Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 221
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 37.”
“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.”
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 III
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.
