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Title: Henry Northcote
Author: J. C. Snaith
Release date: March 6, 2024 [eBook #73110]
Language: English
Original publication: Boston: Henry B. Turner and Company, 1906
Credits: D A Alexander, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by University of California libraries)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HENRY NORTHCOTE ***
HENRY NORTHCOTE
Henry Northcote
_By_
JOHN COLLIS SNAITH
_Author of “Broke of Covenden,” “Miss Dorothy
Marvin,” etc._
[Illustration]
Boston
HERBERT B. TURNER & CO.
1906
COPYRIGHT, 1906
BY JOHN COLLIS SNAITH
_Entered at Stationers’ Hall
London_
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER, 1906
Second Edition, October 1, 1906
_COLONIAL PRESS_
_Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
Boston, U. S. A._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. SHEPHERD’S INN, FLEET STREET 5
II. RETROSPECTION 14
III. SUMMONING THE GENIE 23
IV. ENTER MR. WHITCOMB 29
V. AN ARISTOCRAT OF ARISTOCRATS 35
VI. A PROPHECY 44
VII. THE OFFER OF A BRIEF 48
VIII. EQUITY A FRUIT OF THE GODS 59
IX. THE BRIEF WITHDRAWN 65
X. THE RIDE TO NORBITON 75
XI. MR. WHITCOMB’S FOIBLES 91
XII. THE FAITH OF A SIREN 104
XIII. BE BOLD, WARY, FEAR NOT 110
XIV. A JURY OF TWO 116
XV. TRUTH’S CHAMPION 128
XVI. A JURY OF ONE 140
XVII. MESSRS. WHITCOMB AND WHITCOMB 154
XVIII. TO THE PRISON 164
XIX. THE ACCUSED 176
XX. THE INTERVIEW 181
XXI. THE TALISMAN WHICH TRANSCENDS EXPERIENCE 185
XXII. LIFE OR DEATH 190
XXIII. PREPARATION 200
XXIV. THE TRIAL 209
XXV. MR. WEEKES, K. C. 231
XXVI. THE PLEA 238
XXVII. THE PERORATION 259
XXVIII. THE SUMMING-UP 268
XXIX. THE VERDICT 278
XXX. SIR JOSEPH BRUDENELL 285
XXXI. MEDIOCRITY VERSUS GENIUS 297
XXXII. MEDIOCRITY ASPIRING TO VIRTUE 306
XXXIII. THE HIGHWAY OF THE MANY 313
XXXIV. MAGDALENE OR DELILAH 320
XXXV. DELILAH 341
XXXVI. THE HONORABLE SECRETARY 351
XXXVII. INDELIBLE EVIDENCE 363
XXXVIII. CLEANSING FIRE 368
XXXIX. WITHOUT FEAR AND WITHOUT STAIN 380
I
SHEPHERD’S INN, FLEET STREET
Northcote sat in his chambers in Shepherd’s Inn. Down below was Fleet
Street, in the thrall of a bitter December twilight. A heavy and
pervasive thaw pressed its mantle upon the gaslit air; a driving sleet
numbed the skin and stung the eyes of all who had to face it. Pools
of slush, composed in equal parts of ice, water, and mud, impeded
the pavements. They invaded the stoutest boots, submerged those less
resolute, and imposed not a little inconvenience upon that section of
the population which, unaddicted to the wearing of boots, had dispensed
with them altogether.
The room in which Northcote kept was no more than a large and draughty
garret, which abutted from the northern end of a crazy rectangular
building on this curious byway of the world’s affairs. Only a few
decrepit tiles, a handful of rotten laths, and a layer of cracked
plaster intervened between him and the night. The grate had no fire in
it; there was no carpet to the floor. A table and two chairs were the
sole furniture, and in a corner could be heard the stealthy drip of icy
water as it percolated through the roof.
The occupant of the room sat in a threadbare overcoat with the collar
turned up to his ears. His hands, encased in a pair of woollen gloves,
which were full of holes, were pressed upon his knees; a pipe was
between his teeth; and while he sucked at it with the devout patience
of one to whom it has to serve for everything that the physical side of
his nature craved, he stared into the fireless grate with an intensity
which can impart a heat and a life of its own.
Now and again after some particularly violent demonstration on the part
of the weather he would give a little stoical shudder, fix the pipe in
the opposite corner of his mouth, and huddle away involuntarily from
the draught that came from under the door.
Northcote was a man of thirty who found himself face to face with
starvation. He had been six years at the bar. Friendless, without
influence, abjectly poor, he had chosen the common law side.
Occasionally he had been able to pick up an odd guinea in the
police-courts, but at no time had he earned enough to meet his few
needs. He was now contemplating the removal of the roof from over
his head. Its modest rental was no longer forthcoming; and there was
nothing remaining among his worldly possessions which would induce the
pawnbroker, the friend of the poor, to advance it.
“I wonder how those poor devils get on who live in the gutter,” he
muttered, grimly, as he shuddered again. “You will soon be able to find
an answer to that question,” he added, as he stamped his frozen toes on
the hearthstone and beat his fingers against his knees.
Quite suddenly he was lifted out of the abyss of his reflection by the
sound of a footfall in the room. Jerking up his head, he peered through
the darkness towards the door whence the sound had come, but the
shadows were so thick that he could see nothing.
“Hullo!” he called.
“Hullo!” came back a wholly unexpected response.
“Who are you? What do you want?” cried Northcote, with a thrill in his
voice.
The young man rose to his feet to summon the commoner faculties. For
a voice to have invaded his garret at this hour and in this fashion
seemed to presage a new epoch to his life.
“Who are you?” he demanded again, having received no reply to the
former demand.
“Nobody much,” said the voice, which sounded unlike anything he had
ever heard before.
“I’ll strike a match before I get a blow from a bludgeon.”
“Pray do so,” said the voice, quietly.
Northcote began to fumble for the matches and found them on the
mantelpiece. He obtained a light and applied it to the wick of the lamp
which was on the table, and was then able to read his visitor.
The flicker of the lamp declared him to be a man of forty, of pale and
attenuated figure, clad in rags.
“To what am I indebted for the honor of this visit?” said Northcote,
with slightly overemphasized politeness.
“Curiosity, curiosity,” muttered his visitor, with the quietness of one
who is acquainted with its value.
Northcote turned up the lamp to its highest point and resumed his
scrutiny. The voice and manner were those of a man of education; and
although the garb was that of a scarecrow, and the face was wan with
hunger and slightly debased by suffering, a strange refinement was
underlying it.
“This is all very mysterious,” said the young advocate; and indeed the
wretched figure that confronted him appeared to have no credentials to
present. “May I ask who and what you are?”
“How race reveals itself!” said the visitor, with a faint air of
disappointment. “Even the higher types among us cannot cast their
shackles away. When we go down into Hades, we are at once surrounded by
the damned souls of our countrymen, clamoring to know _who_ and _what_
we are.”
“Well, who are _you_, at any rate?” said Northcote, oppressed with an
acute sense of mystery.
“My name is Iggs,” said the scarecrow.
“Well, Mr. Iggs, I am sorry to say that to me your name conveys
nothing.”
“No?”
“No!”
For an instant the scarecrow peered in a strange and concentrated
manner into the face of the advocate. He then sighed deeply and rose
from his chair.
“With all the learning we acquire so painfully,” he whispered, “we
cannot enjoy a perfect immunity from error. Good night, sir. I offer my
apologies for having invaded your privacy.”
With a bow of grave deference the strange figure proceeded to glide
from the room in the noiseless manner in which it had entered it.
By the time his visitor had reached the door, Northcote called after
him hastily: “Come back, Mr. Iggs. I have not expressed myself--not
expressed myself adequately. Come back.”
His visitor, with the same air of deference and the same noiselessness
of movement, returned to the chair. Northcote fixed two eyes of a
devouring curiosity upon his bloodless face. They recoiled with a shock
of encounter; two orbs flaming out of it in all their sunken brilliancy
had looked within them. Also he beheld a mouth whose lips were curved
with the divine mobility of a passion. The advocate clasped his hands
to his sides to repress a fierce emotion of pain.
“Perhaps, Mr. Iggs,” he said, “you have been down into the depths of
the sea?”
His visitor brushed the green canopy of his mutilated bowler hat slowly
and delicately upon the threadbare sleeve of his coat.
“That is true,” he said; “but I would have you not forget that I have
also walked upon the peaks of the highest mountains.”
The roar of Fleet Street, the sough of the icy wind through the
telegraph wires, the driving of the sleet against the window, and the
drip drip of the water through the ceiling seemed to blend with the
rich and full tones enveloping these words. A sensation of awe began
to surmount the pity and the patronage that the outer semblance of his
visitor had first aroused in the breast of the young man.
“With your permission, sir,” he said, “I will go back to my original
question, and I will frame it with a deeper sincerity: To what does
Henry Northcote owe the honor of this visit?”
“This visit is paid to you, my friend, because for some inscrutable
reason Nature mixed blood and fire with your brains. You, too, will
go down into the depths of the sea and ascend also into the mountain
places.”
“You cannot know that,” said Northcote, with his heart beginning to
beat violently.
“Reflect a moment,” said his visitor. “Do you not know as well as I
that it is the privilege of us to know everything?”
“True, true! But in what manner has one so obscure as myself been
brought to your notice?”
“Every Sunday afternoon for a year past I have been a member of the
audience your oratory has enchanted in Hyde Park.”
“How comes it, sir, that one of your condition can bring himself to
listen to a mob orator?”
“How comes it that one of a like condition can bring himself to preach
to the mob?”
“Primarily, I suppose, that my powers may develop. One day I shall hope
to turn them--that is, if it is given to me to survive the present snap
of cold weather--to higher things and larger issues.”
“And I, my friend,” said his visitor, “who by no human possibility can
survive the present snap of cold weather, I come to tell the young
Demosthenes that he can seek no higher thing, no larger issue than to
preach to the mob. All the great movements the world ever saw began
from below. The power of the sea lies in its depths. Jesus was able to
invent a religion by preaching to the mob.”
“There are some who think,” said the young man, “that for one who was
ambitious the career of Jesus was a partial failure.”
“The age is crying out for another such failure,” said his visitor.
“Because the old has betrayed them?” said the young man, with fear in
his voice.
His visitor left the question unanswered.
“They await the advent,” he said, after a silence in which both
breathed close, “of a second Failure to save them from themselves. Only
that can prevent them dashing out their brains against the blank wall
that has come to stand before them.”
“I believe you to be right, sir,” said the advocate, slowly, as his
eyes traversed the chaste delicacy of the face which was framed in
shadows.
“The Great Renunciator who first reduces this failure to terms,” said
the scarecrow, “will have a sterner task than Jesus had.”
“Yet, sir, you come to one who is almost fainting by the bleak wayside.”
“Have I not listened to your oratory? Do I not discern you to stand at
the parting of the ways?”
“Yes, at the parting of the ways,” said the young man heavily. “The
hour is at hand when one whose poverty is bitter must make his choice.”
“I have prayed for you,” said his visitor, with such a perfect
simplicity that it filled the eyes of the young advocate with tears.
“Your ordeal is terrible, for I discern you to be a man of great power.”
“Poverty is a deadly evil,” said Northcote.
“Yet I would have you beware of riches,” said his visitor. “Think of
the cruel treachery with which they use so many. See how they have
betrayed our own fair land. And it is one such as you, in his virgin
immunity, who is called upon to release her from their false embraces.”
“I, sir!” exclaimed the young man, with wild eyes and his heart beating
violently. “I, without clothes to my skin, without food in my belly,
and who to-morrow will have no roof under which to rest his head!”
The wan smile of the scarecrow embraced his own mutilated hat, broken
boots, and ragged condition.
“You may or you may not be the emancipator,” said the scarecrow,
peering at him earnestly, “yet the veritable great one whom I see
configured before me is some such man as you. I have listened many
weeks to your oratory, and you have a strange power. Your voice is
noble, and speaks words of authority. Even if you are not the demigod
for whom the age is asking,--and, my dear friend, far be it from me to
say you are not,--you were yet formed by Nature to do a momentous work
for your country.”
“In its casual wards,” said the young man, with an outburst of
bitterness.
“The elect upon whom Nature confers true power are generally
safeguarded in this wise manner. The ambitions of the market-place are
set beyond their reach. I lie down to-night with a p an of thanksgiving
upon my lips. May the hour dawn when you also may consign your bones to
the snow. But in the meantime you have a great work to do in the world.
Nature has filled you with speech; therefore you have the burden of
immense responsibilities, for speech is the most signal of her gifts.
You may or you may not be the great renunciator whom millions of your
countrymen await with fevered looks; but it lies within your province,
as it lies within that of every mariner, to array yourself among those
of humble prophecy who read the meaning of the star in the east. At
least, my friend, all who allow themselves to anticipate a divine
appearance are the servants of truth.”
With these words the scarecrow rose from his chair, and, bowing to the
young man with an austere but kind dignity, left the room as suddenly
and noiselessly as he had entered it.
II
RETROSPECTION
Left alone in the coldness of his garret, Northcote felt a stupefaction
steal upon him. The phase of his own circumstances had lent force to
this bizarre incident. Spectral as this apparition was, however, the
gestures, the tones, the mean garb were those of a living man.
The coming of such a mariner who had been down into the depths of the
sea appeared for a moment to turn his eyes inwards. Seated again before
the empty grate with his hands on his knees, he saw his life and its
surroundings with a sharpness of vision which hunger had seemed to
render more definite. He saw himself as the full-blooded turbulent man,
tormented by desires, thwarted by fortune, yet yearning to express a
complete, moral, intellectual, and physical life. He was so strong,
yet so impotent; so expansive, yet so circumscribed; loving all the
colors of the sun and the bright face of heaven, yet condemned to a
prison, and perhaps the more dreadful darkness of the lazar-house. He
saw himself as the wholesome, simple-hearted citizen, yet as the man
of imagination also, the poet and the dreamer formed to walk upon the
heights, who, oppressed by the duality of his nature, was in danger of
succumbing to weariness, disillusion, and a remorseless material need.
He saw himself as a boy roaming the fields, casting up the soft loam
with his feet, spending long days in dreams of the miraculous future,
and evenings in conversation with his mother,--that wonderful mother
whose mind was so secure, whose conceptions of the heavy duties that
wait upon the gift of life were so odd, yet so exact. He recalled her
as a gaunt, strong, and tall woman, with a red face, rather coarse
hands, and a shabby black hat tied in a frayed velvet bow under her
chin.
He could never remember to have heard her complain of life and fortune.
She wore the same clothes year after year; sought no amelioration
from her wearisome and unremitting labors; never seemed to vary in
her sturdiness of health and temper; and always maintained plain,
robust, material opinions. Her life had been a sordid and continuous
struggle for the acquisition of money, a pound here and a pound there,
but there was no trace of avarice in her character. She had educated
him wholly beyond her means, but permitted herself no romance about
it. She believed that being her son, and the son of the man she had
married,--whom life had cut off in an arbitrary manner before he
had had a chance to display his gifts,--he would be a man of sound
abilities. She had decided in her own mind three months before he was
born that to have a fair field for his talents he must go to the bar.
“I have a little imagination, but not enough,” she would say to him,
as he sat with her an hour after supper in the winter evenings. “Your
father was a man of good imagination, and used to read the best authors
to me. My mental limitations did not permit me to understand their
truth, but I always felt their power. Your father was a brilliant
man in some ways, but the clock of his intellect was always set a
little too fast. If he had not decided early in life to be a bishop, I
think he would have been a writer of books. Even as it was, he wanted
sometimes to write them. However, I managed to dissuade him. ‘No,
Henry,’ I said, ‘stick to your trade. You cannot combine the two. To
write books you would have to look at things so closely that it would
unfit you for your calling.’ All the same, your father was a man of
remarkable natural force. He would have succeeded in anything he had
undertaken.”
Northcote never recalled his mother--and it was seldom that a
day passed in his life unless he did recall her in one shape or
another--that this speech, and a hundred that were similar, did not
fill his ears, his memory, and his imagination. As he sat now with his
hands and feet growing colder, the pool on the floor growing larger,
his vitality becoming less and with despair advancing upon him silently
like the army of shadows that pressed every minute more strongly upon
the feeble lamp, he saw that dauntless countenance, the firm lips, the
gray eyes which darkened a little in the evenings as though accompanied
by thought; the precise but inharmonious voice came into his ears; the
vigorous intelligence was spread before him, calm but unbeautiful, full
of massive courage, but deficient in the finer shades of life.
At those seasons when the young advocate sat in his isolation and
despair, that arch-enemy of high natures crept into his veins like
a drug; he would seek the antidote in that courageous life. This
penniless widow of a clergyman in a small village in a remote part
of the world had fitted her son for the only sphere in which she
looked for distinction for him, by many years of Spartan hardihood
in thought and deed. The few pounds the Reverend Henry Northcote had
laid by from his pittance, wherewith to provide an education for
his son, had been lost in a building society within three months of
his own departure from the world. From the date of the disaster his
widow had restricted the hours she spent in bed to five out of the
twenty-four; had renounced the eating of meat and the most commonplace
luxuries; and had practised a thousand and one petty economies in order
that her husband’s son should not lack the educational advantages of
those with whom he would have to compete. She had maintained him at a
public school, and afterwards, for a short period, at the university,
by translating classics out of foreign languages for scholastic
publishers, and by conveying the rudiments of knowledge to the young
children of the landholders who lived in her neighborhood.
This stalwart figure formed a wonderful background to his youth. He
was filled with awe by a simplicity that was so unconquerable, a
self-reliance that was so majestic. All the subtle implements of his
nature could not resolve such a potency as that. He himself was so much
less and so much more.
Strange homage was paid to this unlovely but august woman by the privy
council which sat in eternal session in his intellect. The favorite
guise in which she was presented to it was as the mother of Napoleon,
that “Madame Mère” who in the trenches conceived the Man of Destiny,
and walked to church an hour before she gave him to the world. Her
martial bearing, large bones, strong country speech, clothed the idea
with the flesh of the hard fact; her consciousness of purpose, power of
will, ennobled and quickened it with the hues of poetry.
Homer must have had some such woman for a mother, in whose womb the
Iliads were born prenatally. All that sped, flew, or swam in the a
rial kingdom of the Idea must first have had its pinions fixed and
pointed by some inarticulate goddess who laid upon herself the humblest
functions, the meanest offices, in order that nature might not lack
lusty and shrewd servants in the time to be. The teeming millions of
creatures who spawned in the darkness, who lifted their scaled eyes
to where the light might be found, according to those who had skill
in prophecy, yet who themselves were so uncertain of its presence
that, when it shone straight before them through the fissures in their
cave, they passed it by as a chimera, or the iridescence of some bird,
reptile, piece of coal, or winged snake,--these cried out continually
for some true-born Child of the Sun to lead them out of that gross
night into the molten plains of beauty which ran down to the sea. And
it was given to some stalwart creature with a red face and coarse
hands and a shabby black hat tied in a bow under the chin, who herself
was purblind, yet with knees ever pressed to the flags of the temple,
to dream of the light in her prayers, and presently, out of her own
strong, rustic body, to furnish forth to her kind a guide, a prophet,
and a leader.
As hunger, that exquisite, but cruel, sensation, grew upon Northcote,
and caused fierce little shivers to run through his bones, he awoke
to the fact that all the tobacco in his pipe had been consumed,
and further, that there was not a grain left in his pouch. In this
extremity he had recourse to his evening meal. It was contained in a
confectioner’s paper, and consisted of a large Bath bun, embellished
with currants. He plucked out the currants carefully, and laid them
apart as dessert. After half an hour’s deliberate munching a little of
the well-being of the nourished man returned.
He opened a drawer in the table, and took out a handful of foolscap
pages covered with writing in a small and not very visible hand. These
were but a few among some two thousand others, which embodied “A Note
towards an Essay on Optimism,” the fruit of the leisure of six years.
It had had the honor of being rejected, promptly and uncompromisingly,
by the publishers of London. Only one among this autocracy had
condescended to supply a reason. It was brief but ample: “Philosophy
does not pay.”
As Northcote held these pages beneath the uncertain rays of the lamp,
and for the thousand and first time their quality was revealed to
his gaze, a profound excitement spread through his being. What had
the degradation of his poverty enabled him to compass for mankind?
These magic pages were so quick with authenticity that he was forced
to regard them as the gage of one who was about to offer a universal
sanction to the human heart.
After awhile he returned these papers to the drawer and addressed
himself to one of the dusty manuals of jurisprudence that adorned his
table. But strange shapes were in his mind to-night; and these would
not be harnessed to the dead letter of the law. A torrent had been
unloosed which bore his thoughts in every direction save that in which
he would have them go. After a time the lamp burned so low that it was
no longer necessary to make a pretence at reading. Therefore he closed
the book and lifted up his ears to the night. The faint, consistent
drip drip of the water from the ceiling to the pool it had formed
on the floor stole upon him with a sense of the uncanny. The room
itself was draughty and decrepit, and in common with others in that
neighborhood, particularly on the waterside, was inhabited by rats. He
could hear them now in the crevices behind the wainscot. He took from
the table a piece of lead which he used as a paper-weight, and waited
grimly for one to appear.
Crouching upon the hearth with this deadly instrument in his hand, his
thoughts strayed again to the country, again to his mother, and from
her to the young girl whom he had hoped to make his wife. This slender
and straight and joyous creature, with the supple limbs of a fawn and
complexion of a dairymaid, had the seemliness and purity which was so
essential in one who would be called to the function of completing his
life. She was as sweet and choice as a lily, for her only gift was the
serenity which has its seat in superb physical health and freedom from
the penalties that wait upon intelligence.
She had seen nothing, knew nothing; there was nothing for her to
see or to know. Her simplicity was so naïve that it was a perennial
delight to a sophisticated nature. He never summoned her image except
to cherish it. In his direst mood, in his straitest hour, when life
blew barb after barb into his skin, he felt that to possess her was
to keep a talisman in his spirit which could unweave the knots in the
conspiracies of fate. Those lines in her shape, those curves which were
so arch, so free, yet qualified so finely, seemed to bring healing and
refinement to him; while those eyes, soft and luminous, yet lacking in
expression, seemed to chasten his power without impairing it.
At this moment a sound for which he had been listening broke his
reverie. An enormous she-rat, heavy with young, entered the room. He
watched it waddle out of a dark corner and emerge slowly towards him
along the floor. As it came near he could discern the gleam of its red
eyes, its nose, its wide-spreading whiskers. They filled him with an
indescribable ferocity. He poised the piece of lead in his hand, and
took aim with close-breathing and deliberate care. Suddenly he hurled
it with the strength of a giant, the creature was struck in the flank
and lay dead before it knew that anything had occurred.
With a grunt of satisfaction amounting almost to joy he picked up the
animal by the tail. “What a beauty!” he muttered, “and what a shot! I
might try that a thousand times and not bring it off.” He opened the
window, flung out the carcass, and heard it drop in a puddle of water
in the middle of the traffic.
The perfectly successful accomplishment of this callous feat seemed to
give his senses the exhilaration of strong wine; and the effect was
heightened by a blast of icy air which was dashed on to his face when
he opened the window. The mighty engines of his imagination were set
in motion. He leaned out of the window and snuffed the brutal weather;
and through the fierce sleet which stung his eyes and froze on his
lips he looked down into London with its lights, its vehicles, and its
chaos; unknowing, unheeding, and unseeing, yet in itself magnetic and
so mysterious. He felt like an eagle who peers out of his eyrie in the
cliffs in the midst of winter to witness the fury of the sea, dashing
itself to pieces upon his paternal rocks, and is himself assaulted by
the eternal ferocity of nature.
III
SUMMONING THE GENIE
The passion of Lear when on the heath he bares his head to the storm
mounted in his veins. Leaning far out of the window of his garret to
confront the rage of heaven, with the unbridled insolence of his youth
he called upon the elements to wreak themselves upon him. Let them stab
his eyes with tears, let them curdle the breath upon his lips. Nature
had charged his being with that dynamic force which makes the world
vibrate, only to withhold the master-key without whose aid his quality
could not announce itself. All--all was furnished in the armory of
the spirit. He asked no more than one brief occasion, and clad in his
demonic power he would shake the pillars of society with that passion
which was preying now upon his flesh and blood.
Such occasions were not denied to those who did not comprehend their
use. How often with scornful eyes was he to watch in the courts of
justice mediocrity, primed with privilege and favor, misconducting
itself amid the purlieus of the law. Every week he was affronted
with the spectacle of this hydra-headed monster toying with the life
and liberty of the subject. At the worst it was no more than another
“miscarriage of justice;” some other unseemly wretch offered upon the
altars of incompetence.
Many times of a night when alone and hungry had he conjured up a vision
of the judge calling from the bench for a tyro to undertake the defence
of one too poor to purchase an advocate. “You, sir--will you undertake
the defence of this unfortunate woman?” And over and over again had he
broken the silence of his room with a carefully modulated, “It will
give me great pleasure, m’lud, it will give me great pleasure.”
However, no judge had made the call. How narrowly had some old and
obtuse public servant escaped unlocking the lips of a Milton, mute and
inglorious, who sat in a shiver of hope awaiting the summons. To be
sure, no judge had known of so strange a presence, but had one of these
venerable guardians been aware of it, in the public interest he would
still have passed him by. For what is more contemptible than elevation
of any kind when it seeks a platform on which to declare itself?
Suppose the call came to-night! The suggestion was conveyed in the
rages of the wind buffeting the cheeks of the unhappy man. Gasping,
drenched, and excited almost beyond the verge of reason, he withdrew
his face from the elements and closed the window. The lamp on the table
had gone out, the few ashes in the grate gave a mere feeble spark. In
spite of the overcoat and thick gloves which he wore, the coldness of
the room oppressed him like a sepulchre. His feet were frozen; he had
no tobacco; the clock at the Law Courts was chiming nine. Yet suppose
it came! Why not? Why not demand it with all the fervor of his nature,
like others who had sought their opportunity had done so often?
He could not understand this fever which had stretched him upon the
rack. It might be that the lack of the meanest necessaries had told
too severely upon his frame. Indeed, he was starving by degrees. His
limbs--huge, knotted things--had withered until he was ashamed. His
skin was so pale, his cheeks so wasted, that when his eyes flamed out
in all their cadaverous lustre the prosperous shrank from him as though
he were a ghost or a leper.
However, he did not covet the heritage of others. Sharp as his belly
was to-night, ragged as was his back, he must not purchase the cuisine
and raiment of princes at the price that was asked. Were he to inhabit
the body of Crœsus, he would have also to inhabit his soul. Throned
amid pomp, he would have dined that evening to the strains of Beethoven
under the shadows of Velasquez and Raphael. He would have eaten the
manna of the wilderness served upon gold plate; have drunk the fabulous
Falernian, with pearls from the Orient dissolved in it to heighten the
bouquet. Gorgeous houris, whose eyes and jewels were jealous of one
another, whose breaths were perfumed, whose lips were laden with music,
would have been on his right hand and on his left. Yet he would neither
have seen, nor heard, nor felt, nor tasted; for those who partook of
such a feast could neither know nor understand.
He must not barter his hunger for a feast such as that. No ray of
meaning ever invaded this crapulous Barmecide. All that he saw was
that the color of money was yellow; all that he knew was that its
possession oiled the wheels of life. The starving man crouched upon his
knees and buried his burning face in the dust of the table. He must
make his apology to Nature for having reviled her. Nothing was more
imperfect than this handmaid; yet how patient, how obedient was this
Unanswering One! She did not deserve to be abused. For all at once,
with a prophetic shudder of his doom, he recognized that he had only to
make his demand of her to receive all that he asked.
If his nature craved the material, let him seek it and it should be
given. He need not starve in his garret; his prayers would be heard. If
Success with all her penalties must be his, let him prostrate himself
before her; was she not a courtezan that none need to woo in vain?
But crouching thus in wretchedness, his frame shivering and burning
by turns, the price of such a triumph was before his eyes, written in
garish letters upon the dismal walls. He was hungry to the point of
death almost, yet if he satisfied that hunger with a mess of pottage he
would be destroyed.
How unhappy is he who becomes the witness of his own dread passions
determining an issue on the battle-ground of his nature! If the mere
act of volition was still to remain with him, the choice must be made;
yet if he made that which had grown so imminent he would lose whatever
status or sanction he derived from the elevation of his aims. This
bundle of forces within him, to whom after all he held the master-key
did he but dare to use it, was driving him pitilessly. Already he
seemed to be losing his fineness of perception. The point at issue
was already half-erased. Those immensely powerful engines which drove
the blood so furiously through his veins were in revolt. Let him find
employment for them; let them fulfil their appointed ends, or woe
betide him.
He had only to press his eyes to the table to summon the genie.
Occasion would wait upon him if he sank to his knees. Let him harness
his will to his common needs and the power would be rendered to him
to achieve them. His imagination had no trammels; it was burning with
a volcanic activity; by its light he could enter any kingdom in the
material world. Let him ask, and all should be given.
He had fallen into a kind of trance in which immediate sensations of
place and time were suspended. The cold room, now wrapped in an almost
complete darkness in which rats were scratching and scuttling; the
drip drip of the water to the floor; the rattle of the windows against
the rising gale; the roar of the traffic in the street--all had become
submerged, had lost their form, had been blended into a strange yet not
inharmonious something else. A pageant was passing before his mind. He
was powerless to identify himself with it, to fix its colors, to catch
the expressions of the fleeting faces of those who mingled in it, yet
despite the suspension of the functions of the will, he was conscious
of what was taking place.
He was not in a dream, because his eyes were open, he knew where he
was, and he was in possession of the sense of hearing. But he had
surrendered the control of the will; and although he was on his knees
with his face pressed to a dusty table before a dead fire, the mind
was become divorced from the body and was cast into the vortex of
indescribable scenes. It drifted about among them helplessly. It bore
no relation to actors or events. All was the weirdest panorama, crammed
with hurry and wild inconsequence; and yet the spectator was filled
with an exhilaration which was as remote from the province of reality
as a drunkard’s delirium.
He began to make frantic efforts to fix and locate this phantasmagoria.
He stretched every nerve to catch the import of the word that was
spoken; he craned his whole being to wrest a single incident from this
wild confusion. He strove as fiercely for a thread of meaning as though
he were fighting against the operations of an anæsthetic, but he could
reclaim nothing from the chaos in which he was enveloped. He was like
a drowning man with the heavy yet not unpleasant rush of water in his
ears.
Suddenly his mind was invaded by a distinct sound. It had the dull
sense of finality of a blow on the head. The door of the room had been
flung open. And then came a voice through the shadows which encompassed
the last feeble gutterings of the lamp:
“Anybody at home?”
Northcote rose from his knees in a wild and startled manner.
“Who--who is that?” he cried, in a hollow tone.
“Is that Mr. Northcote?” said the obscure presence which had entered
the room.
IV
ENTER MR. WHITCOMB
For the second time that evening Northcote peered through the gloom
of his chamber with a thrill of curious expectancy. The visit of the
scarecrow had been forgotten in the torments of his passion, but the
sound of his own name on the lips of the unknown resummoned that
phantom to his mind. But in the room of one so frail was a robust and
spreading presence.
“To whom do I owe a welcome?” muttered Northcote, and as he rose from
his knees his words seemed to be lost in the vibrations of his heart.
“Mr. Northcote it is,” said the round and full tones of the invader.
The advocate, trembling in every limb, was conscious of a powerful
and confident grasp of the hand. And then as his eyes encountered the
outlines of his visitor, he was seized with a pang of disappointment,
for he had looked to see something different.
“Don’t you know me, Mr. Northcote?” said the voice--the conventional
voice which had already smote the starving man with a sense of the
intolerable.
“I am afraid I do not,” he said, heavily.
“Well, I thought Samuel Whitcomb was known to every member of the bar.”
Mr. Whitcomb’s whimsical air strove to cloak a wound to his
professional feelings.
“Ah, yes, of course, Mr. Whitcomb; of course,” said the young man, with
a deeper disappointment fixing its talons upon him. “Of course--Mr.
Whitcomb, the solicitor,” he added, hastily, as through the haze of the
unreal which still enveloped his amazed and stupefied senses he caught
a familiar aspect and a tone that he recalled.
“The same.”
“Excuse this inhospitable darkness,” said Northcote. “Here is a chair;
and try, if you please, to keep your patience while I put some oil in
the lamp and seek a piece of coal for the fire.”
“No elaborate scheme of welcome, I beg. Your client is not a prince of
the blood, but a common lawyer.”
A well-fed and highly sagacious chuckle accompanied this sally on the
part of the solicitor.
Still in the throes of his stupefaction, Northcote addressed himself to
the oil-can and the coal-box, that as far as the circumstances would
permit a reception might be accorded to this unexpected guest, whose
common and prosaic quality had already jarred upon every fibre of his
being. And these preparations, diffidently conducted, kindled again the
well-fed chuckle of the solicitor; and so ingratiating was it that it
seemed to banish all appearance of constraint by imparting an air of
equality to everything in the world.
The lamp flared up under the influence of the dregs of fuel that had
been added to it, and revealed the pale and wasted features of the
garret’s inhabitant. The solicitor, with the quickness of the trained
observer, pursed up his lips in a suppressed whistle. A kind of pity
softened the relentless composure of his eyes as they beheld the
haggard and unkempt bearing of the man before them. “Poor devil,” he
muttered; “literally starving.” It was in this succinct yet compendious
manner that Mr. Whitcomb filed for reference all facts which are
sufficiently obvious to stand as knowledge.
“Do you know,” said Northcote, suddenly, “I was half-expecting somebody
to-night.”
“Sitting in state to receive him, evidently,” the solicitor muttered,
as he sniffed the temperature of the garret and glanced oddly from the
fireless grate to the gloves and overcoat that Northcote was wearing.
“Dining out together, were you?”
“To speak the truth,” said the advocate, with an odd laugh, “I had
hardly got so far as to consider the personage I was half-expecting in
such a grossly material aspect.”
“Personage, eh?” said the solicitor. “They’re out of my line. I only
have to do with persons, quite ordinary people, who are mightily
interested in their meals.”
“Well, you see,” said Northcote, “I had hardly got so far as to
formulate my expected visitant in actual terms of flesh and blood.”
“You deal in spooks!” said the solicitor. “A likely pitch for them,
too.” Mr. Whitcomb began to stroke his moustache pensively, his
invariable habit when confronted by the danger of going beyond his
limit. “A creepy hole, by God!” he said, in another of his asides,
for the simplicity and matter-of-fact of the advocate had a little
discomposed him.
“I was half-expecting a genie,” said the advocate.
“A genie!” said the solicitor, with a laugh of embarrassment, for his
surroundings oppressed him, and his vitality was impaired by not having
yet had his dinner. “I never heard of a genie except in the ‘Arabian
Nights.’”
“They abound in London,” said the advocate. “They are all about us.”
“You are right, I dare say,” said the solicitor, with a puzzled
air. “The latest discovery of science, is it? They have found such
marvellous things lately, even in the water we drink and the air we
breathe. But if you will just stick on your hat, and do me the honor of
eating a bite of supper,--I have had a deplorable day, which has ended
by robbing me of my dinner,--I will talk to you of the business that
has brought me here at such an odd sort of hour.”
“A bite of supper!” These magic words caused the advocate to enfold his
visitor in a melancholy smile.
“Upon my soul,” said he, “you are the genie.”
The solicitor gave a laugh as ponderous as Gargantua’s.
“Have it your own way,” he said; “but for the love of heaven put on
your hat and let us heed the intimations of Nature. Perhaps if we pet
her a little she may do us well in this somewhat remarkable affair.
Come, let us away.”
That robustness of bearing which made half the stock in trade of
the first criminal lawyer in London had already an effect upon the
advocate. Those luscious tones had dispelled his comatose condition.
And who should say, after all, that this was not the genie; at least,
here was the living embodiment of success, that jovial and gigantic
swaggerer. What a smugness and sagacity were in the heavy inflections
of this prosperous man! “A fellow is not fit to pare his own nails when
he’s sharp-set, and I had my chop at a quarter-past one,” he chuckled,
as he watched the advocate grappling with his boots. “Now, on with your
hat, and we’ll take a cab to I know where.”
“As you will,” said the young man, reaching for his hat.
A reaction was stealing along his veins. Already his passionate despair
had begun to cower. It looked like wizardry that one so famous should
have been borne in person, dinnerless, at ten o’clock at night, up
flight after flight of dark stairs, to the crazy fifth floor of that
decrepit building in quest of one so poor and so obscure.
“I am sure you are the genie,” said Northcote, carrying the lamp to
the door to light the distinguished visitor to the head of the rickety
stairs. “Strike a match, sir, if you respect your neck.”
Northcote turned the key of his door, and Mr. Whitcomb descended, step
by step, in a gingerly fashion.
“If there is the slightest fear,” said Northcote, pressing on behind
the solicitor, “of burning your fingers with that match, I shall urge
you not to stop to examine the array of old masters that line this
perfectly damnable staircase of mine.”
“Is that an ‘Adoration of the Magi’ above me on the right?” said Mr.
Whitcomb, with his jovial air.
“No; only a crack in the plaster and a cobweb. And that weird splotch
to the left, which, at this distance, might stand for ‘Hercules
Wrestling with Death for the Body of Alcestis,’ is the damp striking
through the wall.”
When at last they had crept down these noisome stairways into the
street, they found that the sleet had yielded to a light, murky rain.
The solicitor summoned imperiously a passing hansom, and sent a thrill
through the heart of his starving companion by naming for the cabman’s
guidance one of the most luxurious restaurants in the world.
V
AN ARISTOCRAT OF ARISTOCRATS
A swift journey of a thousand yards in this enchanted vehicle along
slushy and dangerous pavements into the West End, that magic region
and golden home of the marvelous, saw the bewildered young man and
his companion, a veritable prince who had stepped out of some fairy
romance, deposited before the portals of a palace raised by a wizard
in the centre of the streets of London. A master-stroke of malice
had placed this temple of choice and rarity in the midst of acres of
disease, penury, and polluted air. The faces of the ghostly denizens
of these regions broke through the shadows with dumb malevolence as
the solicitor and the advocate leaped to the portico. Hardly had they
reached it when they were assailed by light and color, glittering
liveries, gorgeous women. A stealthy and perfumed warmth had even
invaded the outer atmosphere. The starving man opened his lips and
nostrils, and flung wide all the doors of the senses in order to drink
the sheen and scents, the hues and odors. Like a poet of the Latin
races he sought to feed upon animal sensations. Here in these bright
saloons was the reverse of the medal, of which in his garret that
evening he had dreamed. By no more than the wave of a wand he had been
transported into the plaisances of success.
