VII

EXCURSIONS AND ALARUMS

Already at the time of M. Zola’s arrival in London I had received a summons to serve upon the jury at the July Sessions of the Central Criminal court.  I had been excused from service on a previous occasion, but this time I had no valid excuse to offer, and it followed that I must either serve or else pay such a fine as the Common Serjeant might direct.  There is always a certain element of doubt in these matters; and while I might perhaps luckily escape service after a day or two, on the other hand, I might be kept at the Old Bailey for more than a week.  At any other time I should have accepted my fate without a murmur; but I was greatly worried as to what might befall M. Zola during my absence in London, and I more than once thought of defaulting and ‘paying up.’  But the master would not hear of it.  He was now located at Oatlands, and felt sure that he would have no trouble there.  Moreover, said he, it would always be possible for me to run down now and again of an evening, dine with him, and attend to such little matters as might require my help.

So, on the Monday morning when the sessions opened, I duly repaired to town; and on the journey up, I saw in the ‘Daily Chronicle’ the announcement of M. Zola’s recent presence at the Grosvenor Hotel.  This gave me quite a shock.  So the Press was on the right track at last!  Starting from the Grosvenor Hotel, might not the reporters trace the master to Wimbledon, and thence to his present retreat?  I had no time for hesitation.  My instructions, moreover, were imperative.  For the benefit of M. Zola personally, and for the benefit of the whole Dreyfus cause, I had orders to deny everything.  So I drove to the Press Association offices, sent up a contradiction of the ‘Daily Chronicle’s’ statement, and then hurried up Ludgate Hill to the Court, where my name was soon afterwards called.

I found myself on the second or third jury got together, and that day I was not empanelled.  But on the morrow I was required to do duty; and between then and the latter part of the week I sat upon four or five cases—­all crimes of violence, and one described in the indictment as murder.  This position was the more unpleasant for me, as I am, by strong conviction, an adversary of capital punishment.  I absolutely deny the right of society to put any man or any woman to death, whatever be his or her crime.  My proper course then seemed to lie in the direction of a public statement, which would have created, I suppose, some little sensation or scandal; but happily the prosecuting counsel in his very first words abandoned the count of murder for that of manslaughter, and I was thereby relieved from my predicament.