Chance
Page 52There was only one person who remained unmoved. It was de Barral
himself. He preserved his serene, gentle expression, I am told (for I
have not witnessed those scenes myself), and looked around at the people
with an air of placid sufficiency which was the first hint to the world
of the man's overweening, unmeasurable conceit, hidden hitherto under a
diffident manner. It could be seen too in his dogged assertion that if
he had been given enough time and a lot more money everything would have
come right. And there were some people (yes, amongst his very victims)
who more than half believed him, even after the criminal prosecution
which soon followed. When placed in the dock he lost his steadiness as
if some sustaining illusion had gone to pieces within him suddenly. He
ceased to be himself in manner completely, and even in disposition, in so
far that his faded neutral eyes matching his discoloured hair so well,
were discovered then to be capable of expressing a sort of underhand
into tears; but it might have been from rage. Then he calmed down,
returned to his soft manner of speech and to that unassuming quiet
bearing which had been usual with him even in his greatest days. But it
seemed as though in this moment of change he had at last perceived what a
power he had been; for he remarked to one of the prosecuting counsel who
had assumed a lofty moral tone in questioning him, that--yes, he had
gambled--he liked cards. But that only a year ago a host of smart people
would have been only too pleased to take a hand at cards with him. Yes--he
went on--some of the very people who were there accommodated with seats
on the bench; and turning upon the counsel "You yourself as well," he
cried. He could have had half the town at his rooms to fawn upon him if
he had cared for that sort of thing. "Why, now I think of it, it took me
most of my time to keep people, just of your sort, off me," he ended with
dawned upon him for the first time.
This was the moment, the only moment, when he had perhaps all the
audience in Court with him, in a hush of dreary silence. And then the
dreary proceedings were resumed. For all the outside excitement it was
the most dreary of all celebrated trials. The bankruptcy proceedings had
exhausted all the laughter there was in it. Only the fact of wide-spread
ruin remained, and the resentment of a mass of people for having been
fooled by means too simple to save their self-respect from a deep wound
which the cleverness of a consummate scoundrel would not have inflicted.
A shamefaced amazement attended these proceedings in which de Barral was
not being exposed alone. For himself his only cry was: Time! Time! Time
would have set everything right. In time some of these speculations of
his were certain to have succeeded. He repeated this defence, this
he had done or left undone had been to gain time. He had hypnotized
himself with the word. Sometimes, I am told, his appearance was
ecstatic, his motionless pale eyes seemed to be gazing down the vista of
future ages. Time--and of course, more money. "Ah! If only you had
left me alone for a couple of years more," he cried once in accents of
passionate belief. "The money was coming in all right." The deposits
you understand--the savings of Thrift. Oh yes they had been coming in to
the very last moment. And he regretted them. He had arrived to regard
them as his own by a sort of mystical persuasion. And yet it was a
perfectly true cry, when he turned once more on the counsel who was
beginning a question with the words "You have had all these immense sums
. . . " with the indignant retort "What have I had out of them?"