IF publicity at any cost be a good thing for a new journal, then "The
Carman" had no right whatever to complain. The men belonging to the
Society felt exultant at references to the impending action. It seemed
that they were defying Capital as Capital had never been defied before.
They told each other, when they met at receiving offices and railway
stations, that Capital was going to have a nasty show up. Erb looked
forward to the struggle with eagerness, until he had a meeting with
Spanswick, the writer of the paragraph; that amateur journalist admitted,
at the end of a keen cross-examination, that he had, perhaps, erred in
stating that he knew the statement as a fact of his own knowledge: he
remembered now that it had been related to him by a chap of his
acquaintance, who was either on the Great Eastern or the South Western,
he would not swear which, and he confessed to the indignant Erb that he
could no more place his hand on this man's shoulders and produce him at
the Law Courts "than the dead." Erb told Spanswick exactly what he
thought of him, and Spanswick, penitent, declared that it would be a
warning for the future: he would not have had this happen for forty
thousand pounds. If Erb required him to go into a witness-box he would
guarantee to say on oath just whatever Erb wished him to say. This
sporting offer being declined, Spanswick went with downcast head, and
examined the lining of his cap, as though hopeful that some solution of
the difficulty would be found there. Once clear of the place he gave on
the wooden flags of a cellar in Grange Road a few steps of a dance, which
seemed to intimate that his regret was but a cloak that could be
discarded without much difficulty.
No easy thing to keep up an attitude of hopefulness before the men whilst
searching uselessly for facts to justify the Spanswick paragraph; but
this was a mere diversion compared with the trouble that came to him the
following week. Louisa was at home again after a few days of work at the
factory, and Erb, going one afternoon to Page's Walk for some
correspondence, encountered the doctor who had called for a minute to see
her. The doctor was a breathless, energetic man, whose fees were so
small that, added up, they only made a living wage by reason of the
number of his patients.
"Going on all right, doctor?"
"Yes, thanks," replied the medical man, walking rapidly through the
passage, and brushing his hat the while. "Busy though! Up to my eyes in
work."
"I was referring more particularly to my young sister."
"Oh! she! Oh! it's what might be expected. Hideous occupation, I call
it. One of those manufactures that might well be left to foreigners.
Good day!"
"One moment," said Erb, placing a hand on the doctor's arm, and speaking
with great anxiety. "Tell us exactly what you mean in plain language.
Ought she to be sent away again?"
"You don't want to waste money," said the doctor, glancing at his watch.
"If it's necessary for her health, I'd spend the last penny I've got."
"Would you really?" The doctor seemed genuinely surprised. "Well, then,
perhaps she might get away to the country or the seaside or somewhere."
"May be the means of saving her life?"
"Oh, no," said the doctor cheerfully. "I wouldn't go so far as that."
Erb shook him violently.
"Why didn't you tell me this before? You--"
"Thought you had the sense to see," said the doctor curtly. "Credited
you with more intelligence apparently than you possess. Good day!"
Louisa resting upstairs in the one armchair declared that she had never
felt better. It was only that she was tired, and had no appetite; but,
then, see what a good thing it was to feel tired, and just imagine what a
saving was effected by the absence of a craving for unlimited food! Erb
did not tell his sister what the doctor had said, but his grave
appearance hinted something, and Louisa declared not only that all
doctors were fools, but went further, and asserted that most of them were
born fools. All the same, she consented with some reluctance to go away.
Erb went down to Camberwell, to see Rosalind and talk it over. At
Camberwell, Rosalind, ready dressed for public promenade, came halfway
down the uneven pavement and met him, with both hands outstretched, just
by Minerva. She had only that moment been speaking of him to the
Professor, and the Professor had said that he, for his part, felt a keen
desire to see Erb again.
"But we won't see him," she said, in a confidential way that was very
pleasing, "because he will only want to borrow, and I am used to his
borrowing from most people; but it hurts when he borrows from you."
"We'll talk in the hall," suggested Erb.
"In a whisper," said Rosalind.
The rare good point of talking in a whisper was that they were obliged to
place their heads closely together. Erb explained the difficulty, and
Rosalind, after considering for a moment, announced the decision in her
emphatic way. School holidays would soon be on. She wanted to take a
fortnight's holiday herself: she would take Louisa away with her, either
to Aunt Emma's, at Penshurst, or, if the seaside was ordered, to
Worthing.
"Spoiling your own holiday!"
