CHAPTER I.
I FIRST SEE JOSHUA PILBROW.
When I was a very little boy my mother died. I was too young to feel her loss long, though I missed her badly at first; but the compensation was that it brought my father nearer to me. He was a barrister, a prodigal1 love of a man, dear bless him! And he felt his bereavement2 so cruelly that for a time he seemed incapable3 of rallying from the blow. But presently he plucked up heart, and went, for my sake, to his business again.
He was more liked than lucky, I believe. I had evidence enough, at least of the former; for after my mother’s death, not bearing that we should be parted, he carried me with him on the last circuit he was ever to go. Those were the days when Bench and Bar dined well, and sat up late telling tales. Sometimes my father would slip me into his pocket, so to speak, and from its shelter—when, to be candid4, I had been much better in bed—I heard fine stories related by the gentlemen who put off gravity with the horsehair they wore all day. They were a merry and irresponsible lot, rather like a strolling company of actors; and, indeed, it was no less their business to play many parts. There were types among them which I came to associate with certain qualities: such as the lean vivacious5 ones, who ate and drank hungrily, and presently grew incoherent and quarrelsome; such as the rosy6 bald-headed ones, who always seemed to make most laughter; such as the large, heavy-browed ones, who sulked when they were bettered in argument. But my friend amongst them all, next to my father, was Mr. Quayle, Q.C.
I fancied I had discovered, after much consideration, why he was called Q.C. He was a little man, quite bald and round all over his head and face except for a tuft of hair on his chin, and there was the Q; and he wore a pouter-pigeon ruff under his chin like this, Q/C, and there was the Q.C. I may have been wrong; but anyhow I had precedent7 to justify8 me, for many of these jolly souls bore such characteristic nicknames. There was Plain John, for instance, who had so christened himself for ever during a dispute about the uses or abuses of multiple titles. “Plain John” had been enough for him, he had said. Again, there was Blind Fogle, so called from his favourite cross-examination phrase. “I don’t quite see.” They were all boys together when off duty, chaffing and horse-playing, and my father was the merriest and most irrepressible of the crew.
There was one treat, however, of which he was persistent9 in baulking me. Pray him as I might, he would never let me see or hear him in his character of Counsel. The Court where he would be working by day was forbidden ground to me, and for that very reason I longed, like Bluebeard’s wife, to peep into it. This was not right, even in thought, for I knew his wishes. But worse is to be confessed. I once took an opportunity, which ought never to have been given me, to disobey him; and dreadful were the consequences, as you shall hear.
We were travelling on what is called the Home Circuit, and one day we came to Ipswich, a town to mark itself red in the annals of my young life. On the second morning after our arrival I was playing at horses with George, my father’s man, when Mr. Quayle looked in at our hotel, and, dismissing George, took and sat me upon his knee.
“Dad gone to Court?” said he.
“Yes,” I answered; “just.”
He grunted10, and rubbed his bald head, with a look half comical, half aggravated11. His eyes were rather blinky and red, and he seemed confused in manner and at a loss for words.
“Dicky,” he said, suddenly, “did you live very well, very rich-like, when mamma was alive?”
“Yes,” I answered; “’cept when mamma said we must retrench12, and cried; and by’m-by papa laughed, and threw the rice pudding into the fire, and took us to dine at a palace.”
“And that was—very long before—hey?”
“It was a very little while before mamma went away for good,” I murmured, and hung my head, inclined to whimper.
“O, come!” he said, “we must all bear our losses like men. They teach us the best in the world to stand square on our own toeses. There! Shall I tell you a story—hey?”
I brightened at once. He knew some good ones. “Yes, please,” I said.
“O, lud!” he exclaimed, rubbing his nose with his eye-glasses. “I am committed! Judex damnatur. Dicky, I sat up late last night, devouring14 briefs, and they’ve given me an indigestion. Never sit up late, Dicky, or you’ll have to pay for it!”
He said the last words with an odd emphasis, giving me a little shake.
“Is that the beginning of the story?” I asked, with reserve.
“O, the story!” he said. “H’m! ha! Dear take my fuddled caput! Well, here goes:
“There were once two old twin brothers, booksellers, name of Pilbrow, who kept shop together in a town, as it might be Ipswich. Now books, young gentleman, should engender15 an atmosphere of reason and sympathy, inasmuch as we talk of the Republic of letters, which signifies a sort of a family tie between A, B, and C. But these fellows, though twins, were so far from being united that they were always quarrelling. If Joshua bought a book of a stranger, Abel would say he had given more than its worth, and sell it at his own valuation; and if Abel attended a sale, there was Joshua to bid against him. Naturally, under these conditions, the business didn’t flourish. The brothers got poorer and poorer, and the more they lost the worse they snapped and snarled16, till they took to threatening one another in public with dear knows what reprisals17. Well, one day, at an auction18, after bidding each against t’other thremenjus for a packet of old manuscripts and book rubbish—which Abel ended by getting, by-the-by—they fastened together like tom-cats, and had to be separated. The people laughed and applauded; but the end was more serious than was expected. Abel disappeared from the business, and a few days later the shop took fire, and was burned to the ground.
