Chapter X: Hearing is not believing

Thursday arrived, and Harold Drewitt was again brought up on remand before the magistrate.

He had been taken into custody on the 15th of August, and it was now the middle of September; and as he came into court, two or three people remarked that the air had not seemed to agree with him—that he evidently wanted a change. “Which he is not likely to get to-day,” observed one policeman.

“His witness is here, though, I am told,” was the reply.

“I don’t care if fifty witnesses were here, they could not bring him out clear,” answered the other, oracularly; and, indeed, this was the general feeling in the court. Everybody thought Harold had made a mistake in not pleading guilty, and begging for mercy, as it was his first offence, and the temptation had been great.

In one way the policeman was right. Mr. Gyton could clear him in law, but Mr. Gyton could never wash him white in the estimation of the public; and poor Harold appeared to feel this, as he looked round the court, and saw every eye fastened on him, not compassionately, but curiously.

He never seemed to have courage except when he glanced at Brian, who had been faithful to him through all—faithful, as he had promised his father, on his death-bed, that he would be to Harold.

There was the magistrate, severe and incredulous; there were some of the directors of the Dundalk and Drogheda Banking Company, eager for revenge; there was Mr. Jeremiah Kearns; there were all the witnesses, mentally checking off the depositions as they were read aloud, and thinking how impossible it was any man living could prove an alibi in the face of such overwhelming evidence.

One or two fresh witnesses had been procured by the bank from impossible regions of the earth: the lady who got into the carriage at Drogheda; the passengers who had travelled from Balbriggan to Malahide;—all were there to swear to Harold’s identity with the thief.

The lady was the only person who hesitated about the matter. She could not swear to the prisoner being her fellow-passenger. “He was very like him; but—”

“But what, my dear madam?” suggested the solicitor for the prosecution; and the court waited for her reply, while the lady still hesitated.

“Pray tell us in what respect the prisoner is unlike?” suggested the magistrate, insinuatingly; for the lady was pretty, and his worship had eyes in his head.

There was a profound silence in the court, while the witness turned and looked again at Harold.

Very imploringly he lifted his eyes to hers, and perhaps that settled the matter.

“I cannot swear to the prisoner being the young gentleman with whom I travelled from Drogheda. He is very like—but——”

“Pray proceed, we are all attention;” and the solicitor for the prosecution struck an attitude while he waited for the rest of the sentence.

“The young gentleman I travelled with had a slight suspicion of a moustache and beard coming,” said the lady, desperately, “and——”

A roar of laughter, in which the magistrate himself could not help joining, drowned the remainder of her words.

“You mean, I conclude, that the prisoner’s hirsute appendages have not as yet made their appearance,” suggested the magistrate.

“He has likely been hungry where he was, and ate them off,” remarked some one in the rear.

“If I hear any more indecent interruptions,” said his worship, “I will order the court to be cleared.”

“If ye’d have it cleaned,” observed the same voice; whereupon the police made a dive into the crowd, and seizing an old woman and a boy, hustled them outside the door.

Meantime the solicitor for the prosecution was asking the witness, “if she did not think it possible she was mistaken—that she had been thinking of some one else?”

Upon which the lady got cross and said, “She was not mistaken, and that she was not thinking of any one else;” and as nothing more could be made of her, she was ordered to stand down.

The solicitor for the defence, when it came to his turn, said very little about the business—as little as he could help. He remarked, that it was clearly a case of mistaken identity, and observed that the prisoner had been in Dublin at the very hour when the robbery was said to have been committed. In support of which he produced Mr. Francis Gyton, whose appearance made an impression both on the magistrate and the court generally.

Mr. Francis Gyton being sworn, deposed, that he was a son of Mr. Gyton, of the firm of Gyton, Lark, Munday, Hatfield, & Co., Austinfriars, London.

“He has got fathers enough,” remarked the former speaker from among the crowd, and the police made a fresh dive, and this time carried off in triumph a woman who had an infant in her arms.

