The baronet bowed, and strode out of the room, followed by Chichester and Talbot.
The Enchantress was then alone.
She threw herself at full length upon the sofa, and remained for a long time buried in profound thought. A tear started into her large blue eye; but she hastily wiped it away with her snowy handkerchief. From time to time her lips were compressed with scorn; and then a prolonged sigh would escape her breast.
Had she given a free vent to her tears, she would have experienced immediate relief: she endeavoured to stifle her passion—and it nearly suffocated her.
But how beautiful was she during that painful and fierce struggle with her feelings! Her countenance was flushed; and her eyes, usually so mild and melting, seemed to burn like two stars.
“No,” she exclaimed, after a long silence, “I must not revenge myself that way! Up to the present moment, I have eaten his bread and have been to him as a wife; and I should be guilty of a vile deed of treachery were I to denounce him and his companions. Besides—who would believe my testimony, unsupported by facts, against the indignant denial of a man of rank, family, and title? I must stifle my resentment for the present. The hour of retribution will no doubt arrive, sooner or later; and Harborough shall yet repent the cruel—the cowardly insults he has heaped on my head this day!”
She paused, and again appeared to reflect profoundly. Suddenly a gleam of satisfaction passed over her countenance, and she started up to a sitting posture upon the sofa. The ample skirts of her dress were partly raised by her attitude, and revealed an exquisitely turned leg to the middle of the swell of the calf. The delicate foot, imprisoned in the flesh-coloured stocking of finest silk, tapped upon the carpet, in an agitated manner, with the tip of the glossy leather shoe.
That gleam of satisfaction which had suddenly appeared upon her countenance, gradually expanded into a glow of delight, brilliant and beautiful.
“Perhaps he thinks that I shall endeavour to win him back again to my arms,” she said, musing aloud;—“perhaps he imagines that his countenance and support are imperatively necessary to me? Oh! no—Sir Rupert Harborough,” she exclaimed, with a smile of triumph; “you may vainly await self-humiliation from me! To-morrow—yes, so soon as to-morrow shall you see that I can command a position more splendid than the one in which you placed me!”
Obeying the impulse of her feelings, she hastened to unlock an elegant rosewood writing-desk, edged with silver; and from a secret drawer she took several letters—or rather notes—written upon paper of different colours. Upon the various envelopes were seals impressed with armorial bearings, some of which were surmounted by coronets.
She glanced over each in a cursory manner, which showed she was already tolerably familiar with their contents. The greater portion she tossed contemptuously into the fire;—a few she placed one upon the other, quite in a business-like way, upon the table.
When she had gone through the entire file, she again directed her attention to those which she had reserved; and as she perused them one after the other, she mused in the following manner:—
“Count de Lestranges is brilliant in his offers, and immensely rich—no doubt; but he is detestably conceited, and would think more of himself than of his mistress. His appeal must be rejected;” and she threw the French nobleman’s perfumed epistle into the fire.
“This,” she continued, taking up another, “is from Lord Templeton. Five thousand a-year is certainly handsome; but then he himself is so old and ugly! Away with this suitor at once.” The English Peer’s billet-doux followed that of the French Count.
“Here is a beautiful specimen of calligraphy,” resumed Diana, taking up a third letter; “but all the sentiments are copied, word for word, out of the love-scenes in Anne Radcliffe’s romances. Never was such gross plagiarism! He merits the punishment I thus inflict upon him;”—and her plump white hand crushed the epistle ere she threw it into the fire.
“But what have we here? Oh! the German baron’s killing address—interspersed with remarks upon the philosophy of love. Ah! my lord, love was not made for philosophers—and philosophers are incapable of love; so we will have none of you.”
Another offering to the fire.
“Here is the burning address of the Greek attaché with a hard name. It is prettily written;—but who could possibly enter upon terms with an individual of the name of Thesaurochrysonichochrysides?”
To the flames went the Greek lover’s note also.
“Ah! this seems as if it were to be the successful candidate,” said Diana, carefully perusing the last remaining letter. “It is written upon a plain sheet of white paper and without scent. But then the style—how manly! Yes—decidedly, the Earl of Warrington has gained the prize. He is rich—unmarried—handsome—and still in the prime of life! There is no room for hesitation.”
The Enchantress immediately penned the following note:
“I should have replied without delay to your lordship’s letter of yesterday week, but have been suffering severely from cold and bad spirits. The former has been expelled by my physician: the latter can only be forced to decamp by the presence of your lordship.
“DIANA ARLINGTON.”
Having despatched this note to the Earl of Warrington, the Enchantress retired to her bed-room, to prepare her toilette for the arrival of the nobleman around whom she had thus suddenly decided upon throwing her magic spells.
At eight o’clock that evening, a brilliant equipage stopped at the door of the house in which Mrs. Arlington resided.
The Earl of Warrington alighted, and was forthwith conducted into the presence of the Enchantress.
And never was she more bewitching:—never had she appeared more transcendently lovely.
