Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (441 page)

The lady whispered again.

“I tell you, your Ladyship,” the man’s voice repeated, “that it wouldn’t be the least use. I should only be one against three or four if I sat on the bench. They’d out-vote me. The very most that I can do is to listen to the evidence from the well of the court, and telegraph to the Home Secretary the moment the sentence is pronounced.” The major, rubbing his sore eyes, heard the lady’s voice say clearly and distinctly:

“Why not telegraph to him at once as if the sentence had been pronounced? Then he might suspend judgment before it is uttered.”

Mr. Broadrib pushed his bowler hat back on his head.

“That’s an idea,” he said; “that’s certainly an idea. I have already written to the Home Secretary giving him the details of the case. The point is, that we can’t have these tribunals, which are supposed to be Liberal, though they certainly aren’t, be made to appear ridiculous. Now can we, your Ladyship?”

Again the lady said clearly:

“I should think it would be extremely bad for the party.”

And the major really started. His eyes were no longer watering, but, before each of them, was the fatal round blur like a mist that had ruined his career. He could not see the barmaid’s face; he could not see Mr. Broadrib’s face; by looking quickly downwards he seemed to be able to dodge the blur and to see for a moment his own hands. But that was as far as it went.

Mr. Broadrib struck the bar counter with his fist. “It’s certainly an idea,” he said; and then he added: “Give me a minute or two to think about it. I was never the one to desert a friend, and you fought like a Trojan for me at the election. If I can think of a form of words, I certainly will telegraph to the Home Secretary within these five minutes.”

The lady suddenly disappeared in the deep shadows through a little door that led into the hotel. Mr. Broadrib sat still, looking abstractedly at three scarlet claret glasses that formed the decoration just under his nose.

“I say,” the major finally addressed him, “who did you happen to be talking about?”

“About a man,” Mr. Broadrib said, “called Major Edward Brent Foster.”

“Well, that’s me,” the major said.

“Of course, I knew it was,” Mr. Broadrib answered. “I thought you might like to know how the land lay, or I should not have talked like that in a bar.”

The major said, “Oh!” and then: “I’m very much obliged.” Then he asked: “And that lady who appeared to be interested in me — who was she?”

“That was Lady Savylle of Higham,” Mr Broadrib said. “She’s an old friend of mine.”

“Well, she was always a confounded Radical,” the major commented. “She can afford to be.” And then he made a clumsy rush towards the dark door through which the lady had disappeared. He upset three high cane stools and stumbled over a copper spittoon. Then lie felt his arm grasped by Mr. Broadrib.

“Look here, my friend,” the Liberal member said, “you are not going into court drunk, are you?”

“I’m not drunk,” the major answered him. “I’m going blind.” He tried to look at Mr. Broadrib, but he could not see him. “In the service of my grateful country,” he added.

Mr. Broadrib grasped his arm firmly by the elbow.

“Then you had better let me take you into court,” he said. “Come along with me.”

He marched the major off.

CHAPTER III
.

THE Lady Savylle of Higham was permitted by the manager of the County’s Meet Hotel to watch the proceedings in court from the little generally disused door that communicated from one of the upper passages of the old hotel with the court-room of the old town hall. In the old days the county magistrates had been used to permit any smugglers that were brought before them to escape up a little staircase running up the wall behind Their Worships’ backs. If there looked to be any strong evidence against the smugglers, one of the magistrates would just wink at them, and these hardy and desperate fellows, as the newspapers of the day used to put it, would elude the attention of their guards, rush behind the magistrates’ bench up the little wooden staircase, and through the little door into the hotel corridor. And the door would be slammed in the faces of the constables, who were never in any particular hurry to get their noses pinched.

Nowadays the staircase had been taken down, but the door remained, and Lady Savylle had heard of its existence from a waiter who had been, man and boy, sixty years in the service of the hotel. She had given the waiter half a sovereign, and had had the door opened just a little so that she could see well down into the court. The court was a dilapidated place of old panels and decayed woodwork. The smell that came up from it was none of the pleasantest, but the view was quite good. There were a number of people in the court. Mr. Foster and his party, some reporters, a ratcatcher in velveteen, and an old mad lady who muttered and winked. Five quite old gentlemen sat on a raised platform. Four of them, indeed, had, in the words of Mr. Broadrib, beards like morning mist and hair like uncombed sheep’s wool. Mr. Justice Hills, however, the chairman of the bench, was so exceedingly bald and so cleanshaven, that his head appeared to have been skinned. And all the five of them had heavy expressions, drooping eyelids, and airs of buoyant ill-temper. The clerk to the justices, a dismal man in a very dirty collar, appeared more depressed than anybody else. There were several policemen about the court, and an old man in a very ragged gown. Lady Savylle felt herself to be in the presence of the legal powers of her country in formidable array.

