Frivolities, Especially Addressed to Those Who Are Tired of Being Serious

"Hear, hear!" Mr. Longsett rapped with his knuckles on the table.

"I'd never have come," declared old Parkes, "if I'd a known I was going to be kep' all day without my dinner. When a man gets to my years he wants his victuals regular. I didn't have hardly no breakfast, and I ain't had nothing since."

"I tell you what it is," cried Slater; "I want my dinner, and I've got my business to attend to-this is the busiest day of the week for me. So far as I can see it doesn't make much difference how we bring it in. You say that if you bring him in guilty you're going to get him off: then why shouldn't you bring him in not guilty right away? If you bring him in guilty I can't help thinking that he ought to be punished-he won't care nothing for your bringing him in guilty if he isn't; while, if you bring him in not guilty, he'll thank his stars for the narrow squeak he'll think he's had, and it'll be a lesson to him as long as he lives."

"There is," allowed Mr. Plummer, "a good deal in what Mr. Slater says."

"There is one thing against it," murmured Mr. Moss. His voice was rather squeaky, and, as if conscious of the fact, he generally produced it as softly as he could.

"What's that?"

"The evidence. We are supposed to be influenced by the evidence, and by that only."

"It struck me that the evidence was all one-sided."

"Precisely-on the side of the prosecution. Since the case was practically undefended the presumption is that the prisoner had no defence to offer."

"But, as practical men," persisted Mr. Plummer, "does it not occur to you that there is a good deal in what Mr. Slater says? If we find the lad not guilty we shall teach him a lesson, and, at the same time, not be placing on his character an ineffaceable slur. We might, for instance, state in open court, through the mouth of our worthy foreman, that we are willing to give the prisoner the benefit of the doubt."

"But there is no doubt. Let us do justice though the heavens fall. Have you yourself any doubt that James Bailey stole Samuel Nichols's corn and hay?"

"Ah, dear sir, there is only One who can say. He has no doubt. We are not omniscient."

"That sort of talk may be all very well in a pulpit, Mr. Plummer. It is out of place in a court of law when we are dealing with ascertained facts."

Mr. Plummer raised his hands and shook his head, as if he was sorry for Mr. Moss.

"Let us show mercy, that we may be shown it," he all but whispered.

"In other words," struck in Captain Rudd, "we are to do evil in order that good may come-even to the extent of prostituting truth."

"I am afraid, in our present situation, these things are not arguable. Some of us, thank Heaven, see things through eyes of our own."

"Precisely, and it is because they don't appear to be arguable that I once more suggest to the foreman that the court be informed that we are unable to agree."

"And I again take leave to differ. Why now, there's" – Mr. Longsett pointed with his finger-"one-two-three-four-five of us as says not guilty. We're agreeing more and more every minute. I dare bet any money we'll all be like one family before we get outside this room. If the foreman ain't got no particular objection I'll have a moistener. I never could eat dry." Taking a black bottle out of an inner pocket in his overcoat he applied it to his lips. Such of the eleven as were not keenly observant ostentatiously turned their eyes another way. He took a long and hearty pull, then he smacked his lips. "Good stuff that; I always like a drop when I've been eating-helps digestion."

"This is more than human nature can stand," groaned Mr. Timmins. "Mr. Foreman, I move that the magistrates be informed that we are unable to agree, and I request that you put that motion without further delay."

"I second that motion," said Captain Rudd.

"And I say no!"

Jacob flourished his bottle. Mr. Timmins's visage, as he confronted Mr. Longsett, became slightly inflamed.

"We don't care what you say. Do you think we're going to sit here, watching you guzzling, as long as ever you please? If you want to give a proper verdict you give one which is according to the evidence-we're not going to let you play the fool with us, Jacob, my boy."

Extending the open palm of his left hand, Mr. Longsett marked time on it with the bottle which he was holding in his right.

