The Beckoning Hand and Other Stories - The Original Classic Edition. Allen Grant

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СКАЧАТЬ Crown handed her again the genuine Wulfric, and asked her whether the letters upon it which she professed to have read were or were not similar to those of the Ethelwulf.

       Instead of answering, Emily bent down her head between her hands, and burst suddenly into tears.

       I was so much distressed at her terrible agitation that I forgot altogether for the moment my own perilous position, and I cried aloud, "My lord, my lord, will you not interpose to spare her any further questions?"

       "I think," the judge said to the counsel for the Crown, "you might now permit the witness to stand down."[Pg 91] "I wish to re-examine, my lord," my counsel put in hastily.

       "No," I said in his ear, "no. Whatever comes of it, not another question. I had far rather go to prison than let her suffer this inexpressible torture for a single minute longer."

       Emily was led down, still crying bitterly, into the body of the court, and the rest of the proceedings went on uninterrupted.

       The theory of the prosecution was a simple and plausible one. I had bought a common Anglo-Saxon coin, probably an Ethelwulf, valued at about twenty-two shillings, from the old Lichfield ploughman. I had thereupon conceived the fraudulent idea of pretending that I had a duplicate of the rare Wulfric. I had shown the Ethelwulf, clipped in a particular fashion, to the lady whom I was engaged to marry. I had then defaced and altered the genuine Wulfric at the Museum into the same shape with the aid of my pocket nail-scissors. And I had finally made believe to drop the coin accidentally upon the floor, while I had really secreted it in my waistcoat pocket. The theory for the defence had broken down utterly. And then there was the damning fact of the gold scrapings found in

       the cocoa-nut matting of the British Museum, which was to me the one great inexplicable mystery in the whole otherwise compre-

       hensible mystification.

       I felt myself that the case did indeed look very black against me. But would a jury venture to convict me on such very doubtful evidence?

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       The jury retired to consider their verdict. I stood in suspense in the dock, with my heart loudly beating. Emily remained in the body of the court below, looking up at me tearfully and penitently.

       After twenty minutes the jury retired. "Guilty or not guilty?"

       The foreman answered aloud, "Guilty."[Pg 92]

       There was a piercing cry in the body of the court, and in a moment Emily was carried out half fainting and half hysterical.

       The judge then calmly proceeded to pass sentence. He dwelt upon the enormity of my crime in one so well connected and so far removed from the dangers of mere vulgar temptations. He dwelt also upon the vandalism of which I had been guilty--myself a collector--in clipping and defacing a valuable and unique memorial of antiquity, the property of the nation. He did not wish to be severe upon a young man of hitherto blameless character; but the national collection must be secured against such a peculiarly insidi-ous and cunning form of depredation. The sentence of the court was that I should be kept in--

       Five years' penal servitude.

       Crushed and annihilated as I was, I had still strength to utter a single final word. "My lord," I cried, "the missing Wulfric will yet be

       found, and will hereafter prove my perfect innocence." "Remove the prisoner," said the judge, coldly.

       They took me down to the courtyard unresisting, where the prison van was standing in waiting.

       On the steps I saw Emily and her mother, both crying bitterly. They had been told the sentence already, and were waiting to take a last farewell of me.

       "Oh, Harold!" Emily cried, flinging her arms around me wildly, "it's all my fault! It's my fault only! By my foolish stupidity I've lost your case. I've sent you to prison. Oh, Harold, I can never forgive myself. I've sent you to prison. I've sent you to prison."

       "Dearest," I said, "it won't be for long. I shall soon be free again. They'll find the Wulfric sooner or later, and then of course they'll

       let me out again."

       "Harold," she cried, "oh, Harold, Harold, don't you see? Don't you understand? This is a plot against you.[Pg 93] It isn't lost. It isn't lost. That would be nothing. It's stolen; it's stolen!"

       A light burst in upon me suddenly, and I saw in a moment the full depth of the peril that surrounded me. PART II.

       I.

       It was some time before I could sufficiently accustom myself to my new life in the Isle of Portland to be able to think clearly and distinctly about the terrible blow that had fallen upon me. In the midst of all the petty troubles and discomforts of prison existence, I had no leisure at first fully to realize the fact that I was a convicted felon with scarcely a hope--not of release; for that I cared lit-tle--but of rehabilitation.

       Slowly, however, I began to grow habituated to the new hard life imposed upon me, and to think in my cell of the web of circumstance which had woven itself so irresistibly around me.

       I had only one hope. Emily knew I was innocent. Emily suspected, like me, that the Wulfric had been stolen. Emily would do her best, I felt certain, to heap together fresh evidence, and unravel this mystery to its very bottom.

       Meanwhile, I thanked Heaven for the hard mechanical daily toil of cutting stone in Portland prison. I was a strong athletic young fel-low enough. I was glad now that I had always loved the river at Oxford; my arms were stout and muscular. I was able to take my part

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       in the regular work of the gang to which I belonged. Had it been otherwise--had I been set down to some quiet sedentary occupation, as first-class misdemeanants often are, I should have worn my heart out soon with thinking perpetually of poor Emily's terrible trouble.[Pg 94]

       When I first came, the Deputy-Governor, knowing my case well (had there not been leaders about me in all the papers?), very kindly asked me whether I would wish to be given work in the book-keeping department, where many educated convicts were employed as clerks and assistants. But I begged particularly to be put into an outdoor gang, where I might have to use my limbs constantly, and so keep my mind from eating itself up with perpetual thinking. The Deputy-Governor immediately consented, and gave me work in a quarrying gang, at the west end of the island, near Deadman's Bay on the edge of the Chesil.

       For three months I worked hard at learning the trade of a quarryman, and succeeded far better than any of the other new hands who were set to learn at the same time with me. Their heart was not in it; mine was. Anything to escape that gnawing agony.

       The other men in the gang were not agreeable or congenial companions. They taught me their established modes of intercommu-

       nication, and told me several facts about themselves, which did not tend to endear them to me. One of them, 1247, was put in for

       the manslaughter of his wife by kicking; he was a low-browed, brutal London drayman, and he occupied the next cell to mine, where he disturbed me much in my sleepless nights by his loud snoring. Another, a much slighter and more intelligent-looking man, was a skilled burglar, sentenced to fourteen years for "cracking a crib" in the neighbourhood of Hampstead. A third was a sailor, convicted of gross cruelty to a defenceless Lascar. They all told me the nature of their crimes with a brutal frankness which fairly surprised

       me; but when I explained to them in return that I had been put in upon a false accusation, they treated my СКАЧАТЬ