As he entered this domain he was enchanted with everything,--the tread
of the carpets, the hang of the curtains, the clothes of the people,
the sounds of the music, the mien of the waiters. Ali Baba did not
illicitly enter the Cave of the Forty Robbers with a more profound
bewilderment, a sharper curiosity.
Northcote followed his companion into one of the smaller and quieter
but not the less gilded and luxurious rooms. Mr. Whitcomb, who even
in his own person did not disdain the panoply of fashion, had the
unconquerable nonchalance of bearing which is the first credential to
the public respect.
“I want Jools,” he said to the first waiter he met.
The waiter bowed low and said ingratiatingly, “Yes, sare.” He darted
away in quest of that personage without an attempt to maintain the few
rags of dignity that attend his calling. There was, indeed, a strain of
the magician in this wonderful Mr. Whitcomb. It would not have occurred
to Northcote to use the formula “I want Jools,” any more than it did to
Ali Baba to cry “Open Sesame!” at the portals of the cave of the Forty
Robbers.
Jools was the head waiter, a man of the first distinction, with a small
imperial, the envy and the proud despair of all the compatriots who
shared his exile in an alien country. It had the choice perfection
which art is sometimes able to superimpose upon nature. Jools was of
slight, even mean, physique, but he had the ease of bearing which comes
of having been somebody for several generations. He held the key to
the finest cellar in London, as his father before him had held the key
to the finest cellar of Paris, and his grandfather of that of Vienna.
Jools was an aristocrat of aristocrats, and one versed in the ways of
his order would almost have divined it from the amiable humility with
which he came forward to receive one of other clay.
“How do, Jools?” said Northcote’s companion, with his inimitable gift
of manner. “Nasty night. Let us have a quart of your Château Margaux.
What was that you gave me before?”
Jools screwed up his furtive brown eyes in deep contemplation. “Et
would be a seventy-one, sare,” he said, rubbing softly a forefinger
along his chin.
“I don’t know what it was,” said Mr. Whitcomb, royally, “and I don’t
care, so long as it is the best you have in the place.”
An air of magnificence which prosperity had conferred upon the
solicitor touched a chord in the proud soul of Jools.
“I haf a seventy-three, sare,” said this aristocrat, with a not too
ductile absence of condescension, which he reserved for the society of
his equals.
“That sounds all right,” said the solicitor. “We still number you among
the few eminent Christians we have in London at the present time.”
Jools bowed and smiled softly, but an expression of sorrow was seen to
overspread his mat complexion.
“Ef I had known before, sare, I would haf had it decanted.”
“We must all abase ourselves before the despotism of necessity,” said
the solicitor’s hollow-eyed companion, who was already under the
stimulus of an intense anticipation. “She has reverence for nothing.
Even your Château Margaux ’73, which no doubt is divine, must forego
the rights and trappings of its royalty.”
“You must forgive him, Jools,” said the solicitor, enjoying the effect
upon the waiter of these deep tones. “He is talking prose, although,
unlike your immortal compatriot, I am afraid he knows it.”
Jools summoned one of another mould to receive the baser order of a
thick soup and a cut from the saddle, while he himself, beaming with
pleasure and shrugging his shoulders furiously, went forth accompanied
by an awe-stricken satellite personally to select one of those royal
wines, which lent a touch of romantic grace to the exile of this artist
in a foreign country.
Seated on cushions in the cosiest of all imaginable corners, with
spotless lawn and bright silver before him, the starving man enveloped
his nostrils in the delicious fumes that arose from his plate. These
aromatic vapors seemed to pervade his being like some intoxicating
hashish, or a pungent but subtle Arabian tobacco. He toyed with the
pepper and salt, and crumbled his bread with a devouring eagerness,
which he kept in check sufficiently to refuse at first to swallow a
spoonful of the magic food, in order that he might obtain this sense
of inebriation to the full. His companion, whose perfectly normal and
healthy hunger permitted no such refinements as these, had already
tasted and enjoyed.
“Excellent soup,” he said. “It’s got quite a bouquet to it. I’m almost
glad I missed my dinner. One of these days I shall do it again.”
The satisfaction which in these circumstances consumes the average
sensual person grew so acute, that by the time he had swallowed
half of his plateful, he cried out to the nearest waiter: “Hi! you,
Alphonse--have the goodness to tell the chef to step this way, will
you?”
Northcote placed the first spoonful on his tongue, and indescribable
pangs seemed to mount to his brain. A fierce desire overpowered him. He
devoured another spoonful, and then another. Suddenly he was overcome
by a strange fury of greed. His plate was empty, and his palate had
lost its original fineness, before he was able to impose a check upon
his passion.
Great, however, as his expedition had been in its later stages, it
had scarcely surpassed that of Mr. Whitcomb, who from the first had
been devouring steadily. No sooner had that gentleman eaten his final
mouthful than he ordered both plates to be replenished.
At this moment, by one of those significant coöperations of events
which form the basis of the drama, a large, fat, frock-coated, and
pomatumed gentleman appeared, a little sheath of quiet smiles twinkling
all over his person, as though the playful god of love was in hiding
behind his ample shirt-front and slyly tickling his bosom with feathers.
“Hommage, monsieur le chef, hommage!” cried Mr. Whitcomb. “Cette
consommé est délicieuse. Vous êtes un vrai ruban bleu.”
The chef emitted a loud purr of satisfaction like an unusually large
Persian cat. And then by a still more exquisite coöperation of events
than that which had already preceded this incident, who should appear
but Jools, behind whom his attendant satellite was mincing with a
warmed decanter of wine.
“Two more glasses, Jools, if you please,” said the solicitor. “Monsieur
le chef and your worthy self will honor us, I hope. The first
product of your country will not prove unworthy of two of its most
distinguished sons.”
A look of rapture sprang to the proud eyes of Jools, and he measured
four glasses of wine with an agitation that was more dignified than
perfect composure.
“To l’Entente Cordiale, messieurs,” said Mr. Whitcomb, raising his
glass.
“L’Entente Cordiale!” chimed the others.
“It is part of my religion,” said Mr. Whitcomb, “never to encounter
the artistic temperament without rendering my homage. If we had only a
trace of it in this country to fuse and rarefy our other manifold gifts
and blessings, I believe we should become the most perfect nation upon
the earth.”
“Is it not, sir, the absence of it that makes you English so perfect?”
said the chef, who had all the alert intelligence of his race.
“That is not a thrust, monsieur?”
“Ah, no. As a citizen of the world I make it my duty never to wound the
English. I respect your country; there are seasons when I adore it.”
“Ees it not the land of justice, order, and liberty?” said Jools.
“Justice we have for those who can afford to pay for it,” said the
solicitor; “that is to say, the poor man is quite unable to purchase
it, and even the rich finds it costs a great deal of money. Order we
have; it is the birthright of us all--an adumbration of our exaggerated
reverence for mud, and stones, and bricks, and mortar. Liberty, Jools,
I regret to say, we have not. We are all base slaves--”
“Of the External,” said Northcote, with a lustre in his eyes that the
wine had kindled. “There is no slave like a Saxon. In his scheme of
sense the eye takes precedence. Even his religion is Money.”
“Ah, no,” said the chef, with much amiability, “you English have no
avarice like we have in my native Normandy.”
“An Englishman’s avarice is not of the heart, but of the spirit,” said
Northcote, with the melancholy calmness of one who knows everything.
“You haf your Shakespeare, your Milton,” said Jools.
“I think sometimes we could afford to exchange them both for your
Honoré Balzac,” said Northcote.
“You would be unwise to do so,” said the chef. “Your Shakespeare is
among the first order of mankind. He is greater than Molière; my faith!
he is as great as Napoleon.”
“Perhaps you are right, but your Honoré Balzac showed the bourgeoisie
its every form and feature.”
“Truly,” said the chef, with a sly laugh; “but you have ceased to be
bourgeois in your England nowadays.”
“Since when, sir?” said the young advocate, with a flame in his eyes.
“Since we have learned the trick of calling our mean ambitions by
high-sounding names?”
The solicitor filled up the glasses of Northcote and the chef.
“You speak well, my friends,” he said, with his richest chuckle;
“although myself being a middle-class Englishman, I am sorry to say
your discourse is over my head. But if it is to be my privilege to
maintain the talk upon this extremely high level, it will cost me,
Jools--”
“It will cost him, Jools,” interrupted Northcote, with a truculent
glance at the waiter.
“It will cost me, Jools,” said the solicitor, with an imperturbable
smile, “an extra quart at least of your Château Margaux.”
At the moment this order fell on deaf ears, for the lips of Jools were
trembling with speech like those of Socrates.
“We will give you our Honoré de Balzac, sare,” he said, with a heavy
sigh, “ef you will part wiz your Shikspeare.”
“Also our Voltaire,” said the chef, with a leer at his melancholy
compatriot, “if they will part with their Shakespeare.”
“Your Honoré Balzac is only just coming into his own,” said Northcote,
with immense solemnity.
“That is to say, sir,” said the chef, “a reputation must be established
at least a hundred years in the arts before the world can be decorated
with the radiance that proceeds from the enormous fire it holds in its
bowels.”
“True, monsieur,” said Northcote. “It is like a new-born planet. It has
to be allowed to cool a little before it can assume a shape, and the
wonderful vegetation begins to appear upon it. It cannot be approached
at first; it is a mere ball of fire in the heavens, without form and
without meaning to the human eyes.”
“Or it ees like a young wine, sare; it must be allowed time to mature,”
said Jools.
“It is the worst feature, Jools,” said the solicitor, “of this claret
of yours, that it always unlocks the door for these pleasantries.
And this British skull of mine is so packed with business, that with
our shopkeeping instinct of transacting a little of it whenever and
wherever we can, before we fall upon the latest theories in regard to
the composition of matter, with every reluctance, I shall ask you and
your distinguished compatriot to withdraw for the space of one hour.”
“Personally,” said Northcote, “I believe the universe is not made up of
matter at all.”
“In other words, sir,” said the chef, “matter is--”
“I ask your pardon, my friends,” said the solicitor; “but with true
Britannic effrontery, this business of mine even seeks to take
precedence of the mystery of the universe.”
“There is no such thing as the universe,” said Northcote, draining
his glass with great decision. “The whole of it is contained within
ourselves.”
“Peace, peace!” said the solicitor. “We will resume our speculations,
with the permission of our good friends, in the space of one hour.”
Filled with every fraternal and complacent feeling, Jools and his
distinguished compatriot bowed smilingly, and with a profound regard
for the solicitor and the advocate, retired, in opposite directions,
to those spheres of activity in which there was none to dispute their
supremacy.
VI
A PROPHECY
“And now,” said the solicitor, “as the decks are clear, let me say this
is a rather odd affair which has sent me hungry about the streets of
London at an unpleasant hour.”
“Am I not surprisingly cool about it?” said Northcote, with a flushed
face, balancing his empty wine-glass on the handle of a knife,
“considering that this business of yours is destined to mark the
turning-point in my career.”
“When a man begins to talk of his career,” said the solicitor, “it is
safe to infer that he has taken the wrong quantity of liquor. Waiter!”
“Sare?”
“Tell Jools we want another pint of this filthy stuff--this
what-do-you-call-it?--with which he is poisoning us. And, Alphonse,
have a couple of Welsh rarebits ready by the time we want them.”
The waiter withdrew, walking delicately; and the solicitor bent across
the table towards his companion in a manner of confidential gravity.
“Correct me if I am wrong,” said he, “but you have done no circuit
work?”
“Hitherto I have not soared beyond a police-court,” said the young
man, with perfect frankness. “And even there I have only made a public
display of my incapacity on half a dozen occasions.”
“A beginner one might say, yet an ambitious one.”
“Where do you get the ambition from?”
“It is in the color of your eyes. Besides, have you not a habit of
turning your phrases?”
“If I did not know you to be a connoisseur in men of promise I should
not be convinced.”
“That’s my foible, right enough,” said the solicitor, with a laugh. “A
connoisseur in men of promise. Samuel Whitcomb owes his own reputation
to that, and he is proud to believe that the reputations of half a
score of those who are in every way his superiors are to be traced to
that source.”
“Laying aside the question of superiority, all the world knows it.”
“I gave Finnemore Jones his first brief,” said the solicitor,
immodestly. “I provided Cooper, Howard, and Harrington with the
opportunities that made them famous.”
“And above all,” said the young advocate, measuring with a stealthy eye
the man before him, “are you not the discoverer of Michael Tobin?”
“Ha!” cried the solicitor, as he brought his fist upon the table with
an air of unmistakable triumph, “I was holding that back.”
“As the crown of your achievement?”
“Yes; Michael Tobin is almost here. But how do you come to suspect it,
when at present his quality is only known to the few?”
“I am one of them,” said Northcote, looking his companion imperturbably
in the eyes.
Such a cool affirmation seemed to delight the solicitor.
“Well, I should not be surprised if you were,” he said, with a violent
chuckle. “If I had not had some such suspicion I might not have climbed
up all those dark stairs at a quarter-past ten of a winter’s night.”
“Without your dinner.”
“Without my dinner. Why, if that fellow hasn’t forgotten the black
currant jelly. But here he comes with his poisonous claret.”
“Tobin is a brilliant man,” said Northcote, poising his glass after
having replenished it. “Irish to the bone; a real discovery; ought to
go far. But far as he ought to go and will go, there is one name in
your list that will surpass him.”
“That is where I cannot agree with you, my son,” said the solicitor,
with confidential and parental bonhomie, for this subject lay at the
source of his intellectual pride. “You must know somewhat to have found
out about Tobin; but when you name his superior you betray your youth.”
“I concede it is quite impossible for me to name Tobin’s superior
without betraying my youth.”
“Go to,” said the solicitor, with an air of indulgence that he
reserved for the young and promising. “Don’t labor the point. It wants
experience to detect greatness in the shell. Michael Tobin will easily
be the first upon my list.”
“There is one who will surpass Michael Tobin,” said the young man.
“Not among those I have mentioned.”
“True. As is usual with the prophet, you don’t dare to affirm the
authentic name.”
“Upon my word I can’t think who you mean!”
“One Henry Northcote.”
The solicitor broke forth in a suppressed shout of laughter.
“Good!” he said; “you’ll do. Fill up your glass and we’ll get to work.
And I’m glad your talent is so remarkable, because I’ve got some
business here that is likely to tax it.”
“It is increasingly clear to me that you are the genie,” said the young
advocate in a low voice, and fetching a deep breath.
VII
THE OFFER OF A BRIEF
The solicitor drew from an inner pocket of his coat a bundle of papers
tied with red tape. He placed them on the table at the side of his
plate.
“At the eleventh hour,” he said, speaking coolly and distinctly, “I am
going to ask you to undertake the defence in a trial for murder.”
Northcote was conscious of no more than a slight sharp throb of the
pulses as he met the shrewd, even cunning, eyes of the man who sat
opposite.
“Yes, that’s a chance for Henry Northcote,” were his first words,
uttered under the breath.
“The fee is not much,” said the solicitor, with the precision of the
man of affairs entering his fat voice. “You will not be briefed at more
than twenty guineas.”
“To-night I think I would sell my soul for half that sum,” said the
young man, with an excited laugh.
“Is not that a somewhat damaging admission for you to make?” said the
solicitor.
“I agree, I agree,” said the young man; “but the truth is never
discreet.”
“There’s no money in this case,” said the solicitor, “and I’m afraid
there is no kudos. It is one of those disagreeable cases which are not
only irreclaimably sordid, but also as dead as mutton. In order to
obtain a small sum of money, a woman of the ‘unfortunate’ class has
poisoned a man with whom she lived. She is one of those cold-blooded
persons who are born for the gallows. There is enough evidence to hang
her ten times. We shall be forced to submit to the inevitable.”
“You disappoint me,” said Northcote. “I was thinking of a real fighting
case.”
The solicitor smiled, with a faint suggestion of patronage.
“I beg your pardon, I’m sure,” said the young man, quickly. “Had
there been any life in the case you would not have carried it to one
so obscure. Even as it is, I ought to be grateful to you--and I am
grateful indeed--for putting it in my way.”
“The circumstances of this case are somewhat peculiar,” said the
solicitor. “We are under rather severe pressure in the matter of time.
The case will be called on the day after to-morrow at the Central
Criminal Court.”
“That hardly explains away your kindness towards myself. Even at this
short notice you could have got plenty of men to have consented to a
verdict.”
“I am aware of it, but then it is not quite the method of Whitcomb and
Whitcomb. We like ‘Thorough’ to be our motto. If we accept a client, we
feel we owe it to ourselves to leave no stone unturned, irrespective of
position or emolument.”
“But I understand this case is too dead to be fought?”
“Ah, we are now about to approach the first of the ‘peculiar’
circumstances. At five o’clock this evening Tobin himself was holding
this brief, but at that hour his bicycle had the misfortune to collide
with a motor-car, and the poor fellow now lies in hospital with a
compound fracture of the right thigh.”
“Poor fellow, poor fellow!”
“I think you and I are agreed that Tobin is without a rival in a case
of this nature.”
“You must forgive me if I express surprise that Tobin should have
accepted the brief.”
“That is easily explained. Tobin is the generous-hearted Irishman who
is never weary of affirming that Whitcomb and Whitcomb gave him his
start. He never refuses us, and I am afraid we, in the interests of a
client, trade occasionally on his good nature.”
“Then the practitioners of law are sometimes more disinterested than
they seem.”
“My dear fellow, among a considerable body of men must there not be a
leaven of human nature? And my own experience is that human nature is
so much more disinterested than the young and cynical like to consider
it.”
“That is well said,” replied Northcote, feeling the rebuke to be
merited.
“And so you see,” said the solicitor, “in regard to this wretched woman
whom we had undertaken to defend, we were in the position of being able
to brief a first-rate man for a third-rate fee.”
“Yet a third-rate man would have served your purpose equally well, if
one is allowed to hazard the remark.”
“No; for this reason: the woman has long been of intemperate habits.
Prior to the commission of the crime she was known to be drinking
heavily, and Tobin, who is a real fighting man, if ever there was one,
had decided to take the line of insanity.”
“As the only possible means of saving her neck?”
“There is no other. And even in the hands of such a man as Tobin, the
chance is remote. He has his witnesses to call, of course, in support
of his plea, but they cannot be considered as entirely satisfactory.
And, unfortunately, their evidence will be rebutted by that of the
prison doctors, who are against us.”
“Then, after all,” said the young man, with a sunken eagerness
appearing in his eyes, “there will be opportunities for advocacy.”
“Pretty considerable opportunities, if we are to save her neck.”
“Then forgive me if again I put the question, Why did you come to a
tyro with a case of this nature?”
“How can you ask,” said the solicitor, with an arch smile, “when the
tyro happens to be one Henry Northcote?”
“Upon your own admission that is a name that has no particular
significance for you.”
“Nay, you go too fast, my friend. It must be left to the future to
place the name of Henry Northcote, but let me confess that in the
meantime the bearer of it has not wholly escaped my vigilance.”
“In your capacity as a connoisseur in young men of promise?”
“Precisely.”
“Upon what data have you built, when you have never seen him in open
court?”
“My dear fellow, you are as curious as a woman.”
“Every comprehensive mind is partly feminine.”
“No mind can be in any sense feminine. It is a contradiction in terms.”
“Well, well! From what data have you derived the courage to entrust an
untried man with the defence in a trial for murder?”
“To be perfectly frank, it was Tobin who found the courage for me.”
“Tobin!”
“No less.”
“Why, Tobin doesn’t know me from Adam.”
“Not so fast, my friend; don’t come to conclusions so abruptly. Tobin
has his eyes about him.”
“Well, yes, that is an attribute that is common to all who become
first-rate in anything.”
“Let me tell you exactly what occurred. I was on the point of leaving
Chancery Lane about six, and beginning to think about my dinner, when
I received poor Tobin’s telegram to say he was tucked up in hospital
with a broken thigh, and would I come to him at once. Of course I went;
and there the poor fellow was in a devilish uncomfortable attitude, as
white as the sheets, face drawn with pain, but himself as cool as ice.
“‘We shall have to apply for a postponement,’ were his first words.
“‘In any case, old boy,’ said I, ‘I shall relieve you of further
responsibility.’
“‘Not much!’ said he. ‘Get a postponement until next sessions; I am
going to save the poor beggar’s neck.’
“‘Why, old boy,’ I said, fixing him up with a cigarette, ‘you will be
lying here in your little bed until next sessions.’
“‘Not for me,’ he said; ‘not for Michael. I shall be in court on two
sticks a-saving the poor beggar’s neck.’
“‘Now, look here, old son,’ said I, ‘just let the whole thing go, and
we’ll put up somebody else.’
“‘If you do,’ said he, ‘as sure as a gun she’s a gonner.’
“‘I am afraid I agree,’ said I; ‘but if our fair client is not a fit
subject for the rope, upon my soul there’s no need to hang anybody.’
“Well, the next thing I saw was that his eyes were full of tears.
“‘Oh, damn it all!’ he said, ‘I can’t stand this hanging of women.’
“‘She’s an out-and-outer,’ said I.
“‘That doesn’t alter her sex,’ said the Irishman.
“‘Well,’ said I, ‘who can you suggest to put up in your stead with your
plea of insanity? The difficulty is the brief is only marked twenty
guineas, and you can’t get much for that money with you fellows.’
“‘You can’t,’ said he; ‘besides, this is a case for Michael. Unless
it is handled in a certain way she is certain to hang. Apply for a
postponement.’
“‘Why, you old sentimentalist, I don’t think we could get one,’ said I,
having pretty well made up my mind that we could not.
“‘Who is the judge?’ said he.
“‘Bow-wow Brudenell,’ said I, ‘the most pedantic and cantankerous old
man on the bench. And Weekes is leading for the Crown. There will not
be much in the way of accommodation in that quarter.’
“‘Oh, come, old Bow-wow is not such a bad old sportsman,’ said the
Irishman. ‘Tell him just how it is; tell him I’m suddenly laid by the
wing, and it will be all right.’
“‘But,’ said I, ‘even if we get a postponement, we shall be none the
better for it. It can’t be extended indefinitely; and I am afraid, old
boy, this is going to be a long business of yours. I think I shall hand
the brief over to Harris.’
“At first I was afraid the wild Irishman was going to jump out of his
plaster of Paris.
“‘Harris!’ said he. ‘My aunt! I wouldn’t brief Harris to defend a
fox-terrier for worrying a tortoise-shell kitten.’
“‘I’ll admit,’ said I, ‘that Christopher is not a genius, but at least
he will get our unfortunate client hanged like a Christian and a
gentleman.’
“I spent nearly an hour arguing the point with the poor old fellow.
‘I don’t hold with dumb animals performing on the stage, and I don’t
hold with the hanging of women,’ he kept saying, in that odd way of his
which one doesn’t know exactly how to take.
“‘Look here, old son,’ I said at last, growing impatient, ‘this will
have to be fixed up with Harris to-night; and if I can’t get Harris, I
shall get Westby.’
“‘She can hand in her checks if you get either,’ said he. ‘She’ll be
hanged by the neck without even a run for her money.’
“‘Well, you can’t get “silk” for twenty guineas,’ said I; ‘and you
can’t get a really useful junior.’
“Now, here follows another of the ‘peculiar’ circumstances. Suddenly
the wild Irishman lifted himself in his bed, and again there was that
odd look in his eyes.
“‘I’ll tell you who you _can_ get,’ said he; ‘he’s come to me in a
flash. Get that fellow Northcote.’
“‘Northcote?’ said I; ‘never heard of him.’
“‘Never mind, get him,’ said the wild Irishman. ‘He’s young, and they
say he’s mad, but he might bring us luck.’
“‘For a chap with as brilliant a set of brains as are to be found in
London,’ said I, ‘you do come out with some of the oddest suggestions.
How did you come to think of this fellow Northcote, when you won’t
allow Harris and Westby to be good enough?’
“‘Oh,’ said he, ‘he’s one of my inspirations,’
“‘Inspiration my foot!’ said I. ‘I’m off to Christopher Harris.’
“Well, as I was about to go, poor Tobin raised himself again, and those
queer eyes came at me in a way I don’t like.
“‘Look here, Whitcomb,’ he said; ‘you were a pal to me when I had
hardly a boot to my foot, but if you go to Harris I’ll never speak to
you again.’
“‘Lie down, you damned Celt, and go to sleep,’ I said, ‘and I’ll come
and talk to you another day.’
“‘I won’t lie down until you promise to go to Northcote at No. 3
Shepherd’s Inn.’
“‘King’s Bench Walk,’ I assured him, ‘will be far better. If I can’t
have a reckless fellow like you, I mean to play for safety.’
“‘All the safety in the world,’ said he, ‘won’t save the poor beggar’s
neck.’
“‘That’s all very well,’ said I, ‘but an inexperienced man might
come a dreadful cropper in a case of this kind. I believe myself in a
moderate amount of speculation, but not in a capital charge.’
“‘It’s her only chance,’ said the Irishman.
“‘I am afraid,’ said I, ‘her attorneys are not willing to provide her
with it at the risk of decency.’
“‘There’s your Saxon,’ said he. ‘Even when they hang a woman, they
insist on decency. Praise be to the saints, we haven’t got any decency
in our dirty old island.’
“‘No,’ said I; ‘but you’ve got a good deal of superstition. Whatever
put this fellow Northcote into your wild head? I never remember to have
heard of him in court.’
“‘I don’t care what you’ve heard of him,’ said the Irishman, ‘this is
where he gets his chance. He’ll bring us luck.’
“‘Luck!’ said I. ‘A lawyer’s luck is based on common sense and the
capacity to see into the future.’
“‘We crack-brained Celts possess that capacity,’ said Tobin. ‘You can
come and tell me on Monday whether I’ve been wrong.’
“‘Is Northcote an Irishman, too?’ I asked, feeling myself beginning
to waver; and I don’t mind confessing that I have never been able to
withstand Michael Tobin from the first hour I met him.
“‘I’ve only seen the man twice,’ said he; ‘but if he doesn’t carry a
drop of the Celt under his waistcoat, Cork was not my birthplace.’
“‘Have you seen him in court?’
“‘Not I. The first time I saw him he was addressing a few well-chosen
remarks, quoting the pagan philosophers, to a select gathering of the
unemployed in Hyde Park. M’Murdo was with me. “My hat,” said he,
“that’s a fellow called Northcote; he’s at the bar. A nice place for
a barrister, isn’t it?” “Personally,” said I, “I don’t care a curse
about the place, but I’d give ten years of my life to have his voice.”
There the thing was booming like an organ, and we stayed half an hour
listening to rhetoric that might have come out of Burke.’
“‘And the second time?’
“‘I have only the haziest recollection of the occasion. Where it was
I can’t recall, but the mob orator was paraphrasing “Hamlet” to gain
facility of expression. But I remember thinking, “My son, you will be
bursting upon an astonished world one of these fine afternoons, and
then we shall all be complaining about your luck for being born so
gifted.”’
“And so, my dear Northcote, to round up a long story, thus it was I
came to stand in your chambers, dinnerless, at a quarter-past ten of a
winter’s night.”
As is not uncommon with those who possess mental energy, the solicitor,
under the stimulus of wine and events, had an immense volubility.
During this recital the claret had circulated freely between his
companion and himself. Both their faces were flushed, and, moreover,
the emotions which had been excited in the young advocate had filled
him with a kind of vertigo.
“After all,” said he, resting his forehead on his hand and staring into
vacancy, “it is most probably Tobin who is the genie.”
“Set a thief to catch a thief,” laughed the solicitor. “Michael Tobin
and yourself are well matched--a pair of deuced odd fellows.”
“In any case,” persisted Northcote, “if a genie you are, you would say
you are a genie in spite of yourself.”
“I say nothing at all when it comes to genies,” said the solicitor with
emphasis. “I don’t know anything about them; they are not in my line.
They don’t trouble the common lawyer in the pursuit of his bread. What
does trouble him is time, for time is money.”
The solicitor took out his watch, a thing of value.
“Twenty past eleven,” he said. “There’s a fortune awaiting the fellow
who invents an automatic brake to slip on old Father Time. I’ve got to
get out to Norbiton to-night,--I promised my little girl, and she will
be sitting up. But before I go I wish you would cast your eyes over
your brief, and tell me precisely what you think about it.”
The solicitor handed to Northcote the document tied with red tape, and
called again for the waiter.
“You’ll have a liqueur?--they’ve got some white curaçao that might
be worse. And perhaps some coffee might help us at this stage.
Fortunately, this is the one place in London where they know how it’s
made. And, Alphonse, you might bring some of those fireworks that you
call cigars.”
VIII
EQUITY A FRUIT OF THE GODS
By the time the waiter had returned, the young advocate was addressing
himself to the bundle of papers with a remarkable energy. Already a
fierce mental excitement had stirred him. His senses, overstimulated by
a wine of great potency, and by a too sudden reaction from a state of
actual bodily starvation, a fever had been kindled in his frame. And
those high ambitions which had reconciled him to existence through so
long a period of the most abject penury, yet whose only home had been
his wild dreams, had suddenly, at the touch of the magic wand of the
enchanter, acquired a name and a local habitation.
It was no wonder that to the eyes of the solicitor, that cool, mature,
and rather cynical man of the world, this young man, in whom strong and
deep emotions had been let loose, soon became an object of scientific
interest. Mr. Whitcomb felt himself to be even a little disconcerted by
the feverish manner in which the young advocate tossed about the pages
of his brief. As he came to note the vivid pallor of the face before
him, the burning of the eyes, the twitching of the lips, he felt a
qualm of uneasiness. Perchance it had been neither wise nor kind to be
so lavish of the Château Margaux. Blood which had been deteriorated by
a course of insufficient food was only too likely to be over-charged
by an unaccustomed accession of heat. Already it had seemed to be
waxing too high.
“Here is your liqueur,” said Mr. Whitcomb, with a slight perturbation,
“and here’s a cigar I’ve chosen for you. And here’s a nice black coffee
that may steady you a bit.”
“Thanks, thanks,” muttered Northcote, nodding his head in a mechanical
manner.
The solicitor gulped his liqueur, and cut off the end of his cigar.
“Well, old boy,” he said, letting a somewhat whimsical gaze fall upon
the man who sat opposite, “do you feel like giving us a bit of a run
for our money at the hour of ten-thirty at the Central Criminal Court
on Friday morning next, or would you prefer that the chance should be
offered to Harris?”
The advocate swallowed his coffee.
“You will have a run for your money all right,” said he, “on Friday
morning next. Upon my soul, I believe you have given me a start with
the most fascinating case in the world.”
The solicitor pursed up his lips in an expression of genial
contradiction.
“If you find fascination in a thing like that,” he said, “you must look
very deep. The whole business is sordid, atrocious, bestial. The crime
is brutal and perfectly commonplace.”
“Is it not a mere question,” said the advocate, “of the fashion in
which one uses one’s eyes, of the plane over which one permits them to
stray?”
“There is only one plane, my friend,” said the solicitor, “over which
an attorney permits _his_ eyes to stray. That is the obvious diurnal
one of matter-of-fact common sense.”
“Yet it may happen,” Northcote rejoined, “that the plane of
matter-of-fact common sense may not be identical in the eyes of
attorney and advocate.”
“Is not the hour somewhat advanced for a Socratic dialogue?” said the
solicitor.
“Also,” persisted Northcote, “the plane of matter-of-fact common sense,
in whatever it may consist, may not prove identical in the eyes of the
jury and the judge; also in the eyes of the person who committed the
crime, and the person who was the victim of it.”
“We are not here to traverse the moral code,” said the solicitor,
“or to enter the domain of abstract reason. The English penal law is
perfectly explicit upon the point at issue, as I think you will find on
Friday.”
Of a sudden Northcote struck the table a violent blow.
“This unhappy woman has been deeply wronged by circumstance,” he said,
with a vehemence that was totally unexpected.
“It will do your case no harm to show that to the jury,” said the
solicitor, sucking quietly at his cigar. “There is not a scrap of
evidence to support such a contention, but it might be of service if it
could be upheld.”
“Is it not here that we enter on the higher function of the advocate’s
art?” said the young man. “Does it not consist in the evocation of that
which lies outside the obvious?”
“You must have it entirely your own way, my dear fellow,” said the
solicitor warily. “I don’t propose to play the rôle of Adeimantus at
this hour of the night. But I don’t mind remarking that you will have
to evoke that which is very far outside the obvious to secure the
acquittal of my client on Friday.”
“That is viewing the subject from the plane of matter-of-fact common
sense which you are content to inhabit?”
“That is so; I can view it from no other. But may I remark in
parenthesis that you are also likely to find the judge and jury
inhabiting that plane on Friday.”
“You permit yourself a greater definiteness than I dare to employ,”
said Northcote. “But the point I would like to fix is this: Assuming
that I am able to evoke that which in your view lies so far outside the
obvious as to be non-existent, will you countenance my so doing in the
prisoner’s interest?”
The solicitor gave a short nervous jerk to his mustache.
“That is a rather extraordinary proposition to advance,” he said
disconcertedly; “and as you are a young man, a beginner, perhaps you
will forgive my saying that I consider you hardly wise to advance it.”
“Because we cannot contrive to keep our corns out of the way, eh? We
would look upon equity as a sort of fruit of the gods, which mankind
may eat of, but may not analyze.”
“I shall not attempt to follow you. But what I would like to say is
this,--and I hope, my dear fellow, you, as an advocate, will not
consider this as a breach of etiquette on the part of your client,--I
don’t like your question at all. In a word, speaking with twenty years’
experience behind me, I hardly think it ought to have been put.”
The accession of somewhat strenuous solemnity to a manner which a
minute ago had been grossly, carelessly genial, filled Northcote with a
heavy mocking laughter.
“I don’t like it at all; oughtn’t to have been put,” Mr. Whitcomb
reaffirmed, with a curious admixture of nervousness and sternness.
“I wonder if I shall ever acquire the most valuable of all the arts,”
said the young man, with an arch smile; “the art of knowing where not
to look.”
“That art comprises the first law of success,” said the solicitor
sententiously.
“I omitted to append a rather important corollary to that extraordinary
proposition of mine,” said Northcote, with a mischievous air. “It is
this: Is the advocate entitled to evoke what is non-existent in the
eyes of his client, providing it has an existence in his own?”
“I hope to be spared anything further upon the subject,” said the
solicitor. “I don’t aspire to be a casuist; I’m a common lawyer. But I
feel I am entitled to say this: use this subtlety of yours on Friday to
a full advantage, and you will have no cause to regret having done so.”
“Yes, it’s the voice of the genie, right enough,” said the young man,
in a hollow voice, as he toyed with an empty wine-glass.
“And I feel I am also entitled to say,” said the solicitor, with
emphasis, “since your mind appears to be exercised by the question,
that when an advocate accepts a brief, his whole duty is to his client.”
“And in the case of this unfortunate woman, will serve the interests
of his client by securing her acquittal?”
“Unquestionably.”
“If the ends of justice are thereby defeated?”
“Well, since you force one to say it, the interests of the prisoner’s
attorney may not always be coincident with those of justice.”
“My dear Adeimantus, that is well said,” the young man exclaimed. “Yet
I have your assurance that the interests of client and advocate should
be always identical?”
“Yes, I think you are entitled to say that,” said the solicitor;
“although understand, if you please, I speak entirely in my capacity as
an attorney.”
“From which I gather that as a unit of mankind, as a subscriber to
the common equity, you reserve to yourself the right to appease your
private gods subsequently in your own private fashion?”
“I suppose one does.”
“And in the meantime, you and I, attorney and advocate, must compass
the liberation of this foul murderess, must, if we can, give her back
to society?”
“Personally, I shall be content if we enable her to escape the extreme
penalty.”
“You balk my question.”
“Pray have it as you choose. Thank God, I am only a common lawyer!”
“My dear Samuel Whitcomb,” said the young man, peering at him with
gaunt eyes, “you would do well to get down here and now on your knees,
and thank Him for a dispensation of that kind.”
IX
THE BRIEF WITHDRAWN
“Waiter!” called the solicitor at this point. “More coffee, if you
please. Let it be hot and strong.” Turning to Northcote, he added: “Our
minds have grown so subtle with that claret we’ve got to find out where
we are.”
“Narcotics are not usually the friends of truth,” said his companion.
“My worthy Samuel Taylor,” laughed the solicitor, “I hope you will not
forget I want to get to Norbiton to-night.”
“There is one other point,” said the young man imperturbably, “on which
I wish to render myself clear.”
Mr. Whitcomb permitted himself a shrug of unmistakable expostulation.
“What, another!” he muttered under his breath. “This fellow is the
devil!”
“I do not propose to take the line of insanity.”
Northcote spoke with a quietness which seemed to deepen the
reverberation of Mr. Whitcomb’s subsequent exclamation.
“Then you hang her!”
“On the contrary,” said Northcote, “I promise an acquittal.”
For a moment the solicitor was robbed of speech by this extraordinary
announcement.
“Upon my word,” he exclaimed, with a more manifest impatience than
any he had yet shown, “you can hardly have read your brief. There is
nothing to extenuate the crime; and the evidence of it is overwhelming.”
“Circumstantial, apparently.”
“You must know that in a capital charge the prosecution relies almost
invariably upon circumstantial evidence.”
“So much the worse for it in this particular instance.”
“I am at a loss to understand.” The solicitor spoke in accents of
alarm. “There is not a man living who could overthrow the present
evidence.”
The young man smiled darkly. The symptoms of his inebriation had
yielded to the clarifying influence of a liqueur and two cups of strong
black coffee. His calmness was now forming a memorable contrast to the
marked excitement of the older man.
“My dear Mr. Whitcomb,” he said, “I suggest, as you wish to get to
Norbiton, that we adjourn this discussion until Friday evening, by
which time Emma Harrison, _alias_ Cox, _alias_ Marshall, will be
restored to society.”
“Such an undertaking is entirely reckless,” said the solicitor bluntly.
“Quite the last thing that Tobin himself would attempt would be to
upset the theory of the prosecution. The chain of evidence could not
be more complete. Even he, in the opinion of many the most brilliant
common law man we have at the present moment at the bar, would be
content to urge extenuating circumstances, and call witnesses in their
support.”
“Since you have seen fit to entrust the conduct of this case to me,”
said Northcote, “I shall beg to be conceded as free a hand as would
have been conceded to Michael Tobin.”
“Is your request quite reasonable?” said the solicitor. “Tobin has
years of experience and success behind him.”
“You can trust me not to attempt more than I can perform,” said
Northcote.
