The Palliser Novels (376 page)

“That is what the public wants to know.”

“Because the public is ignorant. The public should not wish to know anything of the kind. What we should all wish to get at is the truth of the evidence about the murder. The man is to be hung not because he committed the murder, — as to which no positive knowledge is attainable; but because he has been proved to have committed the murder, — as to which proof, though it be enough for hanging, there must always be attached some shadow of doubt. We were delighted to hang Palmer, — but we don’t know that he killed Cook. A learned man who knew more about it than we can know seemed to think that he didn’t. Now the last man to give us any useful insight into the evidence is the prisoner himself. In nineteen cases out of twenty a man tried for murder in this country committed the murder for which he is tried.”

“There really seems to be a doubt in this case.”

“I dare say. If there be only nineteen guilty out of twenty, there must be one innocent; and why not Mr. Phineas Finn? But, if it be so, he, burning with the sense of injustice, thinks that everybody should see it as he sees it. He is to be tried, because, on investigation, everybody sees it just in a different light. In such case he is unfortunate, but he can’t assist me in liberating him from his misfortune. He sees what is patent and clear to him, — that he walked home on that night without meddling with any one. But I can’t see that, or make others see it, because he sees it.”

“His manner of telling you may do something.”

“If it do, Mr. Wickerby, it is because I am unfit for my business. If he have the gift of protesting well, I am to think him innocent; and, therefore, to think him guilty, if he be unprovided with such eloquence! I will neither believe or disbelieve anything that a client says to me, — unless he confess his guilt, in which case my services can be but of little avail. Of course I shall see him, as he asks it. We had better meet there, — say at half-past ten.” Whereupon Mr. Wickerby wrote to the governor of the prison begging that Phineas Finn might be informed of the visit.

Phineas had now been in gaol between six and seven weeks, and the very fact of his incarceration had nearly broken his spirits. Two of his sisters, who had come from Ireland to be near him, saw him every day, and his two friends, Mr. Low and Lord Chiltern, were very frequently with him; Lady Laura Kennedy had not come to him again; but he heard from her frequently through Barrington Erle. Lord Chiltern rarely spoke of his sister, — alluding to her merely in connection with her father and her late husband. Presents still came to him from various quarters, — as to which he hardly knew whence they came. But the Duchess and Lady Chiltern and Lady Laura all catered for him, — while Mrs. Bunce looked after his wardrobe, and saw that he was not cut down to prison allowance of clean shirts and socks. But the only friend whom he recognised as such was the friend who would freely declare a conviction of his innocence. They allowed him books and pens and paper, and even cards, if he chose to play at Patience with them or build castles. The paper and pens he could use because he could write about himself. From day to day he composed a diary in which he was never tired of expatiating on the terrible injustice of his position. But he could not read. He found it to be impossible to fix his attention on matters outside himself. He assured himself from hour to hour that it was not death he feared, — not even death from the hangman’s hand. It was the condemnation of those who had known him that was so terrible to him; the feeling that they with whom he had aspired to work and live, the leading men and women of his day, Ministers of the Government and their wives, statesmen and their daughters, peers and members of the House in which he himself had sat; — that these should think that, after all, he had been a base adventurer unworthy of their society! That was the sorrow that broke him down, and drew him to confess that his whole life had been a failure.

Mr. Low had advised him not to see Mr. Chaffanbrass; — but he had persisted in declaring that there were instructions which no one but himself could give to the counsellor whose duty it would be to defend him at the trial. Mr. Chaffanbrass came at the hour fixed, and with him came Mr. Wickerby. The old barrister bowed courteously as he entered the prison room, and the attorney introduced the two gentlemen with more than all the courtesy of the outer world. “I am sorry to see you here, Mr. Finn,” said the barrister.

“It’s a bad lodging, Mr. Chaffanbrass, but the term will soon be over. I am thinking a good deal more of my next abode.”

“It has to be thought of, certainly,” said the barrister. “Let us hope that it may be all that you would wish it to be. My services shall not be wanting to make it so.”

“We are doing all we can, Mr. Finn,” said Mr. Wickerby.

