“Not a step,—not an inch. It was going with you brought me here. This man, my Lord,” cried he, addressing the Court with a wild earnestness,—“this man said to me that this was the time to sell a property,—that land was rising every day; that if we came into the Court now, it's not twenty, nor twenty-five, but thirty years' purchase—”
“I am sorry, sir,” said the Commissioner, sternly, “that you will give me no alternative but that of committing you; such continued disrespect of Court cannot longer be borne.”
“I 'm as well in jail as anywhere else. You 've robbed me of my property, I care little for my person. I'll never believe it's law,—never! You may sit up with your wig and your ushers and your criers, but you are just a set of thieves and swindlers, neither more nor less. Talk of shame, indeed! I think some of yourselves might blush at what you 're doing. There, there, I 'm not going to resist you,” said he to the policeman; “there's no need of roughness. Newgate is the best place for me now. Mind,” added he, turning to where the reporters for the daily press were sitting,—“mind and say that I just offered a calm protest against the injustice done me; that I was civilly remonstrating with the Court upon what every man—”
Ere he could finish, he was quietly removed from the spot, and before the excitement of the scene had subsided, he was driving away rapidly towards Newgate.
“Drunk or mad,—which was it?” said Lord Glengariff to Davenport Dunn, whose manner was scarcely as composed as usual.
“He has been drinking, but not to drunkenness,” said Dunn, cautiously. “He is certainly to be pitied.” And now he drew nigh the bench and whispered a few words to the Commissioner.
Whatever it was that he urged—and there was an air of entreaty in his manner—did not seem to meet the concurrence of the judge. Dunn pleaded earnestly, however; and at last the Commissioner said, “Let him be brought up tomorrow, then, and having made a suitable apology to the Court, we will discharge him.” Thus ended the incident, and once more the clerk resumed his monotonous readings. Townlands and baronies were described, valuations quoted, rights of turbary defined, and an ancient squirearchy sold out of their possessions with as little commotion or excitement as a mock Claude is knocked down at Christie's. Indeed, of so little moment was the scene we have mentioned deemed, that scarcely half a dozen lines of the morning papers were given to its recital. The Court and its doings were evidently popular with the country at large, and one of the paragraphs which readers read with most pleasure was that wherein it was recorded that estates of immense value had just changed owners, and that the Commissioner had disposed of so many thousands' worth of landed property within the week.
Sweeping measures, of whatever nature they be, have always been in favor with the masses; never was any legislation so popular as the guillotine!
Evening was closing in, the gloomy ending of a gloomy day in winter, and Sybella Kellett sat at the window anxiously watching for her father's return. The last two days had been passed by her in a state of feverish uneasiness. Since her father's attendance at the custom-house ceased,—. for he had been formally dismissed at the beginning of the week,—his manner had exhibited strange alternations of wild excitement and deep depression. At times he would move hurriedly about, talking rapidly, sometimes singing to himself; at others he would sit in a state of torpor for hours. He drank, too, affecting some passing pain or some uneasiness as an excuse for the whiskey-bottle; and when gently remonstrated with on the evil consequences, became fearfully passionate and excited. “I suppose I 'll be called a drunkard next; there 's nothing more likely than I 'll be told it was my own sottish habits brought all this ruin upon me. 'He 's a sot.'—'He 's never sober.'—'Ask his own daughter about him.'” And then stimulating himself, he would become furious with rage. As constantly, too, did he inveigh against Dunn, saying that it was he that ruined him, and that had he not listened to his treacherous counsels he might have arranged matters with his creditors. From these bursts of passion he would fall into moods of deepest melancholy, accusing his own folly and recklessness as the cause of all his misfortunes, and even pushing self-condemnation so far as to assert that it was his misconduct and waste had driven poor Jack from home and made him enlist as a soldier.
Bella could not but see that his intellect was affected and his judgment impaired, and she made innumerable pretexts to be ever near him. Now she pretended that she required air and exercise, that her spirits were low, and needed companionship. Then she affected to have little purchases to make in town, and asked him to bear her company. At length he showed a restlessness under this restraint that obliged her to relax it; he even dropped chance words as if he suspected that he was the object of some unusual care and supervision. “There's no need of watching me,” said he, rudely, to her on the morning that preceded the sale; “I 'm in no want of a keeper. They 'll see Paul Kellett 's not the man to quail under any calamity; the same to-day, to-morrow, and the next day. Sell him out or buy him in, and you 'll never know by his face that he felt it.”