“Really, sir,” said Mr. Whitcomb, genuinely alarmed by such an
obduracy, “I cannot admit your right, in the circumstances in which you
stand at present, to overstep the bounds that are so clearly indicated
by persons of experience.”
“I take this brief into court free of all restriction,” was the young
man’s rejoinder.
“That one can hardly consent to,” said the solicitor. “Would you say it
is quite legitimate to make such a stipulation? We have our witnesses
on the line of insanity, and we must ask to have them called.”
“But do you not see,” said Northcote, “that if we call those witnesses
we admit the theory of the prosecution, and cut the ground from under
our own feet?”
“Certainly, certainly. One would have thought that so much would be
self-evident.”
“Yet you sought me out in the capacity of a fighter. I take it that had
you not desired to fight you would have gone straightway to Harris.”
“I can only admit the possibilities of a fight within limits. The
woman’s guilt is established beyond question; our only concern is to
mitigate its degree.”
“For my own part,” said the advocate, “I am not prepared to accept
your proposition. To my mind, so far is the woman’s guilt from being
already established, that I am prepared to give an undertaking that it
never will be established.”
The solicitor drummed his fingers on the table-cloth.
“I should like Tobin to hear you say that. I wish you had been at the
police-court when the case came before the magistrate. There is enough
evidence to hang an archdeacon.”
“Very likely. But we shall be getting back to those abstract principles
for entertaining which I have already suffered reproof.”
The solicitor gave an uneasy eye to his watch.
“You force me to deliver an ultimatum,” said he, in an uncompromising
tone. “Please have the goodness to give an undertaking to conduct the
defence on the lines indicated by Tobin, or return the brief.”
A wave of blood surged through the brain of the young advocate. A
dismal sickness overspread his veins. Tantalus was about to pluck away
that which he had fasted and prayed for before he could take it in his
grasp.
“You have entrusted it to me already,” he said, in a dull, dry voice.
“In a case of this magnitude,” said the solicitor, with an almost
brutal precision, “I reserve to myself the right to alter my mind. You
have forced me to issue an ultimatum. Accept or reject it, whichever
you choose.”
The solicitor called for his bill in a hectoring manner, and threw a
bank-note on the waiter’s salver.
The young advocate, in the meantime, buttoned the brief in the
breast-pocket of his somewhat threadbare black coat.
“What is your decision?” said the solicitor, regarding the young man
with an insolent coolness.
“You can’t have back your brief,” said Northcote. “You gave it to me.”
“It can only be held conditionally,” said Mr. Whitcomb, “and the
conditions are perfectly easy to accept.”
“The brief was delivered unconditionally into my keeping,” said
Northcote, in an arid voice. “And,” he added, with a sudden gleam of
the eyes as an overpowering recollection of his destiny came back to
him, “you will have no reason to regret your act.”
Before the solicitor had framed a reply the waiter had returned with
the receipted bill.
“Keep the change,” said the solicitor, “and call a hansom.”
The waiter withdrew.
“Do I take it,” said the solicitor, with an incisive drawl in his
speech as he turned to Northcote, “that you have said no?”
“I have said no in the first place to your restrictions,” said
Northcote, looking him full in the eyes, “and in the second to your
ultimatum.”
“Then with all possible reluctance I must ask you to have the goodness
to return the brief.”
“With an equal reluctance I feel I must decline to do so,” said
Northcote, speaking through tight lips.
For a moment the solicitor was taken aback by this pointblank refusal.
“But--but--” he stammered, “surely this is most unprofessional. Such a
thing has never happened to me in all my twenty years of practice.”
“And I don’t suppose,” rejoined the young advocate, “it will
ever happen to you again. But suppose we leave the plane of our
professionalism, step down from our platform, and approach the
prejudices of each other in a rational spirit.”
“No more argument, I beseech you,” said the solicitor sternly; “I’ve
got to get to Norbiton. Return the brief, and we will say no more. You
are not the man for this case. You have a bee in your bonnet; you have
too many brains. I think none the worse of you, mind; I respect you;
you have your ideas; one day they may prove valuable, but not in common
law. You have mistaken your _métier_, that is all. We will say you are
above your work; at any rate, with all deference to Michael Tobin, I
shall prefer to see Harris holding briefs of ours before a common-sense
English jury and a matter-of-fact English judge when it comes to the
capital charge.”
“If you are present in court on Friday,” said Northcote, “you will find
that I, not Harris, will still be holding the brief you entrusted to my
care.”
“Upon my word,” muttered the solicitor to himself, “this fellow is a
madman, a lunatic. I dare say he’s been starving so long that a square
meal has turned his brain.”
Involuntarily his eyes began to traverse the face of the man who sat
bolt upright with arms folded at the other side of the table. It was
excessively pale, flushed with wine and conversation, and strangely,
exquisitely mobile. It had a kind of gaunt delicacy, but the obvious
traces of suffering were permeated by a remarkable power. The features
were irregular yet not unpleasing, the nose was straight and incisive,
the eyes deep and luminous, the mouth large and full-lipped. The
general expression was sombre, because it was so bluntly dominating,
yet it was rendered memorable by many subtle qualities. Clearly it was
one of those faces which to see was never to forget.
Mr. Whitcomb, in spite of his desire to get to Norbiton, and the severe
tests to which his constitutional arrogance as an immensely successful
man of the world had been subjected, owed too much to his trained
powers of observation to lay them aside at a moment so remarkable.
“This fellow is cut to a big pattern,” was his mental comment. “That is
a splendid mask for an advocate. Upon my soul, if he were not so mad
I think I should be inclined to back him heavily. Yet I believe he is
literally starving.”
The solicitor rose abruptly from the table to dispel his reverie.
“Rather than you should feel you have ground for complaint,” said he
abruptly, as if touched by compassion, “I shall ask you to allow me to
advance half of your fee; and to-morrow I will send you some other sort
of work.”
Mr. Whitcomb unrolled a note for ten pounds and gave it to Northcote.
“Now,” he said, “kindly return the brief and I will go.”
Northcote crumpled up the note and thrust it in his pocket.
“I accept half my fee,” said he, “not as a bribe, but as a retainer.
By this means I pledge myself to conduct the case to its appointed
issue.”
“Pray do not let us misunderstand one another,” said the solicitor,
with a sense of being trapped. “This brief is withdrawn definitely; I
ask you to return it to me. I give you ten pounds as a solatium for
losing your fee.”
“I cannot construe the situation in that fashion,” said the young man
calmly.
“This is not a question of construction,” said the solicitor, with his
anger beginning to announce itself; “it is a question of hard fact.
Your brief is withdrawn.”
“And I,” said Northcote, with expansive bluntness, “do not submit to
its withdrawal.”
Before this _impasse_ which had presented itself in a manner so
definite, the solicitor, whose patience had been strained beyond the
breaking-point, could only take refuge in a series of imprecations.
“Fellow’s drunk,” he muttered. “Shall have to see him first thing
to-morrow. But it is most irritating that he should refuse to give up
the papers when time is so short. It looks like an application for a
postponement after all.”
The solicitor turned for the last time to the advocate.
“It is a quarter-past twelve,” he said brusquely, “and I am going home.
And I would like to urge you to gain reflection by the aid of a few
hours’ sleep, because I shall look for that brief to be delivered at my
offices at a quarter-past ten to-morrow morning. Good night.”
He held out his hand; Northcote ignored it.
“You appear to impugn my sobriety,” said the latter, “and that is a
pity, because in all my life I have never felt my mind to be quite
so clear as it is to-night. Perhaps it is not fair to expect you to
appreciate the point at which I have arrived, and why it is impossible
for me to restore your brief.” He pressed his hands over the bundle of
papers in his coat. “You see your brief is my destiny.”
A final expression of somewhat forcible disapproval escaped Mr.
Whitcomb, and he moved away to the room in which he had deposited his
hat and coat.
As an attendant was assisting to envelop the solicitor’s portliness in
these articles, it annoyed him to find that Northcote had followed him.
“Why not spare one this trouble to which you are putting one?” he said
reproachfully. “Why not be moderately reasonable about it?”
“Ah, you see,” said Northcote with a smile, as he presented the
ticket for his own extremely time-worn hat and coat, “even a thing so
primitive as ‘the moderately reasonable’ must submit itself to the
peculiarly elusive mental plane one is doomed to inhabit.”
“Peace! peace!” said the solicitor. “No more of that!”
“Attorney and advocate, judge and jury,” said the young man, as he
rummaged in vain among his pockets to find a tip for the attendant,
“justice and equity, the prisoner at the bar and the victim of
circumstance,--one and all are to be poised upon the same arbitrary
moral elevation, to submit to the mandates of a tribunal which is the
creation of that egregiously warped and time-serving thing upon which
we bestow the name of The Majority.”
“Peace! peace!” said the solicitor, unable in spite of himself to
repress a laugh at the amazed face of the cloak-room attendant, and
moving to where his hansom awaited him; “give up those papers here and
now like a good fellow, and save me a great deal of time and worry. If
Harris doesn’t see them first thing to-morrow it means a postponement,
and we don’t want that.”
“There is need for neither,” said Northcote, buttoning up his
threadbare overcoat. “But, ye gods and little fishes! what is the name
for the total blindness, the pathetic obtuseness, which has eclipsed
the faculties of this connoisseur, this expert? Here is one who has
been angling for years for a real authentic fish from the sea, yet when
one plumps into his net, being accustomed to nothing but the sight of
minnows, he doesn’t even guess at his travaille.”
By this time the solicitor had fled precipitately through the vestibule
of the restaurant, and stood in the portico awaiting his hansom.
X
THE RIDE TO NORBITON
As he was entering the vehicle Northcote came to his side.
“Good night,” said Mr. Whitcomb. “In the morning, perhaps, when you see
things a bit clearer you will think better of this. In fact I am sure
of it; and I hope you will not forget to send round the brief.”
Before he could close the door of the hansom, the young man had joined
him in its interior.
“I hope you don’t mind my coming with you,” he said, entirely at his
ease. “This matter is far too momentous for all concerned to be left in
the unsatisfactory stage at which it has now arrived.”
“This fellow is the devil,” muttered the solicitor, suppressing a groan.
“Where, sir?” said the cabman through the hole in the roof.
“Norbiton.”
“Norbiton! Not to-night, sir; the ’oss is tired.”
“Take me to Norbiton,” said the solicitor sharply, “and never mind
about your horse.”
“Very sorry, guv’nor--”
“Well, if you can afford to lose a sovereign--”
The cabman’s head disappeared immediately, and the horse started on its
journey at a good round pace.
“These cabmen are the greatest robbers in Europe,” said the solicitor,
settling himself in his corner. “They are a disgrace to London. One
would like to see them taken over by the state.”
Although Mr. Whitcomb was ruffled by his companion’s strange
pertinacity, his philosophic habit soon came to his aid.
“Have a weed?” he said, offering his cigar-case.
By the time each had lighted a cigar and ensconced himself in a measure
of comfort in a corner of the vehicle, the irritation of the one and
the aggressive tenacity of the other had been somewhat allayed.
“There are several points that still remain dark to me,” said
Northcote, “in this odd affair. Having come in a moment of high
inspiration to the attic of the obscure, having discovered its occupant
to be of an uncommon faculty, having entrusted him with your business,
all of a sudden, because of a singular revelation of his talent, you
discard him and have recourse to an abject mediocrity.”
“You are certainly a queer fellow,” said the solicitor, amused by
this piece of egotism. “A most unconventional fellow--quite the most
unconventional fellow I have ever met.”
“Ah, there is my offence,” said the young man; “I have outraged the
gods, I have disregarded the proprieties. Yet I would ask you, are not
all conventions for the common vulgar? Are not nature’s most authentic
specimens, those pioneers in every sphere of mundane activity who add
the little more that means so much, are not these to walk about the
earth just as nature fashioned them?”
“I am pleased to say,” said Mr. Whitcomb, emitting a soft purr of
contentment, “I am a common lawyer. The whys and wherefores are not my
province; I take things as they are.”
“That does not prevent all your instincts being up in arms when you
encounter the unusual. How curious it is that the most deadly sin
in the eyes of the average person is that shameless egotism which
transacts the real business of the world.”
“If there were no rules to which one had to conform,” said the
solicitor, “there would be no living in the world. Conventions to my
mind are highly necessary. Of course every man has a perfect right to
consider himself a tremendous fellow, but that is no reason why he
should say as much to his neighbor. If he does, his neighbor will want
to refute it.”
“And if he should throw down his gage, and prove to his neighbor in a
perfectly logical and scientific manner that he is a tremendous fellow,
his neighbor will not be content with wanting to refute him; his
neighbor will want to shoot him, or hang him, or burn him, or crucify
him, and it is long odds that his neighbor will succeed in so doing.”
“I am afraid I don’t follow you.”
“I am speaking of the fate that awaited upon the majority of the
tremendous fellows whom we discover in the pages of history; the
founders of the religions, the saints, the heroes, the discoverers, the
makers of the philosophical systems.”
“One suspects,” said the solicitor, “it was because they made the world
so uncomfortable while they were living in it.”
“I agree. But what a world we should have if they had not.”
“It is not at all clear to my mind,” said the solicitor, “that in the
long run these fellows of whom you are speaking have not done more harm
to the world than they have done good. Not only did their abnormal
egotisms run am k during their own lives, but after their deaths, which
as you suggest were often brutal and unnecessary, they continued in the
guise of saints and martyrs, and inspired teachers to wreak iconoclasm
and discomfort upon mankind.”
“One can readily believe,” said the young man, “that you, sir, in your
capacity of a member of the comfortable classes, to which by fortune
and education you belong, would fetter the march of ideas by every
means in your power.”
“Yes,” said the solicitor, drawing peacefully at his cigar; “few things
are more distasteful to me personally than ideas. Particularly those
lawless ones which proceed from ill-regulated and ill-balanced natures.
It seems to me that they are responsible for nine-tenths of the misery
that is in the world.”
“Do I take it that, in your opinion, so far from these so-called ‘great
men’ of whom we are speaking meriting esteem from their fellows, their
doctrines as well as their persons should be pursued with the fire and
the sword; and that means should be adopted to exterminate the growth
of these ‘great’ ones from the comfortable republic which is inhabited
by the average person?”
“I would suggest it. I have given little thought to this subject, but
I cannot think of a single historical personage of whom I do not
consider that in the long run mankind would have gained immeasurably
had he never been born into its midst.”
“This is extreme doctrine,” said Northcote; “and may I pay you the
compliment, sir, of saying that I find you to be one of a greater
courage than I had suspected.”
“All the so-called ‘greatness’ one finds enshrined in history,” the
solicitor continued, “proceeds from an abnormal egotism; and I think
even a perfectly commonplace mind such as my own, which is content
with the obvious, has only to take a most superficial look around to
see that the abnormal is the only evil against which mankind has to
contend.”
“Necessarily,” said Northcote, “since the self-consciousness of matter
is the ugliest phenomenon known to natural law. But to follow the line
of your reasoning, the abnormal person, whatever the sphere of his
activity, is invariably the enemy of his kind?”
“That is my suggestion; the suggestion of an average mind that is
content to rest on the plane of matter-of-fact common sense.”
“You would say that it would have been better for mankind had the poet
Shakespeare never been given to it?”
“Unquestionably. In my view, all poetry, even in what we are pleased
to call a sublime and concentrated form, is a direct emanation of
morbid sensibility. It stimulates those already sufficiently irritable
faculties of the mind which call for a never-ceasing vigilance to hold
in check. Poetry is the chief enemy against which rational common
sense has to contend.”
“Then in your view the greatest enemy of the human race of which
history has taken cognizance is Jesus Christ?”
“I will not say the greatest; but He shares the opprobrium that
attaches to His class. It was that type of abnormalism which developed
the religious sense in man; and any sense more calculated to provoke
infinite misery, any sense more completely out of harmony with the
facts of existence, one cannot conceive.”
“In a word, excess of any kind is repugnant to the average person?”
“One would say so; mainly, I think, because it extorts such heavy toll
of all who are brought in contact with it.”
“Then elevation of feeling, profundity of thought, subtlety of insight,
austerity of morals, heroism, beauty, in short, the superlative in any
guise whatever, should be eliminated from the republic of the average
sensual person?”
“If the average sensual person could contrive a republic for himself,
that would be its first decree.”
“Hence his hostility to those abnormal egotisms which are known as
‘greatness’?”
“As far as the average person can see, that appears to go down to the
root of the matter.”
“Well, sir,” said the young advocate, “permit me to take a slight
parable out of my own experience to refute this supposition.”
“Pray do so.”
The advocate selected as a preliminary a second cigar from the case of
the solicitor, and resettled himself in comfort in the corner of the
vehicle.
“All my life,” said Northcote, “from the farthest day to which my
memory goes back, I have been persecuted with the consciousness of my
own importance. In all my dealings with others, in the daily outlook
upon my surroundings, not only have I been unable to detach myself
from my own private entity, but I have also been obsessed with the
knowledge that that entity was so much more powerful than any with
which it happened to come in contact. As you will believe, a feeling of
that kind spelt serious inconvenience to its possessor. At my private
school I was the recipient of many cuffs in my capacity of a shy,
nervous, and intensely self-centred child who detested games. It grew
to be a special function of my youthful companions, and also that of
every self-respecting master, to ‘knock the nonsense out of Northcote.’
However, so far from knocking it out, these disinterested efforts
appeared to knock it farther in. And when in the fulness of time I
ascended to the ampler region of a public school, my sufferings were
materially increased. I was shunned, I was tormented, an opprobrious
name was fastened upon me; and had not the fire which burned so
intensely at the centre of myself kept me warm in spirit, life would
have become intolerable.
“It was a consciousness of personal power haunting me day and night
which caused me to scorn the gods of the little world in which I found
myself, and to disregard the petty conventions which mean so much
in every phase of human life. Accordingly I was marked out as an
object of hatred and ridicule. However, as years went on, and I came
to be endowed with the somewhat unusual physical frame which you may
have observed I possess, I determined in a somewhat cynical spirit
of revenge to devote myself to one of those stupid and unmeaning
exercises, my contempt for which was one of the most potent causes of
my unpopularity. Never before had I condescended to approach one of
the usual school ‘games,’ other than in a spirit of levity; but when
I awoke to the discovery that nature had somewhat ironically endowed
me with a power of muscle, a suppleness of limb, and a bulk of inches
which would in themselves make me the envy of every athlete in the
school, I determined to turn them to account. It was in no spirit of
open competition with those whom I despised that I resolved to become
the most accomplished football-player who had ever appeared in the
school. It was my somewhat curious method of avenging all the insults,
all the barbarous forms of injustice, that had been wreaked upon me. I
might have requited my assailants in other ways, but I was too proud
to employ the methods of those whom I felt to be my mental, physical,
and moral inferiors. Therefore I gave myself up to this mechanical
exercise, and an abnormal concentration of will-power which I have
always possessed, in conjunction with remarkable physical gifts, had
the result for which I had prayed.
“When this new prowess was first bruited abroad it was received with
derision. But in spite of an organized public opinion which in every
walk of life assails the unconventional, this ability became a source
of distress to the expert. ‘It comes to this,’ said the captain of the
School Fifteen, after a House cup-tie in which dismay had been carried
into the camp of the opposition, ‘if this sort of thing goes on, we
shall have to think about playing “Cad” Northcote for the School.’ The
shouts of derision with which this prophecy was received are still in
my ears. However ‘this sort of thing’ continued to go on, and sure
enough, to the amazement of men and gods, the day dawned on which ‘Cad’
Northcote did play for the School. He dominated the scene of action
in every game in which he took part; but such was the strength of
public opinion that the ruling powers withheld his ‘cap’ until the very
last moment, the eve of the chief game of the year. It was the match
against our great school rivals, a neighboring seminary, of which,
sir, I discern by certain unfortunate tricks of manner that you are an
alumnus.”
“Never mind about that,” said the solicitor; “get on with your story.
It is enormously interesting. Did you play against us in the great
match?”
“Yes, I played against you in the great match. The ‘fez’ of the School
Fifteen, which should have been mine weeks before, was duly presented
to me on the eve of ‘Waterloo,’ for although it was a dreadful crime to
be ‘unpopular,’ it was yet highly necessary to ‘take on’ the French.
And I recall now with some amusement the manner in which I contrived
to flout the _amour propre_ of the venerable institution into whose
service I was pressed. Instead of turning out in the garish colors with
which I had been honored at the eleventh hour, I appeared upon the
scene in a costume of the most immaculate whiteness. As soon as the
captain beheld this apparition on the field of play, he came to me and
said insolently: ‘Northcote, what do you mean by getting yourself up
like this? Go back at once and put on the School colors.’ I rejoined:
‘I play for the School in my own colors on my own terms. I would like
you to understand that if I am with you, I am not of you.’ There was
a hurried consultation among my fourteen fellow players, and although
their sense of outrage was enormous, that was neither the time nor the
place to indulge it.
“The French were ‘taken on’ as they had never been ‘taken on’ before.
But the debacle was the work of one man. Such a game as was played on
that occasion by ‘Cad’ Northcote was never seen before or afterwards.
According to tradition, which to this day invests his pious memory,
he spent half his time in crossing the line of his adversaries, and
the other half in standing the opposing three-quarters on their heads.
He felt himself to be equipped for the part of the man of destiny. I
believe the rout of our hereditary rivals on that occasion came near to
approaching three figures.”
“You don’t mean to say,” exclaimed the solicitor, “that you are the
great Northcote, the fellow who led the English pack while he was still
at school?”
“No less.”
“Why, then I saw you play at the Rectory Field sometime in the
’nineties. I remember you had those damned Welshmen over the line
three times in the first five minutes. You pushed them all over the
place.”
“Yes, we pushed them all over the place. You saw me at the summit of
my fame. And I am now coming to the point of my parable. From those
days of my inordinate success, which conferred not only lustre upon
myself, but upon my school and all who were associated with me, I
became not only a hero, but a figure of legend. The opprobrious title
‘Cad’ Northcote was dropped as completely as though it had never been.
My lightest opinion was treasured, and heaven only can tell us how
many they were on every point under the sun. I became a dictator where
formerly I had suffered infinite misery and persecution. By a display
of personal force criticism was laid low; yet, sir, according to this
theory of yours, it must have been inimical to all who came within its
sphere of influence.”
“I would say so certainly; demoralizing alike to its possessor, and to
those who despised it in its growth and abased themselves before it in
its flower.”
“Yet was it not with bated breath that you inquired whether I was the
‘great’ Northcote?”
“Pray do not overlook the fact, my dear fellow, that however much the
average sensual mind may deplore the false gods before which it kneels,
it has not the power to deliver itself from their thrall. This passion
to ‘excel’ is a flaw inherent in the race.”
“It is at least pleasant to discover,” said Northcote, “that the
average sensual mind is unable to banish the sentiment of admiration
from its republic.”
“If it could,” said the solicitor, “there would be an end of these
abnormal egotisms of which we have been speaking.”
“I do not agree,” said Northcote. “It is not a thirst for admiration
from which they spring, but a thirst for power. And it is an
uncomfortable reflection for those who belong to your republic that
the world has been so arranged that mere power will always have its
devotees. How lamentably your own practice breaks down before your
theory. You have reverence for me as a player of football, and Tobin’s
powers as an advocate fill you with enthusiasm.”
“True; and it is men like Tobin and yourself who forbid any
reconciliation between theory and practice. A phenomenon is always
inimical to the society in which it appears. It may stand forth as
memorable and fascinating as you please, but it does so at the expense
of balance, law, and reason. Your presence in the football match ruined
the game as a game, just as I have observed that the presence of Tobin
in a case has been disastrous to the cause of justice.”
“Nevertheless, you invoke the aid of Tobin on every possible occasion.”
“I do.”
“Upon what pretext, may I ask, since you deplore his gifts so deeply?”
“The answer is simple. To whatever extent I may deplore the condition
of things into which, through no fault of my own, I have been
projected, beyond everything I am of a comfortable and conforming
disposition. Therefore I make my subscription to the things that are. I
have none of the reformer’s zeal; and it is one of the things for which
I am thankful.”
At this stage of the conversation the voice of the cabman was heard
from the roof.
“We’re in Norbiton, sir. Which house?”
“Straight on to the end of the road,” said Mr. Whitcomb; “then first to
the right, second to the left, and it is the first house you come to at
the corner of Avenue Road.”
“How quickly we’ve come,” said Northcote. “One would not have thought
it possible to cover the distance in this time; with a tired horse,
too.”
“The sound of your own voice may have been as agreeable to you,” said
the solicitor, “as it has been to me. I confess it has passed the time
very well.”
Northcote deduced from the more indulgent air of his companion that
this imperious personality of his, of whose possession he was so
conscious and upon which he built so much, had not been without
an effect. He was thinking of the victory that he felt sure would
crown his tenacity, when the hansom drew up at the gate of a very
comfortable-looking suburban residence. It was girt with a high stone
wall, and stood in a pleasant plot of ground amid tall trees.
As they got out of the hansom, the solicitor, after searching his
pockets in leisurely fashion, collected four shillings and a sixpence
and handed them up to the cabman on his perch.
“Wot’s this ’ere?” said the cabman gruffly. “This ain’t no use ter me,
guv’nor. Yer promised me a quid.”
“In one’s dealings with the criminal classes,” said the solicitor, “one
finds that the only method of self-protection is the use of their own
weapons.”
“Yer promised me a quid, guv’nor,” said the cabman, who was too excited
to follow the course of this reasoning.
“May I say,” rejoined the solicitor, with great suavity, “that a
promise is considered to be a thing of no particular value among the
members of the criminal classes.”
“Criminal classes! Wot!” cried the cabman, in a gust of fury. “Breaks
yer promises and calls yerself a toff! Not a-going to part with that
quid. Well, guv’nor, we’ll just see abaht it.”
Emitting a string of foul expressions, the cabman hopped down from his
perch.
“Call yerself a toff? Give me that quid or I’ll knock out yer ---- eye.”
“Try,” said the solicitor, with a coolness that his companion felt to
be inimitable.
Inflamed a little by drink as well as by a sense of injury, the cabman
prepared to exact a summary vengeance. Breathing slaughter he came at
Mr. Whitcomb with his fists in the air; and that gentleman, stepping
aside coolly and nimbly, hit him with a hand ungloved for the purpose a
heavy blow in the face. The cabman dropped like a log in the slush of
the gutter.
“A broken nose,” said Mr. Whitcomb, turning to his companion, while
they stood watching the unfortunate cabman gather himself slowly and
painfully together.
“I feel for you, cabby,” said the solicitor, to his rueful assailant,
“but I can assure you this is wholly in the public interest. Thieves
and bullies, as well as fools, have to be taught by experience.”
“Why the ’ell didn’t yer sye so?” whimpered the cabman, as he strove
in vain to stanch the blood that poured from his nose. “’Ow the ’ell
should I know yer could use ’em? I piked yer fer a toff in yer ’igh
’at and yer fur coat and yer glass eye; ’ow the ’ell should I know yer
could use ’em?”
“That is for you banditti to discover,” was the rejoinder of his fare.
“It is perhaps my chief recreation to thrash hansom cabmen in the
interests of society. I am proud to say your case is one of many.”
“Blow me tight, a prize-fighter!”
“It is not too much to say I might have aspired to that calling, if the
somewhat material nature of my ambitions had not summoned me to a more
lucrative if less honorable practice. Twenty years ago I was considered
rather useful with the gloves.”
“Not so rusty nah, guv’nor,” said the cabman, imperfectly mollified,
and stanching his nose with his sleeve. “Give us a extra bob an’ I’ll
drive to the ’orspital.”
“Here is your sovereign,” said Mr. Whitcomb. “Training and education
make one so punctilious in regard to one’s word, although common sense
assures one that like the majority of your class you are a rogue, a
liar, and a bully; in a word, a common pirate. Here is your money; and
have the goodness to take yourself off as reticently as you can.”
There was not a more astonished Jehu amid the ranks of his London
brethren than this unfortunate specimen, as he climbed into the seat he
had left so injudiciously. Bestowing a succession of brutal strokes of
the whip upon his even more unfortunate horse, he was lost immediately
in the sleet and darkness of the morning, leaving Northcote, who was
only slightly less astonished than his bleeding and blasphemous self,
standing at the side of the solicitor against the gate of the latter’s
residence.
XI
MR. WHITCOMB’S FOIBLES
“In moments of relaxation from my studies,” said Northcote, taking his
companion by the arm, “I like to look upon myself as something of an
amateur of the human mind. I find a great fascination in the endless
nuances of the human character. Permit me to say that I have never come
across a more promising subject than is offered by your own personal
complexity. Why in the name of the marvellous did you batter that poor
devil if you had no intention of cozening him out of his money?”
“He suffered for one of my foibles. I am convinced that a society
of banded robbers is at work to blackmail, bully, and despoil the
peaceable citizens of London. The law is powerless to touch them,
their operations are so cunning and are ordered on so mean a scale.
Therefore it would seem to behove every stalwart private individual to
make war upon them openly; and I am proud to affirm that a good measure
of success has attended my own puny efforts. It is quite possible that
in the course of these labors I may happen upon a retired champion who
chooses to eke out a well-deserved leisure in a manner so unsavory,
but in the meantime I deal out a dozen broken noses a year to this
banditti.”
“You are an enigma, indeed,” said the young man. “You professed just
now to accept the things that are, that your last intention is to
effect any sort of social reform; yet look what you do. Again, you
profess to be a connoisseur in men of promise, yet with your eyes open
you reject the most authentic specimen that has ever swum into your
ken. Further, you deride every form of ‘greatness,’ and despise every
manifestation of the force that it is your daily business to employ.”
“I am an enigma, right enough,” said the solicitor; “yet, for that
matter, so are we all. Who shall explain himself? Who shall attempt
it? I preach one thing in all sincerity, yet with an equal sincerity
I practise another. Nature designed the lymphatic Samuel Whitcomb to
be the most consistent man alive, yet see, my friend, how malleable he
is, how mobile, how entirely at the mercy of the caprices that whirl
about in himself. It gives me an indescribable pleasure to thrash
hansom cabmen; my being craves for that form of relaxation; it is its
conception of true physical and intellectual enjoyment.”
“Did I not understand you to say,” asked the astonished young man,
“that these Promethean labors were undertaken in the service of
society?”
“Do not believe me,” said the solicitor, with his rich laugh floating
melodiously into the chill night air. “I would deceive others with that
pleasant figment, but I do not impose on myself. It is a sheer animal
impulse, which I am powerless to withstand, that causes me to break the
noses of this banditti.”
“Well, sir,” said Northcote, “I will wish you good night. It has been
a real pleasure to have met you. The enchanting complexity of your
personal character will beguile me during my long walk home. As for
the brief that I hold, unless a whim should cause you to obtain a
postponement of the trial, you will find it in my custody at the Old
Bailey on Friday morning.”
“Not so fast, my friend,” said Mr. Whitcomb, as Northcote turned on his
heel. “You had better come in and have a drink before you start. It
will be a dreadfully cold and wearisome tramp back to town through this
slush in the small hours of the morning.”
“My own foible is to walk the streets at night,” said Northcote. “That
is the only taste of real freedom one enjoys in a city. It is only
during the middle of the night in a place like London that one can
think one’s own thoughts and breathe God’s air. But as we do not appear
quite to have settled this momentous business of the brief, which may
mean so much more to society at large than you can imagine, I will
enter your domain and drink one glass of your whiskey.”
The solicitor led the way thereto, unlocked the front door with a
latch-key, and Northcote found himself in the interior of a modern
dwelling-house. It was furnished with perfect taste, fitted with every
luxury. The heavy mats on the floors muffled the sounds of his feet;
the warmed air that assailed his nostrils was seductive and delicate
after the bitter inclemency from which he had taken refuge. Numerous
objects of vertu were scattered in every nook, and the walls were lined
with pictures that astonished him beyond measure.
“Why, that is a Whistler--one of the two or three!” he exclaimed, as
he passed in the hall an unpretentious-looking portrait.
“I got it years ago for a song, before they began to be bought,” said
Mr. Whitcomb modestly.
“And what is that stuck over the stairs? From this distance it looks
suspiciously like a Velasquez. But surely that is in the Prado?”
“Aren’t you confounding it with the companion picture?”
“I had no idea we had this in England.”
“We have many things in England which fortunately are not matters of
common knowledge. Every year they are becoming rarer, owing to that
scourge of nations, the press. If you value my regard, you will forget
that you have noticed it.”
“Did you get that also before they began to be bought?”
“There is rather a strange story attaching to that picture.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Northcote, with an anticipatory eagerness; “that is
where pictures are so unlike women--they are worthless if they have no
history.”
“Possess your soul in patience, my friend,” said the solicitor, with
his rich chuckle; “the history of the lady in the blue dress is not
going to be told.”
“I must get a bit nearer,” said the young man, with shining eyes, “Eh,
she’s authentic! You should be a proud man to keep that little lady
under your own roof.”
“As proud,” said the solicitor, in his unctuous voice, “as any other
Goth of a householder in his snug suburban residence. Conceive the
feelings of the Huns when they overran Rome.”
“Or the mob,” said the young man, “when they sacked the Tuileries.”
“Is she not precious, the little girl in the blue frock?”
At the sound of soft accents, Northcote, a little startled, swung round
to confront a lady. She had come upon him noiselessly, and was standing
at his side.
“Hullo, Angel!” said Mr. Whitcomb, bestowing a kiss upon her; “this is
late for you. Allow me to present Mr. Northcote, England’s future Lord
Chancellor.”
Northcote found himself to be holding the hand of a singularly
beautiful woman. All that art can devise to enhance the sure, strong,
and original groundwork of nature was displayed about her, chastely
yet abundantly. Diamonds were strewn in the flounces of her gown;
three tight bands of pearls clasped her throat; her shoulders gleamed;
her hair had the evanescent hues of the fleeciest silk--each tress
was the fruit of cunning and labor. Yet through every curve of her
gorgeous fairness there peeped forth an almost quaint simplicity. Her
eyes were bright; her features, each of which seemed to add a personal
brilliancy to her expression, had a lustre at once naïve and opulent,
as becomes one who accepts greedily all the thousand and one glittering
and delightful minutiæ that money adds to life; who has both hands
outstretched to receive them; who carries them joyously, like a child,
to her bosom; who presses them to her lips.
“His name is Northcote,” said the solicitor, patting her white arm.
“From the window of his garret in Fleet Street he surveys the universe
with the haughtiest eyes imaginable.”
“How clever of him,” said the lady, in a little melodious accent.
“Those eyes of his know everything,” said the solicitor. “Before them
human nature unveils the whole of its mysteries. They range over the
stars in their courses, and he himself is familiar with spirits. They
have already promised to enable him to conquer the world.”
“He must be what they call a favorite of fortune,” said the lady, with
engaging laughter. “He must be clever.”
“Yes; he confesses it.”
“He is young,” said the lady, with a tender little sigh.
She half-turned to meet the eyes of the young man, and looked straight
into their sombre depths. Her own had a steadiness that was not at all
imperious--they were not even faintly insolent; the candor of their
inquiry was not so much as tinged with encounter. An infant staring
with its ruthless curiosity into the human soul could have hardly dealt
less in implication. Yet the act itself seemed to acquire for the young
man the nature of a feat so meaningless, yet so charged with meaning
did it appear. Only the support of a confident personal beauty rendered
it possible; yet it was nothing at all, not even a comment, nor the
formation of an opinion, hardly the faint awakening of an interest; all
the same the blood had invaded Northcote’s ears.
“You mustn’t look at him so long,” said Mr. Whitcomb, laughing. “You
are making him shy.”
“Pray look at me as long as you please,” said Northcote, who had
recovered already his self-possession. “And if you do really succeed in
making me shy, it may be shown to you one day as not the least of your
works.”
Her laughter rang out pure and clear like the tinkling of steel.
“Yes, he is clever,” she said, “although he is so young. I am so
pleased. I am sure to like you, Mr. Northcote; I like all men who are
clever.”
“Is it that you have so little to fear?”
Northcote was now returning her frank look of inquiry with a gaze of
equal candor.
“Yes, there is truth in that,” she said sagely.
“Are not the powerful among us the most vulnerable to your sex?” said
Northcote gently.
“Yes, that is true also,” she exclaimed, in a sort of glee. “Why has it
not occurred to one before?”
“If you speak much with this gentleman,” said Mr. Whitcomb, “he will
tell you a large number of things that you will be surprised to think
have not occurred to you before.”
“He looks like that,” said the lady, betraying a dimple. “I hope you
don’t mind my looking so much at your face, Mr. Northcote. It is one of
those fascinating faces that seem to give a new meaning to old ideas.”
“Yes, you are very well matched,” said Mr. Whitcomb cheerfully; “and
doubtless you will find a great deal to say to one another. But it
will not be to-night, madam. Are you aware it is a quarter to two? Now
suppose you play us a bit of a tune while we take a much-needed drink,
and then I shall send you to bed.”
The lady led the way to a drawing-room. Luxury and taste appeared
there to have been carried to their highest point. Northcote, whose
delicately poised sensibilities vibrated to the simplest of external
things, was fain to believe that paradise itself could not have shaped
a bolder contrast to that bleak squalor which he had been doomed to
inhabit year after year. Somewhere apart in the sanctuary of the
spirit, the home of so many complex and marvellous things, were chords
responsive to the challenge of the beautiful. They could thrill before
the manifestation of its power, even in that which was exterior,
material, unmeaning. These cushioned enchantments, this bright bower,
with so exquisite an occupant casting slim jewelled fingers across a
wonderful instrument, sent a shock of intoxication into his blood.
At the same instant he was conscious of a stab of shame. It was the
flesh, the draperies, the trappings to which his pulses responded; it
was not the magical secret which was contained in the miniatures upon
the walls, in the passionate delicacy of the cadences which sobbed
themselves out liquidly under the siren’s touch of this beautiful woman.
He stood in front of the cosy fire, glass in hand. A soft warmth
overspread his being. His eyes glanced from the white shoulders of
the enchantress to the thousand and one hues which were blended so
cunningly in the carpets and tapestries. The subtle playings of light
and shadow, the mellow effects of the atmosphere, the softness of the
music, began to assail his senses with indescribable pangs. He feasted
his eyes, his ears, his nostrils; they rewarded him with gladness. His
heart beat violently.
“These rare kinds of genius, are they not barbarous?” he said, when the
siren had ceased to cast her fingers.
“It is like children lisping,” she said, half-turning her head, with a
smile that curved her mouth entrancingly.
“Yes,” said the young man, “poetry, romance, imagination are primitive;
they belong to the childhood of nations, to the dawn of new worlds.
