The Jury (30 page)

Between Roger Coates and Major Reginald Forth sat the sharp-featured red-faced auctioneer, George Oliver Brackett.
Alert and watchful, he sat still and said nothing; and no observer could have suspected that upon the stage of his soul, with himself the actor in every part, himself the fascinated audience, a tremendous drama was being enacted. He was the usher presenting the black cap; he was the judge invested with it. Roderick William Strood, you have been found guilty by a jury of your fellow-countrymen of the terrible crime of murder. You have had a fair trial and I am bound to say … oh, yes, Oliver knew how it went, and what he didn't know he could invent. If the phrases failed him he could eke it out with ample and dramatic gesture. He gripped the edge of the dock and gazed unflinchingly at the face of the Judge. My lord, I have nothing to say (how resonant the voice, how steady the eye!) except that I am innocent of this crime. My lord, I loved my wife, and now that this thing has come upon me I do not care whether I live or die. … Hanged by the neck till you be dead, and may the Lord have mercy on your soul. Very fine. Superb performance. But better still, or anyhow pleasanter, to set the prisoner free, with noble and charitable cadences ringing in his mind. Roderick William Strood, you are greatly indebted to your learned counsel, who has … after a terrible ordeal, in which you have borne yourself with
dignity
and fortitude, the jury has declared you innocent of the dreadful crime of which you were accused. With that verdict I heartily agree, and it is now my pleasure, as well as my duty … But, said Mr Brackett, with a shudder of pity, there's not much chance of that, poor swine. A nasty piece of work, if he did it. Must have planned the thing pretty carefully.

Some twenty-five seconds had passed since the shutting and locking of the jury-room door. Charles Underhay, very conscious of the sudden silence, interpreted it as a reminder that some sort of lead was expected of him. He supposed himself called upon to make a speech.

Fingering the sheets of paper that lay on the table before him, he cleared his throat and began.

“Well, ladies and gentlemen …”

It's no good, thought Cyril Gaskin. Having given a covert glance to see if the mauve silk handkerchief were still protruding from his outer breast-pocket by the requisite one
and a half inches, he braced himself for action. It's no good: he's not the man for it.

“I fancy we're not in much doubt about our verdict, Mr Foreman.”

“What? Eh?” said Charles. “No, I suppose not.”

“I don't want to butt in, sir,” fluted Cyril, with the charming laugh that little Stella so much adored. (And lucky for Agnes she did, for what would she and the baby have done without Stella's help?) “But how would it be to start with a show of hands, just to see where we are? What I mean is,” he went on, seeing that Charles was about to say something, “it's an unpleasant business for everyone, especially, if I may say so, for the ladies—” he enveloped all three ladies in a bland, chivalrous, complacently deprecating smile—“and we want to get through with it as soon as possible. Consistently with justice, of course. Justice and fair play. We're all English here, I believe—or at least British, and—— Well, I don't want to make a speech, but I don't mind telling you, since frankness is my way, cards on the table and always has been, I don't mind telling you, ladies and gentlemen, that I don't think there's much room for what his lordship called reasonable doubt. Do you agree, sir?”

Charles Underhay wriggled unhappily in his chair. To hide his nervousness he put on a face of extreme boldness. His eyes dilated.

“I'm afraid you may be right, but we must talk it over, you know. We can't rush things.”

“Quite,” said Mr Gaskin. “We won't rush the thing, but we'll keep moving, eh? Let's go round with the clock. Now, madam, Miss Cranshaw, I believe?” Clare Cranshaw was on Underhay's left. “Perhaps you'll be good enough to tell us what
you
think.”

A loud report followed this request. It was the sound of Major Reginald Forth blowing his nose.

