Volume Ii Part 31 (2/2)

Stapylton's application for leave to sell out had just been sent in; and once more the newspapers set up the cry that this man should not be permitted to carry away to Aix and Baden the proceeds of a sale which belonged to his ”creditors.” You know the world, and I need not tell you all the pleasant things it told this fellow, for men are pretty nigh as pitiless as crows to their wounded. I thought the complication had reached its limit, when I learned yesterday evening that Stapylton had been summoned before a police magistrate for a case of a.s.sault committed by him when in command of his regiment at Manchester. The case had evidently been got up by a political party, who, seeing the casual unpopularity of the man, determined to profit by it. The celebrated radical barrister, Hesketh, was engaged for the plaintiff.

When I arrived at the court, it was so full that it was with difficulty I got a pa.s.sage to a seat behind the bench. There were crowds of fas.h.i.+onables present, the well-known men about town, and the idlers of the clubs, and a large sprinkling of military men, for the news of the case had got wind already.

Stapylton, dressed in black, and looking pale and worn, but still dignified and like a gentleman, had not a single friend with him. I own to you, I felt ashamed to be there, and was right glad when he did not recognize me.

Though the case opened by a declaration that this was no common a.s.sault case, wherein in a moment of pa.s.sion a man had been betrayed into an excess, I knew the cant of my craft too well to lay any stress on such a.s.sertion, and received it as the ordinary exordium. As I listened, however, I was struck by hearing that the injured man was a.s.serted to be one well known to Stapylton, with whom he had been for years in intimacy, and that the a.s.sault was in reality a deliberate attempt to kill, and not, as had been represented, a mere pa.s.sing act of savage severity committed in hot blood. ”My client,” said he, ”will be brought before you; he is a Hindoo, but so long a resident of this country that he speaks our language fluently. You shall hear his story yourselves, and yourselves decide on its truthfulness. His wounds are, however, of so serious a nature that it will be advisable his statement should be a brief one.” As he said this, a dark-complexioned fellow, with a look half-frightened, half defiant, was carried forwards in a chair, and deposited, as he sat, on the table. He gave his name as Lai Adeen, his age as forty-eight, his birthplace Majamarha, near Agra. He came to this country twelve years ago, as servant to an officer who had died on the pa.s.sage, and after many hards.h.i.+ps in his endeavor to earn a livelihood, obtained employment at Manchester in the mill of Brandling and Bennett, where he was employed to sweep the corridors and the stairs; his wages were nine s.h.i.+llings a week. All this, and much more of the same kind, he told simply and collectedly. I tried to see Stapylton while this was going on, but a pillar of the gallery, against which he leaned, concealed him from my view.

I omit a great deal, not without its interest, but reserving it for another time, and come to his account of the night on which he was wounded. He said that as the cavalry marched on that morning into Manchester, he was struck by seeing at the head of the regiment one he had never set his eyes on for years, but whose features he knew too well to be deceived in.

”I tried to get near him, that he might recognize me,” said he; ”but the crowd kept me back, and I could not. I thought, indeed, at one moment he had seen me, and knew me; but as he turned his head away, I supposed I was mistaken.

”It was on the following evening, when the riot broke out in Mill Street, that I saw him next. I was standing at the door of a chemist's shop when the cavalry rode by at a walk. There was a small body of them in front, at about forty or fifty paces, and who, finding a sort of barricade across the street, returned to the main body, where they seemed to be reporting this. A cry arose that the troops had been blocked up at the rear, and at the same instant a shower of stones came from the side-streets and the house-tops. Thinking to do him a service, I made my way towards him I knew, in order to tell him by what way he could make his escape; and jostled and pushed, and half ridden down, I laid my hand on his horse's shoulder to keep myself from falling. 'Stand back, you scoundrel!' said he, striking me with the hilt of his sword in the face. 'Don't you know me, master?' cried I, in terror. He bent down in his saddle till his face was almost close to mine, and then, reining his horse back to give him room for a blow, he aimed a desperate cut at me. I saw it coming, and threw myself down; but I rose the next instant and ran. The street was already so clear by this time, I got into Cleever's Alley, down Grange Street, up the lane that leads to the brick-fields, and at last into the fields themselves. I was just thinking I was safe, when I saw a horseman behind me. He saw me, and dashed at me. I fell upon my knees to ask mercy, and he gave me this;”

