Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (260 page)
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Authors: Ford Madox Ford
TO
JOHN AND ADA GALSWORTHY
POLICE-CONSTABLE 742L was standing in the porch of one of the great houses in Anglesey Square. The latest carriage and the latest motor-car had set down the latest august resident that could be expected. Indeed, the constable had noted with satisfaction that “they were all home for the night.” And this pleased his well-ordered mind. He had nothing now to await but his time to go off his beat. Sometimes he had to assist the devious footsteps of the Hon. Lionel Horbord of No. 62; and that displeased him, because he liked to think of his betters
as
his betters. Once, even, he had been called to No. 48 by a furious outcry, a quarrel having arisen between Rudolph Kammarstein and his under-butler. And that too displeased him, because it was disagreeable to think that a moneyed man of an alien race should have invaded — though he had only taken Lord Leonard’s house furnished — these tranquil precincts. But that night the Hon. Lionel had walked home, swinging his stick and humming, but steady enough; and the constable having informed the servants of No. 48 that he was not going to stand any nonsense, a deep and soothing tranquillity reigned in the square.
Police-constable 742L stood in the porch of No. 37 because from there he could see the largest possible patch of night sky. It was very clear, and it was his habit to beguile the uneventful hours by trying to name the stars that swam into his ken. He had learned this trick of a Surrey policeman one day when he had been visiting Godalming in the train of a royal prince about to open a hospital. It was soothing and pleasing to him to observe how, in orderly rotation, the stars moved in their courses. He disliked having to make arrests, because they disturbed his nerves, and because arrests meant the giving of evidence, which is a most trying ordeal for a constable. He stood usually in the shadows of the porch. If passers-by appeared to be unquestionable they passed without observing him; to any of the night fraternity he made himself manifest by a slight sound or by noiselessly descending the steps in the goloshes that he wore over his boots. To this evidence of his watchfulness he attributed the fact that evil-doers shunned h
is
side of the square at least.
Having passed this pleasurable evening he was quite sure that his nerves were at their very quietest; he was gazing up at the constellation of Cassiopeia, at that time nearest to the zenith, and he was humming his favourite air of “Watchman! what of the night?” which he esteemed a poetic and melodious composition, when he observed a phenomenon to him most disagreeable because it was most unusual.
Something black and apparently winged, something huge and sailing at no great height, passed between him and the constellation. He stopped his humming for long enough to mutter the words “escaped
”
and “Zoo,” and to feel disgusted that any prisoner could have escaped from
any
cage. But his eye travelled in the direction that the now invisible object had taken, and suddenly, just below the glittering beams of a high electric lamp, he saw, unmistakably, a black form descending towards the lighted circle of the pavement. It descended slowly; it seemed to pause for a second an inch or two above the pavement. Then it met its shadow. Unmistakably it was a man in a gibus hat and an opera cape such as they wore in the spring of last year. The figure stood perfectly still, gazed at the lamp-post, at the face of the house before him, at the trees of the square. There was something curious, almost quizzical, in the gaze, in the upturned angle of the head.
But in a moment the constable had persuaded himself that this malefactor was watching and listening attentively for the police. The constable was persuaded that in the mind of every man that breathed in London town the thought: Where are the police? came first. The well disposed desired this knowledge for their peace of mind, the evil dreaded. And because the unusual displeased and disgusted him, the constable hastened to provide a normal explanation for this appearance. He muttered —
“Swell-mobsman! Harry the Valet! Invisible wire! Let himself down off the roof!”
Nerving himself to be ready to run if the figure turned down the square, to be ready to glide ghostlily down if it came in his direction, holding his whistle half-way to his lips the while, the constable watched. The figure turned deliberately round; beneath the misty, dropping beams of the light he exhibited the white plastron of conventional evening dress.
The constable slowly evolved the theory that a wire must have been stretched from the cross-bar of the standard to the roof of No.
The figure now had his back to the constable: 742L crept slowly forward, his goloshes noiseless, all his senses on the strain. He felt that he was on the verge of a sensational capture.. If he disliked arrests it was because arrests as a rule in that square were for simple cases of aristocratic disorderliness. They brought no advancement and a great deal of danger and nervous strain in the court, where, as a rule, a solicitor attended to browbeat him. But this appeared to be altogether different.... This man was obviously not drunk.
He came within grasping distance.
“What is all this now?” he said gruffly. He was not usually gruff, that was the manner that he used in order to paralyse malefactors, as the owl screeches that mice may be bereft of the power to run.
The suspect swung round towards him.
