Foul Play - Dion Boucicault (the best books to read txt) 📗

employer.” She arrived at 3 Fairfield Cottages with her cheeks burning, and repeating to herself: “Now is the time to be supple as a woman but obstinate as a man.”

She sent the cabman in to inquire for Mr. Penfold; a sharp girl of about thirteen came out to her, and told her Mr. Penfold was not at home.

“Can you tell me when he will be at home?”

“No, miss. He have gone to Scotland. A telegraphum came from Wardlaws’ last night, as he was to go to Scotland first thing this morning; and he went at six o’clock.”

“Oh, dear! How unfortunate!”

“Who shall I say called, miss?”

“Thank you, I will write. What time did the telegram come?”

“Between five and six last evening, miss.”

She returned to the hotel. Fate seemed to be against her. Baffled at the very threshold! At the hotel she found Arthur Wardlaw’s card and a beautiful bouquet.

She sat down directly, and wrote to him affectionately, and asked him in the postscript if he could send her a report of the trial. She received a reply directly, that he had inquired in the office, for one of the clerks had reports of it; but this clerk was unfortunately out, and had locked up his desk.

Helen sighed. Her feet seemed to be clogged at every step in this inquiry.

Next morning, however, a large envelope came for her, and a Mr. Hand wrote to her thus:

 

“MADAM—Having been requested by Mr. Arthur Wardlaw to send you my extracts of a trial, the Queen v. Penfold, I herewith forward the same, and would feel obliged by your returning them at your convenience.

“Your obedient servant,

“JAMES HAND.”

 

Helen took the inclosed extracts to her bedroom, and there read them both over many times.

In both these reports the case for the Crown was neat, clear, cogent, straightforward, and supported by evidence. The defense was chiefly argument of counsel to prove the improbability of a clergyman and a man of good character passing a forged note. One of the reports stated that Mr. Arthur Wardlaw, a son of the principal witness, had taken the accusation so much to heart that he was now dangerously ill at Oxford. The other report did not contain this, but, on the other hand, it stated that the prisoner, after conviction, had endeavored to lay the blame on Mr. Arthur Wardlaw, but that the judge had stopped him, and said he could only aggravate his offense by endeavoring to cast a slur upon the Wardlaws, who had both shown a manifest desire to shield him, but were powerless for want of evidence.

In both reports the summing up of the judge was moderate in expression, but leaned against the prisoner on every point, and corrected the sophistical reasoning of his counsel very sensibly. Both reports said an expert was called for the prisoner, whose ingenuity made the court smile, but did not counterbalance the evidence. Helen sat cold as ice with the extracts in her hand.

Not that her sublime faith was shaken, but that poor Robert appeared to have been so calmly and fairly dealt with by everybody. Even Mr. Hennessy, the counsel for the Crown, had opened the case with humane regret, and confined himself to facts, and said nobody would be more pleased than he would, if this evidence could be contradicted, or explained in a manner consistent with the prisoner’s innocence.

What a stone she had undertaken to roll—up what a hill!

What was to be her next step? Go to the Museum, which was now open to her, and read more reports? She shrank from that.

“The newspapers are all against him,” said she; “and I don’t want to be told he is guilty, when I know he is innocent.”

She now re-examined the extracts with a view to names, and found the only names mentioned were those of the counsel. The expert’s name was not given in either. However, she knew that from Robert. She resolved to speak to Mr. Hennessy first, and try and get at the defendant’s solicitor through him.

She found him out by the Law Directory, and called at a few minutes past four.

Hennessy was almost the opposite to Tollemache. He was about the size of a gentleman’s wardrobe; and, like most enormous men, good-natured. He received her, saw with his practiced eye that she was no common person, and, after a slight hesitation on professional grounds, heard her request. He sent for his notebook, found the case in one moment, remastered it in another, and told her the solicitor for the Crown in that case was Freshfleld.

“Now,” said he, “you want to know who was the defendant’s solicitor? Jenkins, a stamped envelope. Write your name and address on that.”

While she was doing it, he scratched a line to Mr. Freshfield, asking him to send the required information to the inclosed address.

She thanked Mr. Hennessy with the tears in her eyes.

“I dare not ask you whether you think him guilty,” she said.

Hennessy shook his head with an air of good-natured rebuke.

“You must not cross-examine counsel,” said he. “But, if it will be any comfort to you, I’ll say this much, there was just a shadow of doubt, and Tollemache certainly let a chance slip. If I had defended your friend, I would have insisted on a postponement of the trial until this Arthur Wardlaw” (looking at his notebook) “could be examined, either in court or otherwise, if he was really dying. Is he dead, do you know?”

“No.”

“I thought not. Sick witnesses are often at death’s door; but I never knew one pass the threshold. Ha! ha! The trial ought to have been postponed till he got well. If a judge refused me a postponement in such a case, I would make him so odious to the jury that the prisoner would get a verdict in spite of his teeth.”

