Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “Faith, one would suppose I was her ladyship’s footman and had been keeping her seat for her,” he grumbled, as he reluctantly rose at the Usher’s whispered request, and edged himself sulkily off to a corner where he found just standing-room.

  It was a very hard seat which Mr. Jeffreys had vacated, and her ladyship, after sitting there over two hours, nodding asleep a good part of the time, began to feel internal sinkings and flutterings which presaged what she called a “swound,” and necessitated recourse to a crystal flask of strong waters which she had prudently brought in her muff. Other of Lady Fareham’s particular friends were expected — Sir Ralph Masaroon, Lady Lucretia Topham, and more of the same kidney; and even the volatile Rochester had deigned to express an interest in the case.

  “The man was mistaken in his métier,” he had told Lady Sarah, when the scandal was discussed in her drawing-room. “The rôle of seducer was not within his means. Any one could see he was in love with the pale sister-in-law by the manner in which he scowled at her; but it is not every woman who can be subjugated by gloom and sullenness, though some of ’em like us tragical. My method has been to laugh away resistance, as my wife will acknowledge, who was the cruellest she I ever tackled, and had baffled all her other servants. Indeed she must have been in Butler’s eye when he wrote —

  ’That old Pyg — what d’ye call him — malion

  That cut his mistress out of stone,

  Had not so hard a hearted one.’

  Even Lady Rochester will admit I conquered without heroics,” upon which her ladyship, late mistress Mallett, a beauty and a fortune, smiled assent with all the complacency of a six-months’ bride. “To see a man tried for an attempted abduction is a sight worth a year’s income,” pursued Rochester. “I would travel a hundred miles to behold that rare monster who has failed in his pursuit of one of your obliging sex!”

  “Do you think us all so easily won?” asked Lady Sarah, piqued.

  “Dear lady, I can but judge by experience. If obdurate to others you have still been kind to me.”

  * * * * *

  Lady Sarah had nearly emptied her flask of Muscadine before Masaroon elbowed his way to a seat beside her, from which he audaciously dislodged a coffee-house acquaintance, an elderly lawyer upon whom fortune had not smiled, with a condescending civility that was more uncivil than absolute rudeness.

  “We’ll share a bottle in Hell after the trial, mon ami,” he said; and on seeing Lady Sarah’s look of horror, he hastened to explain that Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory, were the cant names of three taverns which drove a roaring trade in strong drinks under the very roof of the Hall.

  “The King’s Attorney-general is prosecuting,” answered Sir Ralph, replying to a question from Lady Sarah, whose inquiries betrayed that dense ignorance of legal technicalities common even to accomplished women. “It is thought the lady’s father would have been glad for the matter to be quashed, his fugitive daughter being restored to his custody — albeit with a damaged character — and her elder sister having run away from her husband.”

  “I will not hear you slander my dearest friend,” protested Lady Sarah. “Lady Fareham left her husband, and with good cause, as his after-conduct showed. She did not run away from him.”

  “Nay, she had doubtless the assistance of a carriage-and-six. She would

  scarce foot it from London to Dover. And now she is leading grand train in

  Paris, and has taken almost as commanding a place as her friend Madame de

  Longueville, penitent and retired from service.”

  “Hyacinth, under all her appearance of silliness, is a remarkably clever woman,” said Lady Sarah, sententiously; “but, pray, Sir Ralph, if Mistress Angela’s father has good reason for not prosecuting his daughter’s lover — indeed I ever thought her an underhand hussy — why does not Sir Denzil Warner — who I hear has been at death’s door — pursue him for assault and battery?”

  “Nay, is so still, madam. I question if he be yet out of danger. The gentleman is a kind of puritanical Quixote, and has persistently refused to swear an information against Fareham, whereby I doubt the case will fall through, or his lordship get off with a fine of a thousand or two. We have no longer the blessing of a Star Chamber, to supply state needs out of sinners’ pockets, and mitigate general taxation; but his Majesty’s Judges have a capacious stomach for fines, and his Majesty has no objection to see his subjects’ misdemeanours transmuted into coin.”