They dismissed the cases against three poachers, threatening to have the gamekeepers who appeared against them prosecuted for perjury and forgery. They sentenced a publican, who was accused of permitting drunkenness on his premises, to ten days’ imprisonment without the option of a fine. But this sentence the clerk of the court proceeded to revise. They disagreed energetically about a case in which the defendant was said to have contravened the regulations against swine fever; for two of the magistrates professed themselves anarchist individualists, and said that the law was preposterous, whilst Sir Arthur Johnson absolutely refused to take the evidence of any inspector. So that case was adjourned. Then Lady Savylle heard a weak voice bleat:

“Call Edward Brent Foster.”

The major was stepping into a sort of high pew, and a great deal of bustle began; she could see one of the reporters sharpening his pencil with great jerks, and she wondered why he had not got a fountain-pen. And there really was a moment when Sir Arthur Johnson seemed inclined to sit on the bench, but he descended to the witness-box and gave extraordinary and violent evidence, and with many gestures of a sweeping nature so that he resembled a splendid Viking. And really the story that he had to tell was so coherent and so extravagant, that Lady Savylle really thought that the major must have been committing mad crimes. She had the emotions of a person reading a wild Irish book; for Sir Arthur had a most tenacious memory, and repeated phrase after phrase of the major’s with the accuracy of a shorthand reporter.

The major called the railway guard, who swore that the major was perfectly sober and, in addition, that Sir Arthur was always getting into adventures on the 6.48. But the justices would not permit him to continue that part of his evidence. Then the major called Mrs. Kerr Howe, who was at once put into a violent rage by her own particular problem. For she was too frightened of the major’s uncle to declare that she was engaged to the major, and extraordinarily unwilling to declare that she was not. And then the justices cut her short and sent her out of the witness-box. What the impression she had made on the court was, Lady Savylle could not gather; and no one there had any say in the affair but the justices, so that it did not really matter. The trial, indeed, though it was eccentric enough, was not in the least thrilling except for the imposing attitudes of Sir Arthur, and except for Sir Arthur’s evidence, it did not take seven minutes — two for the railway guard, two for Mrs. Kerr Howe, and three for the major.

The major went into the witness-box and leant engagingly over the rail when he had taken the oath. The presiding justice told him to stand up, and he stood at attention. Then he began to speak “I was travelling by the 6.48,” he said, “and without the beginnings of a reflection on her, I was anxious not to be alone with the lady who has just gone out of the box.”

The presiding justice snapped out, “Why?” and Sir Arthur Johnson from the well of the court called out:

“That shows the sort of fellow this is!” And then majestically he looked all round him over his splendid beard.

“What we want to know,” the tired but ferocious gentleman on the right of the bald chairman asked, “is whether you did, or did not, entice the prosecutor into your compartment?”

“I invited him,” the major said. “I had half a hazy notion that I knew him.”

“You admit, then, that you were hazy?” the tired but ferocious gentleman on the left of the presiding justice asked.

“I admit nothing of the sort,” the major said. “I wanted a companion; the old gentleman wanted a first-class corner seat. I had a reserved carriage and I offered him what he wanted.”

“You admit to being drunk,” the chairman said. “You admit to enticing the prosecutor into your compartment. Did you, or didn’t you, stamp on his toes?”

“Of course I stepped on his toes,” the major said; “but it was the merest accident. You might have done it.”

The Lady Savylle suddenly had tears in her eyes; she did not know why it was. She was looking down upon him, and he was tired and dispirited; and she felt that he did not care — he did not care anything as long as he shielded the reputations of Mrs. Kerr Howe and Miss Delamare, and the feelings of Miss Peabody. She wiped her eyes suddenly, for she just had to wipe them. It affected her like a story she had read frequently in Christmas supplements — a story in which a clown keeps his end up thoroughly before the footlights whilst his little daughter is dying at home of pneumonia and starvation. There was Edward Brent Foster playing his part; amiably and in a voice that just moved her bones. (It felt really like that. When he spoke she seemed to have little electric currents running down the very bones of her arms and feet.) He was just talking to those farcical old men. And yet for half a dozen reasons he must have misery in his heart.

“So that you admit,” the voice of the bald gentleman was saying, “to drunkenness, enticing, and assault. Now about the theft from the bookstalls...”

The clerk to the justices looked up from below and said:

“Really, my lord, that is a case upon another summons and in another court. Your Worships cannot try that!”

