"I think it very wise," said he, "that you did not surrender yourself to the Governor of Carlisle Castle."
This week passed monotonously enough for me, cooped up in my little apartment. But I had a great hope to cheer me through its passage. For, I had come so near to the attainment of my one end, and in the face of so many difficulties, that I could not but believe that Providence had so willed it, and having willed so much, would will that final issue which should crown the work; moreover, two days before the trial, Mr. Doyle brought me news which enheartened me inexpressibly. It was a message of thanks from Anthony Herbert, and to that message was added another from the wife, which showed me that the reconciliation had become an actual fact.
On the eve of the trial I slept at the house of Mr. Doyle. Indeed, from his window I heard the trumpeters, and saw the judge's carriage go by; and so dressing myself the next morning in my new suit, with Mr. Doyle fluttering about me like a lady's maid, I made my way quickly to the Guildhall.
CHAPTER XXII.
[REPARATION.]
The Guildhall stands northwards of the cross in the market-place, and I remember that I paused when halfway up the steps betwixt the pavement and the portico, and turned me about for a second to glance down upon that open space, and men coming and going about it as they willed in the warm sunlight. Mean houses enclosed it, shambles disfigured it; but I noticed no more than its width and spaciousness. How wide and free it seemed! And of a sudden my thoughts flashed me away beyond these houses, and beyond the gates. The market-place vanished before my eyes like a mirage. I was once more marching from Kelso to Preston, across the moors with the merlins crying overhead,—between the hedges,—under the open sky; and it seemed to me so swift was the passage of my memories, that I traversed in that brief interval all the distance of our march.
But many of the townsfolk were mounting to the court, and one that passed jogged against me with his elbow, and so waked me. I raised my head. Well, here was the court-house, within sat the judge; and though the sunlight beat upon my face, the shadow of the building had already reached about my feet.
The little court was nigh upon full, and I pushed into a corner beneath the gallery, where I was like to escape notice, and yet command a view of what was done. There I stood for the space of ten minutes or so, watching the townsfolk enter by twos and threes in a trickling stream, thronging the floor, blocking the doorways; and I know not why, but gradually a great depression, a dull melancholy, overstole my spirits. It was just for this moment that I had lived for many a week back, I assured myself; my days had been one prayer for its coming, my nights one haunting fear lest it should not come. Yet the assurance, repeat it as I might, had little meaning at the outset, and less and less at each repetition. My blood would not be whipped; I felt inert, in some queer way disappointed. I was like one quit of a fever, but in the despondency of exhaustion. I saw the prisoner set in the dock. I noticed the purple hollows about his eyes, the thin, flushed cheeks, the nervous gripping of his fingers on the rail. But the spectacle waked no pity in me, though I was conscious I should feel pity; aroused no shame, though I knew I should be tingling with shame. And when Anthony Herbert sent his gaze piercing anxiously this way and that into the throng, I wondered for a moment who it was for whom he searched. I saw Jervas Rookley seated at a table; he turned his head so that the bruised scar upon his face was visible from cheekbone to chin—and I, for all I felt towards him, might have been looking at the face of an inanimate statue. I saw the judge take his seat, his robes catching the sunlight and glowing against the black panels of the wall, like some monstrous scarlet flower. I was as one who contemplates a moving scene through a spy-glass, knowing it to be very far away. The actual aspect of the court became dreamlike to me, and when the clerk of the Crown cried out "Anthony Herbert, hold up thy hand!" it seemed to me that the curtain was but now rung up upon a puppet-show.
In this listless spirit I listened while the indictment was read. It set forth that "Anthony Herbert, as a false traitor, not weighing the duty of his allegiance, did with other false traitors conspire, compass, and imagine the death of his Majesty, the subversion of the Government, and to introduce the Romish religion; and for the effecting thereof, the said Anthony Herbert did conspire to levy war upon the kingdom and bring in the Pretender."
Thereupon the indictment being read, the jury was empannelled, which took no short time, for of a sudden Herbert, doubtless primed for the work by Nicholas Doyle, challenges one of them—John Martin, I remember, the man was named.