The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney Part 22

"From my Death-place, _Midnight._

"Dear Madam--No, beloved friend--mother, let me call you.... Oh kind, gentle mother, I am to die ... to be killed in a few hours by cruel men!--I, so young, so unprepared for death, and yet guiltless! Oh never doubt that I am guiltless of the offence for which they will have the heart to hang me.... n.o.body, they say, can save me now; yet if I could see the lawyer.... I have been deceived, cruelly deceived, madam--buoyed up by lying hopes, till just now the thunder burst, and I--oh G.o.d!.... As they spoke, the fearful chapter in the Testament came bodily before me--the rending of the vail in twain, the terrible darkness, and the opened graves!.... I did not write for this, but my brain aches and dazzles.... It is too late--too late, they all tell me! ... Ah, if these dreadful laws were not so swift, I might yet--but no; _he_ clearly proved to me how useless.... I must not think of that.... It is of my nephew, of your Henry, child of my affections, that I would speak. Oh, would that I.... But hark!--they are coming.... The day has dawned ... to me the day of judgment!...."

This incoherent scrawl only confirmed my previous suspicions, but it was useless to dwell further on the melancholy subject. The great axe had fallen, and whether justly or unjustly, would, I feared, as in many, very many other cases, never be clearly ascertained in this world. I was mistaken. Another case of "uttering forged Bank-of-England notes, knowing them to be forged," which came under our cognizance a few months afterwards, revived the fading memory of Jane Eccles's early doom, and cleared up every obscurity connected with it.

The offender in this new case, was a tall, dark-complexioned, handsome man, of about thirty years of age, of the name of Justin Arnold. His lady mother, whose real name I shall conceal under that of Barton, retained us for her son's defence, and from her, and other sources, we learned the following particulars:--

Justin Arnold was the lady's son by a former marriage. Mrs. Barton, a still splendid woman, had, in second nuptials, espoused a very wealthy person, and from time to time had covertly supplied Justin Arnold's extravagance. This, however, from the wild course the young man pursued, could not be forever continued, and after many warnings the supplies were stopped. Incapable of reformation, Justin Arnold, in order to obtain the means of dissipation, connected himself with a cleverly-organized band of swindlers and forgers, who so adroitly managed their nefarious business, that, till his capture, they had contrived to keep themselves clear of the law--the inferior tools and dupes having been alone caught in its fatal meshes. The defence, under these circ.u.mstances necessarily a difficult, almost impossible one, was undertaken by Mr. Flint, and conducted by him with his accustomed skill and energy.

I took a very slight interest in the matter, and heard very little concerning it till its judicial conclusion by the conviction of the offender, and his condemnation to death. The decision on the recorder's report was this time communicated to the authorities of Newgate on a Sat.u.r.day, so that the batch ordered for execution, amongst whom was Justin Arnold, would not be hanged till the Monday morning. Rather late in the evening a note once more reached me from the chaplain of the prison. Justin Arnold wished to see me--_me_, not Mr. Flint. He had something of importance to communicate, he said, relative to a person in whom I had once felt great interest. It flashed across me that this Justin might be the "brother" of Jane Eccles, and I determined to see him. I immediately sought out one of the sheriffs, and obtained an order empowering me to see the prisoner on the afternoon of the morrow, (Sunday).

I found that the convict had expressed great anxiety lest I should decline to see him. My hoped-for visit was the only matter which appeared to occupy the mind or excite the care of the mocking, desperate young man; even the early and shameful termination of his own life on the morrow, he seemed to be utterly reckless of. Thus prepared, I was the less surprised at the scene which awaited me in the prisoner's cell, where I found him in angry altercation with the pale and affrighted chaplain.

I had never seen Justin Arnold before, this I was convinced of the instant I saw him; but he knew and greeted me instantly by name. His swarthy, excited features were flushed and angry; and after briefly thanking me for complying with his wishes, he added in a violent rapid tone, "This good man has been teasing me. He says, and truly, that I have defied G.o.d by my life; and now he wishes me to mock that inscrutable Being, on the eve of death, by words without sense, meaning, or truth!"

"No, no, no!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the reverend gentleman. "I exhorted you to true repentance, to peace, charity, to"--

"True repentance, peace, charity!" broke in the prisoner, with a scornful burst; "when my heart is full of rage, and bitterness, and despair! Give me _time_ for this repentance which you say is so needful--time to lure back long since banished hope, and peace, and faith! Poh!--you but flout me with words without meaning. I am unfit, you say, for the presence of men, but quite fit for that of G.o.d, before whom you are about to arrogantly cast me! Be it so--my deeds are upon my head! It is at least not my fault that I am hurled to judgment before the Eternal Judge himself commanded my presence there!"

"He may be unworthy to live," murmured the scared chaplain, "but oh, how utterly unfit to die!"