“What can I do for you?” he said. His face was in deep shadow. His voice was good-humoured, clear, and thrilling. It was so clear and thrilling as to be distinctly disagreeable to 742L, who disliked all unusual phenomena. “What are you?”
The constable was distinctly excited and angry; a hot rage seemed to possess him at this defiance.
“You’ll soon find out what I am,” he said, and he felt behind him all the imponderable weight, the huge machine of order that he represented and that this man trifled with.
“I am here to make similar investigations,” the voice said. “If the attainment of the knowledge proves either agreeable or amusing, I shall certainly soon find out what you are and how you fulfil your duties.”
His face was still obscured by the shadow of his hat. The constable felt a strong desire to see those features clearly. He was still persuaded that this was some swell-mobsman, one of those dangerous and mysterious creatures that cause puzzling and inexplicable disappearances — of pictures, jewels, deeds, or letters of value — in what the constable knew as High Life. It might prove such a capture as would for ever redound to his credit. But more insistent than the excitement of the capture was his irritation.
“Now, I’ve had enough of this!” he said from his chest. “If you can’t account for yourself you’ll have to come along with me.”
“I would not, if I were you,” the suspect said, “desire to look too closely upon my face. It is dangerous. I wish you no ill-will, but I have no reason, seeing that you appear to be inhospitable and uncivilised....”
“Drunk or mad you come along with me if you cannot account for yourself,” the constable said. He looked upward to see if there were visible any wire stretched from the gloomy house-front to the standard of the arc light. But though the air was alight with the white blaze and appeared to scintillate with little particles, there was no trace of a wire.
“Alas! my friend,” the suspect said, “that is a task that passes even divine powers. I cannot account for myself.”
“Now look here,” the constable said, and his native prudence still struggled with his anger. “If there’s a woman in the case.... If, say, a young lady let you out of her window.... I’ve no wish to cause scandal in society.”
“Alas! my friend,” the suspect said again, “there have been so many women in my case. So many. But they are all dead. And I cannot recall — no, I cannot recall at all that any young lady ever let me out of her window. It would have been a humorous conception; but I have so many other resources that it never entered my head.”
His leisurely and sustained speech (“The fellow talks like a book!” 742L thought to himself) roused once more the constable’s ire.
“I can’t stand here talking all night,” he said. “If you refuse to account for yourself I shall arrest you.”
And, having considered, he added —
“On a charge of disorderly conduct and threatening me in the pursuit of my duties.”
He felt that those charges he could certainly sustain. If the matter was more grave it would appear in the morning when the house awakened.
“Oh, make a distinction,” the prisoner said. “I did not threaten you. I merely pointed out an inexorable law: that if you look too closely upon my face you must die.”
“If you are one of those anarchists,” 742L said sarcastically, “you’ve made a fine mistake. The embassy is on the other side of the square. And you can’t frighten me with your secret societies and dogging to death.”
“There is no secret about it,” the prisoner said; “it is a part of the proverbial philosophy of all nations.”
“Well, I’ll trouble you to step along with me.” 742L uttered the shibboleth grimly. He felt that with that, at least, he was on safe ground.
ON the 5th July, 19 — , a singular case occurred in the Western Police Court. That it attracted little attention was due to the fact that almost all the available space in the newspapers was occupied by reports of a calamity, almost national in its character, that had occurred during the celebration of Independence Day in Madison Square, as well as to the fact that a wrestling match at one of the London music-halls was employing the pen of the Press Syndicate reporter at the police court in question. The syndicate reporter’s place was taken, for the afternoon, by a young and timid journalist, upon whose fears the police were able to work. So that instead of the paragraph going round to the Press under the troublesome heading of “Police and Public,” it was heralded merely as “Tragedy in Court.”
Moreover, the magistrate, who was habitually benign in court because a tyrannous wife gave him little chance for expansion at home — the magistrate, florid, corpulent, with sagacious, if commonplace, blue eyes, was that afternoon in a humour even more benign than was usual with him. A severe attack of toothache, brought on the night before by an undue indulgence in
marrons glacés,
had passed away towards three o’clock. His wife had gone for four days to Brighton, to which place her favourite brother had returned invalided from Simla. The charge-sheet was light, and he had every hope of a game at bridge, an agreeable dinner at the Reform Club, and a night at the Alhambra. With this agreeable prospect before him the good magistrate was more than usually inclined to ejaculate “Poor fellow!” when he had to deal with a case of theft induced by poverty; or “Poor woman!” to a wife whose husband had beaten her.