“It’s a question as to the credit of the witness,” Sir Arthur thundered. The three old men had all whispered together, and then with an astonishing swiftness the chairman remarked:

“Two months for the assault, two months for the drunkenness, and two for the use of blasphemous and obscene language. The decencies of life must be maintained against these libertines. The sentences to run consecutively.” And then he added: “Call the next case!” and fell back into his chair as if he were exhausted to the point of death. This was his favourite attitude when he had disposed of a case in the King’s Bench.

It was then that Miss Delamare fainted. She fell right off the bench on which she had been sitting with a thud, but with no other sound. And she was so pretty, and so picturesque, that the policeman who had been suggesting to the major that he should leave the dock and go into the door marked “Prisoners,” ran away to get a glass of water. Sir Arthur exclaimed: “Infamous!” though it was not clear whether his remark was addressed to the policeman or to Miss Delamare; and someone bleated, “Silence!” to no one in particular. And then Mary Savylle saw a telegraph boy wandering along the high backs of the pen that contained the court. He looked about stupidly, and in her excitement she called down:

“Mr. Broadrib is there! Mr. Broadrib’s there!” And she found that she had opened the door and was out on the little gallery trying to attract the attention of the Labour Member. And the only person who saw her was the major, who looked up and exclaimed:

“Nancy! By God, Nancy!”

His eyes, which had been rested because he had closed them long and frequently whilst he waited for his case to come on, had for just a moment grown clearer. He kicked open the door of the dock, jumped clear over the form of Miss Delamare, and stumbled against Sir Arthur Johnson, who had set his shoulder towards the major as if he were an association footballer resisting a charge. It was extraordinarily quick. Sir Arthur had grasped the major’s shirt collar, and before Lady Savylle could understand what they were doing, a white linen circlet was in the irrepressible old gentleman’s hand, and the major was tumbling over the telegraph boy in the outer passage. But he picked himself up. And then her Ladyship turned and ran.

She went down the gallery like a lapwing, and turned up some very mouldy stairs; she found herself in a corridor that had two of its windows broken, and the panes stuffed with straw. She pushed open a dilapidated whitewashed door and she heard a scream. A servant in her bodice and petticoat was washing her neck at a cracked basin.

She exclaimed: “I’m Lady Savylle. Lock the door.”

The servant shivered. “I know your Ladyship,” she said, “but I don’t believe the door’s got a lock.”

“Then put the chest-of-drawers in front of the door,” her Ladyship commanded. “A man will be breaking in here — a wild, tearing Irishman!” The girl shivered “Oo-oo-oo!” and sank down upon her truckle-bed. And the whole back of the chest-of-drawers came out when Mary Savylle, who was strong enough, just turned it round and set it against the rotten door. The floor was encumbered with the girl’s clothes, cardboard boxes, and hairpins in an immense profusion. It was as if the poor girl who possessed nothing else in the world had spent the whole of her poor fortune on these implements of decoration. She took her hand off her heart and remarked:

“Your Ladyship give me sich a turn!” And then she added: “But I understand it all! Your Ladyship is pursued by a too ardent suitor!”

“That’s what they’d say in novelettes,” Mary commented. “But he’s not really a bit too ardent — only the moment is inconvenient. He has just been sentenced to six months’ hard labour.”

“Oh, poor dear,” the servant said. “Them cruel police!” Suddenly she jumped off the bed. “If a gentleman’s coming here it’s best he shouldn’t see me in my naked neck and shoulders,” she exclaimed, and she got herself into a black costume that had rusty brown passages and white, split seams. Her Ladyship was listening.

“There’s a noise,” she said.

“Then the sooner I make meself decent,” the girl continued, “the better for us all. I shouldn’t like a gentleman to see me without my cap and apern.” She was covering up the deficiencies of her attire in a passably clean frilled apron, when Mary Savylle asked:

“Isn’t there anything else we could put against the door?”

“Nothing,” the girl answered, with a profound conviction. “For the bed, if you do seek to move him, all his legs they do fall off, and the washer-stand do be nailed against the wall, having but two to its body, and the way it do spill water is too tragic, for I suppose you wouldn’t want your ardent suitor to get wet.”

At that moment the Lady Savylle could not have said what had brought her there. She must, she supposed, have acted in a sudden panic such as makes the eternal woman flee from the eternal man who in primeval days did his courting with a stone axe.

“Well, I suppose I had better be going,” she said.

“There’s someone on the stairs,” the girl cried out. And then she began to scream. She screamed like the whistle of a locomotive; she screamed like the maddest wind in ten thousand telegraph wires. The Lady Savylle shut her ears hard, and saw the rotten door fall over the chest-of-drawers; then the chest-of-drawers fell over, letting out new streams of unsuspected hairpins; and then the major was trampling over the chest-of-drawers that dissolved beneath his feet. He plunged on the girl in her cap and apron, and shouted out: