The Gipsy Part 48

"Nay, nay, my lord," replied the bluff old squire; "your official station in the county, as much as your rank, gives you the precedence."

"In the present instance, however, my dear sir," replied Lord Dewry, "I must appear before you as a private individual, as I am here in some sort as the accuser, and if you find cause to commit the prisoner, I must become the prosecutor. Therefore, I will sit here beside you, but without exercising any official authority in a matter where I am in a degree a party."

"The prisoner cannot say that your lordship has not every disposition to give him impartial justice," answered Mr. Arden, taking the vacant chair. "You would have him let off before, when I would certainly have committed him; and now you will not exercise your authority where he is concerned. Let him be brought in, however. Constables, bring in the prisoner." Two men instantly departed from the farther end of the hall for that purpose, and while they were gone some formal business was transacted, the clerks received their instructions, and one or two of the magistrates looked into Blackstone's new work, the volumes of which had been scattered about upon the table. At length a murmur and the sound of footsteps were heard, and the doors being again opened, the constables re-entered, followed by the persons who had been waiting without, reinforced by several of the servants of the peer, as well as by the footmen and grooms who had accompanied the magistrates thither. The princ.i.p.al object of the whole group, however, was of course the prisoner Pharold, and on him every eye was instantly fixed.

Walking between the two constables, who did not attempt to hold him, he advanced boldly up the middle of the hall, and with a slight contraction of the brow, and curl of the lip, gazed on the party a.s.sembled to interrogate him with stern and fearless calmness. His wrists were handcuffed, but no other restraint was put upon him; and when he had advanced within a few yards of the table at which the magistrates were seated, he paused of his own will, and waited as if in expectation of what was to follow, merely turning round to some of the crowd who followed, saying, sternly, "Do not press upon me; you are near enough."

Mr. Arden put on his spectacles, and after gazing for a moment or two at the prisoner, he turned towards Lord Dewry, and said, "My lord, will your lordship be good enough to state the charge against this man; as of course that part of the business referring to the murder of your son must be dropped, since it fortunately turns out that he is alive. There are, however, I think, still two serious charges to be disposed of, and probably our best plan will be to examine into them separately: by separately, I mean, distinct from each other, though, as many of us have come some distance, we had better go into both ere we depart."

Lord Dewry paused for several minutes ere he replied; and looked over some papers which he had laid upon the table before him; but in truth a momentary feeling of doubt and embarra.s.sment crossed his mind. He had determined most positively to urge against the gipsy the death of his brother; he had arranged all his plans for that purpose; he had matured them perfectly; he had secured, as far as human ingenuity could go, every link of the chain; and nothing remained but to cast it boldly round his victim; and yet, at the very moment of execution, a doubt and apprehension, a sort of prophetic hesitation, seemed to seize him, and he wished that it had been possible to abandon the charge of the murder of his predecessor, and to confine his accusation to the deer-stealing and the death of Sir Roger Millington, which was now, as he well knew, so near, as to effect all that could be wished, by rendering the charge against Pharold capital.

He wavered for a moment, then, but he saw that the very wish to give up an accusation so boldly made would appear suspicious, if any one discovered it; and turning to Mr. Arden with a faint smile, he asked, "With which of these charges had I better commence, my dear sir? The one which is susceptible of the most immediate proof is that referring to the recent offence."

"No, no, my lord," replied the magistrate, "take them in the order of their dates. Let us get rid of the ancient business before we begin the other. 'Tis well to be off with the old love before we be on with the new, my lord."

"As you think fit," answered the peer, somewhat disappointed at the magistrate's decision, but determined, as he must proceed, to proceed boldly. "Well, then, my charge is as follows:--that the prisoner Pharold, now before you, did, on the 18th day of May, in the year 17--, feloniously and with malice aforethought put to death my unfortunate brother, the late Lord Dewry, in or near that part of the road from Morley village to Green Hampton, which crosses the wood called Morley Wood; and I am now ready to produce sufficient evidence to induce you to commit the prisoner to the county jail for trial."

While he spoke, the gipsy's eye rested on him with a glance so stern, so keen, so searching, that he felt as if the dreadful secret of his bosom--all its motives and all its feelings, its doubts, its apprehensions, its remorse, its complicated plans and subtle contrivances, were undergoing, one by one, the examination of that dark, fixed regard. Though he looked towards the prisoner as little as possible, yet the gipsy's eye was a load upon him, that oppressed and would have confused a less powerful mind than his own. Even as it was, however, he could not bear it without emotion, and turning abruptly to Mr. Arden, he went on,--"I trust, Mr. Arden, that you have brought with you the notes of the former examination."

