Oh, then tell us, Sings and Judges, where our meeting is to be,
when the laws of men are nothing, and our spirits all are free
when the laws of men are nothing, and no wealth can hold the fort,
There'll be thirst for mighty brewers at the Rising of the Court.
The same dingy court room, deep and dim, like a well, with the clock
high up on the wall, and the doors low down in it; with the bench,
which, with some gilding, might be likened to a gingerbread imitation
of a throne; the royal arms above it and the little witness box to one
side, where so many honest poor people are bullied, insulted and laughed
at by third-rate blackguardly little “lawyers,” and so many pitiful,
pathetic and noble lies are told by pitiful sinners and disreputable
heroes for a little liberty for a lost self, or for the sake of a
friend--of a “pal” or a “cobber.” The same overworked and underpaid
magistrate trying to keep his attention fixed on the same old miserable
scene before him; as a weary, overworked and underpaid journalist or
author strives to keep his attention fixed on his proofs. The same row
of big, strong, healthy, good-natured policemen trying not to grin at
times; and the police-court solicitors (“the place stinks with 'em,” a
sergeant told me) wrangling over some miserable case for a crust, and
the “reporters,” shabby some of them, eager to get a brutal joke for
their papers out of the accumulated mass of misery before them, whether
it be at the expense of the deaf, blind, or crippled man, or the alien.
And opposite the bench, the dock, divided by a partition, with the women
to the left and the men to the right, as it is on the stairs or the
block in polite society. They bring children here no longer. The
same shaking, wild-eyed, blood-shot-eyed and blear-eyed drunks and
disorderlies, though some of the women have nerves yet; and the same
decently dressed, but trembling and conscience-stricken little wretch
up for petty larceny or something, whose motor car bosses of a big
firm have sent a solicitor, “manager,” or some understrapper here to
prosecute and give evidence.
But, over there, on a form to one side of the bench-opposite the witness
box--and as the one bright spot in this dark, and shameful, and useless
scene--and in a patch of sunlight from the skylight as it happens--sit
representatives of the Prisoners' Aid Society, Prison Gate and Rescue
Brigades, etc. (one or two of the ladies in nurses' uniforms), who are
come to help us and to fight for us against the Law of their Land and of
ours, God help us!
Mrs Johnson, of Red Rock Lane, is here, and her rival in revolution,
One-Eyed Kate, and Cock-Eyed Sal, and one or two of the other
aristocrats of the alley. And the weeping bedraggled remains of what was
once, and not so long ago, a pretty, slight, fair-haired and blue-eyed
Australian girl. She is up for inciting One-Eyed Kate to resist
the police. Also, Three-Pea Ginger, Stousher, and Wingy, for some
participation in the row amongst the aforementioned ladies. (Wingy,
by the way, is a ratty little one-armed man, whose case is usually
described in the head-line, as “A 'Armless Case,” by one of our great
dailies.) And their pals are waiting outside in the vestibule--Frowsy
Kate (The Red Streak), Boko Bill, Pincher and his “piece,” etc., getting
together the stuff for the possible fines, and the ten-bob fee for the
lawyer, in one case, and ready to swear to anything, if called upon. And
I myself--though I have not yet entered Red Rock Lane Society--on bail,
on a charge of “plain drunk.” It was “drunk and disorderly” by the way,
but a kindly sergeant changed it to plain drunk (though I always thought
my drunk was ornamental).
Yet I am not ashamed--only comfortably dulled and a little tired--dully
interested and observant, and hopeful for the sunlight presently. We low
persons get too great a contempt for things to feel much ashamed at any
time; and this very contempt keeps many of us from “reforming.” We hear
too many lies sworn that we know to be lies, and see too many unjust and
brutal things done that we know to be brutal and unjust.
But let us go back a bit, and suppose we are still waiting for the
magistrate, and think of Last Night. “Silence!”--but from no human
voice this time. The whispering, shuffling, and clicking of the court
typewriter ceases, the scene darkens, and the court is blotted out as a
scene is blotted out from the sight of a man who has thrown himself into
a mesmeric trance. And:
Drink--lurid recollection of being “searched”--clang of iron cell
door, and I grope for and crawl on to the slanting plank. Period of
oblivion--or the soul is away in some other world. Clang of cell
door again, and soul returns in a hurry to take heed of another soul,
belonging to a belated drunk on the plank by my side. Other soul says:
“Gotta match?”
So we're not in hell yet.
