Eli's Children: The Chronicles of an Unhappy Family
Cyril then had been received into the partnership, and a great deal of the management had after a short time been left to him, a position of which he took advantage to gamble upon the Stock Exchange with the large sums of money passing through their hands, with just such success as might have been expected, and the discovery that Cyril had involved the firm in bankruptcy broke Mr Walker’s heart, the old man dying within a week of the schedule being filed.
Worse was behind: the executors charged Cyril with having forged his partner’s name to bills, whereon he had raised money, signing not merely the name of the firm, but his own and his partner’s name, upon the strength of which money had been advanced by two bill discounters, both of whom were eager to have him punished.
In short, the more Luke Ross studied, the more he found that the black roll of iniquity was unfolding itself, so that at last he threw down the brief, heartsick with disgust and misery, feeling as he did that if half, nay, a tithe of that which was charged against Cyril were true, no matter who conducted prosecution or defence, the jury was certain to convict him of downright forgery and swindling, and seven or ten years’ penal servitude would be his sentence.
It needed no dull, cheerless morning for Luke’s spirits to be at the lowest ebb when he met his father at breakfast, the old man looking very weak, careworn, and troubled, as they sat over the barely-tasted meal.
Luke hardly spoke, but sat there thinking that he would make a fresh appeal to Mr Swift to relieve him of so terrible a charge, and expecting each moment that his father would again implore him to retire from the prosecution and take up the defence. At last the old man spoke.
“I’ve been lying awake all night, thinking about that, my boy,” he said, “and I’m very, very sorry.”
“Father,” said Luke, “it seems almost more than one can bear.”
“I said to myself that my boy was too noble not to forgive one who had done wrong to him in the past, and I said, too, that it would be a fine thing for him to show people how he was ready to go and fight on his old rival’s behalf.”
“And I will, father, or retire from the case altogether,” said Luke, eagerly.
“No, my son, no,” said the old man; “I have not long to live, and I should not like that little time to be embittered by the thought that I had urged my son to do a dishonourable act.”
“Oh, no,” cried Luke, “I will press them, and they will let me retire.”
“But if they refused again, my boy, it would be dishonourable to draw back after you had promised to do your best. No, my boy, there is the finger of God in it all, and you must go on. Poor girl, poor girl! it will be terrible for her, but we cannot fight against such things.”
“But I could not plead my cause with her eyes reproaching me,” said Luke, half to himself.
“But you must, my boy,” cried the old man. “I lay awake all last night, Luke, and I prayed humbly for guidance to do what was right, and it seemed to me that the good counsel came.”
“Father!” exclaimed Luke, gazing in the old man’s face.
“It will be painful, my boy, but we must not shrink from our duty because it is a difficult one to perform. I am a weak old fellow, and very ignorant, but I know that here my son will be a minister of justice against a bad and wicked man. For he is a bad – a wicked man, my boy, who has stopped at nothing to gratify his own evil ends.”
“But how can I proceed against him, father?”
“Because it is your duty; and, feeling what you do against him, you will guard your heart lest you should strike too hard; and it is better so. Luke, my boy, you will be just; while, if another man prosecutes him, he will see in him only the forger and the cheat, and fight his best to get him condemned.”
It was true, and Luke sat back thinking.
“Yesterday, my boy, I prayed you to undertake this man’s defence; I withdraw it all now: take back every word, and I will go and tell poor Sage Mallow why.”
“No, no, father,” cried Luke; “if I cannot defend, neither will I prosecute.”
“You must, my boy – you have given your word. If you drew back now I should feel that it would go worse against this man.”
“But mine, father, should not be the hand to strike him down,” cried Luke.
“We are not our own masters here, my boy,” said the old man, speaking in a low and reverent tone. “My Luke has never shrunk from his duty yet, and never will.”
Luke sank back in silence, and for a long time no word was spoken. Then he suddenly rose and rang the bell.
“See if Mr Serjeant Towle is in,” he said to the boy, and upon the report being received that the serjeant was within, Luke descended and had ten minutes’ conversation with that great legal luminary, who, after a little consideration, said, as Luke rose to go —
“Well, yes, Ross, I will, if it’s only for the sake of giving you a good thrashing. You are going on too fast, and a little check will do you good. If I take the brief I shall get him off. Send his solicitors to me.”
