OPINIONS OF THE BENCH
Late the same night after a disordered
walk Archie was admitted into Lord Glenalmond’s
dining-room where he sat with a book upon his knee
beside three frugal coals of fire. In his robes
upon the Bench Glenalmond had a certain air of burliness:
plucked of these it was a may-pole of a man that
rose unsteadily from his chair to give his visitor
welcome. Archie had suffered much in the last
days he had suffered again that evening; his face
was white and drawn his eyes wild and dark.
But Lord Glenalmond greeted him without the least mark
of surprise or curiosity.
“Come in, come in,” said
he. “Come in and take a seat. Carstairs”
(to his servant), “make up the fire, and then
you can bring a bit of supper,” and again to
Archie, with a very trivial accent: “I was
half expecting you,” he added.
“No supper,” said Archie.
“It is impossible that I should eat.”
“Not impossible,” said
the tall old man, laying his hand upon his shoulder,
“and, if you will believe me, necessary.”
“You know what brings me?”
said Archie, as soon as the servant had left the room.
“I have a guess, I have a guess,”
replied Glenalmond. “We will talk of it
presently when Carstairs has come and gone,
and you have had a piece of my good Cheddar cheese
and a pull at the porter tankard: not before.”
“It is impossible I should eat,” repeated
Archie.
“Tut, tut!” said Lord
Glenalmond. “You have eaten nothing to-day,
and I venture to add, nothing yesterday. There
is no case that may not be made worse; this may be
a very disagreeable business, but if you were to fall
sick and die, it would be still more so, and for all
concerned for all concerned.”
“I see you must know all,”
said Archie. “Where did you hear it?”
“In the mart of scandal, in
the Parliament House,” said Glenalmond.
“It runs riot below among the Bar and the public,
but it sifts up to us upon the Bench, and rumour has
some of her voices even in the divisions.”
Carstairs returned at this moment,
and rapidly laid out a little supper; during which
Lord Glenalmond spoke at large and a little vaguely
on indifferent subjects, so that it might be rather
said of him that he made a cheerful noise, than that
he contributed to human conversation; and Archie sat
upon the other side, not heeding him, brooding over
his wrongs and errors.
But so soon as the servant was gone,
he broke forth again at once. “Who told
my father? Who dared to tell him? Could it
have been you?”
“No, it was not me,” said
the judge; “although to be quite frank
with you, after I had seen and warned you it
might have been me. I believe it was Glenkindie.”
“That shrimp!” cried Archie.
“As you say, that shrimp,”
returned my lord; “although really it is scarce
a fitting mode of expression for one of the senators
of the College of Justice. We were hearing the
parties in a long, crucial case, before the fifteenth;
Creech was moving at some length for an infeftment;
when I saw Glenkindie lean forward to Hermiston with
his hand over his mouth and make him a secret communication.
No one could have guessed its nature from your father;
from Glenkindie, yes, his malice sparked out of him
a little grossly. But your father, no. A
man of granite. The next moment he pounced upon
Creech. ‘Mr. Creech,’ says he, ‘I’ll
take a look of that sasine,’ and for thirty minutes
after,” said Glenalmond, with a smile, “Messrs.
Creech and Co. were fighting a pretty uphill battle,
which resulted, I need hardly add, in their total
rout. The case was dismissed. No, I doubt
if ever I heard Hermiston better inspired. He
was literally rejoicing in apicibus juris.”
Archie was able to endure no longer.
He thrust his plate away and interrupted the deliberate
and insignificant stream of talk. “Here,”
he said, “I have made a fool of myself, if I
have not made something worse. Do you judge between
us judge between a father and a son.
I can speak to you; it is not like ... I will
tell you what I feel and what I mean to do; and you
shall be the judge,” he repeated.
“I decline jurisdiction,”
said Glenalmond, with extreme seriousness. “But,
my dear boy, if it will do you any good to talk, and
if it will interest you at all to hear what I may
choose to say when I have heard you, I am quite at
your command. Let an old man say it, for once,
and not need to blush: I love you like a son.”
There came a sudden sharp sound in
Archie’s throat. “Ay,” he cried,
“and there it is! Love! Like a son!
And how do you think I love my father?”
“Quietly, quietly,” says my lord.
“I will be very quiet,”
replied Archie. “And I will be baldly frank.
I do not love my father; I wonder sometimes if I do
not hate him. There’s my shame; perhaps
my sin; at least, and in the sight of God, not my
fault. How was I to love him? He has never
spoken to me, never smiled upon me; I do not think
he ever touched me. You know the way he talks?
You do not talk so, yet you can sit and hear him without
shuddering, and I cannot. My soul is sick when
he begins with it; I could smite him in the mouth.
And all that’s nothing. I was at the trial
of this Jopp. You were not there, but you must
have heard him often; the man’s notorious for
it, for being look at my position! he’s
my father and this is how I have to speak of him notorious
for being a brute and cruel and a coward. Lord
Glenalmond, I give you my word, when I came out of
that Court, I longed to die the shame of
it was beyond my strength: but I I ”
he rose from his seat and began to pace the room in
a disorder. “Well, who am I? A boy,
who have never been tried, have never done anything
except this twopenny impotent folly with my father.