What a divine inspiration these sweet-voiced children of nature who are
bought out of due time, these unhappy Poles, Germans, and Frenchmen
bring to their despair. Instead of sitting down in black coats to make
their music into beef and mutton, they should be tripping through the
glades piping to the birds, the trees, the bright air.”
“This is a mad fellow, my angel,” said Mr. Whitcomb indulgently, “but
if you are gentle with him you may find him amusing.”
“Mr. Northcote will amuse me enormously,” said the lady, with a demure
glance.
“Is it thus you rebuke his madness?” the young man asked.
“On the contrary, I don’t think I have ever seen a sanity that is quite
so perfect.”
“Drop it,” said the solicitor, roguishly pinching her ear. “Beware of
dangerous turnings, my son. She is quite prepared to play George Sand
to anybody’s Alfred de Musset. She even does it to the greengrocer when
he comes round with his barrow. I understand they discourse divinely
together upon the subject of cabbages.”
“But Witty is too much the man of the world to be jealous about it,”
she purred.
“If Pussy hasn’t the opportunity to sharpen her claws on a sofa or an
ottoman, she doesn’t mind a wicker-work chair.”
“Witty, darling,” said the lady, “I hate to find rudeness keeping
company with real distinction of mind.”
“Upon my word,” expostulated Northcote, seeking to measure her depth,
“I consider that rebuke to be much prettier than the one bestowed upon
me.”
“When, Mr. Northcote, did I rebuke you?”
“Did you not say I should amuse you enormously?”
“Is not that the only compliment a woman has the power to pay nowadays?”
“Yes, Noodle,” said Mr. Whitcomb, laughing; “but don’t you see how
young he is, and therefore how serious? Who would call ‘enormously
amusing’ a fitting compliment for one of the seven champions of
Christendom? This is a devil of a fellow.”
“I can roar you like any sucking dove,” said the young man.
“How it would thrill one to hear you do it!” said the lady, enfolding
him with large eyes.
“He is a man of destiny,” said Mr. Whitcomb; “he carries a genie in his
pocket.”
“Oh!” said the lady, with clasped hands.
“One of these fine mornings he will stand the world on its head.”
“O-o-o-o-h!” said the lady.
“And having done that,” said Northcote, “this amazing fellow will dig
a hole in the universe for to bury the moon.”
“I would that all men had ambition,” said the lady, looking down at
her shoe. “If Witty had only a little of that precious salt which
forms a sediment at the bottom of every fine action he would be one’s
beau-ideal of a hero, a Christian, and a philosopher.”
“Minx!” exclaimed the solicitor. “If it were not for my ambition I
should never rise from my bed.”
“So this wonderful Mr. Whitcomb has no ambition!” said Northcote. “You
see I have found his character so complex, that in my capacity of an
amateur of the human mind I am picking it out, here a little, there a
little, piece by piece.”
“You must give him no marks for ambition,” said the lady. “But since
when did you become acquainted with him not to have found out that?”
“Since this evening at ten.”
“Ah, then, you are absolved. He will certainly baffle you at first.”
“He is wholly incomprehensible to me. He is a man of moods who oughtn’t
to have any.”
The lady clapped her hands in a little ripple of glee.
“How right,” she cried. “In a dozen little words you have shown me the
nothingness of my own knowledge.”
“Of course he has, Vapid One,” said Mr. Whitcomb. “Have I not told you
he carries a genie in his pocket?”
“Then that is why his eyes are so deep and bright,” said the lady,
turning to peruse Northcote again with an unfathomable coquetry; “and
would you not say, Witty, that the genie is in some sort responsible
for his mouth?”
“Is this public laying of one another upon the dissecting-table a
new parlor-game that has been brought into vogue by the long winter
evenings, may I ask?” said Mr. Whitcomb, concealing a yawn.
“Pray do not be insolent, Witty. The proper study of mankind is Man.”
“In the words of Pope,” said the solicitor, turning to replenish his
glass.
“You can see how Mr. Whitcomb baffles me,” said Northcote, who did not
propose to lose the opportunity of following up his clue.
“Is it his attitude to hansom cabmen that makes him so dark?”
“That is contributory. But it is mainly because he has come before me
in the guise of a waverer that I stand so much at fault. If one knows
anything about anything one would be prepared to affirm that nature had
designed Samuel Whitcomb to know his own mind.”
“He does as a rule. I have never known him waver in anything; but then,
of course, it is only quite recently that he has begun to associate
with dangerous persons who keep a genie.”
“Do you suggest that he is susceptible to such a thing as a genie?
Would it have a malign influence upon him, do you suppose?”
“I would suggest it to be likely in the highest degree.”
“Now, look here, my young friends,” interposed the solicitor at this
point, with a broad good humor, “Samuel Whitcomb does not propose to
play the part of the corpse at the lecture on anatomy.”
“You will help yourself to another drink like a good boy,” said the
lady severely; “and you will please to say nothing until we have dealt
with your ‘case.’ Your character need not fear the lancet and bistoury
of true science. Tell me, Mr. Northcote, wherein he is a waverer.”
“I am rejoiced to hear you put that question,” said the young man, with
a gesture of triumph he did not try to conceal, “for now it is that I
unfold my tale.”
XII
THE FAITH OF A SIREN
“At about ten o’clock this evening,” Northcote began, “as I was
kneeling in front of the fire--there was not any fire, by the way, as
it costs too much to afford one sometimes--in my miserable dwelling
at the top of Shepherd’s Inn, the oldest and most moribund of all the
buildings in Fleet Street, who should come climbing up to the topmost
story of the rickety and unwholesome stairs, under which the rats have
made their home for many generations, but Mr. Whitcomb. And what do you
suppose was his business?”
“He wished to buy one of your pictures.”
“Ah, no, I am not a painter.”
“I thought there was a chance of it, since they say all very good
painters are so poor. But perhaps you are a little too fierce, although
I am told these impressionists are terrible men.”
“The painting of pictures is one of the few things I have not
attempted,” said the young man, consenting to this interruption that he
might sit for his own portrait.
“Well, I should not say you are a writer of fiction. They are so tame.
Besides they are all nearly as rich as solicitors.”
“Why not a poet?”
“Why not? although your fierceness would make you a dramatic, not a
lyric one. Still it is impossible for you to be a poet, because I am
sure that Witty would never have climbed up all those stairs to your
miserable garret--I feel sure it is a garret with a sloping roof with a
hole in it--”
“There is a pool under the hole which has been caused by the
percolation of water--”
“On to the atrocious bare boards, its occupant being much too poor to
afford a carpet. Yes, Witty would never have climbed up to your garret
if you had been a poet. Or stay, he might, had you been Mrs. Felicia
Hemans. As you are a seeker of documentary evidence, he has been known
to recite her poems, at the request of the rector of this parish, to a
Sunday-school party.”
“Base woman,” said the solicitor, with an air of injury; “I claim to be
an admirer of the poet Longfellow.”
“Never, Witty, in your heart; it is merely your fatal craving to be
respectable in all things. But in the matter of poetry you must be
content to remain outside. You would never have climbed those rickety
stairs to that cold garret to see John Keats.”
“Well, now, Featherhead, did I not tell you at the first that our young
friend was England’s future Lord Chancellor?”
“I will never believe that; I will never believe that his destiny is
the law. His eye has amazing flashes; and is there not a beautiful
eloquence burning in his mouth? I cannot think of him as rich Witty,
and successful Witty, and smug Witty, like you atrocious lawyers. He is
one who would be an overthrower of dynasties, a saviour of societies.”
“You are letting your tongue wag, Noodle. If you talk so much it will
take the young man until daybreak to unfold his story.”
“I am an advocate,” said Northcote.
“An advocate,” said the lady softly; “yes, I think you may be that. One
no more associates an advocate with the law than one associates a poet
with a publisher.”
“You would say,” said Northcote, “that it is the function of an
advocate to draw his sword for the truth, for progress, for justice,
for every human amenity?”
“I would, indeed. Why, if one thinks about it, surely it is nobler to
be an advocate than to be a poet or a soldier. One might say it was the
highest calling in the world.”
“Then let us say it,” said the young man, “for I verily believe it to
be so.”
“And what, pray, was Witty’s business with this advocate?”
“They are going to hang a woman; and Mr. Whitcomb, who to his infinite
complexities and many-sidedness as a citizen of the world adds a leaven
of the finest humanitarian principles, has undertaken to save the poor
creature from a fate so pitiful.”
“To hang a woman!” said the lady, drawing in her breath with a sharp
sound. “Is it still possible to hang a woman at this time of day?”
“Perfectly,” said the young man. “They do it in every Christian
country.”
“Then the world has need for an advocate,” said the lady, with horror
in her eyes. “It is necessary that we should have yet another champion
for our sex in Christendom. Yes, this was he whom Witty came to seek
in that garret at the top of all those rickety stairs.”
“He came to seek, and found no less a person,” said Northcote. “And
having found this authentic champion of your sex, he gave him a mandate
to plead on behalf of this unfortunate creature, the least happy of all
its members.”
“What a moment of high inspiration for us and for him,” said the lady,
with a glance of tenderness.
“It was even as you say. But I would have you mark what follows.
Scarcely has he bestowed these high plenary powers upon one whom he has
ventured to select from among all the great multitude to champion your
sex in the name of humanity, than for a whim he withdraws his mandate.”
“Impossible; it would be an outrage upon us.”
“Yes; unconditionally and peremptorily he withdraws his mandate.”
“Impossible; they will do the poor creature to death.”
“Yes, they will do her to death. He who has been called to the office
of averting her doom has decreed that she must walk to embrace it
without a friend to plead her cause before humanity.”
“Surely this cannot be; society itself must protest.”
“One expects it; yet things are as they are.”
The beautiful creature turned to the solicitor with an almost royal air.
“What, sir, can you find to say in your defence?”
Mr. Whitcomb gave a short laugh.
“I yield,” said he.
“You restore the mandate?”
“Yes, yes, yes! My blood be on my own head, but so it must be. It is
beyond flesh and blood to withstand such a pair. You, madam, are a
sorceress; and this fellow is the devil.”
“I am content to be a sorceress in the cause of my unfortunate sex,”
cried the lady; and turning to Northcote added gravely: “And is it not
high time that we acquired a devil for our advocate?”
Northcote, who from the moment of her first appearance had foreseen a
victory, took her hand to his lips impulsively, with an expression of
gratitude.
“I hope this will be all right,” said the solicitor, viewing his
surrender with a rueful smile. “You see it is the first time in my life
that a foreboding has overtaken me in the midst of action. Whether it
is the importance of the case, the obscurity of the advocate, or a
certain flamboyancy in his bearing which is so repugnant to an English
common lawyer, I cannot tell; but let me confess that I have already
a premonition that I have been guilty of a mistake. And I will go
farther,” said Mr. Whitcomb, with a wry laugh; “I even see ruin, blue
ruin for all concerned, hidden in this irresolute act. Sharp little
shivers go down my spine.”
“It is no more than the reaction,” said Northcote, “which attends our
highest resolves. Is it not in such moments that a man truly measures
himself? It must have been at the fall of the barometer that Samson was
shorn of his locks.”
“Is there not always a woman in these cases?” said the lady. “This
unfortunate creature whom our advocate is to deliver from the gallows,
may she not be a Delilah of some kind?”
XIII
BE BOLD, WARY, FEAR NOT
At these words, lightly spoken, Northcote grew conscious of an
indescribable sensation which he had never experienced before.
“If it were one’s custom,” he said, with a laugh as wry as the
solicitor’s, “ever to heed the note of prophecy, one might discern it
in your words. But I will not do so. Since that dark hour in which I
summoned the genie, have I not adopted as my device, ‘Be bold, wary,
fear not’?”
“Now you come to mention it,” said the solicitor, “it may be this talk
of the genie that has filled me with these forebodings.”
“That is very foolish, Witty,” said the lady. “You have but to look
into the eyes of our advocate to know what it is and where it dwells.”
“He is quite entitled to keep one, of course, but it is not usual to
take it into society. I sometimes think I may have a bit of a genie
myself, but I do what I can to keep it a profound secret from the
world.”
“Should a man venture to compliment himself, Witty, upon the score of
his reticence?”
“Would you not say,” inquired Northcote, “that all our reticences had
their roots in our cowardice?”
“I would love to say it if I dared. And I would love to say of our
advocate that his genie enables him to fear nothing.”
“Yes,” said Northcote, “you shall say that.”
“A man must have fear of some kind,” said the solicitor, “if he is to
succeed against enormous odds.”
“There may be a place for it in his reflections, but never in his
resolves. Hence you will discern how our reticence has its basis in our
cowardice.”
“Subtle brute,” said Mr. Whitcomb, giving his mustache a tug of
perplexity. “He is entering upon his special function of turning black
into white.”
“Nay,” said Northcote, “the subtlety is not mine, but Francis Bacon’s.”
“Good, O Advocate!” said the lady, as she rewarded him with bright
eyes. “You do well to confute the Philistine with a learned name.”
Again the young man carried the jewelled hand to his lips. He felt the
lithe fingers respond with a sweet and secret motion.
“Rogue!” said the solicitor, laughing. “George Sand and De
Musset--Polly Whitcomb and the greengrocer at the back door. Well,
Mischief, as you have entered into a compact with this fellow to get
him his way, play us another bit of a tune, he shall keep his brief,
and we will go to bed.”
“I knew we should force him to capitulate,” said Northcote to the
siren, as he arranged the stool before the piano.
“What must I play?” she said, looking down at her hands.
“Play me a bit of Beethoven, so that I may take him out with me into
the darkness of the streets.”
She played three movements of a symphony, and all his senses were
submerged in the colors of romance. These fragrant hues which had a
delicate aroma and pungency the imagination alone can impart were of
no time or country. There was nothing that the mind could render as
belonging to itself; the faculties which embody the technical were
overcome by the tumultuous surgings with which they were oppressed.
He seemed to be transfigured with the sense of joy, to be overpowered
with the knowledge that he was a living man, able to breathe and to
perform. The room had grown small and heavy. He was consumed with an
overmastering desire for the spacious streets, for the largeness of the
universe.
“There is a bed for you here,” said the beautiful player, almost before
the last phrase had ceased to vibrate under her touch. “We could not
think of turning you out at this hour.”
“I have not the least intention of staying,” said Northcote. “The
hospitality you have given me already has been too profuse. I feel that
I must roam for the rest of the night in the open streets, a Flying
Dutchman of the London slush. Perhaps I shall fancy myself to be the
mad music-maker of Leipsic, who walked at night on the ramparts to
weave his harmonies.”
“We cannot consent to your leaving us in this manner,” said the
hostess. “As for roaming through the night, it will not be good for
you. Nor is there the least necessity why you should.”
“You forget his genie,” laughed the solicitor. “The infernal thing will
drive him all over the suburbs of south London and send him home _via_
the Crystal Palace and Blackfriars Bridge.”
“He must not go to-night,” said the lady. “It will be a perfectly
horrid walk, and I believe the sleet has turned into rain. It will
be awfully cold and unpleasant. Besides, if anything happens to our
advocate he will not be able to deliver this unfortunate creature from
her doom.”
“It is useless to argue with a man who has got a genie,” said the
solicitor. “I have tried the experiment and therefore am in a position
to give evidence. What will overtake him in the way of adventures I
dare not conjecture; but of one thing I am assured--no earthly power
will cause him to alter his determination.”
“Alas! I know it,” said the lady, sighing. “He has a face that will
yield to nothing.”
This diagnosis proved to be correct, at least as applied to this
instance, as in spite of the humane entreaties of the lady, supported
by a banter which Mr. Whitcomb did not attempt to dissemble, Northcote
insisted on faring from their roof at a quarter-past three. He bade
them adieu with a cordiality that was eloquent of a deep sense of
friendship.
When Mr. Whitcomb returned to the drawing-room after having shown the
young man over the threshold of his residence, he faced the lady with a
half-smile of bewilderment.
“Extraordinary chap,” he said. “He frightens me, takes me out of my
depth. There is such a bee buzzing about in his bonnet that he might
come wofully to grief on Friday. If he does, there will be none but
myself to blame, for he is wholly without experience.”
“I think you may trust him,” said the woman softly.
“Well, you are a mass of instincts, Miss Pussy. And you counsel me to
stick to your advocate?”
“I do, Witty; closer than a brother. I think he is perfectly amazing. I
think he will make the fortunes of all who are connected with him.”
“Another Michael Tobin, would you say?”
“What a dunce it is,” said the lady, with an indulgent sigh. “Michael
and this man don’t inhabit the same hemisphere. Michael is a dear
fellow, brilliant, clever, but only surface deep; this is an ogre of
a creature, a monster, deep as the sea, of the proportions of the
universe.”
“Come, I say, Mrs. Noodle; they don’t call that sort to the bar. They
might find the purlieus of the law too confining.”
“If you have not yet learned to scorn my advice, Witty, take care never
to have this man against you. If you have him on your side every time
you go into court, you will not have many lost causes to record.”
“He is clever, I grant you, but the worst of it is he knows it.”
“He is arrogant with power, Witty, which is somewhat different,
although it sounds the same. I think he is a perfectly terrible man,
and he looks so big and great and deadly. Did you notice his enormous
hands? Did you observe his chest? And that voice as soft as a flute yet
as deep as an organ?”
“You are completely conquered, Featherhead. Yet you would not call this
phenomenon precisely beautiful?”
“Strength is more beautiful than symmetry, I think; although I grant
you that huge square jowl verges upon the horrible. It is far worse
than yours, my dear, although the poor hansom cabmen are constantly
mistaking it for that of an eminent pugilist.”
“Well, little gal,” said the solicitor, “I shall heed you once more,
since your luck is proverbial. I am prepared to back our latest
discovery pretty heavily, although I must confess that when in cold
blood I catch myself thinking of his infernal genie he frightens me to
death.”
XIV
A JURY OF TWO
In the meantime the subject of these speculations had entered the
night. Food and wine in unaccustomed quantities, the romance of
events, the spells cast by music and by a woman of signal beauty and
accomplishment, had provoked his energies to an insurgency that had
rendered them overbearing. He walked like a whirlwind, up one street
and down another, in the chill wet darkness, not knowing whither he was
bound. Soft yet wild strains of melody which still floated through his
brain mingled with a swarm of ideas which were whirling about in it
like so many atoms in a protoplasm. He moved so fast in the endeavor to
keep abreast of his thoughts that at times he broke into a run.
The seductive, amiable, and brilliant woman, who had so nearly
succeeded in casting over him a delicious spell, began to fade from
his consciousness like the intangible occupant of a dream. She had no
appeal for him now. The feast at the restaurant, that phase of color,
warmth, and splendor in which for an hour the squalor of his existence
had been dispelled; the struggle to retain the treasure which had been
entrusted to his keeping by a supernatural agent; the bizarre incident
of the hansom cabman; and the personality of the genial god out of the
machine had now ceased to have significance.
Indeed one thing alone merged his faculties in his overstimulated
thoughts. It was the packet which he could feel in the breast-pocket of
his coat, towards which his hands were straying constantly. These pages
of foolscap bound with red tape, were they not his magic talisman? By
that occult presence had not his thwarted bleak and empty life been
changed into an electrical existence crowded with glory?
His brain bursting with ideas, he began to run faster and faster
through the maze of endless streets, lined with high garden walls,
portentously respectable dwelling-houses, lamps, shops, and secretive
silent-footed policemen. These frequently flashed their lanterns upon
him, for the manner of his progress had an illegal air. Even at the
height of this orgy of freedom, the question shaped itself with the
oddest definiteness as to whether it would not be expedient to curb
his paces, since if he were stopped, he feared lest he should be able
to render an account of himself that would be sufficiently lucid to
commend itself to the myrmidons of the law.
When at last his exertions had thrown him out of breath, and his frame
did not respond with quite the same unanimity to his passion, he
stopped under a lamp in the middle of a street on the side of a steep
hill, took out the precious document he carried, and began to peruse
it for sheer human pleasure. He even pressed his lips to this prosaic
thing, with no less of fervor, indeed with more abandonment than he had
saluted the hand of the sorceress who had been the means of restoring
it to his care.
“I must make her my saint, I must burn candles to her,” he muttered,
recalling her image with a sense of rapture.
As he stood under the lamp, a very large and slow-footed policeman
waddled up towards him, trying doors and casting the light of his
lantern down the areas he passed. As he went by, keenly scrutinizing
the figure of the young man, yet pretending not to notice it, Northcote
hailed him.
“Where might I be, policeman? I am strange to these parts.”
“Well,” said the policeman slowly and with effort, “you might be in
Balham, but you ain’t. Likewise, you might be at Charing Cross, but you
are not there, nuther.”
“I observe, policeman, that you have graduated in the school of
judicial humor,” said Northcote, delighted by the suavity of outline of
X012. “If every man had his rights, which of course it is utopian to
expect, you would be adding lustre to the bench. Your mental gifts fit
you equally to be a judge, a recorder, or a stipendiary magistrate.”
Such an exaggerated view of his merits produced a deep-founded
suspicion in the honest breast of X012.
“If every man had ’is rights,” said the custodian of the peace,
speaking slowly and with effort, and eying Northcote with the solemnity
of a horse, “you’d be took up on suspicion, young feller, and charged
with loitering with intent.”
Northcote dispelled the suburban quietude with a guffaw.
“Being unwilling,” said he, “to impale myself upon that spiked railing
which calls itself the law, I ought to be extremely careful to
refrain in its presence from the vexed and overmuch discussed question
of whether the badinage of its minions is wit, wisdom, humor, or a
veritable cesspool of human inanity.”
X012 was so much astonished by these words and the forcible mode
of their delivery that he pulled his whistle out of his coat, and
proceeded to toy with it in an irresolute fashion. Before he had
decided to summon aid by blowing it, there appeared round the corner of
an adjacent street a second constable, in all essentials of bearing,
physique, and mental energy the perfect replica of himself.
“I’m glad you’ve come, Bill,” said X012. “I’ve got a rum one ’ere.
I don’t know what he’s been drinking, but you should just hear his
languidge. Here he was under this lamp, a-purtendin’ to read a
newspaper at twenty past four by the mornin’.”
“Noticed his mug?” said his confrère Z9. “Bob Capper, the ’ousebreaker,
who just done in ’is last seven stretch an’ was let out on license last
Tuesday.”
“Got it in one!” said X012, not without enthusiasm. “We ’ad better take
him to the station and have ’im searched.”
“This is the result of a misplaced jocularity in the presence of
professional wits,” said Northcote, with an amiability that was viewed
with considerable disfavor by both constables. “I hope you will forgive
me, my friends. The only excuse I can urge for impinging upon the
prerogative of the legal supernumerary, if I may so express myself, is
that as one day I am certain to be a judge, I feel it to be due to the
lofty elevation I shall be called to occupy, and of which I intend to
be so signal an ornament, to neglect no opportunity of acquiring these
cardinal principles of humor, dangerous, double-edged implement though
it be, which can only be done by association with those past-masters
who as the crowning glory of our admirable legal system inhabit it in
choice perfection in all its branches. I hope, my friends, I have made
myself perfectly clear.”
“Clear as mud,” said Z9.
“Impidence!” exclaimed X012; “downright impidence! Certin to be a
judge! Why, Lord love me, young feller, if ever they ax you to be the
judge of a pair o’ pullets at a poultry show you’ll be lucky.”
“Balmy,” said Z9, tapping his forehead with an air of Christian pity.
“You are very probably right,” said Northcote. “I suspect there is
a basis of truth in this scientific opinion which you have embodied
in so expressive an idiom. But at the same time I would ask you, is
it not a somewhat extreme view to take of the mental condition of a
barrister-at-law who has been nominated to appear at the court of the
Old Bailey to-morrow morning at the hour of ten-thirty to defend one
Emma Harrison, who at that time and in that place will stand her trial
for wilful murder?”
“A-going to defend Emma Harrison!” exclaimed the constables. “Why, what
will he be saying next?”
“I do say that, my friends,” said Northcote, with a note of
imperiousness in his voice that was not without its effect on these
astonished minions of the law. “And I want you both to stand back a
yard or two against the railings, while I advance to the curb; and
further, I want you for a few minutes to imagine that you are the jury,
and I will rehearse the opening of my speech for the defence. I shall
begin something like this.”
“Oh, will you now?” muttered Z9 to his companion. “Well, if this don’t
beat cock-fighting!”
Both these constables, overawed already by the authentic manner of the
advocate, were now devoured by curiosity.
“Listen,” said he. “I rise in my place with this bundle of papers
in my hand, which I shall not consult, but shall cling to to gain
confidence, and I shall say: May it please your lordship and gentlemen
of the jury, this is a dreadful issue you are sworn to try. Indeed it
would be difficult for the human conscience to conceive an ordeal more
repugnant to the moral nature of man, one in sharper antagonism to
those principles that are his priceless inheritance, than is revealed
to you by the situation in which you stand. It is not by your own
choice that you come to take your places in this assembly. It is not
in obedience to your own instincts that you have left your toil to
subscribe to a law which is not of your own making. I venture to affirm
this without fear, for is not this ordeal into which you are thrown in
deadly conflict with the behests of that unfearing spirit who, nineteen
centuries ago, discovered the only possible faith for His kind?
“It is as the inheritors, gentlemen, of an inimitable tradition, not
as administrators of a penal code, that I venture to address to you
these words. And let me tell you why I venture to address you in this
fashion. It is because the life of a fellow creature is at stake; it
is because sitting here in conclave in this place you are enmeshed in
the most grievous ordeal that the fruit of human imperfection is able,
at this time of day, to impose upon you. For that reason, gentlemen,
I conceive that you are entitled to take your stand upon a lofty and
secure platform to survey this issue, a platform which has been raised
for the oppressed, the unhappy, and those who are doubtful of their
way, by the travail of the choicest spirit in the annals of human
nature.
“Gentlemen, you are called upon to adjudicate upon the life of a woman.
You are called upon to do so at the bidding of a formula, whose hideous
and obsolete enactments are the fruit of an imperfect culture of a
partial and unsympathetic interpretation of those laws to which every
civilized community owes its name. Gentlemen, you are called upon to
adjudicate upon the life of a woman; you rate-payers of London, you
gentle and devout citizens, you to whom life has given as the crown
of your endeavor, as the consecration of your painful daily labor,
mothers, wives, and daughters of your own.
“Yes, gentlemen, we must indeed ascend the loftiest and most secure
platform known to us, to survey the ordeal that our own imperfection
has presented to us.
“You have heard the words that have fallen from the lips of my learned
friend, the counsel for the Crown. You have examined the facts which
he has marshalled before you. You have noted the inferences which he
has not been afraid to draw. You have been thrilled by the union of a
consummate skill with a consummate learning. All that is base, sordid,
and unworthy in the human heart has been stripped naked before your
eyes. The smallest acts of this unfortunate woman have been shown to
you as vile; even the aspirations which are allowed to ennoble her
sex have been rendered abominable. Every kind of mental and moral
degradation has been made to defile before you; for verily there is no
limit to the talent of this accomplished gentleman.
“That such a talent should have taken service with an outworn formula
is a great public danger. For just as our common humanity is able to
assure us that the acts of the most wicked are not always wrong, so
those of the finest integrity would not bear dissection at the hands
of a cold and scientific cynicism. Our every act has two faces. One
is presented to belief, the other to unbelief; one is presented to
truth, the other to error. And as this penal code of ours, which we
traverse constantly with searchings of heart, is itself a survival of
a time of gross darkness, called into being by unbelief and fostered
by error, the acts of the best and worthiest among us are liable to be
visited by the sword of the avenger, in other words by justice. I am
convinced that if any one of you gentlemen, or any private citizen, was
called upon to rebut the most awful charge that can be levelled against
him, innocent as you might be, innocent as he might be, it would be
found immensely difficult, I will not say impossible, to combat the
deadly array of inferences which would be marshalled against you in
the interests of this penal code by one of the most talented of its
servants. The mere fact that you had come to stand your trial in this
noisome chamber, itself stained with a thousand crimes committed in the
name of justice, and that a cruel chain of events had forced you to
vindicate your kinship with the divine will in the precincts of this
charnel-house--it is well, gentlemen, that the windows are kept so
close, for who would have this foulness mingle with the air of London?”
For the best part of an hour in that raw winter morning, with a
drizzling rain falling incessantly, did Northcote continue to rehearse
his address to the jury. The amused intolerance of his hearers
yielded to an intense interest. They had been present in court on
many occasions and had heard these things for themselves, but never
had they listened to a voice of such dominion, of such volume and
majesty, a voice capable of such burning appeal. They stood merely at
the threshold of the argument, it was true; but the art of the orator
unfolded it, made it clear. His natural magic, his incommunicable
gift, rendered it with the harmony of music, so that before the end
these oxlike custodians of the peace, far from growing weary of their
situation, began to view with emotion the injury that threatened an
outcast from society.
“Go on, sir,” said Z9 humbly; “you’ve the gift and no mistake. They’ll
not be able to hang her if you talk to ’em that way.”
“This is not quite the form it will take, you know,” said Northcote,
whose exertions had been so great that he was breathing heavily and
dripping with perspiration. “It is only a sort of opening roughly
blocked out. It will have to be rendered a bit finer, so that it pins
them like a fly on a card.”
“You’ll pin them to-morrow, sir,” said Z9; “you’ll get your verdict,
see if you don’t!”
Z9 spoke with the proud consciousness of one who can respond to an
intellectual pleasure. X012, with a mental organization of less
delicacy, although impressed by so rare a personality, yet retained the
reverence for facts of the honest Englishman.
“He’ve a gift right enough, Bill,” said X012 magisterially, “but the
law is the law to my mind; and black’s black an’ white’s white. If
this woman done the crime--I don’t say she did, mind--the law will
’ang her. An’ rightly, too. This gentleman is a book-learned man and a
horator,--I know that because I heard Gladstone on Blackheath,--but the
law is the law and horatory ain’t a-going to alter it.”
“I am obliged to you both for your courtesy,” said Northcote, with a
perfect gravity, “and my obligation is even the deeper for the opinions
you have been good enough to express. You are prototypes of the twelve
honest men I am going to sway; and I take it that if my address were to
be launched in its present immature shape, you, sir, would record your
vote for an acquittal, and you, sir, for the severity of the law?”
“The law is the law I say,” said X012, inflating his chest before the
honor of this direct canvass of his intelligence, “an’ words is words,
although, mind you, sir, I respec’s you, because I heard Gladstone on
Blackheath.”
“I assume,” said Northcote, “that although you admired Gladstone’s
oratory, you did not allow it to influence your judgment?”
“That’s ’is pig-headedness, sir,” said Z9. “That’s just like a Tory;
great horators can talk till all’s blue, and then they can’t get
daylight into a Tory. ‘The law is the law,’ says he; an’ if it come to,
he’d hang his own fayther.”
“I take it, policeman, that you try to keep an open mind, a mind
accessible to new impressions?”
“That is so, sir,” said Z9. “I say with you, sir, that although the
law is the law, human natur’ is human natur’. And although Bill ’Arper
is just a common p’liceman with on’y one stripe, an’ not a lawyer like
you, sir, nor a beak, nor a judge, ’e never goes into court and a-takes
off ’is ’elmet but what ’e feels ’igh-minded.”
“Then, policeman, regarding you in the light of a juryman, it is most
probable that you would want mercy to be extended to the prisoner, in
spite of the law, if you happened to be in your present frame of mind?”
“Yes, sir, I should in my present frame o’ mind.”
“More shame to you, Bill,” said X012; “you are a nice bloke to be a
copper, an’ no mistake.”
“Close it, ’Orrice,” said Z9, with a restrained enthusiasm; “you
bloomin’ Tories are so thick’eaded you don’t know nothing.”
“Well, gentlemen,” interposed the advocate, brushing the water from his
brief, “as I observe you to be on the brink of an altercation, I will
hasten to discharge you with my best thanks for your kind attention in
order that you may have it out. For the subject will engage your powers
worthily; pursue it, and it will take you into strange places. But
before I leave you to do so, may I ask where I am?”
“Bottom o’ Sydenham ’ill, sir,” chimed both constables as one.
“Good morning, my friends. I must leave you to ponder this subject or I
shall not get home to breakfast.”
The two myrmidons of the law stepped together into the middle of the
road to watch this astonishing figure ascend out of their ken.
“Well, if ’e don’t beat all as ever I ’eard!” was the comment of Z9.
“’E’s not got ’er off yet, and ’e won’t nuther,” rejoined X012. “She’s
a wrong un; an’ if they let ’er off, it won’t be fair to peace.”
“Well, ’e can talk. ’E kind of got ’old of me. I could ha’ stood there
all day.”
“’E kind o’ did me too, but I should shake him off in court. You’ll see
the beak will put a muzzle on ’im. He warn’t talkin’ law, and you’re no
good in court unless you talk law. The old bloke and them K. C.’s will
not stand that sort o’ lip, see if they does.”
“Well, ’ere’s the sergeant comin’. But just to show there’s no
ill-feelin’, I’ll ’ave ’arf a pint with you, mate, that ’e gets her
off.”
“Make it a pint, matey. A pint seems more legal.”
XV
TRUTH’S CHAMPION
Northcote had only a hazy notion of his whereabouts. He had never been
in these high latitudes before. He had a dim idea that London lay “over
there;” but upon ascending the steep hill that lay before him, he found
that “over there” was merged in the dark and enormous bulk of the
Crystal Palace.
“Whitcomb was right in his topography,” he laughed. “This is the route
he predicted I should take; therefore it is a perfectly fair inference
to regard it as the wrong one.”
He hailed yet another minion of the law, who no less than his brethren
was communicative.
“You are going away from London as fast as your legs will take you,”
said Z201, and proceeded to set a course which in itself was so
intricate that the young man by no means pledged himself to follow it.
The terrific central energy still driving him, the wayfarer strode
forth through the rain with an undiminished vigor. By now his clothes
were saturated and lay upon him heavily. But nothing could abate the
force of these concentrated fires which bore him so lightly mile after
mile. Not only did they burn with splendor, but also with a vital
clarity. His lips moved with the phrases that sprang upon them; the
sense of dull power, of unused native force, which had oppressed him
like a nightmare during many nights and days, had been fused all at
once into an immense fecundity of expression. Each minute blood-vessel
that formed a web round the ball of crystallized energy that was his
brain was big with its own peculiar, original, and special idea. The
strangest vistas had opened before his eyes. His faculties in the first
flush of their self-consciousness had grown insolent and overbearing.
How could a body of common citizens hope to stand against the battery
that would be directed upon them! All the subtleties of the sophists,
all the enthusiasms of the creeds would be as naught in the presence
of such an overweening personal force. How could such insignificant
fragments as these, the mere excrescences of the universal scheme, who
could not make a mind among them, hope to retain the all-too-precarious
standard of their probity when touched by the wand of the magician?
He laughed aloud to the rain when his thoughts reverted to the two
perplexed constables he had left at the bottom of Sydenham Hill; and
how, in spite of the tentativeness of the effort, as his talent had
mounted in him, so that presently its irresistible force had seemed
even to surprise himself, these two stolid, unemotional Englishmen had
nodded their heads in approval, and had hung breathless upon his words.
Only one of God’s great advocates could hope to perform that miracle
under a gas-lamp in the wind-swept streets on a wet and chill winter’s
morning. The old mystics, delivering with a divine _naïveté_ their
surprising message to mankind, could never have accomplished a feat
more wonderful.
His eyes veiled in darkness, his head high-poised yet thrust forward,
his mouth and nostrils filled with cold and deep draughts of air, his
whole being was surrendered to an orgy of freedom and power. For the
first time since he had come to maturity he had found an occupation
for his ferocious energies. It was no unworthy task by which they were
confronted. Thirty was usually the age at which genius elected to give
to the world its first masterpiece. And was it not as seemly that an
advocate should rejoice in a theme as the statesman, the musician,
or the poet? This first essay should be as complete, as audacious,
and as worthy of the sanction of the best minds of the time, as the
_chefs-d’œuvres_ of other representative spirits. It should stand as a
landmark in an art as little understood as that of truth itself.
Old men on the Woolsack, the most reverend seigniors of the law,
advocates who had received the homage the age is accustomed to
lavish on a scanty pretext, should stand aghast before an alarming
iconoclasm of which he would be the pioneer. His ideas should prove
so revolutionary that these practitioners, complacently drawing their
emoluments, should foregather to turn this magnificent ruffler out of
his inn. The scathing criticisms which the elect of all ages launch
against a Jesus, a Galileo, or a Wagner, before the world has grown
accustomed to their strangeness, he would be called upon to support;
for would not he alone be the true advocate, the heaven-born, immortal
one, while they would remain, as always, complacent performers of
tricks which they mistook for the operations of their specific talent,
subscribers to conventions that were shallow and nonsensical and
in open enmity to the idea of justice for which they stood as the
self-satisfied expression.
As he raced along in the company of these wonderful thoughts through
the south of London, he recognized in himself all the signs that
declare Truth’s authentic champion. It would be his to deliver more
than one rueful blow upon the close-locked portals of pedantry.
“The purblind old man who dares to occupy the seat of judgment, his
authority shall be traversed, it shall be rent in pieces. As for that
amazing creature who will dare to stand up for the Crown, who will
propose to do to death a human being with that bleak and irascible
voice, and the operations of that arrested growth he calls his
intellect, an awful example will have to be made of him.”
There was no end to the succession of deserted streets. Water swam
in shallow pools along the black pavements which seemed to reflect
the color of the sky. The numerous lamps, picked out as so many dull,
yellow balls in the surrounding blackness, suffused their oppressive
rays along the long, flat surfaces so that they appeared to shine
without giving forth a radiance.
How vague and vast seemed these early hours before the dawn! They did
not contain a living soul. The sky, the streets, the dark houses, the
bare trees in the gardens and at the sides of the roads were soundless,
empty, destitute of life. A quietness so profound appeared uncanny on
the outskirts of pandemonium. But astonishing, desolating as it was,
it seemed to aid the furious brain that was borne so fast in its midst.
There was only the echo of the advocate’s own feet, which came weirdly
from across the way, and the high and labored breathing of his own body.
By the time the hour of seven chimed out from the half-dozen
neighboring steeples of a population that was beginning to cluster much
closer together, he divined that he was pressing nearer to the heart of
the metropolis. He did not stay to inquire of the occasional wayfarer
who was abroad in these regions, but set his face into the ruck of the
streets, where the dark forms of the houses rose like an impenetrable
and endless forest. No fears assailed him as to whether he would reach
his home--the coldest, most inhospitable home that was ever called upon
to harbor a spirit with such widespread, space-cleaving pinions.
