The Tale of Lal Part 32

Mr. Justice Chatty, the Judge, had not yet entered and taken his seat, so that the expectant hush which had momentarily crept over the Court was all the more remarkable by way of contrast to the series of rushes which had gone before this state of calm.

Something approaching a small riot had taken place before the doors of the Court had been opened. Crowds of curiosity-loving people, having stationed themselves outside for hours, and who had even thoughtfully provided themselves with sandwiches, now fought and kicked and struggled in solid wedges to find a place, and even roundly abused the police who controlled the doors when they were thrust away. The public have an unfortunate habit of becoming abusive whenever "House Full" is announced, after bravely enduring the probationary martyrdom of waiting hours for one of their favoured entertainments to start.

The belief that the Judge was about to take his seat was found to be a false alarm, so the hum and hubbub inside the Court recommenced with renewed activity. The solicitors chattered at their table like magpies. The leading barristers turned over their briefs and snapped out replies to the other barristers with them, and fidgeted with their gowns. Everybody glared at everybody else in the amber-lighted Court, but however eagerly they talked, and wherever they looked, the eyes of every one in Court always returned to stare in amazement and wondering curiosity upon one object. In the body of the Court, looming out of the dimness, the head fully illuminated, was the enormous statue of a bronze lion upon its stone pedestal.

"Most extraordinary case in my recollection," drawled a junior barrister to one of his fellows who was flattened beside him; "no wonder there is no room in Court with that ridiculous thing stuck there!"

"Who's for the defendant?"

"Dreadful, K.C., instructed by Brockett and Bracket."

"Umph! then I suppose there will be explosions and fireworks in Court: it's usually so when Dreadful starts."

"Gentle Gammon, I see, for the plaintiff. Biggest spoofer on the Law List, clever though."

Even after the Court appeared to be packed with that overlapping economy which is a characteristic repose of preserved sardines, small bodies of juniors, some with wigs, some without wigs, some in whole gowns, some with their gowns in shreds, forced their way in from other doors and other Courts. Some conspicuously held briefs borrowed for the occasion, some did not even pretend to have any such thing.

The stalwart policeman who guarded this second door suddenly became firm, and closed it with a mighty effort; that is to say, he all but closed it, only was prevented by the foot and head of the last junior hurrying in, who howled his agony aloud at having fallen into such a trap.

"No, no, Mr. Towers," expostulated the tall constable, "can't you see the Court is full and won't hold another one?"

"Lucas, let me in at once."

"I can't, sir, more than my position is worth."

"Then let me out," howled the suffering junior, "you're crushing my foot and my neck."

The stalwart policeman lessened a fraction of his weight against the door, and the imprisoned junior was allowed to sc.r.a.pe himself out as gradually as his peculiar position would admit.

The one person who considered the presence of the Lion in Court to be the most natural thing in the world was Ridgwell, who, standing beside the Writer, peeped through the little gla.s.s panel let into the door leading from a pa.s.sage to one of the witnesses waiting-rooms.

"Is the Round Game going to commence?" Ridgwell asked the Writer innocently.

The Writer admitted gravely that the Round Game was going to commence with a vengeance.

"The ones who lose have to pay the forfeits, haven't they?" persisted Ridgwell.

"Yes," agreed the Writer. "Exactly--ahem!--heavy forfeits."

"I hope Sir Simon wins then," observed Ridgwell.

"You see that man across there, Ridgwell," remarked the Writer, "big fierce-looking man making ineffectual efforts to adjust his wig becomingly over a pair of very big red ears, with two very big red hands?"

"Yes," agreed Ridgwell.

"With the sort of expression upon his face that the first of the Three Bears must have worn when he entered Silverlocks' kitchen and found the bread-and-milk to be missing?"

"Yes," laughed Ridgwell, "I remember, 'Who stole my bread-and-milk?'"

"Well, that is the man who is going to try to make you and I and Sir Simon pay the forfeits."

