A Young Man's Year

"Well, I shouldn't like it myself," said "my lordship" aside to the Marshal.

His lordship's "asides" added something to the Marshal's instruction and more to his amusement. Sir Christopher was not a reformer or a sociologist, nor even an emotionalist either. He took this Assize Court world as he found it, just as he took West-End drawing-rooms as he found them, at other times of the year. He knew the standards. He was never shocked, and nothing made him angry, except cruelty or a Jack-in-office. In presence of these he was coldly dangerous and deadly. To see him take in hand a policeman whose zeal outran the truth was a lesson in the art of flaying a man's skin off him strip by strip. The asides came often then; the artist would have the pupil note his skill and did not disdain his applause. Though the Marshal's share in the work of the court was of the smallest, his lordship liked him to be there, hearing the cases and qualifying himself for a gossip over them, on an afternoon walk or at dinner in the evening.

As the days went by, a pleasant intimacy between the old man and the young established itself, and grew into a mutual affection, quasi-paternal on the one side, almost filial on the other. A bachelor, without near kindred save an elderly maiden sister, the old Judge found in Arthur something of what a son gives his father – a vicarious and yet personal interest in the years to come – and he found amusement in discovering likenesses between himself and his protégé, or at least in speculating on their existence with a playful humour.

"Men differ in the way they look at their professions or businesses," he said. "Of course everybody's got to live, but, going deeper into it than that, you find one man to whom his profession is, first and foremost, a ladder, and another to whom it's a seat in the theatre – if you follow what I mean. That fellow Norton Ward's of the first class. He's never looking about him; his eyes are always turned upwards, towards an inspiring vision of himself at the top. But you and I like looking about us; we're not in a hurry to be always on the upward move. The scene delights us, even though we've no part in it, or only a small one. That's been true about me, and I think it's true about you, Arthur."

"Oh, I've my ambitions, sir," laughed Arthur. "Fits of ambition, anyhow."

"Fits and starts? That's rather it, I fancy. You probably won't go as far as Norton Ward in a professional way, but you may very likely make just as much mark on life really, besides enjoying it more; I mean in a richer broader way. Purely professional success – and I include politics as well as the law, because they're equally a profession to men like our friend – is rather a narrow thing. The man with more interests – the more human man – spreads himself wider and is more felt really; he gets remembered more too."

"The Idle Man's Apologia! Very ingenious!" said Arthur, smiling.

"No, no, you shan't put that on me. It's perfectly true. The greatest characters – I mean characters, not intellects – are by no means generally in the highest places; because, as I say, to climb up there you have to specialise too much. You have to lop off the branches to make the trunk grow. But I don't see you like that. The Burlington Theatre was hardly in the direct line of ascent, was it?"

"I shan't be quite such a fool as that again, sir."

"Not to that extent, and not perhaps in just that way – no. I don't know exactly how you came to go in for it; indeed you don't quite seem to know yourself, as far as I can gather from what you've said. But I take it that it was to see and find out things – to broaden your life and your world?"

Arthur hesitated. "Yes, I suppose so – complicated by – Well, I was rather excited at the time. I was coming new to a good many things."

Sir Christopher nodded his head, smiling. "You may safely assume that Esther has gossiped to me about you. Well now, take that lady – I don't mean Esther Norton Ward, of course. Men like us appreciate her. Apart from personal relations, she's something in the world to us – a notable part of the show. So we what is called waste a lot of time over her; she occupies us, and other women like her – though there aren't many."

"No, by Jove, there are not!" Arthur assented.

"It's a lucky thing, Arthur, that your good cousin isn't built on the lines of our friend at Raylesbury, isn't it? The world would have been the poorer! By the way, that fellow's going to get off; I had a note from Hurlstone's private secretary this morning." Mr Hurlstone was the Home Secretary. "It's a funny thing, but she kept coming into my mind when I was trying the case."

Arthur's nod confessed to a similar experience.

"We didn't know each other well enough to talk about it then," Sir Christopher observed, smiling. "Fancy if we'd had to try Godfrey Lisle! I hope you're going to stick to the Hilsey folk, Arthur? It's good for a man to have a family anchorage. I haven't got one, and I miss it."

