Part 3, Chapter VI.
The Case for the Prosecution.
It was a strange stroke of fate that, in spite of several attempts to evade the duty, circumstances so arranged themselves that Luke Ross found himself literally forced, for his reputation’s sake, to go on with his obnoxious task, and at last the day of trial came.
Luke had passed a sleepless night, and he entered the court, feeling excited, and as if all before him was a kind of dream.
For a few minutes he had not sufficient self-possession even to look round the well of the building; and it was some time before he ventured to scan the part that would be occupied by the spectators. Here, however, for the time being, his eyes remained riveted, as a choking sensation attacked him, for, seated beside the sturdy, well-remembered figure of the Churchwarden, was a careworn, youngish woman, so sadly altered that Luke hardly recognised her as the Sage whose features were so firmly printed on his memory.
She evidently did not see him, but was watching the jury-box, and listening to some remarks made to her from time to time by her uncle.
Luke turned over his brief, and tried to think of what he could do to be perfectly just, and yet spare the husband of the suffering woman before him, and at whom he gazed furtively from time to time.
He saw her as through a mist, gazing wildly at the judge, and then at the portly form and florid face of Serjeant Towle, who was now engaged in an eager conversation with his junior; and the sight of the famous legal luminary for the moment cleared away the misty dreaminess of the scene. Luke’s pulses began to throb, and he felt like one about to enter the arena for a struggle. He had had many legal battles before, from out of which, through his quickness in seizing upon damaging points, he had come with flying colours; but he had never before been opposed to so powerful an adversary as the Serjeant, and, for the moment, a strong desire to commence the encounter came over him.
But this passed off, and the dreamy sensation came back, as he sat gazing at Sage, thinking of their old childish days together, their walks in the wold woodlands, flower-gathering, nutting, or staining their hands with blackberries; of the many times when he climbed the orchard trees to throw down the ripening pears to Sage, who spread her pinafore to receive them. In these dreamy thoughts the very sunshine and sleepy atmosphere of the old place came back, and the sensation of remembrance of the old and happy days became a painful emotion.
It must be a dream, he felt. That could not be Sage seated there by the sturdy, portly, grey-haired man, her uncle. Even old Michael Ross seemed to be terribly changed, making it impossible that the little, thin, withered man seated behind Churchwarden Portlock could be the quick, brisk tradesman of the past.
“Was it all true?” Luke kept asking himself, “or was it, after all, but a dream?”
Cyril Mallow’s was the first case to be taken that morning, and the preliminaries were soon settled; but all the while the dreaminess of the scene seemed to Luke to be on the increase. He tried to bring his thoughts back from the past, but it was impossible; and when Mr Swift the solicitor who had instructed him spoke, the words seemed to be a confused murmur from far away.
Then the clerk of arraigns called the prisoner’s name, and as Cyril Mallow was placed at the bar, and Luke gazed at the face that had grown coarse and common-looking in the past twelve years, the dreaminess increased still more.
Luke was conscious of rising to bow to the court and say, “I am for the prosecution, my lord”; and heard the deep, rolling, sonorous voice of Mr Serjeant Towle reply, “I am for the defence, my lord”; and then Luke’s eyes rested upon Sage, who for the first time recognised him, and was now leaning forward, looking at him with wild and starting eyes that seemed to implore him to spare her husband, for the sake of their childhood’s days; and her look fascinated him so that he could not tear his gaze away.
It must be a dream, or else he was ill, for there was now a strange singing in his ears, as well as the misty appearance before his eyes, through which he could see nothing but Sage Portlock, as his heart persisted in calling her still.
“Was he to go on?” he asked himself, “to go wading on through this terrible nightmare, planting sting after sting in that tender breast, or should he give it up at once?”
He wanted to—he strove to speak, and say, “My lord, I give up this prosecution,” but his lips would not utter the words. For he was in a nightmare-like dream, and no longer a free agent.
And yet his nerves were so overstrung that he was acutely conscious of the slightest sound in the court, as he rose now, the observed of all present.
He heard the soft, subdued rustle made by people settling in their places for the long trial; the catching, hysterical sigh uttered by the prisoner’s wife; and a quick, faint cough, or clearing of the throat, as the prisoner leaned against the dock, and sought to get rid of an unpleasant, nervous contraction of the throat.
Luke stood like one turned to stone, his eyes now fixed on vacancy, his brief grasped in his hand, and his face deadly pale. The moment had arrived for him to commence the prosecution, but his thoughts were back at Lawford, and, like a rapid panorama, there passed before his eyes the old schoolhouses, and the figure of the bright, clever young mistress in the midst of her pupils, while he seemed to hear their merry voices as they darted out into the sunshine, dismissed for the day.
