Sir Brook Fossbrooke, Volume II.
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“It is a paper, sir, I would not condescend to touch.”
“The fellow says that a Chief Baron without a court, – he means this in allusion to the Crown not bringing those cases of treason-felony into the Exchequer, – a Chief without a court is like one of those bishops in partibus, and that it would n’t be an unwise thing to make the resemblance complete and stop the salary. And then another observes – ”
“Sir, I do not know which most to deplore, – your forgetfulness or your memory; try to guide your conversation without any demand upon either.”
“And it was about those Celts, as they call these rascals, that I wanted to say something. What could it have been?”
“Perhaps you may have joined them. Are you a head-centre, or only empowered to administer oaths and affirmations?”
“Oh! I have it now,” cried Haire, triumphantly. “You remember, one day we were in the shrubbery after breakfast, you remarked that this insurrection was especially characterized by the fact that no man of education, nor, indeed, of any rank above the lowest, had joined it. You said something about the French Revolution, too; and how, in the Reign of Terror, the principles of the Girondists had filtered down, and were to be seen glittering like – ”
“Spare me, Haire, – spare me, and do not ask me to recognize the bruised and battered coinage, without effigy or legend, as the medal of my own mint.”
“At all events, you remember what I’m referring to.”
“With all your efforts to efface my handwriting I can detect something of my signature, – go on.”
“Well, they have at last caught a man of some mark and station. I saw Spencer, of the head office, this morning, and he told me that he had just committed to Newgate a man of title and consideration. He would not mention his name; indeed, the investigation was as private as possible, as it was felt that the importance of such a person being involved in the project would give a very dangerous impulse to the movement.”
“They are wrong, sir. The insurrection that is guided by men of condition will, however dangerous, be a game with recognized rules and laws. The rebellion of the ignorant masses will be a chaos to defy calculation. You may discuss measures, but there is no arguing with murder!”
“That’s not the way Spencer regarded it. He says the whole thing must be kept dark; and as they have refused to accept his bail, it’s clear enough they think the case a very important one.”
“If I was not on the Bench I would defend these men! Ay, sir, defend them! They have not the shadow of a case to show for this rebellion. It is the most causeless attempt to subvert a country that ever was conceived; but there is that amount of stupidity, – of ignorance, not alone of statecraft, but of actual human nature, on the part of those who rule us, that it would have been the triumph of my life to assail and expose them. Why, sir, it was the very plebeian character of this insurrection that should have warned them against their plan of nursing and encouraging it. Had the movement been guided by gentlemen, it might have been politic to have affected ignorance of their intentions till they had committed themselves beyond retreat; but with this rabble – this rebellion in rags – to tamper was to foster. You had no need to dig pitfalls for such people; they never emerged from the depths of their own ignominious condition. You should have suppressed them at once, – stopped them before the rebel press had disseminated a catechism of treason, and instilled the notion through the land that the first duty of patriotism was assassination.”
“And you would have defended these men?”
“I would have arraigned their accusers, and charged them as accomplices. I would have told those Castle officials to come down and stand in the dock with their confederates. What, sir! will you tell me that it was just or moral, or even politic, to treat these unlettered men as though they were crafty lawyers, skilled in all the arts to evade the provisions of a statute? This policy was not unfitted towards him who boasted he could drive a coach-and-six through any Act of Parliament; but how could it apply to creatures more ready to commit themselves than even you were to entrap them? who wanted no seduction to sedition, and who were far more eager to play traitor than you yourself to play prosecutor? I say again, I wish I had my youth and my stuff-gown, and they should have a defender.”
“I am just as well pleased it is as we see it,” muttered Haire.
“Of course you are, sir. There are men who imagine it to be loyal to be always on the side that is to be strongest.” He took a few turns up and down the room, his nostrils dilated, and his lips trembling with excitement. “Do me a favor, Haire,” said he at last, as he approached and laid his hand on the other’s arm. “Go and learn who this gentleman they have just arrested is. Ascertain whatever you can of the charge against him, – the refusal of bail implies it is a grave case; and inquire if you might be permitted to see and speak with him.”