“Mr. Chaffanbrass,” said Phineas, “there is one special thing that I want you to do.” The old man, having his own idea as to what was coming, laid one of his hands over the other, bowed his head, and looked meek. “I want you to make men believe that I am innocent of this crime.”

This was better than Mr. Chaffanbrass expected. “I trust that we may succeed in making twelve men believe it,” said he.

“Comparatively I do not care a straw for the twelve men. It is not to them especially that I am anxious that you should address yourself — “

“But that will be my bounden duty, Mr. Finn.”

“I can well believe, sir, that though I have myself been bred a lawyer, I may not altogether understand the nature of an advocate’s duty to his client. But I would wish something more to be done than what you intimate.”

“The duty of an advocate defending a prisoner is to get a verdict of acquittal if he can, and to use his own discretion in making the attempt.”

“But I want something more to be attempted, even if in the struggle something less be achieved. I have known men to be so acquitted that every man in court believed them to be guilty.”

“No doubt; — and such men have probably owed much to their advocates.”

“It is not such a debt that I wish to owe. I know my own innocence.”

“Mr. Chaffanbrass takes that for granted,” said Mr. Wickerby.

“To me it is a matter of astonishment that any human being should believe me to have committed this murder. I am lost in surprise when I remember that I am here simply because I walked home from my club with a loaded stick in my pocket. The magistrate, I suppose, thought me guilty.”

“He did not think about it, Mr. Finn. He went by the evidence; — the quarrel, your position in the streets at the time, the colour of the coat you wore and that of the coat worn by the man whom Lord Fawn saw in the street; the doctor’s evidence as to the blows by which the man was killed; and the nature of the weapon which you carried. He put these things together, and they were enough to entitle the public to demand that a jury should decide. He didn’t say you were guilty. He only said that the circumstances were sufficient to justify a trial.”

“If he thought me innocent he would not have sent me here.”

“Yes, he would; — if the evidence required that he should do so.”

“We will not argue about that, Mr. Chaffanbrass.”

“Certainly not, Mr. Finn.”

“Here I am, and to-morrow I shall be tried for my life. My life will be nothing to me unless it can be made clear to all the world that I am innocent. I would be sooner hung for this, — with the certainty at my heart that all England on the next day would ring with the assurance of my innocence, than be acquitted and afterwards be looked upon as a murderer.” Phineas, when he was thus speaking, had stepped out into the middle of the room, and stood with his head thrown back, and his right hand forward. Mr. Chaffanbrass, who was himself an ugly, dirty old man, who had always piqued himself on being indifferent to appearance, found himself struck by the beauty and grace of the man whom he now saw for the first time. And he was struck, too, by his client’s eloquence, though he had expressly declared to the attorney that it was his duty to be superior to any such influence. “Oh, Mr. Chaffanbrass, for the love of Heaven, let there be no quibbling.”

“We never quibble, I hope, Mr. Finn.”

“No subterfuges, no escaping by a side wind, no advantage taken of little forms, no objection taken to this and that as though delay would avail us anything.”

“Character will go a great way, we hope.”

“It should go for nothing. Though no one would speak a word for me, still am I innocent. Of course the truth will be known some day.”

“I’m not so sure of that, Mr. Finn.”

“It will certainly be known some day. That it should not be known as yet is my misfortune. But in defending me I would have you hurl defiance at my accusers. I had the stick in my pocket, — having heretofore been concerned with ruffians in the street. I did quarrel with the man, having been insulted by him at the club. The coat which I wore was such as they say. But does that make a murderer of me?”

“Somebody did the deed, and that somebody could probably say all that you say.”

“No, sir; — he, when he is known, will be found to have been skulking in the streets; he will have thrown away his weapon; he will have been secret in his movements; he will have hidden his face, and have been a murderer in more than the deed. When they came to me in the morning did it seem to them that I was a murderer? Has my life been like that? They who have really known me cannot believe that I have been guilty. They who have not known me, and do believe, will live to learn their error.”

