Weaving his ambition with the wish to revive the pride of his hereditary name, every acquisition of fortune or of fame rendered him yet more anxious to find the only one who could perpetuate these hollow distinctions to his race.
‘I shall recover him yet!’ he broke out suddenly and aloud. As he spoke, a quick – darting – spasmodic pain ran shivering through his whole frame, and then fixed for one instant on his heart with a grip like the talons of a bird: it passed away, and was followed by a deadly sickness. Brandon rose, and filling himself a large tumbler of water, drank with avidity. The sickness passed off like the preceding pain; but the sensation had of late been often felt by Brandon, and disregarded, – for few persons were less afflicted with the self-torture of hypochondria; but now, that night, whether it was more keen than usual, or whether his thought had touched on the string that jars naturally on the most startling of human anticipations, we know not, but, as he resumed his seat, the idea of his approaching dissolution shot like an ice-bolt through his breast.
So intent was this scheming man upon the living objects of the world, and so little were his thoughts accustomed to turn towards the ultimate goal of all things, that this idea obtruding itself abruptly upon him, startled him with a ghastly awe. He felt the colour rush from his cheek, and a tingling and involuntary pain ran wandering through the channels of his blood, even from the roots of the hair to the soles of his feet. But the stern soul of Brandon was not one which shadows could long affright. He nerved himself to meet the grim thought thus forced upon his mental eye, and he gazed on it with a steady and enduring look.
‘Well,’ thought he, ‘is my hour coming, or have I yet the ordinary term of mortal nature to expect? It is true, I have lately suffered these strange revulsions of the frame with somewhat of an alarming frequency: perhaps this medicine, which healed the anguish of one infirmity, has produced another more immediately deadly? Yet why should I think this? My sleep is sound and calm, my habits temperate, my mind active and clear as in its best days. In my youth, I never played the traitor with my constitution; why should it desert me at the very threshold of my age? Nay, nay, these are but passing twitches, chills of the blood that begins to wax thin. Shall I learn to be less rigorous in my diet? Perhaps wine may reward my abstinence in avoiding it for my luxuries, by becoming a cordial to my necessities! Ay, I will consult – I will consult, I must not die yet. I have – let me see, three – four grades to gain before the ladder is scaled. And, above all, I must regain my child! Lucy married to Mauleverer, myself a peer, my son wedded to – whom? Pray God he be not married already! My nephews and my children nobles! The house of Brandon restored, my power high in the upward gaze of men; my fame set on a more lasting basis than a skill in the quirks of law: these are yet to come, these I will not die till I have enjoyed! Men die not till their destinies are fulfilled. The spirit that swells and soars within me says that the destiny of William Brandon is but half begun!’
With this conclusion, Brandon sought his pillow. What were the reflections of the prisoner whom he was to judge? Need we ask? Let us picture to ourselves his shattered health, the languor of sickness heightening the gloom which makes the very air of a gaol, – his certainty of the doom to be passed against him, his knowledge that the uncle of Lucy Brandon was to be his judge, that Mauleverer was to be his accuser; and that in all human probability the only woman he had ever loved must sooner or later learn the criminality of his life and the ignominy of his death: let us but glance at the above blackness of circumstances that surrounded him, and it would seem that there is but little doubt as to the complexion of his thoughts! Perhaps, indeed, even in that terrible and desolate hour, one sweet face shone on him, ‘and dashed the darkness all away.’ Perhaps, too, whatever might be the stings of his conscience, one thought, one remembrance of a temptation mastered, and a sin escaped, brought to his eyes tears that were sweet and healing in their source. But the heart of a man, in Clifford’s awful situation, is dark and inscrutable; and often, when the wildest and gloomiest external circumstances surround us, their reflection sleeps like a shadow, calm and still upon the mind.