"Not at all, not at all!" she answered decidedly. "It's going to be, any
way."
"But why should _you_ trouble? I could get Lady Frances--she'd do
anything for me."
"No doubt! Find my umbrella there in the corner--the one with the silver
knob--and walk down with me to the school."
It was certainly very pleasant to see how the young woman, after a few
moments of reserve, and in the presence of Erb's depression, became
brighter than usual, pushing away all her own trouble, and talking of the
Professor's last escapade as though it were the best joke in the world.
The Professor, still declining in the service of the profession, had
recently been offered the post of baggage man in a newly-starting
provincial company, with the added duty of acting as understudies to the
man who played the old City man in Act I., and the Chief of Police in
Russia in Act IV. Professor, with many protestations and frequent
appeals to the shades of Barry Sullivan and John Ryder and others, had
accepted the offer, and, securing on the Saturday night the sum of ten
shillings in advance for the purpose of obtaining fine linen, appeared at
St. Pancras station the next afternoon on the starting of the special,
and denounced "The Banker's Blood" Company, individually and generally,
called upon Heaven to punish them for the attempt to degrade one who had
trod the boards long before many of them had been allowed, mistakenly, to
see the light of day, and altogether making such a furious scene on the
platform, that the manager, consulting hastily with other members of the
company in the labelled compartments, gave Rosalind's father another
half-sovereign to refrain from accompanying the party. All of which
Rosalind told in such a merry way that Erb found himself for a time half
wooed from melancholy.
"That blessed paper," he said, going back to trouble ruefully, "has got
me in a corner the very first start off."
"It wants fifteen minutes to the hour," said Rosalind, looking up at the
clock at the corner. "Let's walk round the Green and hear all about it."
Rosalind's hopeful view of the matter was that it might be only what was
called a "try on," and the statement of Erb that he felt he hadn't a leg
to stand on, she declared to be unworthy of him.
Erb walked back to his office feeling that the talk had done good. It
was certainly a great thing to find himself more hopeful in regard to
Louisa. But he composed on the way a bitter, bitter paragraph concerning
the firm in Neckinger Road and its occupation. This seemed so excellent,
that he had half a mind to turn it into poetry, but there proved to be
some difficulty in finding rhymes for "murder" and for "dastardly," and
he allowed himself on arrival to write it in prose. The copy for number
three being made up, he deleted a humorous paragraph about a Bricklayers'
Arms man, whose wife had run away, and this made room. There was much in
the lines themselves; more to be read by those who could fill up the
blank spaces intervening. Erb looked at it when he had crossed the t's
and dotted the i's with the pride of a man who, with a mere dip of ink,
could force monied folk to tremble. A fine thing to have control in this
way over the printed word.
All the more satisfactory to get on a grievance, which appeared to be
solid, in that he eventually found that he had to step out apologetically
from the corner into which Spanswick's ingenuity had thrust him. There
were, it appeared, no grounds whatever for the statement made, and in
Featherstone Buildings, Holborn, in a dim office with one light, under
which he had to sit, whilst the two partners of the legal firm remained
at the other end of the table in the shadow, he underwent, perhaps, the
very worst quarter of an hour that he had endured since the time of
schooldays. He had had to wait some time whilst one partner was sent for
by the other.
"Then we may take it, Mr. Barnes, that you withdraw unreservedly every
word of the paragraph in question?"
"That is so."
"And you are prepared to offer every apology and every recompense that is
in your power?" asked the other partner.
"I don't know," said Erb, "about recompense."
"Well, then, every apology?"
"I suppose I shall have to taste blacking," he said.
The two partners conferred for a long time in an undertone, the while Erb
played nervously with a paper-knife. When one of them spoke he held his
breath.
"If the paragraph had been copied into other journals, if it had had a
wider circulation than that given by your little paper, Mr. Barnes, our
client would have instructed us to go on with the legal proceedings, and
we should have asked for and obtained heavy damages. If the journal
itself was not below contempt--"
"Look here!" interrupted Erb sharply, "don't you go rubbing it in too
thick."
"Sir William is a man with a large heart," said the other partner, taking
up a more conciliatory tone, "and we shall advise him in the
circumstances to do the generous thing. You will print in the next issue
of your paper an apology?"
"A most humble apology," remarked the other partner, "terms of which you
will permit us to dictate to you. He will not ask you to pay the costs
already incurred, and you must think yourself confoundedly--"
"He understands," remarked the second partner. "I am sure Mr. Barnes
quite understands. Now let us see about drafting the apology."
