Chapter VI

I am Robert Shallow, Sir, a poor Esquire of this county, and one of the
King’s Justices of the Peace.
SHAKSPEARE.

There is no future pang
Can deal that justice on the self-condemned
He deals on his own soul.
BYRON.

Sir North having taken his seat on what is figuratively called the “bench,” typified in this instance by a most portentous looking elbow chair, meant not only passively to confer dignity upon him who sat in it, but calculated actively to strike awe into all who approached it, the prisoners were summoned into his presence. The judicial consequence of Sir North’s _ci-devant_ study had been recently perfected by “appropriate scenery and decorations” in the shape of frame-work divisions, borrowed exactly from the “London boards” or Metropolitan police-offices. In short, there was only one ingredient wanting to make it an excellent “justice-shop,” and that was a little stock of law on the part of the purveyor of that commodity.

Sir North being stationed in what the servants called his throne, with Mr. Asklaw on one side, and Mr. Spencer on the other, with Captain Scudd, of the cutter, at a little distance, the prisoners were brought in. They were many in number, and of varied appearance, from the hard weather-beaten _tar_, who feared nothing, to the fresh lubberly youth, who was scared with the apparent certainty of an hempen cord. There was, among them, both the uneasy assumption of pretended recklessness, and the downcast gaze of nerveless despair. The whole set had on this occasion, too, an unusually care-worn and disordered appearance, as much from the active labours and hard-fought dangers of the preceding night, as from the awkwardness of their present position. Captain Collett alone, neither in his outward appearance, nor, as it seemed, in his internal sensations, was at all changed by the events that had taken place, but still wore the same unvaried expression of quiet cunning.

Poor George Darnell, on the other hand, could not have been recognised for the same light-hearted, frank-spoken, somewhat overbearing roisterer who had appeared at his uncle’s hospitable board so few days before. The remorseful feelings of which he had been the prey during the last few hours, appeared almost to have eaten into his very features, so deeply was their impression stamped upon his wild and haggard countenance.

Sir North, whose great anxiety was not to show how little he really knew of the duties which he had undertaken to discharge, soon found the greatest difference in the value of his two coadjutors,--of the professional assistant whom he had casually sought from Mayton, and of the private friend, on whose considerate suggestions he had mainly depended for helping him, without expense, out of a difficulty. The latter (Mr. Spencer) appeared only anxious to confound all his hearers with the extent of his own information, in which confusion his friend was most especially included. Mr. Asklaw’s desire, on the other hand, was to transfuse his own knowledge almost imperceptibly for the use of his principal. Mr. Spencer began a tirade, much too long and tedious to be recorded here; the result of which was, that poor Sir North’s head, in the conclusion, only retained a chaotic mass of contradictory acts of parliament which he had quoted, principally from the 8th of George II. c. 18, to the 52d George III. c. 143, these both inclusive; much about “foreign brandy, arrack rum, or strong waters;” something about the eye or the limb of a custom-house officer being assessed of the value of 50_l._ extra; but most of all, for Mr. Spencer principally relied upon the act against vessels for hovering near the coast, Sir North had to hear of the peculiar construction of “cutters, luggers, shallops, wherries, smacks, and yawls:” this, more than any thing else, bewildered him; for though he would not for the world have acknowledged his ignorance, but, on the contrary, looked at least as wise as usual on the subject, yet there was not one of these, whether cutter, lugger, shallop, wherry, smack, or yawl, which, if he had seen, he could have known from Noah’s ark. In the mean time, Mr. Asklaw had quietly insinuated a Burn’s Justice open at the right place before him; and though, his head still being a little confused with Peter Spencer’s prolific jargon, his eye did at first wander to the wrong page of the two, and his attention yet stranded amongst the islands of Guernsey, Jersey, Alderney, Sark, and Man; yet, at length, he was beginning to fancy he saw his way clearer, when Spencer having, as he thought, satisfactorily played the part of counsel, rose to try his hand as a judge, and make some sort of address to the prisoners; and he was particularly diffuse upon the enormity of the conduct of the leader of such a gang as this, (the captain of the smugglers,) who, in attempting to defraud his country, had evidently deluded his followers, many of whom were young offenders. Whilst Spencer was working himself into eloquence, he was interrupted by Captain Collett.

