The Bride of Newgate Read online

  “That Prinny had forgotten all about him? Yes?”

  “In effect, yes. But His Royal Highness was graciously pleased to write across the death warrant, ‘This sentence must be carried out.’”

  “Oh, you are a dear! You are a jewel! You are a treasure!”

  “I can but do my best. Madam, God Himself could not save Richard Darwent now.”

  There was a pause. Caroline sat upright, her hands folded. She seemed about to pour out more congratulations, when annoyance struck into her guarded life.

  “Upon my soul,” she said pettishly, “I can’t have quiet in my own home! What is that insufferable noise down in the street?”

  A movement of her eyebrows indicated that Mr. Crockit should ring the bell. Alfred, the first footman, was instructed to inquire about the disturbance. Any urchin in St. James’s Square could have told him.

  Major Percy, clattering up in his carriage to the door of number eighteen, had found Lord Castlereagh not at home. But the War Minister, they told him, was dining only a few doors away at the home of Mr. Boehm. Abovestairs, still over the wine, he found not only Lord Castlereagh; he found Lord Liverpool, the Prime Minister, and His Royal Highness, the Prince Regent.

  But none of the sparks from their talk, now blown and adrift over London, touched the bijou drawing room with its dark-green curtains and its white-clad hostess.

  “Then I am quite, quite safe!” murmured Caroline.

  Whereupon Mr. Crockit lost his head.

  “Before you do this,” he burst out, “I implore you to stop and consider.”

  “I have considered, sir.”

  “Madam, it is a damned outrage!”

  Caroline Ross merely looked at him.

  “That will suffice, I think.” Effortlessly she put him in his place, as though with a candle snuffer. “You yourself,” she could not help adding, “told me that my grandfather’s despicable and mean will could not be contested.”

  “No man can contest it. It is a good will.”

  “‘A good will.’” repeated Caroline, and threw back her head. “God save us!”

  “Can you bear in mind, madam, that you inherit a very great fortune?”

  “As I have always expected to inherit it. Naturally!”

  “Well! Under the law, believe me, your grandfather could have imposed conditions much more severe. He might have chosen you a husband. Instead, the only conditions attached to your inheritance is that you are married by your twenty-fifth birthday. Mark that! Married by your twenty-fifth birthday!”

  Again there was a pause.

  “Do you recall,” Caroline said dreamily, “any particular phrase in the writing of that will?”

  “I have forgotten it.”

  “I have not. ‘She’s a stubborn filly, and needs the whip.’ —Let us see!”

  Mr. Crockit, in quiet despair, made one last plea.

  “Come now,” he urged persuasively, “there must be a dozen eligible gentlemen, if I may say so, eager to ask for your hand in marriage.”

  Caroline lifted one shoulder. “I daresay.”

  “And yet, to avoid the necessity of marrying anybody …”

  Caroline’s soft brown ringlets fell forward as she inclined her head in assent.

  “To avoid this,” said Crockit, “you would go by stealth to Newgate Prison. You would wed a verminous creature condemned to death. On the morrow, above all, you would watch from a tavern window while he kicks at a rope’s end. You would gorge a champagne breakfast, and make sure he is dead. This is not worthy of you.”

  Caroline regarded him fixedly.

  “Worthy or not,” she replied, “does it fulfill the conditions of the law?”

  “The letter of the law. Yes.”

  “Will this marriage be legal?”

  “This afternoon,” returned Mr. Crockit, and tapped the side of his coat, “I procured a license at Doctors’ Commons. The Chaplain at Newgate, whom they call the ‘Ordinary,’ is an ordained clergyman of the Established Church. Yes: it will be legal.”

  “Can any man then contest my right to my inheritance?”

  “None in this world.”

  “Why, then! Let me be married to the convicted felon!”

  “As you please, madam. —You do not find it, forgive me, a trifle degrading?”

  “Degrading!” exclaimed Caroline, though in fact her cheeks were flushed. She arose from the sofa.

  As though to conceal anger by concealing her face, she swept over to examine two framed silhouettes hung on the wall beside the door. After a moment she turned back to the small round table in the center of the room. Standing sideways to her guest, she glanced at him over one bare shoulder, past the ringlets.