"Excuse me, Mr. Foreman, but perhaps I know a bit of law as well as the rest of you, and I say that the law is this, that before a jury can tell the court anything it's got to agree upon what it's going to tell. And what I mean by that is this, that before any one of us-I don't care if it's the foreman, or who it is! – can tell the court that we disagree we've got to agree to disagree-and I don't agree!"

Mr. Moss put a question to the foreman.

"Is that really the case?"

The foreman smiled a wintry smile-and temporised.

"I shouldn't positively like to say."

"But I do say positively. You can ask the magistrates, if you like, and see if I'm not right. Why, if you go into court now and say that we disagree I shall say we don't! I shall say that if we only have a little more time we shall agree yet; all we want's a chance of talking it over."

The foreman, pressing his fingers together, addressed Mr. Longsett with an air that was acid.

"Then, according to you, if one member of a jury chooses to make himself objectionable his colleagues are at his mercy?"

Jacob rose from his seat in such a flame of passion that it almost seemed he was going to hurl his bottle at the foreman's head.

"Don't you call me objectionable, Mr. Grice! I won't have it! I'm no more objectionable than you are! I've got as much right to an opinion as you, and because my opinion don't happen to be the same as yours you've no right to call me names. If we all start calling each other names a nice state of things that'll be. A pretty notion of a foreman's duties you seem to have!"

Mr. Grice, who was not pugilistic, turned a trifle pale; he did not seem happy. Captain Rudd, tilting his chair backwards, and thrusting his hands into his trouser pockets, looked up at the ceiling.

"This is the sort of thing which brings the jury system into contempt."

"What's that, Captain Rudd?" Mr. Longsett, who was still upon his feet, chose his words with much deliberation, emphasising them with shakings of his fist. "You mean you're the sort, I suppose? You're quite right, you are. You've been in the army, you see, and you think we're soldiers, to come to heel whenever you tell us, and that's where you're mistaken, Captain Rudd. We're free Englishmen, and we don't choose to have you come the officer over us-and that's how you make the thing contemptible by trying."

There was silence. His colleagues seemed to be arriving at the conclusion that Jacob was a difficult man to differ with.

"It strikes me," said Mr. Timmins, when the silence was becoming painful, "that if the law is really such that we've got to stop here till our good Jacob takes it into his generous head to let us go, you and I, Mr. Hisgard, might have that little game of crib I was speaking of; it may help us forget where we are, and that we're not going to have any dinner till it's past supper time."

"Just you wait a minute. Perhaps," replied Mr. Hisgard, "I may be allowed to say a word." No one appeared to have any objection. "What I wish to remark is this. With all deference, I think Mr. Slater spoke as a practical man. I don't see that there's much difference between saying guilty and at the same time asking the magistrate to award no punishment, and, as Mr. Slater puts it, bringing it in not guilty right away."

Mr. Timmins, who had been shuffling a pack of cards, replaced them on the table.

"All right. Let's have it that way and make an end of it. Suppose we all say not guilty and caution him not to do it again-what's the odds?"

"So far as I'm concerned," observed Tom Elliott, "I'm willing to bring him in not guilty. It's my belief he's been led into it all along, and I know perhaps as much about it as anyone. There's a good deal about the affair what's been kept quiet by both sides. Perhaps I might have said a word for one."

Mr. Moss interrogated the foreman with uplifted eyebrows.

"Do you think it does make any difference?"

The foreman shrugged his shoulders. He was still. Captain Rudd spoke for him.

"It makes the difference between right and wrong-that's all."

Mr. Plummer leaned his elbows on the table; his spectacled countenance wore its most benevolent smile.

"Hearken to me, dear sir. We are all Christian men-"

"Not necessarily at this moment; at this moment we are jurymen-only jurymen."

Mr. Plummer sighed, as if in sorrow. He turned to the others, as if desiring their forgiveness for the captain.