His feet seemed to devour the pavements. His stride was great, elastic,
and unflagging; it was propelled by the lungs, heart, and muscles
of the athlete. In the swing of the arms, the lunge of the limbs,
the lissom sway of the body, there was fine physical power, and the
seething engines that presided over this massive yet elastic framework
were like the boilers of a locomotive which eat up the miles without
fatigue. When excited into action on the football field the feeling was
always upon him that no puny human agent could stay his course. The
feeling was upon him now in an intensified degree. With will and muscle
coöperating to overstride the darkness, he longed for opposition to
declare itself that he might trample it down.
Near eight o’clock he recognized Waterloo Bridge and the cold Thames
below stealing like a felon through the vapors of the dawn. With
a stupefied surprise he awoke to the sensation of being launched
once more into the sharp and too-definite business of the time. The
pavements were now swarming with people, the roads with omnibuses,
cabs, and vans. Traffic was belching out of every street; clerks and
seamstresses were scurrying to their employments, masticating their
breakfasts as they went. Vendors of newspapers and hawkers of food
were tearing the gray air to pieces with their cries. He emerged from
the orgy of his passion to find that he was up to the throat and being
stifled in pandemonium, even before he was aware that his feet had
entered it.
The lines of palaces across the river, towering tier upon tier above
the embankment, with their majestic bulks half-thrust through the
curtain of December mist which the first streaks of day had seemed to
thicken, fell upon the imagination of the wayfarer, who had slackened
his pace all at once to a footsore limp as he crossed the bridge
and crept towards them. At a distance they stood insolent, aloof,
and cynical. He could hardly believe that in one of these wonderful
caravanserais he, the starving, the friendless, and the solitary, had
eaten and drunk only a few hours before. It was not feasible that such
palaces as these could touch a life so obscure at any point. Penniless,
friendless, lacking even life’s common necessaries, in the midst of six
millions of people, who contended rudely with the first weapons that
came to their hands to enforce their claims, how could he, whose coat
was in holes, whose pockets were empty, have penetrated to the Mecca of
their gods?
Limping into the Strand as the clock at the Law Courts chimed the hour
of eight, his imagination was assailed, not with their unmeaning mass
of architecture, but with that unseen and grisly bulk which only the
eye of his inner consciousness could apprehend. A shudder convulsed his
veins. Less than thirty short hours hence the gladiator would be called
into the arena. He would have to face the lions with no defence for
his nakedness except a small shield in the use of which he had had no
practice, and a sharp but untried spear.
Climbing up the steep stairs to his garret, his nostrils were affronted
as they had been on so many other occasions by the foulness of the
heavy and noisome air. What a labor it was to reach the locked door
at the top of the highest, the darkest, the most unpleasant story!
His fibres had grown strangely slack, his breathing was no longer
joyous and free. The mighty engines of his mind had ceased suddenly to
vibrate; those pulses which had been so overweening in their insolence
could only flutter now. He had fallen without a warning from his
eminence. His whole being was enveloped in a despicable flaccidity, a
despicable weakness, as he turned the key in the lock and entered his
garret.
He recoiled from the dismal scene that met his eyes with the shudder
that one gives in plunging into icy water. As he stood on the threshold
all the phantoms of his previous despair sprang upon him from the
walls of his chamber and seemed to throw him down. There was the cold
grate with the gray ashes in it still; there the lamp that had left
him in the darkness. The table was there with its pile of law-books
that he had conned with the sickening patience which tortured him so
keenly. Strewn over them were fragments of the writings which had eaten
away the flower of his intelligence without bringing him a shilling to
fill his belly or to pay his rent. Enveloped within them was the piece
of lead by whose aid and with a skill so ferocious he had destroyed
the rat. The confectioner’s paper was there that had contained his
dinner; also the crumbs which remained to testify to its nature. On the
mantelpiece was the burned and dirty old pipe which he had cherished so
much, the only friend of his adversity; on the floor was the pouch that
had not a grain of tobacco in it. The pool of water was still in the
corner, underneath the discoloration of the plaster in the low sloping
roof.
How cold it was! Everything in this horrible apartment seemed to be
rendered icier, more dismal, by the callous gray beams that stole
through the grimy windows with a sullenness that hardly merited the
name of light. Ah, that window with its outlook on oblivion! It all
came back to him with the indescribable pangs of the knife, that the
night before he had leaned out of it, bareheaded, open-mouthed, his
eyes and nostrils cut by blasts of sleet, and had cried his haughty
challenge to a world that grovelled so far below him in the mire.
It was all very hideous, yet this Titanic despair filled him with a
deep sense of poetry. He realized, even as he stood now confronting it
for the thousand and first time, that whatever the future might hold in
her womb, never again would he be pierced to these depths whose very
immensity urged the proud rage to his eyes. Yes, there in the cynical
eyes of the morning lay the stained and battered old table to which
the previous evening he had pressed his eyes to summon the genie. What
torments of impotence, of baffled and thwarted power, must those eyes
have undergone before they could prevail upon their royalty to stoop to
such an act.
He took from his pocket the bank-note, half his fee, which the
solicitor had given him at the restaurant, and held it up to a gaze
that was as scornful as that of a young god who has not yet learned to
accept as a matter of course the powers that render him immortal.
Not again would he suffer want. He had made his choice. In a tragic
moment his faintness had forced him to his knees. He had summoned
the mischievous imp who showers gold upon poor mortals in order that
it shall stultify, poison, and corrupt them. Already he could taste
success. There was a faint aroma of it in the dregs of the wine he
had drained the previous night. There was a slight nausea upon his
lips. There had been something beyond mere fatigue in the enervation
with which he had climbed those stairs. For once the great muscles had
seemed to flag. Yet not again would they know the chastening brutality
of want. Indeed his despair already was beginning to seem a holy and
pure condition. He foresaw, as he stood gazing upon its pinched face,
crinkling as he did so the bank-note between his hands, that the
future would be casting back to it perpetually as the tomb of his
godhead, in which he put off those spiritual splendors in which his
nature was once enveloped, those sanctified things which were native to
himself, in order that he might embrace those other things that were
the birthright and the measure of the meanest natures.
Through the open door came the sound of footsteps on the stairs. They
were shuffling and uncertain, and belonged to an old woman, who wore a
shawl and a faded black bonnet, and who crept into the room with little
toddling steps.
“Hullo, Mrs. Brown,” said Northcote, turning to confront her; “rather
late, aren’t you? It is a quarter-past eight.”
“Yes, sir, I am,” said the old woman, in a precise manner. “My youngest
grandchild is dying.”
“How old?”
“Five and a half, sir.”
“Of what is she dying?”
“Diphtheria, sir,” said the old woman humbly.
“And if the poor little kid dies that will reduce the number of small
orphans in your family to four, will it not?”
“It will, sir.”
Northcote stood looking at the old woman for a moment and then changed
the subject abruptly.
“Mrs. Brown,” he said, “I have had a windfall. For the time being I
am a rich man; and I may say that one of these days I expect to be
very much richer. And although your poor little grandchild is dying, I
think we owe it to Providence to celebrate this occasion in a fitting
manner. Never mind about the fire and the water for my bath. I want
you to get a basket and do some shopping, somewhat as follows: one
frying-pan, one pound of the choicest Wiltshire bacon, three moderately
fresh eggs if money will buy them, which I expect it will not, one pot
of marmalade, one pound of the most expensive butter and a loaf of
bread, a pound of tea, price half a crown, and a pint of milk. Now get
along, if you please, and I will light the fire.”
The blank stupefaction on the face of Mrs. Brown conveyed to Northcote
that he had forgotten to give her the money.
“I am so unaccustomed to have the handling of money,” he said, “that I
have forgotten to give it to you. This is a note for ten pounds. See
that no one robs you of the change.”
The stupefaction on the face of the old woman appeared to deepen as her
fingers closed over this unheard-of treasure.
“I--I don’t know that I dare trust myself with it, sir, along the
Strand,” she said weakly.
“Very well,” said Northcote. “Just make the fire--a real good one,
mind, and you can use all the coal that is laid by, because at one fell
swoop I am going to order a ton--and I will do the shopping myself.
Where is that big basket in which you bring home the washing?”
“Here, sir,” said the old woman, passing behind a curtain at the far
end of the room which concealed a bed.
“Good,” said Northcote. “Providence is working for us. It intends that
we shall do ourselves well. And my last words to you are, don’t spare
the coal.”
“I will not, sir,” said the old woman, discarding her air of
stupefaction in favor of her habitual preciseness.
XVI
A JURY OF ONE
When Northcote returned with the basket heavily laden in one hand, and
a frying-pan, aggressively new, in the other, his dismal chamber had
already been transformed, for a fire was burning bravely, a kettle
was singing upon it, the pool of water in the corner had been mopped
up, the floor had been visited with a brush, and books and papers,
two tables, and three chairs had received wholesome discipline from a
duster.
“I could have done it all as well myself,” said Northcote, surveying
this transformation with grim eyes, “although I do not deny it has the
efficient professional touch. But I would have you to know I am a man
of my hands. I am also a man of affairs. I have purchased extensively;
and I am proud to say the best goods in the cheapest markets. I have
ordered a ton of coal, although where we are going to put it I don’t
quite know. Now, these things I surrender to your care; and in half an
hour you will have the goodness to serve up a royal breakfast for two
persons. In the meantime I will have a shave and a tub.”
The young man’s operations behind the curtain were conducted on an
extensive scale, to judge by the noise and splashing that accompanied
them. Yet presently he emerged with a well-scraped chin, a skin glowing
with cleanliness, his ragged mass of hair reduced to a semblance of
order, and his person arrayed in an extremely shabby and unfashionable
but perfectly dry suit of clothes. The tea was at hand to be made, the
pot heated, the eggs, bacon, and toast were delightfully warm and laid
before the fire. And in accordance with instructions the table was
set for two persons, with the blunt knives and forks and the decrepit
crockery of his establishment.
“Will you wait till the other gentleman comes, sir?” asked the old
woman.
“What other gentleman, Mrs. Brown?”
“The gentleman who is coming to breakfast.”
“Well, I can’t very well, seeing that she turns out to be a lady.”
“I beg your pardon, sir.”
“You, Mrs. Brown, are that lady. You will please sit just there, as
near to the fire as you can get without burning yourself. I propose to
make the tea, for I am so expert in the art that I yield to none. And
I shall ask you to pour it out, while I proceed to serve the eggs and
bacon, which look perfectly delicious.”
The charwoman, however, betrayed no sign of assenting to this
arrangement.
“I am sure, sir, it is meant in great kindness,” she said humbly, “but
I could not think of such a thing. You see I have been in good service,
sir, and I beg your pardon, sir, but it is never done.”
“‘Never’ is a dangerous word to employ, Mrs. Brown,” said Northcote,
towering over the old woman in a formidable manner. “In fact, I allow
none to employ it to me. Sit down, if you please, and pour out the tea,
and just have the goodness to imagine yourself the Lady Elizabeth
Who-was-it, famous alike for her breeding and her beauty, while I shall
endeavor to consider myself that distinguished nobleman, the Earl of
What’s-his-name.”
“The Lady Elizabeth Plumptre, sir, and the Earl of Widmerpool.”
“Very well. Now I say, ‘Betty, my gal, have an egg with your bacon?’
and you reply with a quiet ease and distinction of manner, ‘Yes, papa,
if you please,’ Now then, down you get into your chair, and spare me
the necessity of arguing the point. I am so apt to lose my temper if I
argue the point.”
The old woman, who was too much in fear of him to risk anything of the
kind, took her place at the table immediately.
“One of these days,” said Northcote, handing her an egg and some bacon
on the only plate that did not happen to be cracked, “I should like
you to meet my mother. She is a very notable and good woman, with a
remarkably resolute conception of her duty, which all her life she has
rendered bluntly and directly without ever speaking of it to a human
soul. She has ordered her life in the manner that she deems necessary
to the rôle of an eminent Christian. She has brought up her only son
in simple and pious resolves, educated him quite beyond her means, has
found him money when in order to do so she has been compelled to deny
herself life’s common necessaries, yet has asked alms of none, and at
Christmas time never omits to dispense charity to others.”
“I should like to see your mother, sir,” said the charwoman, folding
her hands meekly and sitting very upright on her chair. “I am sure she
is a very good lady.”
“One of those noble narrow women, Mrs. Brown, upon whom life bears
down so heavily. Yet she carries out her programme with a greatness of
spirit which is almost demoralizing to one who tries to look at things
as they are. I don’t know what there is in her life that carries her on
so victoriously; for one never hears her utter a complaint against the
buffets she has received from fate, or against the restrictions that
her dismal surroundings impose on her nature. I have never heard an
impatient word upon her lips, yet every morning, summer and winter, she
rises at the hour of five, performs those domestic functions that can
bring no satisfaction to her, and presently goes forth to labors still
more arduous and equally devoid of meaning. What there is to carry her
on I don’t know. Why that inflexible spirit has not been broken these
many years I cannot conjecture.”
“She has got into the habit of going on, sir, I suppose,” said the
charwoman.
“The habit must be a very strange one, Mrs. Brown, when to-morrow is
always the same as yesterday.”
“It is like being a clock, sir, which goes on because it has been wound
up.”
“Yes, but I never found a clock that could wind up itself. Every clock
must have some kind of a key.”
“It is God, sir, who is the key,” said the charwoman.
“That throws us back,” said Northcote, “to our original necessity to
have a religion. To my mind, Mrs. Brown, you have indicated that need
in a very lucid and practical manner. And how, Mrs. Brown, as you
appear to have given some thought to these things, do you suppose this
reticent mother of mine views this God who holds the key to the watch,
who winds it up and keeps it going? How would you say she regards Him
personally?”
“Perhaps she doesn’t think about Him much, sir. Perhaps as a girl she
troubled her head about Him a bit; but when she got older and had to
take heavy burdens on her shoulders, she was always too tired to think
of Him, except when she said her prayers.”
“Do you suppose there have been times when in her great fatigue she has
fallen asleep while she has been in the act of saying them?”
“Yes, sir, I suppose there may have been,” said the old woman.
“So, then, you would say there is nothing definite, forceful,
all-compelling about this God of hers? You would say He had no
particular personality to speak of?”
“Perhaps He is very real to her, sir, just as to the watch the key must
be very real that winds it up and keeps it going.”
“I suppose, Mrs. Brown, you have never by any lucky chance arrived at
the reason why He does wind you up and keep you going? Yet surely you
have asked yourself the question why it is necessary that you should be
wound up and kept going.”
“I may have done, sir, now and again. But then it has been a wicked
thought.”
“It is an intensely natural thought, and the wickedness of sheer
undraped nature is one of those hard doctrines I have never been able
to accept. When in the depth of winter you have laid an old skirt
on your bed because you did not happen to possess an extra blanket,
and you have crept with your shivering limbs into the cold sheets, I
suppose you have asked yourself occasionally why you who do not even
perform the humble functions of a clock, since you keep no time, should
yet be wound up and set going, when, as a matter of choice, you would
prefer to remain in bed in the morning and be allowed to sleep on
forever?”
“There are my five little grandchildren, sir, who have no mother or
father.”
“They would go to the workhouse; and the state would transform them
into honorable, capable, and industrious citizens with even greater
efficiency than you would yourself.”
“The workhouse, sir, is a very disgraceful thing for a respectable
family.”
“Ah, you impale me on another spike of your religion. Its points are
fixed at a sharper angle than you are willing to allow. For I would
ask you, is it not enough to enrich the state with five healthy and
able-bodied citizens without being called upon to maintain them at
one’s own expense?”
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said the old woman, “but when you have
children of your own you may not say so.”
“I do not doubt that you are right. By exercising as keenly as possible
the very inadequate number of wits with which nature has seen fit to
arm me, I am able to discern that the more reasonable we become the
less do we order our conduct by the light of reason. As you suggest,
it is extremely probable when I become a father, if I am ever called to
that beatitude, I shall rise every morning from my bed to prevent my
children going to the workhouse, however strenuously reason may urge
that the workhouse is their natural and appointed home. And assuming,
Mrs. Brown, that I am not marked out for the honor of paternity, that
crowning achievement of every citizen, why then should I rise from my
bed--that is, assuming that I regard the person who presumes to wind up
the watch to be a meddlesome busybody, a bore, and a nuisance?”
“If you work very hard, sir, you will have no time to think such
thoughts,” said the old woman.
“It is, I suppose, the satisfaction of depriving yourself of the
opportunities of thinking such thoughts that brings you here every
morning of the year at a quarter to eight to tidy up the garret of a
starving materialist who is bleeding to death of his ideals?”
“Yes, sir, you might say partly that and partly to help to bring up my
grandchildren.”
“Well, my good woman, if it is partly to bring up your grandchildren,
why, may I ask, do you continue to toil on behalf of this person, when
for two months past he has paid you no wage, and may I ask also why
have you lent him sums of money, when you must have been aware that it
was in the highest degree unlikely that it would ever be paid to you
again?”
“I have had no time to think about it like that, sir.”
“That is not a very strong answer, Mrs. Brown. I felt sure I should
be able before long to impale this religion of yours upon a paradox.
And I suppose that when you put this shrivelled old hand that I am
holding into that ridiculous old dogskin purse of yours, which must
have been an heirloom in your family in the year one, you had not time
to reflect that you were robbing your poor little grandchildren? You
had not time to reflect that the twenty-five shillings which you lent a
weak-natured, self-indulgent sentimentalist in order that he might not
be turned out into the street would keep them in boots for a year?”
“I don’t say I had not time to think about it, sir, but I could never
have seen you turned out into the street without a roof above your
head.”
“Why could you not, Mrs. Brown? It was no part of your duties to
provide a home for a stalwart and able-bodied young man who was living
in idleness, when you had your five little, orphan grandchildren to
consider.”
“I did not look at it in that light, sir.”
“Surely it was very wrong of you to fail to do so. One would think a
reasonable, right-minded person would hardly need to have it pointed
out.”
“Well, sir,” said the old woman nervously, “I beg your pardon, I’m
sure; but even if I had seen it in that way I might not have acted upon
it.”
“Then I grieve to say, Mrs. Brown, that you appear to have no very
exact standard of probity.”
“I--I--I’m sure, sir, I always try to do what is right.”
The charwoman had become the prey of a deep confusion.
“But,” said Northcote, sternly, “I have just had your own assurance
that you do not. You would not, it seems, scruple to rob your poor
grandchildren to gratify a whim; indeed, it may be said you have robbed
them to gratify one. If I had to prosecute you before a jury of twelve
of your honest countrymen, I could easily get you put into prison.”
“Well, sir,” said the old charwoman, beginning to tremble violently
before this grim realism, “I--I am sure I have always tried to do my
duty.”
“On the contrary, Mrs. Brown, you can scarcely be said to have a
conception of what is your duty. At least the best that can be said
for that conception is that it is arbitrary, perverse, contradictory.
Expedience is the only duty known to the laws which regulate all
forms of nature. The man called Jesus, the chief exponent of the
contrary doctrine which appears to have had some kind of attraction
for you, received a somewhat severe handling when He ventured to show
Himself upon the platform; and you who in your dumb and vague and
invertebrate manner have been seeking to imitate Him in one or two
minor particulars, owe it to the generous forbearance of the recipient
of your charity that you do not find yourself in prison. If the Crown
in its expansive vindictiveness were to instruct me to prosecute you in
what it is pleased to call a ‘court of justice,’ woe would betide you.”
The old woman grew as pale as ashes when confronted with the stern eyes
of this advocate who turned white into black so easily.
“Why--why, sir,” she stammered, “you--you will make me think I have
committed a murder if you go on!”
“I think I might do that without much difficulty. It would be quite
simple to indicate to you in a very few words in what manner the
Almighty has already seen fit to mark the sense of His personal
displeasure. Is it not your own conduct, do you not suppose, which
has provoked Him to strike down your innocent little grandchild with
diphtheria? And if the child dies, which we will pray it will not,
what would be easier than to render you responsible for its death? You
see that is the worst of evil, it is so cumulative in its effect. Once
it has begun its dread courses, who shall predict their end? A good
action is self-contained and stops where it began; a bad one fructifies
with immortal seed and practically goes on for ever--_vide_ the poet
Shakespeare. Why, you are eating nothing. I am afraid I am spoiling
your breakfast.”
“Oh, sir, I didn’t know I was so wicked,” said the charwoman, with
tears in her eyes.
“Opinions are easily formed. As for reputations, they can be made and
unmade and made again in an hour. But might I suggest, Mrs. Brown, that
if one happens to be righteous in one’s own eyes, it does not very
greatly matter if one goes to jail to expiate so pious an opinion. Do I
make myself clear?”
“I--I don’t say I am good, sir, but--I hope I am not a downright bad
one.”
“Well, to relieve your feelings, we will take it that you are a
nebulous half-and-half and somewhat unsatisfactory sort of person who
blindly follows a bundle of instincts she knows less than nothing
about, just like a dog or a cat or a rabbit. And is not that what this
elaborate moral code of ours throws back to if we take the trouble
to examine it? And is not one entitled to say that a dog is a good
dog, a cat a good cat, a rabbit a good rabbit, just as faithfully as
it follows the instincts under its fur, whatever they happen to be? I
have taken this excursus, Mrs. Brown, and have ventured to theorize a
little, quite unprofitably, I grant, and at the risk of causing you
some ill-founded alarm, because to-morrow I have to exercise all the
talents with which the good God has endowed me in the cause of an
extremely wicked woman who has committed a murder. Her crime is of a
vulgar and calculating kind, perpetrated in cold blood; there is not
a rag of evidence to save her from the gallows; but Providence has
called upon me to attempt to save her from the fate she so richly
merits. And there is an instinct within me, her advocate, for which I
am at a loss to account by the rules of reason and logic, which calls
on its possessor to save this abandoned creature at all hazard. If I
obey that instinct I shall be a good advocate and a bad citizen; if I
disobey it I shall be a good citizen but a bad advocate. Yet if I obey
it I shall have fulfilled to the best of my ability the legal contract
into which I have entered, and in so doing I shall be called on to
commit a serious misdemeanor against human nature. On the other hand,
if I disobey it I shall be causing human nature to be vindicated in a
becoming manner, yet shall be guilty of an equally serious misdemeanor
against myself; and further, I shall be false to the interests of
my unfortunate client whose money I have taken, and render myself
indictable for the offence of entering into a contract which I have
wilfully refrained from carrying out. Please have another cup of tea,
and kindly pass the marmalade.”
Northcote having shifted the ground of his reasoning from the personal
to the abstract, the old woman regained sufficient confidence to pour
out the tea without spilling it.
“Now,” said Northcote, “if you were in my position, would you try to
enable one whom you knew to be a murderess to escape the gallows?”
“If I might say so, sir, I would try to have nothing to do with her at
all.”
“In other words, you would rather starve than take her money?”
“Yes, sir, I think I would.”
“And cause _you_ to rob your poor little grandchildren?”
“I--I--don’t say that, sir.”
“Let us be as logical as we can. Again, would it not cause me to rob my
poor old mother who has contributed her all towards my education, which
I put to no useful end?”
“You would be honest, sir.”
“Honest, do you say! Do you call it honest to pervert and misapply the
money my mother has lavished on my education?”
“Might you not use your education, sir, in some other way?”
“You would have me till the fields or be a clerk in an insurance
office. Would that be honest in the sight of God, who has placed
an instinct in me which I disobey? Surely one would say the truly
dishonest man is he who is unfaithful to his nature. Had we not
agreed upon that? If a man knows that he was designed by God to be an
advocate, is he not called to practise? Why have the gift to prove
that white is black and black is white if that gift is not to be
carried to its appointed issue? If I do not barter it for a means of
livelihood by proving the guilty to be innocent, how am I to discharge
the higher function of proving the innocent to be not guilty? If, in my
cowardice, I decline to go into court lest I save those who ought not
to be saved, think of the innocent persons who will perish for the lack
of a true advocate.”
“If we could only get to the real intention, sir,” said the charwoman
solemnly, “of Him who winds up the watch and who is Himself the key,
perhaps these things might not worry us. But God moves in a mysterious
way, His wonders to perform.”
“Yes,” said Northcote, rising from the breakfast-table, “there we have
the fruit of all that our curiosity can yield to us. The power may be
given to us to show that blue is green, but what does it stand for in
the presence of the dread materialism of our religions?”
The advocate took three sovereigns from his pocket, three sovereigns
which he had yet to earn, and placed them in the palm of the old
charwoman.
“Mrs. Brown,” he said, “in the bleak and uncomfortable eyes of science
your virtue will not bear inquiry; but if it were possible to take a
plebiscite of the opinions of your fellows as hastily as possible upon
the bare facts, before a professional advocate had a chance to pervert
them, I do not doubt that you would be voted to a position among the
elect. I believe myself that there is a greater amount of purely
disinterested nobility among all sections of society than is generally
known. Fifteen shillings I owe you for services rendered; twenty-five
for your timely contribution towards my rent; and here is a pound with
which to pay the kind doctor who is going to thwart the Almighty in His
intention of causing your small grandchild to die. One of these days,
as I say, Mrs. Brown, I hope you may meet my mother, for I would like
to render to you the homage that all men desire to be allowed to render
to good women.”
He seized the blackened, shrivelled, and not particularly clean hand
and carried it to his lips.
XVII
MESSRS. WHITCOMB AND WHITCOMB
After the old woman had cleared the table of the breakfast things and
she had gone away, Northcote sat nearly two hours in his easy chair at
the fire, whose grate had never been allowed to consume so much fuel
since it had been in his occupation, and with the aid of his brief
proceeded to rehearse all the points of the case as they presented
themselves to him. Warmth, food, and rest had overthrown his weariness,
and his mind which in its operations was habitually so energetic began
to shape and docket every conceivable aspect of the matter that could
be of the slightest service to the accused. His reasoning was so
amazingly copious that he foresaw and proceeded immediately to guard
against a very real danger.
He might easily overdo it. The jury would not be men of education
to whom fine points would appeal. Most probably they would be petty
tradesmen whom it would be impossible to touch through the mind at all.
He must take aim at their emotions. “I must use,” he said to himself
in his mental analysis, “not a word beyond three syllables, and I must
keep to the language of the Bible as well as I can. All my little
pieces of embroidery, all my little bravura passages must bear that
singularly excellent model in mind; its power of touching the commonest
clay is so unfailing. Happily, in the course of my somewhat eclectic
studies it has not been neglected. But beyond all I must try to get my
address quite fine and close. One word too much and the whole thing
fizzles out in a haze of perplexity. For that reason I am afraid I
must reject some of my choicest and neatest thrusts at the moral code,
which ought to tickle to death all minds with a gleam of humor. No,
I must deny myself those bright excursions in which the cloven hoof
of the artist betrays itself, and put my faith in a few common tricks
performed with mastery. They at least should set up the honest English
grocer on his hind legs and make him purr like anything.”
Before the ingenuity of this keen intelligence those obstacles which
were bristling everywhere in the case, which to the average mind would
have appeared insurmountable, began rapidly to melt away. It was with
an ill-concealed joy that he shed the lime-light of paradox on each
point that presented itself. That array of facts which a judge and jury
of his countrymen would hug to their bosoms as so many pearls they
could positively hold in their hands he would disperse with a touch of
his wand. In the ripeness of his talent he foresaw that it would cost
him no labor to demolish the evidence, to turn it inside out.
The world is full of great masterpieces that have been created out of
nothing, haunting and beautiful things which have been spun by genius
out of the air. And are not feats like these more wonderful than the
exercise of the natural alchemy of change by which fairness is turned
into ugliness, poetry into lunacy, good into evil, truth into error?
The constructive faculty is rare and consummate; when it appears
it leaves a track of light in the heavens; but the faculty of the
demolisher is at work every day. Northcote was conscious that he was a
born demolisher of “evidence,” of those trite dogmas, those brutalized
formulas of the average sensual mind. When he looked for truth he
sought it at the bottom of the well. On the morrow for the first time
he would give free play to his dangerous faculty.
When he had blocked out and brought into harmony the main lines of his
address to the jury, it occurred to him that his powers might receive
an additional stimulus if he saw the accused, exchanged a few words
with her, brought himself into intimate relation with her outlook. Up
to this point she had been no more than an academic figure, around whom
he had woven detached, somewhat Socratic arguments. He felt that to
see and to know her would be to place yet another weapon in his hands,
wherewith he would be enabled to dig another pit for those whom he had
already come to look on as his, no less than her, deadly adversaries.
Already he was a little amused by his own complacency, the conviction
of his own success. There was that curious quality within him that
forbade his evoking the possibility of failure in so great an
enterprise. He was so grotesquely sure of his own power to triumph over
arbitrary material facts. Such a sense of personal infallibility could
only spring from the profoundest ignorance, or from talent in its most
virile and concentrated form. For what was more likely than that on
inspection the accused would present one of the most abandoned figures
of her calling? Was it not highly probable that nature, who takes such
infinite precaution to safeguard her creatures, had caused this woman
to assume the shape of a hag, a harpy, a thing of loathsome, terrible
abasement? In that case, how would he dispose of evidence in its most
salient form? How would he dispose of that immutable instinct, that
deep conviction which is conferred by personality?
On the other hand, if the accused, by the aid of one of those miracles
of which the world is so full, were to present the outlines of actual
personal beauty, through whose agency common sensual minds are appealed
to so easily, how slight would his difficulties be! In that event,
so far as her advocate was concerned, the gilt would be off the
gingerbread, his achievement would cease to be astonishing. Indeed,
so finely tempered was his arrogance that to undertake the defence of
one of this kind would be distasteful to it, so small would be the
field afforded for personal glory. Rather than have to deal with one
who could be trusted to be her own most efficient advocate, he would
prefer that a veritable harpy out of a sewer should be placed in the
dock. Could he have been allowed the privilege of choosing a theme for
his powers, he believed that he should best consult the dictates of his
talent by asking for a commonplace, unillumined woman of forty to be
put up.
Deciding at last to seek an interview with the accused, he set forth
to the offices of his client in Chancery Lane. On his way thither he
occupied himself with drawing the portrait of the ideal subject as his
mind conceived her. She would be forty, with her hair turning gray.
She would be a plain, drab, slightly elusive figure, cowed a little by
life, the privations she had undergone, and the ignominy and terror of
her situation. The positive, the actual would be to seek in her; she
would offer no target for too facile sympathies. Her inaccessibility
to all suggestions of romance or of picturesqueness would lend to
her predicament that extreme peril which it would be her advocate’s
chief glory to surmount. All the same, he desired no ghoul, but a
human being. She might be visibly stained, buffeted, common, broken,
devoid of a meaning to eyes that were unacquainted with the poetry of
misfortune, the irony of blunt truths; yet let a few rags of her sex
remain, let her be capable of humiliation, of being rendered in piteous
fear.
At the offices of Messrs. Whitcomb and Whitcomb in Chancery Lane he was
informed that the senior partner was anxiously awaiting him.
“Ah, here you are at last!” exclaimed the solicitor, rising to receive
him. “I thought you would have been round before.”
“I suppose you only honor a silk gown with a consultation in his own
chambers?” said Northcote.
“Chambers, you call them! Well, did we not hold it last night?”
“One cannot very well hold a consultation with one’s client before one
receives one’s brief.”
“What dignity!”
“Is it not at least half the stock in trade of mediocrity?”
“What modesty! Do I take it that the rather formidable ’Ercles vein of
last night is really no more?”
“You may not. It is waxing higher and higher.”
“Defend us, gentle heaven and pious gods!”
“A truce to these pleasantries. Put on your hat and take me to the jail
to see the accused.”
“You are going a little fast, my young friend, are you not? Is it
wholly necessary that you should see the accused? Is it wholly to her
interest or to yours?”
“Wholly, I assure you.”
“Well, before we get as far as that, I am particularly curious to know
what line you have decided to take. Is it too much to ask that you
have decided not to adhere to the acquittal? Speaking for myself, I
must confess that the more consideration I give to the question, the
less do I like that idea. Tobin would certainly have taken the line of
insanity.”
“Last night you were good enough to inform me of that.”
“Well, my young friend, what is good enough for Tobin should be good
enough for you.”
“That also you were good enough to inform me of last evening. But,
my dear fellow, pray do not let us go over this ground again.
Unfortunately Tobin and myself do not inhabit quite the same
intellectual plane.”
“Unfortunately that appears to be the case,” said the solicitor.
“Tobin’s is the lower,” said the young man blandly.
“Tobin will be glad to know that.”
“I hope he may. After to-morrow he will be the first to admit it. But
once more I crave to be allowed to conduct this case in my own way.
I can listen to none; so be a good fellow, put on your hat, and come
along to see the lady.”
“Well, I must say that for a youngster who is asked for the first time
to conduct the defence in a capital charge you don’t lack confidence in
yourself.”
“If I did I should not be holding the brief.”
“There is something in that. And in any case you will have to have your
way now. It is too late in the day to stand up against you.”
Mr. Whitcomb pressed his bell and a clerk appeared.
“I want permission to interview Emma Harrison. Will you ring up the
prison and see if you can get the governor to give it?”
The clerk withdrew.
“They are not likely to refuse it?” said Northcote.
“They ought not to be,” said Mr. Whitcomb, “but when you are confronted
with Mr. Bumble in any shape or form, your motto must always be, ‘You
never can tell.’”
“Arbitrary brute,” said the young man with vehemence, “I hate him
altogether.”
“I also; but one should always do him the justice of conceding that he
has arduous duties to perform.”
“Presumably that is the reason why he aggravates difficulties of those
who are called to help him in performing them.”
“Is not that what we agree to call ‘human nature’? But really I think
it is the duty of every citizen to think of him tenderly. He means
well. He is not a bad fellow at bottom.”
“I have no patience,” said the young man truculently. “Mean well!--not
a bad fellow at bottom! Why, he and his satellites are the custodians
of the life and liberties of the whole population. One wonders how many
innocent lives have been sworn away by this fat-witted blunderer who is
barely able to write his own name.”
“You are too strong, my son. His responsibilities are immense; the
wonder is that he plays up to them in the manner that he does.”
“You are all members of the same great and far-reaching society; you
have all sworn allegiance to one another. Mediocrity arm in arm with
Mediocrity; Law and Order arm in arm with Law and Order.”
“Insolent dog!”
“Better the insolence of the dog than the blind ineptitude of the
donkey. The barking of a dog can frighten a rogue, but the braying of
the ass fills every fool with courage. If _he_ is allowed to lift up
his voice, why not _I_? is what Mediocrity is ever asking of itself.
And up goes your own private and personal bray. The other ass says,
‘Good Lord, what a clear and beautiful note! Upon my word, I have
never heard anything to compare with it.’ And you reply modestly, ‘My
dear fellow, if you could only hear your own clarion tones, you would
not say that. My own are modelled upon them, I assure you.’ ‘Well, my
dear friend,’ the other ass eagerly rejoins, ‘if that is _really_ the
case, you are eligible for election to our Academy.’ ‘Oh, my dear sir,’
say you, with your hand on your heart and tears in your voice, ‘you
overwhelm me with honor. This is the proudest moment of my existence.’
‘Not at all, my dear fellow, tut! tut!’ says the other ass; ‘great
privilege to have you among us. And there is only one rule, you know,
to which you have to subscribe.’ ‘Ah!’ you exclaim, in an awed whisper.
‘The rule is quite simple,’ says the other ass, putting his great
flabby lips to your long furry ear. ‘It is merely that every member of
our distinguished brotherhood shall unite in extolling his confrères.’”
Happily the clerk reappeared at this moment, just as the solicitor,
chuckling furiously, was preparing to launch a veritable thunderbolt.
“Well?” he said to the clerk, and suddenly whisking away his head to
laugh.
“Sir Robert Hickman’s compliments, sir, and Harrison’s legal advisers
may see her in consultation at any time.”
“There, what do you say to that!” said the solicitor, casting a merry
glance at the young advocate.
“Courteous fellow,” said Northcote; “one R. A. to another R. A.; it is
perfectly charming. I trust that in accordance with latter-day practice
you keep a reporter on the premises, in order that these high-toned
amenities may be communicated to the press.”
“My dear boy, you are perfectly incorrigible,” said the solicitor,
sticking his hat on the back of his head and insinuating his portly
form within the folds of his imposing outer garment. “But one of these
days you will know better.”
“When I am old enough to be eligible for election, I dare say; in the
meantime let me rejoice that I am not yet brought to heel.”
Laughing at the vagaries of each other, advocate and client went out
together, called a cab, and drove to the prison.
XVIII
TO THE PRISON
No sooner had Northcote entered the vehicle than his mood underwent a
curious transformation. His heart began to beat rapidly, his hands to
shake, his knees to tremble. His brain grew so hot that a vapor was
thrown in front of his eyes. Extraordinary emotions overcame him to
such a degree that he could not discern any of the faces in the street.
“You are very quiet,” said the solicitor, after awhile.
“Yes, I dare say,” said the young man, in a voice which in his own ears
sounded thin and high-strung.
“Why not talk? That is your _métier_. You were much more amusing last
night on the way to Norbiton.”
“Somehow I don’t feel as though I have anything to say. My head is so
full of this affair.”
“Don’t think about it too much or it may get you down,” said Mr.
Whitcomb, puffing quietly at his cigar; “although to-morrow you are
certain to be in a horrible funk, as it is the first job of the kind
you have ever had to tackle. Nor will it make it the easier for you
when you reflect that the line you have decided to take will add
immensely to your difficulties.”
Mr. Whitcomb spoke with the quiet incisiveness of one whom experience
has rendered callous. From the leisurely candor and nonchalance of his
manner a trial for murder was made to appear of rather less moment than
the obtaining of a judgment in a county court. Such coolness contrasted
so oddly with the young man’s own perturbation that he was thrown
completely out of conceit with himself.
“I suppose you played cricket, Whitcomb, at that highly fashionable
seminary of yours?” said Northcote abruptly.
“I was a ‘wet bob’ myself,” the solicitor rejoined; “but I think I know
why you ask the question.”
“It is like sitting with your pads on waiting for the fall of the next
wicket when you are playing for your ‘colors.’”
“I agree,” said the solicitor, “that there are few things so
disagreeable as that. But you are bound to have a wretched time until
the case is over. It is for that reason that I continue to urge you to
heed the counsels of experience.”
“Well, I will see her first,” said Northcote tenaciously.
That air of self-confidence which had tried the patience of the
solicitor so extremely had vanished altogether from the manner of his
youthful companion; for to Northcote’s horror, every phase of the
defence which, with so much elaboration, he had already prepared,
every word of the memorable speech to the jury which had been packed
away sentence by sentence had passed away out of his consciousness so
completely that it might never have been in it. Pressing through the
crowded traffic with a vertigo assailing his eyes and his ears, and a
paralysis upon his limbs, his mind was a blank which might never have
been written upon. Pray heaven this would not be his condition when he
rose to-morrow in the court; for what is comparable to the despair that
overtakes an imperious nature when it is publicly abased by a physical
failure? In imagination he was already sharing the sufferings of the
young Demosthenes when derided by the populace.
