“I am never ambiguous, sir, though it occasionally happens to me to say somewhat less than I feel. I wish you a good day.”
CHAPTER XX. IN COURT.
When the day arrived that the Chief Baron was to resume his place on the Bench, no small share of excitement was seen to prevail within the precincts of the Four Courts. Many opined that his recovery was far from perfect, and that it was not his intention ever to return to the justice-seat. Some maintained that the illness had been far less severe than was pretended, and that he had employed the attack as a means of pressure on the Government, to accord to his age and long services the coveted reward. Less argumentative partisans there were who were satisfied to wager that he would or would not reappear on the Bench, and bets were even laid that he would come for one last time, as though to show the world in what full vigor of mind and intellect was the man the Government desired to consign to inactivity and neglect.
It is needless to say that he was no favorite with the Bar. There was scarcely a man, from the highest to the lowest, whom he had not on some occasion or another snubbed, ridiculed, or reprimanded. Whose law had he not controverted? Whose acuteness had he not exposed, whose rhetoric not made jest of? The mere presence of ability before him seemed to stimulate his combative spirit, and incite him to a passage at arms with one able to defend himself. No first-rate man could escape the shafts of his barbed and pointed wit; it was only dulness, hopeless dulness, that left his court with praise of his urbanity and an eulogy over his courteous demeanor.
Now, hopeless dulness is not the characteristic of the Irish Bar, and with the majority the Chief Baron was the reverse of popular.
No small tribute was it therefore to his intellectual superiority, to that mental power that all acknowledged while they dreaded, that his appearance was greeted with a murmur of approbation, which swelled louder and louder as he moved across the hall, till it burst out at last into a hoarse, full cheer of welcome. Mounting the steps with difficulty, the pale old man, seared with age and wrinkled with care, turned round towards the vast crowd, and with an eye of flashing brightness, and a heightened color, pressed his hand upon his heart, and bowed. A very slight motion it was,—less, far less, perhaps, than a sovereign might have accorded; but in its dignity and grace it was a perfect recognition of all the honor he felt had been done him.
How broken! how aged! how fearfully changed! were the whispered remarks that were uttered around as he took his seat on the Bench, and more significant even than words were the looks interchanged when he attempted to speak, and instead of that clear metallic ring which once had been audible even outside the court, a faint murmuring sound was only heard.
A few commonplace motions were made and discharged. A somewhat wearisome argument followed on a motion for a new trial, and the benches of the Bar gradually grew thinner and thinner, as the interest of the scene wore off, and as each in turn had scanned, and, after his own fashion, interpreted, the old Judge's powers of mind and body; when suddenly, and as it were without ostensible cause, the court began to fill,—bench after bench was occupied, till at last even all the standing-space was crowded; and when the massive curtain moved aside, vast numbers were seen without, eagerly trying to enter. At first the Chief Baron appeared not to notice the change, but his sharp eye no sooner detected it than he followed with his glance the directed gaze of the crowd, and saw it fixed on the gallery, opposite the jury-box, now occupied by a well-dressed company, in the midst of whom, conspicuous above all, sat Lady Lendrick. So well known were the relations that subsisted between himself and his wife, such publicity had been given to their hates and quarrels, that her presence here was regarded as a measure of shameless indelicacy. In the very defiant look, too, that she bestowed on the body of the court she seemed to accept the imputation, and to dare it.
Leisurely and calmly did she scan the old man's features through her double eyeglass, while from time to time, with a simpering smile, she would whisper some words to the lady at her side,—words it was not needful to overhear, they were so palpably words of critical comment upon him she gazed at.