43

VI.

THE MAJESTY OF THE LAW.

Ir may be a certificate of character, it may be a confession of shame, but I had never been inside the Law Courts in my life. They stand, as you know, in the heart of London. Along Fleet Street rolls roaring the City's life-blood-merchants and manufacturers, tradesmen and clerks, artisans and labourers. The Law Courts exist to keep all these jostling units in their due relation. Turn into them out of the roar -and you are instantly in another air, another age, another life.

Outside the City sweats in the sun; in these dim corridors it is quite cool. Outside, the City yells for acutest cry of self-interest

its daily bread; here the or passion scarcely rises above a muffled whisper. Outside the very building lofty and large and uncouthly Gothic; but when you enter one of the Courts of Appeal you find yourself in quite a small, unembellished room. On the bench, at its opposite

end, sit three judges, one facing directly towards you, another turning a little inwards, the third frankly displaying a rotund profile. On the benches before them you cannot help recalling your school-days— sit about twenty men, some in wigs and gowns, some in plain black coats. All cherish documents on stout paper; all keep their faces decorously composed; all turn gravely towards the back of a wig and gown which appears to be whispering confidences to the three judges. Presently one of them leans forward. and appears to address the front of the wig and gown. You see a strong jaw working and strong brows gripping together over his eyes: at one moment he appears to smile; but you hear no words. Some sound there is, but it seems to pervade the room, not from any human mouth, but exuding from everywhere. You might fancy it the whisper of impersonal abstract justice.

The naked walls, the hushed and moveless audience, the awful sphinxes on the bench, the wordless voice that is rather than speaks all is far more solemn than any church. It might be the Court of Rhadamanthus, judging ghosts. You have just eaten beef and salad and driven in a hansom cab, yet that and all the concrete world seem a million miles away.

You step out, longing for the footfall of a cat and in terror lest the swinging door should creak. The

next court is exactly the same. Another bare room, three precisely similar judges on the bench, precisely similar rows of black-backed figures focussed on a similar rampant wig and gown. This one, in a voice compact of drowsiness, which lies densely over the whole court, appears to be giving a lecture, illustrated by a plan hung upon the wall. "This, m' lords," he drones, "was in 1864, and in 1865 he used to shoot over this property, andSuddenly the centre judge springs into life: his eyes sparkle and his ears prick like a terrier's. "What did he get?" he asks feverishly. "Snipe, I suppose. Any grouse?" "No, no, no, m' lord," responds counsel soothingly; "no grouse. Perhaps a few snipe, but no grouse. Returning to my point, m' lords- And m' lord returns to somnolence. But it was a touch of nature, and you go on to the next court less embarrassed by being a human man of the year 1899.

But the next court would in any case have turned embarrassment to laughter. Here again is the same judge on the bench, except that there is but one of him, the same solicitors and clerks, the same wig and gown in possession of the court. But here there is a difference the place is populated partly with incarnations of the law and partly with people. In the witness-box stands a working man-grey-bearded, with but one hand. The barrister is supposed to be cross-examining him; but really he is addressing his

questions to a row of seats at the right-hand side of the court, where sits the jury. There is nothing exceptional about the jury; they are twelve average Londoners. But just because they are average Londoners in a place like this, you have much ado to keep yourself from screaming aloud. Up above sits Rhadamanthus; the counsel is not of this world, but a wig and a mask of nose and month and chin; the dimness and the rustling echoes are pure underworld. And amid it all here sit a dozen London shopkeepers, a little self-important, a little bored, a little scared-one tall with a brown beard down his waistcoat, one tiny with red whiskers and a bald head, one nursing his paunch, one picking his teeth. is the absolute average man, taken from his native omnibus. One alone would have been less extraordinary; it takes twelve to be so average; and never, never in the omnibus could twelve be so average as when brought here to play a part in the processes of the shades.

Here

You think this far-fetched and strained, to make a point: well, go into the courts and see. It is the most dramatic, the most farcical, sight in Londontwo utterly different worlds jostling each other, engaged in the same task, yet remaining utterly apart. Go into a court where a woman is giving evidence. At the very sight of a woman you gasp, for among sphinxes you have forgotten in half an

hour that people in the world outside are divided by sex. Probably, if you want to be matter-of-fact, the judge on the bench has a wife of his own; he dresses himself in a white waistcoat, sits down opposite her at table, and carves a saddle of mutton; after that, may be, plays picquet with her; after that goesNo, I cannot say it. Look at his

lordship, and it is contempt of court even to think such things. Under the awful majesty of the wig there are eyes to see whether you change colour, a nose to scent the truth, a mouth to absolve or damn. And the lady in the witness-box is putting hair-pins into her hair. No: the two are not thinkable in the same sentence.

Their

The two worlds jostle, but do not mix. very language is different. The witness embarks cheerfully upon the generals and approximates of his ordinary conversation. "Now, be very careful," says the lawyer, "and remember you are on your oath." To him it is nothing that people should be on their oaths; for him, professionally, it is the normal attitude of mankind. But the poor devil of a witness will spend just one-hundred-thousandth part of an ordinary life on his oath; the position is new and vague and mysteriously hedged with human and divine menace. He must extemporise for himself new standards of accuracy, new acceptations of words, a new state of mind.