Читать книгу Morley Ernstein; or, the Tenants of the Heart - G. P. R. James - Страница 10

The general diffusion of knowledge is a very great thing, no doubt, and the cultivation of intellectual powers, in every grade of life and class of society, may probably produce a very excellent result; but yet, the man who goes about the world with his eyes open--it is certainly very rare to find such a man, for the great mass of human beings decidedly keep their eyes shut altogether, or, at best, but half unclosed--the man who goes about the world with his eyes open will be inclined, from a great number of very curious facts that he perceives, to deduce a theory, or, perhaps, if that be too positive a term, we may say, to build up an hypothesis, very much at variance with the dream of the French philosophers before the first revolution, regarding the perfectibility of human nature. He will be inclined to imagine that the will of God may allot to a certain number of mortals only a certain portion of genius, and that when a very great share of this genius is concentrated in a few individuals of the number, the rest of the multitude remain dull and incapable, while the few produce the most sublime fruits of human intellect; and, on the contrary, where the allotted portion of talent is spread over a great surface, divided amongst many, not only few distinguish themselves from the rest, but none produce anything equal to the works brought into being by the two or three more gifted men which we have referred to in the other case. Thus, in the present age, where all is light, in not one of the arts do we find such wonderful results as we might anticipate from the general diffusion of knowledge. It is very true, great discoveries have been made--that we have had Herschells, La Places, Faradays--that we have discovered steam-engines, railroads, electric telegraphs; but, though the assertion may seem bold, the gauge of original powers in the human mind is to be found more in the arts than in the sciences. The sciences build upon tradition; they are cumulative, and all the generations of the past together hold out the hand to raise up the diligent aspirer to a height above themselves. Not so the arts; for though the scientific part of each may be improved, by, the accumulation of knowledge, that part which gives them their fire and vigour depends upon the genius of each individual artist; and just in the same proportion as you find a certain degree of skill very generally diffused, you will find a multitude of poets, painters, statuaries, and a sad deficiency of excellence amongst them.

Nothing, perhaps, shewed the grandeur and the grasp of ancient art more strongly than the vigour with which the old painters used the effect produced upon the human mind by the power of contrast, and the infinite skill with which they employed that power, so as never to violate those essential principles of harmony which affect painting and sculpture fully as much as they affect music and poetry. Where is the man of the present day who can set red, and yellow, and blue garments side by side with hues of the most sparkling brightness, and yet in no degree offend the eye, or produce the least sensation of harshness upon the mind? So, nevertheless, it is in the paintings of almost all the finest old masters; and we shall also find, that in life itself, one of the greatest zests to enjoyment is striking contrast, provided we can obtain it without any harshness of transition.

Morley Ernstein sat at breakfast, on the following day, somewhat later than usual, thinking over all the people and the things he had seen, and all the words and sounds he had heard, and as, though somewhat variable in his moods, he was not one of those monsters of philosophy who come out into the world at the age of one-and-twenty, like Minerva all armed from the head of Jove, with a sombre and supercilious disgust for common life and its vanities--as he was, in short, neither less nor more than an eager, impetuous, though talented and feeling, young man, it must be confessed, he felt a little of that sort of giddiness of brain, and hurry of ideas, which follows excitement of any kind. His reveries, however, were soon broken in upon by the appearance of his friend Lieberg, who did not take the seat placed for him, but immediately exclaimed--

"Come, Ernstein, you are on the search for strange things; I have one all ready for you. I am going to Bow-street, and on what occasion I will tell you by the way. There you may make a mental breakfast upon all the rogues and vagabonds that are served up fresh every morning about eleven, like new shrimps at Worthing."

"I shall be delighted," replied Morley. "I long extremely to see a good deal more of those gentry; they and their manners have always formed a subject of wonder and interest for my imagination."

"You may pamper its appetite here to the full," answered Lieberg; "but come, I shall be late."

Morley Ernstein was speedily equipped and rolling along in Lieberg's cabriolet towards that street where, in days of yore, a thieves' coffee-house appeared on one side of the way, nearly opposite to the place whence so many of them were sent to trial and to death. As a Bow-street officer once expressed it--"The house had been established there, that the gentlemen might always be ready when they were wanted." As they proceeded, Lieberg told him that his pocket had been picked of a gold snuff-box, coming out of the opera on the preceding night.