“So far, so plain; and now, Mr. Dickycumbob, d’ye know what’s meant by Insurance?”
“No, sir?”
“Well, look here. If I want to provide against my house, and the goods in it, being lost to me by fire, I go to a gentleman, with a gold watch-chain like a little ship’s cable to recommend him, and says I:—‘If I give you so much pocket-money a year, will you undertake to build up my house again for me in case it happens to be burned down?’ And the gentleman smiles, and says ‘Certainly.’ Then I say, ‘If I double your pocket-money will you undertake to give me a thousand pounds for the value of the goods in that house supposing they are burned too?’ And the gentleman says, ‘Certainly; in case their value really is a thousand pounds at the time.’ So I go away, and presently, strange to say, my house is actually burned to the ground. Then I ask the gentleman to fulfil his promise; but he says, ‘Not at all. The house I will rebuild as before, and for the goods I will pay you; but not a thousand pounds, because I am given to believe that they were worth nothing like that sum at the time of the fire?’ Now, what am I to do? Well, I will tell you what this Joshua did. He insisted upon having the whole thousand pounds, and the gentleman answered by saying that he believed Joshua had purposely set fire to his own house in order to secure a thousand pounds for a lot of old rubbish in it that wasn’t worth twopence ha’penny. D’yunderstand?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Very well, then, and listen to this. If the gentleman spoke19 true, Joshua had fallen in Scyllam cupiens vitare Charybdim, which means that he had jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire, or, in other words had, in trying to catch the Insurance gentleman, been nabbed himself by the law. For arson20 is arson, and fraud fraud, and the gentleman with the watch-chain isn’t to be caught with a pinch of salt on his tail. But that was not the worst. Human bones had been found among the débris of the building, and ugly rumours21 got about that these bones were Abel’s bones—the bones of an unhappy victim of Joshua’s murderous hate. The man had disappeared, the brothers’ deadly quarrel was recalled; it was whispered that the fire might owe itself to a double motive—that, in short, Joshua had designed, at one blow, to secure the thousand pounds and destroy the evidences of a great crime. Joshua, sir, was arrested and put upon his trial for murder and arson.”
I was listening with all my eyes and ears.
“Your father, sir.”
“O!” I exclaimed, thrilling. And then, after a pause, with a pride of loyalty24: “He got him off, didn’t he?”
Mr. Quayle put me down, and yawned dyspeptically.
“What!” he said. “If any man can, papa will. I ask your pardon, Master Dicky, I really do, for palming off fact instead of fiction on you. But my poor brain wasn’t equal. The case is actually sub judice—being tried at this moment. Yesterday began it, and to-day will end. If you whisper to me to-night, I’ll whisper back the result.”
The delay seemed insupportable. He had read and worked me up to the last chapter of the story, and now proposed to leave me agonising for the end. It was the first time I had ever been brought so close to the living romance of the law, and my blood was on fire with the excitement of it.
“O, I wish——” I began.
The barrister looked down at me oddly, and shook his head.
I felt too guilty to speak. He knew all that was in my mind. Suddenly he took my hand.
“Come along, then,” he said, “and let’s have a peep. Papa needn’t know.”
He shouldn’t have tempted27 me, nor should I have succumbed28. A murder romance was no book for a child, though my father figured in it as a Paladin championing the wronged and oppressed.
I hung back a moment, but the creature cooed and whistled to me. “Come and see Joshua,” he said, “with his back to the wall, and papa in front daring ’em all to come on.”
It was a dingy31 November morning. The old town seemed dull and uneasy, and a tallow-faced clock on a church dawdled32 behind time, as if it had stopped to let something unpleasant go by. That might have been a posse of melancholy33 javelin-men, who, with a ludicrous little strutting34 creature at their head—a sort of pocket drum-major, in sword and cocked hat and with a long staff in his hand—went splashing past at the moment. The court-house, what with the fog and drip, met us like the mouth of a sewer35, and I was half-inclined to cry off so disenchanting an adventure, when my companion tossed me up in his arms and carried me within. Through halls and passages, smelling of cold, trodden mud, we were passed with deference36, and suddenly were swung and shut into a room where there were lights and a great foggy hush37.
