Under cross-examination Gunston, his honour being at stake, flatly denied that he had refused a challenge. He insisted that he had refused only to fight Roger there and then without seconds and the observance of proper formalities.
During the evidence much had been said to show that, although Roger’s visits to Stillwaters occurred only at long intervals, he obviously regarded it as his second home, particularly as his little daughter was being brought up there with the young Earl of St. Ermins. It was therefore evident that, having been debarred from visiting the house in future, he had much to lose; whereas with Beefy dead he would be free to continue staying there and making merry in it with his mistress.
In his summing up the Judge stressed this point, and it was clear that on the evidence he believed Roger to be guilty. As Roger was about to be led away he felt it as good as certain that he would be convicted, and he wondered vaguely what the black cap was like that the Judge would put on when sentencing him to be hanged by the neck until dead, after the passing of the next three Sundays.
He had always expected to die from a sword thrust or a bullet, and the thought of being strangled while kicking wildly at the end of a rope both nauseated and frightened him. The Judge had been scrupulously fair, except in one particular for which he could not be blamed, and that could have made no material difference. Gunston’s evidence had been truthful and the jury had, if anything, appeared sympathetic. So there were no grounds on which he could lodge an appeal. Thinking again of the horrible death that awaited him, he wished now that the bullet that had hit him at Marengo had done so a few inches lower and proved fatal.
The Judge had already left the dais and the jury had risen, when there was a stir at the back of the Court. Two black-clad women were pushing their way through the press. At the sound of the slight commotion Roger turned, halted, pushed aside the two gaolers who were leading him away and started back towards the dock. He felt certain that he had caught sight of Jenny’s face. If so, the other figure, heavily veiled in crêpe, could only be Georgina.
Colonel Thursby had left the well of the Court to meet them. Roger’s gaolers tried to make him accompany them out and across the corridor to a cell; but he insisted on remaining where he was, and they were reluctant to make a scene by manhandling him. There were hasty, whispered exchanges between Georgina, her father and Sergeant Burnfurze, then the latter went out to speak to the Judge.
Order was called for. The Judge returned and addressed the Counsel for the Prosecution. ‘I am informed that the Countess of St. Ermins is now in Court and has asked to be allowed to give evidence. As this may throw new light on this case I am of the opinion we should hear Her Ladyship.’
Georgina mounted the stand, threw back her veil, took the oath and addressed the Judge in a low voice, ‘My Lord, I pray you pardon my belated appearance but it was only yesterday that my maid learned from a news sheet that Mr. Brook is accused of murdering my late husband and was to be brought to trial today. I have been travelling all night to get here, because I was the only independent witness of this terrible affair and felt it my duty to give an account of it to the Court.’
The Judge nodded but made no comment, and she went on in a stronger voice to describe what had taken place. Her account differed from Gunston’s on two points. She said that he had refused Roger’s challenge to a duel; and that at the fatal moment when Roger had lunged at him, the Colonel, having the much heavier weapon, had knocked Roger’s rapier aside; so deflecting the thrust that, with considerable impetus still behind it, the blade had pierced her husband’s body.
In the first matter she had told the truth, in the second she had deliberately perjured herself; but if she was believed Roger’s life would be saved.
Sergeant Burnfurze put a few questions to her, bringing out that Roger, having been very drunk, could have had little control over his weapon yet, having lurched forward, the whole weight of his body would have been behind it.
Counsel for the Prosecution then rose to cross-examine. He asked if it was true that on the evening preceding the tragedy her husband had said in her presence that he would not tolerate further visits to Stillwaters by the defendant.
‘Yes,’ Georgina replied. ‘He did say something to that effect.’
The little lawyer took a pinch of snuff, gave a self-satisfied smile and said, ‘Perhaps Your Ladyship can tell us your husband’s reason for being averse to continuing to receive Mr. Brook in his house?’
Looking straight at him, Georgina cried in ringing tones, ‘I will; although I doubt not you have already ferreted it out. ’Twas because some rattle-trap servant had told him that Mr. Brook was my lover. And ’twas the truth. I care not who knows it! We have been lovers since we were boy and girl, and no woman ever had a finer, braver man on whom to bestow her favours.’
Georgina’s bold declaration caused an excited buzz to run round the Court. The usher called for silence; then Counsel, looking at the jury, said with a slight sneer, ‘Her Ladyship’s admission is all that was needed to show that she and her lover were so enamoured of one another that they would brook no hindrance to their immoralities. As to my Lady’s story of the rapier being struck aside.… I leave you, gentlemen, to judge its worth.’
The moment he sat down, Burnfurze lumbered to his feet. ‘M’Lud! I protest! I take great exception to my learned colleague’s innuendo. My Lady St. Ermins has testified on oath that the rapier was struck aside. She was in a better position to see what occurred than Colonel Gunston, and he has admitted under cross-examination that this was like no ordinary duel, but an exchange of wild blows the sequence of which neither he nor the defendant can recall exactly.
