Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (261 page)

The calm nature of his statement caused the magistrate moments of perturbation. It came into his head that in trying to be kindly to the constable he had perhaps jumped too swiftly to the conclusion that the prisoner was an aristocratic libertine. The constable’s behaviour — the agonised glances that he cast round upon the faces in court, upon the brown wood of the benches and desks, his pallor and his fumblings — all these gave the magistrate pause. For were these not the very indications of perjury?

And suddenly the man burst into a very agony of speech.

“How could I say what he really did? Who’d have believed me? I couldn’t believe my own eyes.” He paused and stretched out his fist to the magistrate. “As God is my maker,” he gasped, “I saw him come sailing down through the air.” The magistrate suddenly leaned back in his chair, both his fists on the table.

“Sailing down through the air?” he said. “In a flying machine? Well, but...”

He imagined that the prisoner must be a competitor in a distance competition for balloonists who had discovered an actual aeroplane. “What became of the machine? And what was his offence? Did you imagine him perhaps to be a foreign spy? Even if this is a credible tale, it is no offence to land where one will. And besides, you said he came down the portico.” For all his obstinate anxiety to make allowances, the magistrate was unable to avoid the growing conviction that the constable was perjuring himself, and, because he had no formula to meet this case, he was perplexed and angry.

“He came sailing down through the air,” the constable said, “in evening dress.”

The magistrate leant sharply forward.

“And he has been in the cells ever since? No one has had access to him?”

He looked at the sergeant who had given him the charge sheet.

“No one, your worship,” the sergeant said. “He has been alone in a cell and never asked for bail.”

Again the magistrate leant forward to the constable.

“Repeat your words,” he said. “Be very careful.” And as the constable brought out no reply, he read out to him the words that he had taken down —

“He came sailing down through the air in evening dress.”

“Before God, it’s truth,” the constable whispered.

“Then look at the prisoner!” the magistrate said. “This is the most monstrous perjury. Look at the prisoner!”

The constable who had all along kept his face averted, moved his head at last, as if against his will, towards the dock. He pressed his handkerchief to his lips, raised his eyes to the prisoner’s face. He gazed for an instant, threw up his arms, and fell down.

The prisoner was wearing a morning coat, cut rather long, of a grey frieze. It was so little noticeable that no one there could have said what he had been wearing.

CHAPTER II
I

IN the sounds caused by the feet of the several court assistants who came to carry out the body of constable 742L the slightly apologetic words in which the magistrate dismissed the case — he imagined the arrest to have arisen through incipient brain-trouble in the unfortunate 742L — were inaudible. The prisoner could, however, be heard replying in clear and incisive tones. The court reporter had the whole speech inscribed on his tablet, and good “copy” it would have made.

It was to the effect that prisoner had suffered no inconvenience at all in gaol; that to him time was of no value; that he was satisfied that as much truth had been extracted in his affair in that court as could be expected of human machinery; and that since the court was intended for dealing with human material, it fulfilled its functions in a manner worthy of admiration, and that he, the prisoner, had no intention of making any complaint to any authorities at all.

Any singularity of this speech was, however, lost to the audience, whose attentions were engaged by the group transporting the form of constable 742L through the door at the rear of the dock. The magistrate, indeed, walked to the end of his platform and, craning forward, exclaimed to the charge sergeant —

“Hold the poor fellow’s head higher”; and he repeated, “Poor fellow! Poor fellow!”

The policeman who had stood beside the prisoner held open the panel door at the back of the dock, and twice during the prisoner’s speech he had exclaimed, “You may go now.” But it was not till he actually — but quite with the respect due to obvious social standing — touched him on the elbow that the prisoner came to an abrupt and, as it were, a slightly outraged conclusion.

Leisurely and serene he stepped down, and with deliberation — so that he appeared in that hurried world a person oddly detached, and devoid of appointments to keep or a home to hurry to — he seated himself on one of the seats allotted to the public.

