Erb/Chapter 13

F publicity at any cost be a good thing for a new journal, then The Carman had no right whatever to complain. The men belonging to the Society felt exultant at references to the impending action. It seemed that they were defying capital as capital had never been defied before. They told each other, when they met at receiving offices and railway stations, that capital was going to have a nasty show up. Erb looked forward to the struggle with eagerness, until he had a meeting with Spanswick, the writer of the paragraph; that amateur journalist admitted, at the end of a keen cross-examination, that he had, perhaps, erred in stating that he knew the statement as a fact of his own knowledge: remembered now that it had been related to him by a chap of his acquaintance, who was either on the Great Eastern or the South Western, he would not swear which, and he confessed to the indignant Erb that he could no more place his hand on this man's shoulders and produce him at the Law Courts “than the dead.” Erb told Spanswick exactly what he thought of him, and Spanswick, penitent, declared that it would be a warning for the future: he would not have had this happen for forty thousand pounds. If Erb required him to go into a witness-box he would guarantee to say on oath just whatever Erb wished him to say. This sporting offer being declined, Spanswick went with downcast head, and examined the lining of his cap, as though hopeful that some solution of the difficulty would be found there. Once clear of the place he gave on the wooden flags of a cellar in Grange Road a few steps of a dance, which seemed to intimate that his regret was but a cloak that could be discarded without much difficulty.

No easy thing to keep up an attitude of hopefulness before the men whilst searching uselessly for facts to justify the Spanswick paragraph; but this was a mere diversion compared with the trouble that came to him the following week. Louisa was at home again after a few days of work at the factory, and Erb, going one afternoon to Page's Walk for some correspondence, encountered the doctor who had called for a minute to see her. The doctor was a breathless, energetic man, whose fees were so small that, added up, they only made a living wage by reason of the number of his patients.

“Going on all right, doctor?”

“Yes, thanks,” replied the medical man, walking rapidly through the passage, and brushing his hat the while. “Busy though! Up to my eyes in work.”

“I was referring more partic'larly to my young sister.”

“Oh, she! Oh! it's what might be expected. Hideous occupation, I call it. One of those manufactures that might well be left to foreigners. Good day!”

“Half a moment,” said Erb, placing a hand on the doctor's arm, and speaking with great anxiety. “Tell us exactly what you mean in plain language. Ought she to be sent away again?”

“You don't want to waste money,” said the doctor, glancing at his watch.

“If it's necessary for her health, I'd spend the last penny I've got.”

“Would you really?” The doctor seemed genuinely surprised. “Well, then, perhaps she might get down to the country or the seaside or somewhere.”

“May be the means of saving her life?”

“Oh, no,” said the doctor cheerfully. “I wouldn't go so far as that.”

Erb shook him violently.

“Why didn't you tell me this before?”

“Credited you with more intelligence than you possess.” said the doctor curtly. “ Good day!”

Louisa resting upstairs in the one armchair declared that she had never felt better. It was only that she was tired, and had no appetite; but, then, see what a good thing it was to feel tired, and just imagine what a saving was effected by the absence of a craving for unlimited meals! Erb did not tell his sister what the doctor had said, but his grave appearance hinted something, and Louisa declared not only that all doctors were fools, but went further, and asserted that most of them were born fools. All the same, she consented with some reluctance to arrange to go away. Erb went down to see Rosalind and talk it over; it seemed natural to to to her when there was trouble. At Camberwell Rosalind, ready dressed for public promenade, came half-way down the uneven pavement and met him, with both hands outstretched, just by a granite cross. She had only that moment been speaking of him to the Professor, and the Professor had said that he, for his part, felt a keen desire to see Erb again.

“But we won't see him,” she said, in a confidential way that was very pleasing, “because he will only want to borrow, and I am used to his borrowing from most people; but it hurts when he borrows from you.”

Erb explained the difficulty, and Rosalind, after considering for a moment, announced the decision in her emphatic way. School holidays would soon be on; she wanted a good ortnight's holiday herself: she would take Louisa away with her, either to Aunt Emma's, at Penshurst, or, if the seaside was ordered, to Worthing.