The next morning, the whole town of — (a town in which, we regret to say, an accident once detained ourself for three wretched days, and which we can, speaking therefore from profound experience, assert to be in ordinary times the most melancholy and peopleless-looking congregation of houses that a sober imagination can conceive) exhibited a scene of such bustle, animation, and jovial anxiety, as the trial for life or death to a fellow-creature can alone excite in the phlegmatic breasts of the English. Around the court the crowd thickened with every moment, until the whole market-place, in which the town-hall was situated, became one living mass. The windows of the houses were filled with women, some of whom had taken that opportunity to make parties to breakfast; and little round tables, with tea and toast on them, caught the eyes of the grinning mobbists as they gaped impatiently upwards.
‘Ben,’ said a stout yeoman, tossing up a halfpenny, and catching the said coin in his right hand, which he immediately covered with the left, – ‘Ben, heads or tails that Lovett is hanged; heads hanged, tails not, for a crown.’
‘Petticoats, to be sure,’ quoth Ben, eating an apple; and it was heads!
‘Dammee, you’ve lost!’ cried the yeoman, rubbing his rough hands with glee.
It would have been a fine sight for Asmodeus, could he have perched on one of the housetops of the market-place of —, and looked on the murmuring and heaving sea of mortality below. Oh! The sight of a crowd round a court of law, or a gibbet, ought to make the devil split himself with laughter.
While the mob was fretting, and pushing, and swearing, and grinning, and betting, and picking pockets, and trampling feet, and tearing gowns, and scrambling nearer and nearer to the doors and windows of the court, Brandon was slowly concluding his abstemious repast preparatory to attendance on his judicial duties. His footman entered with a letter. Sir William glanced rapidly over the seal (one of those immense sacrifices of wax used at that day), adorned with a huge coat of arms, surmounted with an earl’s coronet, and decorated on either side with those supporters so dear to heraldic taste. He then tore open the letter, and read as follows: –
My dear Sir William,
You know that, in the last conversation I had the honour to hold with you, I alluded, though perhaps somewhat distantly, to the esteem which his Majesty had personally expressed for your principles and talents, and his wish to testify it at the earliest opportunity. There will be, as you are doubtless aware, an immediate creation of four peerages. Your name stands second on the list. The choice of title his Majesty graciously leaves to you; but he has hinted, that the respectable antiquity of your family would make him best pleased were you to select the name of your own family-seat, which, if I mistake not, is Warlock. You will instruct me at your leisure as to the manner in which the patent should be made out, touching the succession, &c. Perhaps (excuse the licence of an old friend) this event may induce you to forsake your long-cherished celibacy. I need not add that this accession of rank will be accompanied by professional elevation. You will see by the papers that the death of — leaves vacant the dignity of Chief Baron; and I am at length empowered to offer you a station proportioned to your character and talents.
With great consideration,
Believe me, my dear Sir,
Very truly yours,
—
(Private and Confidential)
Brandon’s dark eye glanced quickly from the signature of the Premier, affixed to this communication, towards the mirror opposite him. He strode to it, and examined his own countenance with a long and wistful gaze. Never, we think, did youthful gallant about to repair to the trysting spot, in which fair looks make the greatest of earthly advantages, gaze more anxiously on the impartial glass than now did the ascetic and scornful judge; and never, we ween, did the eye of the said gallant retire with a more satisfied and triumphant expression.
‘Yes, yes!�
� muttered the judge, ‘no sign of infirmity is yet written here; the blood flows clear and warm enough, the cheek looks firm too, and passing full, for one who was always of the lean kind. Aha! This letter is a cordial, an elixir vitæ. I feel as if a new lease were granted to the reluctant tenant. Lord Warlock, the first Baron of Warlock, – Lord Chief Baron. – What next?’
As he spoke, he strode unconsciously away; folding his arms with that sort of joyous and complacent gesture which implies the idea of a man hugging himself in a silent delight. Assuredly, had the most skilful physician then looked upon the ardent and all-lighted face, the firm step, the elastic and muscular frame, the vigorous air of Brandon, as he mentally continued his soliloquy, he would have predicted for him as fair a grasp on longevity as the chances of mortal life will allow. He was interrupted by the servant entering.
‘It is twenty-five minutes after nine, sir,’ said he, respectfully.
‘Sir, – sir!’ repeated Brandon. ‘Ah, well! So late!’
‘Yes, sir, and the sheriff’s carriage is almost at the door.’