“But I don’t want to speak with him. I’d infinitely rather not meet him at all.”
“Sir, if you go, you go as an emissary from me,” said the Chief, naughtily, and by a look recalling Haire to all his habitual deference.
“But only imagine if it got abroad – if the papers got hold of it; think of what a scandal it would be, that the Chief Baron of the Exchequer was actually in direct communication with a man charged with treason-felony. I would n’t take a thousand pounds, and be accessory to such an allegation.”
“You shall do it for less, sir. Yes, I repeat it, Haire, for less. Five shillings’ car-hire will amply cover the cost. You shall drive over to the head-office and ask Mr. Spencer if – of course with the prisoner’s permission – you may be admitted to see him. When I have the reply I will give you your instructions.”
“I protest I don’t see – I mean, I cannot imagine – it’s not possible – in fact, I know, that when you reflect a little over it, you will be satisfied that this would be a most improper thing to do.”
“And what is this improper thing I am about to do? Let us hear, sir, what you condemn so decidedly! I declare my libellers must have more reason than I ever conceded to them. I am growing very, very old! There must be the blight of age upon my faculties, or you would not have ventured to administer this lesson to me! this lesson on discretion and propriety. I would, however, warn you to be cautious. The wounded tiger is dangerous, though the ball should have penetrated his vitals. I would counsel you to keep out of reach of his spring, even in his dying moments.”
He actually shook with passion as he said this, and his hands closed and opened with a convulsive movement that showed the anger that possessed him.
“I have never lectured any one; least of all would it occur to me to lecture you,” said Haire, with much dignity. “In all our intercourse I have never forgotten the difference between us, – I mean intellectually; for I hope, as to birth and condition, there is no inequality.”
Though he spoke this slowly and impressively, the Chief Baron heard nothing of it. He was so overwhelmed by the strong passions of his own mind that he could not attend to another. “I shall soon be called incorrigible as well as incompetent,” uttered he, “if the wise counsels of my ablest friends are powerless to admonish me.”
“I must be moving,” said Haire, rising and taking his hat. “I promised to dine with Beattie at the Rock.”
“Say nothing of what has taken place here to-day; or if you mention me at all, say you found me in my usual health.” Haire nodded.
“My usual health and spirits,” continued the Chief. “I was going to say temper, but it would seem an epigram. Tell Beattie to look in here as he goes home; there ‘s one of the children slightly ailing. And so, Haire,” cried he, suddenly, in a louder voice, “you would insinuate that my power of judgment is impaired, and that neither in the case of my granddaughter nor in that larger field of opinion – the state of Ireland – am I displaying that wisdom or that acuteness on which it was one time the habit to compliment me.”
“You may be quite right. I won’t presume to say you ‘re not. I only declare that I don’t agree with you.”
“In either case?”
“No; not in either case.”
“I think I shall ride to-day,” said the Chief; for they had now reached the hall-door, and were looking out over the grassy lawn and the swelling woods that enclosed it. “You lose much, Haire, in not being a horseman. What would my critics say if they saw me following the hounds, eh?”
“I ‘ll be shot if it would surprise me to see it,” muttered Haire to himself. “Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, Haire. Come out and see me soon again. I ‘ll be better tempered when you come next. You ‘re not angry with me, I know.”
Haire grasped the hand that was held out to him, and shook it cordially. “Of course I ‘m not. I know well you have scores of things to vex and irritate you that never touch fellows like myself. I shall never feel annoyed at anything you may say to me. What would really distress me would be that you should do anything to lower your own reputation.”
The old Judge stood on the doorstep pondering over these last words of his friend long after his departure. “A good creature – a true-hearted fellow,” muttered he to himself; “but how limited in intelligence! It is the law of compensation carried out. Where nature gives integrity she often grudges intellect. The finer, subtler minds play with right and wrong till they detect their affinities. – Who are you, my good fellow? What brings you here?” cried he to a fellow who was lounging in the copse at the end of the house.
“I ‘m a carman, your honor. I ‘m going to drive the Colonel to the railway at Stoneybatter.”
