A NONENTITY.
He was a tramp, a mere tramp, clearly a man of no importance to you or me or anyone else in the world. The evening was warm, the place secluded and remote, and, other things being equal, he climbed over the hedge, chose a comfortable position against a haystack, pulled from his pocket a fragment of a newspaper and a fragment of a pipe and settled down.
A tramp, the merest tramp, seven miles from anywhere, sitting in a field smoking a pipe and reading a newspaper—what can such a one matter to the world at large?
The portion of the newspaper was that containing the law reports, not a prime favourite with the tramp. The lengthy report which had squeezed out other matter that might have been worth reading was a proceeding before the Lords of Appeal, in which Sir Rupert Bingley, K.C., M.P., was being very explicit and very firm about the exact limitations of the power of the Divisional Court to commit for contempt. This was hardly fit matter for the reading of a young and susceptible tramp, our man was telling himself, when the name of a district which he had once traversed cropped up in the case and caught his wandering attention.
The spot in question was on the wild Welsh border, and it was at a remote farm thereabouts that the trouble first began over which their Lordships and Sir Rupert, together with innumerable other senior counsel, junior counsel, solicitors, law reporters, lay reporters, ushers, and what-nots were so troubling themselves and each other. The farmer's stack of clover had been destroyed by fire, and the farmer, feeling that this was rather the affair of the Insurance Company than himself, had asked for solatium. The Insurance Company asked who set the stack on fire; the farmer didn't know; the Insurance Company, having regard to the size and the recent creation of the policy, were prepared to guess. The case was heard at Presteign Assizes and the farmer lost it, the jury who tried it being not quite so sure as was the farmer of his innocence in the matter.
Encouraged by this, the Insurance Company prosecuted the farmer for perjury; but the jury that tried this case took almost a stronger view of the farmer's virtue than he did himself and found a verdict of "Not Guilty," adding a rider very depreciatory of the Insurance Company. Encouraged by this verdict, the farmer sued the Insurance Company for malicious prosecution, but the jury that tried this case had no faith in either party and disagreed. Another jury were then put in their stead and they as good as disagreed by finding for the farmer but assessing the damages at one farthing.
It will be observed that their Lordships have not yet appeared in the matter, whereas the haystack, the cause of all the trouble, had as good as disappeared. Meanwhile our tramp, who had seen better days and was something of a mathematician, calculated that the total sum spent on counsels' fees alone up to this point was well over two hundred guineas.
Social reformers get mixed up in everything nowadays, and one appeared in the affair at this juncture. Having chanced to be in court at the hearing of the Malicious Prosecution suit, he had formed an opinion of the last-mentioned jury, and in an extremely witty speech, had included them specifically in the long list of people and things that were no better than they should, be. One of the jurors had unhappily been among his audience and, possibly because his experience of another's cause had endeared him to litigation, he must needs start his action for slander. By the time that action had been tried, and appealed, and a new trial ordered and held, and the legal proceedings in the respective bankruptcies of the social reformer and the juror were completed, the total of counsels' guineas must have been well on the other side of a thousand.
Everybody had now forgotten that there ever was a stack involved and no one would have recollected that the Insurance Company had had anything to do with it, had not the social reformer, in the course of his public examination, ingenuously attributed his financial downfall to the original misbehaviour of that company in disbelieving their policy-holders when they declared that they were not incendiaries. Thereupon, after a number of applications by counsel to a number of courts, the Insurance Company got itself inserted in the Bankruptcy proceedings, but not before an enterprising newspaper had taken upon itself to assert that there was an element of truth in the contention of the social reformer. And then it was that the Contempt proceedings began, and were fought strenuously stage by stage, each side briefing more and more counsel as they went along, until at last, when the case came before their Lordships, there were more barristers involved than could be seated in the limited accommodation provided at the bar of their Lordships' House.
To calculate even roughly the final total of counsels' fees was no easy sum to be done on the fingers. After wrestling with it a little, the tramp leant back and puffed hard at his pipe—so hard that the sparks flew and the smoke became thick around him—so thick that "Bless my soul," said the tramp, rising hurriedly, "there's another stack I've been and gone and set afire!"