"Everything! everything, my lord," replied the magistrate; "prepared as I was for the case, I brought every memorandum that could at all bear upon it; and I think my clerk had better read the depositions made at the time, and then you can proceed with any new facts which may have since come to your knowledge."

The peer bowed his head, and the clerk, under Mr. Arden's instructions, proceeded to read a variety of doc.u.ments relating to facts with which the reader is already acquainted. It is unnecessary, therefore, to repeat them; but the demeanour of the two persons princ.i.p.ally interested in the details was in itself sufficiently singular to attract the attention of some of the magistrates, though, if they sought in their own minds for the motives, they were mistaken in the conclusions at which they arrived. During the reading of all the formal and immaterial part of the depositions, the gipsy remained with his eyes fixed upon the ground, and his head slightly bent, with the aspect of one who hears a thing with all the details of which he is too familiar to give it any deep attention. But when the clerk came to his own deposition, and read the declaration which he had made of having seen the murder committed, and marked the murderer so particularly as to be able to swear to him if he ever saw him again, his lip curled with a bitter and a biting sneer, and, raising his head, he fixed his eyes upon his accuser, with a gaze that might well have sunk him to the earth.

Lord Dewry, however, encountered not his glance. He felt that the gipsy's look must be then upon him; and, though he kept his own eyes steadfastly on the papers before him, he turned deadly pale under the consciousness of his own guilt, and the knowledge of what must be pa.s.sing in the bosom of the innocent man he had accused.

"This is your declaration, made twenty years ago, prisoner!" said Mr.

Arden, examining the gipsy's countenance through his spectacles.

"I know it is," answered the gipsy; "and it is truth, which twenty years cannot change as they have done you and me, hard man!"

"Egad, he's right there!" cried the magistrate; "twenty years have worked a woful change both in my eyes and in my teeth; but, thank G.o.d, I can ride as fresh as any man after the hounds, and shirk neither fence nor gate."

"Have you anything to add to your declaration, prisoner!" asked Mr.

Simpson, in a milder tone. "Nothing," answered Pharold. "Let me ask you, however," continued the other, "whether you have ever, by any chance, seen the murderer since the events which you have detailed in this paper?"

"More than once!" answered the gipsy.

"Then, why did you not point him out for apprehension?" demanded Mr.

Simpson.

"Because no one asked me," replied Pharold. "I told yon hard old man, that I would point the murderer out if he were set before me; but I never promised any of you to be as one of your hounds, and seize the game for your sport or advantage."

"Then if the murderer were brought before you," asked another magistrate, "would you point him out, and swear to him?"

The inquiry was taking a turn unpleasing to the peer; for although he felt well convinced that Pharold would, sooner or later, retort the accusation upon him, and was ready to meet it boldly and calmly, yet he was not a little anxious to conclude his own statement of the case first, and to bring forward every circ.u.mstance which could criminate the gipsy, in order to take all weight from the testimony of his adversary, and make the magistrates pa.s.s it over with contempt.

"I think," he said, rising ere the gipsy could reply--"I think, gentleman, if you will now permit me to proceed with what I have further to adduce, you will find the matter very much simplified, and can then examine the prisoner in whatever manner you think fit."

"Certainly, my lord! certainly!" said some of the more complaisant of the party; but the magistrate who had put the question was less easily turned aside; and he replied,--

"Permit the prisoner, my lord, to answer my question in the first place. My memory is bad," he added, dryly, "and before we got to the end I might forget it. Now, answer me, prisoner,--that is, if you do not object--there is no compulsion, remember,--if the murderer were brought before you, could you and would you point him out, and swear to him!"

"That I could do so," answered Pharold, "I have already said; but that I would do so, I do not know. It would depend upon circ.u.mstances."

Lord Dewry looked suddenly up, and their eyes met, but there was nothing in Pharold's glance at that moment but cold stern indifference; and those who saw the look he gave the peer could not have distinguished that he was moved towards him by any other feelings than those which might well exist between the accused and the accuser.