Thus an air of tranquillity, a foretaste, as it were, of a golden age, reigned in the Western Police Court. The police-court missionary, who himself was troubled by the attentions that his daughter was receiving from a bank clerk residing in their terrace — the missionary was pleased to think that his efforts to reclaim criminals in that district had so far borne fruit that not one old offender had that day returned to the court “This,” he remarked to the clerk, “is very gratifying to me; very gratifying.”
And if the clerk, who was a hero worshipper with the magistrate as his object of adoration — if the clerk was inclined to think the absence of recidivists due to several smart sentences passed by the magistrate in the last two months, he did not express his belief. For Mr. Todd, the missionary, was a big, bearded Scotsman, inclined to be corpulent, loud-voiced, spectacled, and with a healthy flush above and through the short hairs of his beard. He had a great belief in his own value to society, a belief any questioning of which was apt to raise his voice above the common, and the clerk, a frail, elderly man, dreaded the elevation of this powerful organ. He dreaded it because it suggested physical violence, though it is only fair to the Rev. Mr. Todd to say that the clerk was perfectly aware that nothing so unseemly could by any possibility occur.
Thus the magistrate was happy; the missionary rejoiced that his labours had not only profited society, but would enable him to return home in time to keep an eye on his daughter and the bank clerk; the clerk of the court was happy because he had been able to abstain from mildly controverting the trustfulness of the missionary. The ushers, the sergeants, and the police-constables were all happy because on that bland and pleasant afternoon not a single reprimand had been administered to any official or constable. If the afternoon was a little warm and overcast, it was no more than could be expected in July. Moreover, news had come from Wimbledon that England had beaten Belgium in the semi-finals of the tennis tournament. The Golden Age! Yes, in the court it was as near the Golden Age as we may know in this world.
A shaft of sunlight penetrated an upper window as Fybus Poldo, otherwise Apollo, was escorted from below. It fell upon the face of the prisoner in the dock with a so sudden illumination that Miss Petherell, the novelist, who was by chance collecting local colour for her twenty-second book, exclaimed to her companion, “My dear, Lord Byron!
It’s positively Lord Byron!”
Mr. Poldo leaned tranquilly upon the brown wood ledge of the dock. The sun shone on his blonde, shaven face; his light curls glistened; his air was nonchalant, unconcerned — Miss Petherell said it was even a little coldly cruel. But the sunlight threw such a glamour into the dusty air of the court that it was possible to see him only as if through a haze of motes, and Miss Petherell was thinking rather of portraits of the poet-peer than of the indistinct lineaments before her.
Police-constable 742L stood beside the dock, because the flooring of the witness-box had the day before — after repeated representations by the magistrate to the authorities — given way beneath the feet of an obstreperous and intoxicated witness for the defence of a prisoner charged with drunkenness and impeding the police. 742L appeared to be troubled by the sunlight that the prisoner accepted with such disregard. He wiped his brow with a red handkerchief; he supported himself with one hand on the ridge of the dock. At this motion of his the prisoner moved, as if he desired to avoid the contact of the policeman’s hand.
“Police — constable — 742L — were — you — on — duty — last — night — um — um — um — Anglesey — Square? — Did — you — observe — prisoner — acting — um — um — um...”
The clerk asked these questions in a gabbling, monotonous voice, with a little rise at the beginning of each sentence and a regular drop into inaudibility at the end. It was as if he ran a race against time. And at the end of each sentence 742L answered “I did” or “Yes,” in tones of nervous and defiant firmness.
“And — did — the — prisoner — threaten...”
The prisoner suddenly ejaculated —
“Stop!”
He was leaning upon his crossed fore-arms; his chest must in consequence have been contracted; yet that word caused Miss Petherell to quiver to the depths of her being, and her companion to drop the diary in which she was making notes for the novelist’s use. The magistrate, leaning not somnolently so much as acquiescent above his blotting-pad, raised his head amiably and looked at the prisoner.
“You will, you know,” he said soothingly, “have an opportunity of putting questions to the witness at the proper time.” He had made up his mind from reading the depositions that a fine of forty shillings and a mild lecture to the young gentleman—”Poor fellow, with a little too much champagne in him” — upon the necessity of treating constables with politeness would fully meet all the necessities of the case. He had seen so many similar cases.
“Pardon me,” the prisoner said, “I am a stranger enjoying the hospitality of this country. I am curious to investigate its laws and their administration. But I protest an utter inability to understand what your subordinate is alleging against me. This is not so much disagreeable to me as an offender as disappointing to one naturally curious. I do not doubt that you will render me justice, as I have been entirely inoffensive.”
