Filing into the jury box next morning, Mr. Bosengate collided slightly
with a short juryman, whose square figure and square head of stiff
yellow-red hair he had only vaguely noticed the day before. The man
looked angry, and Mr. Bosengate thought: 'An ill-bred dog, that!'
He sat down quickly, and, to avoid further recognition of his fellows,
gazed in front of him. His appearance on Saturdays was always military,
by reason of the route march of his Volunteer Corps in the afternoon.
Gentleman Fox, who belonged to the corps too, was also looking square;
but that commercial traveller on his other side seemed more louche,
and as if surprised in immorality, than ever; only the proximity of
Gentleman Fox on the other side kept Mr. Bosengate from shrinking.
Then he saw the prisoner being brought in, shadowy and dark behind the
brightness of his buttons, and he experienced a sort of shock, this
figure was so exactly that which had several times started up in his
mind. Somehow he had expected a fresh sight of the fellow to dispel and
disprove what had been haunting him, had expected to find him just an
outside phenomenon, not, as it were, a part of his own life. And he
gazed at the carven immobility of the judge's face, trying to steady
himself, as a drunken man will, by looking at a light. The regimental
doctor, unabashed by the judge's comment on his absence the day before,
gave his evidence like a man who had better things to do, and the case
for the prosecution was forthwith rounded in by a little speech from
counsel. The matter--he said--was clear as daylight. Those who wore
His Majesty's uniform, charged with the responsibility and privilege of
defending their country, were no more entitled to desert their regiments
by taking their own lives than they were entitled to desert in any other
way. He asked for a conviction. Mr. Bosengate felt a sympathetic shuffle
passing through all feet; the judge was speaking:
“Prisoner, you can either go into the witness box and make your
statement on oath, in which case you may be cross-examined on it; or you
can make your statement there from the dock, in which case you will not
be cross-examined. Which do you elect to do?”
“From here, my lord.”
Seeing him now full face, and, as it might be, come to life in the
effort to convey his feelings, Mr. Bosengate had suddenly a quite
different impression of the fellow. It was as if his khaki had fallen
off, and he had stepped out of his own shadow, a live and quivering
creature. His pinched clean-shaven face seemed to have an irregular,
wilder, hairier look, his large nervous brown eyes darkened and glowed;
he jerked his shoulders, his arms, his whole body, like a man suddenly
freed from cramp or a suit of armour.
He spoke, too, in a quick, crisp, rather high voice, pinching his
consonants a little, sharpening his vowels, like a true Welshman.
“My lord and misters the jury,” he said: “I was a hairdresser when the
call came on me to join the army. I had a little home and a wife. I
never thought what it would be like to be away from them, I surely never
did; and I'm ashamed to be speaking it out like this--how it can squeeze
and squeeze a man, how it can prey on your mind, when you're nervous
like I am. 'Tis not everyone that cares for his home--there's lots o'
them never wants to see their wives again. But for me 'tis like being
shut up in a cage, it is!” Mr. Bosengate saw daylight between the skinny
fingers of the man's hand thrown out with a jerk. “I cannot bear it shut
up away from wife and home like what you are in the army. So when I took
my razor that morning I was wild--an' I wouldn't be here now but for
that man catching my hand. There was no reason in it, I'm willing to
confess. It was foolish; but wait till you get feeling like what I
was, and see how it draws you. Misters the jury, don't send me back to
prison; it is worse still there. If you have wives you will know what it
is like for lots of us; only some is more nervous than others. I swear
to you, sirs, I could not help it---?” Again the little man flung out
his hand, his whole thin body shook and Mr. Bosengate felt the same
sensation as when he drove his car over a dog--“Misters the jury, I hope
you may never in your lives feel as I've been feeling.”
The little man ceased, his eyes shrank back into their sockets, his
figure back into its mask of shadowy brown and gleaming buttons, and Mr.
