As Berry and I Were Saying

by Dornford Yates

  “A nice reading-party,” said Daphne. “I can’t believe Dean Farrar’s—”

  “Not on your life,” said Berry. “If they saw a maiden approaching they offered up a short prayer and went and hid in a wood. And the one who didn’t was ‘sent to Coventry’. Never mind. The blacksmith’s wife had a very fat reminiscence.”

  “Bung it in,” said I. “Hadn’t the daughters any?”

  “Too young,” said Berry. “They seemed to live for the present. But there you are, you know – youth must be served. Well, their mother told me this. Her father was a notable smuggler; and a number of kegs of brandy were safely delivered to his house at the moment at which her mother was herself to be delivered of the lady who told me the tale. But on that particular night the excise officers were out. So the kegs were carried upstairs and hidden beneath the great bed. Armed with a warrant, the officers came to the house. They searched the rooms downstairs, but when they came to the bedroom, the midwife barred their path. They were allowed a glimpse. When they saw there was a woman in labour, they searched the rest of the house and went empty away. Very soon after they left, the blacksmith’s wife was born. The birth was surprisingly easy. This was because her mother had been anaesthetized. The fumes of the brandy, rising through the mattress, had put her out.

  “Well, Time went pleasantly on. March gave way to April, and the weather was that of June. After dinner we always studied, but, after all day in such air, our powers of concentration were not at their best.

  “We had three more days to go, and Roy and I were alone, in a ground-floor room. I’ve called the house an inn, but it was half a hotel. The room was on the small side, but it had a fine French window and this was open wide. And we were sitting at a table, trying to get the hang of a subject called ‘Torts’. The time was half-past ten, and the night was windless and dark. We were well up above a cove, and the tide was on the ebb. The regular lap of the waves enchanted the ear. But we were too much depressed to fall under any spells.

  “At last I shut my volume and looked at Roy.

  “‘We’ll never do it,’ I said, ‘because it can’t be done. In eleven weeks from now the slaughter-house doors will open and we shall go in. In gowns and caps and white ties. And after a fortnight of nightmares, we shall emerge. But it won’t be worth going in, for the subjects are eight in number and we are familiar with none. I don’t know what some of them mean. As for knowing their habits and manners – when Cousins tries to explain them, I cannot construe his words.’

  “‘I can’t put it better,’ said Roy. ‘But I can put it more shortly. Dress it up as you please, we both of us know we’re sunk.’

  “‘But I can’t be sunk,’ I cried. ‘I gave my word I’d get a degree with honours.’

  “‘So did I,’ said Roy. ‘But we’ve missed the tide. We should have worked for three years. You can’t compress three years’ study into eleven weeks.’

  “This was an obvious truth. And the obvious truth is always the most unpleasant. Like any bull of Basan, it gapes upon you with its mouth.

  “‘You’ve said it,’ said I. ‘But I’d give six months of my life to get an honours degree.’

  “My words seemed to make Roy think.

  “‘So would I,’ he said quietly. ‘And I mean that. Do you?’

  “‘I certainly do,’ said I. ‘What the hell’s six months?’

  “‘Then let’s do a deal,’ said Roy. ‘A deal with the Prince of Darkness. He gets us through Schools and we give him six months of our lives.’

  “‘I’m on,’ said I.

  “I’ve no defence to offer for what we did. But we were young and foolish and, I fear, like Gallio, we ‘cared for none of those things’. We rose and recited our contract. And then we resumed our seats.”

  “My darling,” said Daphne, “I’m inexpressibly shocked.”

  “You have every right to be. But let me go on.

  “For some moments neither of us spoke. But I think I shall always hear the lap of the waves below. And the darkness seemed thicker than ever.

  “I took a sudden resolution.

  “‘Roy,’ I said, ‘we’re damned fools. Let’s take our words back.’