“Spoiling your own rest!”

“Not at all, not at all!” she answered decidedly. “It's going to be, any way.”

“But why should you trouble? I could get Lady Frances—she'd do anything for me.”

“No doubt!”

The young woman, after a few moments of reserve, and in the presence of Erb's depression, became brighter than usual, pushing away all her own trouble, and talking of the Professor's last escapade as though it were the best joke in the world. The Professor, still declining in the service of the profession, had recently been offered the post of baggage man in a newly-starting provincial company, with the added duty of acting as understudies to the man who played the old City man in Act I., and the Chief of Police in Russia in Act IV. Professor, with many protestations and frequent appeals to the shades of Barry Sullivan and John Ryder and others, had accepted the offer, and, securing on the Saturday night the sum of ten shillings in advance for the purpose of obtaining fine linen, appeared at St. Pancras station the next afternoon on the starting of the special, and denounced The Banker's Blood Company, individually and generally, called upon Heaven to punish them for the attempt to degrade one who had trod the boards long before many of them had been allowed, mistakenly, to see the light of day, and altogether making such a furious scene on the platform, that the manager, consulting hastily with other members of the company in the labelled compartments, gave Rosalind's father another half-sovereign to refrain from accompanying the party. All of which Rosalind told in such a merry way that Erb found himself for a time half-wooed from melancholy.

“That blessed paper,” he said, going back to trouble ruefully, “has got me in a corner the very first start off.”

“It wants fifteen minutes to the hour,” said Rosalind, looking up at the clock at the corner. “Let's walk round the Green and hear all about it.”

Erb walked back to his office feeling that the talk had done good. It was certainly a great thing to find himself more hopeful in regard to Louisa. But he composed on the way a bitter, bitter paragraph concerning the firm in Neckinger Road and its occupation. This seemed so excellent, that he had half a mind to turn it into poetry, but there proved to be some difficulty in finding rhymes for “murder” and for “dastardly,” and he allowed himself on arrival to write it in prose. The copy for number three being made up, he deleted a humorous paragraph about a “Bricklayers' Arms” man, whose wife had run away, and this made room. There was much in the lines themselves; more to be read by those who could fill up the blank spaces intervening. Erb looked at it when he had crossed the t's and dotted the i's with the pride of a man who, with a mere dip of ink, could force moneyed folk to tremble. A fine thing to have control in this way over the printed word.

All the more satisfactory to get on a grievance, which appeared to be solid, in that he eventually found that he had to step out apologetically from the corner into which Spanswick's ingenuity had thrust him. There were, it appeared, no grounds whatever for the statement made, and in Essex Street, in a dim office with one light, under which he had to sit, whilst the two partners of the legal firm remained at the other end of the table in the shadow, he underwent, perhaps, the very worst quarter of an hour that he had endured since the time of school days. He had had to wait some time whilst one partner was sent for by the other.

“Then we may take it, Mr. Barnes, that you withdraw unreservedly every word of the paragraph in question?”

“That's so.”

“And you are prepared to offer every apology and every recompense that is in your power?” asked the other partner.

“Don't know,” said Erb, “about recompense.”

“Well, then, every apology?”

“I suppose I shall have to taste blacking,” he said.

The two partners conferred for a long time in an undertone, the while Erb played nervously with a paper-knife. When one of them spoke he held his breath.

“If the paragraph had been copied into other journals, if it had had a wider circulation than that given by your little paper, Mr. Barnes, our client would have instructed us to go on with the legal proceedings, and we should have asked for and obtained heavy damages. If the journal itself was not below contempt”

“Look here!” interrupted Erb sharply, “don't you go rubbing it in too thick.”

“Sir William is a man with a large heart,” said the other partner, taking up a more conciliatory tone, “and we shall advise him in the circumstances to do the generous thing. You will print in the next issue of your paper an apology?”

