Quality and Others | Page 9

we throw out, and the one we throw out we know it to be true,
and the dirtieth job of the whole lot. Ith fonny!" "Yes," I answered him,
"our sense of respectability does seem excessive." But just then we
reached the Court, where, in his red robe and grey wig, with his
clear-cut, handsome face, the judge seemed to shine and radiate, like
sun through gloom. "I thank you, gentlemen," he said, in a voice
courteous and a little mocking, as though he had somewhere seen us
before: "I thank you for the way in which you have performed your
duties. I have not the pleasure of assigning to you anything for your
services except the privilege of going over a prison, where you will be
able to see what sort of existence awaits many of those to whose cases
you have devoted so much of your valuable time. You are released,
gentlemen."
Looking at each, other a little hurriedly, and not taking too much
farewell, for fear of having to meet again, we separated.
I was, then, free--free of the injunction of that piece of paper reposing
in my pocket. Yet its influence was still upon me. I did not hurry away,
but lingered in the courts, fascinated by the notion that the fate of each
prisoner had first passed through my hands. At last I made an effort,
and went out into the corridor. There I passed a woman whose figure
seemed familiar. She was sitting with her hands in her lap looking
straight before her, pale-faced and not uncomely, with thickish mouth
and nose--the woman whose bill we had thrown out. Why was she
sitting there? Had she not then realised that we had quashed her claim;

or was she, like myself, kept here by mere attraction of the Law?
Following I know not what impulse, I said: "Your case was dismissed,
wasn't it?" She looked up at me stolidly, and a tear, which had
evidently been long gathering, dropped at the movement. "I do nod
know; I waid to see," she said in her thick voice; "I tink there has been
mistake." My face, no doubt, betrayed something of my sentiments
about her case, for the thick tears began rolling fast down her pasty
cheeks, and her pent-up feeling suddenly flowed forth in words: "I
work 'ard; Gott! how I work hard! And there gomes dis liddle beastly
man, and rob me. And they say: 'Ah! yes; but you are a bad woman, we
don' trust you--you speak lie.' But I speak druth, I am nod a bad
woman--I gome from Hamburg." "Yes, yes," I murmured; "yes, yes." "I
do not know this country well, sir. I speak bad English. Is that why they
do not drust my word?" She was silent for a moment, searching my
face, then broke out again: "It is all 'ard work in my profession, I make
very liddle, I cannot afford to be rob. Without the men I cannod make
my living, I must drust them--and they rob me like this, it is too 'ard."
And the slow tears rolled faster and faster from her eyes on to her
hands and her black lap. Then quietly, and looking for a moment
singularly like a big, unhappy child, she asked: "Will you blease dell
me, sir, why they will not give me the law of that dirty little man?"
I knew--and too well; but I could not tell her.
"You see," I said, "it's just a case of your word against his." "Oh! no;
but," she said eagerly, "he give me the note--I would not have taken it
if I 'ad not thought it good, would I? That is sure, isn't it? But five
pounds it is not my price. It must that I give 'im change! Those
gentlemen that heard my case, they are men of business, they must
know that it is not my price. If I could tell the judge--I think he is a man
of business too he would know that too, for sure. I am not so young. I
am not so veree beautiful as all that; he must see, mustn't he, sir?"
At my wits' end how to answer that most strange question, I stammered
out: "But, you know, your profession is outside the law."
At that a slow anger dyed her face. She looked down; then, suddenly
lifting one of her dirty, ungloved hands, she laid it on her breast with
the gesture of one baring to me the truth in her heart. "I am not a bad
woman," she said: "Dat beastly little man, he do the same as me--I am
free-woman, I am not a slave bound to do the same to- morrow night,

no more than he. Such like him make me