Eli's Children Part 96

It must be a dream, or else he was ill, for there was now a strange singing in his ears, as well as the misty appearance before his eyes, through which he could see nothing but Sage Portlock, as his heart persisted in calling her still.

"Was he to go on?" he asked himself, "to go wading on through this terrible nightmare, planting sting after sting in that tender breast, or should he give it up at once?"

He wanted to--he strove to speak, and say, "My lord, I give up this prosecution," but his lips would not utter the words. For he was in a nightmare-like dream, and no longer a free agent.

And yet his nerves were so overstrung that he was acutely conscious of the slightest sound in the court, as he rose now, the observed of all present.

He heard the soft, subdued rustle made by people settling in their places for the long trial; the catching, hysterical sigh uttered by the prisoner's wife; and a quick, faint cough, or clearing of the throat, as the prisoner leaned against the dock, and sought to get rid of an unpleasant, nervous contraction of the throat.

Luke stood like one turned to stone, his eyes now fixed on vacancy, his brief grasped in his hand, and his face deadly pale. The moment had arrived for him to commence the prosecution, but his thoughts were back at Lawford, and, like a rapid panorama, there pa.s.sed before his eyes the old schoolhouses, and the figure of the bright, clever young mistress in the midst of her pupils, while he seemed to hear their merry voices as they darted out into the sunshine, dismissed for the day.

Then he was studying for the mastership, and was back at the training college. That was not the judge seated on his left, but the vice-princ.i.p.al, and those were not spectators and reporters ranged there, tier above tier, with open books and ready pencils, but fellow-students; and he was down before them, at the great black board, helpless and ashamed, for the judge--no, it was the vice-princ.i.p.al--had called him down from his seat, and said--"In any right-angled triangle the square of the sides subtending the right angle is equal to the square of the sides containing the right angle. Prove it."

Prove it! And that forty-seventh problem of the first book of Euclid that he knew so well had gone, as it were, right out of his memory, leaving but a blank.

There was a faint buzz and rustle amongst the students as it seemed to him in this waking nightmare, and the vice-princ.i.p.al said--"We are all ready, Mr Ross." Still not a word would come. Some of the students would be, he knew, pitying him, not knowing how soon their own turn might come, while others he felt would be triumphant, being jealous of his bygone success.

He knew that book so well, too; and somehow Sage Portlock had obtained a seat amongst the students, and was waiting to hear him demonstrate the problem, drawing it with a piece of chalk on the black board, and showing how the angle ABC was equal to the angle DEF, and so on, and so on.

"We are all ready, Mr Ross," came from the vice-princ.i.p.al again. No, it was from the judge, and it was not the theatre at Saint Chrysostom's, but the court at the Old Bailey, where he was to prosecute Cyril Mallow, his old rival, the husband of the woman he had loved, for forgery and fraud; and his throat was dry, his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth, and his thoughts were wandering away.

And yet his senses were painfully acute to all that pa.s.sed. He knew that Serjeant Towle had chuckled fatly, after fixing his great double eyegla.s.s to gaze at him. Then, as distinctly as if the words were uttered in his ear, he heard one of the briefless whisper--

"He has lost his nerve."

There was an increase in the buzzing noise, and an usher called out loudly, "Silence."

"Ross, Mr Ross! For heaven's sake go on," whispered Mr Swift, excitedly; and Luke felt a twitching at his gown.

But he could not master himself. It was still all like a nightmare, when he turned his eyes slowly on the judge, but in a rapt, vacant way, for the old gentleman said kindly--"I am afraid you are unwell, Mr Ross." Luke was conscious of bowing slightly, and just then a hysterical sigh from the overwrought breast of Sage struck upon his ear, and he was awake once more.

The incident had been most painful, and to a man the legal gentlemen had considered it a complete breakdown of one of the most promising of the young legal stars, those who had been so far disappointed seeing in the downfall of a rival a chance for themselves.

But the next minute all that had pa.s.sed was looked upon as a slight eccentricity on the part of a rising man. Mr Swift, who had begun to grind his teeth with annoyance, thrust both his hands into his great blue bag, as if in search of papers, but so as to be able to conceal the gratified rub he was giving them, as he heard Luke Ross in a clear incisive tone, and with a gravity of mien and bearing beyond his years, state the case for the prosecution in a speech that lasted quite a couple of hours. Too long, some said, but it was so masterly in its perspicuity, and dealt so thoroughly with the whole case, that it was finally declared to be the very perfection of forensic eloquence.

How his lips gave utterance to the speech Luke himself hardly knew, but with his father's words upon his duty ringing in his ears, he carried out that duty as if he had neither feeling against the prisoner, nor desire to save him from his well-merited fate. With the strict impartiality of one holding the scales of justice poised in a hand that never varied in its firmness for an instant, he laid bare Cyril Mallow's career as partner in the wine firm, and showed forth as black an instance of ingrat.i.tude, fraud, and swindling as one man could have gathered into so short a s.p.a.ce.

