‘Yes sir. It is quite a usual punishment in the City for fraudulent dealings and so on. And of course he would be dismissed the service.’
‘God between us and evil,’ said Stephen. He was moved beyond his usual calm and he did not recover even the appearance of it until he was walking up the steps of his club.
‘I am sorry to be late, Blaine,’ he said, ‘but my interview with Lawrence lasted longer than I had expected, and it was far, far more distressing. Now that Palmer cannot possibly be brought forward, Lawrence has no hope. He did not say so directly, but it was evident. He has no real hope at all.’
‘I do not suppose he has,’ said Sir Joseph. ‘Appearances are so very much against poor Aubrey. If his worst enemy had contrived this scheme he could not have done him more harm.’
‘You too think he will be condemned?’
‘I should not go so far as that. But this is a political trial, with all the furious passion that implies: it is aimed against General Aubrey and his Radical friends, and so long as their reputations are blasted the rest does not signify. The end justifies the means in these matters. How Sidmouth and his people must have welcomed such an opportunity! Indeed, I am sometimes tempted to wonder whether some zealous follower may not have engineered it, anticipating their wishes and perhaps at the same time meaning to enrich himself. It is a specious theory, though I do not believe it.’
There was a silence, during which Stephen looked at the carpet and Sir Joseph contemplated his friend, whom he had never seen so perturbed.
‘As I was coming here,’ said Stephen at last, ‘I reflected on what I should do in the event of a condemnation. Jack Aubrey, dismissed the service, would go stark mad on land; and I have no great wish to stay in England either. I therefore think of buying the Surprise, since Jack will no longer have the means of doing so, taking out letters of marque, manning her as a privateer and desiring him to take command. May I beg you to reflect upon this and give me your considered opinion tomorrow?’
‘Certainly. On the face of it, I should say it is an excellent scheme. Several unemployed naval officers have turned privateer, continuing their war independently and sometimes causing havoc among the enemy’s trade at great profit to themselves. You are away?’
‘I must go to the Marshalsea: I am already late.’
‘You must take a hackney-coach,’ said Blaine, looking beyond Stephen at the clock. ‘You must certainly take a hackney-coach, though even then you will have very little time before the gates are locked.’
‘It is all one – there are beds to be had in the coffee-house on the debtors’ side. God bless, now.’
‘I shall tell Charles to fetch a coach,’ Sir Joseph called after him as he ran up the stairs to his room.
The coach, an unusually rapid vehicle, took him the shortest way, by Westminster Bridge, but when it set him down at the gates of the prison the man said, ‘Just five minutes to go before the lock is on. Should you like me to wait, sir?’
‘Thank you,’ said Stephen, ‘but I believe I shall stay the night.’ And to himself ‘God help me
– I am far behind my hour – I shall be reproved.’
in the event, however, Jack was playing such an energetic, hard-fought game of fives in the courtyard that he had lost count of the time, and when the last point was over he turned his scarlet, streaming, beaming face to Stephen and said in a gasping voice, ‘How glad I am to see you, Stephen,’ without a hint of blame. ‘Lord, I am out of form.’
‘You were always grossly obese,’ observed Stephen. ‘Were you to walk ten miles a day, and eat half what you do in fact devour, with no butcher’s meat and no malt liquors, you would be able to play at the hand-ball like a Christian rather than a galvanized manatee, or dugong. Mr Goodridge, how do you so, sir? I hope I see you well.’ This to Jack’s opponent, a former shipmate, the master of HMS Polychrest and a fine navigator, but one whose calculations had unfortunately convinced him that phoenixes and comets were one and the same thing – that the appearance of a phoenix, reported in the chronicles, was in fact the return of one or another of the various comets whose periods were either known or conjectured. He resented disagreement, and although in ordinary matters he was the kindest, gentlest of men, he was now confined for maltreating a rear-admiral of the blue: he had not actually struck Sir James, but he had bitten his remonstrating finger.
Upstairs, when Jack had changed his shirt and they were sitting by the fire, Stephen said
‘Did I tell you of Lord Sheffield, Jack?’
‘I believe you have mentioned him. In connexion with Gibbon, if I don’t mistake.’
‘The very man. He was Gibbon’s particular friend. He inherited many of his papers, and he has passed me a very curious sheet expressing Gibbon’s considered opinion of lawyers. It was intended to form part of the Decline and Fall, but it was withdrawn at a late stage of page-proof for fear of giving offence to his friends at the bar and on the bench. Will I read them to you?’
‘If you please,’ said Jack, and Sophie folded her hands in her lap, looking attentive.
Stephen drew a sheaf from his bosom: he unfolded
it; his expression, formed for reading the grave, noble, rolling periods, changed to one of ordinary vexation, quite intense and human vexation. ‘I have brought Huber on Bees,’ he said. ‘In my hurry I seized upon Huber. Yet I could have sworn that what lay there on the right of the pamphlets was Gibbon. I-low sorry I shall be if I have thrown Gibbon away, the rarity of the world and a jewel of balanced prose, taking him for a foolish little piece on Tar Water. And I did not commit much of it to memory. However, the gist of it was that the decline of the Empire -,
‘There is the bell,’ cried Sophie as a remote but insistent clangour reached them. ‘Killick, Killick! We must go. Forgive me, Stephen dear.’ She kissed them both, a rapid though most affectionate peck, and darted from the room, still calling ‘Killick, Killick, there.’
‘She and Killick are going down by the evening coach, so they must not be locked in,’ said Jack ‘She wants to fetch some things from Ashgrove’
As for Gibbon, now,’ said Stephen when they were settled by the fire again, ‘I do remember the first lines. They ran “It is dangerous to entrust the conduct of nations to men who have learned from their profession to consider reason as the instrument of dispute, and to interpret the laws according to the dictates of private interest; and the mischief has been felt, even in countries where the practice of the bar may deserve to be considered as a liberal occupation.” He thought – and he was a very intelligent man, of prodigious reading – that the fall of the Empire was caused at least in part by the prevalence of lawyers. Men who are accustomed over a long series of years to supposing that whatever can somehow be squared with the law is right or if not right then allowable – are not useful members of society; and when they reach positions of power in the state they are noxious.
They arc people for whom ethics can be summed up by the collected statutes. Tully, for example, thought himself a
good man, though he openly boasted of having deceived the jury in the case of Cluentius; and he was quite as willing to defend Catiline in the first place as he was to attack him in the second. It is all of a piece throughout:
they are men who tend to resign their own conscience to another’s keeping, or to disregard it entirely. To the question “What are your sentiments when you are asked to defend a man you know to be guilty?” many will reply “I do not know him to be guilty until the judge, who has heard both sides, states that he is guilty.” This miserable sophistry, which disregards not only epistemology but also the intuitive perception that informs all daily intercourse, is sometimes merely formular, yet I have known men who have so prostituted their intelligence that they believe it.’
‘Oh come, Stephen. Surely saying that all lawyers are bad is about as wise as saying that all sailors are good, ain’t it?’
‘I do not say that all lawyers are bad, but I do maintain that the general tendency is bad: standing up in a court for whichever side has paid you, affecting warmth and conviction, and doing everything you can to win the case, whatever your private opinion may be, will soon dull any fine sense of honour. The mercenary soldier is not a valued creature, but at least he risks his life, whereas these men merely risk their next fee.’