The morning after the meeting in the Market Place Edward Beaumont was
seated in a capacious easy chair in his own room in the office in Queen
Street, smoking a well-seasoned meerschaum pipe, and reading the
“Leeds Mercury” of the day. Edward felt a sort of proprietorship in
the winged messenger from the fact, which he regarded with satisfaction,
that his great-grandfather had purchased the first issue of the paper a
hundred years before, and the subscription to that journal had been
piously continued in the family down to his own day, though he flattered
himself he had considerably overpast the cautious Liberalism but
slightly differentiated from Whiggery, of the “Mercury.” He had
skimmed the local news, pshaw’d over the leading articles, and was
enjoying the London Letter from our Own Correspondent, usually
attributed to a rising publicist, when Storth bustled into the room.
“There’s not much for Petty Sessions this morning, Beaumont; a
couple of assaults, a profane and obscene, and a bastardy; but there’s
one case you’ll have to put all you know into. You remember that girl
we heard last night in the Market Place?”
“The Salvation Army girl?”
“That’s the party. Well, she’s in my room now.”
“What’s the trouble?”
“Well, here’s the brief. It seems she was staying in Matt Duskin’s
Lodging House last night.”
“In Matt Duskin’s Lodging House in Kirkgate?”
“Nowhere else, as I’m a sinner, and a lively time of it she must
have had before they settled down for the night and went to bed.”
“I should imagine the lively time for a lodger at Matt’s comes after
he gets into bed,” said Beaumont, smiling. “The place must be alive
with vermin. But what’s the case?”
“You remember Pat Sullivan that’s been in trouble with the police so
often and that they’re so afraid of? They say it took three of them to
get him to the station last night. Well, he’s about half-killed
another of Duskin’s select assortment of lodgers, and all Kirkgate and
his wife will be in Court this morning to see the last of Sullivan for a
few months anyway. He’s sure to be sent down. Ward will work for a
committal without the option, and the constables on that beat will do
their nightly prowl all the more serenely when they know Pat’s
comfortably snoring on a plank bed in Wakefield gaol.”
“Miss—the Salvation Army girl’s in your room, you say. What’s
she got to do with it?”
“There’s her and Sullivan’s wife in tears and a shawl and
half-a-dozen more of the quality. They say Pat didn’t begin it. But
it’ll be no good. Pat’s booked this journey, you bet. Anyhow,
here’s your brief, and it’s about time you were off to Court.”
“I think I’ll speak to the Young lady first. Ask her to come here,
will you, Sam?”
When the speaker of the previous evening entered the large low room,
with its walls lined with many rows of calf-bound volumes of statutes,
reports, and precedents, its lettered pigeon-holes, its ponderous safe,
and japanned deed boxes, it was evident she had lost for a time the calm
serenity that had distinguished her at the Market Cross. Her face was
pale, and her eyes looked as though they had lately wept. Her expression
was anxious, and her manner agitated. As Beaumont rose from his chair
he returned the respectful bow with which he greeted her, and took with
some trembling the chair he placed for her. She waited for him to speak.
“Mr. Storth tells me you will be a witness in the case in which
Sullivan is charged with assault, Miss——. I beg your pardon, I
don’t think Storth told me your name.”
A crimson flush suffused the fair and beautiful features.
“I am called Sister Gertrude in the Army.”
“H’m; I’m afraid the clerk will ask for your full name. I
understand this is a serious case, and he may think it necessary to take
depositions.”
“My name is Gertrude Fairfax, but, if possible, I prefer that my
surname should not appear. There are reasons.”
“Fairfax is a name both known and honoured in Yorkshire,” said
Edward, with a courteous inclination towards the lady; “but I should
not take you for a native of our county.”
“Oh, no! my home is in Staffordshire, but my address is at the
headquarters of the Army in London.”
“Very well, Sister, I think we can manage that your name may not
appear. I’ll speak to the reporter; he’ll work the oracle for a
drink,” he mentally added.
