The Forsyte Saga, Volume 3(11)

‘Dinny!’ and she saw her Aunt May. Mrs Hilary Cherrell had her usual air of surmounting the need for being in three places at once; she looked leisurely, detached, and pleased – not unnaturally, for she liked her niece.

‘Up for the shopping, dear?’

‘No, Aunt May, I’ve come to win an introduction off Uncle Hilary.’

‘Your Uncle’s in the Police Court.’

A bubble rose to Dinny’s surface.

‘Why, what’s he done, Aunt May?’

Mrs Hilary smiled.

‘Nothing at present, but I won’t answer for him if the magistrate isn’t sensible. One of our young women has been charged with accosting.’

‘Not Uncle Hilary?’

‘No, dear, hardly that. Your uncle is a witness to her character.’

‘And is there really a character to witness to, Aunt May?’

‘Well, that’s the point. Hilary says so; but I’m not so sure.’

‘Men are very trustful. I’ve never been in a Police Court. I should love to go and catch Uncle there.’

‘Well, I’m going in that direction. We might go together as far as the Court.’

Five minutes later they issued, and proceeded by way of streets ever more arresting to the eyes of Dinny, accustomed only to the picturesque poverty of the countryside.

‘I never quite realized before,’ she said, suddenly, ‘that London was such a bad dream.’

‘From which there is no awakening. That’s the chilling part of it. Why on earth, with all this unemployment, don’t they organize a national Slum Clearance Scheme? It would pay for itself within twenty years. Politicians are marvels of energy and principle when they’re out of office, but when they get in, they simply run behind the machine.’

‘They’re not women, you see, Auntie.’

‘Are you chaffing, Dinny?’

‘Oh! no. Women haven’t the sense of difficulty that men have; women’s difficulties are physical and real, men’s difficulties are mental and formal, they always say: “It’ll never do!” Women never say that. They act, and find out whether it will do or not.’

Mrs Hilary was silent a moment.

‘I suppose women are more actual; they have a fresher eye, and less sense of responsibility.’

‘I wouldn’t be a man for anything.’

‘That’s refreshing; but on the whole they get a better time, my dear, even now.’

‘They think so, but I doubt it. Men are awfully like ostriches, it seems to me. They can refuse to see what they don’t want to, better than we can; but I don’t think that’s an advantage.’

‘If you lived in the Meads, Dinny, you might.’

‘If I lived in the Meads, dear, I should die.’

Mrs Hilary contemplated her niece by marriage. Certainly she looked a little transparent and as if she could be snapped off, but she also had a look of ‘breeding’, as if her flesh were dominated by her spirit. She might be unexpectedly durable, and impermeable by outside things.

‘I’m not so sure, Dinny; yours is a toughened breed. But for that your uncle would have been dead long ago. Well! Here’s the Police Court, I’m sorry I can’t spare time to come in. But everybody will be nice to you. It’s a very human place, if somewhat indelicate. Be a little careful about your next-door neighbours.’

Dinny raised an eyebrow: ‘Lousy, Aunt May?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say not. Come back to tea, if you can.’

She was gone.

The exchange and mart of human indelicacy was crowded, for with the infallible flair of the Public for anything dramatic, the case in which Hilary was a witness to character had caught on, since it involved the integrity of the Police. Its second remand was in progress when Dinny took the last remaining fifteen square inches of standing room. Her neighbours on the right reminded her of the nursery rhyme: ‘The butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker.’ Her neighbour on the left was a tall policeman. Many women were among the throng at the back of the Court. The air was close and smelled of clothes. Dinny looked at the magistrate, ascetic and as if pickled, and wondered why he did not have incense fuming on his desk. Her eyes passed on to the figure in the dock, a girl of about her own age and height, neatly dressed, with good features except that her mouth was perhaps more sensuous than was fortunate for one in her position. Dinny estimated that her hair was probably fair. She stood very still, with a slight fixed flush on her pale cheeks, and a frightened restlessness in her eyes. Her name appeared to be Millicent Pole. Dinny gathered that she was alleged by a police constable to have accosted two men in the Euston Road, neither of whom had appeared to give evidence. In the witness-box a young man who resembled a tobacconist was testifying that he had seen the girl pass twice or three times – had noticed her specially as a ‘nice bit’; she had seemed worried, as if looking for something.