In his lodgings Sir Edward Parkin buttered his toast deliberately. He was a short, plump man with a very white face and very white hands. It was rumoured in London that he powdered them like a woman. His voice, when he spoke across the table to his marshal, was high and affected. It played tricks at an empyrean height, curvetting like a skittish mare. He complained peevishly of the breakfast which had been laid before him.
At the White Hart Sir Henry Merriman breakfasted with his papers before him on some dry toast and coffee. Lucy was still in bed, and Mr. Farne at the other end of the table was silent and thoughtful.
Sir Henry looked up. “Is he still in the hotel?” he asked.
Mr. Farne nodded.
“Will he stay the course, I wonder?”
Mr. Farne shrugged his shoulders.
Outside, the javelin men marched along the street to the judge’s lodgings, their bright uniforms shining dimly through the grey veil of rain. They were followed at a short interval by the trumpeters of the local militia. They formed up outside the lodgings and Sir Edward Parkin rose, dusting crumbs from his knees. He had timed his breakfast to a minute. He sent his marshal out to find snuff. “It must be Bentley’s.”
At the prison they were fastening the irons on six men. Five were big bearded fellows who cursed, defiantly, but in the best of humour. Their lawyer had seen them the previous day and he was supremely confident in the jury. They only needed a loophole for an acquittal and that loophole he had devised. The sixth man had not understood what the lawyer had said. He dimly realised that a man was dead, and he was in the dock for murder. He was white and shaken by sudden bouts of terrified tears. He was the half-witted boy Tims.
Some time before this a maid had knocked on Andrews’s door and offered him breakfast. He had refused it. He had no appetite. He felt that it was he who was about to enter the dock and be tried for his life. His mouth was so dry that he wondered how he would be able to answer counsel’s questions. “I am doing the right thing,” he told himself over and over again. “This is what Elizabeth would have me do.” But the answer was too obvious. “This is not for her.” If only it were. He remembered how the day before he had seen her cottage from the down and had taken the smoke for turning, twisting birds. His heart too had flown that now felt as though it must drag in the mud forever. He was afraid to raise her image, since it had been so easily and completely defeated by a courtesan. If it had not been for that, for the bargain he had made, he felt that he could have faced his trial, if not with courage, at least with an echo of a resemblance to it.
Somewhere from a long way off there came a broken blare of trumpets. It meant, he knew, that the judge was entering his carriage. Any moment now they would be coming for him. It was not fear so much as disgust and regret that filled his mind to the exclusion of any clear thought—disgust at his actions and his words the night before, disgust at the young lustful woman who had come between him and a strange, purifying dream, regret that he was going to face death for so mean a reason. He heard someone moving on the stairs. Was it too late? He flung himself on his knees beside the bed and prayed for the first time for many years, with a disjointed passion. “O God, if you are God,” he implored, “give me courage. Forgive last night. I will try to forget it. I will try not to see that woman again. I will not take her reward. Give, give me back the old motive.”
Mr. Farne’s face appeared in the doorway. “You must come along,” he said. He looked puzzled, embarrassed and therefore a little angry.
Crowds lined the pavements, and a long queue had formed up in front of a side door for entrance to the public gallery. Andrews turned up the collar of his coat, lest he should be recognised. There were many in Lewes who knew his face, innkeepers to whom the smugglers had sold their goods, housekeepers with convenient cellars in which to store barrels.
In the Court was a buzz and movement which made Andrews feel dizzy and confused. His brain was tired with the constant wakefulness of the previous night, and it was indistinctly, as though through a mist, that he picked out Sir Henry Merriman where he sat at the counsel’s table. Mr. Farne had joined him and there was a third man whom Andrews did not know, as well as the two counsel for the prisoners. From where he stood he could not see the occupants of the dock and he was glad. His time would come in the witness box only too soon.
Outside the Court was a clash and rattle as the javelin men grounded their weapons, and then, heralded by a blare of trumpets and