“I never heard that he was about to leave town,” muttered the old Judge. “I thought he had been confined to bed with a cold these days back. Cheetor, go and tell Colonel Sewell that I should be much obliged if he would come over to my study at his earliest convenience.”
“The Colonel will be with you, my Lord, in five minutes,” was the prompt reply.
CHAPTER XI. A LEAP IN THE DARK
Colonel Sewell received the Chief Baron’s message with a smothered expression of no benevolent meaning.
“Who said I was here? How did he know I had arrived?” cried he, angrily.
“He saw the carman, sir; and asked for whom he was waiting.”
Another and not less energetic benediction was invoked on the rascally car-driver, whom he had enjoined to avoid venturing in front of the house.
“Say I’m coming; I’ll be with him in an instant,” said be, as he hurriedly pitched some clothes into his portmanteau.
Now it is but fair to own that this demand upon his time came at an inconvenient moment; he had run up to town by an early train, and was bent on going back by the next departure. During his absence, no letter of any kind from his agent O’Reardon had reached him, and, growing uneasy and impatient at this silence, he had come up to learn the reason. At the office he heard that O’Reardon had not been there for the last few days. It was supposed he was ill, but there was no means of ascertaining the fact; none knew his address, as, they said, “he was seldom in the same place for more than a week or two.” Sewell had a profound distrust of his friend; indeed, the only reason for confiding in him at all was, that it was less O’Reardon’s interest to be false than true. Since Fossbrooke’s arrival, however, matters might have changed. They might have met and talked together. Had Sir Brook seduced the fellow to take service under him? Had he wormed out of him certain secrets of his (Sewell’s) life, and thus shown how useful he might be in running him to earth? This was far from unlikely. It seemed the easiest and most natural way of explaining the fellow’s absence. At the same time, if such were the case, would he not have taken care to write to him? Would not his letters, calling for some sort of reply, some answer to this or that query, have given him a better standing-ground with his new master, showing how far he possessed Sewell’s confidence, and how able he was to make his treason to him effective? Harassed by these doubts, and fearing he knew not what of fresh troubles, he had passed a miserable week in the country. Debt and all its wretched consequences were familiar enough to him. His whole life had been one long struggle with narrow means, and with the expedients to meet expenses he should never have indulged in. He had acquired, together with a recklessness, a sort of self-reliance in these emergencies which positively seemed to afford him a species of pleasure, and made him a hero to himself by his successes; but there were graver troubles than these on his heart, and with the memory of these Fossbrooke was so interwoven that to recall them was to bring him up before him.
Besides these terrors, he had learned, during his short stay at the Nest, a most unwelcome piece of intelligence. The vicar, Mr. Mills, had shown him a letter from Dr. Lendrick, in which he said that the climate disagreed with him, and his isolation and loneliness preyed upon him so heavily that he had all but determined to resign his place and return home. He added that he had given no intimation of this to his children, lest by any change of plan he might inflict disappointment upon them; nor had he spoken of it to his father, in the fear that if the Chief Baron should offer any strenuous objection, he might be unable to carry out his project; while to his old friend the vicar he owned that his heart yearned after a home, and if it could only be that home where he had lived so contentedly, the Nest! “If I could promise myself to get back there again,” he wrote, “nothing would keep me here a month longer.” Now, as Sewell had advertised the place to be let, Mills at once showed him this letter, believing that the arrangement was such as would suit each of them.
It needed all Sewell’s habitual self-command not to show the uneasiness these tidings occasioned him. Lendrick’s return to Ireland might undo – it was almost certain to undo – all the influence he had obtained over the Chief Baron. The old Judge was never to be relied upon from one day to the next. Now it was some impulse of vindictive passion, now of benevolence. Who was to say when some parental paroxysm might not seize him, and he might begin to care for his son?
Here was a new peril, – one he had never so much as imagined might befall him. “I ‘ll have to consult my wife,” said he, hastily, in reply to Mills’s question. “She is not at all pleased at the notion of giving up the place; the children were healthier here: in fact,” added he, in some confusion, “I suspect we shall be back here one of these days.”