I saw before me the scarlet38 judge. I knew him well enough, but never awful like this—a shrunk ferret with piercing eyes looking out of a gray nest. I saw the wigs39 of the counsel; but their bobtails seemed cocked with an unfamiliar40 viciousness. I saw the faces of the Jury, set up in two rows like ghostly ninepins; and then I saw another, a face by itself, a face like a little shrewd wicked gurgoyle, that hung yellow and alone out of the mist of the court. And that face, I knew, was the face of Joshua.
The terrible silence ticked itself away, and there suddenly was my father standing41 up before them all, and talking in a quick impassioned voice. My skin went cold and hot. If I reaped little of the dear tones, I understood enough to know that he spoke impetuously for the prisoner, heaping scorn upon the prosecution42. Never, he said, in all his experience had he known calumny43 visit a soul so spotless as the one it was now his privilege to defend. The process would be laughably easy, it was true, and he would only dwell upon what must be to the jury a foregone conclusion—the accused’s innocence44, that was to say—with the object to crush with its own vicious fallacies a prosecution which, indeed, he could not help remarking bore more the appearance of a persecution45.
Mr. Quayle at this point laughed a little under his breath and whispered, “Bravo!” in my ear, as he eased his burden by resting my feet on the back of a bench. As for me, I was burning and shooting all over with pride, as my eyes went from my father to the poor little ugly prisoner in the dock, and back again.
The accused, went on my father (in substance. I can only give the briefest abstract of his speech), would not deny that there had been differences between him and his brother. Indeed, it would be useless to, in the face of some recent notorious evidence to the contrary. But did not all history teach us the folly46 of jumping, on the strength of an unguarded word, to fatal conclusions? Had not one of our own monarchs47 (surnamed Fitz-Empress, as he need not remind the jury) suffered a lifelong regret from the false interpretation48 put upon a rash utterance49 of his? “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” he had cried, in an unthinking moment. “You shall pay for this!” had been Joshua Pilbrow’s threat to his brother, under a like aggravation50, in the sale-room. “Gentlemen,” said my father, “how deadly the seeming import, how laughable the explanation in either case. King Henry cried only distractedly for some one to persuade his importunate51 Chancellor52 to leave him alone. Joshua Pilbrow meant no more than to insist that his brother should ‘stand the whole racket’ of a purchase of which he himself had disapproved53. Hence, gentlemen, these tears!”
There was a little stir in court, and my companion chuckled delightedly in my ear again.
My father then proceeded triumphantly54 to give the true facts of the case. The packet of books had, it appeared when opened, revealed one item of unexpected value, in the profits from which Joshua, as partner, insisted upon sharing. To this, however, Abel, quoting his own words against him, demurred55. It was his—Abel’s purchase, Abel contended, to do with as he chose. The dispute ran so high as to threaten litigation; when all of a sudden one night Abel was found to have taken himself off with the cherished volume. Joshua, at first unable to credit such perfidy56, bided57 his time, expecting his brother to return. But when, at last, his suspicion of bereavement settled into a conviction, he grew like one demented. He could not believe in the reality of his loss; but, candle in hand, went hunting high and low amongst the litter with which the premises58 were choked, hoping somewhere to alight, in some forgotten corner where cupidity59 had concealed60 it, on the coveted61 prize. Alas62! it never rains but it pours. He not only failed to trace the treasure, but, in his distracted hunt for it, must accidentally have fired the stock, which, smouldering for awhile, burst out presently into flame, and committed all to ruin.
Such was the outline of the story, and, for all that I understood of it, I could have clapped my father to the echo, with the tears gulping in my throat, for his noble vindication63 of a wronged man. There were other points he made, such as that Joshua had himself escaped with the utmost difficulty from the burning building (and did that look like arson?); such as that he had instructed his lawyers, after committal, to advertise strenuously64, though vainly, for his brother’s whereabouts (and did that look like murder?); such as that the bones found amongst the ruins were the bones of anatomical specimens65, in which the firm was well known to have dealt. I need not insist on them, because the end was what I knew it must be if men were not base and abominable66 enough to close their ears wilfully67 to those ringing accents of truth.
The prosecution, poor thing! answered, and the judge summed up; and still Mr. Quayle, quite absorbed in the case, did not offer to take me away. I had my eyes on my father all the time. He had sunk back, as if exhausted68, after his speech, and sat in a corner of the bench, his hand over his face. The jury gave their verdict without leaving their places. I heard the demand and the answer. The cry, “Not Guilty,” rang like a pæan in my ears; and still I kept my eyes on my father.