‘Humph, – Minister, – Peer, – Warlock, – succession. – My son, my son! – Would to God that I could find thee!’
Such were Brandon’s last thoughts as he left the room. It was with great difficulty, so dense was the crowd, that the judge drove up to the court. As the carriage slowly passed, the spectators pressed to the windows of the vehicle, and stood on tiptoe to catch a view of the celebrated lawyer. Brandon’s face, never long indicative of his feelings, had now settled into its usual gravity, and the severe loftiness of his look chilled, while it satisfied, the curiosity of the vulgar. It had been ordered that no person should be admitted until the judge had taken his seat on the bench; and this order occasioned so much delay, owing to the accumulated pressure of the vast and miscellaneous group, that it was more than half an hour before the court was able to obtain that decent order suiting the solemnity of the occasion. At five minutes before ten, an universal and indescribable movement announced that the prisoner was put to the bar. We read in one of the journals of that day, that:
on being put to the bar, the prisoner looked round with a long and anxious gaze, which at length settled on the judge, and then dropped, while the prisoner was observed to change countenance slightly. Lovett was dressed in a plain dark suit; he seemed to be about six feet high; and though thin and worn, probably from the effect of his wound and imprisonment, he is remarkably well made, and exhibits the outward appearance of that great personal strength which he is said to possess, and which is not unfrequently the characteristic of daring criminals. His face is handsome and prepossessing, his eyes and hair dark, and his complexion pale, possibly from the effects of his confinement; there was a certain sternness in his countenance during the greater part of the trial. His behaviour was remarkably collected and composed. The prisoner listened with the greatest attention to the indictment, which the reader will find in another part of our paper, charging him with the highway robbery of Lord Mauleverer, on the night of the — of — last. He occasionally inclined his body forward, and turned his ear towards the court; and he was observed, as the jury were sworn, to look steadily in the face of each. He breathed thick and hard when the various aliases he had assumed, Howard, Cavendish, Jackson, &c., were read; but smiled, with an unaccountable expression, when the list was completed, as if exulting at the varieties of his ingenuity. At twenty-five minutes past ten, Mr Dyebright, the counsel for the crown, stated the case to the jury.
Mr Dyebright was a lawyer of great eminence; he had been a Whig all his life, but had latterly become remarkable for his insincerity, and subservience to the wishes of the higher powers. His talents were peculiar and effective. If he had little eloquence, he had much power; and his legal knowledge was sound and extensive. Many of his brethren excelled him in display; but no one, like him, possessed the secret of addressing a jury. Winningly familiar; seemingly candid to a degree that scarcely did justice to his cause, as if he were in an agony lest he should persuade you to lean a hair-breadth more on his side of the case than justice would allow; apparently all made up of good, homely, virtuous feeling, a disinterested regard for truth, a blunt yet tender honesty, seasoned with a few amiable fireside prejudices, which always come home to the hearts of your fathers of families and thorough-bred Britons; versed in all the niceties of language, and the magic of names; if he were defending crime, carefully calling it misfortune; if attacking misfortune, constantly calling it crime; – Mr Dyebright was exactly the man born to pervert justice, to tickle jurors, to cozen truth with a friendly smile, and to obtain a vast reputation as an excellent advocate. He began by a long preliminary flourish on the importance of the case. He said that he should, with the most scrupulous delicacy, avoid every remark calculated to raise unnecessary prejudice against the prisoner. He should not allude to his unhappy notoriety, his associations with the lowest dregs. (Here up jumped the counsel for the prisoner, and Mr Dyebright was called to order.) ‘God knows,’ resumed the learned gentleman, looking wistfully at the jury, ‘that my learned friend might have spared himself this warning. God knows that I would rather fifty of the wretched inmates of this county gaol were to escape unharmed, than that a hair of the prisoner you behold at the bar should be unjustly touched. The life of a human being is at stake; we should be guilty ourselves of a crime, which on our deathbeds we should tremble to recall, were we to suffer any consideration, whether of interest or of prejudice, or of undue fear for our own properties and lives, to bias us even to the turning of a straw against the