Part 3, Chapter V.
A Hard Duty.
Old Michael Ross was at his son’s side on the instant.
“Are you ill, my boy? Tell me what it is! You frighten me, Luke!—you frighten me!”
“I shall be better directly, father,” panted Luke, with a strange look in his face.
“But you are ill. Let me send for brandy.”
“No, no; I am better now! It is nothing. But tell me, father, I thought that man became partner with a Mr Walker?”
“Yes, my boy; I believe it was a very old firm, trading as Esdaile and Co. No other names appeared.”
“Good heavens!” muttered Luke, who kept glancing at the brief and turning over its leaves.
“Why, Luke!” exclaimed the old man, excitedly, as the state of the case flashed upon him. “You are not already engaged in this affair?”
“I am, father,” he said, with a strange pallor gathering in his face. “I have undertaken the prosecution of Cyril Mallow on behalf, it seems, of Mr Walker’s executors, and I shall have to try and get him convicted.”
Father and son sat gazing blankly in each other’s eyes, thinking of the future; and as Luke pondered on the position into which he had been thrown by fate, he saw that he should be, as it were, the hand of Nemesis standing ready to strike the heartless spendthrift down—that he was to be his own avenger of the wrongs that he had suffered from his enemy, and that no greater triumph could be his than that of pointing out, step by step, to the jury, the wrongdoings of this man, who would be standing in the felon’s dock quailing before him, looking in his eyes for mercy, but finding none.
He shuddered at the picture, for soon fresh faces appeared there—that of Sage, standing with supplicating hands and with her tearful, dilated eyes, seeming to ask him for pity for her children’s sake. Then he saw the white-haired rector gazing at him piteously, and the suffering invalided mother who worshipped her son. Both were there, asking him what they had done that he should seek to convict him they loved.
He looked up, and saw that his father was watching him with troubled face.
“This—this is very terrible, my boy,” he said. “I ought to have been sooner. But—but—must you take that side?”
“I have promised, father. I would give anything to have been under the same promise to you. But I cannot, I will not stand up and accuse Cyril Mallow. Strive how I would, I should fight my hardest to get a verdict against him, and I could not afterwards bear the thought. I will get off taking this brief. Stay here while I go out.”
He took his hat, and was driven to his solicitors, where he had an interview with Mr Swift, and proposed that that gentleman should retire the brief from his hands.
Mr Swift smiled, and shook his head.
“No, Mr Ross,” he said; “I have given you your price, and after a chat with my partner, he agreed that I had done right. The matter is settled, sir! I could not hear of such a thing.”
Luke was in no mood to argue with him then, but went back to his chambers, dined with his father, and then sat up half the night studying the brief, not with the idea of being for the prosecution, but so as to know how Cyril Mallow stood.
It was a long brief, and terrible in its array of charges against Sage’s husband. As he read on, Luke found that the executors of Cyril’s partner, the late Mr Walker, were determined upon punishing him who had wrought his ruin. The wine business had been a good and very lucrative one until Mr Walker had been tempted into taking a partner, whose capital had not been needed, the object really being to find a junior who would relieve the senior from the greater part of the anxiety and work.
Cyril then had been received into the partnership, and a great deal of the management had after a short time been left to him, a position of which he took advantage to gamble upon the Stock Exchange with the large sums of money passing through their hands, with just such success as might have been expected, and the discovery that Cyril had involved the firm in bankruptcy broke Mr Walker’s heart, the old man dying within a week of the schedule being filed.
Worse was behind: the executors charged Cyril with having forged his partner’s name to bills, whereon he had raised money, signing not merely the name of the firm, but his own and his partner’s name, upon the strength of which money had been advanced by two bill discounters, both of whom were eager to have him punished.
In short, the more Luke Ross studied, the more he found that the black roll of iniquity was unfolding itself, so that at last he threw down the brief, heartsick with disgust and misery, feeling as he did that if half, nay, a tithe of that which was charged against Cyril were true, no matter who conducted prosecution or defence, the jury was certain to convict him of downright forgery and swindling, and seven or ten years’ penal servitude would be his sentence.