"Yes, rather! I shall go down there in the Christmas vacation. I'm awfully fond of it."

The old man leant forward, warming his hands by the fire. "You'll often find funny parallels like that coming into your head, if you're ever a judge. Good thing too; it gives you a broad view."

"I never shall be a judge," said Arthur, laughing.

"Very likely not, if they go on appointing the best lawyers. Under that system, I should never have been one either."

"I think, on the whole, sir, that it's better fun to be a Marshal."

Certainly it was very good fun – an existence full of change and movement, richly peopled with various personalities. From the Bar they lived rather apart, except for three or four dinner-parties, but they entertained and were entertained by local notables. The High Sheriffs themselves afforded piquant contrasts. Bluff and glossy Sir Quintin, the country gentleman, was one type. Another was the self-made man, newly rich, proud of himself, but very nervous of doing something wrong, and with stories in his mind of judges savagely tenacious of their dignity and free with heavy fines for any breach of etiquette: many an anxious question from him about his lordship's likes and dislikes Arthur had to answer. And once the office was ornamented by the son and heir of a mighty Grandee, who did the thing most splendidly in the matter of equipage and escort – even though his liveries were only the family's "semi-state" – treated his lordship with a deference even beyond the custom, and dazzled Arthur, as they waited for Mr. Justice Lance (who was sometimes late), with easy and unaffected anecdotes of the youth of Princes with whom he had played in childhood – the perfect man of the Great World, with all its graces. Between this High Personage and the man who stole the pig there ranged surely Entire Humanity!

But the most gracious impression – one that made its abiding mark on memory – was more aloof from their work and everyday experience. It was of an old man, tall and thin, white-haired, very courtly, yet very simple and infinitely gentle in manner. He was an old friend of Sir Christopher's, a famous leader of his school of thought in the Church, and now, after long years of labour, was passing the evening of his days in the haven of his Deanery beneath the walls of a stately Cathedral. They spent Sunday in the city, and, after attending service, went to lunch with him. He knew little of their work, and had never known much of the world they moved in. But he knew the poor by his labours among them, and the hearts of men by the strangely keen intuition of holiness. There was no sanctimoniousness, no pursing-up of lips or turning-away of eyes; on the contrary, a very straight dealing with facts and reality. But all things were seen by him in a light which suffused the Universe, in the rays of a far-off yet surely dawning splendour; Sorrow endureth for the night, but Joy cometh in the morning.

As they walked back to the Lodgings, Sir Christopher was silent for awhile. Then he said abruptly: "That's a Saint! I don't know that it's much use for most of us to try to be saints – that's a matter of vocation, I think – but it does us good to meet one sometimes, doesn't it? All that you and I think – or, speaking for myself perhaps, used to think – so wonderful, so interesting, has for him no importance – hardly any real existence. It's at the most a sort of mist, or mirage, or something of that sort – or a disease of mortal eyes – what you like! Are you in any way a religious man?"

"No, I'm afraid I'm not." He hesitated a moment and went on: "I don't quite see how one can be, you know, sir."

"Not as he is, no – I don't either. And I suppose the world couldn't get on, as a working world, if by a miracle everybody became like him. The world wants its own children too – though no doubt it begets some devilishly extreme specimens, as you and I have seen in the last few weeks. Well, you'll probably make some sort of creed for yourself presently – oh, a very provisional sketchy sort of affair, I daresay, but still a bit better than club codes and that kind of thing. And – " He laid his hand on Arthur's shoulder – "the beginning of it may just as well be this: Earn your money honestly. Such work as you do get or take, put your back into it."

"That after all is just what the Dean has done with his job, isn't it?"

"Why, yes, so it is, though he doesn't do it for money – not even money of his currency. Upon my word, I believe he'd sooner be damned than let you or me be, if he could help it! So I've shown you one more variety of human nature, Arthur."

"It's at least as well worth seeing as any of the rest."

"Fit it in at leisure with your other specimens," Sir Christopher recommended.

It did not seem altogether easy to follow this advice – even after reflection.

But there had been other specimens, also not too easy to fit in with one another or with any neat and compact scheme of society, vindicating to complete satisfaction the ways of God to men and of men to one another. No symmetrical pattern emerged. Wherever he looked, life met his enquiring eyes with a baffling but stimulating smile.

