FullReads

“Any of you gentlemen want breakfast?” Those who have money and appetites order; some order for the sake of the tea alone; and some “shout” two or three extra breakfasts for those who had nothing on them when they were run in. We low people can be very kind to each other in trouble. But now it’s time to call us out by the lists, marshal us up in the passage and draft us into court. Ladies first. But I forgot that I am out on bail, and that the foregoing belongs to another occasion. Or was it only imagination, or hearsay? Journalists have got themselves run in before now, in order to see and hear and feel and smell for themselves–and write.

“Silence! Order in the Court.” I come like a shot out of my nightmare, or trance, or what you will, and we all rise as the magistrate takes his seat. None of us noticed him come in, but he’s there, and I’ve a quaint idea that he bowed to his audience. Kindly, humorous Mr Isaacs, whom we have lost, always gave me that idea. And, while he looks over his papers, the women seem to group themselves, unconsciously as it were, with Mrs Johnson as front centre, as though they depended on her in some vague way. She has slept it off and tidied, or been tidied, up, and is as clear-headed as she ever will be. Crouching directly behind her, supported and comforted on one side by One-Eyed Kate, and on the other by Cock-Eyed Sal, is the poor bedraggled little resister of the Law, sobbing convulsively, her breasts and thin shoulders heaving and shaking under her openwork blouse–the girl who seemed to pity Jesus of Nazareth last night in her cell. There’s very little inciting to resist about her now. Most women can cry when they like, I know, and many have cried men to jail and the gallows; but here in this place, if a woman’s tears can avail her anything, who, save perhaps a police-court solicitor and gentleman-by-Act-of-Parliament, would, or dare, raise a sneer.

I wonder what the Nazarene would have to say about it if He came in to speak for her. But probably they’d send Him to the receiving house as a person of unsound mind, or give Him worse punishment for drunkenness and contempt of court.

His Worship looks up.

Mrs Johnson (from the dock): “Good morning, Mr Isaacs. How do you do? You’re looking very well this morning, Mr Isaacs.”

His Worship (from the Bench): “Thank you, Mrs Johnson. I’m feeling very well this, morning.”

There’s a pause, but there is no “laughter.” The would-be satellites don’t know whom the laugh might be against. His Worship bends over the papers again, and I can see that he is having trouble with that quaintly humorous and kindly smile, or grin, of his. He has as hard a job to control his smile and get it off his face as some magistrates have to get a smile on to theirs. And there’s a case coming by and by that he’ll have to look a bit serious over. However–

“Jane Johnson!”

Mrs Johnson is here present, and reminds the Sergeant that she is.

Then begins, or does begin in most courts, the same dreary old drone, like the giving out of a hymn, of the same dreary old charge:

“You — Are — Charged — With — Being — Drunk — And — Disorderly — In — Such — And — Such — A — Street — How — Do — You — Plead — Guilty — Or — Not — Guilty?” But they are less orthodox here. The “disorderly” has dropped out of Mrs Johnson’s charge somehow, on the way from the charge room. I don’t know what has been going on behind the scenes, but, anyway, it is Christmas-time, and the Sergeant seems anxious to let Mrs Johnson off lightly. It means anything from twenty-four hours or five shillings to three months on the Island for her. The lawyers and the police–especially the lawyers–are secretly afraid of Mrs Johnson.