His voice, almost more than his words, roused all the sleepy attendants in the court. The magistrate found the protest perfectly natural; the sergeant at the door whispered to his companion —
“742 has made a mistake. This is not a swell-mobs-man. More like a Russian grand duke.”
“The charge against you is perfectly simple,” the magistrate said. “It is that you acted in a disorderly manner, refused all account of yourself, and threatened the officer in the discharge of his duty.”
“Your subordinate’s elocution,” the prisoner said, “has such a disturbing effect upon my ears that I should esteem it a favour if you yourself will question this man who imprisoned me.”
The magistrate bent his brow upon 742L, whose face expressed trepidation and concern. Normally he was ruddy and clear-eyed; now, in the full light of the sun, he was pallid; the sweat stood out upon his brow; his eyes were veiled and appeared to be greyish.
“Officer,” the magistrate said, with his amiable patience, “will you describe the conduct that you allege against this gentleman?”
“He — He—” the constable laboured with his breath. “He,” he brought out at last, “behaved unusually. An aristocratic neighbourhood.”
“But describe his actions particularly,” the magistrate said. “Did he sing? Did he dance? Did he appear intoxicated?”
The constable fumbled with his helmet; he returned no answer.
“Come now!” the magistrate said kindly.
“His actions,” the constable muttered, “were unusual. He came down the porch of
“Down the porch of 37!” the magistrate said. “Oh!” Several reflections went through his head.
“Have there been any complaints from the occupants of No. 37 Anglesey Square? Any traces of entrance? Any property missing?”
The constable shook his head.
“Then is it your theory that the prisoner climbed the portico and then redescended?” the magistrate said.
The constable returned no answer. The magistrate looked at the prisoner.
“I do not see how a charge of disorderliness will lie against you,” he said, “but there might be substituted one...”
He came, however, to a halt He was about to add the words “of being a suspected person.” But there went through his head, as through the head of 742L, the idea that there might be a lady in the case. And the inhabitants of Anglesey Square were of a class to dislike such mysteries’ being investigated when they attached to their residences. He said therefore only —
“I dismiss the charge of disorderly conduct. Nevertheless” — and he addressed the prisoner again—”though I may accept your assurance that you are a stranger to this country, you must understand that you cannot, with impunity, threaten the guardians of our peace. You appear to have acted in an unusual manner, and the constable was within his rights in asking you to account for yourself. Indeed, he was acting under the pressure of an imperative duty. And, however good your reasons may have seemed to you for refusing to account for yourself, you were guilty of a gross misdemeanour in threatening him.” The magistrate was intending to finish his speech mildly by saying that the penalty of a night in the cells had without doubt seemed a severe one, but that the prisoner had only himself to blame, and so dismissing the case and getting away to his bridge, his dinner at the club, and his night at the Alhambra — prospects rendered still more alluring to him by the thought of the evening that he imagined the prisoner to have passed (He, alas! was only too circumscribed from innocent expansions by the exacting nature of his wife), when the prisoner interrupted him with the words —
“My curiosity to observe the working of justice in this land, rather than any desire to clear my own character or escape what penalties you may see fit to inflict, leads me to beg you to put certain questions to this man. Will you ask him the exact nature of the threats I used towards him?”
The patient magistrate bent his patient look upon the constable. He was anxious to get the case over; at the same time he was anxious to demonstrate to this stranger — a stranger obviously distinguished — the thorough and meticulous justice of a British court of law.
“Answer the prisoner’s question,” he said. After many stammerings, the constable, who presented all the appearance of a man in the throes of extreme impatience, brought out the words —
“He said I should die if I arrested him.”
“Ask him,” the prisoner said to the magistrate, “if I used the words—’if you arrest me.’”
His tone was cool and inexorable.
“Now, constable,” the magistrate said, “what were the exact words the prisoner used?”
“He said I should die!” the constable cried out. “Before God, he said I should die if ‘I recognised him.’”
The magistrate looked at the prisoner and raised his brows.
“I take it,” he said, “that you consider yourself a personage of such eminence that merely to arrest you would entail a heavy penalty. But let me tell you that the constable acted well within his powers; and I may tell him,” he added — for he imagined that the constable’s obvious emotion arose from fear of the consequences of this arrest, and he had, being a kindly man, the desire to reassure him—”I may tell him that, in case any complaint is lodged against him, taking into consideration the unusual nature of this gentleman’s action...”
“I beg,” the prisoner interrupted him authoritatively, “that you will ask him again what was the exact nature of my actions. The account that he has given is incorrect.”