At last came the dread incident of the hansom stopping before the
gateway of the prison. The portals rose mournfully through the twilight
of the December morning. While the hansom stood waiting for them to
revolve, a little company of loafers and errand-boys collected about
the vehicle, and regarded its occupants with curiosity not unmingled
with awe.
“Lawyers,” said a denizen of the curb to a companion, whose world like
his own was cut into two halves by the huge wall of the prison.
“Ugly----!” said his friend, spitting with extraordinary vehemence upon
the wheel of the vehicle.
The huge door, studded with brass nails, swung back soundlessly upon
its invisible hinges, and the hansom passed over cobbles under an
archway that seemed to reverberate so much with the sound of its
progress, that Northcote felt his brain to be shattered. He was unable
to witness the little drama that was enacted behind him, of the great
door shutting out the row of solemn faces, standing upon the dim
threshold of the outer world to peer into the gloomy precincts of
oblivion.
The courtyard seemed to consist of low doorways with gas lamps burning
within them, endless expanses of wall, windows heavily barred, and
extremely official-looking police-constables. The little daylight of
the streets through which they had passed had diminished sensibly.
Mr. Whitcomb led the way out of the hansom as it stopped at a doorway
at the end of the courtyard, slightly less insignificant than the rest.
A policeman without his helmet, but with three stripes on the sleeve
of his tunic, and whose hair, glossy with grease, fell over his low
forehead in the form of a fringe, came out of the semi-darkness to
receive them.
“If you will take my card to the governor I shall be obliged to you,”
said Mr. Whitcomb.
“Yessir,” said the constable, with a deferential alacrity touched with
a slightly abject humility. “Will you please to step this way, sir, and
mind your ’at, sir, against the top of the door?”
They followed the policeman along a gaslit passage which seemed
endless. Their boots echoed and reëchoed from its stone flags up to
and along the low, white-washed ceiling. Ascending a flight of steps
they were shown into a room through the iron bars of whose window a few
irregular beams of daylight struggled painfully, and arrived in such an
exhausted condition that they appeared to be quite at a loss to know
what to do when they had entered. The room was small, warm, and so full
of bad air that Northcote found the act of respiration difficult. Three
or four massive chairs, covered in brown leather, were disposed in the
corners, while the middle was in the occupation of a table, upon which
was a bottle filled with water with a glass fitting over the top of it.
“The atmosphere of this place makes one feel ill,” said Northcote, when
the constable had borne away Mr. Whitcomb’s card.
“They have another apartment which will make you feel a lot worse
than this,” said that gentleman cheerfully, unbuttoning his coat
and providing himself with a chair. “Take a seat and make yourself
quite at home. It will take our polite friend with the hair at least
three-quarters of an hour to penetrate through morasses of red tape and
officialdom in its most concentrated form into the governor’s parlor
and then to get back again to us. I have known him take an hour.”
“Good Lord,” said Northcote, “I shall be dead long before that.”
“Pretend you are Dante, and try to think out the first canto of your
‘Inferno,’” said Mr. Whitcomb, taking a crumpled copy of the _Law
Journal_ out of his coat, fixing his glass, and proceeding to peruse it
with admirable spirit and amiability.
Northcote remained standing. He was too completely the victim of the
emotions that had been excited in him to simulate composure. He walked
up and down the room in nervous agitation, and examined the bare walls
and the grated window.
“I see they have revived this flatulent controversy in regard to the
value of circumstantial evidence in the capital charge,” said Mr.
Whitcomb.
“One would certainly say it ought always to be admitted under the
greatest reserve,” said Northcote.
“It would be impossible to work without it in almost every trial for
murder.”
“Well, I shall tell the jury to-morrow, overwhelming as in this case it
may seem, to reject it altogether.”
“And what do you suppose the judge will tell them, may I ask?” said Mr.
Whitcomb.
“I am expecting a bit of a duel between us,” Northcote replied. “But if
he can undo the work I have set myself to accomplish, he is a better
man than I take him to be, that is all.”
The solicitor did not frame his reply immediately, but a rush of blood
to his complexion announced what its nature would have been. The fellow
was really like a child in some things! How could he suppose that these
outworn pleas that long ago had been worn threadbare by every country
attorney could carry the least weight with men who bore sound heads on
their shoulders? If he had nothing better on which to base his defence
than the inadmissibility of circumstantial evidence, there was no need
for him to go into court at all. He was declining to call the witnesses
who would attempt to prove insanity; he was rejecting the one natural
and reasonable line, which had the sanction of those who were older,
wiser, altogether more capable than himself, in favor of a single
desperate throw with the dice--and here was what that throw amounted to!
“I must venture to say,” protested the solicitor, “you surprise one
more and more. If you have nothing more original than that to show the
jury, a weaker judge than Brudenell would demolish it in a few minds
like a house of cards.”
“We shall see.”
“Why, my dear fellow, all the world knows there is no escape from
circumstantial evidence in murder cases. Have you asked yourself the
question how many verdicts could have been taken in recent years upon
notorious crimes, had it been ruled out?”
“I expect to have my own way of answering the question,” said the young
man.
“Yes, and Brudenell will have his.”
“Quite probably, I grant you,” said the young man, with a tenacity
that his companion felt to be exasperating; “but unless one is wholly
deceived in the estimate of one’s own capacity--forgive this very
unprofessional candor in regard to oneself--the jury will answer it
in the fashion I ask them to, not in the fashion asked of them by Mr.
Justice Brudenell and Mr. Horatio Weekes.”
“Well, my young friend,” said Mr. Whitcomb, scrutinizing him with the
patient wonder that is bestowed on a rare quadruped in a zoological
gardens, “pray don’t think me impertinent if I confess that you are the
most baffling compound I have ever encountered.”
“Notably,” said Northcote, “of self-conceit, pig-headedness,
childishness, ignorance, and effrontery. I dare say you are right, for
have I not committed the unpardonable offence of assuming that I am
wiser than Tobin, wiser than yourself, also of considering myself the
superior of the judge upon the bench?”
“You may be perfectly entitled to this self-estimate after the event,”
said the solicitor, with a candor he was unable to repress; “but I
would like to say that only a very complete, and even astonishing,
success to-morrow can possibly justify it.”
“I recognize, I concede that,” said the young advocate, with an
unexpected humility. He passed his handkerchief across his dripping
forehead. “Is it not true of all who undertake to perform a miracle
that nothing short of a consummate achievement will satisfy those
eternally timid ones who have not even the courage to be credulous?
It is the fate of all who break with custom to be derided, but was
anything ever done for the world by conforming to it?”
“Custom is a useful safeguard against ridicule, at any rate,” said Mr.
Whitcomb.
“Ridicule!” cried the young man. “Would you have one fear it?”
“Yes, my son,” said the solicitor, with calmness and unction, “one
would have every professional man fear it like the plague.”
“God knows we are all susceptible to the fear of ridicule,” said the
young man, sweating profusely, “but is it not those fearful minds that
defer perpetually to custom that build their actions upon it? Where
would the epoch-makers have been had they been weak enough to defer to
ridicule? No movement was ever initiated but what in the beginning its
progenitor was laughed out of court.”
“Do I understand, my young friend,” said Mr. Whitcomb in his suavest
accent, “that you propose to elevate the hanging of Emma Harrison into
a world movement?”
“You may,” said the young man, lifting up his chin, from which great
beads were rolling, “for the theme is fit for a world-drama. And he
who is cast for the leading rôle shall make it so.” With unsteady
steps Northcote passed out of the gloomy corner in which he stood to
where the daylight struggled through the grated window. He pressed his
forehead against the bars. “One would have preferred Gethsemane,” he
muttered; “at least there would have been space and air.”
Mr. Whitcomb readdressed himself to the study of the _Law Journal_. The
conquest of that irritation which overcomes on occasion the sternest
discipline had long been elevated into a mental habit by this sagacious
gentleman, who felt it to be the due of the inimitable coolness with
which he looked at life. Yet could he have indulged an explosion
without endangering his stupendous dignity, he must have done so here.
This ridiculous fellow was getting on his nerves. Whatever could have
led him to entrust him with a case of this kind? Was it not an evil
hour when he climbed those foul and dark stairs to hale him from the
obscurity of his garret? What could be clearer than that this madman
was about to make a public exhibition of himself and of his client?
After all, the unearthing of this man Northcote was no more than a whim
of Tobin’s formed on the spur of the occasion. Tobin, it was true,
was highly successful, yet he was himself a somewhat odd, whimsical
fellow, a Celt; and really his suggestion ought to have been seen at
the deuce. Yet it was no good to repine; he had gone too far to draw
back; time, the tyrannical determining factor of every event, allowed
him no choice. This man Northcote must be Emma Harrison’s advocate or
she must do without one.
In the meantime Northcote’s tense emotion had been well served by the
cold iron against which his face was pressed. It seemed to possess a
medicinal quality which entered his arteries. Once more his mind was
able to exert its faculty. His courage, his fecundity of idea, the
sense of his destiny, had seemed to return.
The discomposure of the solicitor and the nervous tension of the
advocate were intruded upon at last by the constable, who had taken
rather more than three-quarters of an hour to perform his mission.
“Will you come this way, gentlemen?” he said.
They were conducted along more dark and apparently interminable
passages, up one flight of stone steps and down two others, until at
last they found themselves in a room similar to the one they had left,
except that it was larger and gloomier, smelt rather more poisonous,
and looked somewhat more funereal.
Northcote’s heart was again beating violently as he stepped over its
threshold, and his excitement was not in the least allayed when he
discovered that there was no one in it.
“If you will kindly take a seat, gentlemen,” said their guide,
“Harrison will be here in a few minutes.”
“In other words, twenty,” said Mr. Whitcomb, beginning a tour of
inspection of this dismal apartment. “These small mementoes may have
some slight interest for you, my friend,” he said to Northcote.
He drew the young man’s attention to a row of shelves placed at right
angles to the window. They were raised tier upon tier to the height
of the ceiling, and were crammed with crude staring objects. A close
inspection revealed them to be busts made of plaster of Paris.
“Why, what are these horrible things supposed to represent?” said
Northcote, with a thrill in his voice.
“These,” said Mr. Whitcomb cheerfully, “are the casts taken after death
of a number of ladies and gentlemen who have had the distinction of
being hanged within the precincts of this jail during the past hundred
years. If you will examine them closely, you will be able to observe
the indentation of the hangman’s rope, which has been duly imprinted on
the throat of each individual. Also, you may discern the mark of the
knot under the left ear. Interesting, are they not? The official mind
is generally able to exhibit itself in quite an amiable light when it
stoops to the æsthetic.”
“I call it perfectly devilish,” said Northcote, shuddering with horror.
“They must have quite a peculiar scientific interest,” said Mr.
Whitcomb, “for each lady or gentleman who may chance to enter this
apartment to consult his or her legal adviser. Are you able to
recognize any of these persons of distinction? If I am not mistaken,
the elderly gentleman on the third row on the right towards the door
is no less an individual than Cuttell, who poisoned a whole family at
Wandsworth. High-minded and courteous person as he undoubtedly was, I
must say Cuttell certainly looks less _outré_ now he is dead, and more
in harmony with his surroundings, than when he entered this room, and
asked me in a mincing tone, with all the aitches misplaced, whether in
my opinion any obstacle would be raised against his getting his evening
clothes out of pawn, as he desired to wear them in the dock during his
trial.”
“For the love of pity, spare me!” cried Northcote, pressing his fingers
into his ears, “or I shall run away.”
“The gentleman with the protruding lip on the second shelf towards the
window is, unless my eyes deceive me, one Bateman, who slaughtered his
maiden aunt with a chopper and buried her in a drain--”
Northcote spared himself further details in the history of Mr. Bateman
by laying violent hands upon his counterfeit presentment, and hurling
it with terrific force against the iron window bar, whence it fell to
the floor in a thousand pieces.
“Upon my soul, I have a great mind to go through the lot,” he said,
livid with fury.
“Pray do so, by all means, dear boy,” said Mr. Whitcomb, with that
unction which never forsook him, “and you will find your art-loving
countrymen will avenge this outrage upon the private and peculiar form
of their culture by one day insisting that your own effigy is placed on
these historic shelves.”
XIX
THE ACCUSED
Renewed assaults upon these interesting _objets d’art_ were averted by
sounds outside in the corridor. Northcote imposed a superhuman control
on all his faculties that his agitation might be restrained, when the
door opened and two shadowy figures, barely visible at first, crept
silently into the darkness of the room.
The two figures were those of women. By the time Northcote had evoked
a sufficient force of will to meet their outline, the one that first
encountered his glance was so brutalized and repulsive that his eyes
were detained with a fascinated sense of horror. It belonged to a
creature that was degraded, squat, coarse, insensitive. He felt almost
the same reluctance in approaching it as he would a cobra.
She, however, was not the one whom Mr. Whitcomb, with all the polished
readiness of the thoroughgoing man of the world, had advanced to
meet, and to whom he had held out his hand. The young man heard with
stupefaction, while his own gaze remained riveted to the features of
the sibyl, the bland and courtier-like tones of the solicitor caressing
and paying homage to a figure in the background, a figure which was
still and silent, which he could not see.
This person, however, had no interest for Northcote; she was so
obviously the female warder who had accompanied the murderess. One
so characterless, so formless, could not be said to exist in the
presence of this detaining horror, whose personality thickened, as with
pestilence, the noisome air of the room. And it was this obscene life
that he had pledged himself to save!
Strangely, this blunt fact did not dominate his consciousness in the
manner it must have done one of a less alert perception. For with a
perversity that transcended the will, at this moment his thoughts
were overspread by the comedy that was being enacted by the suave
lips of the solicitor. The harmonious stream of mellow commonplaces
that Mr. Whitcomb was pouring into the ear of the shrinking official
nonentity who kept in the background accosted his sense of the comic
with a kind of lugubrious irony. With a critical detachment which even
startled himself, he seemed to awake to the fact that he was standing
outside his _milieu_, that he was witnessing a drama within a drama;
and he found himself in possession of the singular reflection that
here was a robust yet delicate adumbration of the farcical which would
make the fortune of a writer for the stage. For there was something
indescribably ludicrous in the rich voice of the solicitor enunciating
his own private opinions upon the weather, the state of trade, the
inconvenience of winter and its bearing upon the perennial problem of
the unemployed, when the grotesque horror which dominated the room was
at his elbow, emitting the glances of a venomous snake.
Suddenly Northcote heard Mr. Whitcomb call his name.
“Come here, Mr. Northcote; I want to introduce you.”
In a hazy, stupefied manner the young man obeyed.
“Mrs. Harrison,” said the solicitor, “allow me to present my friend Mr.
Northcote. I feel sure you will find a friend in him too.”
The advocate grew aware that a weak, nerveless hand was resting in his,
but his eyes were still riveted on the face of the ghoul.
“Say something, you fool, and play up a bit,” said the solicitor’s calm
voice in his ear.
“Er--a nice day, Mrs. Harrison,” said the young man, without knowing a
word he was uttering.
“Yes,” said a hesitating voice, which by no possibility could have
proceeded from the tightly closed lips of the creature whom his gaze
was devouring.
The words broke the illusion at a blow. The brutalized countenance
under whose dominion he had fallen was that of the female warder. The
person with whom the solicitor had been conversing with such cheerful
volubility, to whom he was now himself speaking, was the poisoner, the
cold-blooded denizen of the curb and the gutter. He drew his hand away
quickly, with an involuntary emotion, from those hot, flabby, and damp
fingers that he still detained.
“I know, I know,” the woman seemed to breathe, as though she were
interpreting an unspoken thought.
“I may tell you, Mrs. Harrison,” said the solicitor, with his well-fed
chuckle, “that if your knowledge can compare with that of this
gentleman, you are one of the wisest persons in the world. He will tell
you so himself.”
So crude a gibe had the happy effect of restoring to Northcote his
self-possession.
“My name is not known, Mrs. Harrison,” he said, with his fibres
stiffening, and his voice growing deeper and falling under control,
“but you can trust me to eke out my inexperience with a determination
to serve you to the utmost of my power.”
Northcote saw that two luminous orbs were being defined slowly in the
centre of the gloom. For an instant no reply was made to his words,
and then he was conscious that a faint voice was whispering, “If your
friend would go right away with the warder--right away to the end of
the room, then perhaps we could speak with one another here where it is
so dark.”
“Whitcomb,” said Northcote, in a low tone, “please take the warder
right up to the window at the other end, where you can see to read, and
read the _Law Journal_ to her.”
“How d’ye do, ma’am,” said the solicitor, turning to the ghoul in his
promptest, blandest, and most musical manner. “I think it has been my
privilege to meet you before, although you may not remember me. Is that
boy of yours prospering in the police force?”
“I haven’t got a boy in the police force,” said the sibyl, in a loud,
strident tone.
“Then which of your blood relations is it, may I ask, who is connected
with the police force? I am sure you have some one.”
“I have an uncle.”
“Ah, to be sure, an uncle! But it is so easy to make a mistake on a
point of official nepotism. Come along this way, ma’am, and tell me all
about your uncle.”
XX
THE INTERVIEW
Prisoner and advocate were left together amid recesses of impenetrable
gloom in the darkest corner of the large apartment. It seemed to enfold
them, and to render the pallor of their faces almost invisible. The
eyes alone encountered those of each other, and even these could embody
no phase of meaning. A strange continence, as sharp and clean as that
of a hero of fable, had begun to cleanse the veins of the advocate.
In the presence of this stealthy thing his nature had never seemed so
fine, so valiant, so full of subtle penetration; nor had it ever felt
so girt with mastery, so completely enamored of its own security.
“I shall know what words to speak to-morrow,” he said, in a hoarse
undertone.
“Will they not be spoken for yourself?” whispered the dismal low voice.
“How? In what manner?”
“You will speak to make a name.”
“Also for the salvation of yours.”
“Mine does not matter; it is not my own.”
“You trust me, do you not?”
“I trust you; yet you drew your hand away so quickly when you knew it
was not the warder who was the murderess. Give it to me again.”
There was something so curious in the prisoner’s fragility, something
so strange in her cowed air, that it seemed to pervade the advocate
with the stealth of a drug. But the emotion of disgust with which he
had withdrawn his hand when first he grew conscious that he touched her
was no longer present when he offered it again. The second time she
clasped her fingers round it so that their pressure seemed to sear his
skin. It had the heat of a live coal.
In releasing his hand she let her fingers yield it so imperceptibly
that he did not know the precise point at which it had ceased to be
held; and he was afraid to make a motion of withdrawal, lest it should
be interpreted as a repetition of that which had dealt her a wound. He
tried to see her face, but in the darkness there was no lineament to
decipher.
“This is my deliverer,” he heard her breathe.
“How have you come to know it?” The advocate was devoured by an
intolerable curiosity.
“Your hands--your hands, they are so powerful; are you not so strong?”
There was nothing in these words that the advocate had expected; the
voice, the manner of their utterance, their apparent irrelevance, made
a strange effect in his ears.
“They will not do me to death,” she said, in a tone he could hardly
hear. “I never tasted life until I was brought into prison. And you
cannot think how sweet it is to me. Everything has become so beautiful:
the birds, the trees, and the sky, and the crowds of people and the mud
of the great city.”
She clutched the hand of the young advocate with a convulsive shudder.
“Your quietness tells me that you understand.” Her voice was touched
with ecstasy. “You do not answer or seek to console me. You are the one
I have dreamed of in prison. Where is your hand?”
Again Northcote yielded to her entreaty, this time without a sense of
repulsion.
“Yes, this is the hand that has been around me in the darkness, when I
have shuddered in my dreams.”
“It is wonderful,” said Northcote, “that you should know that you will
be able to lean upon me.”
“I know what your voice is like also, although it is so vague and
distant to me now. I know the words it will speak to-morrow, when it
asks them to be merciful. I know that all I have seen in my dreams will
take place.”
“It must be a grievous thing to go to sleep in a prison,” said
Northcote, uttering a half-formed thought without consideration of his
words. “Or perhaps it is more dreadful to awaken in one.”
“The going to sleep and the awakening are not so terrible as the dreams
that come. That in which I saw you first, in which I first heard your
voice, in which I first touched the hand that will deliver me, was most
dreadful in its nature. My weak mind fell down under it. I think I
could not live through such a vision again.”
“How strange are these visitations!” said Northcote. “How awful, how
mysterious! When did this dream come to you?”
“Last night about the hour of ten; the first time I had closed my eyes
for three days.”
Northcote recoiled with a shudder. The precision of the voice and the
power of the coincidence were overmastering.
“There is no accounting for these things,” he said, in a voice
throbbing with excitement. “At the same hour I also had a strange, an
almost terrible sort of vision.”
“Yes, my deliverer, you have been called into my life to save it--to
save that life which never had a perfect thought until it was brought
into prison. It did not know what the trees and the sky were, nor the
air and the birds; never had it heard a deep voice nor touched a strong
hand. You are he that leaped out of the vast multitude that mocked me
in my dream, he who stood up before it, and, with a great voice that
sounded like the waves of the sea, caused them all to break and run.
They grew afraid of your words and your looks, and they fled in terror.
Yes, my life has become so full of beauty and meaning, so full of a
spacious mystery, that I cannot believe it is to be taken away.”
These words, breathed rather than spoken, sounded in the ear of
Northcote as those of a transcendent sanity. Remote as they were, they
yet appeared divinely appropriate to the time and place. But they left
only one course for him to follow. He must detach himself from the
unhappy speaker of them; he must flee her presence. Their edge was too
keen. There would be no advocacy on the morrow if he yielded to the
subtle enervation of this atmosphere. The voice pierced him like a
passion, yet his veins had grown sluggish and heavy, as if under the
influence of a drug.
XXI
THE TALISMAN WHICH TRANSCENDS EXPERIENCE
Calling the name of the solicitor, Northcote broke away abruptly from
the prisoner and left the room. It had seemed to be charged with a
pestilence. Mr. Whitcomb was soon at his side, and hastily they wended
their way up and down various flights of stone steps, along the noisome
corridors of the huge building, until daylight came in sight once more
through the doorway at the end of the passage at which their cab was
standing. Their relief was very real at being able to breathe again the
living air, fog-laden as it was.
“I don’t know how many times,” said Mr. Whitcomb, as they drove from
the portals of the jail, “on one errand and another, I have descended
into this inferno, but it never loses its power to give me the blues.”
“I am regretting,” said Northcote, “that I did not take your advice. I
wish I had not come near it. I cannot shake off the impression it has
made. Ugh! it gets into one’s blood. I don’t know anything quite so
overpowering as the nausea of locality.”
“You are too impressionable, my son,” said the solicitor, with a
furtive smile. “You will never be able to get through life at this
rate. It wants one of some hardihood, one who is robust in each one of
his five senses, to practise law.”
“I would say,” Northcote rejoined, with a shudder, “that to be armed
for this calling each particular nerve he has got in his body must be
shod with iron.”
The solicitor laughed at so palpable a discomposure.
“What did you make of the prisoner?” he asked, suddenly. “You appeared
to find a great deal to say to one another.”
“Personally I hardly spoke a word to her,” said the young man, seeking
to gather his recollection of that strange interview.
“She appeared to find a good deal to say to you,” said the solicitor.
“In that respect you have been more fortunate than myself. I have
spoken with her three times, and I don’t think I have been able to
extract three words from her. Do you mind telling me what she said?”
“To the best of my remembrance she said nothing that could have the
least interest for anybody.”
“Tell me, what impression of her have you brought away?”
“I hardly know whether she allowed me to form one. Our communication
seemed so indirect. She kept her face in the shadow all the time; I
could not discern a feature.”
“Surely you were able to gather some sort of general idea?”
“That is the strange thing--I seem to have formed no opinion about
her. One would not have thought it conceivable that one should have
conversed with a person, dealt at least in an actual exchange of words
at close quarters, and that they should remain so null. I think I
should have been better acquainted with her had I not seen her at all.”
“Come, my dear fellow, you can surely recall a word or two of what she
said? She is an enigma; and she is said not to have spoken six words
since she was first remanded in custody.”
“That certainly makes the volubility in which she indulged this
afternoon the more astonishing.”
“Indeed it does. Would you say that she expects an acquittal?”
“Well, now you come to mention that, I would say she does.”
“It is an extraordinary thing that they are all so sanguine. It hardly
ever seems to occur to any of them that by any possibility they can
meet with their deserts. Indeed, one might say the bigger the criminal,
the greater their confidence that they will escape.”
“I am going to ask you what opinion you have formed of her,” said
Northcote.
“It follows the lines of your own. When I have come into personal
contact with her, I have been able to make rather less than nothing
of her. At first I thought she seemed sullen, and quite reconciled to
her position, indeed, that she was too callous to care about anything;
but upon seeing her to-day, I was rather struck by the fact that her
attitude had undergone a change.”
“How long has she been in prison?”
“Nearly three months. She is an odd sort of creature--her former
associates are agreed upon that--and doubtless some sort of change has
taken place in her. I am more than ever convinced that insanity is
your line; and by this time it should not be too much to hope that you
are.”
“She will expect her liberty.”
“_She_ will expect! My dear boy, it is when you permit yourself to talk
in this fashion that you fill one with so much distrust. Her position
entitles her to expect nothing.”
“No sort of doubt overtakes you then in regard to her guilt?”
“None. I have suggested that to you over and over again. My dear
fellow, it is as I feared; you have not permitted yourself a due
appreciation of the overwhelming nature of the evidence. I do not see
how she can hope to escape; and this is pretty plain speaking on the
part of her attorney. Just look at the array of facts--her course
of life, her purchase of the poison, the result of the post-mortem,
the presence of motive. Again and again I have felt it to be my duty
to suggest to you that Tobin would not have attempted to shake the
evidence.”
“Well, you must permit me to say that, reflect upon the question as I
will, it does not seem easy to reconcile the woman in that room with
the cold-blooded monster who will be presented to the jury.”
“That phenomenon is by no means rare. It has been my fortune to
undertake the defence of more than one finished example of moral
obliquity who has presented not the least indication of such a
condition. Besides, do you not admit that the impression that this
woman made upon you was one of absolute nullity? Were you not unable to
divine anything in regard to her?”
“Yes, that was my first feeling; but I am now confessing that
after all, in some mysterious way, she has contrived to shake these
preconceived ideas about her, now that from this distance I can view
the room and what transpired in it. I dare not say by what means she
has contrived to produce this effect; indeed, it is so subtle that I
can hardly say what it amounts to, because if I begin to recall her
words she seems almost to have admitted her guilt. Yet of one thing I
am convinced--she presented no evidence of her depravity.”
“One can easily concede the probability of that.”
“Yes, but had it been as complete as you insist, I must have seen it.”
“Pardon me, but I am afraid it does not follow. What is easier than to
hide its traces from the eyes of inexperience?”
“Have I not the talisman in my pocket which transcends experience?”
“Talisman be damned,” said Mr. Whitcomb, with a jovial brutality.
Before his companion could frame an answer to a scorn so
unconciliatory, the hansom stopped before the offices of Messrs.
Whitcomb and Whitcomb. They alighted together.
XXII
LIFE OR DEATH
The final consultation of Northcote and his client took place in the
open street in the heavily raining December afternoon, with their backs
against Mr. Whitcomb’s brass plate. The spot selected for their last
utterances on this momentous affair was incongruous indeed, but each
had grown so impatient of the other, that if their last words were
spoken here, the clash of their mental states was the less likely to
invite disaster than in a more formal council-chamber of four walls.
The robust common sense of the solicitor had never shown itself to be
more incisive than now as he stood with his back to his own door, under
a dripping umbrella, his hat pushed to the back of his head, and his
trousers turned up beyond his ankles. His twenty years of immensely
successful practice, his exact knowledge of human nature, his ruthless
worldliness, his reverence for the hard fact, stood forth here in
the oddest contrast with the somewhat “special” and rarefied quality
of this youthful advocate whom he had seen fit to entrust with so
important a case.
“It’s a pity, it’s a pity,” he brought himself to say at last, his
veneer falling off a little under the stress of his chagrin, and
revealing a glimpse of the baffled human animal beneath. “It is a
serious mistake to have made; but we have got to stand to it. You are
not the man for this class of work, to speak bluntly. You are either
too deep or you are not deep enough. But as I say, we have got to stand
to it now. My last words will be to urge you to put as good a face upon
it as you can.”
“In other words,” said Northcote, stiffening, “you will look to me to
do my best.”
“I don’t put it in that form exactly,” said the solicitor, midway
between exasperation and a desire to be courteous. “I want you fully to
appreciate that you are handling an extremely tough job, and I merely
want you to make the best of it, that’s all.”
“I will tell you, Mr. Whitcomb,” said Northcote, striving in vain to
avert the explosion that had been gathering for so long, “that if it
were not now the eleventh hour, if I had not pledged myself to this
thing more deeply than you know, if it were not a matter of life and
death to me as well as to your client, I would throw your brief back at
you rather than submit to this. It will be time enough for you to get
upon your platform when I have made a hash of everything.”
“Yes, I think you are entitled to say that,” said the solicitor
impartially, having made a successful effort to recapture his own
serenity. “I have no right to talk as I am doing; I have never done so
to any one else. I suspect you have got on my nerves a bit.”
“Yes, the whole matter throws back to the clash of our temperaments,”
said Northcote, unable to cloak his own irritation now that it had
walked abroad. “It is a pity that we ever attempted to work together.
Yet for one who envelops himself in the serene air of reason, you are
somewhat illogical, are you not? You enter the highways and hedges in
search of a particular talent; you have the fortune to light upon it;
and then you turn and rend its unhappy possessor for possessing it.”
“As I say, my dear boy, this particular talent of yours--or is it your
temperament?--you see I am not up in these technical names--has got on
my nerves a little.”
“And your temperament, my friend, to indulge a _tu quoque_, is covered
with a hard gritty outer coating, for which I believe the technical
name is ‘practicality,’ which positively sets one’s teeth on edge.”
“So be it; we part with mutual recriminations. But this is my last
word. Firmly as I believe I have committed an error of judgment, if
to-morrow you can prove that I have deceived myself, you will not find
me ungrateful. I can speak no fairer; and this you must take for my
apology. It is not too much to say that since I have come to know you I
have ceased to recognize myself.”
“I accept your _amende_” said Northcote, without hesitation. “I see I
have worried you, but if I might presume to address advice to the fount
of all experience, never, my dear Mr. Whitcomb, attempt to formulate a
judgment upon that which you cannot possibly understand.”
“After to-morrow there is a remote chance that I may come to heed your
advice. In the meantime we will shake hands just to show that malice is
not borne. Don’t forget that you will be the first called to-morrow, at
half-past ten. It is quite likely to last all day.”
The solicitor turned into his offices and Northcote sauntered along
Chancery Lane. The twilight which had enveloped the city all day was
now yielding to the authentic hues of evening. The dismal street-lamps
were already lit, the gusts of rain, sleet, and snow of the previous
night had been turned into a heavy downpour which had continued without
intermission since the morning. The pavements were bleached by the
action of water, but a miasma arose from the overburdened sewers, whose
contents flowed among the traffic and were churned by its wheels into
a paste of black mud. Northcote was splashed freely with this thick
slushy mixture, even as high as his face, by the countless omnibuses;
and in crossing from one pavement to another he had a narrow escape
from being knocked down by a covered van.
It was in no mood of courage that the young man pushed his way to his
lodgings through the traffic and the elbowing crowds who thronged the
narrow streets. Even the mental picture that was thrown before his eyes
of this garret which had already devoured his youth had the power to
make him feel colder than actually he was. Never had he felt such a
depression in all the long term of his privation as now in wending his
way towards it laboriously, heavily, with slow-beating pulses.
He was sore, disappointed, angry; his pride was wounded by the attitude
of his client. His self-centred habit caused him to take himself so
much for granted, that at first he could discern no reason for this
_volte-face_. In his view it was inconsiderate to withhold the moral
support of which at this moment he stood so much in need. Truly the
lot of obscurity was hard; its penalties were of a kind to bring many
a shudder to a proud and sensitive nature. The patronizing insolence of
one whom he despised was beginning to fill him with a bootless rage,
yet in his present state how impotent he was before it. He must suffer
such things, and suffer them gladly, until that hour dawned in which
his powers announced themselves.
That time was to-morrow--terrible, all-piercing, yet entrancing
thought! The measure of his talent would then be proclaimed. Yet all in
an instant, like a lightning-flash shooting through darkness, for the
first time the true nature of his task was revealed to him. Doubt took
shape, sprang into being. Its outline seemed to loom through the dismal
shadows cast by the lamps in the street. Who and what was he, after
all, in comparison with a task of such immensity? With startling and
overwhelming force the solicitor’s meaning was suddenly unfolded to him.
He took himself for granted no more. He must be mad to have gone so
far without having paused to subject himself to the self-criticism
that is so salutary. How could he blame the solicitor whose eminently
practical mind had resented this inaccessibility to the ordinary rules
of prudence? Was he not the veriest novice in his profession, without
credentials of any kind? And yet he arrogated to himself the right to
embark upon a line of conduct that was in direct opposition to the
promptings of a mature judgment.
How could he have been so sure of this supreme talent? It had never
been brought to test. The only measure of it was his scorn of others,
the scorn of the unsuccessful for those who have succeeded. The
passion with which it had endowed him was nothing more, most probably,
than a monomania of egotism. How consummate was the folly which could
mistake the will for the deed, the vaulting ambition for the thing
itself!
On the few occasions, some seven or eight in all, in which he had
turned an honest guinea, mostly at the police-court, he had betrayed
no surprising aptitude for his profession. There had been times, even
in affairs so trivial, when his highly strung nervous organization had
overpowered the will. He had not been exempt from the commission of
errors; he recalled with horror that once or twice it had fallen to his
lot to be put out of countenance by his adversary; while once at least
he had drawn down upon himself the animadversions of the presiding
deity. Surely there was nothing in this rather pitiful career to
provide a motive for this overweening arrogance.
He grew the more amazed at his own hardihood as he walked along. To
what fatal blindness did he owe it that from the beginning his true
position had not been revealed to him? Where were the credentials that
fitted him to undertake a task so stupendous? What achievement had he
to his name that he should venture to launch his criticisms against
those who had been through the fray and had emerged victorious? How
could he have failed to appreciate that abstract theory was never
able to withstand the impact of experience! It was well enough in the
privacy of his garret to conceive ideas and to sustain his faculties
with dreams of a future that could never be, but once in the arena,
when the open-mouthed lion of the actual lay in his path, he would
require arms more puissant than these.
To overcome those twin dragons Tradition and Precedent, behind which
common and vulgar minds entrenched themselves so fearlessly, the sword
of the sophist would not avail. It would snap in his fingers at the
first contact with these impenetrable hides. His blade must be forged
of thrice-welded steel if he were to have a chance on the morrow. He
had decided to promulgate like a second Napoleon the doctrine of force,
and for his only weapon he had chosen a dagger of lath. Well might Mr.
Whitcomb smile with contempt. Where would he find himself if he dared
to preach the most perilous of gospels, if he could not support it with
an enormous moral and physical power?
For years he had dwelt in a castle which he had built out of air,
secure in the belief that he was endowed in ample measure with
attributes whose operations were so diverse yet so comprehensive,
that in those rare instances in which they were united they became
superhuman in their reach. An Isaiah or a Cromwell did not visit the
world once in an era. How dare such a one as he fold his nakedness in
the sacred mantle of the gods! It was the act of one whose folly was
too rank even to allow him to pose as a charlatan. If he ventured to
deliver one-half of these astonishing words he had prepared for the
delectation of an honest British jury, these flatulent pretensions
would be unveiled, he would be mocked openly, his ruin would be
complete and irretrievable.
Never had irresolution assailed him so powerfully. This review at the
eleventh hour of the unwarrantable estimate he had formed of himself
rendered it imperative that he should change his plans. The opinion
of others, acknowledged masters of the profession in which he was so
humble a tyro, was incontrovertible. Evidence in support of a perfectly
rational plea was provided for him, would be ready in court. His client
had demanded that it should be used. To disregard that demand would be
to rebuff his only friend, one of great influence who had been sent to
his aid in his direst hour. And it was for nothing better than a whim
that he was prepared to yield his all. No principle was at stake, no
sacrifice of dignity was involved. That which his patron had asked of
him was so natural, so admirably humane, that the mere act of refusal
would be rendered unpardonable unless it were vindicated by complete
success. No other justification was possible, not only in the eyes of
himself and in those of his client, but no less was exacted of him by
the hapless creature whose life was in his keeping.
Stating it baldly, let him fail in the superhuman feat which had been
imposed upon him by a disease which he called ambition, and this
wretched woman would expiate his failure upon the gallows. Had any
human being a right to incur such a penalty, a right to pay such a
price in the pursuit of his own personal and private aims? The middle
course was provided for him. It would deliver the accused and himself
from this intolerable peril; it opened up a path of safety for them
both.
Already he could observe with a scarifying clearness, that here and
now, at the eleventh hour, he must defer to the irresistible impact of
the circumstances. The risk was too grave; he was thrusting too cruel a
responsibility upon his flesh and blood. He must hasten to make terms
with that grossly material world of the hard fact which he scorned
so much. He must submit to one of those pitiful compromises which he
yearned to defy; and in so doing he must betray a talent which had
inflicted indescribable torments upon him.
His address to the jury of his countrymen, that surprising impromptu
prepared at leisure, must be given up. Not a word could be used of this
demand for an acquittal which was to mark an epoch in English justice.
He must begin again on a lower note.
Just before reaching the archway through which he had to pass to
reach his own door, he turned into a post-office, and despatched to
his mother two sovereigns out of the ten he had received from the
solicitor. Enclosing a scrap of paper with the order, he wrote these
words upon it: “My first great case is called to-morrow. Life or death
for Prisoner and Advocate--which?” Having posted the letter he ascended
the stairs to his garret.
He groped his way up to it. Shuddering with despair he unlocked the
door and flung it open. An impenetrable darkness covered the room. He
stood on the threshold searching his damp clothes for a match. He found
a solitary one sequestered in a corner of a pocket; but all attempts to
strike it failed. He then proceeded to grope his way forward through
the room, reached the table, and after knocking down several articles
was able to place his hand upon that which he sought. He kindled a
light, and the lamp having been replenished with oil that morning was
able to maintain it. The fire had burned out long ago; all the coal had
been used, and the fresh quantity he had purchased had not arrived. His
overcoat was soaked with rain, his trousers were damp, and the room had
already become cold. He rummaged out an old sweater that had stood him
in good stead in his football days, from a box beneath the bed, removed
his wet overcoat and pulled this garment over his jacket. He then
filled his pipe and sat down beside the lamp.
