The Color of Evil - The Dark Descent V1 (1991)

by David G. Hartwell (Ed. )

  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

  Mr. Justice Harbottle

  231

  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