"The thing was done in the most deliberate manner," he said. "I found myself pressed upon very hard by three strong fellows, and feeling a sort of waving undulation of my pocket behind, I turned round to look, and saw a very well-dressed man in the act of abstracting the box, without any great ceremony or delicacy. With the fullest intentions of knocking him down, I was prevented from moving in many way by the two men who pressed me on either side, and who, by a well-devised method of squeezing their victim, held me as if in a vice. Scarcely could I turn my head round again, when I found something tugging hard at my watch; luckily there was a strong guard round my neck, but, nevertheless, after the conquest of my snuff-box had been fully effected, the fellow who was before me still gave two hearty pulls, and when he ceased, had the impudence to say, with a grin--'That's a good chain, sir--I'd advise you to take care of it.' They then shouted to each other--'Be off--be off!' and began running up the Haymarket at full speed. I chased the man who had got the box for some way, crying--'Stop thief!' A watchman sprang his rattle, and tried to seize one of the fellows; but, by a dexterous movement, the pickpocket tripped up the poor Charley's feet, and he, rolling down before me, stopped one for the moment, and the fellows escaped. I immediately sent for a Bow-street officer, described my friend who had got the snuff-box, and this morning was told that he is in custody. A curious hint, however, was given me by my good friend R----, the officer. 'Which do you want to do, sir--get your snuff-box, or punish the man? You can't do both, you know.' 'To get my snuff-box,' I replied; 'so if you can manage that for me, I can contrive not to be quite sure of his identity, you know.' 'No, no, sir,' said R----, with a wink of his eye, 'that's no go; you must swear to him positively, otherwise the fellows will think you've got no hold of him, and they'll keep the yellow. You be quite sure, and we'll have an alibi ready.' So you see, Ernstein, I am going to play my part in a pretty farce."

As he spoke the last words, the cabriolet rolled up to the door of the police-office, in Bow-street, round which were standing numerous groups of men and women, whose character was anything but doubtful, and whose appearance was certainly by no means prepossessing, whatever their practices might be. There might be seen the face pale and swollen from habitual drunkenness, looking like a moulded lump of unbaked dough, with an expression which will bear no logical description, though it was marked and peculiar enough. It was the expression of stupid cunning, if one may use such a term, and is seldom to be met with, except in the countenances of those in whom drunkenness is only an accessory to other vices. There, too, might be beheld all the terrible marks, with which crime brands upon the forehead of the guilty the history of their faults and punishment. The red vermilion lines about the mouth and eyelids; the swelled and sometimes blackened eyes; the face covered with many a patch and plaster; the hair rugged and dirty; the dull, downcast look, not of active but of passive despair, seeing nothing round it, but fixing the corporeal eyes upon blankness, while looking with its mental eyes into itself. Oh! who can tell what it must be sometimes for the spirit to stare into the dark cavern of the heart, with that heavy, straining gaze, ineffectual, hopeless, finding nothing there--nothing to solace or to soothe; nothing to elevate or to support; nothing from the past, nothing for the future; nothing to be derived from memory; nothing to be bestowed on hope. Nothing!--nothing! All blank darkness, blotted over with the night of crime!

Through a crowd of such beings standing round the door of the police-office in Bow-street, Morley and his friend drove up to the side of the pavement, and jumped out of the cabriolet, while Lieberg's young groom sprang to the head of the tall, powerful horse, who seemed as if he could have run away with him like a feather, and held him firm with both hands, like a small bull-dog pinning an immense bull. Along the dirty passage, the wainscoted walls of which, on either side, about five feet from the ground, were traced with a long-continued smear of greasy black, from the incessant rubbing of human shoulders, Lieberg, and his companion, walked on--one or two very doubtful-looking people giving way before the two swells, as they internally termed them--into the room where the magistrates were sitting.

There were several persons already at the bar, and in the place assigned to the attorneys were various shrewd-looking, keen-faced men, with eyes full of business, while in one or two instances an ostentatious blue bag appeared beside them. More than one personage, however, who seemed merely, an idler, was also amongst the select; while at the back of the part appropriated to the people, chatting carelessly over totally different subjects, was a group of friendly officers and pickpockets, screened from the bench and the bar by a tolerable thick row of human heads, male and female, through the interstices between which, a girl of fourteen, who seemed already a prostitute, and a boy somewhat younger, were striving to get a view of what was passing at the bar. The court itself possessed an atmosphere redolent of a peculiarly disagreeable smell of human nature, mixed with second-hand whiffs of beer, tobacco, and gin, which, to the more refined noses of the two gentlemen who now entered the court, and especially to that of Morley Ernstein, which was principally accustomed to the free air and sweet scents of the country, was anything but fragrant.

The case before the magistrates was disposed of ere any notice was taken of Lieberg and his companion; but then, the gentleman who had relieved him of his snuff-box on the night before, being placed at the bar, and the rank, station, and appearance, of the two friends being taken into due consideration by His Worship, they were invited to take their places on the bench, and the charge was entered into. Lieberg detailed the whole affair, and swore to the prisoner's identity; a keen-faced man asked him several questions on behalf of the prisoner, and the magistrate, after giving the personage at the bar a proper warning not to say anything more than he liked, interrogated him in turn.