‘As to Her Ladyship’s generous admission that she and the defendant had been lovers for many years, nothing could more completely demolish the case for the Prosecution. Had they but just met and become newly engaged in a passionate association, it is perhaps possible that the defendant, seized by violent jealousy while too drunk to control his emotion, might have made a thrust at the hated husband of his mistress. But here we have a couple who have been lovers since their teens. In fact this extra-marital relationship was such that passion must have long since died down and given place to an almost conjugal state. And pray observe, gentlemen of the jury, that there was no question of the association being brought to an abrupt end. Stillwaters alone was to be denied to the couple as a place at which to meet. They were perfectly free to see one another wherever and whenever else they would.’
The Judge again summed up. He gave some weight to Georgina’s statement that Roger’s rapier had been knocked from its intended course by Gunston’s heavier weapon, and Burnfurze’s argument that as the association between Georgina and Roger had existed for many years it was not reasonable to suppose that a sudden upsurge of jealousy had led him to seize the offered opportunity to kill her husband. But he put it to the jury that, in view of Lady St. Ermins’ confessed life-long attachment to the defendant, they might consider the evidence she had given to be very highly prejudiced in his favour.
The Court thereupon rose. The judge was solemnly escorted from it, the jury retired to consider their verdict and Roger was taken by his warders to a cell across the corridor.
The jury were absent for six hours. During that time the strain on Roger, waiting to hear the verdict they would bring in, was appalling. He was well aware that Georgina had perjured herself in the hope of saving him; for it had been his off-balance stagger that had caused his rapier to pierce Beefy’s side—not, as she had sworn, a blow from Gunston’s sword that had turned the thrust. But, after her admission that he had been the one man who really counted in her life, would the jury believe that?
At last the summons came for him to be escorted back to the courtroom. It was by then twilight and candles had been lit, throwing queer shadows upon the walls. The jury filed into their box. The foreman rose, bowed to the Judge and said, ‘My Lord, we find the accused “Not guilty”.’
The relief Roger felt w
as beyond description. He looked round in vain for Georgina; she and Jenny had left the Court. His father, his friends and many of his acquaintances who had been present during the trial crowded round to congratulate him on the verdict. But he was not allowed to depart a free man.
Within a few minutes he was re-arrested, spent the night in a cell and, the following morning, was arraigned before the same Judge on a charge of manslaughter. The evidence of the manner in which John Beefy had met his death was again given, without Georgina having to be called on. A new jury retired and returned within ten minutes; their verdict being ‘Guilty’.
The Judge looked at Roger with a frown and said severely, ‘By the statutes of the land duelling is a crime. Armed assault is a still more serious one. That you were drunk is no excuse for having used a weapon, and the public must be protected from persons who resort to violence. Your intemperate act led to the death of a man who was attempting to prevent you from continuing an illegal conflict. For that I sentence you to three years’ imprisonment.’
13
The Terrible Betrayal
As Roger had not been convicted of housebreaking, coining or any other felony of that kind he had not been condemned to hard labour, so was to serve his sentence in Guildford Gaol. His cell was on the first floor and contained a bed, table, chair and washstand. The regulations entitled him to see only one visitor, and send and receive only one letter a month; and the only amenity for passing the time was a dog-eared Bible.
But in those days prisoners with money were allowed to have food sent in and nearly all officials, other than Judges, were habitually corrupt. The salaries paid to Prison Governors were so small that, while they would not connive at escapes, they were usually willing to ameliorate the lot of prisoners in return for presents from the prisoners’ friends; and during Roger’s first week in prison he received visits from his father, Droopy Ned and Colonel Thursby.
The Admiral cheered him greatly by saying that he meant to ask for an audience with the King and, in consideration of his own distinguished service in the Royal Navy, implore him to grant a pardon or, at least, a reduction of Roger’s sentence.
The Colonel depressed him by admitting to him with great reluctance that, although Georgina had given evidence that had saved his life at his first trial, she remained adamant in her determination not to forgive him for having killed her husband, and had now returned to Weymouth, where the Colonel was about to join her.
Droopy, combining his foppish charm and his prestige as a wealthy noble with many powerful connections, had made a friend of the Governor, He had brought with him a present of a dozen cases of wine, which it was tacitly understood that the Governor should share with Roger, and had also obtained the concession that he should be supplied with writing materials and allowed to send out for books.
Even with these privileges to solace his confinement the appalling fact remained that, should his father prove unsuccessful with the King, he would have to spend three of the best years of his life in prison; and to that was added the agonising knowledge that, being unable to have a full explanation with Georgina, there seemed little chance of healing the breach between them.
Every morning he was taken out for an hour’s exercise in the courtyard, but the remainder of the days dragged interminably. He had always enjoyed reading, but now that he had nothing else to do he lost his pleasure in it. At times he paced his cell restlessly, six paces towards the stout door with its great lock and six paces back towards the heavily-barred window. At others he lay on his bed for hours at a stretch, his thoughts vaguely wandering but returning again and again to what an incredible fool he had been not to have skipped his bail while he had had the chance; for he could easily have got away to France, and the loss of the money involved would have been a small price to pay for retaining his liberty.
