“I have nothing to do with your scruples,” said the magistrate; “the
law is the law, and I am here to administer it.”
Mr. Plumley licked his hand, and stolidly smoothing down his black
hair with it, answered, as if at a distance, being a well-fed,
unctuous man, “too full for sound and foam,” “I’m a conscientious
objector.”
“Passive resister!” corrected a friend, a little eager man, among the
audience near him.
“Eh?” said Mr. Plumley immovably, and without a glance in the
direction of the voice, “I said passive resister, didn’t I?”
“Whether you said it or not,” answered the magistrate sharply, “you
look it. I make an order against you for the amount.”
“As man to man——” began Mr. Plumley.
“Not in the least,” said the magistrate; “as debtor to creditor. Stand
down.”
“I shan’t pay it,” said Mr. Plumley, preparing to obey.
“If you say another word, I’ll commit you for contempt,” said the
magistrate. “Stand down, sir!”
Mr. Plumley stood down, with an unspeakable expression—it might have
been of satisfaction—on his huge, stolid face. Arrived at the floor,
he beckoned his little friend to follow him, and heavily left the
court.
He steered—the other acting as his rudder, as it were, and keeping
his position behind—straight for his own domestic shrine, hight
Primrose Villa, semi-detached. It was a beautiful little home for a
widower unencumbered, calculated, like an india-rubber collar, to
afford the maximum of display at a minimum of cost in washing. The
doorsteps were laid with a flaming pattern in tiles; red-aspinalled
flower pots, embellished with little dull glazed shrubs, stood on the
lowest window-sill; the bell-knob was of handsome porcelain, painted
with the gaudiest flowers in miniature. Within, too, it was all
furnished on a like hard principle of lustre—red and yellow oilcloth
in the hall, with marbled paper to match; earthenware-panned mahogany
hat-rack and umbrella stand combined, as red as rhubarb, and as acrid
in suggestion to one’s feelings; more oilcloth in the parlour; more
mahogany, also, with a pert disposition in its doors and drawers to
resent being shut up; glass bead mats and charity bazaar photograph
frames on the whatnots, all so clean and pungent with sharp furniture
stain that the rudder—Gardener by name—felt, as usual, the necessity
of a humble apology for bringing his five feet four of shabbiness into
the midst of so much splendour and selectness.