Lord Dewry paused, and a momentary feeling of remorse for that which he was engaged in crossed his bosom, now that he saw even persecution would hardly make the gipsy violate his word so far as to betray his fearful secret. But he had gone too far to recede, and he crushed the better feeling. He called up the image of Sir William Ryder returning to England, and supporting a charge against him by the testimony of the gipsy; he recalled the state of feverish apprehension in which he had lived for twenty years; and he went on with the work he had begun, resolved that the struggle should be commenced and ended now for ever, in the vain hope that thus his latter days might pa.s.s in peace!

"Now, my lord," said the magistrate, when the gipsy had replied--"now, my lord, I beg pardon for having detained you."

"Well, then, sir," answered Lord Dewry, with some of his haughty spirit breaking out even then--"well, then, if it quite suits your convenience, I will proceed. I must give a slight sketch of some events long pa.s.sed, gentlemen; and the clerks had better take it down as my deposition, which may be sworn to hereafter. Not very long after my brother's death, gentlemen, I had some money transactions to settle with an honourable friend of mine, one Sir Roger Millington; and I went to London for the purpose. I found him just returned from Ireland; and he told me that, in the neighbourhood of Holyhead, he had met with an accident by which one of his finest horses had nearly been killed; but that he had obtained a secret from a gipsy there by which the animal had been completely cured. You may easily suppose I gave the anecdote but little attention at the time. In settling our accounts, however, Sir Roger had to give me, in change for a larger sum, several smaller notes, on which he wrote his name. I took no great notice of these bits of paper till I returned to the country, when, on looking them over, I found, to my surprise, that one of them was marked with my brother's own name, in his own handwriting. This led to further examination; and in this banker's book, and also in these memoranda, I found, by the dates and numbers of the notes, that the very note in question must have been drawn by my poor brother from his bankers the day before his death. The next thing to be discovered was, where Sir Roger Millington had obtained it; but, as that gentleman was continually moving about from place to place, some time elapsed ere I could see him again. When I did so, however, I found that he had received this very note from a gipsy called Pharold, at Holyhead, in change for a larger one given him in order to purchase the secret by which the worthy knight's horse had been cured."

"A most singular coincidence!" cried Mr. Arden. "Murder will out, gentlemen!"

"For a long time no trace could be discovered of the gipsy," continued Lord Dewry; "but at length he suddenly reappeared in this neighbourhood; and one of my keepers obtained information that he and his gang had laid a plan for robbing my park of the deer. On his telling me this, I ordered him to take such measures as he thought expedient for seizing the whole of them in the fact; much more anxious, indeed, to capture my brother's murderer than to punish the deer-stealers. It so happened, that just at the same time Sir Roger Millington came down to pay me a visit; and on hearing that the culprit was likely to fall into our hands that very night, he insisted upon coming over here, both to direct the operations of the keepers, and to satisfy himself that this gipsy Pharold is the same from whom he received the note. I would fain have persuaded him that it was a wild scheme; but he was a soldier, gentlemen, and accustomed to contemn all dangers. The unhappy result you know. He was mortally wounded, and is now lying in a state of delirium, if he be not already dead. Last night, however, I took advantage of a time when his mind was quite clear and rational, to obtain from him this declaration in the presence of competent witnesses; and herein you will find that he positively states that the man Pharold, whom he saw with the gipsy deer-stealers in Dimden Park, was the same from whom he received this note."

"Foul, h.e.l.lish liar!" exclaimed Pharold, starting abruptly from the state of calm and apparently indifferent thought in which he had been standing, with his eyes fixed upon the handcuffs on his wrists, and his head bent down. "Foul, h.e.l.lish liar! He never either gave me aught, or had aught from me! I cured his n.o.ble beast for nothing; and not for his sake either; but he gave me naught, nor would I have taken his gold if he had offered it."

"What, then," cried Mr. Arden, "you acknowledge that you did see this gentleman at Holyhead, and did cure his horse by some nostrum in your possession! Clerk, take that down carefully."

"Ay, and take down that, if in dying he say he either gave me aught or received aught from me," continued Pharold, vehemently, "he goes to the place appointed for liars and false witnesses, if the great G.o.d of all the universe be a G.o.d of justice and righteousness."

"Do you know, gentlemen," said Mr. Arden, turning round and rubbing his hands, "I think that quite enough has been elicited to justify us in committing the prisoner without further ceremony."

