"Come into the carriage," I said, hoping that the swift wind in his face would freshen him up, give him a moment"s taste of the joy of living and sharpen the desire of freedom.
"Yes, Frank," he said, "if you will take me to Oakley Street."
"I would as soon take you to prison," I replied; "but as you wish."
The next moment we had got in and were swinging down Queen"s Gate. The mist seemed to lend keenness to the air. At the bottom of Queen"s Gate the coachman swept of himself to the left into the Cromwell Road; Oscar seemed to wake out of his stupor.
"No, Frank," he cried, "no, no," and he fumbled at the handle of the door, "I must get out; I will not go. I will not go."
"Sit still," I said in despair, "I"ll tell the coachman," and I put my head out of the window and cried:
"Oakley Street, Oakley Street, Chelsea, Robert."
I do not think I spoke again till we got to Oakley Street. I was consumed with rage and contemptuous impatience. I had done the best I knew and had failed. Why? I had no idea. I have never known why he refused to come. I don"t think he knew himself. Such resignation I had never dreamt of. It was utterly new to me. I used to think of resignation in a vague way as of something rather beautiful; ever since, I have thought of it with impatience: resignation is the courage of the irresolute. Oscar"s obstinacy was the obverse of his weakness. It is astonishing how inertia rules some natures. The attraction of waiting and doing nothing is intense for those who live in thought and detest action. As we turned into Oakley Street, Oscar said to me:
"You are not angry with me, Frank?" and he put out his hand.
"No, no," I said, "why should I be angry? You are the master of your fate. I can only offer advice."
"Do come and see me soon," he pleaded.
"My bolt is shot," I replied; "but I"ll come in two or three days"
time, as soon as I have anything of importance to say.... Don"t forget, Oscar, the yacht is there and will be there waiting until the 20th; the yacht will always be ready and the brougham."
"Good night, Frank," he said, "good night, and thank you."
He got out and went into the house, the gloomy sordid house where the brother lived who would sell his blood for a price!
Three or four days later we met again, but to my amaze Oscar had not changed his mind. To talk of him as cast down is the precise truth; he seemed to me as one who had fallen from a great height and lay half conscious, stunned on the ground. The moment you moved him, even to raise his head, it gave him pain and he cried out to be left alone.
There he lay p.r.o.ne, and no one could help him. It was painful to witness his dumb misery: his mind even, his sunny bright intelligence, seemed to have deserted him.
Once again he came out with me to lunch. Afterwards we drove through Regent"s Park as the quietest way to Hampstead and had a talk. The air and swift motion did him good. The beauty of the view from the heath seemed to revive him. I tried to cheer him up.
"You must know," I said, "that you can win if you want to. You can not only bring the jury to doubt, but you can make the judge doubt as well. I was convinced of your innocence in spite of all the witnesses, and I knew more about you than they did. In the trial before Mr.
Justice Charles, the thing that saved you was that you spoke of the love of David and Jonathan and the sweet affection which the common world is determined not to understand. There is another point against you which you have not touched on yet: Gill asked you what you had in common with those serving-men and stable boys. You have not explained that. You have explained that you love youth, the brightness and the gaiety of it, but you have not explained what seems inexplicable to most men, that you should go about with servants and strappers."
"Difficult to explain, Frank, isn"t it, without the truth?" Evidently his mind was not working.
"No," I replied, "easy, simple. Think of Shakespeare. How did he know Dogberry and Pistol, Bardolph and Doll Tearsheet? He must have gone about with them. You don"t go about with public school boys of your own cla.s.s, for you know them; you have nothing to learn from them: they can teach you nothing. But the stable boy and servant you cannot sketch in your plays without knowing him, and you can"t know him without getting on his level, and letting him call you "Oscar" and calling him "Charlie." If you rub this in, the judge will see that he is face to face with the artist in you and will admit at least that your explanation is plausible. He will hesitate to condemn you, and once he hesitates you"ll win.
"You fought badly because you did not show your own nature sufficiently; you did not use your brains in the witness box and alas--" I did not continue; the truth was I was filled with fear; for I suddenly realised that he had shown more courage and self-possession in the Queensberry trial than in the trial before Mr. Justice Charles when so much more was at stake; and I felt that in the next trial he would be more depressed still, and less inclined to take the initiative than ever. I had already learned too that I could not help him; that he would not be lifted out of that "sweet way of despair,"
which so attracts the artist spirit. But still I would do my best.
"Do you understand?" I asked.
"Of course, Frank, of course, but you have no conception how weary I am of the whole thing, of the shame and the struggling and the hatred.
To see those people coming into the box one after the other to witness against me makes me sick. The self-satisfied grin of the barristers, the pompous foolish judge with his thin lips and cunning eyes and hard jaw. Oh, it"s terrible. I feel inclined to stretch out my hands and cry to them, "Do what you will with me, in G.o.d"s name, only do it quickly; cannot you see that I am worn out? If hatred gives you pleasure, indulge it." They worry one, Frank, with ravening jaws, as dogs worry a rabbit. Yet they call themselves men. It is appalling."