Five minutes later Luke was with his father.
“Go and see Mrs Mallow at once, father,” he said, “and bid her tell her solicitors to wait upon Mr Serjeant Towle.”
“Yes, my boy – Mr Serjeant Towle,” said the old man, obediently.
“He will require an enormous fee, father, which you will pay.”
“Yes, my boy, of course. Is – is he a great man?”
“One of the leading counsel at the bar; and if Cyril Mallow can be got off, Serjeant Towle is the man for the task.”
“But, my boy – ” began the old man.
“Don’t hesitate, father, but go,” cried Luke; and the old man hurried off.
Part 3, Chapter VI.
The Case for the Prosecution
It was a strange stroke of fate that, in spite of several attempts to evade the duty, circumstances so arranged themselves that Luke Ross found himself literally forced, for his reputation’s sake, to go on with his obnoxious task, and at last the day of trial came.
Luke had passed a sleepless night, and he entered the court, feeling excited, and as if all before him was a kind of dream.
For a few minutes he had not sufficient self-possession even to look round the well of the building; and it was some time before he ventured to scan the part that would be occupied by the spectators. Here, however, for the time being, his eyes remained riveted, as a choking sensation attacked him, for, seated beside the sturdy, well-remembered figure of the Churchwarden, was a careworn, youngish woman, so sadly altered that Luke hardly recognised her as the Sage whose features were so firmly printed on his memory.
She evidently did not see him, but was watching the jury-box, and listening to some remarks made to her from time to time by her uncle.
Luke turned over his brief, and tried to think of what he could do to be perfectly just, and yet spare the husband of the suffering woman before him, and at whom he gazed furtively from time to time.
He saw her as through a mist, gazing wildly at the judge, and then at the portly form and florid face of Serjeant Towle, who was now engaged in an eager conversation with his junior; and the sight of the famous legal luminary for the moment cleared away the misty dreaminess of the scene. Luke’s pulses began to throb, and he felt like one about to enter the arena for a struggle. He had had many legal battles before, from out of which, through his quickness in seizing upon damaging points, he had come with flying colours; but he had never before been opposed to so powerful an adversary as the Serjeant, and, for the moment, a strong desire to commence the encounter came over him.
But this passed off, and the dreamy sensation came back, as he sat gazing at Sage, thinking of their old childish days together, their walks in the wold woodlands, flower-gathering, nutting, or staining their hands with blackberries; of the many times when he climbed the orchard trees to throw down the ripening pears to Sage, who spread her pinafore to receive them. In these dreamy thoughts the very sunshine and sleepy atmosphere of the old place came back, and the sensation of remembrance of the old and happy days became a painful emotion.
It must be a dream, he felt. That could not be Sage seated there by the sturdy, portly, grey-haired man, her uncle. Even old Michael Ross seemed to be terribly changed, making it impossible that the little, thin, withered man seated behind Churchwarden Portlock could be the quick, brisk tradesman of the past.
“Was it all true?” Luke kept asking himself, “or was it, after all, but a dream?”
Cyril Mallow’s was the first case to be taken that morning, and the preliminaries were soon settled; but all the while the dreaminess of the scene seemed to Luke to be on the increase. He tried to bring his thoughts back from the past, but it was impossible; and when Mr Swift the solicitor who had instructed him spoke, the words seemed to be a confused murmur from far away.
Then the clerk of arraigns called the prisoner’s name, and as Cyril Mallow was placed at the bar, and Luke gazed at the face that had grown coarse and common-looking in the past twelve years, the dreaminess increased still more.
Luke was conscious of rising to bow to the court and say, “I am for the prosecution, my lord”; and heard the deep, rolling, sonorous voice of Mr Serjeant Towle reply, “I am for the defence, my lord”; and then Luke’s eyes rested upon Sage, who for the first time recognised him, and was now leaning forward, looking at him with wild and starting eyes that seemed to implore him to spare her husband, for the sake of their childhood’s days; and her look fascinated him so that he could not tear his gaze away.
It must be a dream, or else he was ill, for there was now a strange singing in his ears, as well as the misty appearance before his eyes, through which he could see nothing but Sage Portlock, as his heart persisted in calling her still.
