“Can you tell what led the prisoner to determine on returning to his mother’s house in the month of November last?”
“Blue devils,” replied the witness, with determined conciseness.
“Blue devils?”
“Yes, he’d been in a low way for three months, or more; he’d had a sharp attack of delirium tremens, and a touch of his old complaint—”
“His old complaint?”
“Yes, brain-fever. During the fever he talked a great deal of his mother; said he had killed her by his bad conduct, but that he’d beg her forgiveness if he walked to Slopperton on his bare feet.”
“Can you tell me at what date he first expressed this desire to come to Slopperton?”
“Some time during the month of September.”
“Did you during this period consider him to be in a sound mind?”
“Well, several of my friends at Guy’s used to think rather the reverse. It was customary amongst us to say he had a loose slate somewhere.”
The counsel for the prosecution taking exception to this phrase “loose slate,” the witness went on to state that he thought the prisoner very often off his nut; had hidden his razors during his illness, and piled up a barricade of furniture before the window. The prisoner was remarkable for reckless generosity, good temper, a truthful disposition, and a talent for doing everything, and always doing it better than anybody else. This, and a great deal more, was elicited from him by the advocate for the defence.
He was cross-examined by the counsel for the prosecution.
“I think you told my learned friend that you were a member of the medical profession?”
“I did.”
Was first apprenticed to a chemist and druggist at Slopperton, and was now walking one of the hospitals in London with a view to attaining a position in the profession; had not yet attained eminence, but hoped to do so; had operated with some success in a desperate case of whitlow on the finger of a servant-girl, and should have effected a surprising cure, if the girl had not grown impatient and allowed her finger to be amputated by a rival practitioner before the curative process had time to develop itself; had always entertained a sincere regard for the prisoner; had at divers times borrowed money of him; couldn’t say he remembered ever returning any; perhaps he never had returned any, and that might account for his not remembering the circumstance; had been present at the election of, and instrumental in electing the prisoner a member of a convivial club called the “Cheerful Cherokees.” No “Cheerful Cherokee” had ever been known to commit a murder, and the club was convinced of the prisoner’s innocence.
“You told the court and jury a short time ago, that the prisoner’s state on the last night you saw him in London was ‘rum,’” said the learned gentleman conducting the prosecution; “will you be good enough to favour us with the meaning of that adjective — you intend it for an adjective, I presume?”
“Certainly,” replied the witness. “Rum, an adjective when applied to a gentleman’s conduct; a substantive when used to denominate his tipple.”
The counsel for the prosecution doesn’t clearly understand the meaning of the word “tipple.”
The witness thinks the learned gentleman had better buy a dictionary before he again assists in a criminal prosecution.
“Come, come, sir,” said the judge; “you are extremely impertinent. We don’t want to be kept here all night. Let us have your evidence in a straightforward manner.”
The witness squared his elbows, and turned that luminary, his nose, full on his lordship, as if it had been a bull’s-eye lantern.
“You used another strange expression,” said the counsel, “in answer to my friend. Will you have the kindness to explain what you mean by the prisoner having ‘a loose slate’?”
“A tile off. Something wrong about the roof — the garret — the upper story — the nut.”
The counsel for the prosecution confessed himself to be still in the dark.
The witness declared himself sorry to hear it — he could undertake to give his evidence; but he could not undertake to provide the gentleman with understanding.
“I will trouble you to be respectful in your replies to the counsel for the crown,” said the judge.
The medical student’s variegated eve looked defiantly at his lordship; the counsel for the crown had done with him, and he retired faun the witness-box, after bowing to the judge and jury with studious politeness.
The next witnesses were two medical gentlemen of a different stamp to the “Cheerful Cherokee,” who had now taken his place amongst the spectators.
These gentlemen gave evidence of having attended the prisoner some years before, during brain-fever, and having very much feared the fever would have resulted in the loss of the patient’s reason.
