good; if you say you do, you lie.”
She laughed a wicked, saucy laugh, and gave the terrible
Rhadamanthus a playful tap on the chops.
“ He wants me to send him money to fee a counsellor,”
she said, while her eyes wandered over the pictures on the
wall, and back again to the looking-glass; and certainly she
did not look as if his jeopardy troubled her very much.
“ Confound his impudence, the scoundrelV’ thundered the
old Judge, throwing himself back in his chair, as he used to
do in furore on the bench, and the lines of his mouth looked
brutal, and his eyes ready to leap from their sockets. “ If you
answer his letter from my house to please yourself, you’ll
write your next from somebody else’s to please me. You understand, my pretty witch, I ’ll not be pestered. Come, no pouting; whimpering won’t do. You don’t care a brass farthing for the villain, body or soul. You came here but to make a row. You are one of Mother Carey’s chickens; and where
you come, the storm is up. Get you gone, baggage! get you
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gone!” he repeated, with a stamp; for a knock at the hall-
door made her instantaneous disappearance indispensable.
I need hardly say that the venerable Hugh Peters did not
appear again. The Judge never mentioned him. But oddly
enough, considering how he laughed to scorn the weak invention which he had blown into dust at the very first puff, his white-wigged visitor and the conference in the dark front
parlour was often in his memory.
His shrewd eye told him that allowing for change of tints
and such disguises as the playhouse affords every night, the
features of this false old man, who had turned out too hard
for his tall footman, were identical with those of Lewis Pyne-
weck.
Judge Harbottle made his registrar call upon the crown
solicitor, and tell him that there was a man in town who bore
a wonderful resemblance to a prisoner in Shrewsbury jail
named Lewis Pyneweck, and to make inquiry through the
post forthwith whether any one was personating Pyneweck in
prison, and whether he had thus or otherwise made his escape.
The prisoner was safe, however, and no question as to his
identity.
IV In terru p tio n in Court
In due time Judge Harbottle went circuit; and in due time
the judges were in Shrewsbury. News travelled slowly in those
days, and newspapers, like the wagons and stage-coaches,
took matters easily. Mrs. Pyneweck, in the Judge’s house,
with a diminished household—the greater part of the Judge’s
servants having gone with him, for he had given up riding
circuit, and travelled in his coach in state—kept house rather
solitarily at home.
In spite of quarrels, in spite of mutual injuries—some of
them, inflicted by herself, enormous—in spite of a married
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life of spited bickerings—a life in which there seemed no love
or liking or forbearance, for years—now that Pyneweck stood
in near danger of death, something like remorse came suddenly upon her. She knew that in Shrewsbury were transacting the scenes which were to determine his fate. She knew she did not love him; but she could not have supposed, even
a fortnight before, that the hour of suspense could have affected her so powerfully.
She knew the day on which the trial was expected to take
place. She could not get it out of her head for a minute; she
felt faint as it drew towards evening.
Two or three days passed; and then she knew that the trial
must be over by this time. There were floods between London and Shrewsbury, and news was long delayed. She wished the floods would last for ever. It was dreadful waiting to hear; dreadful to know that the event was over, and that she could not hear till self-willed rivers subsided;
dreadful to know that they must subside and the news come
at last.
She had some vague trust in the Judge’s good-nature, and
much in the resources of chance and accident. She had contrived to send the money he wanted. He would not be without legal advice and energetic and skilled support.
At last the news did come—a long arrear all in a gush: a
letter from a female friend in Shrewsbury; a return of the
sentences, sent up for the Judge; and most important, because most easily got at, being told with great aplomb and brevity, the long-deferred intelligence of the Shrewsbury Assizes in the Morning Advertiser. Like an impatient reader of a novel, who reads the last page first, she read with dizzy
eyes the list of the executions.
Two were respited, seven were hanged; and in that capital
catalogue was this line:
‘ ‘Lewis Pyneweck—forgery. ’ ’
She had to read it half-a-dozen times over before she was
sure she understood it. Here was the paragraph:
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J. Sheridan Le Fanu
Sentence, Death—7
Executed accordingly, on Friday the 13th instant, to wit:
Thomas Primer, alias Duck—highway robbery.
Flora Guy—stealing to the value of IIs. 6d.
Arthur Pounden—burglary.
Matilda Mummery—riot.
Lewis Pyneweck—forgery, bill of exchange.
And when she reached this, she read it over and over,
feeling very cold and sick.
This buxom housekeeper was known in the house as Mrs.
Carwell—Carwell being her maiden name, which she had
resumed.
No one in the house except its master knew her history.
Her introduction had been managed craftily. No one suspected that it had been concerted between her and the old reprobate in scarlet and ermine.