“Was he to go on?” he asked himself, “to go wading on through this terrible nightmare, planting sting after sting in that tender breast, or should he give it up at once?”
He wanted to – he strove to speak, and say, “My lord, I give up this prosecution,” but his lips would not utter the words. For he was in a nightmare-like dream, and no longer a free agent.
And yet his nerves were so overstrung that he was acutely conscious of the slightest sound in the court, as he rose now, the observed of all present.
He heard the soft, subdued rustle made by people settling in their places for the long trial; the catching, hysterical sigh uttered by the prisoner’s wife; and a quick, faint cough, or clearing of the throat, as the prisoner leaned against the dock, and sought to get rid of an unpleasant, nervous contraction of the throat.
Luke stood like one turned to stone, his eyes now fixed on vacancy, his brief grasped in his hand, and his face deadly pale. The moment had arrived for him to commence the prosecution, but his thoughts were back at Lawford, and, like a rapid panorama, there passed before his eyes the old schoolhouses, and the figure of the bright, clever young mistress in the midst of her pupils, while he seemed to hear their merry voices as they darted out into the sunshine, dismissed for the day.
Then he was studying for the mastership, and was back at the training college. That was not the judge seated on his left, but the vice-principal, and those were not spectators and reporters ranged there, tier above tier, with open books and ready pencils, but fellow-students; and he was down before them, at the great black board, helpless and ashamed, for the judge – no, it was the vice-principal – had called him down from his seat, and said – “In any right-angled triangle the square of the sides subtending the right angle is equal to the square of the sides containing the right angle. Prove it.”
Prove it! And that forty-seventh problem of the first book of Euclid that he knew so well had gone, as it were, right out of his memory, leaving but a blank.
There was a faint buzz and rustle amongst the students as it seemed to him in this waking nightmare, and the vice-principal said – “We are all ready, Mr Ross.” Still not a word would come. Some of the students would be, he knew, pitying him, not knowing how soon their own turn might come, while others he felt would be triumphant, being jealous of his bygone success.
He knew that book so well, too; and somehow Sage Portlock had obtained a seat amongst the students, and was waiting to hear him demonstrate the problem, drawing it with a piece of chalk on the black board, and showing how the angle ABC was equal to the angle DEF, and so on, and so on.
“We are all ready, Mr Ross,” came from the vice-principal again. No, it was from the judge, and it was not the theatre at Saint Chrysostom’s, but the court at the Old Bailey, where he was to prosecute Cyril Mallow, his old rival, the husband of the woman he had loved, for forgery and fraud; and his throat was dry, his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth, and his thoughts were wandering away.
And yet his senses were painfully acute to all that passed. He knew that Serjeant Towle had chuckled fatly, after fixing his great double eyeglass to gaze at him. Then, as distinctly as if the words were uttered in his ear, he heard one of the briefless whisper —
“He has lost his nerve.”
There was an increase in the buzzing noise, and an usher called out loudly, “Silence.”
“Ross, Mr Ross! For heaven’s sake go on,” whispered Mr Swift, excitedly; and Luke felt a twitching at his gown.
But he could not master himself. It was still all like a nightmare, when he turned his eyes slowly on the judge, but in a rapt, vacant way, for the old gentleman said kindly – “I am afraid you are unwell, Mr Ross.” Luke was conscious of bowing slightly, and just then a hysterical sigh from the overwrought breast of Sage struck upon his ear, and he was awake once more.
The incident had been most painful, and to a man the legal gentlemen had considered it a complete breakdown of one of the most promising of the young legal stars, those who had been so far disappointed seeing in the downfall of a rival a chance for themselves.
But the next minute all that had passed was looked upon as a slight eccentricity on the part of a rising man. Mr Swift, who had begun to grind his teeth with annoyance, thrust both his hands into his great blue bag, as if in search of papers, but so as to be able to conceal the gratified rub he was giving them, as he heard Luke Ross in a clear incisive tone, and with a gravity of mien and bearing beyond his years, state the case for the prosecution in a speech that lasted quite a couple of hours. Too long, some said, but it was so masterly in its perspicuity, and dealt so thoroughly with the whole case, that it was finally declared to be the very perfection of forensic eloquence.
