The Jury (31 page)

“I'm sure it won't.”

“I'd like you to meet my children,” said the Major, a little dubiously. Well-washed insolent young persons, Evangeline and Edgar. Ten to one they'd be smilingly disagreeable to the little woman. “Well, here we are. back at the scene of action, what!”

He got himself carefully out of the cab and turned to place a hand at her elbow. How very old-world, she thought. But gratification mingled with her amusement. She felt like a precious piece of porcelain.

“Here we are, here we are,” he said again, as they mounted the steps to the Court. “Moreover”—he consulted his watch —“there's exactly four minutes to go before we fall in. Good staff-work, Mrs Cranshaw. Good staff-work.”

As they passed into the great hall she placed a hand on his sleeve.

“We shall meet upstairs,” she said. “And thank you, Major,” she recited, like a good little girl at the end of a party, “thank you for a very nice lunch.”

AND SO when the Major heard Cyril Gaskin say “Miss Cranshaw, I believe?” he experienced a spasm of indignation which in logic it would have been hard to justify. He thereafter blew his nose with peculiar emphasis, like a motorist sounding his horn at an impudent pedestrian. Who the deuce was he, this sleek young fellow, that he must needs take so much upon himself? The foreman was evidently a duffer, but he looked like a gentleman, not a shopwalker, snorted the Major under cover of his nasal performance. And for little Mrs Cranshaw to be singled out for this officious attention …

“Mrs
Cranshaw, sir,” said the Major, in a gentle voice that did no sort of justice to his inward ferocity.

“Pardon, sir?” asked Cyril.

Pardon. Pardon. Just what he
would
say. “The lady's name is
Mrs
Cranshaw.”

“I see,” said Gaskin. “Well, Mrs Cranshaw, what's the verdict?”

Ignoring Gaskin with a coolness that was nectar to Major Forth, Clare turned to Charles Underhay. “I don't think there's much doubt he did it, Mr Chairman, do you?”

“Frankly, I don't,” answered Charles gravely. He forgot his shyness. “But we mustn't be hasty. We must hear everyone's views. Don't you agree, Major?”

“Most emphatically, sir. The way we have in the service, in courts martial, you know, is to let the youngest officer speak first. And so on, in inverse order of seniority.”

Charles nodded. “Quite so.” He had a profound respect for the army and all its ways.

“Well, there's no doubt who's the eldest here,” went on the Major. “My turn comes last. Mrs Cranshaw has given us her opinion. So perhaps one of the other ladies …” He sketched a courteous bow in the direction of Lucy Prynne.

“If you ask me,” said Mr Bayfield, his impatience boiling over, “I'm of the young gent's way of thinking. Surely to goodness we've heard enough
talk
about the business.” Suppose it had been Dolly and that George of hers. Dolly, who might be crippled for life. Too many of these young sparks in the world.

Blanche Izeley, staring at Bayfield with frightened eager eyes, leaned forward and opened her mouth to speak.

But the others were waiting for Lucy. Blanche was unnoticed.

He asked me to call him Edward. Fancy that. “Did you know I worked in a shop, Mr Seagrave?” She burnt her boats, for he'd not want her to call him Edward now he knew she worked in a shop. He himself was something very distinguished, she felt sure. He might even be an editor, or a poet. Anyhow something awfully nice. But all he did in answer to her confession about the shop was to stammer a repetition of his request.

“Well, I'll try,” said Lucy. “It's very kind of you, I'm sure.”

“It's so absurdly formal, that other,” he explained. “And you—are you always called Miss Prynne?”

She laughed in happy confusion. “Of course not. How absurd of you!”

“Isn't your first name Lucy?” he asked, pronouncing the name as though it had been a prayer.

“You
do
say funny things sometimes.”

“Really? What have I said funny?”

“About everybody calling me Miss Prynne. Mother, frinstance. Did you think Mother called me Miss Prynne?”

He ignored that. “Lucy is a very beautiful name,” he solemnly announced.

“But
did
you know I worked in a shop?” Lucy insisted.

“I didn't, indeed. But I'm most interested to hear it. What sort of a shop is it?”