Bosengate was conscious that the judge was making a series of remarks;
and, very soon, of being seated at a mahogany table in the jury's
withdrawing room, hearing the voice of the man with hair like an
Irish terrier's saying: “Didn't he talk through his hat, that little
blighter!” Conscious, too, of the commercial traveller, still on his
left--always on his left!--mopping his brow, and muttering: “Phew! It's
hot in there to-day!” while an effluvium, as of an inside accustomed
to whisky came from him. Then the man with the underlip and the three
plastered wisps of hair said:
“Don't know why we withdrew, Mr. Foreman!”
Mr. Bosengate looked round to where, at the head of the table, Gentleman
Fox sat, in defensive gentility and the little white piping to his
waistcoat saying blandly:
“I shall be happy to take the sense of the jury.”
There was a short silence, then the chemist murmured:
“I should say he must have what they call claustrophobia.”
“Clauster fiddlesticks! The feller's a shirker, that's all. Missed his
wife--pretty excuse! Indecent, I call it!”
The speaker was the little wire-haired man; and emotion, deep and angry,
stirred in Mr. Bosengate. That ill-bred little cur! He gripped the edge
of the table with both hands.
“I think it's d-----d natural!” he muttered. But almost before the words
had left his lips he felt dismay. What had he said--he, nearly a colonel
of volunteers--endorsing such a want of patriotism! And hearing the
commercial traveller murmuring: “'Ear, 'ear!” he reddened violently.
The wire-headed man said roughly:
“There's too many of these blighted shirkers, and too much pampering of
them.”
The turmoil in Mr. Bosengate increased; he remarked in an icy voice:
“I agree to no verdict that'll send the man back to prison.”
At this a real tremor seemed to go round the table, as if they all saw
themselves sitting there through lunch time. Then the large grey-haired
man given to winking, said:
“Oh! Come, sir--after what the judge said! Come, sir! What do you say,
Mr. Foreman?”
Gentleman Fox--as who should say 'This is excellent value, but I don't
wish to press it on you!'--answered:
“We are only concerned with the facts. Did he or did he not try to
shorten his life?”
“Of course he did--said so himself,” Mr. Bosengate heard the wire-haired
man snap out, and from the following murmur of assent he alone
abstained. Guilty! Well--yes! There was no way out of admitting that,
but his feelings revolted against handing “that poor little beggar” over
to the tender mercy of his country's law. His whole soul rose in arms
against agreeing with that ill-bred little cur, and the rest of this
job-lot. He had an impulse to get up and walk out, saying: “Settle it
your own way. Good morning.”
“It seems, sir,” Gentleman Fox was saying, “that we're all agreed to
guilty, except yourself. If you will allow me, I don't see how you can
go behind what the prisoner himself admitted.”
Thus brought up to the very guns, Mr. Bosengate, red in the face, thrust
his hands deep into the side pockets of his tunic, and, staring straight
before him, said:
“Very well; on condition we recommend him to mercy.”
“What do you say, gentlemen; shall we recommend him to mercy?”
“'Ear, 'ear!” burst from the commercial traveller, and from the chemist
came the murmur:
“No harm in that.”
“Well, I think there is. They shoot deserters at the front, and we let
this fellow off. I'd hang the cur.”
Mr. Bosengate stared at that little wire-haired brute. “Haven't you any
feeling for others?” he wanted to say. “Can't you see that this poor
devil suffers tortures?” But the sheer impossibility of doing this
before ten other men brought a slight sweat out on his face and hands;
and in agitation he smote the table a blow with his fist. The effect was
instantaneous. Everybody looked at the wire-haired man, as if saying:
“Yes, you've gone a bit too far there!” The “little brute” stood it for
a moment, then muttered surlily:
“Well, commend 'im to mercy if you like; I don't care.”
“That's right; they never pay any attention to it,” said the grey-haired
man, winking heartily. And Mr. Bosengate filed back with the others into
court.