It was indeed like the breaking up of a school, so that the late prisoner had the air of a man who would soon be left by a receding tide high and dry upon a rock. The magistrate had dropped that “case” out of his mind: he saw so many that whether it were extraordinary or no it was little more to him than one of the rolls he was so fond of at his breakfast. He was leaning over the back of his clerk arranging the hour at which on the morrow they would be ready to hear two troublesome adjourned summonses, the one connected with a financier who was certainly predatory, the other with a philanthropist who ran a children’s holiday fund and had disagreed with his subscribers and a weekly journal. The officer of the S.P.C.A. was rolling some papers up in a wallet of American cloth; the Church Army officer was disappearing through the doors after the little crowd supporting the constable; even Miss Petherell, the novelist, was putting together her secretary’s notes. Her secretary she had sent with her smelling-bottle to the aid of 742L, and the secretary too had disappeared, sucked in by that little whirl. That was why Miss Petherell never spoke to the prisoner who looked like Lord Byron. A maiden lady of a singular meagreness and a slightly ashy complexion, she would with her secretary at her side have ventured upon any adventure. But alone she did not dare to address a gentleman.

The young reporter was glancing through his notes, pleased at having reported the prisoner’s excellent English in a shorthand so legible that he could decipher every word of it. The prisoner’s English — because it was so literary — had pleased him very much. It appeared to be exactly what the papers would want — and he wanted to give the papers what they would want, because down in Devonshire there were two aged parents, several schoolfellows who had stayed on their fathers’ farms, and a girl called Gertrude with exceedingly black hair. This was his first engagement as a professional reporter.

But an inspector, in a cap with a singularly flat rim, and in a blue uniform of a cloth so stiff in the creases that it appeared to cover wooden limbs, leant with one hand on the table, his legs crossed above the knees, holding down with one hand a singularly heavy moustache that he bit with his strong teeth. His attitude was easy and circumspect; his deliberation gave him an air, in the eyes of the young reporter, of singular wisdom and knowledge of the world. He removed his hand from his moustache to tap the reporter’s tablet; then he set it in his black belt above his right hip. This appeared to lend an even greater ease to his attitude.

“I wouldn’t,” he said, “give that report to the Agency. Mr. Milton would not like it For obvious reasons.”

And immediately it appeared to the young reporter that he had very nearly endangered his visions of the parents, the schoolfellows, and of the girl called Gertrude with the exceedingly red lips. The reasons for not giving the report to his Agency must be obvious, though he could not see them. And he might — it was plain to him that he might — have endangered his relations with the kind Mr. Milton — the official reporter, now engaged in reporting the wrestling match, who, because he also came from Devonshire, had promised to befriend him. He thanked the inspector effusively. The inspector, with an emphasis of his air of circumspection, again swept up his hand to press down his moustache into his mouth.

“If you wish to fill up a space,” he said, “I should say that during the hearing of a case at the Western, a constable engaged in giving evidence became suddenly indisposed. Upon examination the surgeon pronounced life to be extinct.”

In his haste to re-express his gratitude, in his admiration for this smooth — and so obviously right — official method of dealing with the affair, and above all in his delight that Fate, being on his side, had averted this danger to his Devonshire visions, the young reporter forgot to express commiseration for the fate of the policeman.

*******

In the meanwhile a great but a fidgeting desire had possessed the soul of the Rev. Mr. Todd. In it he forgot the fact that the bank clerk might even then be paying his attentions to his daughter. Mr. Todd stroked his square, brown beard, glanced at the late prisoner, pulled down the waistcoat that had a trick of rumpling up over his considerable frame, directed his beaming spectacles again at the late prisoner, twittered in his throat, and then curved his spine in the manner that is appropriate in an excellent Briton about to approach a person of rank.

His manner when he did approach was precisely that of a man aware that he is a Briton and aware that he is excellent. The stranger was certainly a person of rank, therefore he should be approached with deference. But he was a foreigner, therefore the deference must not be too considerable. Supposing him to be a foreign royalty, he might receive the deference due, say, to a British lord chancellor. At the same time, being a Briton gave one a certain natural and inborn royalty, so that one should attempt to feel and to express, with reservations, almost an equality; and the stranger being very obviously ignorant — ignorant, that is to say, of British institutions, and in consequence ignorant of that which is best in the world, ignorant in fact in the utmost sense of the term — one must attempt also to approach him with a certain superiority — as, indeed, smilingly and quite benevolently one would approach a child. All these subconscious emotions were expressed in the figure, sleek and shining, of Mr. Todd as he came near this unknown prince.

It is indeed due to Mr. Todd to say that he had no thoughts of his own material advantage. That is to say that he had not yet thought that this personage, moving as he probably did in august circles, might commend him — might, as Mr. Todd would have expressed it, exalt his horn where preferment is to be obtained. That came, of course, later. For the moment he had merely the feeling that he would like — without loss of self-respect, of course — to fawn against this presence as a cat rubs itself against a man’s legs.

