The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion by John Charles Dent (short novels in english .TXT) 📖

had been rendered more lively by weakness and prostration of body, and he was so stimulated by the change of air from his cell to the court-room that his sensations were chiefly those of a vague and unreasoning delight--delight at the prospect of freedom; delight at the prospect of once more enjoying the luxury of heaven's sunlight unimpeded by the bars of a prison cell; of running rampant through the land, and feeling upon his sunken cheeks the deliciously invigorating air of the open fields. His high spirit had been effectually tamed by that rigid, excruciating torture of close confinement during the dog days, with no other companion than despair. By this time personal liberty and fresh air seemed to him the only things greatly to be desired. He was cognizant of a sensation of thankfulness that his trial had come on at last, even though it should result in his banishment. He rejoiced that he should even thus be set at liberty from his horrible situation.[16] He longed to feel the tide of human life ebbing and flowing around him, and to feel that he himself was not a mere drone in the hive. During the progress of the trial, though he was oblivious of most that was going on in the court-room, memory and fancy were keenly alert, and he rapidly lived over again many episodes of his past life. The dead and gone years rose up before him like the scenes of a rapidly-shifting panorama, even as the past is said to arise before the mental vision of those lying on beds of pain, just before the great mystery of the grave is unfolded to their view. Subjects and scenes long forgotten or seldom remembered presented themselves. There was the little Fifeshire school, with its umbrageous playground, where he had been a merry laughing lad, and where Dominie Angus had given him his first taste of ferule and Fotherup. There was the patched portrait of Cardinal Beaton, in St. Mary's College, at which he and his friend John Dean had been wont to gaze with rapt admiration in the old days left so far behind. There was that odd adventure among the Mendip Hills, during his professional peregrination through Somersetshire more than a dozen years before, and upon which he could not remember that he had bestowed a single thought since his arrival in Canada. There, too, was the drunken type-setter from Bristol, who had taught him the technical marks to be used in making corrections for the press, and whom he had neither seen nor thought of since the publication of his pamphlet in which be had portrayed the sufferings of Bet Bennam and Mary Bacon. Who shall say what other scenes, sad or mirthful, presented themselves among his "thick-coming fancies"? Possibly he recalled the high hopes of his boyhood, when he thirsted to better the condition of the poor, and was almost persuaded that he had been sent into the world expressly to guard their interests against the exactions of grasping landlords. Visions, too, may have arisen before him of his beautiful Wiltshire farm, where the modest daisies peeped above the grass, and the joyous lark sang from the meadow; where he had once been so happy in the companionship of his fond wife and little ones, who at this moment waited in longing expectation for tidings from the absent husband and father. Perchance also he called to mind, at that crisis, his little dead daughter, who had blossomed and faded among the green glades of Wily, and over whose grave the parson of the parish had refused to read the services of the Church.[17] The poor babe had died unchristened, and under such circumstances the rubric forbade the solemnization of funeral rites.
From all such musings he was recalled by the voice of Chief Justice Powell, demanding if he had aught to say ere the sentence of the court should be pronounced upon him. The sentence of the court! For the best part of two hours he had been wool-gathering, and the words beat upon his brain without arousing any just appreciation of their significance. He now once more awoke to the fact that he was on his trial, but he could not grasp the potentialities of his situation, nor could he for the life of him recall the precise nature of the offence with which he had been charged. He did, however, realize that the jury had returned a verdict to the effect that he had been guilty of refusing to leave the Province, pursuant to the order served upon him. By a desperate effort he managed to rally his senses sufficiently to remember that he had been accused of being a seditious person, though whether the accusation had been made yesterday, or the day before, or half a century ago, he was wholly unaware. Turning towards the jury-box, he enquired of the nearest occupant whether he had been found guilty of sedition. Suddenly it flashed across him that he had prepared a defence, together with a written protest against the anticipated verdict. But by no mental exertion of which he was capable could he remember what he had done with the defence, nor could he call to mind the word "protest," although at that moment he had the written one in his pocket. After a moment's struggle to remember what he wished to say, he found himself hopelessly befogged, and abandoned the attempt. Then, to the amazement of all who heard him, he burst out into a loud, strident peal of unmeaning, maniacal laughter--laughter which had no spice of merriment in it, and which was a mere spontaneous effort of nature to relieve the strain upon the shattered nerves. Bench, bar, jury and spectators stared aghast. Such laughter sounded not only incongruous, but sinister, ominous. It was suggestive of the expiring wail of a lost soul. It was more eloquent than any mere words could have been, and spoke with most miraculous organ. Over more than one heart there crept a sort of premonition that a dread reckoning must sometime arrive for that day's work: that Eternal Justice would sooner or later exact a fit penalty for the cruel perversion of right which was then and there being consummated. It would be interesting to know what, at that particular moment, were the innermost sensations of William Dickson and William Claus, both of whom sat within a few feet of their victim, and both of whom had repeatedly received offices of kindness at his hands.