Then he was studying for the mastership, and was back at the training college. That was not the judge seated on his left, but the vice-principal, and those were not spectators and reporters ranged there, tier above tier, with open books and ready pencils, but fellow-students; and he was down before them, at the great black board, helpless and ashamed, for the judge—no, it was the vice-principal—had called him down from his seat, and said—“In any right-angled triangle the square of the sides subtending the right angle is equal to the square of the sides containing the right angle. Prove it.”
Prove it! And that forty-seventh problem of the first book of Euclid that he knew so well had gone, as it were, right out of his memory, leaving but a blank.
There was a faint buzz and rustle amongst the students as it seemed to him in this waking nightmare, and the vice-principal said—“We are all ready, Mr Ross.” Still not a word would come. Some of the students would be, he knew, pitying him, not knowing how soon their own turn might come, while others he felt would be triumphant, being jealous of his bygone success.
He knew that book so well, too; and somehow Sage Portlock had obtained a seat amongst the students, and was waiting to hear him demonstrate the problem, drawing it with a piece of chalk on the black board, and showing how the angle ABC was equal to the angle DEF, and so on, and so on.
“We are all ready, Mr Ross,” came from the vice-principal again. No, it was from the judge, and it was not the theatre at Saint Chrysostom’s, but the court at the Old Bailey, where he was to prosecute Cyril Mallow, his old rival, the husband of the woman he had loved, for forgery and fraud; and his throat was dry, his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth, and his thoughts were wandering away.
And yet his senses were painfully acute to all that passed. He knew that Serjeant Towle had chuckled fatly, after fixing his great double eyeglass to gaze at him. Then, as distinctly as if the words were uttered in his ear, he heard one of the briefless whisper—
“He has lost his nerve.”
There was an increase in the buzzing noise, and an usher called out loudly, “Silence.”
“Ross, Mr Ross! For heaven’s sake go on,” whispered Mr Swift, excitedly; and Luke felt a twitching at his gown.
But he could not master himself. It was still all like a nightmare, when he turned his eyes slowly on the judge, but in a rapt, vacant way, for the old gentleman said kindly—“I am afraid you are unwell, Mr Ross.” Luke was conscious of bowing slightly, and just then a hysterical sigh from the overwrought breast of Sage struck upon his ear, and he was awake once more.
The incident had been most painful, and to a man the legal gentlemen had considered it a complete breakdown of one of the most promising of the young legal stars, those who had been so far disappointed seeing in the downfall of a rival a chance for themselves.
But the next minute all that had passed was looked upon as a slight eccentricity on the part of a rising man. Mr Swift, who had begun to grind his teeth with annoyance, thrust both his hands into his great blue bag, as if in search of papers, but so as to be able to conceal the gratified rub he was giving them, as he heard Luke Ross in a clear incisive tone, and with a gravity of mien and bearing beyond his years, state the case for the prosecution in a speech that lasted quite a couple of hours. Too long, some said, but it was so masterly in its perspicuity, and dealt so thoroughly with the whole case, that it was finally declared to be the very perfection of forensic eloquence.
How his lips gave utterance to the speech Luke himself hardly knew, but with his father’s words upon his duty ringing in his ears, he carried out that duty as if he had neither feeling against the prisoner, nor desire to save him from his well-merited fate. With the strict impartiality of one holding the scales of justice poised in a hand that never varied in its firmness for an instant, he laid bare Cyril Mallow’s career as partner in the wine firm, and showed forth as black an instance of ingratitude, fraud, and swindling as one man could have gathered into so short a space.
There was a murmur of applause as Luke took his seat. Then his junior called the first witness, and the trial dragged its slow length along; while Luke sat, feeling that Sage would never forgive him for the words that he had said.
Witness after witness, examination and cross-examination, till the prosecution gave way to the defence, and Serjeant Towle shuffled his gown over his shoulders, got his wig awry, and fought the desperate cause with all his might.
But all in vain. The judge summed up dead against the prisoner, alluding forcibly to the kindly consideration of the prosecution; and after stigmatising the career of Cyril Mallow as one of the basest, blackest ingratitude, and a new example of the degradation to which gambling would lead an educated man, he left the case in the jury’s hands, these gentlemen retiring for a few minutes, and then returning with a verdict of guilty.
Sentence, fourteen years’ penal servitude. And, once more, as in a dream, Luke saw Cyril Mallow’s blotched face gazing at him full of malice, and a look of deadly hatred in his eyes, before he was hurried away.
He was then conscious of Mr Swift saying something to him full of praise, and of Serjeant Towle leaning forward to shake hands, as he whispered—
“You beat me, Ross, thoroughly. We’ll be on the same side next time.”
But the dreaminess was once more closing in Luke Ross as with a mist, and in it he saw a pale, agonised face gazing reproachfully in his direction as its owner was being helped out of the court.
“God help me!” muttered Luke. “I must have been mad. She will think it was revenge, when I would sooner have died than given her pain.”