A dress of the richest black velvet, very low in the corsage, set off her voluptuous charms and displayed the pure and brilliant whiteness of the skin to the highest advantage. Her ears were adorned with pendants of diamonds; and a tiara glittering with the same precious stones, encircled her brow. There was a soft and languishing melancholy in her deep blue eyes and in the expression of her countenance, which formed an agreeable contrast to the dazzling loveliness of her person and the splendour of her attire.
She was enchanting indeed.
Need we say that the nobleman, who had already been introduced to her and admired her, was enraptured with the prize that thus surrendered itself to him?
Diana became the mistress of the Earl of Warrington, and the very next day removed to a splendid suite of apartments in Albemarle Street, while his lordship’s upholsterers furnished a house for her reception.
CHAPTER XXVI.
NEWGATE.
NEWGATE! what an ominous sound has that word.
And yet the horror exists not in the name itself; for it is a very simple compound, and would not grate upon the ear nor produce a shudder throughout the frame, were it applied to any other kind of building.
It is, then, its associations and the ideas which it conjures up that render the word NEWGATE fearful and full of dark menace.
At the mere mention of this name, the mind instantaneously becomes filled with visions of vice in all its most hideous forms, and crime in all its most appalling shapes;—wards and court-yards filled with a population peculiar to themselves,—dark gloomy passages, where the gas burns all day long, and beneath the pavement of which are interred the remains of murderers and other miscreants who have expiated their crimes upon the scaffold,—shelves filled with the casts of the countenances of those wretches, taken the moment after they were cut down from the gibbet,—condemned cells,—the chapel in which funeral sermons are preached upon men yet alive to hear them, but who are doomed to die on the morrow,—the clanking of chains, the banging of huge doors, oaths, prayers, curses, and ejaculations of despair!
Oh! if
it were true that the spirits of the departed are allowed to revisit the earth for certain purposes and on particular occasions,—if the belief of superstition were well founded, and night could be peopled with the ghosts and spectres of those who sleep in troubled graves,—what a place of ineffable horrors—what a scene of terrible sights, would Newgate be at midnight! The huge flag-stones of the pavement would rise, to permit the phantoms of the murderers to issue from their graves. Demons would erect a gibbet at the debtor’s door; and, amidst the sinister glare of torches, an executioner from hell would hang those miscreants over again. This would be part of their posthumous punishment, and would occur in the long—long nights of winter. There would be no moon; but all the windows of Newgate looking upon the court-yards (and there are none commanding the streets) would be brilliantly lighted with red flames, coming from an unknown source. And throughout the long passages of the prison would resound the orgies of hell; and skeletons wrapped in winding sheets would shake their fetters; and Greenacre[100] and Good[101]—Courvoisier[102] and Pegsworth[103]—Blakesley[104] and Marchant,[105] with all their predecessors in the walks of murder, would come in fearful procession from the gibbet, returning by the very corridors which they traversed in their way to death on the respective mornings of their execution. Banquets would be served up to them in the condemned cells; demons would minister to them; and their food should be the flesh, and their drink the gore, of the victims whom they had assassinated upon earth!
All would be horrible—horrible!
But, heaven be thanked! such scenes are impossible; and never can it be given to the shades of the departed to revisit the haunts which they loved or hated—adored or desecrated, upon earth!
NEWGATE!—fearful name!
And Richard Markham was now in Newgate.
He found, when the massive gates of that terrible prison closed behind him, that the consciousness of innocence will not afford entire consolation, in the dilemma in which unjust suspicions may involve the victim of circumstantial evidence. He scarcely knew in what manner to grapple with the difficulties that beset him;—he dared not contemplate the probability of a condemnation to some infamous punishment;—and he could scarcely hope for an acquittal in the face of the testimony that conspired against him.
He recalled to mind all the events of his infancy and his boyish years, and contrasted his present position with that which he once enjoyed in the society of his father and Eugene.
His brother?—aye—what had become of his brother?—that brother, who had left the paternal roof to seek his own fortunes, and who had made so strange an appointment for a distant date, upon the hill-top where the two trees were planted? Four years and four months had passed away since the day on which that appointment was made; and in seven years and eight months it was to be kept.
They were then to compare notes of their adventures and success in life, and decide who was the more prosperous of the two,—Eugene, who was dependent upon his own resources, and had to climb the ladder of fortune step by step;—or Richard, who, placed by his father’s love half-way up that ladder, had only to avail himself, it would have seemed, of his advantageous position to reach the top at his leisure?
But, alas! probably Eugene was a miserable wanderer upon the face of the earth; perhaps he was mouldering beneath the sod that no parental nor fraternal tears had watered;—or haply he was languishing in some loathsome dungeon the doors of which served as barriers between him and all communion with his fellow-men!
It was strange—passing strange that Eugene had never written since his departure; and that from the fatal evening of his separation on the hill-top all traces of him should have been so suddenly lost.
Peradventure he had been frustrated in his sanguine expectations, at his very outset in life;—perchance he had terminated in disgust an existence which was blighted by disappointment?