But when from the jury box his eyes fell once more on the hare-eyed
figure in the dock, he had his worst moment yet. Why should this poor
wretch suffer so--for no fault, no fault; while he, and these others,
and that snapping counsel, and the Caesar-like judge up there, went
off to their women and their homes, blithe as bees, and probably never
thought of him again? And suddenly he was conscious of the judge's
voice:
“You will go back to your regiment, and endeavour to serve your country
with better spirit. You may thank the jury that you are not sent to
prison, and your good fortune that you were not at the front when you
tried to commit this cowardly act. You are lucky to be alive.”
A policeman pulled the little soldier by the arm; his drab figure with
eyes fixed and lustreless, passed down and away. From his very soul
Mr. Bosengate wanted to lean out and say: “Cheer up, cheer up! I
understand.”
It was nearly ten o'clock that evening before he reached home, motoring
back from the route march. His physical tiredness was abated, for he had
partaken of a snack and a whisky and soda at the hotel; but mentally
he was in a curious mood. His body felt appeased, his spirit hungry.
Tonight he had a yearning, not for his wife's kisses, but for her
understanding. He wanted to go to her and say: “I've learnt a lot
to-day-found out things I never thought of. Life's a wonderful thing,
Kate, a thing one can't live all to oneself; a thing one shares with
everybody, so that when another suffers, one suffers too. It's come to
me that what one has doesn't matter a bit--it's what one does, and
how one sympathises with other people. It came to me in the most
extraordinary vivid way, when I was on that jury, watching that poor
little rat of a soldier in his trap; it's the first time I've ever
felt--the--the spirit of Christ, you know. It's a wonderful thing,
Kate--wonderful! We haven't been close--really close, you and I, so
that we each understand what the other is feeling. It's all in that,
you know; understanding--sympathy--it's priceless. When I saw that
poor little devil taken down and sent back to his regiment to begin his
sorrows all over again--wanting his wife, thinking and thinking of her
just as you know I would be thinking and wanting you, I felt what an
awful outside sort of life we lead, never telling each other what we
really think and feel, never being really close. I daresay that little
chap and his wife keep nothing from each other--live each other's
lives. That's what we ought to do. Let's get to feeling that what really
matters is--understanding and loving, and not only just saying it as
we all do, those fellows on the jury, and even that poor devil of a
judge--what an awful life judging one's fellow-creatures.
“When I left that poor little Tommy this morning, and ever since, I've
longed to get back here quietly to you and tell you about it, and make
a beginning. There's something wonderful in this, and I want you to feel
it as I do, because you mean such a lot to me.”
This was what he wanted to say to his wife, not touching, or kissing
her, just looking into her eyes, watching them soften and glow as they
surely must, catching the infection of his new ardour. And he felt
unsteady, fearfully unsteady with the desire to say it all as it should
be said: swiftly, quietly, with the truth and fervour of his feeling.
The hall was not lit up, for daylight still lingered under the new
arrangement. He went towards the drawing-room, but from the very door
shied off to his study and stood irresolute under the picture of a “Man
catching a flea” (Dutch school), which had come down to him from his
father. The governess would be in there with his wife! He must wait.
Essential to go straight to Kathleen and pour it all out, or he would
never do it. He felt as nervous as an undergraduate going up for his
viva' voce. This thing was so big, so astoundingly and unexpectedly
important. He was suddenly afraid of his wife, afraid of her coolness
and her grace, and that something Japanese about her--of all those
attributes he had been accustomed to admire most; afraid, as it were,
of her attraction. He felt young to-night, almost boyish; would she see
that he was not really fifteen years older than herself, and she not
really a part of his collection, of all the admirable appointments of
his home; but a companion spirit to one who wanted a companion badly.