“I’ll tell you what, young gentleman, I take it you’ve only your own authority for putting yourself into the commission here; if so, you’d better keep your advice for those who ask it, and your opinions for those who need them. It is no part of my present misfortunes that I should be forced to hear you preach; I know exactly how much I’m forced to bear, and no more. I must answer his worship’s questions there, always provided that I need not criminate myself, which I’m not very likely to do; and I must mind his worship’s bidding always, providing it’s according to law, which, of course, it’s likely to be, but of which same law, it’s as well to let all present know, I’ve myself some little smattering. But it’s neither my business, nor my pleasure, to stand here as a mark for you to shoot your tongue at, as practice in jaw, or law, whichever you please to call it.”

“Silence, fellow, respect the court!” said Sir North, in, as he thought, the most impressive manner.

Whilst this collateral dispute was going on, Mr. Asklaw, who had not previously had any communication with the Captain of the revenue cutter, had extracted from him the degree of circumstantial evidence he had been able to collect, and which had, since they arrived at Hornscliff, been, to a certain extent, confirmed by the general report, that a stranger, who had been for some days residing in that neighbourhood, was mysteriously missing. He again repeated the appearances they had remarked in the smuggler’s open boat, intimating that a deed of violence had been there consummated. The girl’s exclamation, when found on the beach, seeming to prove that the assault which had been the cause of death, (whether by fire-arms, or what other means, did not yet appear,) had taken place on shore previous to the re-embarkation; it immediately occurred to Mr. Asklaw, that this being much the more serious charge of the two, it would be most desirable to go into this first; because, could a case of murder be substantiated and brought home to the parties, the other accusation, though a much more complicated affair, was of infinitely minor importance.

He therefore suggested that the young girl, who was in attendance, should be called in and examined as to her knowledge of the earlier part of these transactions, to which her exclamation on the beach had referred. This proposal was acceded to by Sir North, and poor Lucy sent for. In the interval which followed, had all present, of every degree, not been too much occupied with their own concerns to remark George, the workings of his countenance, in his efforts to maintain his composure during these moments of, to him, agonizing suspense, would then have been construed as the struggles of a guilty conscience.

After some little while the door opened, and Mrs. Jones only made her appearance. “I ask pardon, Sir North, for _protruding_ myself, but it’s quite impossible that young person can make her _testament_, for she’s _parfectly historical_.”

It was urged by Mr. Spencer that she ought at least to be brought there, that they might themselves judge of the state in which she was; when George, with apparent effort, stepped forward to prevent it. “It’s not the least necessary, gentlemen, if you’ll only give me leave to speak a moment. She could only hang me if she came here, and I’d rather do that job for myself than owe it to her handy-work. If I must know that my guilt is in her thoughts, let me in mercy think that she could not bring her lips to utter it. If you’ll only hear me, I’ll tell you all. Nay, never fear,” said he to his companions, observing rather a murmur of alarm, “I’m not going to peach about any of you; leave me _alone_ to tell what concerns myself _alone_. I know you all too well to think you’d make any difficulties about my twisting my own hempen cord--I know very well what you, too, are going to say, gentlemen,” added he, turning to the bench, and persevering through an attempt to interrupt him from thence, “you would advise me not to criminate myself; but when a man has brought disgrace on an honest name, repaid the kindness of his kin with deceit, and behaved like a bloodthirsty savage in the presence of her he loved, why, the sooner he finishes his own business the better, and the less he mixes up with his shameful end those dear ones for whom it would have been better that they had never seen him.--I’ll out with it at once, without more words,” continued he in a firmer tone, and, after gulping down that emotion which swelled within his throat, “’Twas I that killed Churchill; it was all my own affair; these comrades had nought to do with it. I might not be minded, perhaps, to kill him outright, but I certainly did hate him with all my heart, and I fear my spirit yearned for his blood.”