In the previous year the question of Catholic emancipation had had such a disturbing effect on King George’s mind that soon after the fall of the Pitt government he had again become temporarily insane. His recovery had been much quicker than it had in ’89, but it was still felt that he should be burdened only with a minimum of business. In consequence there were many delays before Admiral Sir Christopher Brook obtained his audience, and it was not until mid-July that the monarch received him at Kew. The following day Sir Christopher came down to see Roger and, as gently as he could, broke to him the ill success of the interview.
The King had received him kindly, exclaiming, ‘Admiral Chris! Admiral Chris! What! What! ’Tis good to see you.’ But when the Admiral had explained the reason for his visit, the King had taken a very different tone. ‘Farmer George’, as his subjects called him, was a rigorously moral man and abhorred all forms of violence. His now faulty memory of the case being reawakened he had become angry and flustered; then declared it to be his duty to protect his subjects from dangerous, drunken adulterers, and that Roger, having killed a good honest merchant, deserved to hang for it.
That night Roger felt very low and wrote informing Droopy of his bitter disappointment. In his reply Droopy endeavoured to cheer him by saying that for some time past, apart from his set principles on religious matters, the King’s attitude to many other questions often varied from day to day; so he thought it would be worth approaching him again, this time through the Duke of Portland who, after Pitt’s retirement, had remained on as Home Secretary. But, Droopy added, the summer recess would soon be taking His Grace out of London and, in any case, it would be unwise to raise the subject again with His Majesty until he had had ample time to forget the Admiral’s visit.
Shortly after this Roger received a letter from Colonel Thursby. He said he thought Roger would like to know that Georgina had for the past few weeks again taken up her painting, so was in better spirits, and that he had now persuaded her to accompany him on a visit to Paris. Having for so long been unable to visit the French capital, the English were now flocking there in great numbers and were being received in a most friendly spirit. There everything was now à l’anglais. and everything French was the latest mode in London. He was in great hopes that this complete change of scene would have entirely restored Georgina to her old self by the time they returned to Stillwaters in September.
Roger also had some talent as an artist, although not approaching that of Georgina’s, who had studied under both Reynolds and Gainsborough. The letter reminded him of his long-neglected hobby; and the Governor, who by then was doing very handsomely out of Droopy Ned, agreed to have some artists’ materials bought for him.
Now being able to occupy himself with sketching and painting as an alternative to reading, he somehow got through the remainder of July and the month of August. But having no model to sit for him, or landscape to copy other than the view from his window, which consisted of tree tops seen across the high prison wall, he found his painting from memory gave him little satisfaction, with the result that when September came in he was again desperately craving for freedom.
After brooding on the matter for some days he decided that if the Duke of Portland failed to secure the King’s clemency for him he must, somehow, escape and make his way back to France. Food and other things were bought for him out of a deposit he had arranged to be placed with the Governor, but he was not allowed to have any money; so it would not be possible for him to bribe one of his gaolers. They had, too, treated him decently; so he was very averse to attacking and attempting to overpower one of them and, even should he do so, his chances of getting clear of the prison would be small.
The door of his cell was of stout oak and the lock much too strong to be forced. There remained only the window and, after much thought, he decided that he must adopt the classic method of sawing through a bar then lowering himself to the ground by a rope made out of his bedclothes. There remained the problem of getting over the fifteen-foot-high wall of the gaol; but in that it looked as if luck might favour him, as some workmen had recently started to renew the beams and roof of a large one-storey outbuilding that was just
within his view. If they were still working on it when he made his attempt he would be able to make use of their gear.
That ‘if’ was the crux of the matter; so he made up his mind to start work on the bar without delay. He had been allowed a penknife to sharpen his pencils for sketching and a small whetstone on which to sharpen the penknife. By breaking the whetstone so that it had a jagged edge he set about serrating the blade of the penknife until he had turned it into a small saw. It was a slow and finicky business and took him the best part of a week; but now he again had a worthwhile project to occupy his mind he felt much more cheerful.
In the door of his cell there was a grill through which, only very occasionally, but at odd times, one of the gaolers looked in at him. While working on the penknife he had no difficulty in concealing what he was doing, by sitting, as usual, at his table with his back to the door. But to cut through one of the inch-thick iron bars to the window without being caught was a very different undertaking. He had now to control his impatience during the day and work during the night, and then only on nights when there was no moon or its light was obscured by cloud.
To dig the ends of one of the bars out of the masonry with the tools at his disposal was clearly impossible, and making two cuts through a bar proved a most laborious task. But by the end of September he had cut both ends so that the bar was held in place only by a remaining eighth of an inch and had protected the cuts from detection by filling them with a mixture of black paint and soap.
Now that Parliament was about to meet again for its autumn session he wrote to Droopy asking if the Duke of Portland had yet returned to London and if he had had any opportunity of approaching him. Droopy replied that he had seen the Duke a fortnight since, but had been so loath to inflict another disappointment on Roger that he had put off letting him know the result of the interview. His Grace, like the King, had been of the opinion that Roger had been lucky to escape a hanging, and had refused to intervene.
The Wanton Princess Page 20