Part 116 (1/2)
”Done.”
”How will you find out?”
”How? Why set the thief-takers on um, to be sure.”
He wrote off to the prefect of police at Boulogne, and in four days received an answer headed ”Information in the interest of families.” The prefect informed him there had been no railway accident: but that the Sieur Speers, English subject, had really hurt his leg getting out of a railway carriage six weeks ago, and had kept his room some days; but he had been cured some weeks, and going about his business, and made an excursion to Paris.
On this Compton offered Sampson the s.h.i.+lling. But he declined to take it. ”The lie was self-evident,” said he; ”and here's a judge wouldn't see't, and an attorney couldn't. Been all their lives sifting evidence, too. Oh the darkness of the profissional mind!”
The next term came. Mr. Compton delivered the briefs and fees, subpoenaed the witnesses, &c., and Alfred came up with a good heart to get his stigma removed by twelve honest men in the light of day: but first one case was taken out of its order and put before him, then another, till term wore near an end. Then Messrs. Heathfield applied to another judge of the court for a postponement. Mr. Richard Hardie, plaintiff's father, a most essential witness, was ill at Clare Court.
Medical certificate and letter herewith.
Compton opposed. Now this judge was a keen and honourable lawyer, with a lofty hatred of all professional tricks. He heard the two attorneys, and delivered himself to this effect, only of course in better legal phrase: ”I shall make no order. The defendant has been here before on a doubtful affidavit. You know, Mr. Heathfield, juries in these cases go by the plaintiff's evidence, and his conduct under cross-examination. And I think it would not be just nor humane to keep this plaintiff in suspense, and _civiliter mortuum,_ any longer. You can take out a commission to examine Richard Hardie.”
To this Mr. Compton nailed him, but the commission took time; and while it was pending, Mr. Heathfield went to another judge with another disabled witness: Peggy Black. That naive personage was nursing her deceased sister's children--in an affidavit: and they had scarlatina--surgeon's certificate to that effect. Compton opposed, and pointed out the blot. ”You don't want the children in the witness-box,”
said he: ”and we are not to be robbed of our trial because one of your witnesses prefer nursing other people's children to facing the witness-box.”
The judge nodded a.s.sent. ”I make no order,” said he.
Mr. Heathfield went out from his presence and sent a message by telegraph to Peggy Black. ”You must have Scar. yourself, and telegraph the same at once: certificate by post.”
The accommodating maiden telegraphed back that she had unfortunately taken scarlatina of the children: medical certificate to follow by post. Four judges out of the five were now awake to the move. But Mr. Heathfield tinkered the hole in his late affidavit with Peggy's telegram, and slipped down to Westminster to the chief judge of the court, who had had no opportunity of watching the growth and dissemination of disease among Deft.'s, witnesses. Compton fought this time by counsel and with a powerful affidavit. But luck was against him.
The judge had risen to go home: he listened standing; Compton's counsel was feeble; did not feel the wrong. How could he? Lawyers fatten by delays of justice, as physicians do by tardy cure. The postponement was granted.
Alfred cursed them all, and his own folly in believing that an alleged lunatic would be allowed fair play at Westminster, or anywhere else.
Compton took snuff, and Sampson appealed to the press again. He wrote a long letter exposing with fearless irony the postponement swindle as it had been worked in Hardie _v._ Hardie: and wound up with this fiery peroration:
”This Englishman sues not merely for damages, but to recover lost rights dearer far than money, of which he says he has been unjustly robbed: his right to walk in daylight on the soil of his native land without being seized and tied up for life like a n.i.g.g.e.r or a dog; his footing in society; a chance to earn his bread; and a place among mankind: ay, among mankind; for a lunatic is an animal in the law's eye and society's, and an alleged lunatic is a lunatic till a jury clears him.
”I appeal to you, gentlemen, is not such a suitor sacred in all wise and good men's minds? Is he not defendant as well as plaintiff? Why, his stake is enormous compared with the nominal defendant's; and, if I know right from wrong, to postpone his trial a fourth time would be to insult Divine justice, and trifle with human misery, and shock the common sense of nations.”
The doctor's pen neither clipped the words nor minced the matter, you see. Reading this the water came into Alfred's eyes. ”Ah, staunch friend,” he said, ”how few are like you! To the intellectual dwarfs who conspire with my oppressors, Hardie _v._ Hardie is but a family squabble. _Parvis omnia parva._” Mr. Compton read it too; and said from the bottom of his heart, ”Heaven defend us from our friends! This is enough to make the courts decline to try the case at all.”
And, indeed, it did not cure the evil: for next term another _malade affidavitaire_ was set up. Speers to wit. This gentleman deposed to having come over on purpose to attend the trial; but having inadvertently stepped aside as far as Wales, he lay there stricken with a mysterious malady, and had just strength to forward medical certificate. On this the judge in spite of remonstrance, adjourned Hardie _v._ Hardie to the summer term. Summer came, the evil day drew nigh: Mr. Heathfield got the venue changed from Westminster to London, which was the fifth postponement. At last the cause came on: the parties and witnesses were all in court, with two whole days before them to try it in.
Dr. Sampson rushed in furious. ”There is some deviltry afloat,” said he. ”I was in the House of Commons last night, and there I saw the defendant's counsel earwigging the judge.”
”Nonsense,” said Mr. Compton, ”such suspicions are ridiculous. Do you think they can talk of nothing but Hardie _v._ Hardie?”
”Mai--dearr sirr--my son met one of Heathfield's clerks at dinner, and he let out that the trile was not to come off. Put this and that together now.”
”It will come off,” said Mr. Compton, ”and in five minutes at farthest.”
In less than that time the learned judge came in, and before taking his seat made this extraordinary speech:
”I hear this cause will take three days to try; and we have only two days before us. It would be inconvenient to leave it unfinished; and I must proceed on circuit the day after to-morrow. It must be a remanet: no man can do more than time allows.”
Plaintiff's counsel made a feeble remonstrance; then yielded. And the crier with sonorous voice called on the case of Bread _v._ Cheese, in which there were pounds at stake, but no principle. Oh, with what zest they all went into it; being small men escaping from a great thing to a small one. Never hopped frogs into a ditch with more alacrity. Alfred left the court and hid himself, and the scalding tears forced their way down his cheeks at this heartless proceeding: to let all the witnesses come into court at a vast expense to the parties: and raise the cup of justice to the lips of the oppressed, and then pretend he knew a trial would last more than two days, and so s.h.i.+rk it. ”I'd have made that a reason for sitting till midnight” said poor Alfred, ”not for prolonging a poor injured man's agony four mortal months.” He then prayed G.o.d earnestly for this great postponer's death as the only event that could give him back an Englishman's right of being tried by his peers, and so went down to Oxford broken-hearted.
As for Sampson he was most indignant, and said a public man had no business with a private ear: and wanted to appeal to the press again: but the doughty doctor had a gentle but powerful ruler at home, as fiery houses are best ruled by a gentle hand. Mrs. Sampson requested him to write no more, but look round for an M. P. to draw these repeated defeats of justice to the notice of the House. Now there was a Mr.
Bite, who had taken a prominent and honourable part in lunacy questions; headed committees and so on: this seemed the man. Dr. Sampson sent him a letter saying there was a flagrant case of a sane man falsely imprisoned, who had now been near a year applying for a jury, and juggled out of this const.i.tutional right by arbitrary and unreasonable postponements: would Mr. Bite give him (Dr. Sampson) ten minutes and no more, when he would explain the case and leave doc.u.mentary evidence behind him for Mr. Bite to test his statement. The philanthropical M. P.