"I think I'd better see to that."
"Now, my dear old friend," urged the conciliatory partner.
A most abject apology it was, and the only encouragement for Erb came
from the severe partner, who recommended several additions intended to
make it of a more cringing nature. Erb signed it after a moment's
hesitation, and gave a great sigh of relief when he found himself in
Holborn again; he knew that there would be some trouble in convincing his
Committee that he had acted throughout with wisdom, but he had so much
assurance in his own powers of speech, he had so often taken difficult
positions by reason of his own generous ammunition of words, and of their
short supply, that he felt confident of success. All the same, the
incident would do him no good, and a repetition would undoubtedly weaken
his power.
Number Three of "The Carman" came out rather opportunely, for he was able
to present a copy to Rosalind and to Louisa on the day he saw them off
from London Bridge. They were going to Worthing. Aunt Emma, who had not
viewed the sea since childhood's days, was going there from Penshurst in
order to ascertain whether it had changed much. Louisa had to be taken
to the station in a four-wheeler, and as she was helped along by her two
companions through a rush of arriving City men, the girl seemed proud of
the notice that her white face attracted. Erb recited the stinging
paragraph that concerned Louisa's late employers through the open
carriage window, when Rosalind had made her patient comfortable with
cushions. Two of Louisa's sweethearts, friends in the presence of
disaster, stood away against a lamp-post, and toyed with automatic
machines.
"That's one up against them," said Louisa with relish. She smiled, but
the look soon faded.
"If this don't have any effect," declared Erb, "I shall follow it up with
something stronger. I'll never let go of 'em."
"Shouldn't like the other gels to lose their shops," remarked Louisa
apprehensively.
"But you wouldn't see 'em all get ill like you are?"
"I'm not reely ill," said Louisa. "I'm only pretendin'. Besides, some
gels can stand the work and some can't."
"Make her get better," said Erb to Rosalind. "Don't let her have her own
way too much."
"Not much use having anyone else's," remarked Louisa, with an effort at
the old pertness.
"If she gets up to any of her nonsense send me a telegram."
"I'll write to you very often," said Rosalind quietly. "Let me know--let
me know if you see Lady Frances."
The guard cried, "Stand away!" and gave the signal to start. Erb put his
head in and kissed his sister's face.
"Might as well serve both alike," suggested Louisa sportively. She
rubbed her eyes with her glove.
"Don't dare," said Erb.
One of the infatuated youths walked along with the train, and when Erb,
with a wistful look in his eyes, fell back, the youth aimed a packet of
chocolate, but either from nervousness or want of practice, missed the
compartment and sent it into the next, where four children pounced upon
it with a high scream of delight.
The violence of the paragraph concerning the Neckinger Road firm helped
to appease those on the Committee who showed uneasiness in regard to what
they called the "climb down." True, some of them remarked that the
attacks on the Neckinger Road firm had nothing to do with the objects of
the society, and Erb, reckoning up, found that he had lost the confidence
of three, but a carman who had been discharged by the firm for slight
inebriety--"I'm a man that varies," said the ex-carman. "Sometimes I may
'ave twenty pints, sometimes I may 'ave thirty pints, and then other days
I may 'ave quite a lot,"--came and begged permission to thank them for
the public service that the journal was doing, and assured the Committee,
with the air of one having exclusive information, that they would get
their reward, in this world or in the next, or in both. As the reports
from Rosalind at Worthing became less satisfactory, so the fierceness of
the attacks in "The Carman" increased; but it was not until a paragraph
appeared headed "Wilful Murder!" that Neckinger Road, after taking the
previous outbursts with a calm that suggested it was either deaf or
asleep, suddenly started up and took action in the most decided and
emphatic manner.
Information has been laid this day by for
that you, within the district aforesaid, did
unlawfully and maliciously publish a certain defamatory libel of and
concerning the said well knowing the same defamatory
libel to be false, contrary to the statute in such case made and
provided. You are therefore hereby summoned to appear before the
Court of Summary Jurisdiction sitting at the Southwark Police Court
on the twentieth day of October, at the hour of ten in the forenoon,
to answer to the said information. Signed with an indistinct
signature, one of the magistrates of the police-court of the
metropolis.