Bending down so that his beaming spectacles with their blue steel rims were quite close to the eyes of the late prisoner, he exclaimed —

“I did not catch your name. But if I can be of assistance...” His little obeisance was meant to convey the idea of an almost infinite desire to oblige.

Miss Petherell, “dying with impatience, my dear,” bent forward to catch the stranger’s reply.

“I am Phoebus Apollo!” it came. And she caught the missionary’s exclamation —

“Ah, yes! Of the — of the Greek Royal House,” when it occurred to her that it was unladylike to listen further. Besides, there was always the
Almanach de Gotha,
A similar thought occurred actually to the court missionary, though, having knowledges different in kind from those of the lady, it was the name of another work of reference that occurred to him. And he added, “The descents of your...” He was about to say “gentlemen,” but the word seemed inappropriate. He wished to express the fact that even as there were, he was aware, in existence many who claimed to be descendants from the prophet Mahomet, or even as the emperors of Siam, China, Japan, Abyssinia, Korea, and other places with whom his reading of missionary journals had rendered him acquainted — even as these royalties claimed descent from prophets, deities, or queens of Sheba, so without doubt this stranger was of a princely house, claiming descent from a deity whose name was dimly familiar to him from his student days at the training-college at Cupar. It was indeed even, more singularly, very familiar to him, because for many years he had been in the habit of exclaiming “Apollo” when he paid his bus fare to the chapel at which he officiated. It was situated in a by-street immediately behind the Apollo Music-Hall. Thus he felt upon familiar ground, and he retained his breezy satisfaction, and he abandoned his sentence in the exclamation “Very interesting!”

They were by this time almost alone in the court. The stranger sat with a leonine and absolute repose.

“If our destinations...” the missionary began. He had intended, remembering his daughter and the bank clerk, to say that if their destinations were at all in the same neighbourhood he would accompany his new friend. But at that moment the idea that his new friend might be “of use” to him became dimly present in his mind. It so operated as to cause him to throw all considerations of domesticity to the dust of the court benches and to utter—”If you will permit me to be your guide to your destination, I think I can be of assistance to your investigations.” And he added, “I may say that you could find few better guides to the poorer quarters, monsieur. My labours of late years...”

“I have no destination,” the stranger uttered.

“But, monsieur,” the missionary said, “your friends will feel a natural anxiety...”

“I have no friends,” the stranger said.

The missionary uttered the words —

“But your time has, no doubt, a great value.” He was anxious to demonstrate that his willingness to oblige was so great that without a scruple he would devote all his waking hours till the court again sat to this stranger’s service.

“Time has no existence for me,” the stranger said.

The missionary had a little start. Time, he was aware, was money. But the stranger’s passivity was so entire that he did without a doubt convey the impression of having all the time in the world. It was difficult too to doubt the truth of this personage’s other statements, that he had no friends in that country to feel anxieties about him and no destination. In his mind he set to work to construct a theoretic personage who could fill all these requirements and could render possible these statements uttered in tones so full, so authoritative, and so final. He ejaculated, “Of course I will respect your incognito.”

He had come to the conclusion that this must be some prince in exile. For he remembered now to have read in the papers at the time of the Grecian sovereign’s visit to London that the King of the Hellenes was a popularly elected prince of some vague German family; he could not therefore claim descent, however shadowily, from heathen deities of the Greek mythology. But this personage with all the time in the world, and, time being money, of immense wealth, of a tone so commanding, yet without friends... who else but a foreign prince in exile could satisfy these possibilities? Might he not be, say, a pretender to the throne of Turkey? For, vaguely, Mr. Todd remembered, echoes of Gibbon being in his mind, that the Eastern Empire — the Eastern half of the Roman Empire — had descended into the hands of Greek monarchs. He seemed to recall an emperor called Johannes Paleologos. Might not Paleologos’s family name have been Apollo, just as the Duke of Northumberland’s is Smithson?

“Of course I shall respect your incognito,” and an uncontrollable sense of fitness of place — a sense of fidgetings near the doors of the court — made him add —

“But perhaps you are unaware that we are delaying the officials.
They
are not leisured people.” He gave to this remark the symphony of a benevolent smile, for he was certain that, since the truly great are always considerate of their inferiors, this personage would feel contrition and compunction at the thought that he was keeping two police sergeants and a constable from their teas. The demeanour of the stranger, however, both disappointed him and enhanced his views of his position. For, far from starting to his feet, he set them slowly on the floor, and though he rose, he gazed without emotion first at one officer and then at the other.