If his imaginative conscience or his pride; if all the
extravagant ghosts and austere shades that were the disastrous familiars
of his youth would not let him run away from the block, I, who of course
can't be suspected of such familiars, was irresistibly impelled to go
and see his head roll off. I wended my way towards the court. I didn't
hope to be very much impressed or edified, or interested or even
frightened--though, as long as there is any life before one, a jolly
good fright now and then is a salutary discipline. But neither did I
expect to be so awfully depressed. The bitterness of his punishment was
in its chill and mean atmosphere. The real significance of crime is in
its being a breach of faith with the community of mankind, and from
that point of view he was no mean traitor, but his execution was a
hole-and-corner affair. There was no high scaffolding, no scarlet cloth
(did they have scarlet cloth on Tower Hill? They should have had), no
awe-stricken multitude to be horrified at his guilt and be moved to
tears at his fate--no air of sombre retribution. There was, as I walked
along, the clear sunshine, a brilliance too passionate to be consoling,
the streets full of jumbled bits of colour like a damaged kaleidoscope:
yellow, green, blue, dazzling white, the brown nudity of an undraped
shoulder, a bullock-cart with a red canopy, a company of native infantry
in a drab body with dark heads marching in dusty laced boots, a native
policeman in a sombre uniform of scanty cut and belted in patent
leather, who looked up at me with orientally pitiful eyes as though his
migrating spirit were suffering exceedingly from that unforeseen--what
d'ye call 'em?--avatar--incarnation. Under the shade of a lonely tree
in the courtyard, the villagers connected with the assault case sat in a
picturesque group, looking like a chromo-lithograph of a camp in a book
of Eastern travel. One missed the obligatory thread of smoke in the
foreground and the pack-animals grazing. A blank yellow wall rose behind
overtopping the tree, reflecting the glare. The court-room was sombre,
seemed more vast. High up in the dim space the punkahs were swaying
short to and fro, to and fro. Here and there a draped figure, dwarfed
by the bare walls, remained without stirring amongst the rows of empty
benches, as if absorbed in pious meditation. The plaintiff, who had
been beaten,--an obese chocolate-coloured man with shaved head, one
fat breast bare and a