  “Dear Mr. Crockit,” she breathed. “Do let me explain!”

  The lawyer merely inclined his head.

  Caroline turned round to face him fully. The ruby at her corsage burned with shifting colors by candlelight.

  “In marriage, it’s understood, the husband has a certain ‘right.’ I will not grant that right to any man.” She rapped her knuckles on the table, breathing quickly. “Do you understand me, sir?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “That aspect,” said Caroline, “I have always considered rather ridiculous and faintly revolting. But, under your precious law, the husband has still another right. Everything I own becomes his property, even to the house we stand in at this moment. And what, pray, do I get in exchange?

  “I receive a boorish lout who will stamp home smelling of the stables, rattle out his oaths, and be hopelessly drunk by three o’clock in the afternoon. Or an empty-pated dandy (praise heaven the breed is passing!) who pays fabulous compliments, has a sour temper, and gambles away every farthing at Watier’s or White’s. If one lives à la mode, that’s a husband.

  “And for this,” Caroline went on, with bitter disdain, “we’re taught to simper, and swoon, and tap coquettishly with a fan, and cry ‘Fie!’ at some mildly bawdy jest. For what purpose? To ‘catch,’ dear me, a husband who is not worth the trouble to catch!”

  Her voice went up.

  “It’s not fair. It’s odious,” cried Caroline, suddenly becoming human and stamping her foot on the dark-green carpet. “You say, Mr. Crockit, that what I propose is degrading. Very well! Then which is the more degrading: their style of marriage or mine?”

  “My dear young lady,” protested a much-puzzled Mr. Crockit, “I am not responsible. That’s the way of the world.”

  “Not my world, sir. Not my world!”

  The lawyer studied her.

  “You have spoken much,” he told her dryly, “of feeling and sensibility. Have you thought of your felon-husband’s feelings?”

  “Pardon me. Of … what?”

  “We come to him, madam, during the last few hours of his life. We say to him, ‘Wed this lady and die as soon as possible, so that she may have fine jewels and painted carriages.’ It might well sicken a poor devil on the brink of eternity.”

  Caroline’s whole manner had altered to one of poised coolness.

  “This murderer, I imagine, is not du monde?” Her sarcasm increased. “He belongs to perhaps a little lower stratum of society than my own?”

  “And if he does, madam?”

  “Then how does it matter what his feelings are?” Caroline asked simply. “Indeed, he has no feelings.”

  That was the moment at which, suddenly, they both turned toward the door.

  They could not have been more astonished if a tidal wave had swept up over Whitehall. For the door of the drawing room was almost flung open. Alfred, the first footman, stood red-faced and unable to control his voice.

  “He’s beaten,” the footman said. “Boney’s beaten!”

  The words struck across that fastidious room like hammers against glass.

  And now they were all aware, as though noises had hovered only at the back of the mind, that a crowd was assembled in the square below. Two-hundred-odd voices were upraised with, “God Save the K
ing.”

  “You may apologize later,” Caroline told the footman. “In the meantime … no, no; don’t try to speak formally: you’ll burst. Simply tell us.”

  “On Sunday, madam,” the footman began formally, and choked. “On Sunday they beat the immortal stuffing out of Boney at some place near Brussels. The Frenchies, they downed arms and ran. Old Boney ran too. We might ‘a’ had the news Sunday night.”

  “Sunday night?”

  “Yes, madam. Two of our lads, cavalrymen they were, swore they’d ride all night and send the news to Dover by semaphore. They’d got a big semaphore, and a lot of brushwood for a fire to see it by. But in Dover …”

  “Gently, now. Gently!”

  “They couldn’t tell, even with the best spyglass, whether the message was, ‘Boney beat us,’ or, ‘Boney beaten.’ My brother says an old woman was hurt, and a man dropped dead. But there wasn’t anything more until today.”

  And outside the windows voices rose up:

  Confound their politics,

  Frustrate their knavish tricks,

  On Thee our hopes we fix,

  God save the king!