But I tell you, my lord, and I know myself, I am at
least that kind of a man or that kind of
a boy, if you prefer it that I could die
in torments rather than that any one should suffer
as that scoundrel suffered. Well, and what have
I done? I see it now. I have made a fool
of myself, as I said in the beginning; and I have gone
back, and asked my father’s pardon, and placed
myself wholly in his hands and he has sent
me to Hermiston,” with a wretched smile, “for
life, I suppose and what can I say? he
strikes me as having done quite right, and let me off
better than I had deserved.”
“My poor, dear boy!” observed
Glenalmond. “My poor, dear and, if you
will allow me to say so, very foolish boy! You
are only discovering where you are; to one of your
temperament, or of mine, a painful discovery.
The world was not made for us; it was made for ten
hundred millions of men, all different from each other
and from us; there’s no royal road there, we
just have to sclamber and tumble. Don’t
think that I am at all disposed to be surprised; don’t
suppose that I ever think of blaming you; indeed I
rather admire! But there fall to be offered one
or two observations on the case which occur to me
and which (if you will listen to them dispassionately)
may be the means of inducing you to view the matter
more calmly. First of all, I cannot acquit you
of a good deal of what is called intolerance.
You seem to have been very much offended because your
father talks a little sculduddery after dinner, which
it is perfectly licit for him to do, and which (although
I am not very fond of it myself) appears to be entirely
an affair of taste. Your father, I scarcely like
to remind you, since it is so trite a commonplace,
is older than yourself. At least, he is major
and sui juris, and may please himself in the
matter of his conversation. And, do you know,
I wonder if he might not have as good an answer against
you and me? We say we sometimes find him coarse,
but I suspect he might retort that he finds us always
dull. Perhaps a relevant exception.”
He beamed on Archie, but no smile could be elicited.
“And now,” proceeded the
judge, “for ‘Archibald on Capital Punishment.’
This is a very plausible academic opinion; of course
I do not and I cannot hold it; but that’s not
to say that many able and excellent persons have not
done so in the past. Possibly, in the past also,
I may have a little dipped myself in the same heresy.
My third client, or possibly my fourth, was the means
of a return in my opinions. I never saw the man
I more believed in; I would have put my hand in the
fire; I would have gone to the cross for him; and
when it came to trial he was gradually pictured before
me, by undeniable probation, in the light of so gross,
so cold-blooded, and so black-hearted a villain, that
I had a mind to have cast my brief upon the table.
I was then boiling against the man with even a more
tropical temperature than I had been boiling for him.
But I said to myself: ’No, you have taken
up his case; and because you have changed your mind
it must not be suffered to let drop. All that
rich tide of eloquence that you prepared last night
with so much enthusiasm is out of place, and yet you
must not desert him, you must say something.’
So I said something, and I got him off. It made
my reputation. But an experience of that kind
is formative. A man must not bring his passions
to the Bar or to the Bench,” he added.
The story had slightly rekindled Archie’s
interest. “I could never deny,” he
began “I mean I can conceive that
some men would be better dead. But who are we
to know all the springs of God’s unfortunate
creatures? Who are we to trust ourselves where
it seems that God Himself must think twice before
He treads, and to do it with delight? Yes, with
delight. Tigris ut aspera.”
“Perhaps not a pleasant spectacle,”
said Glenalmond. “And yet, do you know,
I think somehow a great one.”
“I’ve had a long talk with him to-night,”
said Archie.
“I was supposing so,” said Glenalmond.
“And he struck me I
cannot deny that he struck me as something very big,”
pursued the son. “Yes, he is big. He
never spoke about himself; only about me. I suppose
I admired him. The dreadful part ”
“Suppose we did not talk about
that,” interrupted Glenalmond. “You
know it very well, it cannot in any way help that
you should brood upon it, and I sometimes wonder whether
you and I who are a pair of sentimentalists are
quite good judges of plain men.”
“How do you mean?” asked Archie.
“Fair judges, I mean,”
replied Glenalmond. “Can we be just to them?
Do we not ask too much? There was a word of yours
just now that impressed me a little when you asked
me who we were to know all the springs of God’s
unfortunate creatures. You applied that, as I
understood, to capital cases only. But does it I
ask myself does it not apply all through?
Is it any less difficult to judge of a good man or
of a half-good man, than of the worst criminal at
the bar? And may not each have relevant excuses?”
“Ah, but we do not talk of punishing
the good,” cried Archie.
“No, we do not talk of it,”
said Glenalmond. “But I think we do it.
Your father, for instance.”
“You think I have punished him?” cried
Archie.
Lord Glenalmond bowed his head.
“I think I have,” said
Archie. “And the worst is, I think he feels
it! How much, who can tell, with such a being?
But I think he does.”
“And I am sure of it,” said Glenalmond.
“Has he spoken to you, then?” cried Archie.