Mr. Gyton proceeded—Knew the prisoner Harold Drewitt very well indeed; called at his mother’s house, and subsequently at the office of his employers, on the first of August last. Remembered the day, because he left London on the evening of the thirty-first of July, by the twenty-five minutes past eight express, and crossed to Kingston by the night mail-packet. Was only the one day in Dublin. Left the very evening of his arrival for Galway. Slept in Galway at the Railway Hotel, and proceeded the next day to Durrow Park, near Duranmore, the residence of his uncle, Mr. Henry Pryor. The prisoner dined with him and accompanied him to the railway station.

Cross-examined.—Was certain he did not stop the night at Chester. He had a glass of very bad sherry there, and returned to the compartment he occupied immediately. Was not left behind. Begged the solicitor for the prosecution would recollect to whom he was speaking. Had not the slightest idea whether it was the Ulster, Munster, Leinster, or Connaught, he came over in. If he, the solicitor, sent down to Kingston, very probably he could find which of those steam-vessels arrived at Kingston from Holyhead on the morning of the first of August.

Knew they had a good passage. Could not possibly be mistaken as to Harold’s identity, Had been acquainted with him too long for that. Was certain he only remained in Dublin one day. Did he, the lawyer, think he should forget his own name next? Left Broadstone by the half-past seven train. There was one gentleman in the compartment with him. Arrived in Galway about twelve. Had some cold beef; remembered it, because he had never seen such a joint before, or since; and a glass of brandy and water. Slept at the Railway Hotel. Could not recollect the number of his room; but knew it had three windows in it, and that all of them would open. Had never in any other house in Ireland seen a window that would open, or a door that would shut. Was not in love with Ireland. The solicitor for the prosecution was perfectly correct in that supposition; but came often to Ireland to see his uncle. Had frequently been told it was a fine country, but could not say of his own knowledge that such was the fact.

Admitted that he liked English customs best. Did not admire Irish peculiarities when they carried people to the length of shooting landlords, and locking up an innocent boy for a month, on suspicion of his having stolen a black bag from a bank clerk. Would swear fifty times, if the solicitor wished it, that the prisoner could not have been at Drogheda, because he was at Broadstone; and he, Mr. Gyton, supposed that even an Irishman was unable to appear in two places at once. Had kept none of his hotel bills; always tore up the rubbish the moment he was outside the door; did not consider that a proof of English extravagance, and could not see, if it were, that it had anything to do with the matter in hand. Did not know whether the prisoner led a respectable life or not, and was at a loss to understand what his life signified to anybody except Mr. Harold Drewitt, and Mr. Harold Drewitt’s friends. Had come back from France solely for the purpose of giving evidence in this case; would have come from Jericho for that matter. Was quite certain prisoner had dined with and accompanied him to the Broadstone Station. Did not think it at all singular that he could remember the name of a station while he forgot the name of a boat. Most probably he had never indeed heard the name of the steamer. Was positive about the date. How much oftener was the solicitor going to ask him that question?

Henry Pryor, sworn, stated that his nephew, the last witness, arrived at his house on the second of August, and told him he had parted with Harold Drewitt at the Broadstone Terminus of the Midland Great Western Railway on the preceding evening. His nephew informed him (Mr. Pryor) that he had asked Harold to come down to Connemara, and that the boy would endeavour to get permission to do so. Mr. Gyton was suddenly summoned back to London, in consequence of the dangerous illness of his father, with whom he subsequently proceeded abroad, and consequently, when Harold Drewitt did arrive at Durrow, Mr. Gyton had left that place. Was certain his nephew arrived in Connemara on the second, and that he said he had not slept in Dublin, but in Galway. He had known Harold Drewitt for two years, and believed him to be quite incapable of the crime laid to his charge.

After which evidence, the solicitor for the defence intimated that he did not purpose calling any other witness. It was, as he stated in the commencement, a clear case of mistaken identity. From the first his client had said he never travelled by the Belfast Junction, or Dublin and Drogheda Railway, in his life, and an alibi had now been unmistakably proved.

