Читать книгу They Seek a Country - Francis Brett Young - Страница 18
ОглавлениеCOUNTRY ASSIZES
Mr. Justice Carlow, bewigged, in scarlet and ermine, sat uplifted in lonely state above the court from whose crowded benches beneath him the fetid effluvium of sweaty clothes and unwashed bodies rose in wafts of hot air offending his sensitive nostrils. That was the worst of these country assizes. Not one county town in the six that comprised his circuit gave a thought to the dignity and comfort of His Majesty’s judges; and Worcester, as he had often complained, was the worst of the lot. The judge’s lodgings were dark and dank and musty; the chimneys smoked; the rooms smelt as if they had never been ventilated since the Guildhall was built in the reign of Queen Anne. He could not even be sure that the bed had been properly aired since he slept in it last, in spite of the warming-pans with which it was ostentatiously stuffed. He had written to the High Sheriff, complaining of these discomforts, after his visit earlier in the year, and the High Sheriff had replied that a Bill for the erection of a new County Hall and Courts of Assize had been presented to Parliament. But by the time this was passed, Mr. Justice Carlow reflected gloomily, he would probably have caught his death of damp sheets and been buried: country gentlemen had no conception of the standards of comfort required by civilized folk. There was one thing, thank heaven, they did understand, and that was good living. The pint of port he had drunk with his roast pheasant at dinner last night was a wine of quality. When one got to the age at which one ascended the bench, one began to feel the need of a little stimulation. For one’s liver’s sake one drank little; but that little ought to be good. And indeed, for a man who by reason of his calling was regrettably denied the modicum of exercise that capricious organ demanded, Mr. Justice Carlow felt himself in tolerably good trim, though at the moment a little impatient with the provincial jury, who, in spite of his clear summing-up, were taking, as usual, an unconscionable time in considering their verdict.
It was not, he thought irritably, as if the facts of the case were in doubt. This was an ordinary poaching affray of the sort with which every criminal court in the country dealt by the dozen: three men caught by a gentleman’s keepers flagrante delicto with a sackful of game in their hands and armed with a gun which had been discharged and had inflicted a grievous wound in the struggle: a circumstance that rendered them all three liable to capital punishment; and what made these Game Law offences even more simple was the fact that no man committed on a charge of felony had the vexatious right to be represented by counsel who could waste valuable time and draw on a sentimental jury’s sympathies and becloud the issue. It was not, he reflected again, as if the accused in this case were by any means prepossessing. The middle-aged man, who appeared to be the ringleader, was a desperate, wolfish type, with hard-bitten criminal written all over his skinny face. It was he who had fired the shot; and that was enough to hang him. The second, the little fellow with the wooden leg, was quite clearly a fool (but a fool, none the less, must take the consequences of his folly)—an old soldier who dragged in the name of the Duke of Wellington. That was not in his favour. The Duke himself had declared that his soldiers were nothing but the scourings of the community. These old soldiers, in fact, were becoming a positive pest all over the country, demanding preferential treatment over their fellow-citizens because they had fought in a war more than twenty years ago. After all, they had been paid for fighting.
The position of the third man in the dock was rather more questionable. Both of the other accused had sworn, and sworn convincingly, that he had actually taken no part in their poaching exploit and that they had merely picked him up in an ale-house on their way home. Admittedly he was carrying the sackful of pheasants; but the other men said he had offered to carry it without knowing what was inside it, which, of course, was rather less credible. He was a much better type than the others: a fine upstanding lad, with a mop of dark hair, straight eyes in an honest, open face, and good, clear-cut features not without refinement. He was decently dressed and bore himself with a self-respecting air. On the whole, at first sight, the judge had been prejudiced in his favour.
If the fellow had had the sense to hold his tongue he might have got off more lightly. But he hadn’t: with a deplorable lack of humility he had actually taken it upon himself to address the bench, and entered, without any excuse, on a long and entirely irrelevant disquisition on the social injustices, as he called them, that drove men to poaching—as if social injustice, imaginary or otherwise, had anything whatever to do with the laws of property. And here, on the desk before him, if there had remained any doubt in the judge’s mind as to this young man’s guilt, lay a private letter which he had received that morning from a gentleman of family and standing, Colonel Abberley, Lord d’Abitot’s cousin, in which, though the spelling was not so good as it might be, he stated in black and white that the prisoner was a “good-for-nothing fellow” and that he hoped the judge would “look to him.” Not that Mr. Justice Carlow approved of private communications of this kind: on the contrary, though not unusual, they were reprehensible. On the other hand, the young man had not called any witnesses as to his character, which was suspicious in itself; and this evidence of character, though irregular and unsolicited, was sufficient to explain why he hadn’t. What weighed even more heavily against him was the fact, brought out in his own evidence, that on the day of the crime he had just returned from London, where he had been presenting a petition to Parliament. Working men who had sufficient assurance to do that sort of thing were, on the face of it, undesirable members of society, fomenters of unrest and potential disturbers of the peace. There were far too many of that kind about in Worcestershire. Only a few years ago at the Michaelmas Assizes he had tried and sentenced the Kidderminster rioters. In deference to the sentiment of the time he had dealt with them lightly. Next year, encouraged by that lenience, there had been riots in Worcester and Dulston. It was clearly his duty in future to prove by exemplary sentences that violence did not pay. Where was that jury?