  “He laughed what I said to scorn and accused me of having cold feet. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I have. I’m going to revoke what I said and I beg that you’ll do the same.’ But he only laughed the more.

  “I stood up and ate my words. I solemnly revoked my contract, while Roy sat there and laughed. And then I sat down. Soon after, we went to bed.

  “The reading-party dispersed. I went back to White Ladies and Roy went up to Scotland to get a week or two’s fishing before the term began.

  “I went up to Oxford early, and when I was settled in, I had a word with my servant and sported my oak.”

  “Translation, please,” said Jill.

  “Every set of rooms in Oxford has a massive outside door, which is called ‘the oak’. Except when the owner is ‘down’, it is never shut. When it is shut or ‘sported’, it cannot be opened from without, except with a key. The key is in the charge of your servant. If, therefore, you pay a call, to find ‘the oak sported’, it means that your friend is away or must not be disturbed. Except in my own case, I’ve never known an oak sported, unless the fellow was ‘down’. But I was determined to work with all my might, and I knew that I could not do this, unless my front door was shut. My acquaintance was too wide.

  “For the next eight weeks, I worked ten hours a day. I came out to go to Cousins and dine in Hall. I took no exercise. My servant served my breakfast and luncheon: thereafter he brought me cider every two hours: and a clean towel and fresh water, for I worked with a towel round my head.

  “Roy never went to Cousins. One day I asked where he was.

  “I was told – in a nursing-home, very seriously ill. Blood-poisoning. Whilst he was fishing in Scotland, he had knelt on a pen-knife’s blade. This had entered the knee-cap. He had been within an ace of losing his leg. They might have to take it off yet, unless he improved.

  “Time went on, and I worked like any madman, week after week. My system was simple. There were, for instance, two papers on Roman Law. I didn’t know what that meant, but I had a first-rate text-book three hundred pages long. One hundred and fifty pages, I learned by heart. I learned half of everything, and prayed for a question or two in the half that I knew. For one subject, I had no time. It was called ‘Jurisprudence’. I didn’t know what the word meant, but when I looked it up, it said ‘The Science of Law’. Well, I didn’t know what that meant, either. I had two enormous textbooks on Jurisprudence alone. The sight of them gave me a pain. But their leaves were uncut; so my servant took them back to the shop and they credited my account. But I learned ‘Cousins’ spots’ by heart.”

  “Translation, please.”

  “Cousins was a very good coach. And he had been a coach for a number of years. He always kept the papers which had been set, and when he saw that some questions had not been asked for some time he used to select those questions as likely to be asked. This, on every subject. Then to his chosen band he would dictate those questions and follow them up with the answers which they should give. It was the purest gamble. The questions were ten in number. He thought he’d done very well, if he’d spotted three. We called them ‘Cousins’ spots’.

  “I was very scared when I’d only a week to go. I knew half my Roman Law: but if all of the questions came in the other half – well, I was properly sunk. I knew, let us say, a third of everything else. And knew it perfectly. I didn’t know what it meant, but I knew the words. But of Jurisprudence, I knew nothing – except ‘Cousins’ spots’. And the Jurisprudence paper was almost the last.

  “At last the day came. We had ten days of it then…morning and afternoon…two papers a day. I had luck all along the line. Two-fifths of the questions asked were in the sections I knew. That meant four out of ten. Not too good, perhaps. But those four answers were perfect, for I knew the stuff by heart. Bu
t the Jurisprudence paper had yet to come. You see, the thing was this. I knew Cousins’ spots by heart, but I didn’t know what they meant. Cousins gave question and answer. Very good. But if the question was phrased in a different way, to recognize it would be beyond my power. Do you wonder that I was uneasy?

  “When the paper was laid before me on a Friday afternoon, I was afraid to read it, and that is the honest truth. And when, at last, I did, I could hardly believe my eyes. Cousins had spotted eight of the ten questions in the very same words.