“And now Miss——I beg your pardon, Sister Gertrude—would you mind
telling me what you know about this wretched business. You belong to the
Salvation Army, I perceive.”
“Yes; I am a soldier in the Army, not an officer, and last night,
after our meeting at the Market Cross, a poor frightened woman spoke to
me. She was in great trouble, but almost afraid to address me. You see,
she is a Catholic and the Catholics never care to do anything their
priest might not like. She said she was living an awful life. Her
husband, the man they are to try to-day, she said, is a good, true man,
and a loving husband, but for the drink, and then he is like one
possessed. She said he earned good wages, under the Corporation, I
fancy, as a navvy; but he spent so much in drink they were always in
sore straits, and now had broken up their home and were living in vile
lodgings. I was moved by Nellie’s story, and asked how I could help
her. She begged me to go speak with her husband, plead and pray with him
to give up the drink. Of course I went….
“Oh! yes. Why should I fear? No one would injure me, and if they did,
what matter? So she took me to the lodging-house in which they live. Her
husband, Pat, was in a long room, where there were several men and women
and some children. At first the man was very surly, would not speak to
me. But he is Irish, from the county Cork; and I happen to have spent
some time with friends in the neighbourhood of Cork, between the city
and Queenstown, on the Lea. But perhaps you don’t know the Lea?”
“Only the lines:
‘…those bells of Shandon,
That sound so grand on,
The pleasant waters of the river Lea,’”
confessed Edward.
“Ah! you read Father Prout,” said the girl, and looked at the grim
law books as though to say they did not look suggestive of the warblings
of a poet. “Well, when he got to speak of his home in the ould
country, and the good mother he had left in the village he was born in,
and of the days of boyhood, I led him on to speak of the glad
springtime, when he courted Ellen as a sweet colleen, as he called her,
and so the man was melted, and he heard me patiently. Then I asked Mr.
Duskin if I might say a few words to the others, and offer a prayer, and
as he didn’t say me nay, why I did.”
“Was this man, what’s his name, the complainant, I mean, there
then?”
“Oh, no! I was just about to leave, for it was near eleven o’clock,
and I feared the friends with whom I stayed would be anxious about
me.”
“Oh! you weren’t staying at Duskin’s yourself, then? Mr. Storth
must have misunderstood you.”
“Oh, no! I was saying a few parting words to one or two of the women,
who seemed glad that I should speak to them. Then the door was thrust
open violently, and the man Graham almost fell into the room. He was
very much under the influence of drink. One of the women was his wife,
and he accused me of wanting to make a Black Protestant of her, and
threatened me. But I did not mind him, for he was not himself and was
moving to the door. But he stood in my way, and made as though to
prevent my going, and Ellen came between us, and made to push him on one
side, and he called her a foul name and struck her in the face. Then
Patrick Sullivan jumped to his feet with a wild cry, and before one
could think or speak the two men were fighting, and then it seemed as
though all the house began to scream and shout and yell and swear, and
the street filled even at that late hour, and then the police came and
seized Sullivan. Graham was on the floor with a nasty wound in his head,
and poor Ellen almost in hysterics blaming herself bitterly for taking
me to the house at all.”
“You are sure Graham struck Nelly?”
“Oh, yes! And now this morning what could I do but come with the poor
woman to see her through the trouble. I had much ado to prevent her
pawning her wedding-ring to pay your fee, but we managed without
that.”
“Oh! Nelly had her wedding-ring? Then Pat hadn’t been drinking long.
It’s the last thing that goes. When that’s gone the husband starts
working again. It’s the last thing in and the first thing out.”
“Can you get Sullivan off, Mr. Beaumont? If it is only a question of a
fine, perhaps that can be arranged.”
“In the same way, I supose as my fee was arranged?”
“Well, yes; that way or some other. But I hope he may not be sent to
prison. Perhaps he may turn over a new leaf, and give up the drink and
mend his ways. I’m sure there’s much more of good than bad in him,
and prison will only foster the bad and dwarf the good.”