"That is true," rejoined Justin Arnold, with undiminished vehemence.

"Those, if you will, are words of truth and sense--go you and preach them to the makers and executioners of English law. In the meantime I would speak privately with this gentleman."

The reverend pastor, with a mute gesture of compa.s.sion, sorrow, and regret, was about to leave the cell, when he was stayed by the prisoner, who exclaimed, "Now, I think of it, you had better, sir, remain. The statement I am about to make cannot, for the sake of the victim's reputation, and for her friends' sake, have too many witnesses. You both remember Jane Eccles?" A broken exclamation from both of us answered him, and he quickly added--"Ah, you already guess the truth, I see. Well, I do not wonder you should start and turn pale. It _was_ a cruel, shameless deed--a dastardly murder if there was ever one. In as few words as possible, so you interrupt me not, I will relate _my_ share in the atrocious business." He spoke rapidly, and once or twice during the brief recital, the moistened eye and husky voice betrayed emotions which his pride would have concealed.

"Jane and I were born in Hertfords.h.i.+re, within a short distance of each other. I knew her from a child. She was better off then, I worse than we subsequently became--she by her father's bankruptcy, I by my mo--, by Mrs. Barton's wealthy marriage. She was about nineteen, I twenty-four, when I left the country for London. That she loved me with all the fervor of a trusting woman I well knew; and I had, too, for some time known that she must be either honorably wooed or not at all. That with me, was out of the question, and, as I told you, I came about that time to London. You can, I dare say, imagine the rest. We were--I and my friends, I mean--at a loss for agents to dispose of our wares, and at the same time pressed for money. I met Jane Eccles by accident. Genteel, of graceful address and winning manners, she was just fitted for our purpose. I feigned re-awakened love, proffered marriage, and a home across the Atlantic, as soon as certain trifling but troublesome affairs which momently hara.s.sed me were arranged. She believed me. I got her to change a considerable number of notes under various pretexts, but that they were forged she had not and could not have the remotest suspicion.

You know the catastrophe. After her apprehension I visited this prison as her brother, and buoyed her up to the last with illusions of certain pardon and release, whatever the verdict, through the influence of my wealthy father-in-law, of our immediate union afterwards, and tranquil American home. It is needless to say more. She trusted me, and I sacrificed her; less flagrant instances of a like nature occur every day.

And now, gentlemen, I would fain be alone."

"Remorseless villain!" I could not help exclaiming under my breath as he moved away.

He turned quickly back, and looking me in the face, without the slightest anger, said, "An execrable villain if you like--not a remorseless one!

Her death alone sits near, and troubles my, to all else, hardened conscience. And let me tell you, reverend sir," he continued, resuming his former bitterness as he addressed the chaplain--"let me tell you that it was not the solemn words of the judge the other day, but her pale, reproachful image, standing suddenly beside me in the dock, just as she looked when I pa.s.sed my last deception on her, that caused the tremor and affright, complacently attributed by that grave functionary to his own sepulchral eloquence. After all, her death cannot be exclusively laid to my charge. Those who tried her would not believe her story, and yet it was true as death. Had they not been so confident in their own unerring wisdom, they might have doomed her to some punishment short of the scaffold, and could now have retrieved their error. But I am weary, and would, I repeat, be alone. Farewell!" He threw himself on the rude pallet, and we silently withdrew.

A paper embodying Justin Arnold's declaration was forwarded to the secretary of state, and duly acknowledged, accompanied by an official expression of mild regret that it had not been made in time to save the life of Jane Eccles. No further notice was taken of the matter, and the record of the young woman's judicial sacrifice still doubtless enc.u.mbers the archives of the Home Office, forming, with numerous others of like character, the dark, sanguine background upon which the achievements of the great and good men who have so successfully purged the old Draco code that now a faint vestige only of the old barbarism remains, stands out in bright relief and changeless l.u.s.tre.

"EVERY MAN HIS OWN LAWYER."

