Roland Cashel Volume Ii Part 58

"How do you mean, pa.s.singly?" asked Linton, in anger.

"The Crown lawyers brought forward that note of yours from Ennismore."

Linton dashed his closed fist against the table, and uttered a horrible and blasphemous oath.

"Some bungling of yours, I'll be sworn, brought this about," said he, savagely; "some piece of that adroit chicanery that always recoils upon its projector."

"I 'll not endure this language, sir," said Jones. "I have done more to serve you than any man would have stooped to in my profession. Unsay those words."

"I do unsay them. I ask pardon for them, my dear Jones. I never meant them seriously," said Linton, in that fawning tone he could so well a.s.sume. "You ought to know me better than to think that _I_, who have sworn solemnly to make your fortune, could entertain such an opinion of you. Tell me now of this. Did Cashel say anything as the note was read?"

"Not a syllable."

"How did he look?"

"He smiled slightly."

"Ah, he smiled," said Linton, growing pale; "he smiled! He can do that when he is most determined."

"What avails all his determination now? No narrative of his can shake the testimony which the examination has confirmed. It was a masterstroke of yours, Mr. Linton, to think of supplying him with counsel."

Linton smiled superciliously, as though he was accustomed to higher flights of treachery than this. "So then," said he, at length, "you say the case is strong against him?"

"It could scarcely be stronger."

"And the feeling--how is the feeling of the Court?"

"Variable, I should say; in the galleries, and among the fashionably dressed part of the a.s.semblage, inclined somewhat in his favor."

"How? Did not the charge of attempted bigamy tell against him with his fair allies?"

"Not so much as I had hoped."

"What creatures women are!" said Linton, holding up his hands. "And how are they betting? What says Frobisher?"

"He affects to think it no case for odds; he says there 's a little fellow in the jury-box never was known to say 'Guilty.'"

"A scheme to win money,--a stale trick, my Lord Charles!" muttered Linton, contemptuously; "but I've no objection to hedge a little, for all that."

"I must be going," said Jones, looking at his watch; "the charge will soon be over, and I must look to the proceedings."

"Will they be long in deliberation, think you?" asked Linton.

"I suspect not; they are all weary and tired. It is now ten o'clock."

"I thought it later," said Linton, thoughtfully; "time lags heavily with him whose mind is in expectancy. Hark! there is some one below talking of the trial! What says he?"

"He speaks of Cashel as still addressing the Court. Can they have consented to hear him, after all?"

A fearful curse broke from Linton, and he closed the door noiselessly.

"See to this, Jones; see to it speedily. My mind misgives me that something will go wrong."

"You say that you know him thoroughly, and that he never would--"

"No, no," broke in Linton, pa.s.sionately; "he'll not break one t.i.ttle of his word, even to save his life! When he promised me that all should be secret between us, he made no reservations, and you 'll see that he 'll not avail himself of such privileges now. I do know him thoroughly."

"Then what, or whence, is your fear?"

Linton made no other answer than a gesture of his hand, implying some vague and indistinct dread. "But go," said he, "and go quickly. You ought never to have left the court. Had you remained, perhaps this might have been prevented. If all goes right, you 'll be here by daybreak at furthest, and Keane along with you. Take care of that, Jones; don't lose sight of him. If--if--we are unfortunate--and do you think such possible?"

"Everything is possible with a jury."

"True," said he, thoughtfully; "it is an issue we should never have left it to. But away; hasten back. Great Heaven! only to think how much hangs upon the next half-hour!"

"To Cashel, you mean?" said Jones, as he prepared himself for the road.

"No; I mean to _me_, I _do_ know him thoroughly; and well I know the earth would be too narrow to live upon, were that man once more free and at liberty."

In his eagerness for Jones's departure, he almost pushed him from the room; and then, when he had closed and locked the door again, he sat down beside the low flickering fire, and as the fitful light played upon his features, all the appliances of disguise he wore could not hide the terrible ravages that long corroding anxiety had made in him. Far more did he resemble the arraigned criminal than he who now stood in the dock, and with a cheek blanched only by imprisonment, waited calm, collected, and erect--"Equal to either fortune."

Linton had often felt all the terrible suspense which makes the paradise or the h.e.l.l of the gambler: he had known what it was to have his whole fortune on the issue, at a moment when the rushing mob of hors.e.m.e.n and foot concealed the winning horse from view, and mingled in their mad cheers the names of those whose victory had been his ruin and disgrace.

He had watched the rolling die, on whose surface, as it turned, all he owned in the world was staked; he had sat gazing on the unturned card, on which his destiny was already written;--and yet all these moments of agonizing suspense were as nothing compared to that he now suffered, as he sat with bent down head trying to catch the sounds which from time to time the wind bore along from the town.

