World From Rough Stones

by Malcolm Macdonald

  Prendergast waited until the laughter died. "Mr. Fox," he said, "if any humour be lacking in this court, you may firmly rely upon me to provide it. But you shall not provoke me to anger, sir! Oh no! Don't imagine that."

  Fox nodded, satisfied, and returned to Starr. "You were about to say what was so especial about these three men that you selected them from among all the remainder as your first and most urgent responsibility."

  "They were nearest," Starr said.

  "No other reason."

  "Not as comes to mind."

  "Then it was presumably your intention to arrest everyone in sight, beginning with the nearest, whether fighting or no."

  "No. That was not in my mind."

  "Then you return us to the puzzle, Captain. Why these three? They were not fighting. They offered no resistance. They were merely the nearest."

  "That's it, sir. The nearest."

  "Did you feel that your men needed a little practice after their long journey? Two or three easy arrests before they waded in to the real affray?"

  Starr looked unhappily about him.

  "For God's sake," Stevenson said, ostensibly to Nora but loud enough for all to hear, "why doesn't he just tell the truth—Jack Whitaker pointed them out."

  Everyone turned to him and he looked around, shocked to have been overheard. He stood up and apologized humbly for his unintentional interruption.

  "Far be it from me to cavil at any interruption that may hasten these proceedings," Prendergast said as he turned to Starr. "Did Mr. Whitaker point these three out to you?"

  "He did, sir."

  "Then you should have said so."

  Fox, who had been staring uncertainly at Stevenson ever since his interjection, turned back to Starr. "In what words?"

  "He said: 'Those are the three behind all this.'"

  A great deal of irrelevant testimony followed, which, though it was clearly unrelated to the charge of obstruction, Prendergast permitted over Fox's repeated and increasingly strenuous objections. In fact, the police were making so bad a case of it that there was a growing likelihood of the verdict going on to an inquiry and being thrown out on at least a dozen technicalities. Stevenson shook his head in disgust at the incompetence, and Prendergast, noticing the gesture and interpreting it correctly, pulled himself together and began to run an entirely tighter trial. Finally, when a policeman who had an ear severed was produced, and Fox had quickly established that the prisoners were, by then, well on their way to the lock-up, Prendergast commanded the unfortunate police solicitor to economize on their case "so strictly that only evidence relevant to the charge" was brought.

  Not long after that, Stevenson was called. There was an expectant coughing and whispering and a general crossing and uncrossing of legs. Nora filled with pride at the simple, confident way he stood, facing the two solicitors.

  For the best part of thirty minutes, largely unprompted by questions from the prosecution, he gave a plain man's account of the week's events. He spoke without notes and in a low, almost monotonous key, avoiding any suggestion of drama. It was a modest and well received performance—over-modest perhaps, in that it credited Fate with certain achievements that more properly lay at John Stevenson's own door.

  And when, half-shamefaced at his own weakness, he outlined the extraordinary lengths to which he had gone in order to reconcile the men to his offer, even after they formed their picket, Prendergast, indigo with rage, thundered at him: "It seems to me you bent yourself dangerously far to accommodate them."

  "And it seems to me," Stevenson snapped back, "that I did no more than a just man should ask of himself. I'm not the sort of master to relish the thought of seeing his men led off in fetters."

  The sudden fire in his voice, after his long and monotonous account, was especially effective, and Prendergast had to quell the applause before Stevenson could continue. His story left no doubt among his hearers that he was a good if somewhat simple master, driven to unwanted measures by three dangerous and violent malcontents who had infiltrated and unsettled a formerly happy working force. Once they had been removed, the seven remaining pickets had come voluntarily to him and confessed their error—and had even asked to be taken back on. And so he had agreed, on condition that—by way of forfeit—they remain on their former rate for three months before they earn the right to bonus.

  Now there was tumultuous applause and some people even wept openly to see such goodness and charity and forbearance so quietly and manfully displayed. But, looking around the crowded room, he noticed Arabella Thornton sitting inconspicuously in the corner. Her level, unblinking gaze held his in steady contempt. He was glad he had not noticed her earlier. Meanwhile, Thornton himself, sitting beside her, nodded his heartiest approval.

  Mr. Fox, who had made surprisingly few notes during the course of this evidence, rose to cross-examine.

  "Mr. Stevenson. Why, on the evening of Tuesday last, the eve of these unhappy events, did you receive a visit from the chairman of this bench of magistrates, the Reverend Doctor Prendergast?"

  For less than a second there was utter silence; then uproar broke loose.

  "What are you implying, sir?" Prendergast roared.

  "I imply nothing, Doctor," Fox said smoothly, when the room was again quiet enough for him to be heard. "But I think we may be left to infer that director of the Manchester and Leeds railway and a contractor to that railway have, in part at least, a common cause. Against the working man."

