Sir Jasper Carew Part 23

"Highly so."

"And as strikingly did they reflect upon the character of all Irishmen who opposed the ministry, and a.s.sumed for themselves the position of patriots. Come, sir, no hesitation; answer my question boldly. Is this not true?"

"We certainly did not regard the party you speak of as being true and faithful subjects of the king."

"You thought them rebels?"

"Perhaps not exactly rebels."

"You called them rebels; and you yourself prayed that the time was coming when the lamp-iron and the lash should reward their loyalty. Can you deny this?"

"We had a great deal of conversation about politics. We talked in all the freedom of friendly intercourse, and, doubtless, with some of that warmth which accompanies after-dinner discussions. But as to the exact words--"

"It is the exact words I want; it is the exact words I insist upon, sir.

They were used by yourself, and drew down rounds of applause. You were eloquent and successful."

"I am really unable, at this distance of time, to recollect a word or a phrase that might have fallen from me in the heat of the moment."

"This speech of yours was made about the middle of the evening?"

"I believe it was."

"And you afterwards sat a considerable time and drank freely?"

"Yes."

"And although your recollection of what pa.s.sed before that is so obscure and inaccurate, you perfectly remember everything that took place when standing on the balcony two hours later, and can swear to the very tone of a voice that uttered but three words: 'That is a lie, sir!'"

"Prisoner at the bar, conduct yourself with the respect due to the court and to the witness under its protection," interposed the judge, with severity.

"You mistake me, my Lord," said Curtis, in a voice of affected deprecation. "The words I spoke were not used as commenting on the witness or his veracity. They were simply those to which he swore, those which he heard once, and, although after a five hours' debauch, remained fast graven on his memory, along with the very manner of him who uttered them. I have nothing more to ask him. He may go down--down!" repeated he, solemnly; "if there be yet anything lower that he can descend to!"

Once more did the judge admonish the prisoner as to his conduct, and feelingly pointed out to him the serious injury he was inflicting upon his own case by this rash and intemperate course of proceeding; but Curtis smiled half contemptuously at the correction, and folded his arms with an air of dogged resignation.

It is rarely possible, from merely reading the published proceedings of a trial, to apportion the due degree of weight which the testimony of the several witnesses imposes, or to estimate that force which manner and conduct supply to the evidence when orally delivered. In the present case, the guilt of the accused man rested on the very vaguest circ.u.mstances, not one of which but could be easily and satisfactorily accounted for on other grounds. He admitted that he had pa.s.sed through Stephen's Green on the night in question, and that possibly the tracks imputed to him were actually his own; but as to the reasons for his abrupt departure from town, or the secrecy which he observed when writing to the bootmaker,--these, he said, were personal matters which he would not condescend to enter upon, adding, sarcastically,--

"That though they might not prove very d.a.m.ning omissions in defence of a hackney-coach summons, he was quite aware that they might prove fatal to a man who stood charged with murder."

After a number of witnesses were examined, whose testimony went to prove slight and unimportant facts, Anthony f.a.gan was called to show that a variety of bill transactions had pa.s.sed between the prisoner and Rutledge, and that on more than one occasion very angry discussions had occurred between them in reference to these.

There were many points in which f.a.gan sympathized with the prisoner.

Curtis was violently national in his politics; he bore an unmeasured hatred to all that was English; he was an extravagant a.s.serter of popular rights: and yet, with all these, and, stranger still, with a coa.r.s.e manner, and an address totally dest.i.tute of polish, he was in heart a haughty aristocrat, who despised the people most thoroughly.

He was one of that singular cla.s.s who seemed to retain to the very last years of the past century the feudal barbarism of a bygone age.

Thus was it that the party who accepted his advocacy had to pay the price of his services in deep humiliation; and many there were who felt that the work was more than requited by the wages.

To men like f.a.gan, whose wealth suggested various ambitions, Curtis was peculiarly offensive, since he never omitted an occasion to remind them of their origin, and to show them that they were as utterly debarred from all social acceptance as in the earliest struggles of their poverty.

The majority of those in court, who only knew generally the agreement between Curtis and f.a.gan in political matters, were greatly struck by the decisive tone in which the witness spoke; and the damaging character of the evidence was increased by this circ.u.mstance.

Among the scenes of angry altercation between the prisoner and Rutledge, f.a.gan spoke to one wherein Curtis had actually called the other a "swindler." Rutledge, however, merely remarked upon the liberties which his advanced age ent.i.tled him to a.s.sume; whereupon Curtis replied, "Don't talk to me, sir, of age! I am young enough and able enough to chastise such as you!"

"Did the discussion end here?" asked the court.