As if to feed his mind with hope, he would recapitulate to himself all the weighty and d.a.m.natory details which environed Cashel, and which, by their singular consistency and coherence, seemed irrefutable. He would even reckon them upon his fingers, as "so many chances against him." He would try to imagine himself one of the jury, listening to the evidence and the charge; and asked himself "were it possible to reject such proofs?" He pictured to his mind Cashel addressing the Court with all that rash and impetuous eloquence so characteristic of him, and which, to more trained and sober tempers, would indicate a nature little subject to the cold discipline of restraint; and from all these speculative dreams he would start suddenly up, to lean out of the window and listen. Other thoughts, too, would cross his mind, scarcely less distracting. What would become of himself should Cashel escape? Whither should he retire? If, at one moment, he half resolved to "stand his ground" in the world, and trust to his consummate skill in secret calumny to ruin him, another reflection showed that Cashel would not play out the game on these conditions. A duel, in which one at least must fall, would be inevitable; and although this was an ordeal he had braved oftener than most men, he had no courage to dare it now. Through all this tangled web of hara.s.sing hope and fear, regrets deep and poignant entered, that he had not worked his ruin by slower and safer steps. "I might have been both judge and jury--ay, and executioner too,"

muttered he, "had I been patient." And here he gave a low, sardonic laugh. "When the hour of confiscation came, I might have played the Crown's part also." But so is it: there is no halting in the downward course of wickedness; the very pleadings of self-interest cannot save men from the commission of _crimes_, by which they are to hide _follies_.

The slow hours of the night dragged heavily on; the fire had gone out, and the candle too--unnoticed, and Linton sat in the dark, brooding over his gloomy thoughts. At one moment he would start up, and wonder if the whole were not a terrible dream,--the nightmare of his own imagination; and it was only after an effort he remembered where he was, and with what object. He could not see his watch to tell the hour, but he knew it must be late, since the fire had long since died out, and the room was cold and chill. The agony of expectation became at last too great to endure; he felt his way to the door and pa.s.sed out, and groping down the narrow stair, reached the outer door, and the road.

All was dark and lonely; not a sound of horseman or foot-traveller broke the dreary stillness of the hour, as Linton, urged on by an impulse he could not restrain, took his way towards the town. The distance was scarcely above a mile, but his progress was slow, for the road was wet and slippery, and the darkness very great. At last he reached the long straggling suburb, with its interminable streets of wretched hovels; but even here none were yet astir, and not a light was seen to glimmer. To this succeeded the narrow streets of the town itself,--where, at long intervals, a dusky yellow haze glimmered by way of lamplight. Stopping beneath one of these, Linton examined his watch, and found that it was near five o'clock. The lateness of the hour, and the unbroken stillness on every side, half induced him to believe that "all was over," and Cashel's fate sealed for good or evil; but then Jones would have hastened back to bring the tidings! There could not be a doubt on this head. Urged onward to greater speed by emotions which now were scarcely supportable, he traversed street after street in frantic haste; when suddenly, on turning a corner, he came in front of a large building, from whose windows, dimmed by steam, a great blaze of light issued, and fell in long columns upon the "Square" in front. A dense, dark ma.s.s of human figures crowded the wide doorway, but they were silent and motionless all. Within the court, too, the stillness was unbroken; for as Linton listened he could now hear a cough, which resounded through the building.

"The jury are in deliberation," thought he, and sat down upon the step of a door, his eyes riveted upon the court-house, and his heart beating so that he could count its strokes. Not far from him, as he sat there, scarcely a hundred paces off, within the building, there sat another man, waiting with a high throbbing heart for that word to be uttered which should either open the door of his prison, or close that of the grave upon him forever. The moments of expectancy were terrible to both!

they were life-long agonies distilled to seconds; and he who could live through their pains must come forth from the trial a changed man forever after.

CHAPTER x.x.xI. "NOT GUILTY"

Free to go forth once more, but oh, How changed!

Harold.

A slight movement in the crowd near the door--a kind of waving motion like the quiet surging of the sea--seemed to-indicate some commotion within the court; and although Linton saw this, and judged it rightly, as the evidence of something eventful about to happen, he sat still to await the result with the dogged firmness with which he would have awaited death itself.

As we are less interested spectators of the scene, let us press our way through the tired and exhausted crowd that fill the body of the building. And now we stand beneath the gallery, and immediately behind a group of about half a dozen, whose dress and demeanor at once proclaim them of the world of fashion. These are Lord Charles Frobisher and his friends, who, with memorandum-books and timepieces before them, sit in eager anxiety, for they have wagers on everything: on the verdict--how the judge will charge--if the prisoner will confess--if he will attempt a defence; and even the length of time the jury will sit in deliberation, is the subject of a bet!