  And now the business of the day began, the panelled enclosure being by this time crowded almost to suffocation; and Lord Fareham was brought into court.

  He was plainly dressed in a dark grey suit, and looked ten years older than when Lady Sarah had last seen him on his wife’s visiting day, an uninterested member of that modish assembly. His eyes were deeper sunken under the strongly marked brows. The threads of iron-grey in his thick black hair were more conspicuous. He carried his head higher than he had been accustomed to carry it, and the broad shoulders were no longer bent in the Stafford stoop. The spectators could see that he had braced himself for the ordeal, and would go through the day’s work like a man of iron.

  Proclamation was made for silence, and for information, if any person could give any, concerning the misdemeanour and offence whereof the defendant stood impeached; and the defendant was bid to look to his challenges, and the Jury, being gentlemen of the county of Bucks, were called, challenged, and sworn.

  The demand for silence was so far obeyed that there followed a hush within the enclosure of the court; but there was no cessation of the buzz of voices and the tramp of footsteps in the hall, which mingled sounds seemed like the rise and fall of a human ocean, as heard within that panelled sanctuary.

  The lawyers took snuff, shuffled on their seats, nudged each other and whispered now and then, during the reading of the indictment; but among Lady Fareham’s friends, and the quality in general, there was a breathless silence and expectancy; and Lady Sarah would gladly have run her hat-pin into a snuffy old Serjeant close beside her, who must needs talk behind his hand to his pert junior.

  To her ladyship’s unaccustomed ears that indictment, translated literally from the Latin original, sounded terrible as an impeachment in the subterranean halls of the Vehm Gericht, or in the most select and secret council in the Venetian Doge’s Palace.

  The indictment set forth “that the defendant, Richard Revel, Baron Fareham, on the 4th day of July, in the 18th year of our sovereign lord the King that now is, at the parish of St. Nicholas in the Vale, in the county of Bucks, falsely, unlawfully, unjustly, and wickedly, by unlawful and impure ways and means, contriving, practising, and intending the final ruin and destruction of Mrs. Angela Kirkland, unmarried, and one of the daughters of Sir John Kirkland, Knight — the said lady then and there being under the custody, government, and education of the said Sir John Kirkland, her father — he, the said Richard Revel, Baron Fareham, then and there falsely, unlawfully, devilishly, to fulfil, perfect, and bring to effect, his most wicked, impious, and devilish intentions aforesaid — the said Richard Revel, Lord Fareham (then and long before, and yet, being the husband of Mrs. Hyacinth, another daughter of the said Sir John Kirkland, Knight, and sister of the said Mrs. Angela), against all laws as well divine as human, impiously, wickedly, impurely, and scandalously, did tempt, invite, and solicit, and by false and lying pretences, oaths, and affirmations, unlawfully, unjustly, and without the leave, and against the will of the aforesaid Sir John Kirkland, Knight, in prosecution of his most wicked intent aforesaid, did carry off the aforesaid Mrs. Angela, she consenting in ignorance of his real purpose, about the hour of twelve in the night-time of the said 4th day of July, in the year aforesaid, and at the aforesaid, parish of St. Nicholas in the Vale, in the county of Bucks aforesaid, out of the dwelling-house of the said Sir John Kirkland, Knight, did take and convey to his own house in the county of Oxford, and did then and there detain her by fraud, and did there keep her hidden in a secret chamber known as the Pr
iest’s Hole in his own house aforesaid, at the hazard of her life, and did oppose her rescue by force of arms, and with his sword, unlawfully, murderously, and devilishly, and in the prosecution of his wicked purpose did stab and wound Sir Denzil Warner, Baronet, the lady’s betrothed husband, from which murderous assault the said Sir Denzil Warner, Baronet, still lies in great sickness and danger of death, to the great displeasure of Almighty God, to the ruin and destruction of the said Mrs. Angela Kirkland, to the grief and sorrow of all her friends, and to the evil and most pernicious example of all others in the like case offending; and against the peace of our said sovereign lord the King, his crown and dignity.”