"We might perhaps be justified," said Mr. Simpson; "but I think there is something more required of us than that, both by our own consciences and our precise duties. It lies with us to prepare the case as far as possible for superior functionaries; and, therefore, I should propose that we proceed at once to collect every information that is to be procured, and that we do not think of committing the prisoner till we have done so. A great deal more still remains to be--"

Here one of the constables advanced from the other end of the hall, and pa.s.sing quietly round the table, interrupted the magistrate by handing him a sealed packet, which he instantly opened, and proceeded to read the first lines. While he did so, the constable advanced to the spot where the peer sat, and spoke a few words in a low tone of voice, while another magistrate, taking advantage of Mr. Simpson's silence, proposed that they should adjourn to the bedside of Sir Roger Millington, and receive his deposition officially.

"I am sorry to say," answered Lord Dewry, with as grieved and melancholy an air as he could a.s.sume, under circ.u.mstances which were in reality satisfactory--"I am sorry to say, gentlemen, that the wise and judicious proceeding just suggested cannot be executed, as the constable has this moment informed me that my poor friend is no more.

His dissolution occurred a few minutes ago; and though I grieve for the loss of my friend, it would be vain to say that I am sorry that an event which was inevitable should have taken place so soon, when every hour of prolonged existence was an hour of torture."

"I trust, then, that the declaration which he made last night," said the same magistrate, "was in every respect such as to be admitted in evidence. Will your lordship permit me to examine it?" The paper was handed to him, and he cast his eyes over it without any comment. Mr.

Simpson, however, was evidently strongly affected by the packet he had just received. He returned more than once to several of the pa.s.sages it contained; and when he had satisfied himself of the precise terms, he let the hand which held the paper fall over the arm of the chair; and with a pale cheek and a look of deep thought, continued gazing at vacancy for several moments.

The first thing that seemed to rouse him was a renewal of Mr. Arden's proposal for the instant committal of the prisoner, when, turning round abruptly, he said, "No, Mr. Arden! no! we have not half gone through the case; and something has just been put into my hand which gives a very different aspect to the business altogether. This is a very painful paper, gentlemen; and the task put upon me is a very painful one, but, however, our duty must be done; and I will not shrink from mine. However, let me beg your lordship in the first instance to remark that this thing is no seeking of mine. For many members of your lordship's family I have the utmost respect and regard, and I would not willingly do anything to hurt any of your house; but, as I have said, my duty must be done."

While he spoke, the gipsy's eye lighted up anew, but the countenance of the peer fell. His colour varied twenty times in a minute; but ere the magistrate had done speaking, he had recovered his self-command, and determined on his course, whatever might be the nature of the communication which Mr. Simpson had received. "To what end, may I ask," he said, haughtily, "to what end does all this tissue of idle words lead, sir? Let me beg you to explain yourself, for I can conceive no circ.u.mstances under which your professed regard for my family should interfere in any way with the execution of your duty."

"You shall hear, my lord, you shall hear," answered Mr. Simpson, with more mild dignity than the peer had imagined he could a.s.sume.

"Constables, clear the hall there."

"Shall we take away the prisoner, sir?" demanded one of the men who stood by his side.

The magistrate paused, and then replied, after a moment's thought, "He has a right to hear anything that may benefit himself. He is here before us without legal advice or a.s.sistance of any kind; and he must not be shut out from a knowledge of facts which he may have to communicate to his counsel hereafter. You, constable, however, retire to the door. I think we are enough to manage one handcuffed man should he prove turbulent."

None of the other magistrates interfered: the hall was cleared; and Pharold was left standing in the midst, with no other witnesses but the magistrates and their clerks. Restraining all his feelings by a mighty effort, the peer sat sternly gazing upon the speaker, with the violent pa.s.sions that were working within, discernible only in the starting sinews of the thin clenched hand which he had laid upon the papers before him.

"What I have to read, gentlemen," continued Mr. Simpson, "has just been sent me by the excellent rector of this parish, Dr. Edwards; and it is ent.i.tled The dying declaration of Sir Roger Millington, knight.

It is, gentlemen, to the following effect;" and he proceeded to read the confession which fear and repentance had induced the dying man to make. The agitation of the peer was dreadful; but it was alone internal; and all that was externally perceptible were those signs of pa.s.sion and indignation which an innocent man might feel at a false accusation. At length, however, when, in conclusion, the unhappy Sir Roger charged him boldly as the murderer of his brother, Lord Dewry started up, exclaiming,--