Bred in the Bone; Or, Like Father, Like Son: A Novel

by James Payn

The unhappy Richard was wholly ignorant of all this excitement. When he pictured the court-house to himself, as he often did, he only beheld a crowd of indifferent persons, who would pay no more attention to his own case than to that of Balfour, or any other that might follow or precede it. He saw himself taken out in custody, and carried in some conveyance, such as he had arrived in, through the gaping street; but the idea of that ordeal gave him no uneasiness. Those who saw him would forget him the next moment, or confuse him with some other in the same wretched plight. His mind always reverted from such reflections, as comparatively trivial, to the issue of the trial itself. Indeed, that thought might be said to be constant, though others intruded on it occasionally without obscuring it, like light clouds that cross the moon. As to the details of the scene of which he was about to be so prominent an actor, he knew nothing; for the warders never opened their lips to him, except officially, and Mr. Balfour had never happened to come to grief in the course of his professional practice in that particular locality before.

But the fact was that the jail of Cross Key, though situated in so out-of-the-way a spot, was a model establishment in its way, and built upon the very highest principles of architecture, as connected with the administration of the criminal law. No prisoner was ever taken out of it for trial at all, but was conducted by an underground passage into the court-house itself—indeed, into the very heart of it, for a flight of steps, with a trap-door at the top, led straight into the dock, in which he made his appearance like a Jack-in-the-box, but much more to his own astonishment than to that of the spectators.

Imagine the unhappy Richard thus confronted, wholly unexpectedly, with a thousand eager eyes! They devoured him on the right hand and on the left, before him and behind him; they looked down upon him from the galleries above with a hunger that was increased by distance. Even the barristers in the space between him and the judge turned round to gaze at him, and the judge himself adjusted his spectacles upon his nose to regard him with a searching look. Not a sound was to be heard except the monotonous voice of the clerk reading the indictment; it was plain that every one of that vast concourse knew him, and needed not that his neighbor should whisper, "That is he." Was his mother there? thought Richard, and above all, Was Harry there? He looked round once upon that peering throng; but he could catch sight of neither. The former, with a thick veil over her features, was, indeed, watching him from a corner of the court; but the only face he recognized was that of his attorney, seated immediately behind a man with a wig, whom he rightly concluded to be Mr. Sergeant Balais.

There was a sudden silence, following upon the question, "How say you, Richard Yorke, are you guilty of this felony, or not guilty?" The turnkey by the prisoner's side muttered harshly behind his hand, "They have called on you to plead."

"Not guilty," answered Richard, in a loud, firm voice, and fixing his eyes upon the judge.

A murmur of satisfaction ran softly through the court-house. His hesitation had alarmed the curious folks; they were afraid that he might have pleaded "Guilty," and robbed them of their treat. Not a few of them, and perhaps all the women, were also pleased upon his own account. He was so young and handsome that they could not choose but wish him well, and out of his peril.

Then Mr. Smoothbore rose, and was some time about it. He was six feet four inches high, and it seemed as though you would never see the last of him. ("Oh, Jerryusalem, upon wheels!" was the remark that Mr. Robert Balfour muttered to himself when some hours afterward he found himself confronted by the same gigantic counsel, instructed specially by the crown to prosecute so notorious a marauder.) The twelve men in the box opposite at once became all ear. Some leaned forward, as though to anticipate by the millionth of a second the silvery accents of Mr. Smoothbore; others leaned back with head aside, as though to concentrate their intelligence upon them; and the foreman held his head with both his hands, as though that portion of his person was not wholly under control, but might make some erratic twist, and thereby lose him some pregnant sentence. These honest men did not know Mr. Smoothbore, and thought (for the first five minutes) that they could sit and listen to him forever; before they had done with him they began to think that they should have to do it.

Far be it from us to emulate the prolixity with which the learned counsel set forth his case; it must be conceded that he did not hang over it; his words ran as smoothly as oil, and with perfect distinctness, and if any body missed his meaning, it was not for want of its being sufficiently expressed. To a listener of average ability, however, he became insupportable by repetition, which is, unhappily, not exclusively "the vice of the pulpit." We will take care to avoid his error. It will be sufficient to say that when he had finished Richard stood accused not only of having stolen two thousand pounds from John Trevethick, but of having compassed that crime under circumstances of peculiar baseness. He had taken advantage of his superior education, manners, and appearance, to impose himself upon the honest Cornishman as the legitimate son of his landlord, and secured within that humble home a footing of familiarity, only the better to compass a scheme of villainy, which must have occurred to him at a very early period of their acquaintance. Indeed, Mr. Smoothbore hinted that the prisoner's profession of landscape-painting was a mere pretense and pretext, and that it was more than probable that, having heard by some means of Trevethick's hoard, he had come down to Gethin with the express intention of becoming possessed of it, which his accidental discovery of the secret of the letter padlock enabled him to do. In short, by artful innuendo at this or that part of the story, Richard was painted as a common thief, whose possession of such faculties as dexterity and finesse only made him a more dangerous enemy of society. There had been rumors, Mr. Smoothbore admitted, of certain romantic circumstances connected with the case, but he was instructed to say that they were wholly baseless, and that the matter which the jury would have to decide upon was simply an impudent and audacious robbery, committed in a manner that he might stigmatize as being quite exceptionally void of extenuation.

The speech for the prosecution immensely disappointed the general public, already half-convinced, in spite of themselves, by Mr. Smoothbore's impassioned clearness and straightforward simplicity, while it pleased the jury, who were glad to hear that the matter in hand was, after all, an ordinary one, which would necessitate no deprivation of victuals, nor absence of fire and candle. The witnesses for the prosecution appeared, as usual, in an order in inverse ratio to the interest and importance of their respective testimonies—the clerk of the Miners' Bank into whose hands the notes had been paid, policemen, Mr. Dodge, and others, who only repeated what we already know. Even the appearance of Solomon Coe was marked by nothing especial, save to the eyes of the accused. In the triumphant bearing of this witness, and in the malignant glance which he had shot toward him ere he began his tale, Richard read that the charge against him was to be pushed to the bitter end. It was in this man's power, more than in any other's (save one), to extenuate or to set down in malice; and there was no doubt in his rival's mind (though his rancor took so blunt a form that it might well have been mistaken by others for outspoken candor) which of the two courses Solomon had chosen. He showed neither scruple nor hesitation; every word was distinct and decisive, and on one occasion (though the repetition of it was forbidden by the judge) even accompanied by a blow with his sledge-hammer fist in the way of corroboration. It seemed that the story he had to tell was, after all, a very plain one.

When John Trevethick, who was the last witness examined for the prosecution, strode into the box, this feeling was intensified. His giant frame and massive features seemed, somehow, to associate themselves with a plain story; and his evidence was as much in consonance with his counsel's speech as evidence could be with pleading.