  Verse after verse of that anthem, sung in deep fervor, rolled across the square. Mr. Crockit hastened to the nearest window, and threw back the heavy curtains.

  Toward his left across the square, over a multitude of upturned faces, he saw that every window in Mr. Boehm’s house was illuminated. It kindled the trees of the square to spectral green. At the windows they were exhibiting the first trophies, two war eagles and four French battle flags. Out on a balcony moved an indistinct figure, which by its immense fatness could be only that of the Prince Regent. The figure bowed, and bowed again, amid a thunder of huzzas.

  Napoleon Bonaparte, so-called Emperor of the French, would trouble this earth no more.

  “You may go,” Mr. Crockit heard Caroline say to the footman. The lawyer hastened to close the curtains, and compose himself. For here, it is regrettable to state, there were tears in Mr. Crockit’s eyes.

  “Will you be good enough, Mr. Crockit, to favor me with your attention”

  “I deeply apologize,” said Mr. Crockit. “I was much preoccupied.”

  “This victory,” said Caroline in a tone of anxiety, “will not disturb our plan?”

  “No, madam. Why should it?”

  “There will not be—oh, what do I want to say!—a rejoicing, a jail delivery for the victory? He cannot escape hanging?”

  Caroline’s mouth, which was broad and full lipped and should have added to her beauty, had been compressed by sheer will power to a thin line.

  “I fear,” said Mr. Crockit, “you must take your notions of law from the Minerva romances. No; he can’t escape.”

  “Stay a moment, though! You said, or at least hinted … oh, it’s absurd! it’s incredible! it’s impossible! … that the man might refuse this offer.”

  “I had already thought of that, madam. He will not refuse.”

  “What assurance do you give of this?”

  Mr. Crockit made a mouth.

  “The last position occupied by the man Darwent,” be answered, “was that of fencing master at a salle d’armes near Drury Lane Playhouse. He became attracted by a young person …”

  “Yes, yes, I might have guessed it!”

  “This young person is an actress, of sorts. But she is given very small parts, and is near destitution. If it had not been for Darwent—well!”

  “Well?”

  “He has nothing to leave her. Fifty pounds—an overly generous sum, mark you!—should keep her in comfort for a year. Yes; he will consent. —I have no pity to waste on murderers,” Mr. Crockit added curtly. “Yet the man Darwent, one hears, is a good fellow.”

  “Oh, and indeed? Have you seen him?”

  “No. I visited Newgate tonight for that purpose. I also wished to have a word with Darwent’s representative, a fat and drunken rascal named Mulberry. But I decided that an approach nearer the last moment would weaken him more.”

  “Yes! I agree!”

  “As for the young person from the playhouse …”

  Caroline made that sound which is usually described as “faugh!” Mr. Crockit politely ignored it.

  “He would die for her, they say,” the lawyer mused, and then woke up. “Come!” he added, angry with himself. “I have strange notions in my head tonight. He will die in any case, madam. Have no fear for that!”

  Chapter II

  Deals with a Blue Coach at Twilight—

  THE REV. HORACE SALUSBURY Cotton, Ordinary of Newgate, stumbled once or twice as he hastened over the rough ground of the Press Yard.

  A turnkey, carrying a lantern, followed him respectfully. The lantern light shone on the clergyman’s black billowing gown, and the neat white bands at his neck.

  The Rev. Horace Cotton was a large, rosy, robust man, with two kinds of strength in him. He was a trifle unctuous, they say, and a little inclined to be strong in his hell-fire sermons to the condemned. But this came only from zeal and earnestness; at heart he was a kindly man.

  Midway across the yard he stopped, his prayer book in his hand, and looked round him.

  The condemned cells were ratholes crowded round three sides of the small yard. “Press Yard” was only a name derived from an older Newgate; no one nowadays was pressed or crushed to death. After dark, as a rule, these cells were lightless. Sometimes as many as fifty persons were pushed, willy-nilly, into the few of them.

  But Press Yard was strangely quiet tonight.

  “Which cell,” asked the Rev. Horace, in his rich voice, “is the prisoner’s?”