and he pointed to the bandages which covered his forehead, stained as they were with clotted blood. ”I fell on my face, and he tried to make his horse trample on me; but the beast would not, and he only touched me with his hoof as he sprang across me. He at last dismounted to see, perhaps, if I were dead; but a shout from some of the rioters warned him to mount again; and he rode away, and I lay there till morning. It is not true that I was in prison and escaped,--that I was taken to the hospital, and ran away from it. I was sheltered in one of the clay-huts of the brickmakers for several weeks, afraid to come abroad, for I knew that the Sahib was a great man and could take my life. It was only by the persuasions of others that I left my hiding-place and have come here to tell my story.”

On being questioned why this officer could possibly desire to injure him, what grudge one in such a station could bear him, he owned he could not say; they had never been enemies, and, indeed, it was in the hope of a friendly recognition and a.s.sistance that he approached him in Mill Street.

Stapylton's defence was very brief, given in an off-hand, frank manner, which disposed many in his favor. He believed the fellow meant to attack him; he certainly caught hold of his bridle. It was not his intention to give him more than a pa.s.sing blow; but the utterance of a Hindoo curse--an expression of gross outrage in the East--recalled prejudices long dormant, and he gave the rascal chase, and cut him over the head,--not a severe cut, and totally unaccompanied by the other details narrated.

”As for our former acquaintance I deny it altogether. I have seen thousands of his countrymen, and may have seen him; but, I repeat, I never knew him, nor can he presume to say he knew me!”

The Hindoo smiled a faint, sickly smile, made a gesture of deep humility, and asked if he might put a few questions to the ”Sahib.”

”Were you in Naghapoor in the year of the floods?”

”Yes,” said Stapylton, firmly, but evidently with an effort to appear calm.

”In the service of the great Sahib, Howard Stapylton?”

”In his service? Certainly not. I lived with him as his friend, and became his adopted heir.''

”What office did you fill when you first came to the 'Residence'?”

”I a.s.sisted my friend in the duties of his government; I was a good Oriental scholar, and could write and speak a dialect he knew nothing of. But I submit to the court that this examination, prompted and suborned by others, has no other object than to insult me, by leading to disclosures of matters essentially private in their nature.”

”Let me ask but one question,” said the barrister. ”What name did you bear before you took that of Stapylton?”

”I refuse to submit to this insolence,” said Stapylton, rising, angrily.

”If the laws of the country only can lend themselves to a.s.sist the persecutions of a rascally Press, the sooner a man of honor seeks another land the better. Adjudicate on this case, sirs; I will not stoop to bandy words with these men.”

”I now, sir,” said Hesketh, opening his bag and taking out a roll of papers, ”am here to demand a committal for forgery against the person before you, pa.s.sing under the name of Horace Stapylton, but whose real designation is Samuel Scott Edwardes, son of Samuel Edwardes, a name notorious enough once.”

I cannot go on, my dear friend; the emotions that overpowered me at the time, and compelled me to leave the court, are again threatening me, and my brain reels at the recollection of a scene which, even to my fast-fading senses, was the most trying of my life.

To General Conyers I must refer you for what ensued after I left. I cannot even say who came home with me to the hotel, though I am aware I owed that kindness to some one. The face of that unhappy man is yet before me, and all the calm in which I have written up to this leaves me, as I think over one of the most terrible incidents of my life.

Your brother, shocked of course, bears up bravely, and hopes to write to you to-morrow.

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