The trial had by this time lasted so long, that the juryman who had a ticket for the public dinner began to feel that his card of admission to the festive board was so much waste pasteboard, and that the green fat of the turtle and the prune cut from the haunch of venison were not for him.
The counsel for the prosecution delivered himself of his second address to the jury, in which he endeavoured to demolish the superstructure which his “learned friend” had so ingeniously raised for the defence. Why should the legal defender of a man whose life is in the hands of the jury not be privileged to address that jury in favour of his client as often, at least, as the legal representative of the prosecutor?
The judge delivered his charge to the jury.
The jury retired, and in an hour and fifteen minutes returned.
They found that the prisoner, Richard Marwood, had murdered his uncle, Montague Harding, and had further beaten and injured a half-caste servant in the employ of his uncle, while suffering from aberration of intellect — or, in simple phraseology, they found the prisoner “Not Guilty, on the ground of insanity.”
The prisoner seemed little affected by the verdict. He looked with a vacant stare round the court, removed the bouquet of rue from his button-hole and placed it in his bosom; and then said with a clear distinct enunciation —
“Gentlemen of the jury, I am extremely obliged to you for the politeness with which you have treated me. Thanks to your powerful sense of justice, I have won the battle of Arcola, and think I have secured the key of Italy.”
It is common for lunatics to fancy themselves some great and distinguished person. This unhappy young man believed himself to be Napoleon the First.
BOOK THE SECOND. A CLEARANCE OF ALL SCORES.
CHAPTER I. BLIND PETER.
The favourite, “Gallows,” having lost in the race with Richard Marwood, there was very little more interest felt in Slopperton about poor Daredevil Dick’s fate. It was known that he was in the county lunatic asylum, a prisoner for life, or, as it is expressed by persons learned in legal matters, during the pleasure of the sovereign. It was known that his poor mother had taken up her abode near the asylum, and that at intervals she was allowed the melancholy pleasure of seeing the wreck of her once light-hearted boy. Mrs. Marwood was now a very rich woman, inheritress of the whole of her poor murdered brother’s wealth — for Mr. Montague Harding’s will had been found to bequeath the whole of his immense fortune to his only sister. She spent little, however, and what she did expend was chiefly devoted to works of charity; but even her benevolence was limited, and she did little more for the poor than she had done before from her own small income. The wealth of the East Indian remained accumulating in the hands of her bankers. Mrs. Marwood was, therefore, very rich, and Slopperton accordingly set her down as a miser.
So the nine-days’ wonder died out, and the murder of Mr. Harding was forgotten. The sunshine on the factory chimneys of Slopperton grew warmer every day. Every day the “hands” appertaining to the factories felt more and more the necessity of frequent application to the public-house, as the weather grew brighter and brighter — till the hot June sun blazed down upon the pavement of every street in Slopperton, baking and gri
lling the stones; till the sight of a puddle or an overflowing gutter would have been welcome as pools of water in the great desert of Sahara; till the people who lived on the sunny side of the way felt spitefully disposed towards the inhabitants of the shady side; till the chandler at the corner, who came out with a watering-pot and sprinkled the pavement before his door every evening, was thought a public benefactor; till the baker, who added his private stock of caloric to the great firm of Sunshine and Co., and baked the pavement above his oven on his own account, was thought a public nuisance, and hot bread an abomination; till the butter Slopperton had for tea was no longer butter, but oil, and eluded the pursuit of the knife, or hid itself in a cowardly manner in the holes of the quartern loaf when the housewife attempted to spread it thereon; till cattle standing in pools of water were looked upon with envy and hatred; and till — wonder of wonders! — Slopperton paid up the water-rate sharp, in fear and anguish at the thought of the possible cutting-off of that refreshing fluid.