"So far as I know, my Lord, it did; for Mr. Rutledge left my office soon after, and apparently thinking little of what had occurred."

"If honest Tony had not been too much engrossed with the cares of usury," cried out Curtis from the dock, "he might have remembered that I said to Rutledge, as he went out, 'The man that injures Joe Curtis owes a debt that he must pay sooner or latter.'"

"I remember the words now," said f.a.gan.

"Ay, and so have I ever found it," said Curtis, solemnly. "There are few who have gone through life with less good fortune than myself, and yet I have lived to see the ruin of almost every man that has injured me!"

The savage vehemence with which he uttered these words caused a shudder throughout the crowded court, and went even further to criminate him in popular opinion than all that had been alleged in evidence.

When asked by the court if he desired to cross-examine the witness, Curtis, in a calm and collected voice, replied:

"No, my Lord; Tony f.a.gan will lose a hundred and eighty pounds if you hang me; and if he had anything to allege in my favor, we should have heard it before this." Then, turning towards the jury-box, he went on: "Now, gentlemen of the jury, there's little reason for detaining you any longer. You have as complete a case of circ.u.mstantial evidence before you as ever sent an innocent man to the scaffold. You have had the traits of my temper and the tracks of my boots, and, if you believe Colonel Vereker, the very tones of my voice, all sworn to; but, better than all these, you have at your disposal the life of a man who is too sick of the world to stretch out a hand to save himself, and who would even accept the disgrace of an ignominious death for the sake of the greater ignominy that is sure to fall later upon the unjust laws and the corrupt court that condemned him. Ay!" cried he, with an impressive solemnity of voice that thrilled through every heart, "you 'll array yourselves in all the solemn mockery of your station; you 'll bewail my guilt, and p.r.o.nounce my sentence; but it is I, from this dock, say unto you upon that bench, the Lord have mercy upon your souls!"

There was in the energy of his manner, despite all its eccentricity and quaintness, a degree of power that awed the entire a.s.sembly; and more than one trembled to think, "What if he really were to be innocent!"

While this singular address was being delivered, f.a.gan was engaged in deep and earnest conversation with the Crown prosecutor; and from his excited manner might be seen the intense anxiety under which he labored.

He was evidently urging some proposition with all his might, to which the other listened with deep attention.

At this instant f.a.gan's arm was tapped by a hand from the crowd. He turned, and as suddenly grew deadly pale; for it was Raper stood before him!--Raper, whom he believed at that moment to be far away in a remote part of the country.

"What brings you here? How came you to Dublin?" said f.a.gan, in a voice tremulous with pa.s.sion.

"We have just arrived; we heard that you were here, and he insisted upon seeing you before he left town."

"Where is he, then?" asked f.a.gan.

"In his carriage at the door of the court-house."

"Does he know--has he heard of the case before the court? Speak, man! Is he aware of what is going on here?"

The terrified eagerness of his whisper so overcame poor Raper that he was utterly unable to reply, and f.a.gan was obliged to clutch him by the arm to recall him to consciousness. Even, then, however, his vague and broken answer showed how completely his faculties were terrorized over by the despotic influence of his master. An indistinct sense of having erred somehow overcame him, and he shrank back from the piercing glance of the other, to hide himself in the crowd. Terrible as that moment of suspense must have been to f.a.gan, it was nothing to the agony which succeeded It, as he saw the crowd separating on either side to leave a free pa.s.sage for the approach of an invalid who slowly came forward to the side-bar, casting his eyes around him, in half-bewildered astonishment at the scene.

Being recognized by the Bench, an usher of the court was sent round to say that their Lordships would make room for him beside them; and my father--for it was he--with difficulty mounted the steps and took his seat beside the Chief Justice, faintly answering the kind inquiries for his health in a voice weak and feeble as a girl's.

"You little expected to see me in such a place as this, Walter!" cried out Curtis from the dock; "and I just as little looked to see your father's son seated upon the bench at such a moment!"

"What is it? What does it all mean? How is Curtis there? What has happened?" asked my father, vaguely.

The Chief Justice whispered a few words in reply, when, with a shriek that made every heart cold, my father sprang to his feet, and, leaning his body over the front of the bench, cried out,--

"It was I killed Barry Rutledge! There was no murder in the case! We fought with swords; and there," said he, drawing the weapon, "there's the blade that pierced his heart! and here" (tearing open his vest and shirt)--"and here the wound he gave me in return. The outrage for which he died well merited the penalty; but if there be guilt, it is mine, and mine only!"

A fit of choking stopped his utterance. He tried to overcome it; he gasped convulsively twice or thrice; and then, as a cataract of bright blood gushed from nostrils and mouth together, he fell back and rolled heavily to the ground--dead.