As a lawyer, in the broad and high sense of the word, it may be presumed that Mr. Chaffanbrass knows little or nothing. He has, indeed, no occasion for such knowledge. His business is to perplex a witness and bamboozle a jury, and in doing that he is generally successful. He seldom cares for carrying the judge with him: such tactics, indeed, as his are not likely to tell upon a judge. That which he loves is, that a judge should charge against him, and a jury give a verdict in his favour. When he achieves that he feels that he has earned his money. Let others, the young lads and spooneys of his profession, undertake the milk-and-water work of defending injured innocence; it is all but an insult to his practised ingenuity to invite his assistance to such tasteless business. Give him a case in which he has all the world against him; Justice with her sword raised high to strike; Truth with open mouth and speaking eyes to tell the bloody tale; outraged humanity shrieking for punishment; a case from which Mercy herself, with averted eyes, has loathing turned and bade her sterner sister do her work; give him such a case as this, and then you will see Mr. Chaffanbrass in his glory. Let him, by the use of his high art, rescue from the gallows and turn loose upon the world the wretch whose hands are reeking with the blood of father, mother, wife, and brother, and you may see Mr. Chaffanbrass, elated with conscious worth, rub his happy hands with infinite complacency. Then will his ambition be satisfied, and he will feel that in the verdict of the jury he has received the honour due to his genius. He will have succeeded in turning black into white, in washing the blackamoor, in dressing in the fair robe of innocence the foulest, filthiest wretch of his day; and as he returns to his home, he will be proudly conscious that he is no little man.
In person, however, Mr. Chaffanbrass is a little man, and a very dirty little man. He has all manner of nasty tricks about him, which make him a disagreeable neighbour to barristers sitting near to him. He is profuse with snuff, and very generous with his handkerchief. He is always at work upon his teeth, which do not do much credit to his industry. His wig is never at ease upon his head, but is poked about by him, sometimes over one ear, sometimes over the other, now on the back of his head, and then on his nose; and it is impossible to say in which guise he looks most cruel, most sharp, and most intolerable. His linen is never clean, his hands never washed, and his clothes apparently never new. He is about five feet six in height, and even with that stoops greatly. His custom is to lean forward, resting with both hands on the sort of desk before him, and then to fix his small brown basilisk eye on the victim in the box before him. In this position he will remain unmoved by the hour together, unless the elevation and fall of his thick eyebrows and the partial closing of his wicked eyes can be called motion. But his tongue! that moves; there is the weapon which he knows how to use!
Such is Mr. Chaffanbrass in public life; and those who only know him in public life can hardly believe that at home he is one of the most easy, good-tempered, amiable old gentlemen that ever was pooh-poohed by his grown-up daughters, and occasionally told to keep himself quiet in a corner. Such, however, is his private character. Not that he is a fool in his own house; Mr. Chaffanbrass can never be a fool; but he is so essentially good-natured, so devoid of any feeling of domestic tyranny, so placid in his domesticities, that he chooses to be ruled by his own children. But in his own way he is fond of hospitality; he delights in a cosy glass of old port with an old friend in whose company he may be allowed to sit in his old coat and old slippers. He delights also in his books, in his daughters' music, and in three or four live pet dogs, and birds, and squirrels, whom morning and night he feeds with his own hands. He is charitable, too, and subscribes largely to hospitals founded for the relief of the suffering poor.
Such was Mr. Chaffanbrass, who had been selected by the astute Mr. Gitemthruet to act as leading counsel on behalf of Alaric. If any human wisdom could effect the escape of a client in such jeopardy, the wisdom of Mr. Chaffanbrass would be likely to do it; but, in truth, the evidence was so strong against him, that even this Newgate hero almost feared the result.
I will not try the patience of anyone by stating in detail all the circumstances of the trial. In doing so I should only copy, or, at any rate, might copy, the proceedings at some of those modern causes célèbres with which all those who love such subjects are familiar. And why should I force such matters on those who do not love them? The usual opening speech was made by the chief man on the prosecuting side, who, in the usual manner, declared 'that his only object was justice; that his heart bled within him to see a man of such acknowledged public utility as Mr. Tudor in such a position; that he sincerely hoped that the jury might find it possible to acquit him, but that—' And then went into his 'but' with so much venom that it was clearly discernible to all, that in spite of his protestations, his heart was set upon a conviction.
When he had finished, the witnesses for the prosecution were called—the poor wretches whose fate it was to be impaled alive that day by Mr. Chaffanbrass. They gave their evidence, and in due course were impaled. Mr. Chaffanbrass had never been greater. The day was hot, and he thrust his wig back till it stuck rather on the top of his coat-collar than on his head; his forehead seemed to come out like the head of a dog from his kennel, and he grinned with his black teeth, and his savage eyes twinkled, till the witnesses sank almost out of sight as they gazed at him.
And yet they had very little to prove, and nothing that he could disprove. They had to speak merely to certain banking transactions, to say that certain moneys had been so paid in and so drawn out, in stating which they had their office books to depend on. But not the less on this account were they made victims. To one clerk it was suggested that he might now and then, once in three months or so, make an error in a figure; and, having acknowledged this, he was driven about until he admitted that it was very possible that every entry he made in the bank books in the course of the year was false. 'And you, such as you,' said Mr. Chaffanbrass, 'do you dare to come forward to give evidence on commercial affairs? Go down, sir, and hide your ignominy.' The wretch, convinced that he was ruined for ever, slunk out of court, and was ashamed to show himself at his place of business for the next three days.
There were ten or twelve witnesses, all much of the same sort, who proved among them that this sum of twenty thousand pounds had been placed at Alaric's disposal, and that now, alas! the twenty thousand pounds were not forthcoming. It seemed to be a very simple case; and, to Alaric's own understanding, it seemed impossible that his counsel should do anything for him. But as each impaled victim shrank with agonized terror from the torture, Mr. Gitemthruet would turn round to Alaric and assure him that they were going on well, quite as well as he had expected. Mr. Chaffanbrass was really exerting himself; and when Mr. Chaffanbrass did really exert himself he rarely failed.
And so the long day faded itself away in the hot sweltering court, and his lordship, at about seven o'clock, declared his intention of adjourning. Of course a cause célèbre such as this was not going to decide itself in one day. Alaric's guilt was clear as daylight to all concerned; but a man who had risen to be a Civil Service Commissioner, and to be entrusted with the guardianship of twenty thousand pounds, was not to be treated like a butcher who had merely smothered his wife in an ordinary way, or a housebreaker who had followed his professional career to its natural end; more than that was due to the rank and station of the man, and to the very respectable retaining fee with which Mr. Gitemthruet had found himself enabled to secure the venom of Mr. Chaffanbrass. So the jury retired to regale themselves en masse at a neighbouring coffee-house; Alaric was again permitted to be at large on bail (the amiable policeman in mufti still attending him at a distance); and Mr. Chaffanbrass and his lordship retired to prepare themselves by rest for the morrow's labours.
But what was Alaric to do? He soon found himself under the guardianship of the constant Gitemthruet in a neighbouring tavern, and his cousin Charley was with him. Charley had been in court the whole day, except that he had twice posted down to the West End in a cab to let Gertrude and Mrs. Woodward know how things were going on. He had posted down and posted back again, and, crowded as the court had been, he had contrived to make his way in, using that air of authority to which the strongest-minded policeman will always bow; till at last the very policemen assisted him, as though he were in some way connected with the trial.