  “W’y sir,” answered the turnkey, pointing toward a very faint gleam inside the grill of an arched iron door, “it’s that ’un with the light in it. Dick must’a paid something ’andsome for it.”

  They approached the door. The Rev. Horace cleared his throat, for better richness of exhortation. He could have sworn he heard, inside the cell, the rattle of iron fetters against a wall: as of a man in a convulsion of mortal terror. But this ceased instantly as the jailer’s keys rattled.

  The Rev. Horace, having forgotten something in his haste, bent close to the turnkey and spoke in a low voice.

  “Er—the prisoner’s name?” he inquired.

  “Darwent, sir. Dick Darwent.”

  “And his—er—offense?”

  “Ain’t sure, sir. There’s so many of ’em.”

  Handing the Rev. Horace his lantern, the turnkey unlocked the iron door for the clergyman to enter, locked it behind him, and waited stolidly.

  And the Rev. Horace swept in, large and robust and rosy, like a sunrise over a sewer.

  “My poor fellow …!” he began.

  Facing him, sitting back to the wall on the pile of straw which served as a bed, was a figure whose hands were fettered to the wall with long rusty chains attached to iron cuffs. He had one leg fettered as well.

  If Darwent had been washed and cleansed of lice, he would have been a middle-sized, lean, very wiry young man in his early thirties. But he had allowed himself to go to seed in detention before his trial. A dark stubble of beard marred his dirty face, and mingled with long greasy hair. His clothes were a scarecrow’s amid straw. His eyes—gray eyes, rather bloodshot but steady and compelling—regarded the clergyman with watchful friendliness.

  “My poor fellow,” continued the Rev. Horace, “I have come to help you during your last hours on earth.”

  “Good evening, Padre,” replied the scarecrow, in a voice of polished courtesy. “It was kind of you to visit me in my somewhat cramped lodgings.”

  The Rev. Horace took a step backwards, and tightened his hand on the prayer book. His astonishment held him speechless.

  At one side of the cell was a small niche of a seat, reserved for visitors. In this stood another lantern, with a tall candle burning inside. There was no other furniture except a wooden bucket, which the French politely called a chaise d’aisance, within reach of the condemned man’s
chains. In the straw bed stood a bottle of brandy, only an inch or so depleted.

  “And before you continue, Padre,” Darwent spoke earnestly, “may I venture a small request?”

  “Of—of course,” said the clergyman.

  With some effort Darwent rose to his feet, the chains rattling, and propped his back against the wall.

  He was weak, since the condemned were permitted only bread and water after their sentence. He had drunk too much brandy, both before and after trial. The iron cuffs galled his wrists to festering, with ceaseless pain.

  “Padre,” he said, “I would mock at no man’s religion, even the faith of those we are taught to call the heathen. Therefore,”—Darwent held up his hand to forestall objection, and pain burned him—“therefore let us discuss all books save only Holy Writ.

  “By your look, Padre,” he went on, “you are good fellow. By your calling you are a man of education. Let us sit here, like two friends—I am devilish lonely!—and talk together until you’re obliged to go. I beg of you to do this!”

  Here, thought his visitor, was a very bad case.

  The Rev. Horace Cotton had not long occupied his post at Newgate. He had not yet seen, in the condemned cell at least, such a dirt-coated wreck of what was plainly a gentleman. His whole nature and soul became as hard as a rock.

  “My poor fellow!” he repeated. Then his voice rolled out. “Do you not credit the reality of the Lord God Almighty?”

  Darwent considered this. His gaze moved slowly over the damp stone ceiling.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “That’s the most fair and honest answer I can give. I don’t know.”

  “Tomorrow morning,” said the Rev. Horace, “you stand in the awful presence of your Maker, who may condemn you to the torture of fire everlasting and sear you with pain beyond human knowledge. Make your peace with Him!”

  The language of the time was not intended to be cruel; it was meant to uplift hearts. The Rev. Horace Cotton thundered at him.

  “Have you nothing to confess? Nothing to repent of?”

  Darwent’s gray eyes looked back at him as steadily as his own.

  “No, I don’t think so.”