Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/422

 2, 1864.]

copy of the certificate of a marriage solemnised at St. Pancras Old Church early in the month of July, 1847, between Lewis Carlton and Clarice Beauchamp.

The magistrates gazed on the document as they sat on the bench, and handed it about from one to another, and glanced at Mr. Carlton. Even so. It was that gentleman’s marriage certificate with the unhappy lady of whom he had denied all knowledge, whom—there could be no doubt now—he had destroyed.

The magistrates glanced at Mr. Carlton. A change had come over his face, as much change as could come over so impassive a one, and a fanciful observer might have said that he cowered. He knew that all was over, that any attempt to struggle against his fate and the condemning facts heaping themselves one after another upon his head, would be utterly futile. Nevertheless, he rallied his spirits after the first moment’s shock, and raised himself to his full height—cold, uncompromising, ready to hold out to the last. Of the sea of eyes bent upon him from every part of the crowded hall, he disliked most to meet those of Frederick Grey; he remembered the boy’s open, honest accusation of him in the years gone by.

The gentleman who had brought the paper into the hall was called forward and sworn. His name was James Chesterton, he said; he had been articled clerk to Mr. Friar, the solicitor, of Bedford Row, and was with him still, though the term of his articles had expired. In consequence of a telegram received the previous night from Mr. Drone, he had gone the first thing that morning to search the register of Old St. Pancras Church, and found in it the marriage-entry of which that certificate was a copy.

“You certify that this is a true copy?” asked the chief magistrate.

“A true copy,” replied the witness, “exact in every particular. The clerk who was with me when I copied it said he was present when the marriage took place, and remembered the parties quite well. He had a suspicion that it was a stolen marriage, and that caused him to observe them particularly. The lady"

“And pray what cause had he to suspect that it was a stolen marriage?” sharply interrupted Lawyer Billiter.

“I asked him the same question,” quietly answered the witness. “He said that the parties came to the church quite alone, and the young lady was dressed in every-day clothes. He could not help looking at her, he said, she was so beautiful.”

“And that was the clerk, you say?”

“I supposed him to be the clerk; if not the actual clerk, some deputy acting for him.

Lawyer Billiter fired up. He was about to deny that the Lewis Carlton then present was obliged to have been that bridegroom, when he was silenced by the bench. The chief magistrate read the certificate aloud for Mr. Carlton’s benefit, and then turned to him.

“Prisoner,” said he,—and it was the first time they had called him prisoner—“what have you to say to this?”

“I shall not say anything,” returned the prisoner. “If evidence is to be brought against me about which I know nothing, how can I be prepared to refute it?”

“You cannot say that you know nothing of the marriage to which this certificate refers. Can you still deny that the unfortunate young lady was your wife?”

There was a pause. It is possible that a gleam of doubt was passing through Mr. Carlton’s mind as to whether he could still deny that fact. If so, it might be abandoned as useless. There were certain officials connected with St. Pancras Church still—and he knew it—who could swear to his person.

“If she was my wife, that does not prove that I—poisoned her,” he returned, making the pause in the sentence, as put.

“It goes some way towards it, though,” said the magistrate, forgetting official reticence in the moment’s heat.

The words were swallowed up in a loud murmur that burst simultaneously from many parts of the hall, and bore an unpleasant sound. It was not unlike a threatening of popular opinion, boding no good feeling to the prisoner. John Bull is apt to be on occasions inconveniently impulsive, and Mr. Carlton was losing his ground.

“Silence!” shouted the chairman, in his anger.

“Prisoner,” he added, turning to Mr. Carlton as the sounds died away, “if my memory serves me right, you swore before the Coroner at the inquest that you knew nothing of this letter or of its handwriting. What do you say now?”