'I ASK YOU TO SPARE YOURSELF FOR MY SAKE,' SAID MARY.
'And are you really going to give yourself up to justice, James, without one effort on your own behalf, or my behalf, or the children's behalf? Will you give your life for the life of such a deep-dyed villain as the merchant is? Will you hold your peace to spare him, and throw away a righteous chance of turning this fearful darkness into light? Oh, James, James! woe is me that I have seen this day! My poor heart will break with all this trouble. Is Phillipson dearer to you than your own Mary? Can you bear that your loved home should become a desolation, a place of weeping and reproach, of poverty and heart-stricken wretchedness? What shall I say to persuade you that wicked vows are only written in the sand, and that you are committing the worst of sins by concealment, when your life, and my life, and everything is at stake? And is this to be our parting, James? I cannot weep now. I am stunned, paralyzed. I feel as if my senses were fast going from, me, as though I must sink down and die. Have pity on me, James! On my knees I ask you to spare yourself for my sake, and to look up believingly to Him who will forgive you all. Don't let me leave you with a hopeless heart, or I shall go beside myself; and who will thank you for the sacrifice? Tell me, James, that you will not throw yourself away, and kiss me as the pledge of it.'
'Mary, my heart will break too,' replied the captain, sobbing, 'if you talk so. I dare not promise. A chain is about me which I cannot rend. What must be, must.' And then, to soothe her, he added, 'Nothing you have said shall be forgotten; and if we part to meet no more on earth, remember the merchant will provide for you—you may trust him in that, I know; and through the mercy of the Almighty we shall meet again soon, where the shadows of sin never darken and the tears of sorrow never fall.'
'Yours is a strange state of heart, James,' she answered. 'You think you are bound before God by a vow; and I think He cannot be pleased with you if you keep it. It's a false state of conscience, which your tempter has helped to bring about; but my prayer for you shall be that there may be light.'
'The time's up,' said the turnkey, considerately giving the notice without unfastening the door, and waiting still, that the last farewell might be spoken. A convulsive embrace—a nervous pressure of those marble lips—a burning tear on that pallid cheek—and again the tottering wife was treading that gloomy passage, emerging from the sepulchre of living men. Again the awe of solitude, made doubly impressive by the presence and absence of such a wife, settled down on the soul of the wretched prisoner.
CHAPTER XIII.
By order of the authorities, James Stauncy was removed from Exeter to London, and lodged in Newgate. According to the law of those times, it was necessary for him to be tried before the Lords of the Admiralty; and on the 25th of February, 1755, the case came on in Justice Hall, at the Old Bailey.
The court was crowded, as is usual on such occasions, by worthless idlers, by men and women whose curiosity and morbid interest in criminal cases bespoke a low mental and moral standard, and by a large number of respectable persons interested in mercantile law, some of whom knew about Mr. Phillipson, and had heard the rumour that he was in fact the guilty man.
No pains or money had been spared by Mr. Phillipson to secure an efficient counsel; and when the prisoner was placed at the bar and the trial commenced, there was not a countenance in that motley company of barristers, jurymen, witnesses, and on that did not give evidence of intense excitement. The captain looked pale and careworn, but he answered when appealed to, with a firm voice, 'Not guilty;' for though he had determined to give his life rather than break his vow by betraying his tempter, he would not publicly confess to a crime, when in his conviction, mistaken as it was, he had only discharged a duty.