How his lips gave utterance to the speech Luke himself hardly knew, but with his father’s words upon his duty ringing in his ears, he carried out that duty as if he had neither feeling against the prisoner, nor desire to save him from his well-merited fate. With the strict impartiality of one holding the scales of justice poised in a hand that never varied in its firmness for an instant, he laid bare Cyril Mallow’s career as partner in the wine firm, and showed forth as black an instance of ingratitude, fraud, and swindling as one man could have gathered into so short a space.
There was a murmur of applause as Luke took his seat. Then his junior called the first witness, and the trial dragged its slow length along; while Luke sat, feeling that Sage would never forgive him for the words that he had said.
Witness after witness, examination and cross-examination, till the prosecution gave way to the defence, and Serjeant Towle shuffled his gown over his shoulders, got his wig awry, and fought the desperate cause with all his might.
But all in vain. The judge summed up dead against the prisoner, alluding forcibly to the kindly consideration of the prosecution; and after stigmatising the career of Cyril Mallow as one of the basest, blackest ingratitude, and a new example of the degradation to which gambling would lead an educated man, he left the case in the jury’s hands, these gentlemen retiring for a few minutes, and then returning with a verdict of guilty.
Sentence, fourteen years’ penal servitude. And, once more, as in a dream, Luke saw Cyril Mallow’s blotched face gazing at him full of malice, and a look of deadly hatred in his eyes, before he was hurried away.
He was then conscious of Mr Swift saying something to him full of praise, and of Serjeant Towle leaning forward to shake hands, as he whispered —
“You beat me, Ross, thoroughly. We’ll be on the same side next time.”
But the dreaminess was once more closing in Luke Ross as with a mist, and in it he saw a pale, agonised face gazing reproachfully in his direction as its owner was being helped out of the court.
“God help me!” muttered Luke. “I must have been mad. She will think it was revenge, when I would sooner have died than given her pain.”
Part 3, Chapter VII.
After the Sentence
There was nothing farther to detain Luke Ross, but he remained in his seat for some time, studying the next case people said, but only that he might dream on in peace, for in the midst of the business of the next trial he found repose. No one spoke to him, and he seemed by degrees to be able to condense his thoughts upon the past.
And there he sat, trying to examine himself searchingly, probing his every thought as he sought for condemnatory matter against himself.
He felt as if he had been acting all day under some strange influence, moved by a power that was not his own, and that, as the instrument in other hands, he had been employed to punish Cyril Mallow.
“They will all join in condemning me,” he thought, “and henceforth I shall go through life branded as one who hounded down his enemy almost to the death.”
At length he raised his eyes, and they rested upon the little, thin, wistful countenance of his father, and there was a feeling of bitter reproach for his neglect of one who had travelled all the previous day so as to be present at the trial.
He made a sign to him as he rose, and the old man joined him in the robing-room, where Mr Dick eyed him askance as he relieved his master of his wig and gown; and then they returned to the chambers, where Luke threw himself into a chair, and gazed helplessly at his father, till the old man laid a hand, almost apologetically, upon his son’s arm.
“You are tired out, my boy. Come with me, and let us go somewhere and dine.”
“After I have disgraced myself like this, father?” groaned Luke. “Are you not ashamed of such a son?”
“Ashamed? Disgraced? My boy, what do you mean? I never felt so proud of you before. It was grand!”
“Proud!” cried Luke, passionately, “when I seem to have stooped to the lowest form of cowardly retaliation. A rival who made himself my enemy is grovelling in the mire, and I, instead of going to him like an honourable, magnanimous man, to raise him up and let him begin a better life, have planted my heel upon his face, and crushed him lower into the slough.”
“It was your duty, my boy, and you did that duty,” cried the old man, quickly. “I will not hear you speak like that.”
“And Sage – his wife,” groaned Luke, not hearing, apparently, his father’s words. “Father, the memory of my old love for her has clung to me ever. I have been true to that memory, loving still the sweet, bright girl I knew before that man came between us like a black shadow and clouded the sunshine of my life.”
He stopped, and let his head rest upon his hand.
“My love for her has never failed, father, but is as fresh and bright now as it was upon the day when I came up here to town ready for the long struggle I felt that I should have before I could seek her for my wife. That love, I tell you, is as fresh and warm now as it was that day, but it has always been the love of one suddenly cut off from me – the love of one I looked upon as dead. For that evening, when I met them in the Kilby lane, Sage Portlock died to me, and the days I mourned were as for one who had passed away.”