“I told him I’d have to consult you,” said Sewell, with an insolent sneer, as he told his wife this piece of news. “I said you were so fond of the country, so domestic, and so devoted to your children, that I scarcely thought you ‘d like to give up a place so suited to all your tastes; – wasn’t I right?”
She continued to look steadily at the book she had been reading, and made no reply.
“I did n’t say, though I might, that the spot was endeared to you by a softer, more tender reminiscence; because, being a parson, there ‘s no saying how he ‘d have taken it.”
She raised her book higher, so as to conceal her face, but still said nothing.
“At all events,” said he, in a more careless tone, “we are not going to add to the inducements which attract this gentleman to return home, and we must not forget that our host here may turn us out at any moment.”
“I think it will be our fault whenever he does so,” said she, quietly.
“Fault and misfortune are pretty much alike, to my thinking. There is one thing, however, I have made up my mind on, – I ‘ll bolt. When he gives notice to quit, he shall be obliged to provide for you and the brats out of sheer necessity. He cannot turn you out on the streets, he can’t send you to the Union; you have no friends to whom he can pack you off; so let him storm as he likes: something he must do.”
To this speech she seemed to give no attention whatever. Whether the threat was an oft-repeated one, or that she was inured to coarseness of this nature, or that silence was the best line to take in these emergencies, she never appeared to notice his words.
“What about that money he promised you? Has he given it?” said he suddenly, when about to leave the room.
“No; he said something about selling out some mining-shares, – scrip he called it. I forget exactly what he said, but the purport was that he was pressed just now.”
“I take it he is. My mother’s allowance is in arrear, and she is not one to bear the delay very patiently. So you ‘ve got nothing?”
“Nothing, except ten pounds he gave Cary yesterday for her birthday.”
“Where is it?”
“In that work-box, – no, in the upper part. Do you want it?”
“What a question! Of course I want it, somewhat more than Gary does, I promise you. I was going off to-day with just five sovereigns in my pocket. By-bye. I shall be late if I don’t hurry myself.” As he reached the door he turned round. “What was it I had to tell you, – some piece of news or other, – what could it have been?”
“Nothing pleasant, I ‘m sure, so it’s as well unremembered.”
“Polite, certainly,” said he, walking slowly back while he seemed trying to recall something. “Oh, I have it. The transport that took out the – th has been wrecked somewhere off Sardinia. Engine broken down, paddle-wheels carried away, quarter-boats smashed, and, in fact, total wreck. I have no time to tell you more;” and so saying, he hurried away, but, opening the door noiselessly, he peeped in, and saw her with her head buried in her hands, leaning on the table; and, stealing stealthily down the corridor, he hastened to his room to pack up for his journey; and it was while thus occupied the Chief’s message reached him.
When the Chief Baron asked Haire to call at the Police Office and inquire if he might not be permitted to see the person who had been arrested that morning at Howth, he had not the very vaguest idea what step he should next take, nor what proceedings institute, if his demand might be acceded to. The indignant anger he felt at the slight put upon him by the Government in passing him over on the Commission, had got such entire possession of him that he only thought of a reprisal without considering how it was to be effected. “I am not one to be insulted with impunity. Are these men such ignorant naturalists as not to know that there is one species of whale that the boldest never harpoons? Swift was a Dean, but he never suffered his cassock to impede the free use of his limbs. I am a Judge, but they shall see that the ermine embarrasses me just as little. They have provoked the conflict, and it is not for me to decline it. They are doing scores of things every day in Ireland that, if there was one man of ability and courage opposed to them, would shake the Cabinet to its centre. I will make Pemberton’s law a proverb and a byword. The public will soon come to suspect that the reason I am not on the Bench at these trials is not to be looked for in the spiteful malignity of the Castle, but in the conscientious scruples of one who warned the Crown against these prosecutions. They were not satisfied with native disaffection, and they have invented a new crime for Ireland, which they call treason-felony; but they have forgotten to apprise the people, who go on blunderingly into treason as of old, too stupid to be taught by a statute! The Act is a new one. It would give me scant labor to show that it cannot be made law, that its clauses are contradictory, its provisions erroneous, its penalties evasive. What is to prevent me introducing, as a digression, into my next charge to a grand jury, my regrets or sorrows over such bungling legislation? Who is to convict me for arraigning the wisdom of Parliament, or telling the country, You are legislated for by ignorance! your statutes are made by incompetence! The public press is always open, and it will soon be bruited about that the letter signed ‘Lycurgus’ was written by William Lendrick. I will take Barnewell or Perrin, or some other promising young fellow of the junior bar, and instruct him for the defence. I will give him law enough to confute, and he shall furnish the insolence to confront this Attorney-General. There never was a case better suited to carry the issue out of the Queen’s Bench and arraign the Queen’s advisers. Let them turn upon me if they dare: I was a citizen before I was a lawyer, I was an Irishman before I became a judge. There was a bishop who braved the Government in the days of the volunteers. They shall find that high station in Ireland is but another guarantee for patriotism.” By such bursts of angry denunciation had he excited himself to such a degree that when Sewell entered the room the old man’s face was flushed, his eye flashing, and his lip quivering with passion.
