I never saw my father again until I was in the prisoner’s anteroom at
the Old Bailey. It was full of lounging men, whose fleshy limbs bulged
out against the tight, loud checks of their coats and trousers. These
were jailers waiting to bring in their prisoners. On the other side
of one black door the Grand Jury was deliberating on my case, behind
another the court was in waiting to try me. I was in a sort of tired
lull. All night I had been pacing up and down, trying to bring my brain
to think of points--points in my defence. It was very difficult. I knew
that I must keep cool, be calm, be lucid, be convincing; and my brain
had reeled at times, even in the darkness of the cell. I knew it had
reeled, because I remembered that once I had fallen against the stone
of one of the walls, and once against the door. Here, in the light, with
only a door between myself and the last scene, I regained my hold. I was
going to fight every inch from start to finish. I was going to let no
chink of their armour go untried. I was going to make a good fight. My
teeth chattered like castanets, jarring in my jaws until it was painful.
But that was only with the cold.
A hubbub of expostulation was going on at the third door. My turnkey
called suddenly:
“Let the genman in, Charlie. Pal o’ ourn,” and my father ran huntedly
into the room. He began an endless tale of a hackney coachman who had
stood in front of the door of his coach to prevent his number being
taken; of a crowd of caddee-smashers, who had hustled him and filched
his purse. “Of course, I made a fight for it,” he said, “a damn good
fight, considering. It’s in the blood. But the watch came, and, in
short--on such an occasion as this there is no time for words--I passed
the night in the watch-house. Many and many a night I passed there when
I and Lord------But I am losing time.”
“You ain’t fit to walk the streets of London alone, sir,” the turnkey
said.
My father gave him a corner of his narrow-lidded eyes. “My man,” he
said, “I walked the streets with the highest in the land before your
mother bore you in Bridewell, or whatever jail it was.”
“Oh, no offence,” the turnkey muttered.