We fumble and light up. They leave us our pipes, tobacco and matches;
presently, one knocks with his pipe on the iron trap of the door
and asks for water, which is brought in a tin pint-pot. Then follow
intervals of smoking, incoherent mutterings that pass for conversation,
borrowings of matches, knockings with the pannikin on the cell door
wicket or trap for more water, matches, and bail; false and fitful
starts into slumber perhaps--or wild attempts at flight on the part of
our souls into that other world that the sober and sane know nothing of;
and, gradually, suddenly it seems, reason (if this world is reasonable)
comes back.
“What's your trouble!”
“Don't know. Bomb outrage, perhaps.”
“Drunk?”
“Yes.”
“What's yours!”
“Same boat.”
But presently he is plainly uneasy (and I am getting that way, too, to
tell the truth), and, after moving about, and walking up and down in
the narrow space as well as we can, he “rings up” another policeman, who
happens to be the fat one who is to be in charge all night.
“Wot's up here?”
“What have I been up to?”
“Killin' a Chinaman. Go to sleep.”
Policeman peers in at me inquiringly, but I forbear to ask questions.
Blankets are thrown in by a friend of mine in the force, though we are
not entitled to them until we are bailed or removed to the “paddock”
(the big drunks' dormitory and dining cell at the Central), and we
proceed to make ourselves comfortable. My mate wonders whether he asked
them to send to his wife to get bail, and hopes he didn't.
They have left our wicket open, seeing, or rather hearing, that we are
quiet. But they have seemingly left some other wickets open also, for
from a neighbouring cell comes the voice of Mrs Johnson holding forth.
The locomotive has apparently just been run into the cleaning sheds,
and her fires have not had time to cool. They say that Mrs Johnson was a
“lady once,” like many of her kind; that she is not a “bad woman”--that
is, not a woman of loose character--but gets money sent to her from
somewhere--from her “family,” or her husband, perhaps. But when she
lets herself loose--or, rather, when the beer lets her loose--she is
a tornado and a terror in Red Rock Lane, and it is only her fierce,
practical kindness to her unfortunate or poverty-stricken sisters in her
sober moments that keeps her forgiven in that classic thoroughfare.
She can certainly speak “like a lady” when she likes, and like an
intelligent, even a clever, woman--not like a “woman of the world,” but
as a woman who knew and knows the world, and is in hell. But now her
language is the language of a rough shearer in a “rough shed” on a
blazing hot day.
After a while my mate calls out to her:
“Oh! for God's sake give it a rest!”
Whereupon Mrs Johnson straightway opens on him and his ancestry, and
his mental, moral, and physical condition--especially the latter. She
accuses him of every crime known to Christian countries and some Asiatic
and ancient ones. She wants to know how long he has been out of jail
for kicking his wife to pieces that time when she was up as a witness
against him, and whether he is in for the same thing again? (She has
never set eyes on him, by the way, nor he on her.)
He calls back that she is not a respectable woman, and he knows all
about her.
Thereupon she shrieks at him and bangs and kicks at her door, and
demands his name and address. It would appear that she is a respectable
woman, and hundreds can prove it, and she is going to make him prove it
in open court.
He calls back that his name is Percy Reginald Grainger, and his town
residence is “The Mansions,” Macleay Street, next to Mr Isaacs, the
magistrate, and he also gives her the address of his solicitor.
She bangs and shrieks again, and states that she will get his name from
the charge sheet in the morning and have him up for criminal libel,
and have his cell mate up as a witness--and hers, too. But just here
a policeman comes along and closes her wicket with a bang and cuts her
off, so that her statements become indistinct, or come only as shrieks
from a lost soul in an underground dungeon. He also threatens to cut us
off and smother us if we don't shut up. I wonder whether they've got her
in the padded cell.
We settle down again, but presently my fellow captive nudges me
and says: “Listen!” From another cell comes the voice of a woman
singing--the girl who is in for “inciting to resist, your worship,” in
fact. “Listen!” he says, “that woman could sing once.” Her voice is low
and sweet and plaintive, as of a woman who had been a singer but had
lost her voice. And what do you think it is?
The crowd in accents hushed reply--
“Jesus of Nazareth passeth by.”
Mrs Johnson's cell is suddenly silent. Then, not mimickingly, mockingly,
or scornfully, but as if the girl is a champion of Jesus of Nazareth,
and is hurt at the ignorance of the multitude, and pities _Him_:
Now who is this Jesus of Nazareth, say?
The policeman, coming along the passage, closes the wicket in her door,
but softly this time, and not before we catch the plaintive words again.
The crowd in accents hushed reply
“Jesus of Nazareth passeth by.”
My fellow felon throws the blanket off him impatiently, sits up with a
jerk, and gropes for his pipe.
“God!” he says. “But this is red hot! Have you got another match?”