Strange to say, the miserable man's memory was merely suspended, and he afterwards recalled with much clearness the thoughts and reflections which passed through his mind during that delirium of more than two hours. He even remembered the senseless bray of laughter which, to the sympathetic mind, is not the least impressive feature of that iniquitous trial. His overwrought nerves being temporarily relieved by the cachinnation, he regained for a few minutes some measure of composure and sanity. With the return of reason came a returning sense of injustice and oppression. He made a brief but ineffectual attempt to argue the matter with the Chief Justice, who informed him that the facts had been dealt with by the jury, and that he could be permitted to speak only on questions of law. The sentence of the Court was then pronounced. It was to the effect that the prisoner must quit the Province within twenty-four hours. He was reminded of the risk he would run in the event of his presuming to disobey, or to return to Upper Canada after his departure therefrom. He would be liable, according to the words of the Act of 1804, to suffer death as a felon, without benefit of clergy. The Chief Justice finally proceeded to read him a severe lecture upon his past course since his arrival in Canada, and furthermore to give him some excellent advice. He informed him that in this country the law is supreme; that no man can be permitted to run counter to it with impunity; that those who administer the law should be no respecters of persons; that justice is even-handed, and metes out impartially to the poor man and the rich. He advised him to turn his great abilities to practical account, whereby he would no doubt win happiness and distinction. "Perhaps," says George Eliot, "some of the most terrible irony of the human lot is to hear a deep truth uttered by lips that have no right to it." Poor Gourlay was conscious of some feeling of this sort when he heard such truths proclaimed from such lips. To his morbidly-sensitive nature, such irony seemed an aggravation of all he had endured. To think that, after such experiences as had fallen to his share, a Family Compact judge should gravely inform him that in Upper Canada the administrators of the law should be no respecters of persons! that justice is even-handed! To think that such an one should presume to advise him to become practical, with a view to wealth and happiness! It was like the adulterous woman who, on eloping with her paramour, wrote to her husband enjoining him to be virtuous if he would be happy. The incongruity struck the prisoner so forcibly that for a moment he was on the verge of another explosion of sardonic laughter. Before leaving the dock he made one last attempt to draw attention to the treatment he had sustained while in prison. By way of heightening the effect of his narration, he informed the Court that his letters had been suppressed by the sheriff:[18] that while his enemies had been allowed to fill the newspapers with lying diatribes against him, and to prejudice the public mind in view of his impending trial, his own letters to the Niagara _Spectator_ had been rigidly withheld from the light of day, and this by official interference. Chief Justice Powell put the cap-sheaf upon the pinnacle of absurdity by informing him that if he chose he might prosecute the sheriff. Prosecute the sheriff! when he had just been sentenced by the Chief Justice himself to leave the Province within twenty-four hours, and when he was liable to the last penalty of the law in case of his return to prosecute!
The trial was ended, and--blissful thought!--for the ensuing twenty-four hours he was free to come and go whithersoever he would. He was taken in charge by his friends the Hamiltons, and spent the night in their house at Queenston. Next day--Saturday, the 21st of August--he obeyed the mandate of the law, and shook from his feet the parched dust of Upper Canadian soil. His mental condition was far from satisfactory, but he would brook no interference with his actions, even from his best friends. The feeling uppermost in his bosom was a delicious sense of being at large, with no one to shut the cell door upon him, or otherwise to control his actions. He felt like one recalled to life. The unhappy man was well aware that his brain was weak, but he also knew that he was not what is ordinarily understood as insane. Like Baldassarre, he carried within him that piteous stamp of sanity, the clear consciousness of shattered faculties. His feebleness was as patent to himself as to others. He knew that he was the mere wreck of what he had once been, and he knew further that his mental and bodily ruin was due to the triumph of tyranny and injustice. Still, he was, for the moment, happy. There was sunshine in his heart, and gladness in his eye. Having crossed the Niagara river, he knew that he was beyond the material grasp of those whose baneful shadow was nevertheless destined to darken the rest of his life. "I thanked God," he writes, several years afterwards, "as I set my first foot on the American shore, that I trod on a land of freedom.