Complete works of a e w.., p.243
Complete Works of a E W Mason, page 243
“My lord and gentlemen,” he began, “I have nothing but innocence to plead. I cannot take the jury or the Court with oratory, but I declare in the presence of Almighty God that what is sworn against me is all a fiction. For rebelling against the established Government or attacking that precious life of his Majesty King George — I never had such a thought. You have heard a great many innuendoes and suspicions but very little fact, and I cannot be condemned upon suspicions. Moreover, I shall call a witness to prove to you that Jervas Rookley had the best of reasons for fitting those suspicions together. It is Blackladies that he covets, the estate from which his father disinherited him, and he seeks to regain it as a reward for his zeal by pursuing me to my death, though it cost him perjury. There is but one fact alleged against me, my Lord, in all this, that I had possession of the medal. But it never belonged to me, and that Jervas Rookley knows. I shall call a witness to prove to you that it belonged to Mr. Clavering, and to explain why it was discovered in my room.”
“Well, call your witness!” said the Judge.
“I do, my Lord,” said Anthony Herbert. “I call Lawrence Clavering.” There was a quick movement all through the court like a ripple upon still water, and then, absolute silence — the silence of a night frost-bound and empty. There floated into my mind a recollection of the street beyond the barricade at Preston. The sunlight blazed ruddy upon motionless figures. Had a woman fainted, it seemed you might. have heard her breathing. Then quick and sharp rang out a laugh. I knew the voice; I understood the relief in it. It flashed upon me of a sudden that here was I failing again, and this time irretrievably. I shook off the weariness which hung upon my limbs, the mist which was wrapped about my senses; I pushed aside the man who stood in front of me.
“I call Lawrence Clavering,” repeated Herbert, the certitude of his tone weakening to a tremor.
From somewhere in the gallery I heard a sob, half-stifled — a sob as though a heart was breaking, and I knew too the voice which uttered that.
“Here!” I shouted, and thrust against the shoulders in front of me. A lane was carved as though by magic, and I advanced to the table.
“My lord, he is a rebel and a papist,” said Rookley, starting up, his face livid, his eyes starting from their sockets.
“Doubtless I shall answer for both those crimes,” said I, “in the law’s good time. I am here this day to prevent a wrong.”
Thereupon I was sworn and bidden to take my stand in the witness-box, which I did, being so placed that my back was towards the windows and the setting sun.
“My lord, the witness laughs,” said Mr. Cowper; “I pray your lordship warn him that he swear truly.”
But the witness was not laughing with any levity for the task to which his hand was set, and composed his face upon the instant. The gallery ran round the three sides of the hall; the sunlight, as I say, poured in from behind me and beat upon the gallery in front. I was looking to that part of it over against me from which I had heard a sob; and a face looked out from the rosy glow of the sunlight and smiled at me. It was at that face — the face of Dorothy Curwen that I smiled back. For my heart was lifted within me, exultant, rejoicing. I did not think then of the danger she ran, though the thought pressed heavily enough upon me afterwards; I did not even consider by what means she had come here. She was here. And this time I had not failed.
My musings, however, were interrupted by the judge, who warned me very outrageously that since nothing now could save my body, so I need not trust the saints would save my soul, if they caught me prevaricating from the truth.
“My lord,” I replied humbly, “I was at Preston, and escaped. I could have fled out of England and got me safe to France; I am not like to have thrown away my life that I might tell a lie.”
I shall not be particular to recount all the questions which Herbert put to me. He put many, and I answered them truthfully. I saw the judge’s face cloud and grow sterner and sterner, for every word I spoke was a link to fetter me the more closely to my death; but the face up there in the gallery grew brighter and brighter; or so at least I imagined. It was to the gallery I looked for my judge, and there I saw myself acquitted.
“You have seen this medal?” asked Herbert.
“It belongs to me,” said I.
“Belongs to you?” said the judge.
“It was given to me at Commercy by him whom I must ever regard as my King.”
“How came it, then, in the prisoner’s lodging?”
“I took it there myself that it might be painted in my picture.”
“We shall need proof of all this,” said the judge; “and prithee, friend,” said he, with a biting irony, “consider the oath thou hast taken!”
“Proof there is, my lord,” I cried, “and a sure proof — the picture itself.”
Thereupon the portrait was exhibited. And since the court-house was now falling to darkness, a couple of candles were brought and set in front of it that it might be the better seen. It was the horridest picture that ever was seen; and the glare of the candles made it start out from the gloom like a thing alive. It was not, however, at the face I looked for any great while.
“There, my lord,” I cried in excitement “On the breast! There the medal hangs.”
And to his good fortune Anthony Herbert had painted that medal with all his minute elaboration. From where I stood I could distinguish the head of King James, and when the picture was held close one could read the motto, “Cujus est?”
I looked up to the gallery while the judge and the jury were inspecting the picture. The last rays of the sun glowed tenderly about Dorothy’s face and died off it whilst I looked.
“But the face!” exclaimed Mr. Cowper. “My lord, this is no simple portrait. We are not at the bottom of the matter.”