XXIII
PREPARATION
He had taken his new resolve outside in the rain; and it behoved him
now to utilize these few remaining hours in putting it into shape.
Rejecting the demand for the liberty of this wretched woman he must
consent to the verdict being given against her, and place his hope in
the clemency of the court.
For two inexpressibly weary hours he strove with clenched lips to piece
together and elaborate this new line; but in spite of all his efforts
it was so dull and lifeless that the task seemed beyond him. Whatever
talent he possessed it was only too clear that so vacillating a method
of defence was quite out of harmony with its workings. This way and
that he twisted each listless uninspired suggestion, but at each
laborious attempt it grew less possible to breathe upon their dry bones
and create them into living flesh. These maimed and halting emendations
were as far removed from the swift and audacious repleteness of the
original as to express the difference between light and dark.
It was the difference between life and death. The one was informed with
the living breath, a vital and a surprising piece of art; the other
was cold and heavy, a confection of wormwood and ditch-water. A bitter
chagrin overcame him when he saw all that his resolve implied. He would
be sent into court dumb, tongue-tied--he with a philippic against
injustice packed away at the back of his brain. This would mark the end
of the ambition that had nourished the fires of his heart through full
many a weary winter’s day.
The new words would not glow; they were so much sound without meaning.
Yet the new words were the true words. They embodied the actual; they
stood for the established fact in its impartial fearlessness; they were
the servants of justice. That the accused had committed the crime was
clear to the meanest intelligence. It only remained for her advocate to
announce her guilt and to pray for mercy. Yet the phrases in which he
shaped this bald proposition crept to his lips as false, devious, and
dishonorable.
The old words conceived in sophistry were burning things, brilliant
with the blood and flame of their emotion. Beneath them paradox itself
stood forth as but a subtler knowledge. The accent of conviction made
these words resonant, these words whose design was to pervert and
mislead. They were breaking in constantly upon the dull and tortured
phrases which he was striving to weave, the insensitive phrases whose
function it was to embody immaculate truth. The commonest platitudes
were not so stale as these. At last with a cry of rage he spurned them
vehemently from his mind.
Indeed, the only purpose that was served by these endeavors was to
prove to the unhappy advocate that his nature must be allowed to obey
its instincts. He must fulfil his destiny. To that acute intelligence
it had come to seem that truth and untruth were identical. It would
seem to be born for iconoclasm, for demolition; let it leave to less
sophisticated minds the championship of outworn ideas. In this
whirlpool of doubt in which he was engulfed, his ideals, his instincts,
all those mental resources which garnish with dignity the most protean
character, seemed to break from their moorings; and in the very frenzy
of this wreck of his stability, there returned upon him in the guise of
one of those paradoxes which had become so fatal, a newer, a franker, a
more vital conception of his power.
There returned in its train the arrogance of his quality. It was not
for one of the blood royal to submit to dictation from the mediocrity
it despised. Its right was inalienable to obey the forces within
itself. He had felt from the first that it was in his power to save
this woman; the attorney’s doubts had intervened and for a time had
overthrown his faith; but now he had come to believe it again. The
thing called “experience,” that eternal standby of the vulgar, was a
mere tawdry substitute for intuition in the inferior orders. A great
talent incorporated experience within itself. He must suffer no qualm
on the score of his youth, his absence of laurels. After all, this
brief had been evoked by the exercise of an imperious will in a magic
hour; had he not an immemorial right to use it as he chose? Let him
obey the divine faculty that had carried him so far, and then if fail
he must, at least his failure would be worthy of himself. It was proper
for common minds, destitute of all force and originality, to subscribe
to the conventions which they set up to protect themselves. Custom,
usage, the accretions of centuries may even hallow and exalt them until
they assume the guise of religions, but these simulations have nothing
to say to the royal among their kind.
This powerful impulse, whose impact upon the mind of the advocate was
almost terrible, merged the surroundings in itself. Time and place
were obliterated; the evening was imperceptibly eaten away. The clocks
of the neighborhood gave out the hour of midnight just as Northcote,
gasping, with all the breath driven out of his body, emerged from the
vortex to grasp his final decision. For six hours he had not been
sufficiently accessible to the external to heed the hours as they
struck. But now, as the long-drawn strokes announced a new day, a
thrill of excitement convulsed his being. The day of all days was at
hand. He was standing on the very threshold of the issue. The dread
future was about to roll back its veil. Such an emotion was cast upon
him that he began to tremble as violently as when he had driven with
Mr. Whitcomb to the prison.
He supposed that the chime of these clocks would penetrate the walls
behind which the unhappy woman was lying awake. She also must be
trembling violently. Doubtless the poisoner and prostitute was dreaming
again of her deliverer. The idea overcame him with a curious poignancy
which, horrible as it was, was yet touched with ecstasy.
This was a creature who must expect no mercy from the Pharisee; yet
the living woman had a power within herself to arouse a desire for it
in one who pretended to no exalted sympathy with his species. In their
interview in the prison he had discerned nothing of vileness about her.
And he was fain to believe that she had dreamed in sober verity of her
advocate the previous night. Conjuring up this memorable interview,
which yet remained so colorless that it seemed to have happened only to
the soul, the haunting low tones began to speak through the silence of
his room; and with an impulse of joy that banished the horror of their
insistency he responded to the accents of their truth.
A living voice had entered the room. It was the same voice, and yet so
much more resonant than the one he had heard in the prison. The senses
of the advocate were strung to a point so perilous that the luminous
figure of a woman appeared before them. This was she who had huddled
away into the shadows of the jail. The lamp on the table, which with
so much difficulty melted the gloom within the area of its influence,
framed her contour with a kind of weird delicacy. Her figure was veiled
in a soft plasticity; it was that of one who was in despair; yet it had
all the simple trust of her sex, which it exhibits at those supreme
moments when nothing is left to it save to kneel and to embrace its
faith. It was a figure such as this that rolled away the stone from the
mouth of the cave and discovered that the body of Jesus was not there.
During the interview the young advocate had known and understood
little, but now, under the spell of his passion, an ampler knowledge
enfolded him in its mantle. It is not until we look down upon them
from the altitude of some momentous phase, that those moments which
are destined to assume a permanence in our lives become crystallized
into our mental history. The terror and the reticence of this pitiable
creature had pierced him like a sword, yet it was not until this remote
hour that Northcote understood the miracle they had wrought in his
nature.
She must once have been fair under the eyes of the sun; once slender,
gracious, inhabited by chastity. Her voice proclaimed a history that
must have been inexpressibly grievous. Yet the desire for life was in
her still. She was not prepared to yield her interest in the mystery.
Her words were memorable: she had never understood anything until
she was brought into prison. Was it not meet that this daughter of a
hundred inhumanities should now call to be released from the doom her
fellows had prepared for her. “I know you will save me, my deliverer,”
were the words he still heard; and they came upon his ear with more of
authenticity than when they first fell from those indescribable lips.
He rose from the chair in which he had been immersed so many hours. He
was shuddering in every vein. His fingers and limbs were petrified with
the coldness of the room; his damp trousers were inflicting his ankles
with rheumatic pains. So stiff were his limbs through remaining in one
position for so long, that it cost him labor to cross the room and open
the window.
He thrust out his head and a rush of icy air saluted his temples.
The rain had ceased; the clouds had dispersed; the heavens, charged
with a keen frost, were studded thickly with little dark blue stars.
Peering towards them eagerly Northcote tried to decipher the names and
positions of these meaningless heads, until at last he came upon one
which was larger and brighter than the rest. He was convinced that
its locality would render it plainly visible from the windows of the
prison. He fixed his gaze upon it with great intensity; he knew the
occupant of the prison had climbed up to peer at it through the bars of
her cell.
Although he had spent the previous night without entering a bed,
nothing would have enabled his thoughts to seek sanctuary in sleep.
The incandescent fervor of his mind would not allow him to repose; and
although a few hours hence he would have to draw upon every spark of
physical energy he possessed, he had no fear of his bodily limitations.
He had the immense vitality of those demigods among their kind, for
whom no ascent is too precipitous. He spent some time in vigorous
gymnastic exercises to drive the congealed blood through his veins; and
this accomplished, he felt his strength return.
He passed the remaining portion of the night in pacing his room, with
a pipe fixed in his teeth and his hands thrust beneath his white
jersey into the pockets of his trousers. Occasionally he ceased these
peregrinations for a few minutes at a time, in order to write down some
of the sentences as they took shape in his mind. He desired to give
himself the æsthetic pleasure of seeing how they looked on paper. Yet
he did not propose to bestow a literal preparation on this address,
since he had sufficient confidence in his fecundity of expression to
speak extempore and yet expect adequately to traverse the scheme he had
planned. Words charged with emotion springing fresh and tingling from
the mist would increase their appeal by being thrown off in the actual
impulse by which they were created.
When at last the old charwoman arrived at half-past seven she was
astonished to discover Northcote walking about the room looking wild
and haggard and declaiming passages of the peroration. He sent her
out to borrow some coal; and when she returned with it and proceeded
to make a fire, he ordered as on the previous day what they both
considered to be a sumptuous breakfast. While this was preparing he
retired to fit himself for that ordeal to which he would so soon be
called.
Even now, however, a palsy was on his limbs, a fever in his blood. In
the delicate operation of shaving he was unable to conduct the razor
firmly, and cut his chin repeatedly. It was with infinite difficulty
that he could render himself presentable after the various gashes it
had undergone. After expending not less than an hour on his toilet, and
conferring as much respectability upon his person as lies within the
province of soap and water and clean linen, he sat down at the table
hungry and cold yet consumed with excitement.
“Mrs. Brown,” he said to the old woman, “I forgot to ask about that
small grandchild of yours.”
“She is dead, sir.”
“I am very sorry. When did this occur?”
“Last night, sir, about twelve. It is one mouth less to feed, as you
might say, but I think it might have been my own.”
“But then there would have been no means of feeding the others.”
“Yes, sir, it was a wrong expression,” said the old woman in her
precise manner. “It was not what I meant to have said.”
“Well, come now,” said Northcote, “suppose you try to eat some
breakfast.”
XXIV
THE TRIAL
The old woman took her seat at the table obediently, but with a
bewilderment as great as on the previous day. It was very strange that
incidents such as these should arise to embellish her servitude.
This morning, however, she was not tormented with a string of
questions. Northcote was silent, gloomy, and haggard; something
appeared to be preying on his mind. The remorse he had shown for having
failed to ask how her grandchild was seemed strange to her indeed, for
until the previous day he had always stood in her mind as a member of
the inaccessible classes. Something had appeared to happen to him by
which, in a few short hours, the tenor and current of his life had
been changed. There was a terrible excitement burning now under his
pale skin; his eyes were restless, his fingers were twitching, and he
drank cup after cup of the hot tea as though he were consumed with an
intolerable thirst.
When he had finished his breakfast he took his wig and gown out of a
cupboard, and placed them together with his brief in a small black
bag. He was on the point of starting for the court, when through the
open door he could hear footsteps on the stairs. Some one was coming
up to the fourth story, an incident so rare in the experience of its
occupant as always to be rendered memorable. In an instant the jovial
outline of the solicitor presented itself to his imagination. With
an agitation that was indescribable he foresaw that he was not to be
allowed to take the brief into court after all.
Instead of Mr. Whitcomb, however, his visitor proved to be a boy with a
telegram. He tore it out of its envelope. The contents were contained
in three words: “Life, my son.” They were from his mother.
With this omen in his heart he set forth. A welcome change had taken
place in the weather. The air had become sharp and dry; already misty
beams were stealing out from the December sun. The press in the streets
was immense, but he brushed through it with the elevating consciousness
that he was overcoming a real obstacle. In his every fibre was the
breath of contest, the joy of battle. His mother’s words, the faint
beams of the new day, the rattle of the traffic, all conspired to endow
him with a ruthless determination.
If it was to be that defeat and confusion should overtake him, at
least he would not go out to greet them half-way. Once and for all
he had put off those fears and misgivings that had tormented him. A
great commander storming an inaccessible position does not pause to
estimate the cost; he does not pause to contemplate the inevitability
of disaster. He, too, would show himself of this quality: a great
commander of his lurid and revolted imagination in the teeth of
frightful odds.
He arrived at the Old Bailey at a quarter-past ten. He did not allow
himself to glance at its profile, nor did he permit his mind to be
distracted by one of the thousand details, common, depressing, and
of no significance in themselves, yet likely to be so ominous in
their effect on high-strung nerves. He passed from the barristers’
robing-room as soon as he could, for beyond everything he wished to
avoid contact with his kind. Yet to the majority of those within its
precincts he was not even known by name; and he felt himself to be
looked on askance by all as a solitary, queer-headed fellow.
On entering the court he used great care in selecting his seat. It was
in a situation from which he felt he could command the attention of all
present; from which the jury would lose nothing of what he presented
to it, and yet be sufficiently removed to be unable to discern the
more intimate workings of his personality. Oratory like music demands
a certain space and distance in which and at which to reveal itself.
Before taking his seat he looked all around him into every part of the
building, in order that he might familiarize himself with that which
lay about him. Every seat allotted to the public was already in its
occupation; the nature of the charge was itself sufficient to stimulate
its curiosity in the highest degree. Among the members of the bar the
interest was not so great. There was said to be no defence worthy of
the name; the crime was of a common kind, presenting neither rare nor
curious features; the absence of Tobin, the most brilliant common law
advocate among the younger men, had become known; and the case was
expected to be disposed of without difficulty. Its main interest in the
eyes of the junior bar centred around the man who had been asked to
conduct the defence. That one so obscure as Northcote should have been
chosen to fill the place of Tobin in a murder case was one of those
unexpected things which furnished a theme for the critic’s function; a
function which the majority of those in their robes on the benches felt
eminently qualified to undertake.
Many were surprised, some were a little grieved, and the ambitious were
rather disconcerted that Northcote should be entrusted with a brief
of this nature. Obscure as he was in practice, he had acquired a kind
of reputation at the bar mess as one who was singularly unsocial in
his habits. As the brief in the first instance had been marked with
a figure large enough to command the services of Tobin, the defence
could not be wholly destitute of means. It was strange that a firm so
notoriously astute as Whitcomb and Whitcomb should have handed it to
one of no experience when the extremely able counsel they had retained
originally had been compelled to throw up the case. There was quite a
number assembled in that court who were far more competent to deal with
it than this young and unknown practitioner. In the opinion of many,
this circumstance was taken as the clearest indication of all that the
case had no life in it.
Hardly had Northcote taken his seat in the court when he felt a hand on
his shoulder; it belonged to Mr. Whitcomb.
“No nonsense, now,” he said anxiously. “The witnesses are here, and we
shall expect you to call them.”
“It is quite impossible for me to alter my line at the last moment,”
said Northcote, while every nerve he had in his body seemed to be
ticking furiously. “Besides,” he added, in a hoarse whisper, “don’t
you see that if they are not called I shall get the last word with the
jury, as the attorney is not in the case?”
“Pray, what is the use of that? What will that do for you?”
“You must wait and see,” said the young man, with a red haze before his
eyes.
“My dear fellow, I must insist on your calling the witnesses.”
“It is impossible,” said the young man, in a voice the solicitor could
hardly hear.
“Really, you know, this is carrying things too far.”
“I would to God,” exclaimed the young advocate, with his voice breaking
in the middle in the queerest manner, “you had never retained me at
all!”
This outburst of petulance conferred upon the solicitor a renewed sense
of the young man’s situation.
“Well, well,” he rejoined, with a certain kindness, “I suppose you must
do as you please. A case is not over until a verdict’s brought in. But
the witnesses are here--if you change mind.”
The young advocate turned his haggard face and bloodshot eyes upon his
monitor, but his rejoinder, whatever its nature, was banished from
his lips by the entrance of the judge. Almost in the same instant
the prisoner was put up. She was called upon at once to plead to the
indictment, “for that she was accused of the wilful murder of Thomas
Henry Barron upon the 12th of September.” In a voice that was scarcely
audible she pleaded, “I am not guilty.”
The jury was sworn immediately, and justice proceeded on its course
with considerable expedition. The case presented no feature that was
warranted to arrest the progress of the legal mind. The woman’s guilt
was indisputable; it was known that the defence had nothing material to
advance; and even had it been placed more fortunately, it was unlikely
to be marshalled to advantage in its present hands. The judge and the
counsel for the Treasury were at one in their eagerness to press the
opportunity of getting the case through, since every few minutes they
could rest from the course of the public business was inexpressibly
dear to their hearts. They would be able to get off to a week-end in
the country by an earlier train.
Mr. Weekes, K. C., who led for the Treasury, commenced briskly and
volubly without the delay of a moment. He was a small, thin man, with
very straight and attenuated hair, sandy in color, and a pair of
side-whiskers. A pair of gold pince-nez suspended by a cord contrived
by some means to add to the quickness and irascibility of his frequent
gestures. His voice was keen and piercing and somewhat metallic in
sound; his language had great facility but no distinction; his delivery
was rapid; but manner, diction, appearance, were equally destitute of
style.
In opening the case to the jury, this expert occupied less than an
hour. He unfolded the nature of the charge in easy, fluent, almost
deprecating terms. It amounted to this: the accused, whose reticence in
regard to her antecedents was impenetrable, and whose age appeared on
the charge-sheet as thirty-nine, had for several years past cohabited
with the deceased, who had followed the profession of a book-maker.
It was known that previous to this she had lived the life of the
streets. It would be shown by several of her associates, who would
be called in evidence--women like herself of ill-fame--that during
the last year in which she had lived with this man, she had more than
once been heard to express the determination “to do for him.” It would
appear that the man, although said to treat her well enough at first,
had latterly evinced signs of growing tired of her. Further, he was a
man of intemperate habits, and on many occasions she had been heard to
complain with bitterness of his violence and brutality towards her.
The accused had been aware that by the man’s will a sum of money
had been left to her. She had often, when in drink particularly, to
which she also was addicted, mentioned this fact boastfully to her
associates; and a few days prior to the commission of the crime had
asserted in the presence of three of them, “that if she did not mind
what she was about she would lose it, as he was always threatening to
leave her.”
On the afternoon of the tenth of September she purchased a quantity
of vegetable poison of a chemist. On the evening of the eleventh the
man sat up drinking heavily into the small hours of the morning; and
at noon on the twelfth he expired in the presence of a doctor, who had
been fetched by a maid servant, although the woman herself had done
her best to prevent a doctor from being summoned. In the doctor’s
opinion the symptoms pointed to death by poisoning. A post-mortem was
held the same afternoon; as the result of it the woman was taken into
custody, the house was searched, and a quantity of strychnine was
found concealed in her bedroom. Subsequently the contents of the man’s
stomach was submitted to a public analyst; and in his evidence he would
testify to the presence of strychnine in sufficient quantities to cause
death.
This was the case for the Crown. Evidence was called in corroboration;
first the detective who had taken the woman into custody, and another
who had discovered the poison. These were examined briefly by Mr.
Topott, the junior counsel for the Treasury. The doctors then described
the cause of death and the result of the post-mortem; and these were
confirmed in their opinion by the analyst when he came to describe
the result of his researches. All of these were soon disposed of, as
Northcote did not attempt a word in cross-examination.
Two of the members of the junior bar, young men and critical, who were
not disinclined to see a personal affront in Northcote’s preferment,
were not slow to note his passiveness, and to add it to the estimate
they had already formed of his incapacity.
“I never saw a fellow look in such a funk,” said the first of these
gentlemen, one who had been nurtured in an atmosphere of wealth and
influence, and himself a former president of the Oxford Union. “The
case will be over by lunch.”
“They are not wasting much time, certainly,” said his friend, the son
of the Master of the Rolls.
Two maid servants were called in evidence, and examined by Mr. Topott
with the same convincing brevity as the previous witnesses. Here again
Northcote refrained from cross-examination.
“Ought to do something,” whispered the ex-president in the ear of
his friend. “Missing opportunities. Why don’t he ask if she saw it
administered?”
The chemist’s assistant who had supplied the poison, and who had
identified the portion found in the possession of the accused as part
of that which had been sold to her, also escaped without a challenge.
Five of her female associates were then called one after another. Their
evidence was extremely damning. With the skilled aid of the junior
counsel for the Crown, every rag of decency was stripped from the woman
in the dock. She stood forth a veritable harpy and monster, several
shades more infamous than themselves. As one after another of these
witnesses was permitted to stand down without being subjected to the
ordeal of cross-examination, the ex-president of the Oxford Union was
moved to express his personal disappointment.
“Something might have been done with these, at any rate.”
“I think you are right,” said his friend; “but what’s the good, after
all. It is a waste of time to say anything.”
“There is no defence, I am told.”
“He will call evidence to show that she was subject to violent fits of
passion when in drink.”
“Ah, that is where Tobin will be missed. Really, one is surprised at
Whitcomb and Whitcomb.”
“They saw the futility of fighting, and are doing it on the cheap.”
“Poor brute! But I don’t altogether agree with you. Something might
have been done by a man of ability. I should like to have seen Tobin in
it.”
“I don’t think Tobin would have attempted to touch their witnesses. We
must wait till he calls his own to see what he is worth.”
At this moment, however, those who had conducted this secret
conversation had their curiosity gratified by the spectacle of
Northcote rising for the first time. He got up heavily and wearily, as
though age had stricken him in every joint. His face was almost painful
in its pallor. The last “unfortunate” had just made her half-audible
reply to the final question that had been put to her by the amiable Mr.
Topott.
“I believe you said you had been acquainted ten years with the
accused?” said Northcote, in a voice that was curiously low and gentle.
“Yes, sir.”
“During that period you had known her many times to be under the
influence of drink?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Would you say that drink excited her easily?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That a very small quantity was sufficient to excite her?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And that when in this condition she was inclined to be very free in
her speech?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Also she had a tendency to make use of expressions that she was never
known to permit herself when perfectly sober?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The same would apply to her statements when in this excited condition?”
“Yes, sir.”
“They were obvious exaggerations?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And some were pure inventions? You knew they were wholly untrue?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You and her other friends were well acquainted with her habit of
giving way to exaggeration, and even to palpable untruth when under the
influence of drink?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The habit was so well known that it was amusing to you? You have often
laughed about it among yourselves?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You were known to say yourself on one occasion when she was what you
call particularly ‘merry,’ ‘Emma would do for anybody on a quartern of
gin’?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You have a distinct recollection of saying that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your meaning was that when your friend had had that quantity of
alcohol the airs of bravado she assumed were quite ridiculously out of
keeping with her character?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And the point of your saying lay in the fact that whether your
friend had had drink or whether she had not, her character was so soft
and gentle that you could not conceive her to be capable of hurting
anybody?”
“Yes, sir.”
“She has been your friend for ten years?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Throughout that period you have found her to be generous, kind,
impulsive, lovable?”
“Yes, sir.”
“No one’s enemy save her own?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Had it ever seemed possible to you that if she was capable of the
commission of this atrocious crime of which she stands accused, she
could never have enjoyed the ten years of your friendship, nor the ten
years of affection you lavished on her?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It was no wish of your own that brought you to this court?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Indeed, you cannot say you came here of your own free will?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You were brought here under compulsion?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Without that compulsion nothing would have induced you to come here,
and stand in this box, and speak words which might be used to hurt your
friend?”
“Yes, sir.”
The witness had been weeping softly for some time. Her emotion, which
in the circumstances was natural, was also felt to be a tribute to the
examining counsel. The gentleness of a voice which touched the chord
of pathos in every phrase it uttered without betraying a consciousness
that it did so, invested a series of tame and unfruitful questions with
an æsthetic quality which even the least educated of those present
could appreciate.
At this point, however, Mr. Weekes rose brusquely and tartly with an
objection. His friend had trespassed beyond the privilege of counsel.
The objection was upheld by the judge, who with a kind of courteous
acerbity informed Northcote in some very harmonious diction that he
would do well to put his question in another form.
“I will do so, my lord,” said the young man, with admirable composure
and raising his voice a little.
“You were forced to come here by the police?”
“Yes, sir.”
“In whom you stand in great fear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You are compelled to do all that they require of you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And when they take one of your friends to prison, and they come to you
and suggest words that she may have used to you when she was not in
a condition to weigh them, you know very well that whatever your own
feeling is in the matter, you must say nothing, and you must do nothing
that is likely to displease the police?”
A more emphatic protest was entered at this point by the counsel for
the Crown. It was upheld by the judge with an equal access of emphasis.
Northcote accepted the ruling with the nicely poised urbanity with
which he had received the previous one; yet in the act of doing so he
contrived, as if by an accident, to let his gaunt eyes alight on the
jury. It was followed by a smile which crept over his haggard cheeks;
and this was conveyed to each of them personally, as though he were
covering a retreat with a little apology. Yet it was all contrived so
delicately that it required a certain fineness of perception to notice
it.
During the next few minutes these objections were frequent. They
were raised with an ever-increasing vehemence by the counsel for the
Crown, were embodied with an ever-increasing acerbity and sternness
by the judge, and were received by the counsel for the defence with
a deferential patience, the ironical side of which was immediately
exposed by the next question he put to the witness, and also by the
concentrated manner in which he smiled at the jury. After a perfect
rain of objections, which for the purposes of our narrative must
henceforward be taken as granted, the leader for the Crown could stand
the carefully elaborated audacity of this unknown tyro no longer. He
lost his temper.
“Mr.--er--er,” he said, referring to a paper for the name, “Mr.
Thornton, you have no need to keep smiling at the jury in that way.”
Northcote turned to face his adversary with a deliberation that
astonished the bar, and even caused a grim flicker to play about the
mouth of the judge.
“I trust, Mr. Weekes,” he said, “you will withdraw your objection to
these amenities. If you do not, I feel sure his lordship will be bound
to uphold it. And if, Mr. Weekes, I might urge you to be patient, I
can promise that your time to receive them will arrive.”
The measured dryness of the young man’s manner set the bar in a twitter.
“Damn his young eyes,” said a barrister of elephantine proportions on
the back bench to a colleague; “two birds with one stone. I shall stand
him a bottle. I like his mug.”
The opinion of the ex-president of the Oxford Union was less favorable.
“Funny chap, isn’t he?” drawled the product of Eton and Christchurch.
“What can he do for the case by trying to score off the judge and a
silk gown?”
“Theoretically he’s wrong,” said the son of the Master of the Rolls;
“but it was very nicely done. I am sure my guv’nor would have liked it.”
Divested of its endless interruptions, the cross-examination of the
woman was conducted with that persuasiveness he had used from the
first. And to those acquainted with the immensely difficult art
Northcote was essaying, it became a source of surprise that so young
a man should evince this perfect command over the means he employed,
when the high-strung nerves of the natural man were subjected to such
severe trials from an opponent. And the reward of his restraint came to
him as he proceeded, for the wretched woman was melted to tears by such
a sympathetic tenderness; and further, the intercourse he had already
established with the jury seemed to deepen.
“It is due to the courtesy of the police that you are able to follow
your calling?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The police could take away your means of livelihood without giving you
warning; and without giving you a moment’s notice they could put you in
prison?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And whenever the police ask you to serve them, whenever they ask you
to oblige them in any way, you feel obliged to carry out their wishes,
whatever the cost may be to yourself?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Even when they cause you to hurt a friend by stating that which you
know to be not quite true?”
“Yes, sir.”
“On one occasion, Mrs. Walsingham, to help the police, you identified a
man whom they suggested had robbed you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And your own testimony and the testimony of several of your friends
enabled them to send this unfortunate man into penal servitude?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I use the word ‘unfortunate,’ Mrs. Walsingham, because this man,
after languishing many years in prison, was able to prove, to the
satisfaction of his fellow creatures, that he was perfectly innocent
of the scandalous charge that was brought against him. But at the
time of his conviction, when the police had called upon you for your
help, you did not dare to tell the judge and the jury that you had not
been robbed by this man, and that you had never seen him in your life
before?”
“Yes, sir.”
“This was an instance in which you felt the necessity, in spite of
all that it cost you, to help the police in obtaining one of those
‘convictions’ which they consider so necessary to their own well-being?”
“Yes, sir.”
“One of those ‘convictions’ which mean an extra stripe on the arm, and
the addition of a few shillings a week to the pay of one or two of
these natural enemies of yours, of whom you and your friends stand in
constant dread?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And so, Mrs. Walsingham, these enemies of whom you stand in such great
fear having, in the first instance, caused you in your weakness to
affirm that which was untrue, in order that the liberty of an unhappy
man, whom you had never met, might be taken away from him, they cause
you now to come again into this court to swear away, not the liberty,
but the life, of a poor friend, whose only fault, as far as you know,
is that occasionally she drank a glass more than was good for her?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Mrs. Harrison often spoke to you of this Mr. Barron?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Of late Mrs. Harrison had complained to you of Mr. Barron being unkind
to her?”
“Yes, sir.”
“She told you that he had even threatened to leave her altogether?”
“Yes, sir.”
“When you first knew her, Mrs. Harrison seemed attached to him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That is to say, she never complained about him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But when latterly he grew unkind to her she became very unhappy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And was it not at such times that she was inclined to drink that extra
glass to forget her great unhappiness?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yet it was only under these conditions, when a stimulant had excited
her feelings, that she was heard to complain against him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And then it seemed to you no more than the legitimate complaint of a
highly emotional and affectionate nature which was suffering deeply?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You remember, Mrs. Walsingham, that on one occasion she made a
reference to her previous history?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It was to the effect that this Mr. Barron and herself came from the
same village in the north of England?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That they had been intimately acquainted in her youth?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That as a young girl she had been in domestic service at the house of
Mr. Barron’s mother?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That Mr. Barron seduced her under a promise of marriage?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And it was the fact that that promise had not been kept which led
directly, in the first instance, to the ruin of this young girl?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Mr. Barron having accomplished her ruin, fled from the house of
his parents to London, to escape his duty?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And this girl, dismissed from her situation, disgraced in the eyes of
her friends, followed in her despair to this huge city, in the slender
hope of finding the man who had ruined her?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yet for many years she was unable to find him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And during those years of inexpressible bitterness, in her ignorance
of life, her helplessness, her friendlessness, in the abasement of her
spirit, she sank deeper and deeper into degradation?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The pure-blooded north country girl became a harlot by the force of
circumstances?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And then after many years of misery one evening at a music hall, in
the pursuit of her calling, she chanced to meet the man who had been
the first cause of her ruin?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And when he renewed a proposal that he had made years before, which as
a young girl she had scornfully repudiated, that she should dwell in
his house, not as his wife, but as his mistress, the pressure of her
circumstances forced her to accept this proposal almost with a sense of
gratitude?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And, Mrs. Walsingham, you do not believe for one moment that any
thought of vengeance ever suggested itself to her mind?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You are prepared to swear that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Also, that even in these latter days, when Mr. Barron became cruel
and violent in his conduct towards her, she never freed herself from
his yoke, never passed from under the spell of a power which, from the
first, had been so fatal to her?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And that this paltry sum of money which she believed had been left
to her in his will, which has proved not to have been the case, could
never have counted in the scale of his personal attraction for her,
which, sinister, dreadful, tragical as it had proved, had caused her at
his behest to forfeit friends, health, virtue, honor, all those things
which dignify life?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I thank you, Mrs. Walsingham; I have nothing more to ask you.”
The poor drab, tottering, faint, dissolved in tears, had to be assisted
from the witness-box.
This piece of cross-examination had made a strange impression. The
manner in which it had been conducted by the young advocate had exerted
a powerful emotion upon many besides the weak and flaccid creature
who had been so much clay in his hands. It had had great success as a
_coup de théâtre_. The trained perceptions present had an uneasy sense
that they had been listening to a masterpiece. Forensically, the means
had been entirely adequate to the end; a supremely difficult art had
been surmounted by an exquisite skill. Each question had been shaped
so naturally, each word was clothed with such true delicacy, that
wonderful _nuances_ of feeling were shed by the magic of the living
human voice over the sordid and the unclean. Sentence by sentence the
fabric of a story that was as old as the world was unrolled until
it became a piece of drama. Even professional criticism, which was
avowedly hostile, was half-conquered by the infusion of human sympathy
into that which could not bear the light. Irrelevant, destitute of
real authority as was the whole thing, it was yet allowed to be a
performance of rare technical beauty, a pledge of the controlled
will-power of its creator. And like all things which are the fruit of
an incomparable technique--in itself the reason to be of what is called
“art”--it had evoked that subtle emotion which transcends reason and
experience. And the least accessible to this malign influence were fain
to see that the first nail had been hammered already into the coffin of
the prosecution.
The indication of a fight on the part of the defence was extremely
distasteful to Mr. Weekes and his junior. Nothing had been farther
outside the prediction of these expert practitioners. It had been
freely anticipated that by luncheon-time the end would be in view. By
then, according to this prolepsis, the defence was to have called its
witnesses to testify to the woman’s violence when in drink, which would
count for little; this youthful novice was to have floundered through
his few disconnected and incoherent remarks to the jury; the leader
for the Crown was to have answered him in a few perfunctory sentences,
which yet would be in striking contradistinction to the halting and
rather inept performance of his youthful opponent; the whole was to
have been transferred to the judge with a sense of perfect security,
since the case for the prosecution was so clear and so entirely
uncontroverted; and the judge, very excellent in his way, and highly
in favor of the despatch of public business and economization of the
public time, was even to have worked in his summing-up by the hour of
the adjournment.
However, this lengthy and irrelevant cross-examination, which had
had to be contested at every point, had somewhat demoralized this
well-considered programme. A solid hour had been cut out of it, a solid
hour in which both sides could have addressed the jury; in fact, a
solid hour in which, by an effort, a verdict could have been obtained
and the woman hanged. And when this tyro, who was conducting his first
case of importance with a coolness that many of his elders might have
envied, intimated that it was not his intention to call witnesses, and
further claimed in that contingency the privilege of addressing the
jury after the counsel for the Crown had spoken, Mr. Weekes was fain
to inform the court that he would prefer to reserve his own address to
the jury, brief as it would be, until after luncheon. Accordingly the
adjournment was then taken.
XXV
MR. WEEKES, K. C.
It was in no amiable mood that Mr. Weekes went to lunch with his
junior. All his arrangements had been spoiled by “the fellow on the
other side.” Instead of the case being in a stage that would permit him
to leave it to devote his afternoon to business in another court, it
began to seem that it might be prolonged indefinitely.
“So like a beginner,” said the leader to his junior; “must spread
himself on the slightest opportunity. When he’s been at it as long as
we have he’ll be wiser. So stupid to waste an hour of valuable time in
that way. But, after all, it’s a golden rule to expect a beginner to
fight a hopeless case. One ought to have known.”
“Quite sure it is hopeless, Weekes?” said his junior quietly.
“Why ask the question?” said Mr. Weekes, irritably. “The case is as
dead as this mutton.”
“Then I am afraid there is a little life in,” said Mr. Topott, tasting
the mutton ominously. “Waiter, if you don’t mind, I’ll try the beef.”
“That confounded cross-examination--so stupid--so unnecessary--put
everybody out,” said Mr. Weekes, snappishly, at each mouthful. “Waste
of public time--may well want more judges--ought to allow judges more
power--better for everybody--save time and money--save youngsters from
making fools of themselves.”
“Also enable us to get in an extra round of golf on a Saturday,” said
Mr. Topott, viewing the beef he had exchanged for the mutton with a
deep suspicion. “But seriously, Weekes,” said he, “I don’t want you to
leave me until they’ve returned their verdict. You can just let that
_nisi prius_ business alone this afternoon, and stay with me. I have a
presentiment that things might go wrong.”
“Presentiment!” said Mr. Weekes impatiently. “Deuce take your
presentiments! Waiter, bring me some red pepper.”
“The fact is, I am frightened to death by that young fellow,” said Mr.
Topott cheerfully. “I suppose you know who he is?”
“I know what he is,” said Mr. Weekes incisively. “He is a confounded
nuisance.”
“He is the greatest player of Rugby football the game ever saw,” said
Mr. Topott impressively.
“Pity he didn’t stick to it,” said Mr. Weekes. “Better for him, better
for us. But what has his football got to do with his advocacy?”
“Well, I always think, you know,” said Mr. Topott modestly, “a man is
all of a piece as you might say. If he is preëminent in one thing he
will be preëminent in another.”
“Not at all, my dear fellow,” said Mr. Weekes, breathing contradiction,
a pastime that was dear to him. “It doesn’t follow in the least. A man
may be supreme as a crossing-sweeper, but it does not follow that he
would be equally great as a member of Parliament.”
“I am only advancing a theory,” said Mr. Topott, more modestly
than ever, “but I rather contend that it does. It is a matter of
will-power. That to which his supremacy is due in one direction, if
evoked in an equal degree in another direction will result in an equal
supremacy. What I mean to say is, that it seems to me this truly great
football-player has made up his mind to become a truly great advocate.
And that is why I fear him.”
“Moonshine,” said Mr. Weekes. “He is clever, I grant you; but
football-playing and advocacy are not on all fours, as he will discover
this afternoon very speedily when he comes to address a British jury.”
“If you don’t mind my saying so,” said Mr. Topott, with a very
apologetic air, “it struck me this morning that his football-playing
and his advocacy were very much on all fours. They both struck me as
belonging unmistakably to the man. I have, as I say, a presentiment
that things might go wrong.”
“Confound your presentiments, Topott! How can things go wrong? And why
a man of your experience should funk a mere boy who has had none, I
don’t know. He is certain to come an imperial crowner with the jury.
There isn’t half a leg for him to stand on.”
“Well, he didn’t come much of a crowner this morning,” said Mr. Topott
deferentially, “in spite of Bow-wow and in spite of you. I don’t know
where he obtained his information, but I thought the whole thing was
most artistic. And if the fellow can cross-examine in that manner,
heaven knows what he can do when he gets up on his hind legs to address
the jury. I tell you, Weekes, I am frightened to death of this young
fellow. He’s deep.”
“I tell you what it is, my boy,” said Mr. Weekes tartly, “you stayed up
an hour longer than you ought to have done at the Betterton last night,
waiting for four aces which never turned up.”
At an adjoining table the barrister of elephantine proportions, who
had expressed his determination “to stand the fellow a bottle,” was
entertaining a select coterie of his learned friends. In his inn he was
justly celebrated as a trencherman among a society which had always
been famous for its prowess at the board. He rejoiced in the name of
“Jumbo;” and, although his practice was small, only his adipose tissue
imposed the bounds to his good nature. In every way he was designed by
nature to be one of her most popular efforts.