“Then you think he was badly defended?”

“No; that is saying a great deal more than I could justify. But there are counsel who trust too much to their powers of reasoning, and underrate a chink in the evidence pro or con. Practice, and a few back-falls, cure them of that.”

Mr. Hennessy uttered this general observation with a certain change of tone, which showed he thought he had said as much or more than his visitor had any right to expect from him; and she therefore left him, repeating her thanks. She went home, pondering on every word he had said, and entered it all in her journal, with the remark: “How strange! the first doubt of Robert’s guilt comes to me from the lawyer who caused him to be found guilty. He calls it the shadow of a doubt.”

That very evening, Mr. Freshfield had the courtesy to send her by messenger the name and address of the solicitor who had defended Robert Penfold, Lovejoy & James, Lincoln’s Inn Fields. She called on them, and sent in her card. She was kept waiting a long time in the outer office, and felt ashamed, and sick at heart, seated among young clerks. At last she was admitted, and told Mr. Lovejoy she and her father, General Rolleston, were much interested in a late client of his, Mr. Robert Penfold; and would he be kind enough to let her see the brief for the defense?

“Are you a relation of the Penfolds, madam?”

“No, sir,” said Helen blushing.

“Humph!” said Lovejoy. He touched a handbell. A clerk appeared.

“Ask Mr. Upton to come to me.” Mr. Upton, the managing clerk, came in due course, and Mr. Lovejoy asked him:

“Who instructed us in the Queen v. Penfold?”

“It was Mr. Michael Penfold, sir.” Mr. Lovejoy then told Helen that she must just get a line from Mr. Michael Penfold, and then the papers should be submitted to her.

“Yes; but, sir,” said Helen, “Mr. Penfold is in Scotland.”

“Well, but you can write to him.”

“No; I don’t know in what part of Scotland he is.”

“Then you are not very intimate with him.”

“No, sir; my acquaintance is with Mr. Robert Penfold.”

“Have you a line from him?”

“I have no written authority from him; but will you not take my word that I act by his desire?”

“My dear madam,” said the lawyer, “we go by rule. There are certain forms to be observed in these things. I am sure your own good sense will tell you it would be cruel and improper of me to submit those papers without an order from Robert or Michael Penfold. Pray consider this as a delay, not a refusal.”

“Yes, sir,” said Helen; “but I meet with nothing but delays, and my heart is breaking under them.”

The solicitor looked sorry, but would not act irregularly. She went home sighing, and condemned to wait the return of Michael Penfold.

The cab door was opened for her by a seedy man she fancied she had seen before.

Baffled thus, and crippled in every movement she made, however slight, in favor of Robert Penfold, she was seduced on the other hand into all the innocent pleasures of the town. Her adventure had transpired somehow or other, and all General Rolleston’s acquaintances hunted him up; and both father and daughter were courted by people of ton as lions. A shipwrecked beauty is not offered to society every day. Even her own sex raved about her, and about the chain of beautiful pearls she had picked up somehow on her desolate island. She always wore them; they linked her to that sacred purpose she seemed to be forgetting. Her father drew her with him into the vortex, hiding from her that he embarked in it principally for her sake, and she went down the current with him out of filial duty. Thus unfathomable difficulties thrust her back from her up-hill task. And the world, with soft but powerful hand, drew her away to it. Arthur brought her a choice bouquet, or sent her a choice bouquet, every evening, but otherwise did not intrude much upon her; and though she was sure he would assist her, if she asked him, gratitude and delicacy forbade her to call him again to her assistance. She preferred to await the return of Michael Penfold. She had written to him at the office to tell him she had news of his son, and begged him to give her instant notice of his return from Scotland.

Day after day passed, and he did not write to her. She began to chafe, and then to pine. Her father saw, and came to a conclusion that her marriage with Arthur ought to be hastened. He resolved to act quietly but firmly toward that end.

 

CHAPTER LVI.

 

UP to this time Helen’s sex, and its attributes, had been a great disadvantage to her. She had been stopped on the very threshold of her inquiry by petty difficulties which a man would have soon surmounted. But one fine day the scale gave a little turn, and she made a little discovery, thanks to her sex. Women, whether it is that they are born to be followed, or are accustomed to be followed, seem to have eyes in the backs of their heads, and instinct to divine when somebody is after them. This inexperienced girl, who had missed seeing many things our readers have seen, observed in merely passing her window a seedy man in the courtyard of the hotel. Would you believe it, she instantly recognized the man who had opened her cab door for her in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Quick as lightning it passed through her mind, “Why do I see the same figure at Lincoln’s Inn Fields and at Charing Cross?” At various intervals she passed the window; and twice she saw the man again.