After a good deal of hesitation, his worship fell into this view, and having remarked that Mr. Gyton’s evidence was irreconcilable with the assumption of the prisoner’s guilt, and that it appeared to be a most singular case of mistaken identity, he said that the prisoner must be discharged.

There was, however, something in the magistrate’s manner which seemed to imply “not guilty, but don’t do it again;” for he assured Harold he had had a very narrow escape, advised him for the future to lead a more regular life, and began a lecture which the prisoner cut short by saying—

“I did not steal those notes, I know nothing about them, who stole them, or whether they ever were stolen. I never was at Drogheda in my life, nor at Dundalk either. I never, to my recollection, entered Mr. Brinny’s shop before the time I went in there for those cigars, and if ever I chance to meet the person who appears to be so like me, I will take the value out of his bones for what he has made me suffer during the past month.”

This indiscretion on the part of Harold was a perfect godsend to the magistrate, who told him such language was highly improper, remarked that he did not seem duly grateful for his escape, and finally dismissed him with a caution.

Then the next case was called on, and Harold, to quote the newspaper reports, left the court with his friends.

There is, perhaps, no way in which a person can be acquitted which is so eminently unpleasant as for an acquaintance to come forward and swear that on such a day, and at such an hour, the accused was with him in such a place.

Of course it is better to get off in this way rather than not at all; but an alibi always sounds too like a pretext to be perfectly satisfactory to the public; while the released prisoner (if he be innocent) invariably leaves the court with the comfortable idea either that a score of people have been in league against him, or else that there is some blackguard walking about the world wearing his face, assuming his gait, speaking with his voice, who may be committing fifty crimes that will, in due time, be fathered on him.

Harold Drewitt was not, however, old enough to comprehend all that a man would have felt, had a man stood in the boy’s shoes. He knew he had got off, and it was impossible that he should understand he had escaped being committed for trial by the merest shave of the wheel of accident. Had he been with any of his ordinary companions during the afternoon in question, there can be no doubt but that the magistrate would have pooh-poohed the evidence in the prisoner’s favour, while probably the witnesses for the defence might have got so worried and tormented as to narrowly escape being committed for perjury.

Mr. Gyton and Mr. Pryor were not, however, people whose testimony could be treated with disrespect. They might be mistaken. In his heart the magistrate thought they were; but still he had no choice but to act on their evidence and allow Harold to leave the court with his friends; while many people remarked—that the young fellow had been born under a lucky planet, and that if he had been a poor boy he would have been transported.

“He would, as sure as God made little apples,” observed one man, indignantly elbowing his way out of the crowd; “for it’s meself knows the dacent chap that was hung on half the ividence they brought against this one. If he didn’t stole that money I’d be very glad to know who did.”

That was the general feeling throughout Dublin; but Harold knew nothing about the general feeling, and only remembering that he was free once more, returned home on a car laughing and amusing himself as usual.

He mimicked the magistrate; he mimicked the witnesses; he mimicked the policeman, and went rollicking about the house in the wildest spirits imaginable.

He was as thin as a whipping-post and as pale as a corpse; but he insisted that he was not ill, that his mother should make herself happy about him.

“I am not ill,” he said; “not a bit ill; all I want is something to eat and to get out into the fresh air. We shall have many a walk before the fine weather is quite gone. There is a fortnight still left of September. Am I to go back to the office or not?” he added, looking towards Brian, who said—

“Your place has been filled up.”

“Has it? A good job too. There was not one of them came to speak a word for me, and none of the fellows sent me a line or a message, though they must have known I did not do it—mustn’t they, mother?”

“Yes, Harold.”

“We will go down for a day to Bray, and take a car on to the Dargle, shall we, mother? I should like that. I’d like to see the purple bloom of the heather if it’s not quite gone off, and I love the sea down there.”