A panelled door in the wall of the court-room opened; they filed in, self-consciously.
“You have considered your verdict, gentlemen?”
“Yes, my lord. We find the three prisoners guilty on all counts, my lord.”
“Have you anything to say before I proceed to sentence?”
The judge fixed John Oakley with an intimidating eye. His gaze was returned without flinching; but the prisoner did not speak. Mr. Justice Carlow adjusted his wig and laid his folded spectacles on the desk in front of him.
“Aaron Sheldon,” he said, “the jury has found you guilty, and rightly in my opinion, of a capital offence. It does not surprise me that you have nothing to say for yourself. The evidence against you has been only too clear. There is nothing to be said. All men of your condition are fully aware of the penalties imposed by the law for the punishment of armed violence against the person and the protection of property. You need expect no mercy from me or from the offended justice of your country on this side of the grave. I shall pass sentence of death on you when I have dealt with your fellow-prisoners.”
Mr. Justice Carlow folded his hands and leant back in his chair.
“Your life, George Dicketts,” he said, “is equally in jeopardy. It appears to me, from the way in which you have spoken, that you are foolish and ignorant. You have also, by a visitation of God, been deprived of the use of a limb. Yet you must not imagine that either of these circumstances entitled you to any clemency. You are, or have been a soldier, accustomed to practise lawful violence in the defence of the realm and in the destruction of His Majesty’s enemies. Yet you must be taught that this peaceful and happy land to which, by God’s mercy, you have returned, does not tolerate the habits of licence which are necessarily accorded to her soldiers abroad and in time of war. I should be justified, indeed, if I imposed upon you the penalty to which, by law, you are equally liable with your associate, Aaron Sheldon. I do not, in fact, feel warranted in recommending that you shall lose your life; yet it is my duty to state that for this violent and disgraceful outrage you shall be sent out of the country, and separated for life from those friends and connections that are dear to you here; that you shall have to employ the rest of your days in labour, at the will and for the profit of another, to show the people of the class to which you belong that they cannot with impunity lend their aid to such outrages against the peace and security of person and property. I sentence you to transportation for life.”
Mr. Justice Carlow was warming to his work. He was flattered by the attentive silence with which the court had received a sentence which, he felt, had been framed with dignity and precision in a voice which, as he listened to it, sounded remarkably well.
“You, John Oakley,” he said, “are also doubtless aware of the perilous state in which your criminal associations have placed you. You are a young man; you have also been blessed with a higher degree of education and natural intelligence than your partners in crime. This is not in your favour. On the contrary, it is clear that the possession of these gifts which you have misused renders you more dangerous to Society than they. You have taken the liberty and the opportunity of alluding, in evidence, to matters which, although they are irrelevant, must not pass without observation. I do not come here to enquire into grievances. I come here to decide the law. Poverty is indeed, I fear, inseparable from the state of the human race. The Poor, Holy Writ declares, are always with us. But poverty itself, and the misery attendant on it, would no doubt be greatly mitigated if a spirit of prudence were more generally diffused among the people, and if they understood more fully, and practised better, their civil, moral and religious duties. You have stated, impudently and slanderously, that the upper ranks of society care little for the wants and privations of the poor. I deny this positively, upon a very extensive means of knowledge upon subjects of this nature. There is not a calamity or distress incident to humanity, either of body or of mind, that is not humbly endeavoured to be mitigated or relieved by the powerful and the affluent, either of high or midling rank, in this our happy land, which, for its benevolence, charity, and boundless humanity, has been the admiration of the world. These inexpressible benefits, you, John Oakley, have forfeited. I hope that your fate will be a warning to others. You will leave the country; you will see your friends and relations no more; for though you will be transported for seven years only, it is not likely that at the expiration of that term you will find yourself in a situation to return. You will be in a distant land at the expiration of your sentence. The land which you have disgraced will see you no more: the friends with whom you are connected will be parted from you for ever in this world.”
Mr. Justice Carlow, having completed his judgment, looked round impatiently. The Clerk hurried towards him, carrying the black cap. John Oakley went pale. Aaron Sheldon, smiling, gripped the rail of the dock.