He then sat down and listened patiently while the old lawyer described to him the nature of the case, — wherein lay his danger, and wherein what hope there was of safety. There was no evidence against him other than circumstantial evidence, and both judges and jury were wont to be unwilling to accept such, when uncorroborated, as sufficient in cases of life and death. Unfortunately, in this case the circumstantial evidence was very strong against him. But, on the other hand, his character, as to which men of great mark would speak with enthusiasm, would be made to stand very high. “I would not have it made to stand higher than it is,” said Phineas. As to the opinion of the world afterwards, Mr. Chaffanbrass went on to say, of that he must take his chance. But surely he himself might fight better for it living than any friend could do for him after his death. “You must believe me in this, Mr. Finn, that a verdict of acquittal from the jury is the one object that we must have before us.”

“The one object that I shall have before me is the verdict of the public,” said Phineas. “I am treated with so much injustice in being thought a murderer that they can hardly add anything to it by hanging me.”

When Mr. Chaffanbrass left the prison he walked back with Mr. Wickerby to the attorney’s chambers in Hatton Garden, and he lingered for awhile on the Viaduct expressing his opinion of his client. “He’s not a bad fellow, Wickerby.”

“A very good sort of fellow, Mr. Chaffanbrass.”

“I never did, — and I never will, — express an opinion of my own as to the guilt or innocence of a client till after the trial is over. But I have sometimes felt as though I would give the blood out of my veins to save a man. I never felt in that way more strongly than I do now.”

“It’ll make me very unhappy, I know, if it goes against him,” said Mr. Wickerby.

“People think that the special branch of the profession into which I have chanced to fall is a very low one, — and I do not know whether, if the world were before me again, I would allow myself to drift into an exclusive practice in criminal courts.”

“Yours has been a very useful life, Mr. Chaffanbrass.”

“But I often feel,” continued the barrister, paying no attention to the attorney’s last remark, “that my work touches the heart more nearly than does that of gentlemen who have to deal with matters of property and of high social claims. People think I am savage, — savage to witnesses.”

“You can frighten a witness, Mr. Chaffanbrass.”

“It’s just the trick of the trade that you learn, as a girl learns the notes of her piano. There’s nothing in it. You forget it all the next hour. But when a man has been hung whom you have striven to save, you do remember that. Good-morning, Mr. Wickerby. I’ll be there a little before ten. Perhaps you may have to speak to me.”

The task of seeing an important trial at the Old Bailey is by no means a pleasant business, unless you be what the denizens of the Court would call “one of the swells,” — so as to enjoy the privilege of being a benchfellow with the judge on the seat of judgment. And even in that case the pleasure is not unalloyed. You have, indeed, the gratification of seeing the man whom all the world has been talking about for the last nine days, face to face; and of being seen in a position which causes you to be acknowledged as a man of mark; but the intolerable stenches of the Court and its horrid heat come up to you there, no doubt, as powerfully as they fall on those below. And then the tedium of a prolonged trial, in which the points of interest are apt to be few and far between, grows upon you till you begin to feel that though the Prime Minister who is out should murder the Prime Minister who is in, and all the members of the two Cabinets were to be called in evidence, you would not attend the trial, though the seat of honour next to the judge were accorded to you. Those be-wigged ones, who are the performers, are so insufferably long in their parts, so arrogant in their bearing, — so it strikes you, though doubtless the fashion of working has been found to be efficient for the purposes they have in hand, — and so uninteresting in their repetition, that you first admire, and then question, and at last execrate the imperturbable patience of the judge, who might, as you think, force the thing through in a quarter of the time without any injury to justice. And it will probably strike you that the length of the trial is proportioned not to the complicity but to the importance, or rather to the public interest, of the case, — so that the trial which has been suggested of a disappointed and bloody-minded ex-Prime Minister would certainly take at least a fortnight, even though the Speaker of the House of Commons and the Lord Chancellor had seen the blow struck, whereas a collier may knock his wife’s brains out in the dark and be sent to the gallows with a trial that shall not last three hours. And yet the collier has to be hung, — if found guilty, — and no one thinks that his life is improperly endangered by reckless haste. Whether lives may not be improperly saved by the more lengthened process is another question.