The prisoner, freed from the dock, had left the court, when suddenly some people stirred, and a whisper went round. A barrister bent69 over the resting figure, and arose hurriedly. In a moment there was a springing up of heads everywhere, so that the dear form was blotted70 from my sight. Mr. Quayle, looking over my shoulder, caught a word, and gave a quick little gasp71.
“Dicky,” he said, catching72 at me, “come out at once! We must get away before—before——” and he left the sentence unfinished as he hurried me into the street.
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1
prodigal
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| adj.浪费的，挥霍的，放荡的 | |
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bereavement
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| n.亲人丧亡，丧失亲人，丧亲之痛 | |
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incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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candid
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| adj.公正的，正直的；坦率的 | |
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vivacious
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| adj.活泼的，快活的 | |
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rosy
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| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
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precedent
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| n.先例，前例；惯例；adj.在前的，在先的 | |
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justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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10
grunted
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| （猪等）作呼噜声( grunt的过去式和过去分词 )； （指人）发出类似的哼声； 咕哝着说 | |
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aggravated
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| 使恶化( aggravate的过去式和过去分词 )； 使更严重； 激怒； 使恼火 | |
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retrench
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| v.节省，削减 | |
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twitched
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| vt.& vi.（使）抽动，（使）颤动（twitch的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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14
devouring
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| 吞没( devour的现在分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
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engender
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| v.产生，引起 | |
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snarled
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| v.（指狗）吠，嗥叫， （人）咆哮( snarl的过去式和过去分词 )；咆哮着说，厉声地说 | |
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reprisals
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| n.报复（行为）( reprisal的名词复数 ) | |
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auction
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| n.拍卖；拍卖会；vt.拍卖 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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arson
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| n.纵火，放火 | |
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rumours
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| n.传闻( rumour的名词复数 )；风闻；谣言；谣传 | |
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gulping
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| v.狼吞虎咽地吃，吞咽( gulp的现在分词 )；大口地吸（气）；哽住 | |
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smack
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| vt.拍，打，掴；咂嘴；vi.含有…意味；n.拍 | |
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loyalty
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| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
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rogue
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| n.流氓；v.游手好闲 | |
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chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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succumbed
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| 不再抵抗（诱惑、疾病、攻击等）( succumb的过去式和过去分词 )； 屈从； 被压垮； 死 | |
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irresistible
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| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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tingling
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| v.有刺痛感( tingle的现在分词 ) | |
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dingy
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| adj.昏暗的，肮脏的 | |
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dawdled
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| v.混（时间）( dawdle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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strutting
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| 加固，支撑物 | |
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sewer
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| n.排水沟，下水道 | |
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deference
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| n.尊重，顺从；敬意 | |
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hush
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| int.嘘，别出声；n.沉默，静寂；v.使安静 | |
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scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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wigs
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| n.假发，法官帽( wig的名词复数 ) | |
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unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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prosecution
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| n.起诉，告发，检举，执行，经营 | |
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43
calumny
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| n.诽谤，污蔑，中伤 | |
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44
innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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persecution
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| n. 迫害,烦扰 | |
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46
folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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monarchs
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| 君主，帝王( monarch的名词复数 ) | |
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interpretation
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| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
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49
utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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50
aggravation
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| n.烦恼，恼火 | |
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51
importunate
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| adj.强求的；纠缠不休的 | |
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chancellor
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| n.(英)大臣；法官；(德、奥)总理；大学校长 | |
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53
disapproved
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| v.不赞成( disapprove的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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triumphantly
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| ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地 | |
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demurred
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| v.表示异议，反对( demur的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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56
perfidy
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| n.背信弃义，不忠贞 | |
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57
bided
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| v.等待，停留( bide的过去式 )；居住；等待；面临 | |
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premises
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| n.建筑物，房屋 | |
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cupidity
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| n.贪心，贪财 | |
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concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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coveted
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| adj.令人垂涎的；垂涎的，梦寐以求的v.贪求，觊觎(covet的过去分词)；垂涎；贪图 | |
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alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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vindication
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| n.洗冤，证实 | |
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strenuously
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| adv.奋发地，费力地 | |
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specimens
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| n.样品( specimen的名词复数 )；范例；（化验的）抽样；某种类型的人 | |
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66
abominable
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| adj.可厌的，令人憎恶的 | |
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67
wilfully
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| adv.任性固执地；蓄意地 | |
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68
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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69
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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70
blotted
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| 涂污( blot的过去式和过去分词 )； （用吸墨纸）吸干 | |
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71
gasp
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| n.喘息，气喘；v.喘息；气吁吁他说 | |
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catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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