A VARIETY SHOW
The Majesty of the Law--nay, in theory at least, the Majesty of
England--sat enthroned at Raylesbury. In the big chair in the centre the
Honourable Sir Christopher Lance, in his newly powdered wig and his
scarlet robes--the "Red Judge" whose splendour solaces (so it is said)
even the prisoners with a sense of their own importance. On his right
the High Sheriff, splendid also in Deputy-Lieutenant's uniform, but
bored, sleepy after a good lunch, and half-stifled by sitting indoors
all day in bad air, instead of agreeably killing something under the
open vault of Heaven. Beyond him the Chaplain, smooth-faced, ruddy,
rather severe, in gown and cassock of silk so fine and stiff as to seem
capable of standing up straight on its own account, even if His
Reverence chanced not to be inside. At the end, the Under-Sheriff,
unobtrusively ready to come to his Chief's assistance. On his Lordship's
left--a sad falling off in impressiveness--Arthur in mufti, and on his
other side Mr. Williams, the Judge's clerk, a fat man of constant but
noiseless activity, ever coming in and going out, fetching nothing from
nowhere and taking it back again (at any rate so far as the casual
spectator could perceive). Behind, such county magistrates as were
attracted by curiosity or by a laudable desire to take a lesson in doing
justice. In front, to right and left, and down below, divided from this
august company (for even on Marshal and Clerk fell rays of reflected
dignity) the world of struggle--the Bar, the solicitors, jury,
witnesses, prisoners, spectators, with great policemen planted at
intervals like forest-trees amongst the scrub. For mainspring of the
whole machine, the Clerk of Assize, a charming and courtly old
gentleman, telling everybody what to do and when to do it, polite,
though mostly unintelligible, to the prisoners, confidential and
consolatory to the jury, profoundly anxious that nothing should ruffle
so much as a hair of his lordship's wig.
In the morning they had tried a yokel for stealing a pig. The defence--a
guinea's worth--eloquently advanced and ardently pressed--was that the
prosecutor had presented the prisoner with the pig in a moment of
conviviality. The prosecutor met the suggestion with amazement, the jury
with smiles: one might get drunk, but no man was ever so drunk as to
give his pig away! Verdict--Guilty. His Lordship passed a light
sentence, faintly smiling over the ways of a world which, after nearly
fifty years in the law and eighteen on the Bench, still remained to him
rather remote and incomprehensible. This case of the pig was a merry
case. It lent itself to jokes, and young Bertie Rackstraw's caricature
(he solaced briefless days with art) of counsel for the defence
arm-in-arm with a gowned and bewigged pig was circulated and much
admired. _Pignus amoris_, another wag wrote under it.
Now, in the afternoon, a different atmosphere obtained in court. There
were no jokes and no caricatures. People were very quiet. Counsel for
the prosecution put his searching questions gravely and gently, almost
with pitifulness; counsel for the defence was careful, earnest, anxious.
Progress was slow, almost every word of the evidence had to go down in
the Judge's red book, to be written down in Sir Christopher's neat
precise handwriting. A man was on trial for his life and, as afternoon
darkened into evening, the battle drew near its fateful issue.
He was a big, burly, stolid, honest-looking fellow, inarticulate, not
able to help himself by his answers or to take proper advantage of the
dexterous leads given him by his counsel, who strained his right to lead
since life was at stake. In truth, though he was sorry that he had
killed her--since his old tenderness for her had revived, and moreover
he wished he had killed the other man instead--he could not see that he
had done wrong. He knew that the law said he had, and drew therefrom a
most formidable conclusion; but he did not feel convicted in his own
heart. She had deceived him and, when discovered, had derided him with
ugly words. Had he slain her then and there in his rage, the plea of
manslaughter might well have prevailed. But he said nothing to her; in
grim silence he had taken his way to the town and bought the knife, and
waited for two days his opportunity; then cunningly laid in wait where
she would come alone, and swiftly, in silence again, killed her. But may
not rage--ungovernable rage--last two days and be cunning? Round this
the battle raged. He had been cunning, calm, methodical.
It was seven o'clock when the Judge finished his summing-up, and the
jury retired. His lordship did not leave the court, but listened to an
application relating to a civil cause which was to be heard at the next
town. Everybody seemed to turn to this matter with relief; and small
noises--coughs and fidgetings--began to be audible again. But Mr.
