Lawrence Clavering Part 45

This week pa.s.sed monotonously enough for me, cooped up in my little apartment. But I had a great hope to cheer me through its pa.s.sage.

For, I had come so near to the attainment of my one end, and in the face of so many difficulties, that I could not but believe that Providence had so willed it, and having willed so much, would will that final issue which should crown the work; moreover, two days before the trial, Mr. Doyle brought me news which enheartened me inexpressibly. It was a message of thanks from Anthony Herbert, and to that message was added another from the wife, which showed me that the reconciliation had become an actual fact.

On the eve of the trial I slept at the house of Mr. Doyle. Indeed, from his window I heard the trumpeters, and saw the judge's carriage go by; and so dressing myself the next morning in my new suit, with Mr. Doyle fluttering about me like a lady's maid, I made my way quickly to the Guildhall.

CHAPTER XXII.

REPARATION.

The Guildhall stands northwards of the cross in the market-place, and I remember that I paused when halfway up the steps betwixt the pavement and the portico, and turned me about for a second to glance down upon that open s.p.a.ce, and men coming and going about it as they willed in the warm sunlight. Mean houses enclosed it, shambles disfigured it; but I noticed no more than its width and s.p.a.ciousness.

How wide and free it seemed! And of a sudden my thoughts flashed me away beyond these houses, and beyond the gates. The market-place vanished before my eyes like a mirage. I was once more marching from Kelso to Preston, across the moors with the merlins crying overhead,--between the hedges,--under the open sky; and it seemed to me so swift was the pa.s.sage of my memories, that I traversed in that brief interval all the distance of our march.

But many of the townsfolk were mounting to the court, and one that pa.s.sed jogged against me with his elbow, and so waked me. I raised my head. Well, here was the court-house, within sat the judge; and though the sunlight beat upon my face, the shadow of the building had already reached about my feet.

The little court was nigh upon full, and I pushed into a corner beneath the gallery, where I was like to escape notice, and yet command a view of what was done. There I stood for the s.p.a.ce of ten minutes or so, watching the townsfolk enter by twos and threes in a trickling stream, thronging the floor, blocking the doorways; and I know not why, but gradually a great depression, a dull melancholy, overstole my spirits. It was just for this moment that I had lived for many a week back, I a.s.sured myself; my days had been one prayer for its coming, my nights one haunting fear lest it should not come. Yet the a.s.surance, repeat it as I might, had little meaning at the outset, and less and less at each repet.i.tion. My blood would not be whipped; I felt inert, in some queer way disappointed. I was like one quit of a fever, but in the despondency of exhaustion. I saw the prisoner set in the dock. I noticed the purple hollows about his eyes, the thin, flushed cheeks, the nervous gripping of his fingers on the rail. But the spectacle waked no pity in me, though I was conscious I should feel pity; aroused no shame, though I knew I should be tingling with shame. And when Anthony Herbert sent his gaze piercing anxiously this way and that into the throng, I wondered for a moment who it was for whom he searched. I saw Jervas Rookley seated at a table; he turned his head so that the bruised scar upon his face was visible from cheekbone to chin--and I, for all I felt towards him, might have been looking at the face of an inanimate statue. I saw the judge take his seat, his robes catching the sunlight and glowing against the black panels of the wall, like some monstrous scarlet flower. I was as one who contemplates a moving scene through a spy-gla.s.s, knowing it to be very far away. The actual aspect of the court became dreamlike to me, and when the clerk of the Crown cried out "Anthony Herbert, hold up thy hand!" it seemed to me that the curtain was but now rung up upon a puppet-show.

In this listless spirit I listened while the indictment was read. It set forth that "Anthony Herbert, as a false traitor, not weighing the duty of his allegiance, did with other false traitors conspire, compa.s.s, and imagine the death of his Majesty, the subversion of the Government, and to introduce the Romish religion; and for the effecting thereof, the said Anthony Herbert did conspire to levy war upon the kingdom and bring in the Pretender."

Thereupon the indictment being read, the jury was empannelled, which took no short time, for of a sudden Herbert, doubtless primed for the work by Nicholas Doyle, challenges one of them--John Martin, I remember, the man was named.

"Are you a freeholder of forty shillings a year?" he asked; and the judge taking him up, he was allowed counsel to argue the point, which was done at great length and with much talk of a couple of statutes, one dating from Henry V., the other from Queen Mary. It seemed that they contradicted one another, but I do not know. I only know that the sunlight, pouring through a high window on the east side, shifted like the spoke of a slow-revolving wheel, and was already withdrawing up the wall beneath the window when Jervas Rookley was called to give his evidence.

To this evidence I lent a careful ear, and could not but perceive that though there was little fact in the recital, yet innuendo so fitted with innuendo that it might well have weight with a jury already inclined to believe. But even this observation I was conscious of making rather as a matter of general interest than as one in which I was so intimately concerned. Rookley told of Herbert's coming to Keswick, how immediately he made Lord Derwent.w.a.ter's acquaintance and was entrusted with the painting of Lady Derwent.w.a.ter's portrait--a work which carried him daily to the house on Lord's Island. Then he proceeded to tell of his own journey to Paris, and how he found me a novice in a Jesuit College. The journey to Bar-le-Duc he omitted, but said that I had given him advice to wait for me in Paris and so had ridden off for close upon a week. The journey, said he, aroused his suspicions; on my return I had openly professed to him my adherence to the Stuarts, and had informed him that I had travelled to Commercy and had seen the Pretender. He went on to describe his discovery that I carried a letter and his failure to possess himself of it.