The 17th of June ushered in the midsummer holidays at Dr. Tappenden’s establishment, and on the evening of that day Dr. Tappenden broke up. Of course, this phrase, breaking up, is only a schoolboy’s slang. I do not mean that the worthy Doctor (how did he ever come to be a doctor, I wonder? or where did he get his degree?) experienced any physical change when he broke up; or that he underwent the moral change of going into the Gazette and coming out thereof better off than when he went in — which is, I believe, the custom in most cases of bankruptcy; I merely mean to say, that on the evening of the 17th of June Dr. Tappenden gave a species of ball, at which Mr. Pranskey, the dancing-master, assisted with his pumps and his violin; and at which the young gentlemen appeared also in pumps, a great deal of wrist-band and shirt-collar, and shining faces — in a state of painfully high polish, from the effect of the yellow soap that had been lavished upon them by the respectable young person who looked to the wardrobe department, and mended the linen of the young gentlemen.
By the evening of the 18th, Dr. Tappenden’s young gentlemen, with the exception of two little fellows with dark complexions and frizzy hair, whose nearest connections were at Trinidad, all departed to their respective family circles; and Mr. Jabez North had the schoolroom to himself for the whole of the holidays — for, of course, the little West Indians, playing at a sea-voyage on one of the forms, with a cricket-bat for a mast, or reading Sinbad the Sailor in a corner, were no hindrance to that gentleman’s proceedings.
Our friend Jabez is as calm-looking as ever. The fair pale complexion may be, perhaps, a shade paler, and the arched mouth a trifle more compressed — (that absurd professor of phrenology had declared that both the head and face of Jabez bespoke a marvellous power of secretiveness) — but our friend is as placid as ever. The pale face, delicate aquiline nose, the fair hair and rather slender figure, give a tone of aristocracy to his appearance which even his shabby black suit cannot conceal. But Jabez is not too well pleased with his lot. He paces up and down the schoolroom in the twilight of the June evening, quite alone, for the little West Indians have retired to the long dormitory which they now inhabit in solitary grandeur. Dr. Tappenden has gone to the sea-side with his slim only daughter, familiarly known amongst the scholars, who have no eyes for ethereal beauty as “Skinny Jane.” Dr. Tappenden has gone to enjoy himself; for Dr. Tappenden is a rich man. He is said to have some twenty thousand pounds in a London bank. He doesn’t bank his money in Slopperton. And of “Skinny Jane,” it may be observed, that there are young men in the town who would give something for a glance from her insipid grey eyes, and who think her ethereal figure the very incarnation of the poet’s ideal, when they add to that slender form the bulky figures that form the sum-total of her father’s banking account.
Jabez paces up and down the long; schoolroom with a step so light that it scarcely wakes an echo (those crotchety physiologists call this light step another indication of a secretive disposition) — up and down, in the darkening summer evening.
“Another six months’ Latin grammar,” he mutters, “another half-year’s rudiments of Greek, and all the tiresome old fables of Paris and Helen, and Hector and Achilles, for entertainment! A nice life for a man with my head — for those fools who preached about my deficient moral region were right perhaps when they told me my intellect might carry me anywhere. What has it done for me yet? Well, at the worst, it has taken me out of loathsome parish rags; it has given me independence. And it shall give me fortune. But how? What is to be the next trial? This time it must be no failure. This time my premises must be sure. If I could only hit upon some scheme! There is a way by which I could obtain a large sum of money; but then, the fear of detection! Detection, which if eluded to-day might cone to-morrow! And it is not a year or two’s riot and dissipation that I want to purchase; but a long life of wealth and luxury, with proud men’s necks to trample on, and my old patrons to lick the dust off my shoes. This is what I must fight for, and this is what I must attain-but how? How?”
He takes his hat up, and goes out of the house. He is quite his own master during these holidays. He comes in and goes out as he likes, provided he is always at home by ten o’clock, when the house is shut up for the night.