Williams rose and went out noiselessly, soon to return. This time he
brought something from somewhere, and held it hidden beneath the Bench.
The jury came back, and the little noises were all hushed.
"How say you--Guilty or Not Guilty?"
"Guilty," the foreman answered. "But we wish to recommend him to mercy,
my lord, in view of his great provocation."
The prisoner's eyes turned slowly from the foreman to the Judge. Mr.
Williams slid what he had brought--the square of black cloth--into the
Marshal's hand, and, under the Bench still, the Marshal gave it to the
Judge.
The prisoner only shook his head in answer to the Clerk of Assize's
question whether he had any reason why the Court should not pronounce
sentence, and in due form sentence followed. The Judge delivered it in
low and very gentle tones, with a high compassion. "The Jury's
recommendation will receive the fullest consideration, but I may not bid
you hope for mercy, save for that Mercy for which everyone of us equally
must pray."
At the end the condemned man made a little bow to the Court, awkward but
not without a pathetic dignity. "Thank you, my lord," he said with
respectful simplicity. Then he was led downstairs, and the black square
travelled back on its hidden way to Mr. Williams' custody. Mr. Williams
stowed it in some invisible place, and issued his summons to all and
sundry to attend again at half-past ten on the morrow. The Court rose;
the work of the day was ended. It remained only for the Marshal to write
to His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department,
apprising him that Sentence of Death had been passed and that the
Judge's notes would be sent to him without delay. His Lordship, the
Sheriff, and the Chaplain passed out to the State carriage, attended by
the Javelin-men.
"Do you think he's got any chance, my lord?" asked the High Sheriff, as
they drove to the Judge's lodgings.
"Yes, Sir Quintin, an off-chance, I should say. In fact I think I shall
help him, as far as I can--that's between ourselves, of course. He
didn't seem to me a bad sort of man, but--" He smiled faintly--"very
primitive! And the poor wretch of a woman certainly didn't let him down
easy."
"I should like to have seen the other man in the dock beside him, my
lord," said the Chaplain.
"Oh, well, Chaplain, he wasn't bound to anticipate murder, was he? As it
is, he's thought it prudent to get out of the country--at some loss and
inconvenience, no doubt; this man's friends were after him. But for that
we should have had him here to-day."
"He wouldn't have been popular," the High Sheriff opined, with a shake
of his glossy head.
Thus, as the days went by, at Raylesbury and the succeeding Assize
towns, drama after drama was unfolded, and varieties of character
revealed--knaves guileless and knaves quickwitted; fools without balance
or self-restraint; mere animals--or such they seemed--doing animal deeds
and confronted with a human standard to which they were not equal and
which they regarded with a dull dismay. Incidentally there came to light
ways of life and modes of thought astonishing, yet plainly accepted and
related as things normal; the old hands on the circuit knew all about
them and used their knowledge deftly in cross-examination. Now and then
the dock was filled by a figure that seemed strange to it, by a denizen
of the same world that Bench and Bar, High Sheriff and Marshal
inhabited; in one place there was a solicitor who had been town-clerk
and embezzled public moneys; in another a local magistrate stood to
plead in the dock side by side with a labourer whom he himself had
committed for trial; the labourer was acquitted, and the magistrate sent
to prison--with nought to seek thence-forward but oblivion. Freaks of
destiny and whirligigs of fortune! Yet these were the exception. The
salient revelation was of a great world of people to whom there was
nothing strange in finding themselves, their relatives or friends, in
that dock, to whom it was an accident that might well happen to anybody,
an incident in many a career. But they expected the game to be played;
they were keen on that, and bitterly resented any sharp practice by the
police; a "fair cop," on the other hand, begat no resentment. Lack of
consideration as between man and man, however, stirred ire. One fellow's
great grievance was that a zealous officer had arrested him at seven
o'clock on a Sunday morning. "Why couldn't 'e let me 'ave my Sunday
sleep out?" he demanded. "A bloke's not going to do a bunk at seven on a
Sunday morning!" His lordship smilingly assured him that he should have
seven days less in prison, but he was not appeased. "Seven of a Sunday,
my lordship!" he growled still, in disappearing.
"Well, I shouldn't like it myself," said "my lordship" aside to the
Marshal.