THAT Major Forth and Mrs Cranshaw should have lunched together, on the strength of so slight an acquaintance, was almost a miracle. The Major was no longer precisely young; he had always been a stickler for the proprieties, and time had only confirmed him in the persuasion that unconventional people were not to be trusted. In the Major's philosophy there were two categories of women: nice women and fast women. There was also an abstraction or commodity called Woman,
tout court,
the first and most dangerous part of a trinity whose other components were Wine and Song. He had committed his follies, like other men; but that was long ago and he did not remember it against himself. Finding himself next to Clare Cranshaw, as a member of the same jury-in-waiting, he had been surprised and indignant that a so obviously 'nice' woman should be exposed to the kind of thing one heard in a criminal court. He wondered, as he had so often wondered before, what the world was coming to; but this wonder was lost in admiration of the clear, detached, and disdainful way in which she recited the oath. To have your name bawled out in court, to have to stand up and read the formula from a card, with a Bible held conspicuously in the right hand, that in itself was a sufficient ordeal—not for an old soldier indeed, but for a delicately nurtured young woman (young? well, say thirty-five), and, by gad, she came through it with flying colours. Before this ceremony began, two prisoners, with the right to object to any member of the jury, were 'put up' into the dock. They stood stiffly, side by side, a fair-haired shifty-eyed rabbit of a man, and another, tall, severe, and self-controlled, in spite of his sensitive hands and suffering dark eyes. “Put Strood back”, ordered the Clerk of the Court, when the jury had been sworn in. So Strood was put back, and the rabbit remained, with an uneasy half-smile on its pale pimply face, to plead guilty to an offence which no gentleman, thought the Major, should dream of even mentioning in the presence of ladies. The trial was mercifully
brief; the jury listened but were not consulted; sentence was passed and … “You will be back in your places at ten minutes to two,” said the Clerk.

The Major sat, eyes front, almost blushing with vicarious shame. Clare, suddenly noticing his confusion, liked him for it, and as they rose to file out of the box she put him miraculously at his ease by remarking firmly “And he richly deserves it”, suppressing, for the Major's benefit, her uneasy suspicion that, though eighteen months' hard labour would teach the wretch a lesson, it would perhaps have been better, kinder even, to shoot him out of hand.

“I agree with you, madam,” said the Major gratefully.

It was pleasant, after that disgusting story, to hear the Major's honest, educated, masculine voice. What a nice old gentleman! And on the way downstairs, to the street, she heard it again.

“Permit me to apologize, madam,” said the Major, raising his hat. “On behalf of our so-called civilization, permit me to apologize for having brought you to this court.”

She smiled acknowledgement of his civility. “We
were
rather unlucky this morning. But it's hardly your fault.”

“No, indeed!” said the Major. “If I had my way you would have been spared all that. But you've the Suffragettes to thank for it, mind!” he added rather fiercely.

“Still,” objected Clare Cranshaw, “we mustn't leave everything to the men to do, must we?”

A stalwart policeman opened the door and they passed through, to pause a moment on the topmost of the five steps before descending to the pavement.

“I mean,” she amplified, “it's only right that we should take our share.”

“Of the privileges, yes,” said the Major. “But not of the more disagreeable duties. That's man's work.” An audacious plan presented itself to him. “Forgive me if I presume too far, but would you allow an old soldier to give you luncheon?”

It was the boldest speech he had ever uttered, and no one was more astonished than he to hear it issue from his lips. Astonished and alarmed. He could hardly believe his ears.

“That's very kind of you, but——”

“We'll take a taxi,” said the Major, with surprising promptitude, and Clare began to perceive that he was not so old after all.

The taxi took them, in seven minutes or so, to a 'little place' known to the Major. They were received, with delighted ceremony, by a gentleman whose beaming smiles and florid gestures and foreign accent, as he well knew, made the Major feel more English than ever: English and benevolent and confirmed in his conviction that these foreigners weren't bad fellows at all if only you knew how to treat them: like animals and children, they nearly always responded to kindness. This exuberant
maître d'hôtel
conducted them to a table which, with transparent and charming mendacity, he declared had been specially reserved for them; and there, illumined and heart-warmed by two pink-shaded electric candles, they advanced from acquaintanceship to something like friendship.

“We're lucky to have so long,” remarked the Major. “Fellow at the Club was telling me, one often gets a bare three-quarters of an hour for luncheon. Wine all right? Not too dry for you? Splendid! Queer mixture, our fellow-jurors.”