unfortunate prisoner. Gentlemen, if you find me travelling a single inch from my case – if you find me saying a single word calculated to harm the prisoner in your eyes, and unsupported by the evidence I shall call, then I implore you not to depend upon the vigilance of my learned friend, but to treasure these my errors in your recollection, and to consider them as so many arguments in favour of the prisoner. If, gentlemen, I could by any possibility imagine that your verdict would be favourable to the prisoner, I can, unaffectedly and from the bottom of my heart, declare to you that I should rejoice; a case might be lost, but a fellow-creature would be saved! Callous as we of the legal profession are believed, we have feelings like you; and I ask any one of you, gentlemen of the jury, any one who has ever felt the pleasures of social intercourse, the joy of charity, the heart’s reward of benevolence, – I ask any one of you, whether, if he were placed in the arduous situation I now hold, all the persuasions of vanity would not vanish at once from his mind, and whether his defeat as an advocate would not be rendered dear to him, by the common and fleshly sympathies of a man! But, gentlemen’ – Mr Dyebright’s voice at once deepened and faltered – ‘there is a duty, a painful duty, we owe to our country; and never, in the long course of my professional experience, do I remember an instance in which it was more called forth than in the present. Mercy, gentlemen, is dear, very dear to us all; but it is the deadliest injury we can inflict on mankind, when it is bought at the expense of justice.’
The learned gentleman then, after a few farther prefatory observations, proceeded to state how, on the night of — last, Lord Mauleverer was stopped and robbed by three men masked, of a sum of money amounting to above three hundred and fifty pounds, a diamond snuff-box, rings, watch, and a case of most valuable jewels, – how Lord Mauleverer, in endeavouring to defend himself, had passed a bullet through the clothes of one of the robbers – how, it would be proved, that the garments of the prisoner, found in a cave in Oxfordshire, and positively sworn to by a witness he should produce, exhibited a rent similar to such a one as a bullet would produce, – how, moreover, it would be positively sworn to by the same witness, that the prisoner Lovett had come to the cavern with two accomplices not yet taken up, since their rescue by the prisoner, and boasted of the robbery he had just committed; that in the clothes and sleeping apartment of the robber the articles stolen from Lord Mauleverer were found, and that the purse containing the notes for three hundred pounds, the only thi
ng the prisoner could probably have obtained time to carry off with him, on the morning in which the cave was entered by the policemen, was found on his person on the day on which he had attempted the rescue of his comrades, and had been apprehended in that attempt. He stated, moreover, that the dress found in the cavern, and sworn to by one witness he should produce, as belonging to the prisoner, answered exactly to the description of the clothes worn by the principal robber, and sworn to by Lord Mauleverer, his servant, and the postilions. In like manner, the colour of one of the horses found in the cavern corresponded with that rode by the highwayman. On these circumstantial proofs, aided by the immediate testimony of the king’s evidence (that witness whom he should produce), he rested a case which could, he averred, leave no doubt on the minds of any impartial jury. Such, briefly and plainly alleged, made the substance of the details entered into by the learned counsel, who then proceeded to call his witnesses. The evidence of Lord Mauleverer (who was staying at Mauleverer Park, which was within a few miles of —), was short and clear; (it was noticed as a singular circumstance, that at the end of the evidence the prisoner bowed respectfully to his lordship.) The witness of the postilions and of the valet was no less concise; nor could all the ingenuity of Clifford’s counsel shake any part of their evidence in his cross-examination. The main witness depended on by the crown was now summoned, and the solemn countenance of Peter Mac Grawler rose on the eyes of the jury. One look of cold and blighting contempt fell on him from the eye of the prisoner, who did not again deign to regard him during the whole of his examination.
The witness of Mac Grawler was delivered with a pomposity worthy of the ex-editor of the Asinæum. Nevertheless, by the skill of Mr Dyebright, it was rendered sufficiently clear a story to leave an impression on the jury damnatory to the interests of the prisoner. The counsel on the opposite side was not slow in perceiving the ground acquired by the adverse party; so, clearing his throat, he rose with a sneering air to the cross-examination.
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