His lordship's "asides" added something to the Marshal's instruction and
more to his amusement. Sir Christopher was not a reformer or a
sociologist, nor even an emotionalist either. He took this Assize Court
world as he found it, just as he took West-End drawing-rooms as he found
them, at other times of the year. He knew the standards. He was never
shocked, and nothing made him angry, except cruelty or a Jack-in-office.
In presence of these he was coldly dangerous and deadly. To see him take
in hand a policeman whose zeal outran the truth was a lesson in the art
of flaying a man's skin off him strip by strip. The asides came often
then; the artist would have the pupil note his skill and did not disdain
his applause. Though the Marshal's share in the work of the court was of
the smallest, his lordship liked him to be there, hearing the cases and
qualifying himself for a gossip over them, on an afternoon walk or at
dinner in the evening.
As the days went by, a pleasant intimacy between the old man and the
young established itself, and grew into a mutual affection,
quasi-paternal on the one side, almost filial on the other. A bachelor,
without near kindred save an elderly maiden sister, the old Judge found
in Arthur something of what a son gives his father--a vicarious and yet
personal interest in the years to come--and he found amusement in
discovering likenesses between himself and his protégé, or at least in
speculating on their existence with a playful humour.
"Men differ in the way they look at their professions or businesses," he
said. "Of course everybody's got to live, but, going deeper into it than
that, you find one man to whom his profession is, first and foremost, a
ladder, and another to whom it's a seat in the theatre--if you follow
what I mean. That fellow Norton Ward's of the first class. He's never
looking about him; his eyes are always turned upwards, towards an
inspiring vision of himself at the top. But you and I like looking about
us; we're not in a hurry to be always on the upward move. The scene
delights us, even though we've no part in it, or only a small one.
That's been true about me, and I think it's true about you, Arthur."
"Oh, I've my ambitions, sir," laughed Arthur. "Fits of ambition,
anyhow."
"Fits and starts? That's rather it, I fancy. You probably won't go as
far as Norton Ward in a professional way, but you may very likely make
just as much mark on life really, besides enjoying it more; I mean in a
richer broader way. Purely professional success--and I include politics
as well as the law, because they're equally a profession to men like our
friend--is rather a narrow thing. The man with more interests--the more
human man--spreads himself wider and is more felt really; he gets
remembered more too."
"The Idle Man's Apologia! Very ingenious!" said Arthur, smiling.
"No, no, you shan't put that on me. It's perfectly true. The greatest
characters--I mean characters, not intellects--are by no means generally
in the highest places; because, as I say, to climb up there you have to
specialise too much. You have to lop off the branches to make the trunk
grow. But I don't see you like that. The Burlington Theatre was hardly
in the direct line of ascent, was it?"
"I shan't be quite such a fool as that again, sir."
"Not to that extent, and not perhaps in just that way--no. I don't know
exactly how you came to go in for it; indeed you don't quite seem to
know yourself, as far as I can gather from what you've said. But I take
it that it was to see and find out things--to broaden your life and your
world?"
Arthur hesitated. "Yes, I suppose so--complicated by--Well, I was rather
excited at the time. I was coming new to a good many things."
Sir Christopher nodded his head, smiling. "You may safely assume that
Esther has gossiped to me about you. Well now, take that lady--I don't
mean Esther Norton Ward, of course. Men like us appreciate her. Apart
from personal relations, she's something in the world to us--a notable
part of the show. So we what is called waste a lot of time over her; she
occupies us, and other women like her--though there aren't many."
"No, by Jove, there are not!" Arthur assented.
"It's a lucky thing, Arthur, that your good cousin isn't built on the
lines of our friend at Raylesbury, isn't it? The world would have been
the poorer! By the way, that fellow's going to get off; I had a note
from Hurlstone's private secretary this morning." Mr Hurlstone was the
Home Secretary. "It's a funny thing, but she kept coming into my mind
when I was trying the case."
Arthur's nod confessed to a similar experience.
"We didn't know each other well enough to talk about it then," Sir
Christopher observed, smiling. "Fancy if we'd had to try Godfrey Lisle!
I hope you're going to stick to the Hilsey folk, Arthur? It's good for a
man to have a family anchorage. I haven't got one, and I miss it."
"Yes, rather! I shall go down there in the Christmas vacation. I'm
awfully fond of it."