CHAPTER XXXI

START AND FINISH

Whenever he was at home at the time of the Assizes Lord Swarleigh made a point of inviting the Judge to dinner. He was Lord-Lieutenant of the County, and he considered the attention due from the Military to the Civil Representative of the Crown. The occasion was treated as one of ceremony, and though Sir Christopher, in mercy to the horses and his own patience, refused to drive the six hilly miles which lay between the town and Higham Swarleigh Park in the state carriage, and hired a car, he was in court dress; very refined and aristocratic he looked.

"It's an enormous house, but distinctly ugly," he told the Marshal as they drove along. "But they've got a lot of fine things, and they're nice people. You'll enjoy yourself, I think."

Presently the great house came dimly into view, its outline picked out by the lights in the windows. It might be ugly; it was certainly huge; it seemed to squat on the country-side like a mighty toad. It had a tremendous air of solidity, of permanence, of having been there from the beginning of time, and of meaning to stay till the end, of being part of the eternal order of things – rather like a secular cathedral, with powdered footmen for beadles, and a groom of the chambers for chief verger.

With courtly punctilio the Lord-Lieutenant received his guest on the threshold, and himself led him to the State drawing-room, where her Ladyship was waiting. The Marshal followed behind, rather nervous, not knowing exactly what his part might be in these dignified proceedings. The Lord-Lieutenant was in full fig too, and several of the men in uniform; the ladies were very sumptuous; the Bishop of the diocese in his violet coat was a good touch in the picture. Behind the hostess, as she received them, hung a full-length portrait of His Majesty King George the Fourth of happy memory, arrayed in the robes of the Garter; His Majesty too was decorative, though in a more florid manner than the Bishop.

Lord Swarleigh was not at all like his house, and anything military about him was purely ex officio. He was a short thin man with a grey beard, an antiquarian and something of an historian. When he heard Arthur's name, he asked what family of Lisles he belonged to, and when Arthur (with accursed pride in his heart) answered "The Lisles of Hilsey," he nodded his head with intelligence and satisfaction. Lady Swarleigh was not at all alarming either. She was a plump middle-aged woman who had been pretty and wore her clothes with an air, but her manner had a natural kindness and simplicity which reminded Arthur of Esther Norton Ward's. She handed him over to a pretty gay girl who stood beside her. "Fanny, you look after Mr. Lisle," she commanded. "He's to take you in, I think, but Alfred'll tell you about that." Lady Fanny took possession of him in such a friendly fashion that Arthur began to enjoy himself immediately.

He saw a tall handsome young fellow moving about the room from man to man and briefly whispering to each; his manner was calm and indolent, and his demeanour rather haughty; he smiled condescendingly over something that the Bishop whispered back to him with a hearty chuckle.

"Alfred Daynton's wonderful!" said Lady Fanny. "He's papa's secretary, you know, though he really does all mamma's work. He can send twenty couples in without a list! He never mixes them up, and always knows the right order."

The great Alfred came up. "You're all right," he said briefly to Lady Fanny and Arthur, and gave a reassuring nod to Lady Swarleigh herself. Then he looked at his watch, and from it, expectantly, towards the doors. On the instant they opened; dinner was ready. Alfred again nodded his head just perceptibly and put his watch back in his pocket. He turned to Lady Fanny. "You're at the pink table – on the far side." He smiled dreamily as he added, "In the draught, you know."

"Bother! You always put me there!"

"Seniores priores– and little girls last! Sorry for you, Mr. Lisle, but you see you're on duty – and I've got to sit there myself, moreover. And you'll have to talk to me, because I haven't got a woman. I'm taking in the Chief Constable – jolly, isn't it?"

However, at the pink table – where the host presided, flanked by the High Sheriff's wife and the Bishop's wife – the young folks in the draught got on very well, in spite of it; and all their wants were most sedulously supplied.

"The thing in this house is to sit near Alfred," Lady Fanny observed. "Papa and mamma may get nothing, but you're all right by Alfred!"

"That's a good 'un!" chuckled the Chief Constable, a stout old bachelor Major of ruddy aspect.

"Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn," said Alfred, who appeared to be fond of proverbial expressions.

"You see, he engages and dismisses all the men," Lady Fanny explained.

It struck Arthur that Lady Fanny and Alfred were in truth remarkably good friends, and he was not wrong. In the future among his own best friends he counted Mr. and Lady Fanny Daynton, and Mr. Daynton turned his remarkable powers of organisation to the service of the public. But to-night Lady Fanny dutifully devoted herself to the Marshal, and proved an intelligent as well as a gay companion. Seeing his interest in his surroundings, she told him about the pictures on the walls, the old silver ornaments on the table, the armorial devices on the silver plates. "You see, papa has drummed all the family history into us," she said, in laughing apology for her little display of learning. "He says people don't deserve to have old things if they don't take an interest in them."

"I'm afraid I should take only too much, if they were mine. They appeal to me awfully." He added, smiling in a burst of candour, with a little wave of his hands: "So does all this!"

She considered what he said for a moment with a pretty gravity, evidently understanding his words and gesture to refer to the surroundings at large, the pomp and circumstance in which it was her lot to live, to which he came as a stranger and on which he looked with unaccustomed eyes; she liked his frank admission that it was unfamiliar.

"I don't think it hurts," she said at last, "if you don't take credit to yourself for it. You know what I mean? If you don't think it makes you yourself different from other people."

"But is that easy?" he asked in curiosity. "Isn't there a subtle influence?"

"You're asking rather hard questions, Mr. Lisle!"

"I suppose I am, but I was thinking mainly of myself. I associate other people with their surroundings and possessions so much that I believe I should do the same with myself. If I had a beautiful house, I should think myself beautiful!"

"If you had this house, then, would you think yourself a hideous giant?" she asked, laughing. "But how do you mean about other people?"

"Well, I've got cousins who live in a fine old house – oh, not a twentieth the size of this! – and I'm sure I like them better because they've got a beautiful house. And the first time I saw a very great friend she was in a very smart carriage; and I'm sure she made a greater impression on me because of the carriage. And I'm afraid that's being a snob, isn't it?"

She laughed again. "Well, don't think of us in connection with our house, or you'll think of us as snails with shells too large for them on their backs! No, I don't think you're a snob, but I think you must beware of an æsthetic temperament. It makes people rather soft sometimes, doesn't it?"

Before he had time to answer, Alfred cut in firmly: "Now it's my turn, Lady Fanny!" He pointed with his thumb to the Chief Constable's averted shoulder, and dropped his voice to a whisper; "I've engineered him on to the Chaplain's wife!" Arthur could not flatter himself that Lady Fanny showed any annoyance at the interruption.

On the other side sat the Under-Sheriff – the supply of ladies had quite given out – but the good man was not conversational, and Arthur was left at leisure to look about him. His eye fell on the small, thin, refined little host, sitting back in his big arm-chair with an air of patient resignation, while two large women – the Bishop's wife and the High Sheriff's wife – talked to one another volubly across him. Perhaps even being the local magnate was not all beer and skittles! If one great man had admired "sustained stateliness of living" another had seen in it a compatibility with every misfortune save one – poverty. A compatibility obviously with boredom, and probably with a great deal of it for a man like Lord Swarleigh! A continuous annual round of it, always between somebody's wives, wives of eminent persons and not generally in their first youth – nor, on the other hand, interested in the family history, nor in armorial bearings. Why even he himself was better off; if he had the Under-Sheriff on one side, he had youth and beauty on the other. Arthur found himself being quite sorry for Lord Swarleigh, in spite of Higham Swarleigh Park, the old silver, and George the Fourth in the robes of the Garter. He had a vision of Godfrey Lisle at one of Bernadette's fashionable parties. Godfrey had got out of it all – at a price. Poor Lord Swarleigh would never get out of it – till Death authoritatively relieved him of his duties.

After dinner Lady Swarleigh signalled him, and made him come and talk to her.