“Indeed, yes,” agreed Clare.

“Excellent people, no doubt, in their way.”

But how different from us, thought Clare, her mind jumping with his.

The Major glanced at the clock. “We must be back in forty minutes. Quite like old times to be under orders again.”

Clare smiled. He was more like a schoolboy than any other man she had ever met. This she found an engaging characteristic: it made her feel indulgent and maternal. And his grey hair, very thin on the crown, made her feel a girl again.

“But I expect you were in command, weren't you?” she objected.

“Ah,” he said sagely, “but there's always a higher command.” He laughed, admiring his generalization. “Yes, there's always a higher command.” He couldn't help feeling that to be a rather pregnant utterance.

“Colonel?” asked Clare, growing bolder.

“Acting colonel,” he answered. “Never confirmed. But I don't complain. They call me Major now. Indiah. Retired
these ten years. We'll have another half-bottle, I think. No? Come, change your mind. We shall be prisoners, you know, as soon as that murder trial comes on. Better make the most of our chance.”

“Prisoners? What do you mean?”

“Once you get on the jury in a murder trial, you're as good as a prisoner, fellow at the Club was telling me. They won't let us out of their sight till it's over, in case, don't you see, we should be got at in some way.” Her apparent surprise made him cock a solicitous eye at her. “Will they be anxious at home about you?”

There was more than solicitude in the question, as she was shrewd enough to see. “You mean my husband, don't you?” The wine was very good and she felt serenely mistress of the situation, and amused by it. “No, Major, there's no one to worry about me. My husband died five years ago.”

“Ah!” said the Major. “Dear me!” He sipped his wine and remarked in a tone that hardly concealed his satisfaction: “So we're both alone in the world. Should give us a fellow-feeling, what?”

“Don't you sometimes miss India—the sunshine and the bugles?”

“Ah, yes,” he answered. “You put it in a nutshell. The sunshine and the bugles. Quite a gift of phrase, upon my word!”

Clare glowed with pleasure. “There's something so terribly thrilling, I always think, about The Last Post.”

For a moment their eyes met, intimately.

“I wonder,” he said. “You won't mind my asking? Was your late husband in the service, by any chance?”

She shook her head, smiling inscrutably. “Henry was a clergyman. Do I look like a vicar's wife?” Really, Clare! she admonished herself: what
are
you saying! Before he could find an answer she added: “But my father was a soldier, as it happens.”

“Of course!” said the Major. “I ought to have known it. I felt at once, if I may say so, that there was, how shall I put it, a link, a bond …”

“Perhaps you knew my father? General Dyce.”

“No. I didn't have that pleasure.” The Major bowed.

“But I'm proud to know his daughter.” He smiled at her, being now at the top of his form. A clergyman's widow and a soldier's daughter—it was hard to believe that so much merit could be crammed into one small and comely person. A fine pair of eyebrows. A soft but confident voice. In short, breeding. “Most courageous thing I ever did, asking you to luncheon. Proud of myself, upon my word!”

Clare laughed. “I'm not sure whether to take that as a compliment or not.”

“Might easily have thought me a bounder,” mumbled the Major.

“Oh, come, Major!” she protested. “I'm not so old as that!” He was at a loss. “So
old,
Mrs Cranshaw! What can you mean?”

“Well, I've still the use of my eyes, you know.”

He thought it out carefully, and, when he had at last got the point, a look of grave pleasure dawned in his eyes, making him, thought Clare, almost lovable while it lasted. “The most charming thing that's ever been said to me,” he declared with a bow, of which, to hide a touch of shyness perhaps, the ceremony was a trifle exaggerated. “And now that we
are
acquainted I hope you'll do me the honour …” He eked out the sentence with a wave of the hand. “Get too much of my own company. Dull old fellow, as I know to my cost. Mustn't let me bore you as I bore myself.”

In the taxi, on the way back, he pursued the theme of his dullness and loneliness, confessed that he had loved not wisely but too well, 'as the Bard has it'. To her look of sympathetic inquiry he answered: “It's not an amusing story. Some other time perhaps, if it won't bore you …”