The old man leant forward, warming his hands by the fire. "You'll often
find funny parallels like that coming into your head, if you're ever a
judge. Good thing too; it gives you a broad view."
"I never shall be a judge," said Arthur, laughing.
"Very likely not, if they go on appointing the best lawyers. Under that
system, I should never have been one either."
"I think, on the whole, sir, that it's better fun to be a Marshal."
Certainly it was very good fun--an existence full of change and
movement, richly peopled with various personalities. From the Bar they
lived rather apart, except for three or four dinner-parties, but they
entertained and were entertained by local notables. The High Sheriffs
themselves afforded piquant contrasts. Bluff and glossy Sir Quintin, the
country gentleman, was one type. Another was the self-made man, newly
rich, proud of himself, but very nervous of doing something wrong, and
with stories in his mind of judges savagely tenacious of their dignity
and free with heavy fines for any breach of etiquette: many an anxious
question from him about his lordship's likes and dislikes Arthur had to
answer. And once the office was ornamented by the son and heir of a
mighty Grandee, who did the thing most splendidly in the matter of
equipage and escort--even though his liveries were only the family's
"semi-state"--treated his lordship with a deference even beyond the
custom, and dazzled Arthur, as they waited for Mr. Justice Lance (who
was sometimes late), with easy and unaffected anecdotes of the youth of
Princes with whom he had played in childhood--the perfect man of the
Great World, with all its graces. Between this High Personage and the
man who stole the pig there ranged surely Entire Humanity!
But the most gracious impression--one that made its abiding mark on
memory--was more aloof from their work and everyday experience. It was
of an old man, tall and thin, white-haired, very courtly, yet very
simple and infinitely gentle in manner. He was an old friend of Sir
Christopher's, a famous leader of his school of thought in the Church,
and now, after long years of labour, was passing the evening of his days
in the haven of his Deanery beneath the walls of a stately Cathedral.
They spent Sunday in the city, and, after attending service, went to
lunch with him. He knew little of their work, and had never known much
of the world they moved in. But he knew the poor by his labours among
them, and the hearts of men by the strangely keen intuition of holiness.
There was no sanctimoniousness, no pursing-up of lips or turning-away of
eyes; on the contrary, a very straight dealing with facts and reality.
But all things were seen by him in a light which suffused the Universe,
in the rays of a far-off yet surely dawning splendour; Sorrow endureth
for the night, but Joy cometh in the morning.
As they walked back to the Lodgings, Sir Christopher was silent for
awhile. Then he said abruptly: "That's a Saint! I don't know that it's
much use for most of us to try to be saints--that's a matter of
vocation, I think--but it does us good to meet one sometimes, doesn't
it? All that you and I think--or, speaking for myself perhaps, used to
think--so wonderful, so interesting, has for him no importance--hardly
any real existence. It's at the most a sort of mist, or mirage, or
something of that sort--or a disease of mortal eyes--what you like! Are
you in any way a religious man?"
"No, I'm afraid I'm not." He hesitated a moment and went on: "I don't
quite see how one can be, you know, sir."
"Not as he is, no--I don't either. And I suppose the world couldn't get
on, as a working world, if by a miracle everybody became like him. The
world wants its own children too--though no doubt it begets some
devilishly extreme specimens, as you and I have seen in the last few
weeks. Well, you'll probably make some sort of creed for yourself
presently--oh, a very provisional sketchy sort of affair, I daresay, but
still a bit better than club codes and that kind of thing. And----" He
laid his hand on Arthur's shoulder--"the beginning of it may just as
well be this: Earn your money honestly. Such work as you do get or take,
put your back into it."
"That after all is just what the Dean has done with his job, isn't it?"
"Why, yes, so it is, though he doesn't do it for money--not even money
of his currency. Upon my word, I believe he'd sooner be damned than let
you or me be, if he could help it! So I've shown you one more variety of
human nature, Arthur."
"It's at least as well worth seeing as any of the rest."
"Fit it in at leisure with your other specimens," Sir Christopher
recommended.
It did not seem altogether easy to follow this advice--even after
reflection.
But there had been other specimens, also not too easy to fit in with one
another or with any neat and compact scheme of society, vindicating to
complete satisfaction the ways of God to men and of men to one another.
No symmetrical pattern emerged. Wherever he looked, life met his
enquiring eyes with a baffling but stimulating smile.