  “I have no hesitation in saying that my papers on Jurisprudence were among the very finest that ever were handed in. I was still writing at the end of the long three hours. Still pouring out Cousins’ knowledge. Three hours was not long enough to get it all down.

  “So I got my Honours Degree.

  “Roy got his, too. He was given an Aegrotat.”

  “Sorry. Translation, please.”

  “Aegrotat is Latin. It means ‘He is sick’. To be awarded an Aegrotat Degree, a man must be too ill to enter the Schools. More. He must be in Oxford: the Examiners must see him and must be satisfied that he is too sick to attend: they must also question him, but that is a matter of form.

  “Roy was brought down from Scotland by motor-ambulance. He then was carried into The Acland Home. There the Examiners saw him. Then he was driven to London and put back to bed. In time, he recovered completely. But the time from the day on which he knelt on the knife to the day on which he left his nursing-home was almost exactly six months.

  “I have told you nothing but the truth. And now may I add a postscript to what I’ve said. The burden of The Bible apart, I’ve seen so many paintings – all of them works of art – of Heaven and Hell. In all the great galleries of Europe. I’ve studied their composition and found it beyond belief: I’ve studied their infinite detail and found it a miracle: but until I returned from Cousins’ reading-party, I fear I gave little thought to their raison d’être. Thereafter, I did. For I had been taught that the Powers of Good and of Evil do exist. You see, I had brushed against one…one lovely April night…on the Cornish coast.”

  7

  “Bedford Row,” said Berry. “Your office was there, and I find it a comfortable name.”

  “It was once a most comfortable house. And The Row was a blind alley, so it was very quiet. For all I know, it is now. We had the whole house. Each partner had one floor. There wasn’t a typewriter in the building. Every single letter was written by hand. And we had to do many indictments. These had to be written on sheepskin, and the clerk that was writing them out in a copper-plate hand, had to pounce the skin as he went, or the ink would have run.”

  “The middle ages?” said Daphne.

  “Very near. But that was how it was done in 1909. There were any number of clerks and they all worked early and late. But they were always cheerful. And one or two were wits and made me laugh very much. I was very happy there. High and low were terribly good to me.”

  “You worked damned hard.”

  “So did everyone else. The work that was done in that office would have made many think. But it was never dull.”

  “Were you concerned in the Stinie Morrison case?”

  “No. But I saw him in court. And I know something about it that didn’t appear in the press. And I’m giving nothing away, for it wasn’t our case. The Treasury dealt with that from first to last.”

  “Proceed.”

  “Well, Stinie Morrison was an unpleasant man. If I told you his main occupation, you’d ask me to leave the house. But he had a side line or two. One was robbery with violence. He’d done seven years for that. And then he added murder. He was a strapping fellow – a great, big Jew. To judge by his demeanour, he rather fancied himself. His features weren’t too bad, but they were terribly coarse and more than life-size. His hands were simply enormous – I’ve never forgotten his hands. He used to strike attitudes – at least, he did in the dock. And his eyes were glittering.”

  “I gather,” said Berry, “that his charm was, shall we say, fleeting?”

  “It was not conspicuous. One night he kept an appointment. This was on Clapham Common. The man who also kept it, failed to return. This was because he was dead. Twenty-four hours later, Morrison was under arrest. The evidence against him was clear, but not altogether conclusive. The information against him left no shadow of doubt; but, as I have said before, information is not always evidence.

  “At the police-court he pleaded not guilty and reserved his defence. At the Old Bailey he was defended by what is known as ‘a thieves’ lawyer’.”

  My sister sat up.

  “Whatever’s ‘a thieves’ lawyer’, Boy?”