"Then you knew Mr. Clavering was a Jacobite so long ago as that!"

interrupted Anthony Herbert. "How comes it you waited so long before you moved for his arrest, unless you had a finger in the Jacobite pie yourself?"

"The witness need answer nothing that would incriminate himself,"

interrupted the judge, quickly. "Besides, your turn will come. Let the King's Counsel finish!"

"There is no reason why I should shrink from answering it," said Jervas, readily. "There was some plot on foot, so much I knew. But what the plot was I knew not nor ever did; and had I laid the information against Lawrence Clavering then, I should myself have closed the avenues of knowledge."

"And what have you to say to that?" asked the judge of Herbert. "You will need more discretion if you are to save your neck." And he wagged his head at the prisoner.

"My Lord," answered Herbert, in a heat, "I shall not want for discretion so long as I do not go begging for justice."

I could see Mr. Doyle in the body of the court, nodding and frowning at his client in a great fl.u.s.ter. But it was already too late for his signs to have their effect.

"Justice!" roared the judge, turning to the jury. "Sirs, the fellow cries for justice as though it were a stranger to a jury of Englishmen. Nay, but justice he shall have, full measure. I am here to see to that;" and he sat glowering at the unfortunate prisoner.

For myself the outburst was no more than I expected, and I listened to it as to an oft-told tale.

Jervas took up his story again. It may have been the heat, it may have been sheer weakness, but though I saw his face flush from expression to expression, the sound of his voice seemed to me no more than a dull droning, duller with every word; and yet every word I heard and clearly understood.

He told of my coming to Blackladies, of Lord Derwent.w.a.ter's suggestion to me concerning Herbert, of my daily visits to the painter's apartment, of my subsequent journeys about the country-side, and the inquiries I made as to troops and munitions.

Even to me hearing the story, it almost appeared that Herbert was inextricably linked in the business, with such ingenuity was it told.

The faces of the jury already condemned the prisoner, people nudged one another about me as each detail was added, and Herbert himself seemed to lose hope at the sight of the tangle in which he was coiled.

"I am for nothing in all this," he cried, but now in a very wail.

"And this too I doubt not is for nothing," said Mr. Cowper, the counsel, with a mocking irony, as he held up the medal which King James had given to me at Commercy. He turned to Rookley--

"You have seen this before?"

"In the prisoner's lodging at Keswick."

"Will you describe it?"

I bent forward. Rookley began to speak again. He described the head of King James struck upon the one side, the British islands upon the other, and made mention of the two mottoes: "Cujus est?" and "Reddite!"

Rookley paused, and there was a buzz of voices from the gallery, from the doorways, from the floor of the court. The medal was pa.s.sed up to the judge. He turned it over in his hands, and had it carried to the jurymen. I saw their heads with many a wise wagging come together over it I leaned yet farther forward, looking at Rookley. For the first time that day I felt a pulse of excitement. Had Rookley chanced to glance my way, he must have seen me, so openly did I crane my head over my neighbour's shoulders. But he stood with downcast eyes in the meekest humility--the very figure and image of unconscious merit. Had he more to say about that medal? Every second I fancied I saw his mouth open and frame the words I dreaded. The murmurs of the throng increased; I could have shouted "Silence! Silence!" I feared that he would speak and I miss the words; I feared that the very noise about him would remind him, would suggest to him, would disclose to him, anyhow would unlock his lips. But he had no further details to give, and it seemed to me that already the fresh air fanned at Herbert's face.

"You saw the medal in the prisoner's lodging?" resumed the counsel.

"When?"

"More than once," replied Rookley, and took up his tale again, and again my excitement died away. I remarked with some curiosity that he made no mention whatever of Mrs. Herbert from first to last, and I remembered how I had noticed before that the story fell into two halves, whereof each seemed complete without the other. He spoke, it is true, of a pretext by which he had lured Herbert to Blackladies, but did not define the pretext, nor did the counsel examine him as to it; while I felt sure that Anthony Herbert would be the last to start that game.

"Now," said the judge, turning to the prisoner, "it is your turn, if you have any questions to ask of the witness."

Herbert gathered up his papers.

"You saw this medal in my lodging?"

"Yes!"

"Do you know the purpose for which I had it there?"

Rookley straightened his shoulders, and facing Herbert, said very deliberately--

"I suppose it was a token which would pa.s.s you as trustworthy amongst the Jacobites."

"Did you never see it before you saw it in my lodging?"

"Never! My lord, I swear it upon my oath--never. The prisoner has no doubt some c.o.c.k-and-bull story, but that is the truth. Upon my oath--never."

"The prisoner has no c.o.c.k-and-bull story," answered Herbert, leaning fiercely over the dock, "but only what he will prove with witnessess."

And so he turned from the subject.

It seemed to me that Rookley turned a trifle pale and for the first time lost his a.s.surance. He glanced anxiously round the court; I drew closer into my corner. He knew that story of his about the medal to be false; he must needs have expected Herbert would press him closely concerning it. But he did not--he did not. There was reason for alarm.

I saw the alarm gather on Rookley's face.

"You were at great pains to effect my arrest secretly," continued Herbert "And why was that?"

"I would not alarm Lawrence Clavering and his friends," he replied, "until I had a riper knowledge of their plots."