There was a murmur of applause as Luke took his seat. Then his junior called the first witness, and the trial dragged its slow length along; while Luke sat, feeling that Sage would never forgive him for the words that he had said.

Witness after witness, examination and cross-examination, till the prosecution gave way to the defence, and Serjeant Towle shuffled his gown over his shoulders, got his wig awry, and fought the desperate cause with all his might.

But all in vain. The judge summed up dead against the prisoner, alluding forcibly to the kindly consideration of the prosecution; and after stigmatising the career of Cyril Mallow as one of the basest, blackest ingrat.i.tude, and a new example of the degradation to which gambling would lead an educated man, he left the case in the jury's hands, these gentlemen retiring for a few minutes, and then returning with a verdict of guilty.

Sentence, fourteen years' penal servitude. And, once more, as in a dream, Luke saw Cyril Mallow's blotched face gazing at him full of malice, and a look of deadly hatred in his eyes, before he was hurried away.

He was then conscious of Mr Swift saying something to him full of praise, and of Serjeant Towle leaning forward to shake hands, as he whispered--

"You beat me, Ross, thoroughly. We'll be on the same side next time."

But the dreaminess was once more closing in Luke Ross as with a mist, and in it he saw a pale, agonised face gazing reproachfully in his direction as its owner was being helped out of the court.

"G.o.d help me!" muttered Luke. "I must have been mad. She will think it was revenge, when I would sooner have died than given her pain."

PART THREE, CHAPTER SEVEN.

AFTER THE SENTENCE.

There was nothing farther to detain Luke Ross, but he remained in his seat for some time, studying the next case people said, but only that he might dream on in peace, for in the midst of the business of the next trial he found repose. No one spoke to him, and he seemed by degrees to be able to condense his thoughts upon the past.

And there he sat, trying to examine himself searchingly, probing his every thought as he sought for condemnatory matter against himself.

He felt as if he had been acting all day under some strange influence, moved by a power that was not his own, and that, as the instrument in other hands, he had been employed to punish Cyril Mallow.

"They will all join in condemning me," he thought, "and henceforth I shall go through life branded as one who hounded down his enemy almost to the death."

At length he raised his eyes, and they rested upon the little, thin, wistful countenance of his father, and there was a feeling of bitter reproach for his neglect of one who had travelled all the previous day so as to be present at the trial.

He made a sign to him as he rose, and the old man joined him in the robing-room, where Mr d.i.c.k eyed him askance as he relieved his master of his wig and gown; and then they returned to the chambers, where Luke threw himself into a chair, and gazed helplessly at his father, till the old man laid a hand, almost apologetically, upon his son's arm.

"You are tired out, my boy. Come with me, and let us go somewhere and dine."

"After I have disgraced myself like this, father?" groaned Luke. "Are you not ashamed of such a son?"

"Ashamed? Disgraced? My boy, what do you mean? I never felt so proud of you before. It was grand!"

"Proud!" cried Luke, pa.s.sionately, "when I seem to have stooped to the lowest form of cowardly retaliation. A rival who made himself my enemy is grovelling in the mire, and I, instead of going to him like an honourable, magnanimous man, to raise him up and let him begin a better life, have planted my heel upon his face, and crushed him lower into the slough."

"It was your duty, my boy, and you did that duty," cried the old man, quickly. "I will not hear you speak like that."

"And Sage--his wife," groaned Luke, not hearing, apparently, his father's words. "Father, the memory of my old love for her has clung to me ever. I have been true to that memory, loving still the sweet, bright girl I knew before that man came between us like a black shadow and clouded the sunshine of my life."

He stopped, and let his head rest upon his hand.

"My love for her has never failed, father, but is as fresh and bright now as it was upon the day when I came up here to town ready for the long struggle I felt that I should have before I could seek her for my wife. That love, I tell you, is as fresh and warm now as it was that day, but it has always been the love of one suddenly cut off from me-- the love of one I looked upon as dead. For that evening, when I met them in the Kilby lane, Sage Portlock died to me, and the days I mourned were as for one who had pa.s.sed away."

"My boy, my boy, I know. He did come between you, and seemed to blight your life, but he is punished now."

"Punished? No," said Luke, excitedly; "it is not the man I have punished, but his wife. Father, that sorrowing, reproachful look she directed at me this morning will cling to me to my dying day. I cannot bear it. I feel as if the memory would drive me mad."

He started up, and paced the room in an agony of mind that alarmed old Michael, who sought in vain to utter soothing words.

At last, as if recalled to himself by the feeling that he was neglecting the trembling old man before him, Luke made an effort to master the thoughts that troubled him, and they were about to go out together, when the boy announced two visitors, and Luke shrank back unnerved once more, on finding that they were the Reverend Eli Mallow and his old Churchwarden.

"I did not know his father was in town," said Luke, in a low voice.

"Yes, my boy, he sat back, poor fellow. He looks very old and weak,"