CHAPTER XLIV. THE BAD DINNER
At nine o'clock the jury retired, and a little afterwards the front drawing-room of the Head Inn was becoming every moment more crowded, as the door opened to admit the several members of the bar, invited to partake of Mrs. Rooney's hospitalities. Mrs. Rooney's, I say; for the etiquette of the circuit forbidding the attorney to entertain the dignitaries of the craft, Paul was only present at his own table on sufferance, and sought out the least obtrusive place he could find among the juniors and side-dishes.
No one who could have seen the gay, laughing, merry mob of shrewd, cunning-looking men that chatted away there would have imagined them a few moments previously engaged in a question where the lives of four of their fellow-men hung in the balance, and where at the very moment the deliberation was continuing that should, perhaps, sentence them to death upon the scaffold.
The instincts of a profession are narrow and humiliating things to witness. The surgeon who sees but in the suffering agony of his patient the occasional displacement of certain anatomical details is little better than a savage; the lawyer who watches the passions of hope and fear, distrust, dread, and suspicion, only to take advantage of them in his case, is far worse than a savage. I confess, on looking at these men, I could never divest myself of the impression that the hired and paid-for passion of the advocate, the subtlety that is engaged special, the wit that is briefed, the impetuous rush of indignant eloquence that is bottled up from town to town in circuit, and like soda-water grows weaker at every corking, make but a poor ensemble of qualities for the class who, par excellence, stand at the head of professional life.
One there was, indeed, whose haggard eye and blanched cheek showed no semblance of forgetting the scene in which so lately he had been an actor. This was the lawyer who had defended the prisoners. He sat in a window, resting his head upon his hand—fatigue, exhaustion, but more than all, intense feeling, portrayed in every lineament of his pale face.
'Ah,' said the gay, jovial-looking attorney-general, slapping him familiarly on the shoulder—'ah, my dear fellow; not tired, I hope. The court was tremendously hot; but come, rally a bit: we shall want you. Bennet and O'Grady have disappointed us, it seems; but you are a host in yourself.'
'Maybe so,' replied the other faintly, and scarce lifting his eyes; 'but you can't depend on my elevation.'
The ease and readiness of the reply, as well as the tones of the voice, struck me; and I perceived that it was no other than the prior of the Monks of the Screw who had spoken. Mrs. Rooney made her appearance at the moment, and my attention was soon taken away by the announcement of dinner.
One of the judges arrived in time to offer his arm, and I could not help feeling amused at the mock-solemnity of the procession, as we moved along. The judge, I may observe, was a young man, lately promoted, and one whose bright eye and bold, dashing expression bore many more traces of the outer bar than it smacked of the dull gravity of the bench. He took the end of the table beside Mrs. Paul, and the others soon seated themselves promiscuously along the table.