  “It was a survival. I don’t for a moment suppose that there are any left. I think this particular fellow was one of the last; and he died a long time ago. For convenience, I’ll call him Rose. You see, for many years now no man has been called to the Bar, unless a Bencher has vouched for him: but in the old days you didn’t have to be vouched for. Hence, ‘the thieves’ lawyer’. The latter knew no law and never attempted to learn. The etiquette of the Bar meant nothing to him. He touted for work and often enough was never instructed by a solicitor. He was quite unscrupulous; and his name was better known in Seven Dials than it was in his Inn of Court. But – he had the gift of the gab. By God, he could talk. And in his crude way he was able. He knew what prisoners want – and that is their money’s worth. And the lower-class prisoner thinks that he has his money’s worth, if his counsel browbeats the witnesses for the Crown, harangues the jury, lodges absurd objections and wastes the time of the Court. His conviction, which usually follows, he attributes not to the incompetence of his counsel, but to the malice of the jury or the injustice of the Judge.”

  Jill laid a hand upon mine.

  “Didn’t you put ‘a thieves’ lawyer’ into Anthony Lyveden?”

  “Yes, my darling, I did. I called him Blink, and I must at once confess that I had Rose in mind. I’m afraid I stretched a point, to put him in, for the ‘thieves’ lawyer’ never went Circuit. The Old Bailey and the Sessions were the covers he used to draw.

  “The doyen of them in my day was old Daniel —. He provided so much amusement that you couldn’t help having a weakness for ‘Dannel’, as he was called. But he must have been nearly eighty and he was past his prime. He hadn’t an ‘h’ to his name. He knew the practice all right, but he knew no law at all. For him, the rules of evidence didn’t exist. He didn’t know what they meant. And to hear ‘Dannel’ arguing in the Court of Criminal Appeal—”

  “Oh, go on,” said Berry.

  “It’s true. I’ve seen him there. The Judges loved him. He was like an old clown. When he made some absurd observation and everyone laughed, he laughed as loudly as any, as if he’d made a good joke. But the Judges were very gentle. Darling would lean forward. ‘But, Mr —, if you admit, as you do, that the jury had every reason to bear that fact in mind, there goes your case.’ ‘That is me point, me lord.’ And Darling would sigh and bury his face in his arms, and the Lord Chief would shake like a jelly, and Channell would strive ’n vain to master his voice.”

  “Who was the Lord Chief Justice – I mean, of your time?”

  “Lord Alverstone. He was a splendid chief and a splendid Judge. So far as I ever saw, he had only one fault. And that was that he was impatient. But he couldn’t fairly be blamed, for he had a lightning brain. If ever I was before him, I always bore this in mind and cut what I had to say as short as ever I could. With the result that he used to remember my name and was always kindness itself. And now let’s get back to Stinie Morrison.”

  “Who tried him?”

  “Darling. And there was a Judge. Taking him all round, Darling was the best Queen’s Bench Judge of my day. He was an admirable lawyer. His perception was most acute. He was intensely human. And he had a brilliant wit. The Press very seldom got it – his wit was too fine for them. Real Attic salt. Sometimes he tossed them a trifle which was not worthy o
f him. The connoisseur sat in his court, when he had time to spare. And savoured his quiet asides. I never once saw him smile. He was always point-device, and his wig was always powdered – the last on the Bench. He was a very fine scholar, as many Judges were. He could jest in Latin and Greek. And French. When his son was at Harrow, Mr Justice Channell used to write to the boy in Greek. I don’t commend the practice, but I don’t think a High Court Judge could do that today. I may be wrong. And now let’s get back to Stinie Morrison.

  “Stinie Morrison had a bad record. He had three previous convictions, all for crimes of violence, for one of which, as I’ve said, he had done seven years. But I don’t have to tell you that a previous conviction must never be mentioned in court. The Judge knows all about them – the list’s lying on his desk. But, for obvious reasons, the jury must never know. To this rule, there is one exception. If the prisoner (or the prisoner’s counsel) should attack the character of a witness for the Crown, then the Crown may give his previous convictions in evidence. If, therefore, you are defending a man who has been convicted before, when you are cross-examining a witness for the Crown, you take particular care to ask no question which might be said to reflect upon his integrity.