“May we go with you?” asked Mr. Pryor, and Mr. Gyton at once followed suit, and voted that it would be nice for them to make up several little parties and go wherever Harold chose. There was an indescribable tenderness in the manner of all towards the boy who had been, as they knew, so hardly done by, and who presently insisted on going as far as Sackville Street, “Just to be sure I am free,” he laughed.

As Brian had business to attend to, and Mr. Gyton appeared a little loth to leave Geraldine, Mr. Pryor offered to accompany Harold; and the pair accordingly sallied forth and walked into Dublin, where the youth at every turn met some one he knew, some one he paused involuntarily to speak with.

But no one voluntarily spoke to him: a cold bow; a nod; a how-d’ye-do; a reluctant shake hands. Harold could not understand it, and at last appealed to Mr. Pryor.

“Am I not innocent? It looks almost as though they thought me guilty, does not it?” and he drew closer to his companion, who told him—

“Not to trouble himself about it; that they would learn better in time.”

“I think,” remarked Harold, after another old acquaintance had passed without taking the slightest notice of his salutation, “I think it is nearly time for us to go home;” and, accordingly, they turned and went back over Carlisle Bridge, and along Westmoreland Street, and past College Green, and down Nassau Street, and so on to the suburb where Mrs. Drewitt resided. As they walked along Merrion Square a disreputable-looking fellow came up and, accosting Harold, shook him so heartily by the hand as to threaten dislocation of his wrist.

“Glad to see you out,” he said; “thought at one time you were in Queer Street for life: when will you be round our way?”

“I don’t know,” answered Harold, nervously feeling Mr. Pryor touch his arm warningly. “I am not very well—that is, I have friends—that is, I am going out of town.”

“Well, it’s about the best thing you can do till the talk has blown over. It is a wicked world, and living’s hard work. Good-bye.”

“Who is that man, Harold?” Mr. Pryor asked a little sternly, and his tone at once put Harold’s bristles up.

“He was a very respectable person—very indeed; but had been unfortunate in business. His name was Grinnell, and he lived some place up near Mountjoy Square.”

“Does he really? I should have thought some of those nice respectable streets in the neighbourhood of St. Patrick’s would have been much more in his way.”

Of which speech Harold refused to take any notice.

“I hope,” continued Mr. Pryor, “that you do not intend keeping up your acquaintance with him; you are but just starting in life; you have been extricated with considerable difficulty from a most awkward position, And it behoves you, therefore, to be doubly careful for the future in choosing your associates.”

Still Harold made no answer.

“I wish you would promise not to have anything more to do with people of that description: you will ruin your own prospects, and break your mother’s heart.”

“Hang it!” interrupted Harold, “one must speak to somebody, and he is the only fellow who has said a civil word to me since I came out. You must see for yourself that the ‘genteels’ have cut me; don’t you now?”

“If they have, do you think you will mend matters by taking up with all the riff-raff who come and shake hands with you?”

“You need not call them names if they are not gentlemen,” suggested Harold.

“I think I, or any one else who styled the person from whom we have just parted an honest man would be calling him very much out of his name.”

“I suppose I am not good enough for you, then?” said Harold pausing.

“Nonsense, boy. I want to save you from the consequences of your own want of firmness. You believe in everybody who says a kind word to you, and the result is you have made intimates and associates of people with whom you ought never to have exchanged a word. Do you not remember what the police stated about the character of your companions—swindlers, betting-men, drunkards, profligates, of every description? If your mother had only heard the one-half we have heard about you, Harold, she would be more anxious about you than she is.”

“I wonder you are not ashamed to be seen out walking with me,” said the boy. “I am sure I am not fit company for a rich swell like you. Had not you better take the other side of the street?” added Harold, who was by this time worked up to a pitch of passionate fury. “We may meet somebody else who will come between the wind and your nobility. Go on; I will follow, if you like; it cannot be pleasant for you to feel that you are out walking with—with—a blackguard and a thief!”

