Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/199

186 service. Time was, as I have been given to understand, when the Court was first opened for business, that ladies of a different kind used to come down to Westminster to obtain a glimpse of the judge who was henceforward to be the supreme arbiter of the destinies of the female world. I have also been told by the gentlemen who frequented the Court in those days, that as far as they could judge from the exclamations they overheard, the result was very favourable to the presiding judge.

“Oh! what a dear man! I’m sure he wouldn’t do anything unkind! Well, I’m not afraid of him!”

Such were the flowers with which the earlier steps of this Rhadamanthus of hearts were greeted by his devotees. Since these times, however, matters have been much changed. The nature of many of the trials, since the Court has settled down to serious work, of course excludes all notion of the presence of women, save of those who may unfortunately be mixed up with the case under discussion. For the most part the group of which I have made mention consists of witnesses, most of whom are there two or three days before they are wanted, with vengeance clearly written on their features. I should not like to have that rigid looking woman with the pinched lips engaged in the capacity of my own wife’s confidential maid. I should fear that she might be disposed to take a somewhat one-sided view—not in my favour—should it ever happen that one of the rose-leaves in my matrimonial bower became at all crumpled through somebody’s fault; nor do I think her presence generally calculated to inspire harmony and good-will in a household. She will swear hard.

The first effort is to make your way from this group in the outer hall to a narrow passage inside. A policeman at the door keeps on repeating “The Court is full,” and repelling the applicants for admission even into the passage; although the gain is small even when you have secured a position there. You tap quietly at the door of the Court; but instead of admitting you the policeman inside quietly opens a little trap, and if you are not a barrister or attorney, or otherwise professionally engaged with the business in hand, you are again informed that “The Court is full!” At this moment your heart is in your mouth, for although you cannot even see through the trap into the body of the Court—a horrid red curtain is in the way—and the first surge of matrimonial agony here rolls upon your ear.

“Did you, or did you not come home in a beastly state of intoxication at four o’clock in the morning, although your poor wife—”

Bang goes the little trap, and you are cut off from hearing the answer of the miserable husband. What will happen next? Will Sir Cresswell with smiling lips intimate to the accused, that “he is free;” and will he be turned out into the body of the Hall rejoicing in his liberty, but to fall under the blows of those hard women outside? One has read of the Septembrists in Revolutionary France, and of the sly way in which the victims were consigned to the untender charge of the “travailleurs” outside. I did not, indeed, notice any marks of gore upon the pavement of the Hall; but with a little saw-dust, and a few buckets of water all traces of each incident might soon be washed away. The bodies, no doubt, would be removed into the Common Pleas. Besides, the case of v. is the first one taken this morning, so nothing can have yet occurred—of consequence.

I am standing in that awful passage still. There is a young and pretty woman leaning with her back against the door. I dare scarcely raise my eyes to note the fact. She gives me an awful idea of power—like a lithe hunting leopard in the Zoological Gardens. There is a stout, rather shabbily dressed man, of middle age, who has come down in a great hurry—for his first act is to take off his hat and swab his poor moist head; his second, to fix a pair of spectacles on his nose; and his third, to produce from his pocket a slip of paper, a subpœna, or sub-agony, or something of that sort, which he hands triumphantly to the policeman on guard in the passage, as entitling him to instant admission to the body of the court. Admission there, indeed! The policeman in the passage taps at the trap. The policeman in the court opens the trap, and you catch a glimpse of, I think, a somewhat well-disposed face—(but by this time you are in a frame of mind in which you would be ready to thank Jack Ketch for his obliging attentions)—with two red whiskers. There it is—Portrait of Policeman, 23 Z, in a frame. Whilst he inspects the slip of paper, which is held up by his brother officer, a thin, maundering voice reaches me from inside,—it is clearly that of some official personage, reading what I suppose is called a document here. The words I catch are these:—

Here there is a sharp dogmatic interruption—like that of a cracker during a cathedral-service.

“My Lud—clear grey in my copy.”

“Deep blue, my Lud—deep blue, in mine.”

Then follow some courteous tones.—Yes.—This must be Sir Cresswell at last!

“It is not of much consequence, Doctor Dobbs.” (Gracious Powers, what do these stony-hearted men then reckon of consequence?) “As we have the ‘original’ before us, we need not dispute about copies. Go on.”

“Deep blue eyes,” the reader was proceeding, when it became necessary for him,—I must tell the truth,—to blow his nose, which he did in a very sonorous way, and then, “the rapture of that glance—”

Bang goes the trap again! It appeared that the policeman inside had taken counsel with the usher, and the result of their deliberations was, that the middle-aged man in the perspiration was informed through the trap that the case of Moppet v. Moppet and Boiling was not likely to occupy the attention of the court until next week, and that he could not be admitted, as “he was neither a professional man, nor a witness in