“Oh! we’ll pull him through, Sister Gertrude, if you tell the Bench
your story as you have told it to me. I’m sure, if you will permit me
to say so, you behaved very pluckily in going unprotected to that horrid
hole. But I’m afraid you wasted your time in trying to save Pat
Sullivan. He’s always in trouble with the police.”
“That’s why my time was _not_ wasted. Society has been trying to
deal with such lost creatures as Sullivan for centuries by its police,
always its police. I think perhaps a little human sympathy and gentle
entreating may do what your police cannot do. That is why I wear this
uniform.”
Beaumont bowed silently. He had had his own opinion of ecstatic young
ladies who take to Slumming as a diversion; but Sister Gertrude did not
harmonise with his preconceived ideas. He would have liked to ask many
questions, but he resented prying inquisitiveness in his own affairs,
and was careful to respect the reserve of others. He looked at his
watch.
“Jove! we must be off. May I have the pleasure of showing you the way
to Court?”
“Thank you. Nelly will be waiting for me. I will go with her.”
As Beaumont entered the Court and made his way to the solicitors’
well, he glanced at the Bench and noted with satisfaction that the
Mayor, Thomas Hoyleham, presided. Mr. Hoyleham was a weak, worthy man of
venerable appearance, with a long, flowing, white beard, and of pallid,
bloodless complexion. He was a draper by trade, and one of the pillars
of the Independent Church at Lowfield. He had signalised his accession
to the Chief Magistracy by treating the members of the Town Council to a
Temperance Banquet, zoedone, phospherade, and other effervescent and
phosphorescent cordials supplanting the wines of France and Spain; much
to the discontent of his guests.
Beaumont, however, had tossed off a bumper of the beady and gaseous
compound with a flourish to the health of the Mayor, and whilst
questioning convictions that forced a man to prefer zoedone to
champagne, vowed he admired the Mayor’s pluck and consistency, and
protested that it was worth while to run the risk of being poisoned to
sit at table with a man of principle. Of course, this sentiment had
reached the Mayor’s ears, and had not only greatly comforted him and
sustained him in presence of the rueful countenances of his guests, but
had led him ever after to entertain a high opinion of Beaumont’s
discrimination. And though he mourned over the young councillor's
infidelity, he was not without hopes some Christian Church might win him
to its bosom, and lost no opportunity of speaking a word in season to
his young colleague; and had even ventured to give him a Temperance
Tract in an apologetic manner, assuring him that the passages marked by
the Mayor’s own hand were not to be taken by Edward as offensively
personal. Beaumont had taken all in good part, and when ribald members
of the Council poked fun at the old gentleman, and called him an old
woman, only fit to sit behind the urn at a tea-party, Beaumont had
stoutly declared that beneath the mild and deferential, almost
shrinking, manner of Mr. Hoyleham, lay a rare staunchness and fidelity
to the right as he conceived it.
The case against Patrick Sullivan was not taken till the charge-sheet
was cleared of all others. Mr. Ward the Chief Constable, was determined
to have that redoubtable breaker of the law and terror of the police
safe under lock and key for so long a spell as the law could ensure, and
he, of course, had heard only the version of the fracas given by the
police and by Graham. The strong, most damaging point against Pat was
his resistance of the police in the discharge of their duty. It was an
article of faith with the Borough Bench that the police must be
supported, and it was equally a matter of faith with those who had been
summoned before it, or who expected to be, and with their witnesses,
that the sworn testimony of one policeman would be taken before that of
all Kirkgate put together. Sullivan was looked upon as a doomed man, as
good as done for, and his sympathisers only found consolation in the
resolve to make the place too hot to hold the complainant. With these
sympathisers the back benches of the Court were crowded. They were
there, male and female, some scores of them, in all states of dress and
undress and all degrees of cleanliness and sobriety. They were all to a
man and also woman known to the police, and most of them had stood in
the very dock now tenanted by the redoubtable Sullivan, and those who
had not looked forward to their appearance in that unenviable rectangle
as a natural and inevitable incident in their career. Needless to say,
the sympathies of this section of the audience in Court were entirely
with the prisoner, and when Edward entered with a light and springing
step and bright smiling face, a subdued murmur ran through their ranks.