“O no,” replied the judge.
“I tell you honestly,”
said Archie, “I want to make it up to him.
I will go, I have already pledged myself to go, to
Hermiston. That was to him. And now I pledge
myself to you, in the sight of God, that I will close
my mouth on capital punishment and all other subjects
where our views may clash, for how long
shall I say? when shall I have sense enough? ten
years. Is that well?”
“It is well,” said my lord.
“As far as it goes,” said
Archie. “It is enough as regards myself,
it is to lay down enough of my conceit. But as
regards him, whom I have publicly insulted? What
am I to do to him? How do you pay attentions to
a an Alp like that?”
“Only in one way,” replied
Glenalmond. “Only by obedience, punctual,
prompt, and scrupulous.”
“And I promise that he shall
have it,” answered Archie. “I offer
you my hand in pledge of it.”
“And I take your hand as a solemnity,”
replied the judge. “God bless you, my dear,
and enable you to keep your promise. God guide
you in the true way, and spare your days, and preserve
to you your honest heart.” At that, he
kissed the young man upon the forehead in a gracious,
distant, antiquated way; and instantly launched, with
a marked change of voice, into another subject.
“And now, let us replenish the tankard; and
I believe, if you will try my Cheddar again, you would
find you had a better appetite. The Court has
spoken, and the case is dismissed.”
“No, there is one thing I must
say,” cried Archie. “I must say it
in justice to himself. I know I believe
faithfully, slavishly, after our talk he
will never ask me anything unjust. I am proud
to feel it, that we have that much in common, I am
proud to say it to you.”
The judge, with shining eyes, raised
his tankard. “And I think perhaps that
we might permit ourselves a toast,” said he.
“I should like to propose the health of a man
very different from me and very much my superior a
man from whom I have often differed, who has often
(in the trivial expression) rubbed me the wrong way,
but whom I have never ceased to respect and, I may
add, to be not a little afraid of. Shall I give
you his name?”
“The Lord Justice-Clerk, Lord
Hermiston,” said Archie, almost with gaiety;
and the pair drank the toast deeply.
It was not precisely easy to re-establish,
after these emotional passages, the natural flow of
conversation. But the judge eked out what was
wanting with kind looks, produced his snuff-box (which
was very rarely seen) to fill in a pause, and at last,
despairing of any further social success, was upon
the point of getting down a book to read a favourite
passage, when there came a rather startling summons
at the front door, and Carstairs ushered in my Lord
Glenkindie, hot from a midnight supper. I am
not aware that Glenkindie was ever a beautiful object,
being short, and gross-bodied, and with an expression
of sensuality comparable to a bear’s. At
that moment, coming in hissing from many potations,
with a flushed countenance and blurred eyes, he was
strikingly contrasted with the tall, pale, kingly figure
of Glenalmond. A rush of confused thought came
over Archie of shame that this was one
of his father’s elect friends; of pride, that
at the least of it Hermiston could carry his liquor;
and last of all, of rage, that he should have here
under his eyes the man that had betrayed him.
And then that too passed away; and he sat quiet, biding
his opportunity.
The tipsy senator plunged at once
into an explanation with Glenalmond. There was
a point reserved yesterday, he had been able to make
neither head nor tail of it, and seeing lights in
the house, he had just dropped in for a glass of porter and
at this point he became aware of the third person.
Archie saw the cod’s mouth and the blunt lips
of Glenkindie gape at him for a moment, and the recognition
twinkle in his eyes.
“Who’s this?” said
he. “What? is this possibly you, Don Quickshot?
And how are ye? And how’s your father?
And what’s all this we hear of you? It
seems you’re a most extraordinary leveller, by
all tales. No king, no parliaments, and your
gorge rises at the macers, worthy men! Hoot,
toot! Dear, dear me! Your father’s
son too! Most rideeculous!”
Archie was on his feet, flushing a
little at the reappearance of his unhappy figure of
speech, but perfectly self-possessed. “My
lord and you, Lord Glenalmond, my dear
friend,” he began, “this is a happy chance
for me, that I can make my confession and offer my
apologies to two of you at once.”
“Ah, but I don’t know
about that. Confession? It’ll be judeecial,
my young friend,” cried the jocular Glenkindie.
“And I’m afraid to listen to ye.
Think if ye were to make me a coanvert!”
“If you would allow me, my lord,”
returned Archie, “what I have to say is very
serious to me; and be pleased to be humorous after
I am gone!”
“Remember, I’ll hear nothing
against the macers!” put in the incorrigible
Glenkindie.
But Archie continued as though he
had not spoken. “I have played, both yesterday
and to-day, a part for which I can only offer the excuse
of youth. I was so unwise as to go to an execution;
it seems I made a scene at the gallows; not content
with which, I spoke the same night in a college society
against capital punishment. This is the extent
of what I have done, and in case you hear more alleged
against me, I protest my innocence. I have expressed
my regret already to my father, who is so good as
to pass my conduct over in a degree, and
upon the condition that I am to leave my law studies.”
...