“A most humble apology,” remarked the other partner, “terms of which you will permit us to dictate to you. He will not ask you to pay the costs already incurred, and you must think yourself confoundedly”

“He understands,” remarked the second partner. “I am sure Mr. Barnes quite understands. Now let us see about drafting the apology.”

“I think I'd better see to that.”

“Now, my dear old friend,” urged the first partner.

An abject apology; the only encouragement for Erb came from the severe partner, who recommended several additions intended to make it of a more cringing nature, but withdrew these on Erb's protests and his partner's counsel. Erb signed, after a moment's hesitation, and gave a great sigh of relief when he found himself in the Strand again; he knew that there would be some trouble in convincing his committee that he had acted throughout with wisdom, but he had so much assurance in his own powers of speech, he had so often taken difficult positions by reason of his own generous ammunition of words, and of their short supply, that he felt confident of success. All the same, the incident would do him no good, and a repetition would undoubtedly weaken his power.

Number Three of The Carman came out rather opportunely, for he was able to present a copy to Rosalind and to Louisa on the day he saw them off from London Bridge. They were going to Worthing, and Aunt Emma, who had not viewed the sea since childhood's days, was travelling there from Penshurst in order to ascertain whether it had changed greatly. Louisa had to be taken to the station in a four-wheeler, and as she was helped along by her two companions through a rush of arriving City men, the girl seemed proud of the notice that her white face attracted. Erb recited the stinging paragraph that concerned Louisa's late employers through the open carriage window, when Rosalind had made her patient comfortable with cushions. Two of Louisa's sweethearts, friends in the presence of disaster, stood away against a lamp-post, and toyed with automatic machines.

“That's one up against them,” said Louisa with relish. She tried to smile.

“If this don't have any effect,” declared Erb, “I shall follow it up with something stronger. I'll never let go of 'em.”

“Shouldn't like the other gels to lose their shops,” remarked Louisa apprehensively.

“But you wouldn't see 'em all get ill like you are?”

“I'm only pretendin',” said Louisa. “Besides, some can stand the work and some can't.”

“Make her get better,” said Erb to Rosalind. “Don't let her have her own way too much.”

“I'll write to you very often,” said Rosalind quietly. “Let me know—let me know if you see Lady Frances.”

The violence of the paragraph concerning the Neckinger Road firm helped to appease those on the Committee who showed uneasiness in regard to what they called the “climb down.” True, some of them remarked that the attacks on the Neckinger Road firm had nothing to do with the objects of the Society; but a carman who had been discharged by the firm for slight inebriety (“I'm a man that varies,” said the ex-carman.  “Sometimes I may 'ave twenty pints, sometimes I may 'ave thirty pints, and then other days I may 'ave quite a lot,”) came and begged permission to thank them for the public service that the journal was doing, and assured the committee, with the air of one having exclusive information, that they would get their reward, in this world or in the next, or in both. As the reports from Rosalind at Worthing became less satisfactory, so the fierceness of the attacks in The Carman increased; but it was not until a paragraph appeared headed “Wilful Murder!” that Neckinger Road, after taking the previous outbursts with a calm that suggested it was either deaf or asleep, suddenly started up and took action in the most decided and emphatic manner.

Information ... has been laid this day by ... for that you, Herbert Barnes, within the district aforesaid, did unlawfully and maliciously publish a certain defamatory libel of and concerning the said ..., well knowing the same defamatory libel to be false, contrary to the statute in such case made and provided. You are therefore hereby summoned to appear before the Court of Summary Jurisdiction sitting at the Southwark Police Court on the twentieth day of October, at the hour of ten in the forenoon, to answer to the said information. Signed with an indistinct signature, one of the magistrates of the police-court of the metropolis.