“Och! it’s himself has the cometherin’ way wid ’im,” whispered
a shawled and frowsy nymph of the pavement to another lady of the same
nationality and facility of affection. “Fwat an eye’s in de face of
’im; ’t would melt a stone, an’ the tongue of him for Blarney most
wonderful.”
The chief witness against Sullivan was, of course, the aggrieved Graham,
who appeared in the box, his head all swathed in bandages and plasters.
He told a piteous tale. He was a homeless, inoffensive man that lodged
at Duskin’s, and wouldn’t harm a fly, so he said. He had been
refreshing himself after the labours of the day at the house of a
friend, and at an early hour had sought his humble lodgings and his
virtuous couch. But he had no sooner entered the door of that sacred
spot—where peace should reign, whatever broils disturb the
street—than that cowardly brute, as strong as an ox and as raging as a
lion, had leaped upon him, beaten down his feeble defence, and left him
senseless on the ground. His wounds were there for their Worships and
all the world to see, and so forth.
Unfortunately for Graham, Beaumont had a memory and Graham an unwary
tongue. Looking at Beaumont’s face as he rose to cross examine the
witness, one would have read there nothing but compassion and sympathy
with the complainant in his great and unmerited wrongs. Sister Gertrude
confided to Ellen, when all was over, that her heart failed her at that
moment, for she feared the plausible rogue’s canting tongue had
imposed on their chosen champion. “He is so young, you know,” But
Ellen had smiled superior.
“Let me see, Graham,” Edward began, in an insinuating voice, “I think
you did not tell us your age.”
“Forty-four, your honour, if I live till Christmas.”
“And what trade may you be?”
“A mason, sorr.”
“May I feel your hands?”
“’Deed, they’re too dirty, sir.”
“Oh, never mind. His Worship might tell you lawyers are used to dirt.
But, indeed, they are dirty, and soft, too; very soft. Where do you
work?”
“’Deed, sorr, just at the time present I’m out of a job.”
“But the building trade’s very brisk just now, I believe?”
“’Deed, sorr, I couldn't say.”
“What, not know the state of the labour market in your own trade!
Where did you work last?”
“At Mr. Whitwam’s, sorr.”
“You live in Huddersfield, I think?”
“Yes, sorr.”
“This how long?”
“This twenty years and more, sorr” answered Graham, with alacrity,
apparently relieved to get away from the subject of his occupation.
“Off and on, or all on?”
“Straight on, sorr, twenty year an’ more I’ve lived in this
town.”
“And never out of it this twenty years?”
“Not a day, sorr. If I have may I be——”
“Oh, quite so. Then may I ask how long it is since you worked for Mr.
Whitwam?”
After much evasion it appeared that it was ten years since the witness
had worked for Mr. Whitwam or anyone else.
“Made your fortune at thirty, you lucky man, and retired from
business, is that it?”
His clothes answered for him.
“Then may I ask how you’ve lived since you gave up working?”
“Hadn’t he a license to hawk, sure?”
“A pedlar, eh? In other words, a licensed mendicant. Let me see your
license.”
After much fumbling in the inner creases of the rag that served him as a
vest, the witness produced a soiled, tattered document that Beaumont
handled gingerly.
“Dated seven years ago and long out of date. That won’t do, my man.
Well what else have you done?”
“Arrah! odd jobs, an’ maybe, a copper or two from a friend or a
Christian lady of the town or the praste. God bless them.”
“Now, turn up the sleeve of your arm, higher, let’s see your
muscles, man.”
A brawny, muscular arm was bared to view.