Flora Carwell ran up the stairs now, and snatched her little
girl, hardly seven years of age, whom she met on the lobby, hurriedly up in her arms, and carried her into her bedroom, without well knowing what she was doing, and sat down, placing the child before her. She was not able to speak.
She held the child before her, and looked in the little girl’s
wondering face, and burst into tears of horror.
She thought the Judge could have saved him. I daresay he
could. For a time she was furious with him, and hugged and
kissed her bewildered little girl, who returned her gaze with
large round eyes.
That little girl had lost her father, and knew nothing of the
matter. She had been always told that her father was dead
long ago.
A woman, coarse, uneducated, vain, and violent, does not
reason, or even feel, very distinctly; but in these tears of
consternation were mingling a self-upbraiding. She felt afraid
of that little child.
But Mrs. Carwell was a person who lived not upon sentiment, but upon beef and pudding; she consoled herself with
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233
punch; she did not trouble herself long even with resentments; she was a gross and material person, and could not mourn over the irrevocable for more than a limited number
of hours, even if she would.
Judge Harbottle was soon in London again. Except the
gout, this savage old epicurean never knew a day’s sickness.
He laughed, and coaxed, and bullied away the young woman’s faint upbraidings, and in a little time Lewis Pyneweck troubled her no more; and the Jud
ge secretly chuckled over
the perfectly fair removal of a bore, who might have grown
little by little into something very like a tyrant.
It was the lot of the Judge whose adventures I am now
recounting to try criminal cases at the Old Bailey shortly after
his return. He had commenced his charge to the jury in a
case of forgery, and was, after his wont, thundering dead
against the prisoner, with many a hard aggravation and cynical gibe, when suddenly all died away in silence, and, instead o f looking at the jury, the eloquent Judge was gaping at some person in the body of the court.
Among the persons of small importance who stand and
listen at the sides was one tall enough to show with a little
prominence; a slight mean figure, dressed in seedy black,
lean and dark of visage. He had just handed a letter to the
crier, before he caught the Judge’s eye.
That Judge described, to his amazement, the features of Lewis
Pyneweck. He has the usual faint thin-lipped smile; and with
his blue chin raised in air, and as it seemed quite unconscious
of the distinguished notice he has attracted, he was stretching
his low cravat with his crooked fingers, while he slowly turned
his head from side to side—a process which enabled the Judge
to see distincdy a stripe of swollen blue round his neck, which
indicated, he thought, the grip of the rope.
This man, with a few others, had got a footing on a step,
from which he could better see the court. He now stepped
down, and the Judge lost sight of him.
His lordship signed energetically with his hand in the direction in which this man had vanished. He turned to the
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tipstaff. His first effort to speak ended in a gasp. He cleared
his throat, and told the astounded official to arrest that man
who had interrupted the court.
“ He’s but this moment gone down there. Bring him in
custody before me, within ten minutes’ time, or I ’ll strip your
gown from your shoulders and fine the sheriff!’’ he thundered, while his eyes flashed round the court in search of the functionary.
Attorneys, counsellors, idle spectators, gazed in the direction in which Mr. Justice Harbottle had shaken his gnarled old hand. They compared notes. Not one had seen any one
making a disturbance. They asked one another if the Judge
was losing his head.
Nothing came of the search. His lordship concluded his
charge a great deal more tamely; and when the jury retired,
he stared round the court with a wandering mind, and looked
as if he would not have given sixpence to see the prisoner
hanged.
V Caleb S earcher
The Judge had received the letter; had he known from
whom it came, he would no doubt have read it instantaneously. As it was he simply read the direction: To the Honourable
The Lord Justice
Elijah Harbottle,
One o f his M ajesty's Justices o f
the Honourable Court o f Common Pleas.
It remained forgotten in his pocket till he reached home.
When he pulled out that and others from the capacious
pocket of his coat, it had its turn, as he sat in his library in
his thick silk dressing-gown; and then he found its contents
to be a closely-written letter, in a clerk’s hand, and an enclo
Mr. Justice Harbottle
235
sure in “ secretary hand,” as I believe the angular scrivinary
of law-writings in those days were termed, engrossed on a
bit of parchment about the size of this page. The letter said:
Mr. Justice Harbottle,—My Lord,
I am ordered by the High Court of Appeal to acquaint your lordship, in order to your better preparing yourself for your trial, that a true bill hath been sent
down, and the indictment lieth against your lordship for
the murder of one Lewis Pyneweck of Shrewsbury, citizen, wrongfully executed for the forgery of a bill of exchange, on the-----th day of-----last, by reason of the
wilful perversion of the evidence, and the undue pressure put upon the jury, together with the illegal admission of evidence by your lordship, well knowing the same to be illegal, by all which the promoter of the
prosecution of the said indictment, before the High
Court of Appeal, hath lost his life.