“I was not aware of your absence, sir!” said he, sternly; “and a mere accident informed me that you were going away again.”
“A sudden call required my presence at Killaloe, my Lord; and I found when I had got there I had left some papers behind here.”
“The explanation would be unexceptionable, sir, if this house were an inn to which a man comes and returns as he pleases; but if I err not, you are my guest here, and I hope if a host has duties he has rights.”
“My Lord, I attached so very little importance to my presence that I never flattered myself by thinking I should be missed.”
“I seldom flatter, sir, and I never do so where I intend to censure!” Sewell bowed submissively, but the effort to control his temper cost him a sharp pang and a terrible struggle. “Enough of this, at least for the present; though I may mention, passingly, that we must take an early opportunity of placing our relations towards each other on some basis that may be easily understood by each of us. The law of contracts will guide us to the right course. My object in sending for you now is to ask a service at your hands, if your other engagements will leave you at liberty to render it.”
“I am entirely at your Lordship’s orders.”
“Well, sir, I will be very brief. I must needs be so, for I have fatigued myself by much talking already. The papers will have informed you that I am not to sit on this Commission. The Ministers who cannot persuade me by their blandishments are endeavoring to disgust me by insult. They have read the fable of the sun and the wind backwards, and inverted the moral. It had been whispered abroad that if I tried these men there would have been no convictions. They raked up some early speeches of mine – youthful triumphs they were – in defence of Wolfe Tone, and Jackson, and others; and they argued – no, I am wrong – they did not argue, they imagined, that the enthusiasm of the advocate might have twined itself around the wisdom of the Judge. They have quoted, too, in capital letters, – it is there on the table, – the peroration of my speech in Neilson’s case, where I implored the jury to be cautious and circumspect, for so deeply had the Crown advisers compromised themselves in the pursuit of rebellion, it needed the most careful sifting not to include the law-officers of the Castle, and to avoid placing the Attorney-General side by side with his victim.”
“How sarcastic! how cutting!” muttered Sewell, in praise.
“It was more than sarcastic, sir. It stung the Orange jury to the quick; and though they convicted my client, they trembled at the daring of his defender.
“But I turn from the past to the present,” said he, after a pause. “They have arrested this morning, at Howth, a man who is said to be of rank and station. The examination, conducted in secret, has concealed his name; and all that we know is that bail has not been accepted, if offered, for him. So long as these arrests concerned the vulgar fellows who take to rebellion for its robberies, no case can be made. With the creatures of rusty pikes and ruffian natures I have no sympathy. It matters little whether they be transported for treason or for theft. With the gentleman it is otherwise. Some speculative hope, some imaginative aspiration of serving his country, some wild dream begotten of the great Revolution of France, dashed not impossibly with some personal wrong, drives men from their ordinary course in life, and makes them felons where they meant to be philanthropists. I have often thought if this movement now at work should throw up to the surface one of this stamp, what a fine occasion it might afford to test the wisdom of those who rule us, to examine the machinery by which they govern, and to consider the advantage of that system, – such a favorite system in Ireland, by which rebellion is fostered as a means of subsequent concession, as though it were necessary to manure the loyalty of the land by the blood of traitors.