"More than ever; and I am very sorry Joe has deserted his kind master. I am afraid now he will lose his case."
"I am not concerned about that at present; my work is but to dream, not to prophesy events. I hope Mr. b.u.mpkin will win, but nothing is so uncertain as the Law."
"And why should that be? Law should be as certain as the Multiplication Table."
"Ah," sighed I, "but-"
"A man who brings an action must be right or wrong," interrupted my wife.
"Yes," said I, "and sometimes he"s both; and one judge will take one view of his case-his conduct out of Court, and his demeanour in-while another judge will take another; why, I have known a man lose his case through having a wart upon his nose."
"Gracious!" exclaimed my wife, "is it possible?"
"Yes," quoth I; "and another through having a twitch in his eye. Then you may have a foolish jury, who take a prejudice against a man. For instance, if a lawyer brings an action, he can seldom get justice before a common jury; and so if he be sued. A blue ribbon man on the jury will be almost sure to carry his extreme virtue to the border of injustice against a publican. Masters decide against workmen, and so on."
"Well, Mr. b.u.mpkin is not a lawyer, or a publican, or a blue ribbon man, so I hope he"ll win."
"I don"t hope anything about it," I replied. "I shall note down what takes place; I don"t care who wins."
"When will his case at the Old Bailey come on? I think that"s the term you use."
"It will be tried next week."
"He is sure to punish that wicked thief who stole his watch."
"One would think so: much will depend upon the way Mr. b.u.mpkin gives his evidence; much on the way in which the thief is defended; a good deal on the ability of the Counsel for the Prosecution; and very much on the cla.s.s of man they get in the jury box."
"But the case is so clear."
"Yes, to us who know all about it; but you have to make it clear to the jury."
"There"s the watch found upon the man. Why, dear me, what can be clearer or plainer than that?"
"True; that"s Mr. b.u.mpkin"s evidence."
"And Mr. b.u.mpkin saw him take it."
"That"s b.u.mpkin again."
"Then Mr. O"Rapley was with him."
"Did you not hear that he is not to be called; the Don doesn"t want to be seen in the affair."
"Well, I feel certain he will win. I shall not believe in trial by jury if they let that man off."
"You don"t know what a trial at the Old Bailey or Quarter Sessions is. I don"t mean at the Old Bailey before a real Common Law judge, but a Chancery judge. I once heard a counsel, who was prosecuting a man for pa.s.sing bad money, interrupt a recorder in his summing up, and ask him to tell the jury there was evidence of seven bad florins having been found in the prisoner"s boot. As guilty knowledge was the gist of the offence, this seemed somewhat important. The learned young judge, turning to the jury, said, in a hesitating manner, "Well, really, gentlemen, I don"t know whether that will affect your judgment in any way; there is the evidence, and you may consider it if you please.""
"One more thing I should like to ask."
"By all means."
"Why can"t they get Mr. b.u.mpkin"s case tried?"
"Because there is no system. In the County Court, where a judge tries three times as many cases in a day as any Superior judge, cases are tried nearly always on the day they are set down for. At the Criminal Courts, where every case is at least as important as any Civil case, everyone gets tried without unnecessary delay. In the Common Law Courts it"s very much like hunt the slipper-you hardly ever know which Court the case is in for five minutes together. Then they sit one day and not another, to the incalculable expense of the suitors, who may come up from Devonshire to-night, and, after waiting a week, go back and return again to town at the end of the following month."
"But, now that O"Rapley has taken the matter up, is there not some hope?"
"Well, he seems to have as much power as anyone."
"Then I hope he"ll exert it; for it"s a shame that this poor man should be kept waiting about so long. I quite feel for him: there really ought not to be so much delay in the administration of justice."
"A dilatory administration of justice amounts too often to a denial of it altogether. It always increases the expense, and often results in absolute ruin."
"I wonder men don"t appoint someone when they fell out to arbitrate between them."