A smarter trader, a keener appreciator of the tendencies to a rise or fall in colonial produce--sugars more especially--than John Linden, of Mincing Lane, it would have been difficult to point out in the wide city of London. He was not so immensely rich as many others engaged in the same merchant-traffic as himself; nothing at all like it, indeed, for I doubt that he could at any time have been esteemed worth more than from eighty to ninety thousand pounds; but his transactions, although limited in extent when compared with those of the mammoth colonial houses, almost always returned more or less of profit; the result of his remarkable keenness and sagacity in scenting hurricanes, black insurrections, and emanc.i.p.ation bills, whilst yet inappreciable, or deemed afar off, by less sensitive organizations. At least to this wonderful prescience of future sugar-value did Mr. Linden himself attribute his rise in the world, and gradual increase in rotundity, riches, and respectability. This constant success engendered, as it is too apt to do, inordinate egotism, conceit, self-esteem, vanity. There was scarcely a social, governmental, or economical problem which he did not believe himself capable of solving as easily as he could eat his dinner when hungry. "Common-sense business-habits"--his favorite phrase--he believed to be quite sufficient for the elucidation of the most difficult question in law, physic, or divinity. The science of law, especially, he held to be an alphabet which any man--of common sense and business habits--could as easily master as he could count five on his fingers; and there was no end to his ridicule of the men with horse-hair head-dresses, and their quirks, quiddits, cases, tenures, and such-like devil's lingo. Lawyers, according to him, were a set of thorough humbugs and impostors, who gained their living by false pretence--that of affording advice and counsel, which every sane man could better render himself. He was unmistakably mad upon this subject, and he carried his insane theory into practice. He drew his own leases, examined the t.i.tles of some house-property he purchased, and set his hand and seal to the final deeds, guided only by his own common-sense spectacles. Once he bid, at the Auction Mart, as high as fifty-three thousand pounds for the Holmford estate, Herefords.h.i.+re; and had he not been outbidden by young Palliser, son of the then recently-deceased eminent distiller, who was eager to obtain the property, with a view to a seat in parliament which its possession was said to almost insure--he would, I had not at the time the slightest doubt, have completed the purchase, without for a moment dreaming of submitting the vender's t.i.tle to the scrutiny of a professional adviser. Mr. Linden, I should mention, had been for some time desirous of resigning his business in Mincing Lane to his son, Thomas Linden, the only child born to him by his long-since deceased wife, and of retiring, an estated squire-arch, to the _otium c.u.m._, or _sine dignitate_, as the case might be, of a country life; and this disposition had of late been much quickened by daily-increasing apprehensions of negro emanc.i.p.ation and revolutionary interference with differential duties--changes which, in conjunction with others of similar character, would infallibly bring about that utter commercial ruin which Mr. Linden, like every other rich and about-to-retire merchant or tradesman whom I have ever known, constantly prophesied to be near at hand and inevitable.

With such a gentleman the firm of Flint & Sharp had only professional interviews, when procrastinating or doubtful debtors required that he should put on the screw--a process which, I have no doubt, he would himself have confidently performed, but for the waste of valuable time which doing so would necessarily involve. Both Flint and myself were, however, privately intimate with him--Flint more especially, who had known him from boyhood--and we frequently dined with him on a Sunday at his little box at Fulham. Latterly, we had on these occasions met there a Mrs. Arnold and her daughter Catherine--an apparently amiable, and certainly very pretty and interesting young person--to whom, Mr. Linden confidentially informed us, his son Tom had been for some time engaged.

"I don't know much about her family," observed Mr. Linden one day, in the course of a gossip at the office, "but she moves in very respectable society. Tom met her at the Slades'; but I _do_ know she has something like thirty-five thousand pounds in the funds. The instant I was informed how matters stood with the young folk, I, as a matter of common sense and business, asked the mother, Mrs. Arnold, for a reference to her banker or solicitor--there being no doubt that a woman and a minor would be in lawyers' leading-strings--and she referred me to Messrs. Dobson of Chancery Lane. You know the Dobsons?"

"Perfectly,--what was the reply?"

"That Catherine Arnold, when she came of age--it wants but a very short time of that now--would be ent.i.tled to the capital of thirty-four thousand seven hundred pounds, bequeathed by an uncle, and now lodged in the funds in the names of the trustees, Crowther & Jenkins, of Leadenhall Street, by whom the interest on that sum was regularly paid, half-yearly, through the Messrs. Dobson, for the maintenance and education of the heiress. A common-sense, business-like letter in every respect, and extremely satisfactory; and as soon as he pleases, after Catherine Arnold comes of age, and into actual possession of her fortune, Tom may have her, with my blessing over the bargain."

I dined at Laurel Villa, Fulham, about two months after this conversation, and Linden and I found ourselves alone over the dessert--the young people having gone out for a stroll, attracted doubtless by the gay aspect of the Thames, which flows past the miniature grounds attached to the villa. Never had I seen Mr. Linden in so gay, so mirthful a mood.

"Pa.s.s the decanter," he exclaimed, the instant the door had closed upon Tom and his _fiancee_. "Pa.s.s the decanter, Sharp; I have news for you, my boy, now they are gone."

"Indeed! and what may the news be?"

"Fill a b.u.mper for yourself, and I'll give you a toast. Here's to the health and prosperity of the proprietor of the Holmford estate; and may he live a thousand years, and one over!--Hip--hip--hurra!"

He swallowed his gla.s.s of wine, and then, in his intensity of glee, laughed himself purple.