“Don’t be an idiot, Harold;” and Mr. Pryor laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder, and led him, or, rather, pushed him, on towards home.

“I’m not an idiot,” said Harold. “I know you all think I am, and that I do not understand anything—that I am a fool; but I am as wise as Brian, though I may not be such an old-fashioned sneak; and I will speak to whom I like, and go with whom I like, and visit whom I like, without consulting anybody.”

“You are resolved to be independent, at any rate,” observed Mr. Pryor.

“Yes, I am. I mean to stick by the friends who stick by me——”

“Would you think me impertinent if I ventured to remind you, I and my nephew have tried to be your friends?” said the barrister.

“I know you have; I know why, too; because Maxwell told me something long ago. It is not because you like me, it isn’t. Nobody likes me; and now you are going to set my mother against me, and tell her every little thing I have ever done.”

Having completed which dreadful picture, Harold stopped again in the very middle of the pavement, and seemed disposed to have a good cry on the spot.

There was a car passing at the moment, which Mr. Pryor hailed. “You are tired, Harold,” he said; “you have tried your strength too much. Jump up, and let us drive home.”

When they reached home, Harold went off to bed; but whether because he was sick, or whether he was sulky, Mr. Pryor could not decide.

Next day, however, he saw clearly that the young gentleman’s temper was greatly damaged; for he insisted, against the advice of every one of his family, on going to his late employers, and asking why they had filled up his berth.

“I wish you would not do anything so foolish,” Brian remarked.

“I am not a child,” was the reply; “and I mean to see to my own business for myself. I won’t be kept in the dark by anybody.”

And accordingly he went.

It was the best thing that could have happened to a youth of Harold’s peculiar disposition, to be able to hear for himself what the world said of him.

He had been so pampered and spoiled at home, that he was never likely to learn the truth there. Strangers, however, did not stand on so much ceremony, and when Harold grew impudent, gave him quite as good as he brought.

“I know you have got off,” said one of his late employers; “and I know how you have got off, also—by an alibi; for which I would not give that!” and he threw a scrap of waste paper on the floor. “Of course, I am sure Mr. Gyton would not have said what he did unless he fully believed it to be the truth; but he was mistaken, that is all; and a very lucky mistake it turned out for you. I really wonder at your assurance in coming here at all. As for taking you back, I am only too glad to be rid of you; there is not another house in Dublin who would have kept so idle, useless, and disreputable a young vagabond for a week.”

Harold walked out of the inner office, and as he passed through the outer looked defiantly at the clerks he had once been intimate with: one or two nodded; but none came forward to shake hands—to say they were pleased at his escape.

He felt tired, but he had no heart to go home; he had taken his own way, and his own way not having proved a pleasant one, he did not like to go back and confess to such a disappointment: accordingly he went on—on along the North Wall, where his respectable friend of the preceding evening dropped upon him, and proposed that they should go out for a drive together: “Round by the strawberry-beds, and on as far as Lucan.”

Harold jumped at the idea. “And we can have some dinner together, and then spend the evening at Birdley’s; there are to be a lot of fellows there. What do you say? will ‘the old folks at home,’ be singing all the evening, ‘Willie, we have missed you?’”

“No,” answered Harold; “I’m your man.” And while Mrs. Drewitt was marvelling what in the world could have become of her boy, he was rattling through the Dublin streets, talking and laughing and joking, as though he had never been in any trouble, as though he had never been a prisoner in his life.

Before evening came he was pretty well exhausted, but still his companion insisted on taking him to Birdley’s, where he was greeted by the assembled guests with great enthusiasm; his health being drunk with all the honours.

“Now tell us how you did it?” exclaimed one. “How many of the flimsies did you manage to get off?” asked another.

“I suppose you have made a bonfire of the rest: it would be no go trying to pass them now,” said a third.

“You must have made a tidy haul of it though, altogether,” observed one unwholesome-looking young man.

“And how did you contrive to hoodwink those respectable friends of yours, for I suppose they would have been above sharing the swag.”