“My boy, my boy, I know. He did come between you, and seemed to blight your life, but he is punished now.”
“Punished? No,” said Luke, excitedly; “it is not the man I have punished, but his wife. Father, that sorrowing, reproachful look she directed at me this morning will cling to me to my dying day. I cannot bear it. I feel as if the memory would drive me mad.”
He started up, and paced the room in an agony of mind that alarmed old Michael, who sought in vain to utter soothing words.
At last, as if recalled to himself by the feeling that he was neglecting the trembling old man before him, Luke made an effort to master the thoughts that troubled him, and they were about to go out together, when the boy announced two visitors, and Luke shrank back unnerved once more, on finding that they were the Reverend Eli Mallow and his old Churchwarden.
“I did not know his father was in town,” said Luke, in a low voice.
“Yes, my boy, he sat back, poor fellow. He looks very old and weak,” said Michael Ross, in a quiet patronising way. “He is a good deal broken, my boy. Speak kindly to him, pray.”
“What do they want?” said Luke. “Oh, father, what have I done that fate should serve me such an ugly turn?”
“Your duty, my boy, your duty,” whispered the old man; and the next minute the visitors were in the room, finding, as they entered, that old Michael was holding his son’s arm in a tender, proud way that seemed to fix the old Rector’s eyes.
He was, indeed, old-looking and broken; sadly changed from the fine, handsome, greyheaded man that Luke knew so well.
“I met Mr Mallow almost at your door,” said Portlock, in his bluff, firm way. “We did not come together, but we both wanted to call.”
Luke pointed to chairs, but the old Rector remained standing, gazing reproachfully at Luke.
“Yes, I wanted to see you,” he said; “I wanted to see and speak to the man I taught when he was a boy, and in whom I took a great deal of pride. I was proud to see you progress, Luke Ross. I used to read and show the reports to your father when I saw them, for I said Luke Ross is a credit to our town.”
“And you said so to me often, Mr Mallow,” cried old Michael.
“I did – I did,” said the Rector; “and to-day in court I asked myself what I had ever done to this man that he should strike me such a blow.”
“Be just, for heaven’s sake, Mr Mallow,” cried Luke. “I did not seek the task I have fulfilled to-day.”
“And I said to myself, as I saw my only son dragged away by his gaolers, ‘I will go and curse this man – this cold-blooded wretch who could thus triumph over us.’ I said I would show him what he has done – bruised my heart, driven a suffering woman nearly mad, and made two little innocent children worse than orphans.”
“Mr Mallow, is this justice?” groaned Luke.
“No,” said the old man, softly. “I said it in mine haste, and as I hurried here mine anger passed away; the scales dropped from mine eyes, and I knew that it was no work of thine. Truly, as Eli’s sons of old brought heaviness to their father’s heart, so have my poor sons to mine; and, Michael Ross,” he cried, holding out his trembling hands, “I was so proud of that boy – so proud. He was his mother’s idol, and, bad as he would be at times, he was always good to her. Can you wonder that she loved him? Oh, God help me! my boy – my boy!”
“It has been an agony to me ever since the brief was forced upon me, Mr Mallow,” said Luke, taking the old man’s hand. “Believe me, I could not help this duty I had to do.”
“God bless you, Luke Ross!” said the old man, feebly. “Like Balaam of old, I came to curse, and I stop to bless. If I have anything to forgive, I forgive you, as I hope to be forgiven. You have been a good son. Michael Ross, you have never known what it is to feel as I do now. But I must go back; I must go back to her at home. She waits to know the worst, and this last blow will kill her, gentlemen – my poor, suffering angel of a wife – it will be her death.”
“Will you not come and see Sage first?” said Portlock, with rough sympathy.
“No, no, I think not. The sight of my sad face would do her harm. I’ll get home. Keep her with you, Portlock. God bless her! – a true, sweet wife. We came like a blight to her, Portlock. Luke Ross, I ought not to have allowed it, but I thought it was for the best – that it would reform my boy. My life has been all mistakes, and I long now to lie down and sleep. Keep her with you, Portlock, and teach her and her little ones to forget us all.”
