Romance

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CHAPTER FOUR

I never saw my father again until I was in the prisoner's anteroom at the Old Bailey. It was full of lounging men, whose fleshy limbs bulged out against the tight, loud checks of their coats and trousers. These were jailers waiting to bring in their prisoners. On the other side of one black door the Grand Jury was deliberating on my case, behind another the court was in waiting to try me. I was in a sort of tired lull. All night I had been pacing up and down, trying to bring my brain to think of points—points in my defence. It was very difficult. I knew that I must keep cool, be calm, be lucid, be convincing; and my brain had reeled at times, even in the darkness of the cell. I knew it had reeled, because I remembered that once I had fallen against the stone of one of the walls, and once against the door. Here, in the light, with only a door between myself and the last scene, I regained my hold. I was going to fight every inch from start to finish. I was going to let no chink of their armour go untried. I was going to make a good fight. My teeth chattered like castanets, jarring in my jaws until it was painful. But that was only with the cold.

A hubbub of expostulation was going on at the third door. My turnkey called suddenly:

'Let the genman in, Charlie. Pal o' ourn,' and my father ran huntedly into the room. He began an endless tale of a hackney coachman who had stood in front of the door of his coach to prevent his number being taken; of a crowd of caddee-smashers, who had hustled him and filched his purse. 'Of course, I made a fight for it,' he said, 'a damn good fight, considering. It's in the blood. But the watch came, and, in short—on such an occasion as this there is no time for words—I passed the night in the watch-house. Many and many a night I passed there when I and Lord ———But I am losing time.'

'You ain't fit to walk the streets of London alone, sir,' the turnkey said.

My father gave him a corner of his narrow-lidded eyes. 'My man,' he said, 'I walked the streets with the highest in the land before your mother bore you in Bridewell, or whatever jail it was.'

'Oh, no offence,' the turnkey muttered.

I said, 'Did you find Cowper, sir? Will he give evidence?'

'Jackie,' he said agitatedly, as if he were afraid of offending me, 'he said you had filched his wife's rings.'

That, in fact, was what Major Cowper had said—that I had dropped into their ship near Port Royal Heads, and had afterwards gone away with the pirates who had filched his wife's rings. My father, in his indignation, had not even deigned to ask him for the address of Jamaica planters in London; and on his way back to find a solicitor he had come into contact with those street rowdies and the watch. He had only just come from before the magistrates.

A man with one eye poked his head suddenly from behind the Grand Jury door. He jerked his head in my direction.

'True bill against that 'ere,' he said, then drew his head in again.

'Jackie, boy,' my father said, putting a thin hand on my wrist, and gazing imploringly into my eyes, 'I'm... I'm ... I can't tell you how....'

I said, 'It doesn't matter, father.' I felt a foretaste of how my past would rise up to crush me. Cowper had let that wife of his coerce him into swearing my life away. I remembered vividly his blubbering protestations of friendship when I persuaded Tomas Castro to return him his black deed-box with the brass handle, on that deck littered with rubbish.... 'Oh, God bless you, God bless you. You have saved me from starvation....' There had been tears in his old blue eyes. 'If you need it I will go anywhere... do anything to help you. On the honour of a gentleman and a soldier.' I had, of course, recommended his wife to give up her rings when the pirates were threatening her in the cabin. The other door opened, another man said:

'Now, then, in with that carrion. D'you want to keep the judges waiting?'

I stepped through the door straight down into the dock; there was a row of spikes in the front of it. I wasn't afraid; three men in enormous wigs and ermine robes faced me; four in short wigs had their heads together like parrots on a branch. A fat man, bareheaded, with a gilt chain round his neck, slipped from behind into a seat beside the highest placed judge. He was wiping his mouth and munching with his jaws. On each side of the judges, beyond the short-wigged assessors, were chairs full of ladies and gentlemen. They all had their eyes upon me. I saw it all very plainly. I was going to see everything, to keep my eyes open, not to let any chance escape. I wondered why a young girl with blue eyes and pink cheeks tittered and shrugged her shoulders. I did not know what was amusing. What astonished me was the smallness, the dirt, the want of dignity of the room itself. I thought they must be trying a case of my importance there by mistake.

Presently I noticed a great gilt anchor above the judges' heads. I wondered why it was there, until I remembered it was an Admiralty Court. I thought suddenly, 'Ah! if I had thought to tell my father to go and see if the Lion had come in in the night!'

A man was bawling out a number of names.... 'Peter Plimley, gent., any challenge.... Lazarus Cohen, merchant, any challenge....'

The turnkey beside me leant with his back against the spikes. He was talking to the man who had called us in.

'Lazarus Cohen, West Indian merchant.... Lord, well, I'd challenge....'

The other man said, 'S—sh.'

'His old dad give me five shiners to put him up to a thing if I could,' the turnkey said again.

I didn't catch his meaning until an old man with a very ragged gown was handing up a book to a row of others in a box so near that I could almost have touched them. Then I realized that the turnkey had been winking to me to challenge the jury. I called out at the highest of the judges:

'I protest against that jury. It is packed. Half of them, at least, are West Indian merchants.'

There was a stir all over the court. I realized then that what had seemed only a mass of stuffs of some sort were human beings all looking at me. The judge I had called to opened a pair of dim eyes upon me, clasped and unclasped his hands, very dry, ancient, wrinkled. The judge on his right called angrily:

'Nonsense, it is too late.... They are being sworn. You should have spoken when the names were read.' Underneath his wig was an immensely broad face with glaring yellow eyes.

I said, 'It is scandalous. You want to murder me, How should I know what you do in your courts? I say the jury is packed.'