"You needn't stare so," he said, as soon as he had partially recovered breath; "I am the proprietor of the Holmford property--bought it for fifty-six thousand pounds of that young scant-grace and spendthrift, Palliser--fifteen thousand pounds less than what it cost him, with the outlay he has made upon it. Signed, sealed, delivered, paid for yesterday. Ha! ha! ho! Leave John Linden alone for a bargain! It's worth seventy thousand pounds if it's worth a s.h.i.+lling. I say," continued he, after a renewed spasm of exuberant mirth, "not a word about it to anybody--mind! I promised Palliser, who is quietly packing up to be off to Italy, or Australia, or Constantinople, or the devil--all of them, perhaps, in succession--not to mention a word about it till he was well off--you understand? Ha! ha!--ho! ho!" again burst out Mr. Linden. "I pity the poor creditors though! Bless you! I shouldn't have had it at anything like the price, only for his knowing that I was not likely to be running about exposing the affair, by asking lawyers whether an estate in a family's possession, as this was in Dursley's for three hundred years, had a good t.i.tle or not. So be careful not to drop a word, even to Tom--for my honor's sake. A delicious bargain, and no mistake! Worth, if a penny, seventy thousand pounds. Ha! ha!--ho! ho!"

"Then you have really parted with that enormous sum of money without having had the t.i.tle to the estate professionally examined?"

"t.i.tle! Fiddlestick! I looked over the deeds myself. Besides, haven't I told you the ancestors of Dursley, from whose executors Palliser purchased the estate, were in possession of it for centuries. What better t.i.tle than prescription can there be?"

"That may be true enough; but still"--

"I ought, you think, to have risked losing the bargain by delay, and have squandered time and money upon fellows in horse-hair wigs, in order to ascertain what I sufficiently well knew already? Pooh! I am not in my second childhood yet!"

It was useless to argue with him; besides the mischief, if mischief there was, had been done, and the not long-delayed entrance of the young couple necessitating a change of topic, I innocently inquired what he thought of the Negro Emanc.i.p.ation Bill which Mr. Stanley, as the organ of the ministry, had introduced a few evenings previously? and was rewarded by a perfect deluge of loquacious indignation and invective--during a pause in which hurly-burly of angry words I contrived to effect my escape.

"Crowther & Jenkins!" exclaimed one morning, Mr. Flint, looking up from the "Times" newspaper he held in his hand. "Crowther & Jenkins!--what is it we know about Crowther & Jenkins?"

The question was addressed to me, and I, like my partner, could not at the moment precisely recall why those names sounded upon our ears with a certain degree of interest as well as familiarity. "Crowther & Jenkins!"

I echoed. "True; what _do_ we know about Crowther & Jenkins? Oh, I have it!--they are the executors of a will under which young Linden's pretty bride, that is to be, inherits her fortune."

"Ah!" exclaimed Mr. Flint, as he put down the paper, and looked me gravely in the face--"I remember now; their names are in the list of bankrupts. A failure in the gambling corn-trade too. I hope they have not been speculating with the young woman's money."

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when Mr. Linden was announced, and presently in walked that gentleman in a state of considerable excitement.

"I told you," he began, "some time ago about Crowther & Jenkins being the persons in whose names Catherine Arnold's money stood in the funds?"

"Yes," replied Flint; "and I see by the 'Gazette' they are bankrupts, and, by your face, that they have speculated with your intended daughter-in-law's money, and lost it!"

"Positively so!" rejoined Mr. Linden, with great heat. "Drew it out many months ago! But they have exceedingly wealthy connections--at least Crowther has--who will, I suppose, arrange Miss Arnold's claim rather than their relative should be arraigned for felony."

"Felony!--you are mistaken, my good sir. There is no felony--no _legal_ felony, I mean--in the matter. Miss Arnold can only prove against the estate like any other creditor."

"The devil she can't! Tom, then, must look out for another wife, for I am credibly informed there won't be a s.h.i.+lling in the pound."

And so it turned out. The great corn-firm had been insolvent for years; and after speculating desperately, and to a frightful extent, with a view to recover themselves, had failed to an enormous amount--their a.s.sets, comparatively speaking, proving to be _nil_.

The ruin spread around, chiefly on account of the vast quant.i.ty of accommodation-paper they had afloat, was terrible; but upon no one did the blow fall with greater severity than on young Linden and his promised wife. His father ordered him to instantly break off all acquaintance with Miss Arnold; and on the son, who was deeply attached to her, peremptorily refusing to do so, Linden, senior, threatened to turn him out of doors, and ultimately disinherit him. Angry, indignant, and in love, Thomas Linden did a very rash and foolish thing; he persuaded Catherine Arnold to consent to a private marriage, arguing that if the indissoluble knot were once fairly tied, his father would, as a matter of course--he being an only child--become reconciled to what he could no longer hope to prevent or remedy.