It needed no dull, cheerless morning for Luke’s spirits to be at the lowest ebb when he met his father at breakfast, the old man looking very weak, careworn, and troubled, as they sat over the barely-tasted meal.
Luke hardly spoke, but sat there thinking that he would make a fresh appeal to Mr Swift to relieve him of so terrible a charge, and expecting each moment that his father would again implore him to retire from the prosecution and take up the defence. At last the old man spoke.
“I’ve been lying awake all night, thinking about that, my boy,” he said, “and I’m very, very sorry.”
“Father,” said Luke, “it seems almost more than one can bear.”
“I said to myself that my boy was too noble not to forgive one who had done wrong to him in the past, and I said, too, that it would be a fine thing for him to show people how he was ready to go and fight on his old rival’s behalf.”
“And I will, father, or retire from the case altogether,” said Luke, eagerly.
“No, my son, no,” said the old man; “I have not long to live, and I should not like that little time to be embittered by the thought that I had urged my son to do a dishonourable act.”
“Oh, no,” cried Luke, “I will press them, and they will let me retire.”
“But if they refused again, my boy, it would be dishonourable to draw back after you had promised to do your best. No, my boy, there is the finger of God in it all, and you must go on. Poor girl, poor girl! it will be terrible for her, but we cannot fight against such things.”
“But I could not plead my cause with her eyes reproaching me,” said Luke, half to himself.
“But you must, my boy,” cried the old man. “I lay awake all last night, Luke, and I prayed humbly for guidance to do what was right, and it seemed to me that the good counsel came.”
“Father!” exclaimed Luke, gazing in the old man’s face.
“It will be painful, my boy, but we must not shrink from our duty because it is a difficult one to perform. I am a weak old fellow, and very ignorant, but I know that here my son will be a minister of justice against a bad and wicked man. For he is a bad—a wicked man, my boy, who has stopped at nothing to gratify his own evil ends.”
“But how can I proceed against him, father?”
“Because it is your duty; and, feeling what you do against him, you will guard your heart lest you should strike too hard; and it is better so. Luke, my boy, you will be just; while, if another man prosecutes him, he will see in him only the forger and the cheat, and fight his best to get him condemned.”
It was true, and Luke sat back thinking.
“Yesterday, my boy, I prayed you to undertake this man’s defence; I withdraw it all now: take back every word, and I will go and tell poor Sage Mallow why.”
“No, no, father,” cried Luke; “if I cannot defend, neither will I prosecute.”
“You must, my boy—you have given your word. If you drew back now I should feel that it would go worse against this man.”
“But mine, father, should not be the hand to strike him down,” cried Luke.
“We are not our own masters here, my boy,” said the old man, speaking in a low and reverent tone. “My Luke has never shrunk from his duty yet, and never will.”
Luke sank back in silence, and for a long time no word was spoken. Then he suddenly rose and rang the bell.
“See if Mr Serjeant Towle is in,” he said to the boy, and upon the report being received that the serjeant was within, Luke descended and had ten minutes’ conversation with that great legal luminary, who, after a little consideration, said, as Luke rose to go—
“Well, yes, Ross, I will, if it’s only for the sake of giving you a good thrashing. You are going on too fast, and a little check will do you good. If I take the brief I shall get him off. Send his solicitors to me.”
Five minutes later Luke was with his father.
“Go and see Mrs Mallow at once, father,” he said, “and bid her tell her solicitors to wait upon Mr Serjeant Towle.”
“Yes, my boy—Mr Serjeant Towle,” said the old man, obediently.
“He will require an enormous fee, father, which you will pay.”
“Yes, my boy, of course. Is—is he a great man?”
“One of the leading counsel at the bar; and if Cyril Mallow can be got off, Serjeant Towle is the man for the task.”
“But, my boy—” began the old man.
“Don’t hesitate, father, but go,” cried Luke; and the old man hurried off.