The man positively declared, that the gentleman must be mistaken, affirming, with a sly look and half-suppressed grin, that he did not mean to impeach the truth and honour of such a gentleman as he was, but that there was a mistake somewhere; for at that very hour, and for a full hour before and after, he was with a club called the "Rum Fellows," which met weekly at a certain house that he named. Very honest men, they were, he said, though they was Rum Fellows, and a number of respectable tradesmen too. He could prove it, he said, for there were lots of witnesses. He would call one immediately, whom he had sent for as soon as he was taken up.

He accordingly called a Mr. Higgins, but for a moment or two Mr. Higgins did not appear, and there was a murmur ran through the court in consequence, which no one took pains to keep from the ears of the bench, of, "where is he? where is he?--where's Bill Jones's alibi?" and at length the call for Bill Jones's alibi was roared with a stentorian voice along the passage, and transmitted to the public-house on the opposite side of the street.

A moment after, in rushed a short, stout, swarthy man, very well dressed, after the fashion of a respectable tradesman. His coal-black hair was as smooth as a mirror; his linen was clean, and white; he had a pair of drab gaiters upon his sturdy legs, a black coat, a Marcellas waistcoat, and a coloured handkerchief. His eyes were black and large, his teeth fine and white, and on a fat little finger he wore a fat, long ring. He was a little out of breath with haste, and, as he appeared before the magistrates, he wiped from the corners of his mouth the last vestiges of what the people of that place generally term "something short," which he had taken to keep him fresh before the court. He bowed low to the sitting magistrates, low to Lieberg and to Ernstein, and then nodded to the prisoner at the bar, exclaiming--"Ah, Bill! what's the matter? Surely you did not get drunk last night after you left us!"

His innocent mind being enlightened, in regard to the charge against his friend, he swore most positively, that Bill Jones had been with him and others, at a public-house named the "George," celebrating the mysteries of a club called the "Rum Fellows," at the very hour when Colonel Lieberg's snuff-box had been extracted from his pocket. He swore that the said Bill Jones had been there an hour before and an hour afterwards; and he did, moreover, what, to the uninitiated, might seem a dangerous proceeding--that is to say, he entered into minute particulars as to what Bill Jones said or did on that occasion.

"Well, then, Mr. Higgins," said the magistrate, "if such be the case, there must be, doubtless, others of your club who can swear to the same facts as yourself; if the prisoner thinks fit, he can call another witness."

The prisoner was prepared upon this point also, and he accordingly called a Mr. Farebrother. While Mr. Farebrother was being sought for, Mr. Higgins thought fit to enlighten the court upon his profession, saying, he did not see why his word should be disbelieved, as he was a respectable tradesman.

"Yes, Mr. Higgins," said the magistrate, "I know you; you are a pawnbroker. You may go down."

Mr. Farebrother presented an appearance the most opposite that it is possible to imagine to that of his club-fellow, Mr. Higgins. He was a small, thin, narrow-made man; with a coat of good quality, but originally constructed for a much more considerable person than himself. Indeed, he seemed to have a strong desire to be at room in his clothes, for the slate-coloured trowsers with which his nether man was ornamented, lapped vaguely over his shoes behind; which, if the stockings were in harmony with those shoes, might be, upon the whole, advantageous to him. His look was humble and sanctimonious, and, either from tenderness of heart or of eyes, he had a weeping look about him, which those who knew him believed to increase greatly under reiterated tumblers of brandy and water. We need not enter largely into the testimony which he gave; suffice it to say, he corroborated, in every point, the testimony of Mr. Higgins, and the story of Bill Jones.

The magistrate, as a matter of form, asked him some shrewd, sensible questions, premising them, however, by saying, in a low voice, to Colonel Lieberg, "You wont convict him; the thing is too well got up."

Mr. Farebrother resisted manfully every attempt to wring the truth from him; he had more than once been under the hands of Mister afterwards Baron Garrow, and, consequently, there was not an art by which a witness can be made to forget or betray himself, that he was not thoroughly acquainted with, and ready to resist. Having terminated his examination, the magistrate turned to the accuser, with a silent smile, as if asking--"What am I to do next?"

"I certainly thought I was sure of the identity," said Lieberg, "and, accordingly, swore to the fact; but, after what we have heard, I suppose the matter must be given up."

The magistrate accordingly dismissed the charge; but Bill Jones, who stood upon character, seemed resolved to have the last word: "I hope, your worship," he observed, "that I quit this bar with honour."

"Pooh! nonsense!" said the magistrate. "Go along;" and the worthy gentleman slunk out of court, like a dog, under the influence of fear. Lieberg and Ernstein took leave, and departed also, followed, a step behind, by R----, the officer, who had been standing near the prisoner during the whole time.