“One moment,” said Mr. Asklaw; “(with your leave, Sir North,) I must remind you that you can be doing yourself no good by speaking in that tone: by making those declarations of furious hatred, you are giving your unhappy act the character of deliberate murder.”

“God forgive me then!” said George; “I would not willingly make myself out worse than I really am; not for my own sake, for my sand is run, but for theirs who must share my shame, and to whom there will soon nought be left behind that was mine but my bad name, which will stick to them long after they’ve tried hard to forget George Darnell. I did not mean to say that I carried deadly weapons expressly to destroy him; but for many a long year that oaken staff, when ashore, has never been out of my gripe; I never had so much ado to keep it still as when I was nigh him. It may all be very wrong and unchristianlike, but when a lad has never had but one hope in the farthermost seas, and the darkest nights, and the roughest weather, it’s hard to be run down and capsized by a fair-weather punt, when he thinks he’s just got safe into that port to which his thoughts have always turned, as the needle to the pole.”

Mr. Spencer, who was very jealous of any interference on the part of Mr. Asklaw with what he considered as his peculiar province, the whole conduct of this case, having already officiated as counsel and judge, now took upon himself the department of clerk, and offered to take down this voluntary confession of George Darnell; and when divested of those ebullitions of feeling, with which the first explanation was mixed up, and reduced, as he thought, to technical form, it contained an accurate account of all that part of which the reader is already aware: George’s first meeting with Churchill on the cliff, the altercation, the blow, the subsequent conveyance of the wounded man to the cave on the beach, and his having afterwards been carried aboard by the orders of Capt. Collett; but of anything which passed afterwards, (of which I hope the reader is also anxious to be informed,) he could add nothing certain. There had been such a confusion in jumping amid the dashing breakers aboard the lugger, from the crowded boat, that neither the moment, nor the manner, of Churchill’s end had been remarked by him. It was possible that he might have fallen the victim of a casual scuffle, or of a blow dealt in hostility by one of the crew, as the evidence of Capt. Scudd, as to the state of the coble, seemed to infer; or he might, as George had previously imagined, have been washed overboard by the breakers, his weak state preventing him from saving himself by taking effectual hold. But the only fact to which the confession could speak was, that upon drawing up the boat, he was nowhere to be found: a circumstance that, as the revenue cutter was directly after, through the darkness, discerned a-head, had failed to make even then a transient impression on the crew.

The result of this confession of George’s was not exactly as he had anticipated, to concentrate upon himself all the blame; for it was decided by Sir North, with the advice of his “privy council,” which, as Mr. Asklaw, from disagreement with the rest of the cabinet, had resigned, now consisted merely of Peter Spencer, that, connecting George’s statement with the evidence of Captain Scudd, he George, his confession having been duly signed, should stand committed to the county gaol, as a principal in the wilful murder of Churchill, and Captain Collett, and the rest of his boat’s crew, who had carried him aboard, as accessaries after the fact.

As soon as this result was communicated to Lady Gayland, she occupied herself in contriving how Lucy might most speedily, and with the least discomfort, be restored to her friends, which was arranged without much difficulty. But she was afterwards prevented from fulfilling her promise, with which she accompanied the completion of this arrangement, “That she would herself pay her a visit there.” For the next post brought letters summoning her to town on legal business connected with her duty as executrix to Sir Joseph, and consequently abridged her intended stay at Hornscliff. But though she cannot accompany the reader there, and he must not expect to revisit Morden Bay in such gay society as the first time, or to find there as happy a home as in the second, yet once again for a short time he is requested to turn his attention towards Bankside Farm.