The day was dying, the western sky all draped with crimson, saffron and rosy curtains: a slight mist over London, purple on the horizon, closer, a mere wash of blue; here and there steeples pierced the thin veil like fingers pointing upward. On the left the dome of St. Paul"s hung like a grey bubble over the city; on the right the twin towers of Westminster with the river and bridge which Wordsworth sang. Peace and beauty brooding everywhere, and down there lost in the mist the "rat pit" that men call the Courts of Justice. There they judge their fellows, mistaking indifference for impartiality, as if anyone could judge his fellowman without love, and even with love how far short we all come of that perfect sympathy which is above forgiveness and takes delight in succouring the weak, comforting the broken-hearted.
The days went swiftly by and my powerlessness to influence him filled me with self-contempt. Of course, I said to myself, if I knew him better I should be able to help him. Would vanity do anything? It was his mainspring; I could but try. He might be led by the hope of making Englishmen talk of him again, talk of him as one who had dared to escape; wonder what he would do next. I would try, and I did try. But his dejection foiled me: his dislike of the struggle seemed to grow from day to day.
He would scarcely listen to me. He was counting the days to the trial: willing to accept an adverse decision; even punishment and misery and shame seemed better than doubt and waiting. He surprised me by saying:
"A year, Frank, they may give me a year? half the possible sentence: the middle course, that English Judges always take: the sort of compromise they think safe?" and his eyes searched my face for agreement.
I felt no such confidence in English Judges; their compromises are usually bargainings; when they get hold of an artist they give rein to their intuitive fear and hate.
But I would not discourage him. I repeated:
"You can win, Oscar, if you like:--" my litany to him. His wan dejected smile brought tears to my eyes.
"Don"t you want to make them all speak of you and wonder at you again?
If you were in France, everyone would be asking: will he come back or disappear altogether? or will he manifest himself henceforth in some new comedies, more joyous and pagan than ever?"
I might as well have talked to the dead: he seemed numbed, hypnotised with despair. The punishment had already been greater than he could bear. I began to fear that prison, if he were condemned to it, would rob him of his reason; I sometimes feared that his mind was already giving way, so profound was his depression, so hopeless his despair.
The trial opened before Mr. Justice Wills on the 21st of May, 1895.
The Treasury had sent Sir Frank Lockwood, Q.C., M.P., to lead Mr. C.F.
Gill, Mr. Horace Avory, and Mr. Sutton. Oscar was represented by the same counsel as on the previous occasion.
The whole trial to me was a nightmare, and it was characterised from the very beginning by atrocious prejudice and injustice. The High Priests of Law were weary of being balked; eager to make an end. As soon as the Judge took his seat, Sir Edward Clarke applied that the defendants should be tried separately. As they had already been acquitted on the charge of conspiracy, there was no reason why they should be tried together.
The Judge called on the Solicitor-General to answer the application.
The Solicitor-General had nothing to say, but thought it was in the interests of the defendants to be tried together; for, in case they were tried separately, it would be necessary to take the defendant Taylor first.
Sir Edward Clarke tore this pretext to pieces, and Mr. Justice Wills brought the matter to a conclusion by saying that he was in possession of all the evidence that had been taken at the previous trials, and his opinion was that the two defendants should be tried separately.
Sir Edward Clarke then applied that the case of Mr. Wilde should be taken first as his name stood first on the indictment, and as the first count was directed against him and had nothing to do with Taylor.... "There are reasons present, I am sure, too, in your Lordship"s mind, why Wilde should not be tried immediately after the other defendant."
Mr. Justice Wills remarked, with seeming indifference, "It ought not to make the least difference, Sir Edward. I am sure I and the jury will do our best to take care that the last trial has no influence at all on the present."
Sir Edward Clarke stuck to his point. He urged respectfully that as Mr. Wilde"s name stood first on the indictment his case should be taken first.
Mr. Justice Wills said he could not interfere with the discretion of the prosecution, nor vary the ordinary procedure. Justice and fair play on the one side and precedent on the other: justice was waved out of court with serene indifference. Thereupon Sir Edward Clarke pressed that the trial of Mr. Oscar Wilde should stand over till the next sessions. But again Mr. Justice Wills refused. Precedent was silent now but prejudice was strong as ever.
The case against Taylor went on the whole day and was resumed next morning. Taylor went into the box and denied all the charges. The Judge summed up dead against him, and at 3.30 the jury retired to consider their verdict: in forty-five minutes they came into court again with a question which was significant. In answer to the judge the foreman stated that "they had agreed that Taylor had introduced Parker to Wilde, but they were not satisfied with Wilde"s guilt in the matter."
Mr. Justice Wills: "Were you agreed as to the charge on the other counts?"