“The face I have painted since I was in prison,” replied Herbert; and explained in some confusion, “I blamed Mr. Clavering for my arrest.”
“Then,” said the judge, “we shall need proof that the medal was not painted in when you were in prison too.”
But that proof he had, and subsequently produced in the person of his landlord and the landlord’s wife with whom he had lodged at Keswick.
Meanwhile he continued his questioning of me.
“You have heard Jervas Rookley describe the medal?”
“Yes.”
“Is it the true description?”
“But incomplete,” I answered, “for there are marks upon the medal. Upon one side is the face, but there are scratches upon that face, when it fell one day upon the stones. The forehead is indented, there is a mark lengthening the curve of the mouth, there is a scratch where the cravat meets the neck beneath the ear.”
“How came these scratches?” asked Herbert.
“I dropped the medal out of my fob,” said I, “when I was thrown from my horse on Coldbarrow Fell, the first time I came to Blackladies, and Jervas Rookley picked it up and gave it back to me.”
There was a murmur amongst the spectators.
“It is not true,” said Rookley, but in a voice so shaken that it belied the words.
The judge took the medal and examined it.
“I cannot see,” he said. “Bring more candles.”
The candles were brought; the judge examined the medal, and handed it to the counsel.
“My lord, the jury would like to see it,” and the voice was that of the foreman.
How eagerly I watched their faces while they clustered once more about it!
“The marks are there,” said the foreman, “as the witness has described them.”
“I should know,” said I. “I tried to rub them of so often.”
“And Jervas Rookley picked it up?” asked Herbert.
“He held it so long, turning it over in his hand, that I had to ask him thrice before ever I could get it back.”
I spoke with all the earnestness I had, and it seemed to me that the jury belied my words. But I could not tell, and I waited, while the judge summed up and the jury were away considering their verdict, in a fever of anxiety. How long they were! how slowly they filed into the court! I looked up to the gallery: a row of white faces bent on the rail, all gazing towards the jury-box, save one, and that one gazed at me as I sat by the table in the court I was indeed still returning that gaze when the verdict was announced, and I think it was Herbert’s hand grasping mine which first informed me what the verdict was.
That night I slept in Carlisle prison, but as I came out upon the steps of the court-house between my guards, I saw, by the light of the lamp swinging above the door, Herbert and his wife standing side by side; and a few yards further, the sergeant who led the way turned his lanthorn on one side and showed me the little figure of a girl and a face which peeped from out a taffety hood.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE LAST.
FOR, STANDING IN the roadway there, she seemed to me the forlornest figure that ever a man set eyes upon. There was something more than a drooping sadness in the attitude, something strangely like remorse, as though unaccountably she blamed herself. But I was not so curious to unravel her thoughts at this moment, as I was fearful of the risk she ran. She had sat alone in the court-house; no one had so much as spoken to her, and she stood alone in the streets of Carlisle. The knowledge of her danger rushed in upon me, and I had but one hope to lighten it. I remembered that she had spoken to me of a Whiggish relative who had given her shelter, and I trusted that she would find a refuge with him.
And so it indeed proved. For I had not lain more than three days in the castle before this very gentleman was admitted to see me, and after a prosy exhortation on the nature of my crimes, he proceeded:
“I have thought it my duty to say this much to you, but I come at the instance of a poor misguided friend of yours, who is anxious you should have no fears for her safety.” The worthy gentleman scratched his forehead in some perplexity. “I cannot repeat to you all that this friend said. A woman in tears — a man in delirium, they both say a great deal which is not to be repeated. But her messages were of the friendliest — of the friendliest. For the rest the Swallow lies off the mouth of the Eden, with your friend’s father on board. It appears that the ship sailed up the coast from a spot you maybe know of better than I do. Our friend returns to it to-night, and it sails forthwith to France.” At the door he stopped, and scratched his head again. Then he rapped for the turnkey to let him out.
“The messages were of the friendliest,” he repeated, and as the door was opened at that moment, assumed a judicial severity, and so marched pompously out.
Left to myself, I fell straightway into a temper of amazing contradictions. For whereas I had before been moved by the thought of Dorothy’s danger, now I was troubled that she should be in such haste to use her liberty.
“This very night must she go?” I asked of myself indignantly. “Well, there is no reason why she should stay. She will be safe in France,” and so came perilously near to weeping over myself, who must remain behind in prison. But to that thought succeeded another, which drove the first clean from my head. Dorothy in tears! There was matter in that notion for an indictment against the universe; and the indictment I drew, and supported it with such arguments as I felt sure must enforce conviction. From that pursuit I came very naturally to a speculation, in the nature of those friendliest messages. I construed them by the dictionary of her looks, as she had sat in the gallery of the court-house. It was a task of which I did not tire, but drew great comfort from it, and found it very improving.