  "Then you're wrong!" Stevenson's shout was loud enough to drown the rest and to silence even Prendergast. "I have no cause against any working man. On the contrary. It's his very opposite—the non-working man—as brings me grief!"

  Above the laughter Fox shouted. "Clever! Clever! But you shall not slide out so easily."

  "I do not seek to slide out at all. It is perfectly true that his Honour visited me last Tuesday—not as magistrate but as railway director. But I warn you, Mr. Fox, not to press too hard to hear what passed between us. For it goes quite contrary to your inference."

  "Indeed!" Fox's confidence was unshaken. "We shall let the public be the judge of that."

  Prendergast, catching Stevenson's eye, had the sense to keep quiet.

  "He came to warn me," Stevenson said, "that I was alone in any dispute between myself and my men. I could expect no help from the board of the Manchester and Leeds, no financial support, no accommodation of timetable. He reminded me it had taken but an hour to appoint me and to unseat me would take even less time."

  Fox began to sneer.

  "Indeed," Stevenson went on, as if the memory had just returned to him, "I believe the landlord can corroborate me, for he overheard part of our talk."

  "Oh," Fox was nonplussed. Then, playing for time, he added: "Did you believe in this warning?"

  "In principle, yes, though not in detail. I could see why he felt constrained to tell me as he did."

  Fox having started the hare could not abandon it there, but he knew he was now gambling on being nimble enough to spot a chink in whatever Stevenson might say. "Perhaps you will enlighten us," he said.

  "I could see that, to the board of the Manchester and Leeds, I must have appeared to be vacillating. To that degree, it made sense to send an emissary with some such message of encouragement to stiffen my backbone."

  The renewed laughter would surely, he thought, force the attorney to abandon this line—which must have looked so promising when he had stood up to begin his cross-examination. Stevenson felt himself relax and immediately had to force himself to remain vigilant, for he was not yet out of the forest.

  Fox made one last effort to gain some advantage from this meeting between magistrate and contractor. "Do you mean you did not discuss the strike in any detail? You did not, for instance, discuss the type of sentence a striker might face?"

  "Of course we did ye daft pennyworth!" Stevenson said, provoking gales of laughter.

  "Mr. Stevenson!" Prendergast shouted, and though Stevenson knew it to be a
shout of alarm he chose to take it as one of outrage.

  "I apologize, your honour," he said. "But really! These attorneys seem to imagine that we men of business go about our work as carelessly as they go about preparing a case!"

  For the first time the laughter unnerved Fox. "We shall see," he said automatically, before it seemed to penetrate to him that Stevenson had actually made a serious confession. "What sentence did the pair of you decide would be appropriate for these three men?" It came too late to have any real force, but it was, even so, a telling question.

  "Naturally, we discussed sentences in relation to no particular man or group of men—only in relation to the offence committed and the state of the law with regard to such offences. Again, I would warn you not to press me, for once more, the answers would run contrary to points you may wish to establish."

  It was still bait that Fox could not resist, though he alone, in all that room, thought benefit might come of it. Metcalfe sank his head in his hands and there remained. "So—after these terrible threats are delivered, you turn at once to an abstract consideration of the law! That is somewhat hard to believe."

  "I care not a fig what you believe, sir. I'm sworn here to tell the truth. And the truth is that there had been talk at Summit Tunnel of secret oaths being sworn— for which, as his Honour then told me—the penalty may be transportation for life. I told him I'd take no active part in bringing or supporting proceedings that led to such a savage sentence. I said further that I thought three months with hard labour severe enough. And I think I know at least three men in this room who, if they are sensible of the way their case is being conducted, will be glad such a conversation occurred!"

  In the buzz of approval that followed, Metcalfe tugged at the attorney's cloak and whispered something in his ear.

  "Very well, Mr. Stevenson. Let us set aside that for a moment and come to the day itself. You say you sent your assistant, Mr. Whitaker, for the constabulary. At what time would that be?"

  "At about ten minutes before seven o'clock."

  "So it was before the arrival of the bricklayers?"

  "During. Half had arrived and were standing awaiting the arrival of the other half."

  "But before they—the bricklayers—formed what you choose to call 'pickets'?"

  "Yes. It was before that."

  "So yours was, in fact, the first hostile act."

  "Only by the perverted logic that calls the constabulary enemies and makes brothers of lawbreakers."

  At this point, Metcalfe stood and said to Prendergast: "Sir, I wish to dissociate myself from this defence and conduct my own."

  Fox glanced briefly at him and then looked down.

  "Very well," Prendergast sighed and consulted his watch. "You shall have your chance later. You two others!" They stood up, too. "Do you wish to do the same?"

  Hope and Burroughs looked miserably at one another and then at Metcalfe. "We could never talk like what you can, Tom," Hope said. They shook their heads and sat again.

  "You have a vote of confidence, Mr. Fox," Prendergast said.