He strolls with a purposeless step through the streets of Slopperton. It is half-past eight o’clock, and the factory hands fill the streets, enjoying the coolness of the evening, but quiet and subdued in their manner, being exhausted by the heat of the long June day. Jabez does not much affect these crowded streets, and turns out of one of the most busy quarters of the town into a little lane of old houses, which leads to a great old-fashioned square, in which stand two ancient churches with very high steeples, an antique-looking town-hall (once a prison), a few quaint houses with peaked roofs and projecting upper stories, and a gaunt gump. Jabez soon leaves this square behind him, and strolls through two or three dingy, narrow, old-fashioned streets, till he comes to a labyrinth of tunable-down houses, pig-styes, and dog-kennels, known as Blind Peter’s Alley. Who Blind Peter was, or how he ever came to have this alley — or whether, as a place possessing no thoroughfare and admitting very little light, it had not originally been called Peter’s Blind Alley — nobody living knew. But if Blind Peter was a myth, the alley was a reality, and a dirty loathsome fetid reality, with regard to which the Board of Health seemed as if smitten with the aforesaid Peter’s own infirmity, ignoring the horror of the place with fatal blindness. So Blind Peter was the Alsatia of Slopperton, a refuge for crime and destitution — since destitution cannot pick its company, but must be content often, for the sake of shelter, to jog cheek by jowl with crime. And thus no doubt it is on the strength of that golden adage about birds of a feather that destitution and crime are thought by numerous ise and benevolent persons to mean one and the same thing. Blind Peter had risen to popularity once or twice — on the occasion of a girl poisoning her father in the crust of a beefsteak pudding, and a boy of fourteen committing suicide by hanging himself behind a door. Blind Peter, on the first of these occasions, had even had his portrait taken for a Sunday paper; and very nice indeed he had looked in a woodcut — so nice, that he had found some difficulty in recognizing himself; which perhaps was scarcely wonderful, when it is taken into consideration that the artist, who lived in the neighbourhood of Holborn, had sketched Blind Peter from a mountain gorge in the Tyrol, broken up with three or four houses out of Chancery Lane.
Certainly Blind Peter had a peculiar wildness in his aspect, being built on the side of a steep hill, and looked very much like a London alley which had been removed from its site and pitched haphazard on to a Slopperton mountain.
It is not to be supposed for a moment that so highly respectable an individual as Mr. Jabez North had any intention of plunging into the dirty obscurity of Blind Peter. He lead come thus far only on his way to the outskirts of the town, where there was a little brick-bestrewn, pseudo country, very much more liberally ornamented by oyster-shells, broken crockery, and scaffolding, than by trees or wild flowers �
�� which natural objects were wondrous rarities in this part of the Sloppertonian outskirts.
So Jabez pursued his way past the mouth of Blind Peter which was adorned by two or three broken-down and rusty iron railings that looked like jagged teeth — when he was suddenly arrested by a hideous-looking woman, who threw her arms about him, and addressed him in a shrill voice thus —
“What, he’s come back to his best friends, has he? He’s come back to his old granny, after frightening her out of her poor old wits by staying away four days and four nights. Where have you been, Jim, my deary? And where did you get your fine toggery?”
“Where did I get my fine toggery? What do you mean, you old hag? I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. Let me pass, will you? or I’ll knock you down!”
“No, no,” she screamed; “he wouldn’t knock down his old granny; he wouldn’t knock down his precious granny that nursed him, and brought him up like a gentleman, and will tell him a secret one of these days worth a mint of money, if he treats her well.”
Jabez pricked up his ears at the words “mint of money,” and said in rather a milder tone —
“I tell you, my good woman, you mistake me for somebody else. I never saw you before.”
“What? you’re not my Jim?”
“No. My name is Jabez North. If you’re not satisfied, here’s my card,” and he took out his card-case.
The old woman stuck her arms a kimbo, and stared at him with a gaze of admiration.
“Lor,” she cried, “don’t he do it nat’ral? Ain’t he a born genius? He’s been a-doing the respectable reduced tradesman, or the young man brought up to the church, what waits upon the gentry with a long letter, and has a wife and two innocent children staying in another town, and only wants the railway fare to go to ‘em. Eh, Jim, that’s what you’ve been a-doing, ain’t it now? And you’ve brought home the swag like a good lad to your grandmother, haven’t you now?” she said in a wheedling tone.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 8