This, on a blue-coloured form, which a friendly policeman left one evening, when Erb was wrestling with his brief leading article, and unable to decide whether to give a touch of brightness to the column by the two lines of poetry from William Morris, and risk offending a few subscribers who looked on rhymes as frivolous, or to remain on the safer ground of prose. Erb, in his attacks on the Neckinger Road firm, had begun to feel as a fencer does who makes ingenious passes at the air, and he was so much gratified now to find that he had at last struck something, that he gave the warrant-officer something with which to purchase a drink, and had a very friendly chat with him concerning points of law. Erb had to confess he had not hitherto understood that one had to appear at a police-court in regard to a charge of libel: the warrant-officer increased Erb's knowledge by informing him that not only was this the case where no damages were claimed, but that the publication had only to be proved and you were at once committed to the Central Criminal Court to take your trial.

“There,” said the officer with relish, “there the Grand Jury has the first go at you, see?”

“They can throw out the bill?”

“They can,” admitted the other grudgingly, “but bless my soul,” with a return to cheerfulness, “they won't in your case. Then, in what you may term due course, on comes your case. See? You can either defend yourself”

“I shall.”

“You know the old saying, I s'pose?”

“Never mind the old saying,” replied Erb. “Get on!”

“Then, of course, if you're fool enough to conduct your own case, you'll be fool enough to cross-examine the witnesses for the other side.”

“I shall,” said Erb.

“And a fine old mess you'll make of it,” remarked the warrant-officer, laughing uproariously. “Lord! I'd give an ounce of shag to be in court when it comes off.”

“I'll see that it comes off.”

“I've seen some of the biggest larks when chaps have been trying to do this sort of thing on their own, that ever you can imagine. Sometimes when I'm a bit down-hearted over anything, or if the wife's a bit aggravatin', I just cast my mind back and”

The warrant-officer laughed again, and, taking off his helmet, mopped the inside of it with his handkerchief.

“Never, I suppose,” said Erb, a little nettled by this ill-timed hilarity, “seen a man in the witness box turned thoroughly inside out?”

“Not by an amateur.”

“Never seen him pinned down to certain facts, never watched him being led on and on and on, until he finds that he hasn't got a shred of a reputation, a remnant of a character, not a single white spot of innocence or”

“I like your talk, old man,” interrupted the warrant-officer, fixing on his helmet, “and I wish I could stay to hear more of it. But take care you don't wear your face out. So long!”

The police of London are not infallible, but the first prophecies of the warrant-officer seemed likely to prove correct. Erb, determined not to fetter himself by legal knowledge, nevertheless found information thrust upon him, and this confirmed the statement that the police-court proceedings would be of a simple and formal nature. He regretted the delay, for he was eager to get to close quarters with the firm, and he spent his days in collecting evidence; walked about at night, (taking in Camberwell in the tour that he might look up at her window), rehearsing the questions that he would put to the firm, imagining contests of words with counsel on the other side, contests from which he always emerged victorious. Spanswick had at last given up all pretence of being a railway carman, and had resigned his membership (this to the relief of Payne and of Erb); it made Erb stop and think for a few minutes, when one afternoon, looking out of his office window he saw Spanswick driving a single-horse van belonging to the Neckinger Road firm.

Nothing could be more gratifying than the notice accorded by the evening papers to the hearing at the police-court. It happened on a day when little else of importance occurred, so that two journals had the item on their placards—

and one of them gave an astonishing portrait of Erb; “Sketched by our Artist in Court,” declared the legend underneath, as though this were any excuse. Railway carmen from all quarters somehow managed to include Southwark Police Court in their rounds at the precise hour of the hearing of the case, and when Payne and another householder gave their names in for the purpose of bail they cheered, and the magistrate threatening to have them expelled, they cheered again and filed out at the door.

“Let's have a bloomin' meeting,” cried one.

The suggestion clipped their fancy. Erb, coming out quietly, found himself seized by two of the strongest men, carried triumphantly to an empty South Western van standing in Marshalsea Road, and hoisted up to the seat of this, whence, to the obvious surprise of the two roan horses, he made a speech.

“We'll stick to you, Erb,” cried some of the crowd.

“Through thick and thin,” cried the rest.

“Three cheers for Erb. Hip! hip”