  The defendant having pleaded “Not guilty,” the Jury were charged in the usual manner and with all solemnity.

  “If you find him ‘guilty’ you are to say so; if you find him ‘not guilty’ you are to say so, and no more, and hear your evidence.”

  The Attorney-General confined himself to a brief out-line of the tragic story, leaving all details to be developed by the witnesses, who were allowed to give their evidence with colloquial freedom and expansiveness.

  The first witness was old Reuben, the steward from the Manor Moat, who had not yet emerged from that mental maze in which he had found himself upon beholding the change that had come to pass in the great city, since the well-remembered winter of the King’s execution, and the long frost, when he, Reuben, was last in London. His evidence was confused and confusing; and he drew upon himself much good-natured ridicule from the junior who opened the case. Out of various muddle-headed answers and contradictory statements the facts of Lord Fareham’s unexpected appearance at the Manor Moat, his account of his lady’s illness, and his hurried departure, carrying the young madam with him on horseback, were elicited, and the story of the ruse by which Mrs. Angela Kirkland had been beguiled from her home was made clear to the comprehension of a superior but rustic jury, more skilled in discriminating the points of a horse, the qualities of an ox, or the capacity of a hound, than in differentiating truth and falsehood in a story of wrong-doing.

  Sir John Kirkland was the next witness, and the aspect of the man, the noble grey head, fine features, and soldierly carriage, the old-fashioned habit, the fashion of an age not long past, but almost forgotten, enlisted the regard and compassion of Jury and audience.

  “Let me perish if it is not a ghost from the civil wars!” whispered Sir Ralph to Lady Sarah. “Mrs. Angela might well be romanesque and unlike the rest of us, with such a father.”

  A spasm of pain convulsed Fareham’s face for a moment, as the old Cavalier stood up in the witness-box, towering above the Court in that elevated position, and, after being sworn, took one swift survey of the Bench and Jury, and then fixed his angry gaze upon the defendant, and scarcely shifted it in the whole course of his examination.

  “Now, Gentlemen of the Jury,” said the Attorney-General, “we shall tell you what happened at Chilton Abbey, to which place the defendant, under such fraudulent and lying pretences as you have heard of from the last witness, conveyed the young lady. Sir John, I will ask you to acquaint the Jury as fully and straightforwardly as you can with the circumstances of your pursuit, and the defendant’s reception of you and your intended son-in-law, Sir Denzil Warner, whose deposition we have failed to obtain, but who could relate no facts which are not equally within your own knowledge.”

  “My words shall be straight and plain, sir, to denounce that unchristian wretch whom, until this miserable business, I trusted as if he had been my son. I came to my house, accompanied by my daughter’s plighted husband, within an hour after that villain conveyed her away; and on hearing my old servant’s story was quick to suspect treachery. Nor was Sir Denzil backward in his fears, which were more instantaneous than mine; and we waited only for the saddling of fresh horses, and rousing a couple of grooms from their beds, fellows that I could trust for prudence and courage, before we mounted again, following in that wretch’s track. We heard of him and his victim at the Inn where they changed horses, she going consentingly, believing she was being taken in this haste to attend a dying sister.”

  “And on arriving at the defendant’s house what was your reception?”

  “He opposed our entrance, until he saw that we should batter down his door if he shut us out longer. We were not admitted until after I had sent one of my servants for the nearest Constable; and before we had gained an entrance into his house he had contrived to put away my daughter in a wretched hiding-place, planned for the concealment of Romish Priests or other recusants and malefactors, and would have kept her there, I believe, till she had perished in that foul cavern, rather than restore her to her father and natural guardian.”

  “That is false, and you know it!” cried Fareham. “My life is of less account to me than a hair of her head. I hid her from you, to save her from your tyranny, and the hateful marriage to which you would have compelled her.”