“I have to design things,” said Lucy, with her curious self-defensive trick of never giving a direct answer if she could avoid it.

“Then you must be very talented,” remarked Edward gravely, not quite keeping the surprise out of his voice. “What sort of things do you design?”

“Of course I'm not always designing,” she explained. “I sometimes help in the showroom.”

“Ah, the showroom. Dresses, perhaps?”

“Brenda's better in the showroom than I am. And I'm better at the designing part.”

“You'll think me very ignorant,” said Edward, with the blandest irony. “But I don't even know who Brenda is.”

“Madame Brenda, she calls herself. But she's really Brenda Willingdon. I was at school with her sister Phyllis, but she's married.”

“Brenda is married?”

“No, Phyllis.”

“Then Miss Willingdon, Brenda, is your business partner. Have I got it right?” “In a way.”

“And you design dresses?”

“Well,” said Lucy, “I'm more successful with hats, in Brenda's opinion.”

“Dresses and hats,” said Edward, as though counting his spoils. From his smile you would have judged that the information was precious to him in proportion to the trouble he had had in extracting it.

What was there in this conversation that it should have changed the direction and quality of her life? The change was not pure happiness. The return of spring to a heart so long wintered, and so stubborn to resist the genial invasion, was at times exquisitely painful, like the return of sensation to frozen fingers. By incessant sacrifice at the altar of Father's Wickedness and Mother's Need she had trained herself to turn away from anything that might tempt her to a life of her own: she was as busy, almost as mindless, almost as neuter, as a worker-bee. These shafts of strange joy brought pain and confusion into her too-ordered life. And there were dire specific consequences. Edward and Mother were irreconcilable
loyalties: the new image distracted her from the old. She was betrayed into what she could not but know was wickedness, for she began, with a cunning that appalled her, to deceive Mother, spinning tales about having a bit of supper with Brenda in town for a treat, when in fact she was to be Edward's alarmed, delighted guest. Candour she had never had since that day, so many years ago, when Father and Aunt Lena had put an abrupt end to her childhood. She was incorrigibly secretive even about matters of no importance. And this habit of evasion, combined with an unsuspected talent for plain lying, served her present ends well enough, though at incalculable cost to her peace of mind. She had told her mother nothing—nothing significant—about Edward Seagrave; and was resolved to tell nothing. Sooner or later, if the thing went on, it must all come out, she dimly supposed; but she would not hasten the revelation by so much as a word or a glance.

For if Mother were to learn the truth before she, Lucy, was irreparably committed, Lucy, as Lucy well knew, would be outmanœuvred in a moment: at the first sighing breath, at the first plaintive or reproachful word, she would capitulate, her hatred of Father and her angry compassion for Mother would gush out in passionate and final re-surrender, and she would renew her lifelong allegiance to this woman—once a young, gay, affectionate mother—who demanded (believed Lucy) not only her company and attention but her undivided heart. The lurking fear that 'something might happen to Mother' sometimes presented itself in smiling guise. She remembered that figure at the stairhead on the night of Edward's first and only visit to the house, and remembered her eager, frightened, ashamed, involuntary thought: If Mother were to lose her balance … And throughout the trial of Roderick Strood, while she listened to the evidence in her meek, muddled fashion, somewhere in the darkness of her being, only just below consciousness, floated images of what had been and what might have been in her own life: of Father, of Mother, of Edward, and of how the whole posture of things may be changed for one person by the death of another. This man Strood, with his eyes like Father's, dark and brilliant, had wanted, like Father, to be rid of his lawful
wife. Supposing Father had done what this man did.… Lucy caught the merest glimpse of this theory and of what followed from it: that if Mother … if Father … if anything
had
happened to Mother, she and Edward … well, everything would be different and simple, there would be no problem left to solve.