“Tell us all about it?” repeated the first speaker. “Silence now, gentlemen, if you please. Mr. Harold Drewitt rises to address the meeting.”

“I want to know something,” cried Harold, who was indeed on his legs. “Do you really think I stole those notes?”

“Draw it mild,” suggested the young man above referred to; who looked very much as though he had been buried and dug up again. “Stole is such a confoundedly ugly way of putting it.”

“Do you believe then I ever was at Drogheda? Do you think I ever saw that money? Do you imagine that all I said was lies?”

“Well, very few people looked upon it as the truth,” was the reply.

“You consider me a thief, then, in plain words?”

“Oh! no, nothing of the kind; you merely annexed the contents of that carpet-bag——”

“I did not—I did not,” Harold vehemently interrupted. “I know no more who took that money than you do.” (Here the auditors winked at one another.) “If I never should speak another word, I am as innocent in this matter as any man among you.”

“Well, then, who the devil is guilty?” asked the chairman; “for no person in his senses can suppose all those witnesses were in collusion against you. It must have been you or your twin brother, if you have one.”

“If you look closely at his face, it must strike you as too old, too second-hand, if I may use the expression, to have served only one body,” said Mr. Grinnell. “Rely upon it there’s another trunk somewhere that borrows that face and goes out with it at nights while this good child is sleeping it its bed.”

“Gentlemen,” began Harold.

“We are all attention.”

“I wish you would believe me.”

“Lord help the boy, we are so simple we could be made believe anything,” said his neighbour.

“I never saw that money. I never changed one of those notes. Everybody is against me, though I am innocent—innocent;” and Harold’s voice began to shake a little and his lips to tremble.

“Really this is becoming affecting,” remarked the corpse-like young gentleman, addressing Mr. Grinnell.

“Allow me to perform a parent’s part,” said the chairman, offering Harold a handkerchief.

But Harold’s temper was now up: he pitched the handkerchief back at the speaker; he threw off his coat, and declaring he would fight the matter out, dared any one to say he was a liar, and requested the company generally to “come on!”

“Now, now,” said Mr. Grinnell; “now, now,” and he walked round the table, and picked up Harold’s coat, and begged him to put it on, and to sit down and take things peaceably.

“How can I take things peaceably when you are all against me—all?” asked Harold, looking first at one of his tormentors and then at another. “Are you cowards, that none of you will come on, when I ask you? Will you not even let me fight for my good name? will you not——”

“Catch him, some of you,” cried the chairman, and involuntarily every man sprang to his feet, and stretched out his arms towards the boy, who, stopping suddenly in his sentence, reeled back a few paces, and then fell into the chair he had pushed away from him.

“Send for a doctor,” said one.

“Give him some punch.”

“He’s had too much already.”

“No, he hasn’t,” said Grinnell, “he has scarcely tasted a drop.”

“Get him some water.”

“Stand back, stand back,” entreated Grinnell, “and open the windows, some of you; it is not a common faint though, he’s quite gone,” and he wiped the perspiration from Harold’s face, and put the hair back off his forehead, and took the clammy hands in his and chafed them gently.

“I will take him home,” he said, when Harold recovered a little. “Tell the waiter to call a car. Birdley will lend me something warm to wrap round him. Are you able to walk now, do you think?” he continued, addressing Harold, “or shall I carry you? That is right; take hold of my arm; don’t be afraid of leaning. Now come with me.”

“Good-night, gentlemen,” Harold said, turning round and addressing the group that were looking after him. “Likely I shall never see any of you again; but, whether you believe it or not, I am innocent of what you think.”

“He looks to me,” remarked the chairman after he had left the room, “as though he were going precious fast to that place where it’s best known what he is. It is a pity, too, for he is a plucky lad;” and there ensued a great silence, during which every man present was employed wondering whether it were indeed within the bounds of possibility that Harold had been mistaken for some one else, who might be thinking at that very moment how deucedly lucky it was for him that he had escaped scot free.