And the trial of the said indictment, I am farther
ordered to acquaint your lordship, is fixed for the 10th
day of---- next ensuing, by the right honourable the
Lord Chief-Justice Twofold, of the court aforesaid, to
wit, the High Court of Appeal, on which day it will
most certainly take place. And I am farther to acquaint
your lordship, to prevent any surprise or miscarriage,
that your case stands first for the said day, and that the
said High Court of Appeal sits day and night, and never
rises; and herewith, by order of the said court, I furnish
your lordship with a copy (extract) of the record in this
case, except of the indictment, whereof, notwithstanding, the substance and effect is supplied to your lordship in this Notice. And farther I am to inform you,
that in case the jury then to try your lordship should
find you guilty, the right honourable the Lord Chief-
Justice will, in passing sentence of death upon you, fix
the day of execution for the 10th day of---- , being one
calendar month from the day of your trial.
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J. Sheridan Le Fanu
It was signed by
Caleb Searcher,
Officer of the Crown Solicitor in the
Kingdom of Life and Death.
The Judge glanced through the parchment.
“ ’Sblood! Do they think a man like me is to be bamboozled by their buffoonery?”
The Judge’s coarse features were wrung into one of his
sneers; but he was pale. Possibly, after all, there was a conspiracy on foot. It was queer. Did they mean to pistol him in his carriage? or did they only aim at frightening him?
Judge Harbottle had more than enough of animal courage.
He was not afraid of highwaymen, and he had fought more
than his share of duels, being a foul-mouthed advocate while
he held briefs at the bar. No one questioned his fighting qualities. But with respect to this particular case of Pyneweck, he lived in a house of glass. Was there not his pretty, darkeyed, over-dressed housekeeper, Mrs. Flora Carwell? Very easy for people who knew Shrewsbury to identify Mrs. Pyneweck, if once put upon the scent; and had he not stormed and worked hard in that case? Had he not made it hard sailing
for the prisoner? Did he not know very well what the bar
thought of it? It would be the worst scandal that ever blasted
Judge.
So much there was intimidating in the matter but nothing
more. The Judge was a little bit gloomy for a day or two
after, and more testy with every one than usual.
He locked up the papers; and about a week after he asked
his housekeeper, one day, in the library:
‘‘Had your husband never a brother?”
Mrs. Carwell squalled on this sudden introduction of the
funereal topic, and cried exemplary “ piggins full,” as the
Judge used pleasantly to say. But he was in no mood for
trifling now, and he said sternly:
‘ ‘Come, madam! this wearies me. Do it another time; and
give me an answer to my question.” So she did.
Mr. Justice Harbottle
237
Pyneweck had no brother living. He once had one; but he
died in Jamaica.
“ How do you know he is dead?” asked the Judge.
“ Because he told me so.”
“ Not the dead man.”
“ Pyneweck told me so.”
“ Is that all?” sneered the Judge.
He pondered this matter; and time went on. The Judge was
growing a little morose, and less enjoying. The subject struck
nearer to his thoughts than he fancied it could have done. But
so it is with most undivulged vexations, and there was no one
to whom he could tell this one.
It was now the ninth; and Mr. Justice Harbottle was glad.
He knew nothing would come of it. Still it bothered him; and
to-morrow would see it well over.
[What of the paper I have cited? No one saw it during his
life; no one, after his death. He spoke of it to Dr. Hedstone;
and what purported to be “ a copy,” in the old Judge’s handwriting, was found. The original was nowhere. Was it a copy of an illusion, incident to brain disease? Such is my belief.]
VI A rrested
Judge Harbottle went this night to the play at Drury Lane.
He was one of those old fellows who care nothing for late
hours, and occasional knocking about in pursuit of pleasure.
He had appointed with two cronies of Lincoln’s Inn to come
home in his coach with him to sup after the play.
They were not in his box, but were to meet him near the
entrance, and get into his carriage there; and Mr. Justice
Harbottle, who hated waiting, was looking a little impatiently
from the window.
The Judge yawned.
He told the footman to watch for Counsellor Thavies and
Counsellor Beller, who were coming; and, with another yawn,
he laid his cocked hat on his knees, closed his eyes, leaned
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back in his comer, wrapped his mantle closer about him, and
began to think of pretty Mrs. Abington.
And being a man who could sleep like a sailor, at a moment’s notice, he was thinking of taking a nap. Those fellows had no business to keep a judge waiting.
He heard their voices now. Those rake-hell counsellors
The Color of Evil - The Dark Descent V1 (1991) Page 29