Such were the topics of Markham’s thoughts, as he walked up and down the large paved court-yard belonging to that department of the prison to which he had been consigned;—and, of a surety, they were of no pleasurable description. Uncertainty with regard to his own fate—anxiety in respect to his brother—and the dread that his prospects in this life were irretrievably blighted—added to a feverish impatience of a confinement totally unmerited—all these oppressed his mind.
That night he had nothing but a basin of gruel and a piece of bread for his supper. He slept in the same ward with a dozen other prisoners, also awaiting their trials: his couch was hard, cold, and wretched; and he was compelled to listen to the ribald talk and vaunts of villany of several of his companions. Their conversation was only varied by such remarks as these:—
“Well,” said one, “I hope I shan’t get before the Common-Serjeant: he’s certain to give me toko for yam.”[106]
“I shall be sure to go up the first day of sessions, and most likely before the Recorder, as mine is rather a serious matter,” observed a second. “He won’t give me more than seven years of it, I know.”
“For my part,” said a third, “I’d much sooner wait till the Wednesday, when the Judges come down: they never give it so severe as them City beaks.”
“I tell you what,” exclaimed a fourth, “I shouldn’t like to have my meat hashed at evening sittings before the Commissioner in the New Court. He’s always so devilish sulky, because he has been disturbed at his wine.”
“Well, you talk of the regular judges that come down on a Wednesday,” cried a fifth; “I can only tell you that Baron Griffin and Justice Spikeman are on the rota for next sessions; and I’m blowed if I wouldn’t sooner go before the Common-Serjeant a thousand times, than have old Griffin meddle in my case. Why—if you only look at him, he’ll transport you for twenty years.”
At this idea, all the prisoners who had taken part in this conversation, burst out into a loud guffaw—but not a whit the more hearty for being so boisterous.
“Is it possible,” asked Markham, who had listened with some interest to the above discourse,—“is it possible that there can be any advantage to a prisoner to be tried by a particular judge?”
“Why, of course there is,” answered one of the prisoners. “If a swell like you gets before Justice Spikeman, he’ll let you off with half or a quarter of what the Recorder or Common-Serjeant would give you: but Baron Griffin would give you just double, because you happened to be well-dressed.”
“Indeed!” ejaculated Markham, whose ideas of the marvellous equality and admirable even-handedness of English justice, were a little shocked by these revelations.
“Oh! yes,” continued his informant, “all the world knows these things. If I go before Spikeman, I shall plead Guilty, and whimper a bit, and he’ll be very lenient indeed; but if I’m heard by Griffin, I’ll let the case take its chance, because he wouldn’t be softened by any show of penitence. So you see, in these matters, one must shape one’s conduct according to the judge that one goes before.”
“I understand,” said Markham: “even justice is influenced by all kinds of circumstances.”
The conversation then turned upon the respective merits of the various counsel practising at the Central Criminal Court.
“I have secured Whiffins,” said one: “he’s a capital fellow—for if he can’t make anything out of your case, he instantly begins to bully the judge.”
“Ah! but that produces a bad effect,” observed a second; “and old Griffin would soon put him down. I’ve got Chearnley—he’s such a capital fellow to make the witnesses contradict themselves.”
“Well, I prefer Barkson,” exclaimed a third; “his voice alone frightens a prosecutor into fits.”
“Smouch and Slike are the worst,” said a fourth: “the judges always read the paper or fall asleep when they address them.”
“Yes—because they are such low fellows, and will take a brief from any o
ne,” exclaimed a fifth; “whereas it is totally contrary to etiquette for a barrister to receive instructions from any one but an attorney.”
“The fact is that such men as Smouch and Slike do a case more harm than good, with the judges,” observed a sixth. “They haven’t the ear of the Court—and that’s the real truth of it.”
These remarks diminished still more the immense respect which Markham had hitherto entertained for English justice; and he now saw that the barrister who detailed plain and simple facts, did not stand half such a good chance of saving his client as the favoured one “who possessed the ear of the Court.”
By a very natural transition, the discourse turned upon petty juries.
“I think it will go hard with me,” said one, “because I am tried in the City. I wish I had been committed for the Middlesex Sessions at Clerkenwell.”
“Why so!” demanded another prisoner.
“Because, you see, I’m accused of robbing my master; and as all the jurymen are substantial shop-keepers, they’re sure to convict a man in my position,—even if the evidence isn’t complete.”
“I’m here for swindling tradesmen at the West-End of the town,” said another.
“Well,” exclaimed the first speaker, “the jury will let you off, if there’s the slightest pretence, because they’re all City tradesmen, and hate the West-End ones.”
“And I’m here for what is called ‘a murderous assault upon a police-constable,’” said a third prisoner.
“Was he a Metropolitan or a City-Policeman?”
“A Metropolitan.”
“Oh! well—you’re safe enough; the jury are sure to believe that he assaulted you first.”
The Mysteries of London Volume 1 Page 23