  “Liar! Impudent, barbarous liar!” roared the old Knight, with his right arm raised, and his body half out of the box, as if he would have assaulted the defendant. “Sir John,” said the Judge, “I would be very loath to deal otherwise than becomes me with a person of your quality; but, indeed, this is not so handsome, and we must desire you to be calm.”

  “When I remember his infamy, and that vile assumption of my daughter’s passion for him, which he showed in every word and act of that miserable scene.”

  He went on to relate the searching of the house, and Warner’s happy inspiration, by which Angela’s hiding-place was discovered, and she rescued in a fainting condition. He described the defendant’s audacious attempt to convey her to the coach which stood ready for her abduction, and his violence in opposing her rescue, and the fight which had well-nigh resulted in Warner’s death.

  When Sir John’s story was finished the defendant’s advocate, who had declined to question the old butler, rose to cross-examine this more important witness.

  “In your tracing of the defendant’s journey between your house and Chilton you heard of no outcries of resistance upon your daughter’s side?”

  “No, sir. She went willingly, under a delusion.”

  “And do you think now, sir, as a man of the world, and with some knowledge of women, that your daughter was so easily hoodwinked; she having seen her sister, Lady Fareham, so shortly before, in good health and spirits?”

  “Lady Fareham did not appear in good health when she was last at the Manor, and her sister was already uneasy about her.”

  “But not so uneasy as to believe her dying, and that it was needful to ride to her helter-skelter in the night-time. Do you not think, sir, that the young lady, who was so quick to comply with his lordship’s summons, and bustled up and was in the saddle ten minutes after he entered the house, and was willing to got without her own woman, or any preparation for travel, had a strong inclination for the journey, and a great kindness for the gentleman who solicited her company?”

  “Has that barbarous wretch set you on to slander the lady whose ruin he sought, sir?” asked the Knight, pallid with the white heat of indignation.

  “Nay, Sir John, I am no slanderer; but I want the Jury to understand the sentiments and passions which are the springs of action here, and to bear in mind that the case they are hearing is a love story, and they can only come at the truth by remembering their own experience as lovers—”

  The deep and angry tones of his client interrupted the silvery-tongued

  Counsellor.

  “If you think to help me, sir, by traducing the lady, I repudiate your advocacy.”

  “My lord, you are not allowed to give evidence or to interrupt the Court. You have pleaded not guilty, and it is my duty to demonstrate your innocence. Come, Sir John, do you not know that his lordship’s unhappy passion for his sister-in-law was shared by the subject of it; and that she for a long time opposed all your efforts to bring about a proper alliance for her, solely guided and influenced by this secret passion?”

&nbs
p; “I know no such thing.”

  “Do I understand, then, that from the time of your first proposals she was willing to marry Sir Denzil Warner?”

  “She was not willing.”

  “I would have wagered as much. Did you fathom her reason for declining so proper an alliance?”

  “I did not trouble myself about her reasons. I knew that time would wear them away.”

  “And I doubt you trusted to a father’s authority?”

  “No, sir. I promised my daughter that I would not force her inclinations.”

  “But you used all methods of persuasion. How long was it before July the 4th that Mrs. Angela consented to marry Sir Denzil?”

  “I cannot be over precise upon that point. I have no record of the date.”

  “But you have the faculty of memory, sir; and this is a point which a father would not easily forget.”

  “It may have been a fortnight before.”

  “And until that time the lady was unwilling?”

  “Yes.”

  “She refused positively to accept the match you urged upon her?”

  “She refused.”

  “And finally consented, I will wager, with marked reluctance?”

  “No, sir, there was no reluctance. She came to me of her own accord, and surprised me by her submission.”

  “That will do, Sir John. You can stand down. I shall now proceed to call a witness who will convince the Jury of my client’s innocence upon the first and chief count in the indictment, abduction with fraud and violence. I shall tell you by the lips of my witness, that if he took the lady away from her home, she being of full age, she went freely consenting, and with knowledge of his purpose.”