"They often do, and too frequently, after all the expense of getting ready for trial has been incurred, the case is at last sent to the still more costly tribunal called a reference. Many matters cannot be tried by a jury, but many can be that are not; one side clamouring for a reference in order to postpone the inevitable result; the other often obliged to submit and be defeated by mere lapse of time."
"It seems an endless sort of business."
"Not quite; the measure of it is too frequently the length of the purse on the one side or the other. A Railway Company, who has been cast in damages for 1,000, can soon wear out a poor plaintiff. One of the greatest evils of modern litigation is the frequency with which new trials are granted."
"Lawyers," said my wife, "are not apparently good men of business."
"They are not organizers."
"It wants such a man as General Wolseley."
"Precisely." And here I felt the usual drowsiness which the subject invariably produces. So I dreamed again.
CHAPTER XXVI.
Morning reflections-Mrs. Oldtimes proves herself to be a great philosopher-the departure of the recruits to be sworn in.
And as I dreamed, methought what a strange paradox is human nature. How often the night"s convivialities are followed by despondent morning reflections! In the evening we grow valiant over the inspiriting converse and the inspiring gla.s.s; in the morning we are tame and calculating. The artificial gaslight disappears, and the sober, grey morning breaks in upon our reason. If the sunshine only ripened one-half the good resolves and high purposes formed at night over the social gla.s.s, what a harvest of good deeds there would be! Yes, and if the evening dissipations did not obliterate the good resolves of the morning, which we so often form as a protection against sin and sorrow, what happy creatures we should be!
Methought I looked into a piece of three-cornered gla.s.s, which was resting on a ledge of the old wall in the room where Joe was sleeping, and that I read therein the innermost thoughts of this country lad. And I saw that he awoke to a very dreadful sense of the realities of his new position; that, one after another, visions of other days pa.s.sed before his mind"s eye as he lay gazing at the dormer window of his narrow chamber. What a profound stillness there was! How different from the roystering glee of the previous night! It was a stillness that seemed to whisper of home; of his poor old mother; of the green sward lane that led to the old farm; of the old oak tree, where the owls lived, and ghosts were said to take up their quarters; of the stile where, of a Sunday morning, he used to smoke his pipe with Jack, and Ned, and Charley; where he had often stood to see Polly go by to church; and he knew that, notwithstanding she would not so much as look at him, he loved her down to the very sole of her boot; and would stand and contemplate the print of her foot after she had pa.s.sed; he didn"t know why, for there was nothing in it, after all. No, Joe, nothing in it-it was in you; that makes all the difference. And the voice whispered to him of sunny days in the bright fields, when he held the plough, and the sly old rook would come bobbing and pecking behind him; and the little field-mouse would flit away from its turned up nest, frightened to death, as if it were smitten with an earthquake; and the skylark would dart up over his head, letting fall a song upon him, as though it were Heaven"s blessing. Then the voice spoke of the noontide meal under the hedge in the warm sunshine, or in the shade of the cool spreading tree; of the horses feeding close up alongside the hedge; of the going home in the evening, and the warm fireside, and the rustic song, and of the thousand and one beloved a.s.sociations that he was leaving and casting behind him for ever.
But then, again, he thought of "bettering his condition," of getting on in the world, of the smart figure he should look in the eyes of Polly, who would be sure now to like him better than she liked the baker. He never could see what there was in the baker that any girl should care for; and he thought of what the Sergeant had said about asking his mother"s leave. And then he pondered on the beef steaks and onions and mutton chops, and other glories of a soldier"s life; so he got up with a brave, resolute heart to face the world like a man, although it was plainly visible that sorrow struggled in his eyes.
There was just one tear for old times, the one tear that showed how very human Joe was beneath all the rough incrustations with which ignorance and poverty had enveloped him.
As he was sousing his head and neck in a pail of cold water in the little backyard of the Inn, the thought occurred to him,-
"I wonder whether or no we "gins these "ere mutton chops for brakfast to-day or arter we"re sweared in. I expects not till arter we"re sweared in."