Sister Gertrude: A Tale of the West Riding

by D. F. E. Sykes

“Well, yes; that way or some other. But I hope he may not be sent to prison. Perhaps he may turn over a new leaf, and give up the drink and mend his ways. I’m sure there’s much more of good than bad in him, and prison will only foster the bad and dwarf the good.”

“Oh! we’ll pull him through, Sister Gertrude, if you tell the Bench your story as you have told it to me. I’m sure, if you will permit me to say so, you behaved very pluckily in going unprotected to that horrid hole. But I’m afraid you wasted your time in trying to save Pat Sullivan. He’s always in trouble with the police.”

“That’s why my time was not wasted. Society has been trying to deal with such lost creatures as Sullivan for centuries by its police, always its police. I think perhaps a little human sympathy and gentle entreating may do what your police cannot do. That is why I wear this uniform.”

Beaumont bowed silently. He had had his own opinion of ecstatic young ladies who take to Slumming as a diversion; but Sister Gertrude did not harmonise with his preconceived ideas. He would have liked to ask many questions, but he resented prying inquisitiveness in his own affairs, and was careful to respect the reserve of others. He looked at his watch.

“Jove! we must be off. May I have the pleasure of showing you the way to Court?”

“Thank you. Nelly will be waiting for me. I will go with her.”

As Beaumont entered the Court and made his way to the solicitors’ well, he glanced at the Bench and noted with satisfaction that the Mayor, Thomas Hoyleham, presided. Mr. Hoyleham was a weak, worthy man of venerable appearance, with a long, flowing, white beard, and of pallid, bloodless complexion. He was a draper by trade, and one of the pillars of the Independent Church at Lowfield. He had signalised his accession to the Chief Magistracy by treating the members of the Town Council to a Temperance Banquet, zoedone, phospherade, and other effervescent and phosphorescent cordials supplanting the wines of France and Spain; much to the discontent of his guests.

Beaumont, however, had tossed off a bumper of the beady and gaseous compound with a flourish to the health of the Mayor, and whilst questioning convictions that forced a man to prefer zoedone to champagne, vowed he admired the Mayor’s pluck and consistency, and protested that it was worth while to run the risk of being poisoned to sit at table with a man of principle. Of course, this sentiment had reached the Mayor’s ears, and had not only greatly comforted him and sustained him in presence of the rueful countenances of his guests, but had led him ever after to entertain a high opinion of Beaumont’s discrimination. And though he mourned over the young councillor's infidelity, he was not without hopes some Christian Church might win him to its bosom, and lost no opportunity of speaking a word in season to his young colleague; and had even ventured to give him a Temperance Tract in an apologetic manner, assuring him that the passages marked by the Mayor’s own hand were not to be taken by Edward as offensively personal. Beaumont had taken all in good part, and when ribald members of the Council poked fun at the old gentleman, and called him an old woman, only fit to sit behind the urn at a tea-party, Beaumont had stoutly declared that beneath the mild and deferential, almost shrinking, manner of Mr. Hoyleham, lay a rare staunchness and fidelity to the right as he conceived it.

The case against Patrick Sullivan was not taken till the charge-sheet was cleared of all others. Mr. Ward the Chief Constable, was determined to have that redoubtable breaker of the law and terror of the police safe under lock and key for so long a spell as the law could ensure, and he, of course, had heard only the version of the fracas given by the police and by Graham. The strong, most damaging point against Pat was his resistance of the police in the discharge of their duty. It was an article of faith with the Borough Bench that the police must be supported, and it was equally a matter of faith with those who had been summoned before it, or who expected to be, and with their witnesses, that the sworn testimony of one policeman would be taken before that of all Kirkgate put together. Sullivan was looked upon as a doomed man, as good as done for, and his sympathisers only found consolation in the resolve to make the place too hot to hold the complainant. With these sympathisers the back benches of the Court were crowded. They were there, male and female, some scores of them, in all states of dress and undress and all degrees of cleanliness and sobriety. They were all to a man and also woman known to the police, and most of them had stood in the very dock now tenanted by the redoubtable Sullivan, and those who had not looked forward to their appearance in that unenviable rectangle as a natural and inevitable incident in their career. Needless to say, the sympathies of this section of the audience in Court were entirely with the prisoner, and when Edward entered with a light and springing step and bright smiling face, a subdued murmur ran through their ranks.

“Och! it’s himself has the cometherin’ way wid ’im,” whispered a shawled and frowsy nymph of the pavement to another lady of the same nationality and facility of affection. “Fwat an eye’s in de face of ’im; ’t would melt a stone, an’ the tongue of him for Blarney most wonderful.”