But the surface of her mind was engaged, conscientiously enough, with the business of the moment. She quite believed herself to be absorbed in the dreadful story that Sir John Buckhorn so persuasively unfolded. She quite clearly saw the prisoner pouring poison into that cup of malted milk, which Mrs Tucker had unsuspectingly left on the hall-table. She quite clearly saw it, and seeing is believing. While Sir John was speaking it hardly occurred to her to doubt the prisoner's guilt. He had such a nice deep voice, Sir John; he was so confident and calm, and you could see that he was frightfully clever. But when Mr Harcombe held the floor, somehow it put a different complexion on things; for he too seemed frightfully clever, and just as confident as Sir John. Was it possible that the prisoner hadn't done it after all? But if he hadn't, how did the poison get into the cup? Besides, he must have done it, because he did, didn't he, want to get rid of his poor wife? He must have done, because of that woman. That woman who didn't seem to know the difference between right and wrong. But these foreigners are like that. Not all foreigners, because we must be broad-minded, but anyhow foreigners aren't the same as English people: they're foreigners. Nice to hear their funny way of talking; you had to laugh; but you couldn't rely on what they said, and of course that woman—for even a wicked woman she supposed could be fond of a man in a sort of way—of course that woman would try to save him if she could, and you couldn't blame her for it. Not blaming her wasn't the same thing as believing her. Still Mr Harcombe spoke so awfully nicely, and seemed so very sure, that it was difficult to know
what
to believe. And the Judge's speech was more muddling than ever. Lucy was ready to do her duty if only someone would tell her what her duty was; but from what the Judge said you really couldn't make out what he thought. Had the man done it or hadn't he? That was what Lucy wanted to be
told, and to have these important and learned gentlemen in wigs telling you quite different things made it very confusing indeed.

There was no doubt that Father would have been glad enough to poison Mother, instead of having to pay her thirty shillings a week. And all men were like that, once they gave way to their evil passions. That woman was behind it all. All men, except Edward, were like that. That was the difference between love and lust. Real love was Edward's kind of love. Gentle and considerate, a nice warm friendly feeling. She knew quite well that Edward was as pure as pure. Everything he said and did showed that there was nothing
horrid
in his love. All that side of life was something he never so much as thought about. How different from this man in the dock! An educated man too. It was dreadful, dreadful and unfair. Unfair that she should be dragged into it. The thought of what would be done to him if they found him guilty was too hideous to be imagined, even for a moment. The Judge (or was it Sir John?) had said that the jury wasn't to consider that part of it; and Lucy was glad enough to obey the injunction. Her plan, if anything so vague can be called a plan, was to let the others decide and then agree with them. If they said he was guilty—well, she couldn't stand up against eleven of them, could she? And, indeed, that visual picture of the man pouring poison into a cup of milk had become firmly lodged in her imagination: there was no shifting it. It was as clear as that of King Alfred burning the cakes, which had been part of her mental furniture since childhood.

And now they had got her in a corner (ran her panic-stricken thought) and wanted to make her speak first, because she was the youngest. She saw the Major's inquiring glance, and the foreman's, and that Mrs Cranshaw's. They were all looking at her.

“What's your opinion, Miss Prynne? Guilty or not guilty?”

Harried and cornered, she shrank into herself. A look of mulish obstinacy, masking fear, settled on her face. Her reply was too indistinct to be heard.

“We didn't quite catch that,” said Charles Underhay kindly.
“It's a disagreeable business. We all feel that. But would you mind telling us …”

“What do you want to know for?” asked Lucy sullenly.

Poor girl, she's a cretin, said Charles to himself. He smiled encouragingly. “Well, it's obvious, isn't it, we've all got to vote one way or the other.”

“Why do you have to ask me first?” insisted Lucy.

Blanche Izeley leaned forward again, and again she opened her mouth to speak.

“I want to say,” said Blanche Izeley, her voice harsh with effort, for she was not at home in this company, “I want to say that I don't believe in capital punishment.”

Major Forth exclaimed “Tchah!” and had manifest difficulty in leaving it at that. A murmur arose among the twelve. Tongues were loosed, and nervousness was forgotten.

“That's neither here nor there,” exclaimed Charles, almost testily. “Quite right!” said Cyril Gaskin. “Hear, hear! Hear, hear!” grumbled the Major. “If that don't take the bun!” remarked Mr Bayfield despairingly. Even Arthur Cheed let fall an exclamation of protest. And Roger Coates uttered a snort of derision.