"This gentleman-I trust he will pardon me for saying so-puts a curb upon his natural generosity. His is what we may, perhaps, term the military mind-precise, and, if we may say so, just a little-the merest atom-hard. For my part I think, Mr. Foreman, we might, as Christian men, conscientiously return a negative finding, intimating at the same time that, owing to the prisoner's tender years, we are not unwilling to give him the benefit of the doubt."

The captain dissented.

"What sort of mind do you call yours, sir? Were we to return such a verdict, we should make of ourselves the laughing-stock of England."

The foreman shook his head.

"I hardly think England will interest itself in our proceedings to that extent. Similar verdicts in similar cases are, I imagine, more common than you may suppose. I am not advocating such a course, but I believe it would be logically possible for us to inform the magistrates that, while some of us entertain strong opinions on the subject of the prisoner's guilt, being desirous to arrive at a state of agreement, and also bearing in mind the youth of the accused, we are willing to acquiesce in a verdict of acquittal."

"I agree to that," cried Mr. Longsett. "That's fair enough. Now, is it all settled?"

"I'm not."

The speaker was the captain. All eyes were turned on him.

The foreman spoke.

"Don't you think, captain, you-might swallow a gnat?"

"I don't wish to set myself up as a superior person, but, under the circumstances, I'm afraid I can't."

"Quite so. Now we know where we are." Mr. Longsett composed himself in his chair; planting his hands against his sides he stuck out his elbows; he screwed up his mouth. "It just shows you how one man can play skittles with eleven others."

The captain was silently contemptuous.

"I really doubt if it matters." It was Mr. Moss who said it; he whispered an addition into the captain's ear: "If the young scamp isn't hung to-day he'll be hung to-morrow."

The captain ignored the whisper; his reply was uttered with sufficient clearness.

"Perhaps, sir, your sense of duty is not a high one."

The eleven eyed each other, and the table, and vacancy; a spirit of depression seemed to be settling down upon them all. Old Parkes, with elongated visage, addressed a melancholy inquiry to no one in particular. "What's us sitting here for?"

Jacob responded-"That's what I should like to know, George. Perhaps it's because a gentleman's made up his mind to ruin a poor young lad for life."

The captain took up the gauntlet.

"I presume it is useless for me to point out to you that your statement is as incorrect as it is unjustified. I have heard a good deal about the absurdities of the jury system. I may tell you, sir, that you have presented me with an object-lesson which will last me the rest of my life. It occurs to me as just possible that the sooner the system is reformed the better."

"Ah! I daresay it would. Then gentlemen like you would be able to grind poor lads under your feet whenever it suited you. Oh, dear, no! You think yourself somebody, don't you, captain?"

Captain Rudd looked as if he would if he could; in his eyes there gleamed something very like a foreshadowing of assault and battery. The foreman made a little movement with his hands, which, possibly, was intended to be a counsel of peace. Anyhow, the captain allowed the last word to be Jacob's. Mr. Tyler, his handkerchief still pressed to his ear, appealed to the captain in a tone of voice which was almost tearful.

"As man to man, sir, let me beseech you to take pity on the dreadful situation we are in."

"To what situation do you allude, sir?"

"I am alluding, sir, to the dreadful pain which I am enduring in my left ear; you can have no conception of its severity. Besides which I have a sadly weakly constitution generally-as is well known to more than one gentleman who is now present. I have suffered for the last twenty years from chronic lumbago, together with a functional derangement of the liver, which, directly any irregularity occurs in my hours or habits, invariably reduces me to a state of collapse. I assure you that if this enforced confinement and prolonged abstention from my natural food endures much longer, in my present state of health the consequences may be highly serious."

"I don't follow your reasoning, sir. Because you are physically unfitted to serve upon a jury, and culpably omitted to inform the court of the fact, you wish me not to do my duty, you having already failed to do yours?"

"I wish you," sighed Mr. Tyler, "to be humane."