“An arm, your Worships will observe” said Edward, “that hasn’t
done a stroke of honest work these ten years back.”
“You’re a married man, I think, Graham?”
“’Deed, I am, sorr, worse luck.”
“Where’s your wife?”
Graham couldn’t say, but when his memory was assisted he confessed she
had left him years ago, but not before he had been convicted three or
four times in that very Court of aggravated assault upon her.
“You didn’t strike Pat Sullivan last night, you say?”
“Not a strike, sorr!”
“Striking a woman’s more in your line, I suppose. Perhaps you’ll
have their Worships believe you never beat your wife. Who was the friend
you had been spending the night with?”
Then it transpired that the friend was the genial host of the “Spotted
Dog,” and that before visiting that popular house of entertainment
Graham had favoured the “Brindled Cow” with his company, and when
somebody in the crowd at the back called out “Wheatsheaf,” to the
great indignation of half-a-dozen constables, who all called out
“Silence in Court,” and glared angrily at a very small boy who began to
whimper, Mr. Graham confessed to having had a glass, or maybe, two,
’deed, he wouldn’t swear not three, at the “Wheatsheaf.”
But at this the confusion of the witness was so great that Beaumont knew
it to be more damaging than any evidence, and magnanimously forbore to
press the question.
“Hadn’t we better get to last night?” suggested Mr. Mayor, mildly.
“I agree with your Worship. But it was desirable that we should know
who this injured innocent is that comes here with his whimpering,
whining story. And now, Graham, you know Nelly Sullivan?”
“Sure he did, bad cess to her for a squalling, meddling woman!”
“What made you strike Nelly Sullivan when you returned to your
lodgings last night?”
Of course he hadn’t struck Nelly. “Was he the man to lift his hand
against any woman?”
“Bar your wife, Graham,” reminded Beaumont.
“That was different. He hadn’t come there to talk about his wife. He
swore before God and all His saints on the blessed book he’d never
lifted so much as his little finger ’gainst Nelly Sullivan; strike him
dead, if he had!”
“Well, we’ll see what others have to say about it,” concluded
Edward, as he sat down.
“You’ve settled the assault on Graham, but what about resisting the
police?” whispered Storth, to his partner; “that’ll settle his
hash you’ll see.”
The constables who had arrested Pat and carried him to the cells
certainly bore speaking marks of that hero’s prowess, and their story
lost nothing in the telling. They told it with that unswerving
consistency which distinguishes the British policeman before “their
Washups.” They had certain things to say, those and no more. For the
time being the sum total of human knowledge was contained in just that.
They knew neither more nor less than what they went into the box to
swear to. For anything they knew Sullivan might have been provoked
beyond endurance by Graham, but when they appeared he ought to have
become as a bleating lamb. That was the official view, that, too, it was
clear, was the view of the Bench.
“We must support the police, you know,” was the most sacred tenet of
the magisterial mind.
“I shall not occupy your Worship’s time by making a speech,” said
Edward briefly. “I shall show you that Sullivan at the time the police
appeared was smarting under the sense of a cowardly blow given by that
wretched man Graham to his wife. When the police rushed in it was Graham
they ought to have seized, not my client. But give a dog a bad name and
hang him. But it is a most unfortunate thing that the police should have
interfered and put poor Pat to his trial at the very time when there was
some likelihood of his becoming a teetotaller and entirely amending his
ways.”
The Mayor pricked up his ears.
“Eh, eh? What’s that you say, Mr. Beaumont—a teetotaller?”
“Yes, your Worship, incredible as it may seem. Sullivan had yielded to
the persuasion a young lady, who will give her evidence before you, and
whose influence, I verily believe, was in a fair way to accomplish what
your Worships can do neither by fine nor imprisonment. You shall hear
the lady’s story. She is known in the Salvation Army as Sister
Gertrude, and as many ladies of very good social position and education
are engaged in this good work under these assumed titles, I shall ask
the Bench to allow the witness to be sworn in that name.