"How?" inquired Ridgwell.

"Well," suggested the Writer, "you know he will roar and shout and bang the table with those red hands of his, and try to frighten everybody, but the one thing to do is not to take the slightest notice of him. If he annoys you, just smile; if he continues to annoy you, just glance towards the Judge."

At this moment the voices of the ushers were heard shouting for silence and order, and a profound stillness reigned inside the Court, for his Lordship the Judge had entered through the doors leading to his room and had taken his seat.

His scarlet robe only seemed to accentuate the colour of his puffy pink cheeks, whilst the blackness of his little beady eyes and pointed nose rather gave him the appearance of some overfed bird gorged to repletion after a particularly satisfying meal, slightly apoplectic, with its beak out of focus. The Judge, moreover, appeared to be afflicted with a little wheezy asthmatical cough which attacked him at intervals as he prepared to arrange his papers. The Clerk carefully placed a gla.s.s of water upon the desk by his Lordship's side, but whether this was done by way of a simple remedy for the Judge's wheezy little cough, or merely as a gentle reminder that the case was likely to be a dry one, cannot be guessed with any certainty. The preliminaries having been arranged, the case having been called, the Ushers of the Court having again shouted unnecessarily for silence, Sir Simon Gold having stared at the Judge, and Mr. Learned Bore having stared at everybody, the Judge having appeared to have closed his beady eyes in slumber, like a broody hen upon a perch, Mr. Gentle Gammon rose and opened his case for the plaintiff.

As Ridgwell observed in a whisper, "the Round Game had started." Mr.

Gentle Gammon opened his case in his proverbially gentle tones. It was a silky voice, purring in its gentleness, but with a curious power of penetrating every corner of the over-crowded Court; it insisted even whilst it soothed, and its effect upon his Lordship the Judge seemed to be most pleasing, as he immediately appeared to nod to it as if in greeting. Mr. Gentle Gammon related to the Court how his client, holding the highest Civic position in London, had been made the subject of a virulent and unscrupulous newspaper attack by a man who, in addition to writing plays which n.o.body professed to understand, undoubtedly wrote articles that all fair-minded people unquestionably deplored. This unprincipled person, Mr. Learned Bore by name, had seen fit to attack no less a person than the Worshipful the Lord Mayor of London, and that, moreover, during his Lordship's tenure of office, believing that he, an unscrupulous journalist, could drag the Lord Mayor down from his exalted position by means of a few clap-trap phrases written for money, although he, the learned Counsel, marvelled how any one could find it in their hearts to remunerate such a person engaged in such a calling using such questionable language in such a preposterous case.

He, the Most Worshipful the Lord Mayor, the observed of all observers in the City as elsewhere, or in any a.s.semblage he adorned with his presence and ornamented with his personality, had been accused in an offensive phrase of "imbibing too freely of the Devil's cup," the Devil's cup in this instance signifying wine, the insidious inference being that the Most Worshipful the Mayor was inebriated, and, moreover, in public, and in Trafalgar Square of all places in London. The Counsel paused dramatically, then a thrill of unutterable horror crept into the hitherto purring voice of Mr. Gentle Gammon.

"That, my Lord and Gentlemen of the Jury, is a foul calumny, an insidious lie, uttered to drag down the exalted of the earth, and bespatter the resplendent robes of Civic dignity with the spiteful mud besprinkled from the nethermost garbaged recesses of the journalistic gutter.

"During the still and beautiful night hours, when this travesty of an accusation is brought, my client, the Most Worshipful, had wandered into the holy star-lit night, clad in the flowing robes symbolical of his exalted earthly estate, to place a wreath, a beautiful wreath, upon one of the monuments of London he deemed the most dignified and fitting to receive it. That monument, if they but lifted their eyes, they would see in Court. A stately n.o.ble Lion, whose presence there had necessitated the removal of four separate sets of folding doors leading to the Court in order that it might be present. Could this n.o.ble beast but speak," urged Mr. Gentle Gammon, K.C., "could it even roar, it would speak its severest censures, would roar its loudest denunciations at the libellous statement that the n.o.ble Civic head of London who honoured it, could possibly have done so, could conceivably have climbed to such a height upon its back, unless he had been eminently sober, unfalteringly steady at the time when, clad in his robes in the calm violet depth of night, he had placed his offering in happy felicitation as a symbol and a greeting to his beloved City of London.

