to acquaint your lordship, to prevent any surprise or miscarriage, that your case stands first for the said day, and that the said High Court of Appeal sits day and night, and never rises; and herewith, by order of the said court, I furnish your lordship with a copy (extract) of the record in this case, except of the indictment, whereof, notwithstanding, the substance and effect is supplied to your lordship in this Notice. And farther I am to inform you, that in case the jury then to try your lordship should find you guilty, the right honourable the Lord Chief-Justice will, in passing sentence of death upon you, fix the day of execution for the 10th day of —— , being one calendar month from the day of your trial.”
It was signed by “CALEB SEARCHER,
“Officer of the Crown Solicitor in the
“Kingdom of Life and Death.”
The Judge glanced through the parchment.
“‘Sblood! Do they think a man like me is to be bamboozled by their buffoonery?”
The Judge’s coarse features were wrung into one of his sneers; but he was pale. Possibly, after all, there was a conspiracy on foot. It was queer. Did they mean to pistol him in his carriage? or did they only aim at frightening him?
Judge Harbottle had more than enough of animal courage. He was not afraid of highwaymen, and he had fought more than his share of duels, being a foul-mouthed advocate while he held briefs at the bar. No one questioned his fighting qualities. But with respect to this particular case of Pyneweck, he lived in a house of glass. Was there not his pretty, dark-eyed, over-dressed housekeeper, Mrs. Flora Carwell? Very easy for people who knew Shrewsbury to identify Mrs. Pyneweck, if once put upon the scent; and had he not stormed and worked hard in that case? Had he not made it hard sailing for the prisoner? Did he not know very well what the bar thought of it? It would be the worst scandal that ever blasted judge.
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 787