A hush fell upon the Court when Gertrude Fairfax entered the box, a
thrill passed through it when her clear but sweet and soft voice spoke.
Very quietly, almost timidly, with nothing of the self-assurance and
glib loquacity one hears in so many of the public women speakers and
that takes the bloom off their womanhood, she told to the Bench, with
little prompting from Edward, the story with which we are already
acquainted. Insensibly there arose before the minds of all who heard her
the picture of this pure, delicately-nurtured maiden, seated in a vile
den, surrounded by rough men, and slattern, vicious women, speaking to
them words of loving counsel and pleading with them for their good; of
Pat Sullivan, at first resentful, then subsiding into sulky silence,
then interested, then touched, and at length moved to promise of
amendment, the forgotten tenderness for his wife revived, the angel
within the man rescued from the death of sensuality and self-indulgence.
As she told her simple tale, women in the body of the Court sobbed
aloud, and even the stolid policemen looked human. The Mayor, an
emotional man, furtively used his handkerchief.
Then, when Beaumont adroitly threw in the remark:
“You are not, I believe, a paid officer in the Army, Sister Gertrude;
why should you concern yourself about the reformation of Patrick
Sullivan?”
The witness paused for one short moment, and then, with utmost
naturalness and naiveté, not as one quoting, but as speaking from her
own heart, said quietly:
“Wist ye not that I must be about Father’s business?”
“That is the case for the defence, Sir,” Said Beaumont, with a bow
to the Bench.
“We cannot convict upon such testimony,” said the Mayor, after
consulting his colleagues. “We only hope this will be a warning to
Sullivan. He shall go scot free this time, may God help him to be a
better man.”
“The Clerk ought to say ‘Amen,’” muttered Sam Storth, “and
then the thing would be complete. We’d turn the Court into a church
and dedicate it to St. Barabbas.”
“That was a narrow squeak for Master Sullivan,” said Beaumont to
Sister Gertrude. He found her waiting at the Court door, as he passed
out of it at the rising of the Court—to thank him, she said.
“There’s nothing to thank me for. It’s you they’ve to thank.
I’m afraid, if you are returning to Duskin’s Lodging House, you
won’t find Pat there cultivating the domestic virtues. He’ll be
celebrating his victory over the allied forces of the brutal and bloody
Sassenach in his national beverage at the ‘Wheatsheaf.’ The police
will keep a sharper eye on him than ever now, and I hope he won’t give
them another chance yet awhile. We can’t hope for a Thomas Hoyleham
and a Sister Gertrude in conjunction every day in the planetary system
of police administration. However, sufficient for the day’s the evil
thereof.”
“I hope better things for Pat and Nelly, Mr. Beaumont. I know how
difficult it will be for him and Nelly to struggle out of their present
surroundings; but I have faith.”
“Yes, you may have faith, Miss Fairfax; but I fear the surroundings
will be stronger than your faith. I suppose environment has a lot to say
to it. See! I don’t like the idea of Sullivan going and making a mess
of it again after the way you’ve tried to save him. Can’t you get
him and Nelly out of Duskin’s?”
“It would be a help, of course. But environment isn’t everything,
Mr. Beaumont.”
They were walking slowly on the New Street now, and many turned to cast
an envious and admiring glance at the well-known young lawyer and the
beautiful, graceful figure that moved, _dea certe_, by his side.
“Perhaps not. But it must be difficult to cultivate the domestic
virtues—that was what we called them, I think?—at such a hole as
Duskin’s. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Tell Nelly to find a small
house somewhere near Sullivan’s work, and if you don’t mind getting
them some furniture into it—you can go to Oldfield and tell him to
send the bill in to me. We’ll give poor Pat a chance, anyway; but
I’m afraid the sticks will find their way back to Oldfield before the
month’s over. And now, good-bye, Miss Fairfax,” and Beaumont hurried
away to avoid the thanks his companion was beginning to express.