"We're always so glad when your Judge comes our circuit," she said. "He's a friend, you see, and that makes our Assize dinner pleasanter. Though I always like it; lawyers tell such good stories. Sir Christopher's very fond of you, isn't he? Oh, yes, he's been talking a lot about you at dinner. And he tells me you know Esther Norton Ward. Her mother was at school with me, and I knew her when she was so high! You must come and see us in London in the summer, won't you? I wish the Judge and you could come out to dinner again – just quietly, without all these people – but he tells me you're moving on directly; so we must wait for London. Now don't forget!"

Here was a woman to like, Arthur made up his mind instantly; a regular good sort of woman she seemed to him, a woman of the order of Marie Sarradet; ripened by life, marriage, and motherhood, and, besides, amplified as it were by a situation and surroundings which gave greater scope to her powers and broader effect to her actions – yet in essence the same kind of woman, straightforward, friendly, reliable.

"I've only one girl left at home," she went on, "and I daresay I shan't keep her long, but the married ones are always running in and out, and the boys too, and their boy and girl friends. So you'll find lots of young people, and lots of racketing going on. They often get up private theatricals and inflict them on the patients at our hospital – my husband is President of St. Benedict's, you know – and you ought to be able to help us – with your experience!"

Arthur smiled and blushed. Sir Christopher had been talking, it seemed; but apparently the talk had not done him any harm in Lady Swarleigh's estimation.

"We shall be up after Easter. Don't forget!" she commanded again, rising to meet the Judge as he came to take leave of her.

With renewed ceremony, escorted by the Lord-Lieutenant, with the High Sheriff, the Chaplain, the Under-Sheriff – last, but certainly not least, Alfred – hovering in attendance, his lordship and his satellite returned to their motor-car, the satellite at least having thoroughly enjoyed his evening.

"What awfully jolly people they are!" he exclaimed, thinking, plainly, of the ladies of the family; for the adjective was not appropriate to Lord Swarleigh himself.

Sir Christopher nodded, smiling in amusement at Arthur's enthusiasm, but very well pleased with it, and more pleased with the hostess's whispered word of praise for his young friend as she bade him good night.

"I got a piece of news to-night which I'm ashamed to say I find myself considering bad," he said. "I thought I wouldn't tell you before dinner, for fear that you'd think it bad too, and so have your evening spoilt to some extent. Horace Derwent writes that he's quite well again and would like to join me for the rest of the circuit. And I can't very well refuse to have him; he's been with me so often; and, what's more, this'll be the last time. I'm going to retire at Christmas."

"Retire! Why, you're not feeling out of sorts, are you, sir? You seem wonderfully fit."

"I am. Wonderfully fit – to retire! I'm turned seventy and I'm tired. And I'm not as quick as I was. When I sit in the Divisional Court with a quick fellow – like Naresby, for instance, a lad of forty-nine or so – I find it hard to keep up. He's got hold of the point while I'm still putting on my spectacles! It isn't always the point really, but that's neither here nor there. So I'm going. They'll give me my Right Honourable, I suppose, and I shall vanish becomingly."

"I'm awfully sorry. I wanted to have a case before you some day! Now I shan't. But, I say, they ought to make you a peer. You're about the – well, the best-known judge on the Bench."

Sir Christopher shook his head. "That's my rings, not me," he said, smiling. "No, what's the use of a peerage to me, even if it was offered? I'm not fit to sit in the Lords – not enough of a lawyer – and I've no son. If you were my son in the flesh, my dear boy, as I've rather come to think of you in the spirit, these last weeks, I might ask for one for your sake! But I've got only one thing left to do now – and that's a thing a peerage can't help about."

Arthur was deeply touched, but found nothing to say.

"It's a funny thing to come to the end of it all," the old man mused. "And to look back to the time when I was where you are, and to remember what I expected – though, by the way, that's hard to remember exactly! A lot of work, a lot of nonsense! And to see what's become of the other fellows too – who's sunk, and who's swum! Some of the favourites have won, but a lot of outsiders! I was an outsider myself; they used to tell me I should marry a rich wife and chuck it. But I've never married a wife at all, and I stuck to it. And the women too!"

Arthur knew that gossip, floating down the years, credited Sir Christopher with adventures of the heart. But the old man now shook his head gently and smiled rather ruefully. "Very hard to get that back! It all seems somehow faded – the colour gone out."