The next day, however, I was taken out of the castle and sent forward under an escort, to join my co-rebels who were being marched by easy stages to London. I caught them up at St. Albans, and coming to Barnet we had our hands tied, and halters thrown about our horses’ necks, and so were carried through the streets of London to Newgate gaol. Such a concourse of people came to view us as I have never seen the like of. The town was dressed for a holiday; and what with the banging of drums, the hurrahing for King George, and the damning of the “Pretender,” the air so rang with noise, that it was as much as you could to hear your neighbour speak. One sturdy Whig, I remember, planted himself in our way, and with many jeers and imprecations lifted up a jackdaw tricked out with white roses, which he carried on a warming-pan, and so paced backwards and in front of us, until a soldier cracked him on the chest with the butt of his firelock, and toppled the fellow into the gutter.
In Newgate, there I remained a weary while, though this period was made as light for us as well could be. We had the liberty of the Press yard, and were allowed to receive visitors and to visit one another — no inconsiderable privilege, one may think, if one counts up the number imprisoned there. There it came about that I saw much of Charles Ratcliffe, Lord Derwentwater’s brother; and though he was not of his brother’s amiable and endearing disposition, grew to some intimacy with him. He thought me, indeed, a great fool for running my head into the noose at Carlisle for a beggarly painter, and never scrupled to tell me so; but I think it was just that action which inclined his friendship my way. There were other consolations came to me, and one of them was lighted with a glimmering of hope; for one day came Sir William Wyndham to see me, and informed me that Lord Bolingbroke was very active in my behalf, urging upon his friends in England to make representations for my release, or, if that failed, to concert measures for my evasion. I set no great reliance upon either alternative, but Sir William Wyndham came again in March of the year 1716, after the rebellion had closed in Scotland, and Lord Bolingbroke had been dismissed from the service of King James.
“Mr. Secretary Stanhope encourages your kinsman,” said he, “in the hope that he may be pardoned. In which event something might be done for you. Meanwhile, I have a message to deliver to you from him. ‘Tell Lawrence,’ he says, ‘that here in Paris I am much plagued and pestered by a young friend of his, who tells me that unless I unlock Newgate, I do not deserve to be related to him. I am greatly humiliated by so much scolding, but will do what I can.’”
It was not very much, however, that he could do; and on the 8th of May I was arraigned with Charles Ratcliffe at the Exchequer Bar at Westminster, and tried there on the 18th, and taken back again a few days later to receive sentence.
“But we shall not be hanged,” said Ratcliffe. “You will see.”
Indeed, he ever had the greatest confidence that he would escape. I recollect that on the occasion when we were being carried from Newgate to receive sentence at Westminster, our coach was stopped in Fleet Street to make way for King George, who was setting out upon his first visit to Herrenhausen since he had come to the English throne. We stopped opposite a distiller’s, and Ratcliffe, leaning from the window, very coolly called for half a pint of aniseed, and drank it off.
“There is some merit in the Dutchman, after all,” he said with a laugh, “for I was in great need of that.”
The events, however, justified his confidence. Never shall I forget the weeks which followed our condemnation — the intrigues with our friends outside, the timorous bribing of the gaolers within. One day the plan would be settled, the moment for its execution appointed, and the next thing maybe we saw was the countenance of a new gaoler, and so the attempt must needs be deferred and the trouble begin again. Or at another time news would be brought to us that we should receive the clemency of the Crown and only suffer transportation to the colonies; or, again, that we were to be granted a free pardon; or, again, that the sentence was to be carried out within a week. So that now we kicked our heels upon the pinnacles of hope, now we sank into a bog of despair, and either way we shivered with fever — all of us except Charles Ratcliffe.
It was with his usual serenity that when at last all arrangements had been made, he invited those of us who were in the plot to a grand entertainment in a room called the Castle, in the upper part of the prison.
“There are thirteen of us besides myself,” said he, as soon as the supper was served and we were left alone. “The rest must shift for themselves. Mr. Clavering, do you help me with this file, and do you, gentlemen, be sufficiently ill-mannered to make as much clatter with the dishes and your talk as will drown the sound of it.”
Whereupon he drew a file from his pocket, and I crossed over with him to a little door in the corner of the room; and while the others talked and clattered, I went to work with my file upon the screws of the plate which held the lock to the door. When I was tired and my fingers bleeding, Ratcliffe took my place, and after him another, until at last the plate came away.
“Now,” said Ratcliffe, “the passage leads to the debtors’ side. We have been to solace our good friend Mr. Tiverton, who has been most unkindly committed by his creditors. Mr. Tiverton — pray do not forget the name, gentlemen! For even the most obliging gaoler might cavil if we forgot the name.”
We followed him quickly along the passage, across the yard to the porter’s lodge.
“Poor man!” says Ratcliffe, “it is very barbarous and inhuman that a man of genius should go to prison for lack of money.”
“For my part, sir,” says the gaoler, throwing open the wicket, “I pity his tradesmen.”
“But some men are born to be gulled,” says Ratcliffe, with his tongue in his cheek. “And here’s five guineas for you,” and he stepped into the street.
We followed him quickly enough, and once there scattered without so much as a single word of farewell. Each man had his own plant, no doubt. For myself, I knew that a certain sloop was waiting for me on the Thames, and I hurried down to the water’s edge below London Bridge. A boat was waiting by the steps.