  Fox, his voice almost obliterated by the embarrassment, said: "At least Mr. Stevenson you cannot deny you left the workings before the trouble began?"

  "Speak up!" several voices urged.

  Fox had to repeat the question.

  "Mrs. Thornton had arrived on horseback with news of the approach of the Irish. Mr. Thornton could not leave the working, with the trespassers being on it. I had business in Todmorden…"

  Fox recovered sufficiently to say: "You are simply repeating your main testimony. I wish to hear about one specific offer you made to the Irish. And I would remind you that Mrs. Thornton is in the court and could be called."

  Stevenson laughed. "Really Mr. Fox, ye spend half the afternoon protesting that every mention of the Irish is irrelevant (in which, I may say, I heartily agree)—and now it is you who is most eager to parade them before us yet again."

  "And you who is least so," Fox said above the chuckling and laughter.

  "Not at all. If you called Mrs. Thornton she'd probably tell you—as I do, too—that the band we met was not a vicious, rioting mob, but a cheerful, roistering motley."

  "Yet they had smashed the windows out of four houses in Todmorden!"

  "Quite! The very point I was about to make. Your Irish are as volatile as your Latins. And though they were cheerful and carefree when we met them, there was no telling what another dry mile or two might not do. So I offered them my hospitality."

  "Yet there was no liquor to offer."

  "So I later learned."

  "There was no question of a collusive agreement between you and the Irish."

  "None whatever."

  Though he gave no outward sign of it, Stevenson was, for the first time, worried. There were a dozen questions Fox could ask in this area that would dent his case. He could see that Fox was winding up to a knockout—or what he imagined would be a knockout.

  "Then kindly tell us, Mr. Stevenson"—he looked around, wagging one finger heavenward—"why you were seen this very morning escorting the Irish prisoners to a cart laden with ale and spirits for a free ride home to Todmorden—all paid for by you!"

  It produced the sensation he expected. Stevenson could see the gleam in people's eyes as they scented blood.

  When he had the silence he wanted he said: "I must ask you, Mr. Fox, if you really wish to pursue that question. Again, I warn you…"

  "Oh come!" Fox laughed. "You don't catch me that way three times."

  "Answer!" someone in the crowd shouted.

  "Yes, sir," Prendergast leaped from what he must have seen as a sinking ship. "Answer the question."

  Even Metcalfe betrayed a slight hope. Nora alone smiled, serenely sure of him.

  Stevenson sighed. "I paid for their beer and spirits and ride home out of self-interest," he said, speaking slowly as one would to a dim but good-hearted servant. "The Irish are no more subtle than you, Mr. Fox." There was a titter at that. "They are every bit as capable as you, Mr. Fox, of assuming that by telling them there was liquor where it later proved there was not, I had stood them up as a row of skittles." The laughter was stronger. "And then, Mr. Fox, it would be the work of moments—or at least the work of one dark night—for them to come down and do several thousand pounds' worth of damage to my workings. So, Mr. Fox, I paid what you might think of as insurance, and cheap at the price I'd say. And that, Mr. Fox, is a fact so self-evident, that only an attorney, Mr. Fox, or some other spinner of wild and fantastical tissues, Mr. Fox, would need to have it explained to him. Mr. Fox."

  The titters rose to a chuckling and continued to swell until they almost drowned the end of his reply. Fox, unheard save by those beside him, said, "No more questions," and sat abruptly down.

  Stevenson felt no pity for the advocate; his defeat was self-inflicted. He had stood up with at least four supposedly lethal questions to ask: Why had magistrate and contractor met before the strike? Why had the constabulary been summoned even before the men's intentions were clear? Why had the contractor left the site and met with the rioters only moments before the riot started? Why had he given liquor to the rioters the following day and provided free transport home for them? Taken together they framed a devastating and beautifully consistent theory of conspiracy. It must have seemed that no further work for the defence was necessary. Yet it would have taken only the slightest degree of caution—or the slightest ability to stand in another's shoes—to see how easily the case might fall apart. As, indeed, it had.

  The police solicitor stood again. "To return to the points at issue, Mr. Stevenson. You required these men to work and they would not?"

  "Yes."

  "You sought an assurance that they would peaceably let pass any others you might hire in their stead?"

  "Yes."

  "And this assurance they refused to give?"

  "Yes."

  "Whereupon you, fearing a breach of the peace, were obstructed from setting new employees on
…"

  "Yes. Not only new employees, but also those who had abandoned their attempts to strike. I felt able to set on no bricklayer yesterday."

  "That, Your Honour, is the basis of the case against the prisoners."

  "Well," Prendergast smiled coldly. "You led us quite a dance getting to it. Now, Metcalfe. Your defence."

  "What defence!" Metcalfe stood morosely. "Mr. Stevenson. At the start of your evidence, ye stated there was no personal element, no grudge, in any of your actions."

  "Aye. I did."

  "I believe I made the same point in different words, to you, the evening before our strike."