This should have excited only admiration; but seen through the prying eyes of a prurient pressman, this touching tribute had been changed by the vile alchemy of suspicion to an unseemly and ridiculous action of midnight debauchery which could only have turned the n.o.ble Lion to stone, had it not already been made of bronze.

"My Lord and Gentlemen of the Jury, this Lion stands for liberty, as do all British Lions. I claim the liberty and full right of my client, if he deems fit, to be able to decorate any statue of London whenever he pleases, at any or every possible hour of the night that he chooses, without the stupid and interfering intervention of a constable, or the slanderous pen of a Mr. Learned Bore, having the power to make a lovable and harmless action wear the appearance of a midnight frolic of bibulous recklessness, which, had it taken place, would have been only food and gossip for the senseless and shameful, and reflective regret for the wise.

"My Lord and Gentlemen of the Jury, my client does not wish for big damages, but he does demand strict justice. That is what he is here for, my Lord and Gentlemen of the Jury, that is what we are all here for. If I were given to emotion, which I am glad to confess I am not, my deepest and innermost emotions would be called forth by the picture of his Lordship there before us, who holds the scales of Justice in his hands, who can pierce the outer coverings of dissembling and falsehood with the eagle eye of truth, who can right this hideous wrong, who can smooth out the crooked paths of falsehood, making all plain. Let the false traducer beware, I say, he is veritably between the Lion and the Eagle. His Lordship in this case is the Eagle (metaphorically, of course)," hastily added Counsel, upon noticing the extraordinary likeness of his Lordship to a bird roosting, "and the Lion and the Eagle shall each of them turn and between them rend the truth and nothing but the truth from the lying carcase of calumny.

"Having now shown with impartiality, at the same time characterised with reserve, that the condition ascribed to the Right Worshipful the Lord Mayor was ridiculous, I will proceed to deal with the other statement in this misjudged journalistic attack, that the Right Worshipful was reviving Paganism in London, and in consequence attracting a crowd. Far from the Right Worshipful either attracting attention or causing a scene or obstruction in Trafalgar Square, I shall prove indisputably that it was the Lion, and the Lion alone, that caused the scene; the Lion also, who by a strange metamorphosis occasioned a crowd to collect. We know from cla.s.sical history that in Babylon and a.s.syria bulls talked, we have heard of the oracle of Delphi, and in Biblical history of animals who talked. I shall prove by witnesses that this Lion has not only walked but talked as well."

Sensation in Court.

Here his Lordship the Judge appeared to show the first sign of interest he had evinced in the case.

"My learned friend must be careful," cautioned the Judge. "If what he states is true, the Lion may have to go into the witness-box."

t.i.tters in Court. The Learned Judge smiles, rather pleased with his own remark.

Mr. Dreadful, K.C., at this point arose hastily; in fact, the learned K.C. almost jumped.

"My Lord, I protest against such a line of argument, such a travesty being introduced to mar the seriousness of this case."

His Lordship waved the learned and excited gentleman aside.

"I am the Judge here," observed his Lordship, "and in that sense I even resemble Daniel with regard to his duties in a similar capacity, but I fear I do not possess his special knowledge with regard to Lions."

t.i.tters again in Court, in which the Learned Judge joins.

"However, I am always anxious to learn."

Renewed t.i.tters.

Mr. Dreadful, K.C., seats himself hurriedly and grinds his teeth in vexation, but finds time to whisper rapidly to a junior, who leaves the Court hastily and mysteriously.