In this agitation of his soul he could keep still no more than he could
last night in the agitation of his senses; and he wandered into the
dining-room. A dainty supper was set out there, sandwiches, and cake,
whisky and the cigarettes--even an early peach. Mr. Bosengate looked at
this peach with sorrow rather than disgust. The perfection of it was of
a piece with all that had gone before this new and sudden feeling. Its
delicious bloom seemed to heighten his perception of the hedge around
him, that hedge of the things he so enjoyed, carefully planted and
tended these many years. He passed it by uneaten, and went to the
window. Out there all was darkening, the fountain, the lime tree, the
flower-beds, and the fields below, with the Jersey cows who would
come to your call; darkening slowly, losing form, blurring into soft
blackness, vanishing, but there none the less--all there--the hedge of
his possessions. He heard the door of the drawing-room open, the voices
of his wife and the governess in the hall, going up to bed. If only they
didn't look in here! If only! The voices ceased. He was safe now--had
but to follow in a few minutes, to make sure of Kathleen alone. He
turned round and stared down the length of the dark dining-room, over
the rosewood table, to where in the mirror above the sideboard at the
far end, his figure bathed, a stain, a mere blurred shadow; he made his
way down to it along the table edge, and stood before himself as close
as he could get. His throat and the roof of his mouth felt dry with
nervousness; he put out his finger and touched his face in the glass.
'.ou're an ass!' he thought. 'Pull yourself together, and get it over.
She will see; of course she will!' He swallowed, smoothed his moustache,
and walked out. Going up the stairs, his heart beat painfully; but he
was in for it now, and marched straight into her room. Dressed only in a
loose blue wrapper, she was brushing her dark hair before the glass. Mr.
Bosengate went up to her and stood there silent, looking down. The words
he had thought of were like a swarm of bees buzzing in his head, yet not
one would fly from between his lips. His wife went on brushing her hair
under the light which shone on her polished elbows. She looked up at him
from beneath one lifted eyebrow.
“Well, dear--tired?”
With a sort of vehemence the single word “No” passed out. A faint, a
quizzical smile flitted over her face; she shrugged her shoulders ever
so gently. That gesture--he had seen it before! And in desperate desire
to make her understand, he put his hand on her lifted arm.
“Kathleen, stop--listen to me!” His fingers tightened in his agitation
and eagerness to make his great discovery known. But before he could get
out a word he became conscious of that cool round arm, conscious of her
eyes half-closed, sliding round at him, of her half-smiling lips, of her
neck under the wrapper. And he stammered:
“I want--I must--Kathleen, I---”
She lifted her shoulders again in that little shrug. “Yes--I know; all
right!”
A wave of heat and shame, and of God knows what came over Mr. Bosengate;
he fell on his knees and pressed his forehead to her arm; and he was
silent, more silent than the grave. Nothing--nothing came from him
but two long sighs. Suddenly he felt her hand stroke his
cheek--compassionately, it seemed to him. She made a little movement
towards him; her lips met his, and he remembered nothing but that....
In his own room Mr. Bosengate sat at his wide open window, smoking a
cigarette; there was no light. Moths went past, the moon was creeping
up. He sat very calm, puffing the smoke out in to the night air. Curious
thing-life! Curious world! Curious forces in it--making one do the
opposite of what one wished; always--always making one do the opposite,
it seemed! The furtive light from that creeping moon was getting hold of
things down there, stealing in among the boughs of the trees. 'There's
something ironical,' he thought, 'which walks about. Things don't come
off as you think they will. I meant, I tried but one doesn't change like
that all of a sudden, it seems. Fact is, life's too big a thing for one!
All the same, I'm not the man I was yesterday--not quite!' He closed his
eyes, and in one of those flashes of vision which come when the senses
are at rest, he saw himself as it were far down below--down on the floor
of a street narrow as a grave, high as a mountain, a deep dark slit of a
street walking down there, a black midget of a fellow, among other black
midgets--his wife, and the little soldier, the judge, and those jury
chaps--fantoches straight up on their tiny feet, wandering down there
in that dark, infinitely tall, and narrow street. 'Too much for one!'
he thought; 'Too high for one--no getting on top of it. We've got to be
kind, and help one another, and not expect too much, and not think too
much. That's--all!' And, squeezing out his cigarette, he took six deep
breaths of the night air, and got into bed.