"This is the first jury ever I was on," groaned Mr. Parkes, shaking his ancient head as if it had been hung on wires, "and I'll take care that it's the last. Such things didn't ought to be-not when a man's got to my years, they didn't. Who's young Jim Bailey, I'd like to know, that we should go losing our dinners acause of him? Hit him over the head and ha' done with it-that's what I say."

"You must excuse me, Captain Rudd," said Mr. Timmins, "but why can't you strain a point as well as the rest of us? Why shouldn't we, as a body of practical men, take a merciful view of the position and give the boy another chance? He is only a boy after all."

"We are not automata though we are jurymen, and surely we may, without shame, allow ourselves to be actuated by the dictates of our common humanity."

Thus Mr. Plummer. Mr. Slater agreed with him in a fashion of his own.

"Let the boy go and have done with it-I daresay we can trust Jacob to give him a good sound towelling."

"He's had that already."

There was a grimness in Mr. Longsett's tone which caused more than one of his hearers to smile.

"I'll be bound his mother's crying her eyes out for him at home."

This was Tom Elliott. Mr. Plummer joined his hands as if in supplication.

"Poor woman!" he murmured.

"It comes hard upon the mothers," said Mr. Hisgard.

"And Jim Bailey's mother is as honest and hard-working a woman as ever lived-that I know as a fact. And she's seen a lot of trouble!"

As he made this announcement Mr. Timmins shuffled his pack of cards, as if the action relieved his mind. For some moments everyone was still. Suddenly Mr. Tyler, who had been looking a picture of misery, broke into audible lamentations.

"Oh dear! oh dear! I'm very ill! Won't anyone take pity on a man in agony?"

So intense was his sympathy with his own affairs that the tears trickled down his cheeks. Mr. Timmins endeavoured to encourage him.

"Come, Mr. Tyler, come! Bear up! It'll soon be over now!"

"If anything serious comes of the cruel suffering which is being inflicted on me I shall look to you gentlemen for compensation. I'm a poor man; it's always a hard struggle, with my poor health, to make two ends meet. I can't afford to pay doctors' bills which have been incurred by the actions of others!"

"That's pleasant hearing-what do you think, Mr. Hisgard? – if we've got to contribute to this gentleman's doctors' bills! Come, Mr. Tyler, don't talk like that, or soon we shall all of us be ill. I know I shall!"

There was a further pause. Then Mr. Moss delivered himself.

"I'm bound to admit that what Mr. Timmins has said of the prisoner's mother I know to be correct of my own knowledge. Mrs. Bailey has been a widow for many years; she has brought up a large family with the labour of her own hands; she has had many difficulties to contend with, and is deserving of considerable sympathy. There is that to be said. Come, Captain Rudd, for once in a way let us be illogical. If you will agree to a verdict of not guilty I will."

Captain Rudd, his head thrown back, continued for some moments to silently regard the ceiling. The others watched him, exhibiting, in various degrees, unmistakable anxiety. Finally, with his eyes still turned ceilingwards, he capitulated.

"All right. Let it be as you say. Rather than the gentleman in front of me should perish on his chair, and other gentlemen should suffer any longer from the absence of their 'natural food,' I am willing to be joined with the rest, and, with you, to place myself under the dominion of Mr. Jacob Longsett's thumb."

"Hear, hear! Bravo!" There were observations expressive of satisfaction from different quarters; but Mr. Longsett, in particular, was enthusiastic in his approbation.

"Your words does you honour, captain!"

"You think so? – I'm sorry we differ."

The foreman rapped upon the table.

"Order, gentlemen, please. Then may I take it that, at present, we are finally agreed upon a verdict of not guilty?"

"Coupled," corrected Mr. Moss, "with an intimation to the effect that, considering the prisoner's age, we have been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt."

"Precisely. Does any other gentleman wish to make an observation? Apparently not. Then may I also take it that we are ready to return into court?"

Acclamations in the affirmative rose from all sides. The foreman rang the hand-bell which was in front of him. The usher appeared.

So the prisoner was acquitted, no one in the court having the faintest notion why.