This, on a blue-coloured form, which a friendly policeman left one
evening, when Erb was wrestling with his brief leading article, and
unable to decide whether to give a touch of brightness to the column by
the two lines of poetry from William Morris, and risk offending a few
subscribers who looked on rhymes as frivolous, or to remain on the safer
ground of prose. Erb, in his attacks on the Neckinger Road firm, had
begun to feel as a fencer does who makes ingenious passes at the air, and
he was so much gratified now to find that he had at last struck
something, that he gave the warrant-officer something with which to
purchase a drink, and had a very friendly chat with him concerning points
of law. Erb had to confess he had not hitherto understood--being a man
whose mind was occupied with other matters--that one had to appear at a
police-court in regard to a charge of libel: the warrant-officer
increased Erb's knowledge by informing him that not only was this the
case where no damages were claimed, but that the publication had only to
be proved and you were at once committed to the Central Criminal Court to
take your trial.
"There," said the officer with relish, "there the Grand Jury has the
first go at you, see?"
"They can throw out the Bill?"
"They can," admitted the other grudgingly, "but bless my soul," with a
return to cheerfulness, "they won't in your case. Then, in what you may
term due course, on comes your case. See? You can either defend
yourself--"
"I shall."
"You know the old saying, I s'pose?"
"Never mind the old saying," replied Erb. "Get on!"
"Then, of course, if you're fool enough to conduct your own case, you'll
be fool enough to cross-examine the witnesses for the other side."
"I shall," said Erb.
"And a fine old mess you'll make of it," remarked the warrant-officer,
laughing uproariously. "Lord! I'd give an ounce of shag to be in court
when it comes off."
"I'll see that it comes off."
"I've seen some of the biggest larks when chaps have been trying to do
this sort of thing on their own, that ever you can imagine. Sometimes
when I'm a bit down-hearted over anything, or if the wife's a bit
aggravatin', I just cast my mind back and--"
The warrant-officer laughed again, and, taking off his helmet, mopped the
inside of it with his handkerchief.
"Never, I suppose," said Erb, a little nettled by this ill-timed
hilarity, "seen a man in the witness box turned thoroughly inside out?"
"Not by an amateur."
"Never seen him pinned down to certain facts, never watched him being led
on and on and on, until he finds that he hasn't got a shred of a
reputation, a remnant of a character, not a single white spot of
innocence or--"
"I like your talk, old man," interrupted the warrant-officer, fixing on
his helmet, "and I wish I could stay to hear more of it. But take care
you don't wear your face out. So long!"
The police of London are not infallible, but the first prophecies of the
warrant-officer seemed likely to prove correct. Erb, determined not to
fetter himself by legal knowledge, nevertheless found information thrust
upon him, and this confirmed the statement that the police-court
proceedings would be of a simple and formal nature. He regretted the
delay, for he was eager to get to close quarters with the firm, and he
spent his days in collecting evidence, he walked about at night, always
taking in Camberwell in the tour that he might look up at _her_ window,
rehearsing the questions that he would put to the firm, imagining
contests of words with counsel on the other side, contests from which he
always emerged victorious. Spanswick had at last given up all pretence
of being a railway carman, and had resigned his membership (this to the
relief of Payne and of Erb); it made Erb stop and think for a few
minutes, when one afternoon, looking out of his office window he saw
Spanswick driving a single-horse van belonging to the Neckinger Road
firm.
Nothing could be more gratifying than the notice accorded by the evening
papers to the hearing at the police-court. It happened on a day when
little else of importance occurred, so that two journals had the item on
their placards--
"ALLEGED NEWSPAPER LIBEL,"
and one of them gave an astonishing portrait of Erb, "Sketched by our
Artist in Court," declared the legend underneath, as though this were any
excuse. Railway carmen from all quarters somehow managed to include
Southwark Police Court in their rounds at the precise hour of the hearing
of the case, and when Payne and another householder gave their names in
for the purpose of bail they cheered, and the magistrate threatening to
have them expelled, they cheered again and filed out at the door.
"Let's have a bloomin' meeting," cried one.
The suggestion clipped their fancy. Erb, coming out quietly, found
himself seized by two of the strongest men, carried triumphantly to an
empty South Western van standing in Marshalsea Road, and hoisted up to
the seat of this, whence, to the obvious surprise of the two roan horses,
he made a speech.
"We'll stick to you, Erb," cried some of the crowd.
"Through thick and thin," cried the rest. "Three cheers for Erb. Hip!
hip--"