“Who’s Northcote?” was a question that was circulating freely. None
seemed to know.
“Never heard of him. Never seen his name.”
“Well known in the police-courts, I believe.”
“It’s time he gave them up. His talents call him elsewhere.”
“It was rather poor form, I must say, trying to score off Bow-wow.”
“It is a mistake a young man is likely to make.”
“Speaking for myself, I thought Bow-wow was asking for it. It is the
time-honored story of the old-established firm of the bench and the
Treasury. Once a Treasury counsel always a Treasury counsel.”
“Jealousy, jealousy, jealousy.”
“He was altogether wrong with the police.”
“I agree. He ought to have been handled more firmly.”
“Bow-wow furnishes a good example of a lath painted to look like iron.
I should like to have seen him face to face with Cunningham, or old
Tottie Turnbull. There would have been trouble for one.”
“For m’lud, I’ll lay a pony. This young sportsman is quite above the
ordinary. He is going a very long way.”
“It is too early to say. We see so many geese with the plumage of the
swan in this profession.”
“Name! name!” cried the table.
“I expect when it is all reckoned up,” said Jumbo, when order had been
restored, “my young pal, Jem Smith, is the son of ‘Pot’ Northcote who
went the northern circuit for years.”
“If that is so, Jum, he is already a better man than his father. Pot
died a recorder.”
“I hope the young un will open his mug for an hour this afternoon. He’s
got the finest mask on him for a young un I ever saw.”
“Weekes might easily have to play jack-in-the-box all the afternoon.”
“In that case poor old Bow-wow will have to do a frightful amount of
scratching at his leg.”
“But the case is too dead to be worth it.”
“That won’t matter to James. He threw down his gage this morning. The
jury will have to sit tight and hold on to the handle going round the
curves, or he’ll have them in a hat before he’s done with them. And
I’ve seen Bow-wow crumple up before now.”
“So have we all.”
“Like all notorious barkers his voice is the best part about him.”
“For my part, I think you are going too fast. The lad is not so
wonderful as all this. He has done nothing out of the common as far as
I can see.”
“No, dear boy,” said Jumbo, “because you can never see anything. But
a young sportsman who can cross-examine in that manner in his first
murder case is made of the right stuff.”
“But the witness was as easy as pie. She didn’t know where she was or
what she was saying.”
“And he took an amazing advantage of her.”
“So would any one else.”
“They would, but in a very different way.”
“His cross-examination will amount to nothing, in spite of the time it
wasted.”
“Will it not, though? That is all you know of a sentimental jury of
your countrymen.”
“His attack on the police was monstrous, and he had no right to put
questions in the form he did.”
“So thought Weekes, so thought Bow-wow, but he put them all the same.
And what is more, the foreman of the jury, a highly respectable
greengrocer, took cognizance.”
“Well, where does his amazingness come in? She only answered ‘yes’ to
everything.”
“Had he wanted her to answer ‘no’ to everything she would have done so.”
“Of course she would. Everybody could see that.”
“Yes, dear boy, and what does he do? Our young friend takes the
liberty of inventing every one of his facts as he goes along. All that
about her dealings with the police and the murdered man coming from
her native village was so much fiction. It was a marvellous piece of
improvisation.”
“We shall none of us believe that.”
“Of course you won’t, dear boys; you are not expected to. But as soon
as he realized his opportunity he took an amazing advantage of it. It
was daring, I grant you, an unparalleled piece of effrontery. I don’t
know another man at the bar who, had he been capable of a _coup_ of
that kind, would have ventured to play it. The whole thing was the most
audacious piece of work ever seen.”
“But, my dear Jum, he had no right to do a thing of that kind.”
“Of course not, dear boy, but he did it.”
“But why didn’t Weekes stop him?”
“Because Weekes did not know any more than you. He would be the last
man in the world to see a thing of that kind.”
“Then why didn’t Topott call his attention to it?”
“Topott also was completely taken in.”
“Then by your own showing, Jum, you were the cleverest man in court
this morning?”
“The cleverest but one, dear old boy. My young friend Jem Smith was
the cleverest by very long chalks, but my perspicacity is deserving of
honorable mention.”
“It is not the first time,” said the table, roaring with laughter,
“that this fatal drink habit has caused you to see things.”
XXVI
THE PLEA
Northcote lunched with Mr. Whitcomb in a secluded place, where he
partook of a concoction of egg and sherry, and two Abernethy biscuits.
The solicitor’s attitude towards him had already changed. The fact
that he had adhered to his refusal to call witnesses for the defence
was allowed to pass, because he had been able to show that after all
he was entitled to hold ideas of his own on the conduct of the case.
His remarkable essay in cross-examination had restored the solicitor’s
self-esteem; the dark horse he had chosen was not going to prove so
unworthy after all.
“Of course you have got the judge dead against you now,” said the
solicitor, “and I don’t quite see what it is going to do for you; but
as far as it went it was very well done. I can’t think how you came to
put all those questions. Where did you get your information? It was not
on your brief.”
“Never mind where I got it,” said Northcote, with a laugh.
His composure was much greater than when his client had conversed with
him in the court.
“If only the whole case were not so dead it might have proved
enormously useful,” said the solicitor. “Yes, it was very well done.”
“Would you say that Tobin would have done it better?” said the young
man, with an odd smile.
“No, I would not,” said the solicitor. “I will pay you the compliment
of saying that even Michael Tobin would not have done it better.”
“Thank you,” said the young man drily. “And now, what would you like to
lay against an acquittal?”
“Well, you are a cool hand, I must say,” exclaimed Mr. Whitcomb,
somewhat taken aback. “For a beginner I don’t think I’ve met your
equal.”
“What will you lay against an acquittal?”
“I don’t mind laying five hundred to fifty,” said the solicitor.
“Done,” said Northcote.
“If you had asked me this morning before you went into court you might
have had five thousand to fifty.”
“Sorry I forgot to mention it, because I was just as sure then as I am
now what the result will be.”
“Why you should have this confidence I cannot understand. Really, you
know, you haven’t a leg to stand on.”
“Well, well; I am going to leave you now to take a stroll for ten
minutes. See you soon.”
Northcote went out into the traffic to take a few mouthfuls of the
London air. Fiery chemicals seemed to be consuming his nerves, and
his brain was like a sheet of molten flame. But sensations so extreme
in nowise distressed him. He felt the exhilaration of this strange
yet not unpleasant condition to be the pledge of a harmony between
mental and physical passion. It seemed to promise that the overweening
consciousness of power that had haunted him for so many weeks in his
solitude was about to be fulfilled. The painful self-distrust, the
afflicting self-consciousness which had tormented and atrophied his
energies in smaller cases had vanished altogether.
As he recalled the achievement of the morning, he felt a glow of
exaltation. Looking back upon it his mind had been as clear as a
crystal, exquisitely responsive to the will. Every bolt and nut of the
complex mechanism had been in perfect order. The very words he had
wished to use had sprung to his lips, the very tones in which he sought
to embody them had proceeded out of his mouth. So profoundly harmonious
had been his mind in its most intimate workings, that he had been able
to convey fine shades of meaning to the jury without addressing to them
a single word.
Already he seemed to know all that was salient in the character of each
individual who composed it. As he rejoiced in the masterful strength
in which he was now cloaked so valiantly, he felt it had only to abide
with him throughout the afternoon, and a signal victory would crown his
efforts. And it would abide with him throughout that period, because
all the power of his nature, which when aroused to action he felt to be
without a limit, was pledged to this contingency. In this overmastering
flush of virility in which he walked now, he stood revealed to himself
as a Titan. Bestriding the crowded pavements he seemed to be in a world
of pygmies. What was there in the life around him that could stem this
vital force? No longer did he doubt that it was in him to dominate the
judge, the jury, and the prosecution. They were none of his clay;
their mould was not the mighty one nature had used for his fashioning.
With an extraordinary boldness and elasticity in his steps he walked
back into the court. How dear, how precious, had the fetid and hideous
room become to him already! It is a ruthless joy that consumes the
orator, when, clad in his strength, he stands up in that forum which
previously his failures have caused him to dread, but which the lust
of triumph has rendered indispensable to his being. This day would be
written in its memorials. It would mark the first of a succession of
achievements within its precincts, achievements which would cause his
name to be handed down in its archives forever. Who among the listless
occupants of the surrounding benches foresaw that they were on the
threshold of another miracle that was about to happen in the world? Who
among them foresaw that a demigod was about to rise in their midst?
Those venal, high-living men, whose flesh was overlaid in luxury, how
could they hope to understand the miracle that was about to occur? How
could the poor drab, cowering in the dock, whose life so ironically
had become the pretext for the first announcement of his genius, how
could she hope to understand that a new force was about to take its
walk in the world? How dismal, coarse, and sordid everything seemed!
Not a glimpse of light, beauty, or hope was anywhere to be discerned
in the whole of that crowded and suffocating room. The darkness and
horror which oppress us so much in the streets of a great city, all
the festering sores, all the blunt evils which discolor human nature
and conspire against its dignity, seemed to have congregated here.
The most cruel fact of human existence, the knowledge of man’s innate
imperfection, appeared to be concentrated, to be rendered visible in
this inferno in which every aperture was kept so close.
As soon as the judge returned into court, Mr. Weekes rose to address
the jury. Northcote sought sternly to curb his own impatience while the
trite voice of the counsel for the prosecution marshalled the array
of facts. They were so damning that they hardly called for comment.
None could dispute the tale that they told; and the Crown had no wish
to waste the time of the court by laboring the obvious. Reposing
an implicit confidence in the triumph of a virgin reason, that one
imperishable gift of nature to mankind, Mr. Weekes was yet able to
exhibit a profound sorrow for the terrible predicament of the accused,
and the awful alternative with which twelve of her countrymen were
confronted. But painful as was their duty, and painful as was his, it
was imposed upon them by the law. Mr. Weekes resumed his seat in the
midst of a deep and respectful silence, which indicated how crucial the
situation was to all, after having spoken for three-quarters of an hour.
The uninspired but adequate words of his opponent had galled Northcote
at first, so overpowering was his desire to rise at once and deliver
that utterance with which his whole being was impregnated. But as
perforce he waited and his ears were fed by the formal phrases of his
adversary, his nervous energy seemed to concentrate under the effort
of repression. And when at last a curious hush informed him that his
hour had arrived, which at a time less momentous would have unnerved
him altogether, and he rose to his feet, to such an extent was he
surcharged with emotion that at first he could not begin.
Every eye in the crowded building was strained upon him almost
painfully, as he stood with locked lips looking at an old woman in a
bright red shawl in the public gallery. He was as pale as a ghost,
his cheeks were so cadaverous that in the murky light of the gaslit
winter afternoon they presented the appearance of bones divested of
their flesh. But there was a profound faith among the majority of the
slow-breathing multitude. Since the morning the name of the advocate
had come to be bruited among them; and in spite of his silence, which
was grinding against their tense nerves, there was that in his bearing
which excluded all sense of foreboding from their minds.
A full minute passed in complete silence while the advocate stood
staring at the old woman in the red shawl. At last his lips were
unsealed, slowly and reluctantly; the first words that proceeded from
them were of a quietude which pinned every thought. All listened with a
painful intensity without knowing why.
“My lord, gentlemen of the jury: It is with feelings of awe that I
address you. This is the first occasion on which my inexperience
has been summoned to bear the yoke of a great task; and here on its
threshold I confess to you without shame that I should faint under its
burden, had I not the knowledge that I hold a mandate to plead the
cause of not the least of God’s creatures.
“You must have heard with admiration the words which have fallen from
the lips of the learned gentleman who has pleaded the cause of the
Crown. Impregnable in his learning, ripe in his judgment, he has made
it impossible for the tyro who stands before you to imitate his force
and his integrity. Indeed, I do not know how this tyro would derive the
courage to follow him at all were it not that a special sanction had
been given to him by the grievous circumstances of this case. It is
because its nature is so terrible that he who has to share its onus is
able to forget his youth, his weakness, his absence of credentials.
“We are proud, we citizens of London, that we are born of the first
race of mankind, in the most fortunate hour of its history. It is our
boast that we are the inheritors of a freedom that was never seen
before on the earth; a freedom not only of conduct and intercourse,
but more rarely, more preciously, a freedom of opinion, a freedom of
ideas. And we prize this birthright of ours not merely because our
fathers purchased it for us with their blood, but also because its
possession is of inestimable worth in the progress of human nature.
And in the very centre of this pride of ours, which is intellectual in
its source, there arises, as the bulwark of our homage, the more than
sacred edifice which has crystallized the national life. I refer to the
constitution of England.
“We do well to accept this institution with an unreserved emotion
which, as a race, we regard as unworthy. For there are some who hold
that this hiatus between our precepts and our practice confers a yet
deeper lustre upon our love of justice. For, gentlemen, that love is
innate in the heart of every Englishman; it is the stuff of which our
constitution is composed, which quickens our pulses and tightens our
throats; it helps to form the most magnificent of all our traditions;
it is the woof of a fabric which is imperishable.
“It is the thought of this love of justice dominant in the breast of
every London citizen, which sustains him who pleads the cause of the
accused. For in a charge of this awful nature the constitution enacts
with a noble wisdom that the prisoner at the bar is entitled to any
doubt that may arise in any one of your minds in regard to the absolute
conclusiveness of all the evidence that may be urged against her. That
is a humane provision, gentlemen. It is worthy of the source from which
it springs. Without this provision I do not know how any advocate would
be prevailed upon to incur his responsibility; nor, gentlemen, do I
know how any jury of twelve humane and enlightened Englishmen would be
gathered into this court to adjudicate upon the life or death of an
Englishwoman. It is a humane and far-sighted provision, and it enables
the advocate of this unhappy Englishwoman to address you with a feeling
of security which otherwise he could never have hoped to possess.
“I feel, gentlemen, that the exigencies of this case may compel me to
speak to you at great length, but of one thing you may be assured.
I shall not speak at all unless every word I am called to utter is
weighed with care and fidelity in the scales of the reason that God has
given to me, and I know, gentlemen, from the look upon your faces, that
with equal care and equal fidelity you will weigh them in the scales
of the reason God has given to you. I have placed myself in the most
favorable position for addressing you I can devise. I shall hope to
speak with the utmost distinction of which I am capable; and I shall
hope not to employ a word whose meaning is obscure to you, or a phrase
which is equivocal or open to misconstruction. That you are prepared
to surrender your whole attention to me you tell me with your looks.
That I shall hold that attention I dare to believe, unless the hand of
Providence deprives me of the power to give utterance to those things
with which my mind is charged to the bursting-point.
“You will not refute me when I assert that the fact in our common
experience which at the present time has the greatest power to oppress
us is the imperfection of human nature. And upon entering a court of
justice this fact is apt to demoralize a feeling mind. The science of
appraising criminal evidence has been carried among us to a curious
pitch, as witness the unexampled skill of my learned friend; the
paraphernalia of incrimination, if the expression may be allowed to me,
is consummate; but in spite of the rare ingenuity of great legal minds,
human nature is fallible. It is liable to err. It does err. To the deep
grief of science it errs with great frequency. Indeed, its errors are
so numerous that they even impinge upon the sacred domain of justice.
Miscarriages of justice occur every day.
“In a cause of this nature it is most necessary that steps should be
taken to exclude the element of injustice by all means that are known
to us. We are bound, gentlemen, to keep that contingency constantly
before our eyes. Such a contingency fills me with trembling; and I
believe it fills you, for in this instance a miscarriage of justice
would not only be irreparable, it would be a crime against our human
nature.
“The question arises, how can we safeguard ourselves against this
element of injustice? What means can we adopt to keep it out?
Gentlemen, it devolves upon me, the advocate of the accused, to furnish
that means. By taking thought I shall endeavor to provide it. To that
end I propose to divide what I have to say to you into three parts. The
first will deal with your legal duty. The second will deal with the
duty to which every Christian Englishman must subscribe or forfeit his
name, and with his name the title-deeds of his humanity. The third will
show the consequences which must and do wait upon the evasion of this
second duty, which is the highest and noblest known to mankind, which
in itself completely transcends this legal one, this technical one you
are sworn to obey.”
“I can see he means to be all night,” said Mr. Weekes to his junior,
with marked irritation. “Lover of the sound of his own voice.”
“He is going wrong already,” said Mr. Topott complacently. “Saying too
much; overdoing it generally.”
“Every inch a performer,” said Jumbo at the back to a companion.
“There’s a fortune in that voice and manner. Hope the lad won’t say too
much.”
“Has done already,” said his companion. “That cant of a duty higher
than the legal one is merely ridiculous.”
The ex-president of the Oxford Union and his friend, whose youth
rendered them sternly critical, were following Northcote’s every word
with the closest attention.
“He’s got a brogue you could cut with a knife,” said the ex-president,
with an air of resenting a personal injury.
“You are wrong,” said his friend, with an absence of compromise. “He
was at school with me.”
By this time the advocate had cut into the heart of his subject. In a
few swift yet unemphasized sentences he had proved the existence of a
doubt in the case. He pressed home the significance of that fact with
a power that was so perfectly disciplined that it did not appear to
exert itself, yet it carried a qualm into the camp of the enemy. He
was content to indicate that the doubt was there, and with apparent
magnanimity differentiated it from that which in his view must ever
accompany circumstantial evidence. Every gesture that he used in the
demonstration of its presence, each vibration of a voice which had
become marvellously flexible, was a living witness of the dynamic
quality he had in his possession.
“He will be wise to let it go at that,” was the opinion of Mr. Weekes.
“He has done quite as well as was to have been expected. We shall just
get home, and for a beginner he will have done very nicely.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me if he is only just starting,” said Mr. Topott
mournfully.
“I have done now, gentlemen,” Northcote continued, “with the legal
aspect of this case. That aspect, as I have shown, makes an acquittal
necessary. But whenever we are content to base our judgment upon
technicalities, we tie our hands. We furnish room for one of those
sophistries which trained intellects, the intellects of those who are
far more learned in the law than we are, find it so easy to introduce.
There is always the danger that a body of laymen, however unimpeachable
their integrity, may be led from the plain and obvious path of their
duty by a cunning stratagem. Again, in all those matters that seek
ascertained fact for their basis, we must not forget that its supply is
partial. Science is doing stupendous things for the world, but even it
cannot yet supply mankind with anything beyond half-truths. There is no
field of man’s activities--philosophy, religion, politics, law--which
does not depend upon these. Science can furnish us with sufficient
evidence to hang a fellow creature, but the time is at hand when it
will also have furnished us with such abundant knowledge of our eternal
fallibility, that we shall cease to exact these reprisals. For are not
all reprisals, which we include under the comprehensive term ‘justice,’
the fruit of an imperfect apprehension of the nature of man? It has
been said truly that a little knowledge is dangerous, for in looking
at the history of human opinion in all the phases through which it has
passed, we see how the habit of basing our actions upon half-truths has
been the cause of the manifold wounds of the world.
“I think, gentlemen, I have said enough to indicate the dangers which
lurk in the temptation to apply in its arid literalness the letter of
the law. I am aware that such a precaution tells against the cause I
am pleading, because, as I think I have made clear to you, the letter
of the law demands the acquittal of the prisoner at the bar. But those
who seek for direction in great issues must strive to forget their
personal cause. According to the law you are pledged to obey your duty
is clear; but as every day its tendency to err becomes more visible,
I feel I must not, I feel I dare not, place too implicit a trust in
its clemency. Therefore, gentlemen, I am about to supplement this law,
I am about to reinforce it, and to reinforce you, by a reference to
that moral code which each and every one of God’s citizens carries in
his own heart, that is the only tribunal known to mankind that is not
liable to error. And I think you will agree with me that the nature of
this case allows me to partake of the inestimable boon of appealing to
it.
“When I watched you defile into this dismal room this morning, one
after another, faltering and uncertain in your steps, and bearing about
you many evidences of having been overcome by the cruel task which
had been imposed upon you by no will of your own, my heart went out
to you, and I could not help reflecting that I would rather be in my
own case, awful as it was to me, than I would be in yours. I at least
could walk upon the higher ground without misgiving. I had not been
pressed into the service of this court of justice to make obeisance to
a ruthless and obsolete formula. I was not called upon to subscribe
to a compact that was repugnant to my moral nature; I was not called
upon to enact the brutal travesty of sealing it with my lips. But, my
friends, as I marked you this morning, with a great fire burning in
my veins, I wondered by what miracle it was, I wondered by what signal
act of grace, I too did not stand among you in my capacity of a private
citizen, to bear my part in this saturnalia of justice. Who was I,
that I should not be plucked from among my family and my friends, from
my peaceful vocations and my modest toil, to do to death a woman? Who
was I, that I should be exempt from this bitter degradation which my
peers are called upon to suffer? And in thinking these thoughts, my
friends, it came upon me suddenly--call it a prophetic foresight if you
will--that one of these days I should be called to sit among you. And I
said to myself, ‘When that comes to pass, what will you do?’ I said to
myself, ‘What will you do?’
“At first I could make no answer. I was stupefied by the thought my too
active imagination had conjured up. And then at last I said to myself,
‘I shall ask for guidance in this matter; I shall ask for guidance from
that tribunal which lies within my own nature.’ And, my friends, there
and then I turned to it, as though this thing had come of a verity to
pass, for the sight of you all seated there in your despair had borne
upon me so heavily that your situation had become my own.
“Now the answer that tribunal vouchsafed to me was this: ‘Consider
what your pastors and masters would do were they placed in your case.
Consider what would be the attitude of those great minds that still
burn like candles in the night of the time, whose radiance has warmed
your veins, whose immortality has enriched your own personal nature.
Consider what would be the conduct of those representative spirits of
whom you proud Englishmen of the twentieth century are the heirs.’
“And then a strange thing happened. No sooner had this answer been
written on the tablets of my brain, than this gaslit room grew dimmer
than it already was, and there seemed to arise a kind of commotion
among you gentlemen of the jury. And when at last I found the courage
to lift my eyes outwards from my thoughts, and they looked towards you,
I saw with a thrill of surprise, as if by the agency of magic, that
each one of your faces had been blotted out. Each was shrouded in an
intense darkness. But while I continued to gaze upon the place that had
contained you, almost with a feeling of horror, a shadowy haze seemed
to play over it, and a number of strange faces peopled the gloom. They
were more than twelve in number; they were more than twenty; they
were more than a hundred. For the most part they were those of men
old and austere. Each face seemed to be that of a person of infinite
power and dominion, of one accustomed to walk alone. Each was marked
by a kind of superhuman composure, as though having spent its youth in
every phase of stress, it had emerged at last upon the summits of the
mountains, where the air is rarefied, and where it is possible to hold
a personal intercourse with Truth. Some of the faces were grave, some a
little sinister, but the eyes of each had a forward, upward look which
conferred an expression upon them of entrancing beauty.
“Stealthily, rapidly, but with a superhuman composure these noble
shadows ranged themselves in the jury-box, in the room of you
gentlemen who had vacated it. And when I had overcome my stupefaction
sufficiently to look upon these new jurors more closely, I was struck
with amazement at the curious familiarity of those faces of theirs.
They were those of persons that I had seemed to have known all my life.
“There and then a shiver of recognition crept through my veins. I
knew them; I revered them, I had spent many hours in their company.
The first face I had recognized was that of an old man, urbane and
ironical, a citizen of the world; it was the face of Plato. Beside
him was a man, older, less urbane, more ironical; it was the face of
Socrates. Thinkers, warriors, saints, and innovators began to teem
before my gaze. There was St. Augustine and St. Francis of Assisi,
Shakespeare and Goethe, Leonardo and Dante, Washington and Cromwell,
Kant and Spinoza, Isaac Newton, Giordano Bruno, Voltaire. I thought
I discerned the faces of at least two women among this assembly;
one was that of Joan of Arc, the other that of Mary the Magdalene.
There appeared to be hosts of others of all times and countries which
sprang into being as I gazed, but though I recognized them then, I
cannot pause to enumerate them now. For this gathering was strangely
representative, and the living were not excluded--I saw a great
Russian, a great Englishman, and a great Frenchman of our own day--but
I must resist the temptation to give the names of all I beheld.
“No sooner had the scope and representativeness of this gathering
declared itself and it had ranged itself miraculously within a
little room, than a kind of commotion overspread it. They seemed to
be discussing some difficult point among themselves. However, this
action of theirs had no time to engage my anxiety, for I understood
immediately that they were seeking a foreman to their jury. Now you
would suppose that among a concourse of all who had attained an
immortal preëminence in mental and moral activity, to choose a leader
from amongst them would be impossible. But this was not so. Their
discussion was over almost before it began. They had no difficulty
whatever in nominating one among their number to speak for them all.
“It was with an indescribable curiosity that I observed a slight,
strangely garbed figure emerge from their midst. And when he came to
assume his place at the head of his immortal companions, which you,
sir, are occupying now, I was devoured by an overpowering eagerness to
look upon his face. And by this time so immensely powerful had been
the impact of this jury upon my imagination, that it had obtained an
actual existence and proceeded in sober verity to conduct the business
of the court. And I was sensible that the painful curiosity with which
I awaited the foreman’s revelation of his identity was shared by all
who were present. All were craning with parted lips to look upon his
face. And when at last he lifted his head, and his pale and luminous
features shone out of the gloom and overspread this assembly, a kind of
half-stifled sob of surprise, a sort of shudder of recognition, passed
over the crowded court. The face was that of the man called Jesus of
Nazareth.
“To myself, however, the recognition brought an immediate and profound
sense of joy. All my doubts, my terrors, my perplexities, were no
more. They passed as completely as though they had never been. The
business of the court proceeded, but I was inaccessible to its bearing
upon my task. My every thought was merged in the personality of the
foreman of the jury. The precise, calm, and harmonious legal diction
of my learned friends lost all its meaning and coherence, and even the
demeanor of the good and upright judge, who is making trial of this
cause, became one with the glamour which environed the figure in the
jury-box.
“That august jury seemed to sit and listen to all that passed. By
an extreme courtesy which they were able to impose on their finely
disciplined natures, they gave heed to the ceremonial that was enacted
for their benefit. It is true that there were moments when they were
unable to conceal the smile of soft irony which veiled their lips; but
from the beginning to the end their patience and urbanity remained
inviolate. The foreman, however, muttering continually inaudible words
to himself, with fingers twitching, and the hectic pulse beating in
his thin and fevered cheek, never took his eyes from the rail in front
of him. And when at last the time came for the jury to consider their
verdict, they were able to return it instantly, without leaving the
box, as you would expect such a tribunal to do.
“I can scarcely hope to picture to your minds the scene that was
presented when the foreman, so frail and thin and yet so full of
compassion, rose humbly in his place. ‘Are you agreed upon your
verdict, gentlemen?’ said the Clerk of Arraigns. ‘We are,’ said the
voice of the divine mystic of the Galilean hills; yet I can convey to
you the sound of it no better than could those poor fishermen who
heard it nineteen centuries ago. ‘What is your verdict, gentlemen?’
said the Clerk of Arraigns, whose own voice sounded so ludicrously
trite in comparison with that of the foreman, that it seemed to have no
place in human nature. ‘I understand,’ said the foreman of the jury,
‘according to your laws the penalty is death.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said the
Clerk of Arraigns, with a quiet dignity, ‘the penalty according to the
law is death.’ ‘The jury return a verdict of Not Guilty,’ replied the
foreman instantly, stooping to write with his finger on the rail in
front of him, as though he had heard him not.”
At this point Mr. Weekes rose excitedly.
“My lord,” he cried, “this blasphemous travesty has gone too far. It
must be carried no farther. It must cease.”
“Mr. Weekes,” said Northcote, turning to confront him, while a wave of
emotion swept over the court which seemed to make the air vibrate, “I
must ask you resume your seat.” He pointed with a finger with sorrowful
sternness. “I cannot submit to interruption at such a moment as this.
You hold your brief for the Crown; I hold mine for God and human
nature.”
The hush which followed was broken by a poor actor among the jury. He
had been out of an engagement for two years, and he had left his home
that morning with his wife sitting with a child at her breast before a
grate without a fire in it.
“That’s true,” he muttered heavily.
“My lord, I appeal to you,” cried Mr. Weekes more excitedly than ever.
“I did not come here to be browbeaten and insulted. I did not come
here to witness religion made into mockery and dragged through the
mire.”
“Mr. Weekes,” said Northcote with a depth of compassion in his tone
which made many veins run cold, “a subterfuge of this kind will not
serve you. The jury have no desire that you should make a parade of
your feelings at such a moment as this. They desire that you will
resume your seat, and relinquish any further attempt to make their task
more hideous than it already is.”
“That is perfectly true,” exclaimed the foreman in a hoarse whisper.
It was observed by those who were behind Northcote that in the
stress of the mental anguish through which he had already passed, by
constantly plucking with his fingers at the back of his hands, the skin
had been pulled away and the bleeding flesh was exposed.
“I appeal to your lordship,” cried Mr. Weekes.
“My lord, I also appeal to you,” said Northcote; and the poise of his
head and the lift of his chin, as it was directed upwards to the bench,
reminded those who had seen it of the figure of Balzac as modelled by
Rodin in clay.
The dæmonic quality was dominant here, as is the case always when the
gospel of force has its dealings with human nature. Few had suspected
that this old judge, with his brusque manners and his great barking
irascible voice was no longer fit to fill his position. His lionlike
exterior was no more than the livery of his dignity. He was not the man
to face a crisis, when above all things an iron nerve and an implacable
will were needed to impose restraint upon a jury and an advocate who
were in danger of trampling underfoot the accepted rules of decorum
and procedure. And the week before the judge had buried his youngest
daughter. When Northcote’s gaunt eyes were turned upon this old man,
who was trembling violently under his ermine, the tears began to course
down his face.
“My God, he’s settled Bow-wow,” said the fat barrister on the back
bench.
“Always was a senile old fool at bottom,” said his companion. “That
young bounder ought to lose his wig and gown.”
“Shut up! He’s speaking again.”
XXVII
THE PERORATION
“It is too much the custom, my friends,” Northcote continued to the
jury when Mr. Weekes had sat down as spasmodically as he had got up,
“to regard this divine mystic of whom I have spoken as a supernatural
being whose name can only be mentioned with propriety in the presence
of an elaborate ritual. That fetish dies hard, my friends, but dying
it is, for if ever a human being walked this earth, whose life and
opinions are a great poem that deserves to be recited in our bosoms
and our businesses during every hour that we dwell, it is the life
and opinions of him who has already given his verdict in this case.
There are very few things that are of any importance to us upon which
we have not his pronouncement in one form or another; and though that
pronouncement may not always be coincident with the technical lawyer’s
law of the time, which is understanded of no man, least of all of
themselves, these _obiter dicta_ of his, delivered upon the spur of the
occasion, have already outlasted kings, dynasties, and nations; and
they are likely to endure when court-houses, jury-boxes, and scaffolds
have long ceased to be.
“A few centuries ago such words as I am now addressing to you would
have sent me to the lions, and you also would have been torn in pieces
for having deigned to listen to them. It is not a hundred years since
small children were hanged in this country for stealing five shillings.
A hundred years before that a woman was burned at the stake for the
practice of witchcraft. It was the custom to disembowel those who
were guilty of a felony; to break on the wheel those who did not hold
orthodox political opinions; and to burn, maim, cut off the heads, and
inflict indescribable physical torments upon any person because of his
religious views.
“I am going to ask you, my friends, how these monstrous enactments
were overcome. By the lawyers who drew their fees from the Crown to
put them in practice? Not so. By those educated minds that conducted
the business of the state? Not so. These unspeakable crimes committed
in the name of justice were overcome by a handful of prophets, seers,
and reformers, who arose in Israel. They were common and unrefined,
of small education, and less culture; poor and obscure herdsmen and
fishermen, a pedlar by the wayside; the keeper of a public-house;
a small tradesman in Lambeth; a miserable grocer of Spitalfields;
a wretched old tinker who passed the choicest part of his days in
Bedford jail. This very Jesus himself, the foreman of this jury which
is sitting with you in the box, which at this moment urges these words
to my lips, was a common rustic by trade, a carpenter. And you will
remember that he paid for the extreme unorthodoxy of his religious and
political views by crucifixion upon the tree.
“The tree has gone, my friends, but he remains. I say the tree has
gone. That tree has gone, but as mankind in the present imperfect stage
of its development, does not dare as yet to trust itself without a
tree of some kind to lean upon, a substitute has been provided for
that cross of wood upon which it nailed the redeemer of his kind. And
it seems to me that if the divine mystic of whom I am speaking were
again to roam the hills of Galilee, his fate would be the same to-day
as it was yesterday. In the present phase which has been attained by
our sympathies with those who share the burden of our so dark and so
inscrutable inheritance, it would be extremely easy for some learned
Treasury counsel in the performance of his duty to the Crown, to
reënact the supreme tragedy of a world which is filled with tragedies.
“At the present time there is still a tree standing in England upon
which we nail women. They may be guilty of dark offences, as were
the associates of that Nazarene Jew of whom I have spoken; their
fate, according to the written statutes, may be sound in equity; some
wretched Magdalene in falling by the way may have stained the pavements
of the street with blood. But if we, her peers and coadjutors, are to
continue at this time of day to visit her with reprisals, I am forced
to believe, my friends, that all we most cherish in our national life
will perish. And I think I discern by that which is written in your
faces that you are of this opinion also.
“I have alluded to the two unhappy outcasts who were nailed upon the
tree with Jesus. Technically they were malefactors; it was right that
they should be immolated upon the altar of the law. Doubtless the
instant the counsel for the Crown had compassed this desirable end,
he repaired to his home with a substantial emolument and a perfect
security of soul, ate a good dinner, and afterwards lay on a mat and
harkened to the sounds of the lyre. But I do not think from that day to
this the associate of these malefactors was ever shown to be guilty of
any crime at all, at least of any crime known to the judicial calendar.
His only offence, if offence there was, was in living before his day
and generation, which, in the eyes of those who are contemporary, is a
misdemeanor of a heinous character. Posterity only is able to condone
a greatness which transcends its own era. Yet do not misunderstand me.
Technically he was blameless, technically he had committed no crime.
“This consideration brings me to the final word I shall venture to
speak--the supreme danger of the tree. It is very dangerous to keep a
tree at all. Whatever is once nailed upon it can never be removed. The
stains sink into the wood, and, strive as they may, the labors of those
who undertake to cleanse it and purify it cannot avail. Like corrosive
acids these stains percolate through the fibres and change them to
wormwood and fungus. And do not forget, my friends, that the fibres of
the tree are the fibres also of the national life. A nation pledges its
honor when it seeks reprisal.
“We do well to shudder at the many bitter degradations which have
sprung from this habit of keeping a tree. Jesus was not the first
innocent person whose blood was spilt upon that oft-humiliated wood.
And he was not the last. Our human faculties play us such strange
tricks that they can render us certain of nothing. Even a poor outcast
who has fainted by the bleak wayside of life, who has occasionally
drunk a glass of spirits to keep her from the river, may by some
obscure possibility which the counsel for the prosecution has not been
able to reveal to us have refrained from destroying the man who has
been the first cause of her fall, although it devolves upon all who
love justice--in whatever justice may consist--to explain away the
coincidence of a packet of poison having been found in her possession.
But, as I say, it is within the bounds of possibility that the theory
of the prosecution is wrong.
“It would not be the first occasion that an uncommon zeal has led it
into error. A year ago to-morrow, at these sessions, one John Davis,
a butler, who for thirty years had been a faithful servant in the
household of his mistress, was found guilty of the crime of compassing
the death of that aged lady, in order that he might spend his own
latter days in the enjoyment of a small legacy she had left him in her
will. In the mind of the counsel for the Crown, and in the mind of the
judge, the evidence against this man was overwhelming. At first you
gentlemen of the jury were disposed to see a doubt in the case, but the
learned counsel for the prosecution was so consummate in his arguments,
the learned judge was so emphatic, the array of witnesses for the Crown
was so formidable, from zealous police-constables, with their way to
make in the world, to experts and past-masters in criminology who had
made theirs long ago; and the youthful advocate, whom the butler’s
legal adviser had selected to defend him, was so unused to a trial of
this magnitude, for his experience had been limited, that he failed in
cross-examination to elucidate from a hostile witness an extremely
important fact; and in his address to you, gentlemen of the jury, he
was unable to soften the impression that the Crown had been able to
build up in your minds.
“I have hardly a need, gentlemen, to reveal to you the sequel of this
painful story. As all the world remembers, you had in the end to submit
to the inevitable. You, gentlemen of the jury, consented to a verdict
of guilty; a month later the unhappy man was hanged; and he had not
been five days in his grave when a nephew of the murdered woman gave
himself up to a justice that had already wreaked itself on an innocent
man, and confessed that he himself had murdered his aunt because he was
in need of her money.
“These facts are green in the minds of you all. But there is a
coincidence connected with this atrocious story and this grievous case
which is engaging your attention. The counsel for the prosecution in
both cases is identical. He stands before you framing yet another of
those objections with which he has endeavored to impede the cause of
humanity. I point my finger at him, and challenge him to deny the
truth of the statement I am making. And by a perfectly logical and
natural extension of this coincidence, the judge who sent the butler
to his doom is seated above you now in all the panoply of his office.
I leave him now if he is able to deal in a like manner with this poor
Magdalene, who may or may not have fallen by the way.”
Northcote sat down after having spoken for nearly three hours. The
December darkness had long fallen upon the court. The feeble gas-jets
seemed to enhance the shadows that they cast. The intense faces of
the overcrowded building, bar, jury, populace all electrified, seemed
to belong to so many ghosts, so pale, shining, and transfigured did
they gleam. For nearly three hours had the advocate cast his spell;
yet moment by moment, in the dominion of his voice and the cumulation
of his effects, he had increased the hold upon his hearers. At times
the tension had been so great that it had seemed that somebody must
break it with a laugh; but no one had done so. One and all were swept
forward by the contained impetuosity of the orator; by the restrained
and gentle modulations of a power that played through every word he
used; by a ferocious irony which looked like tenderness, so little did
they understand its nature; and above all by the irresistible magnetism
of a personal genius which rendered the most perilous obstacles of no
account.
None had foreseen the cruel, terrible, yet melodramatic climax to
which the advocate was leading; and when it came over the minds of
those present, all of whom in the course of the speech, even the most
hardened officers of the court, the ushers, the chaplain, the javelin
men, and the newspaper reporters, had passed in one form or another
through all the anguish of the spirit of which they were capable,
pity and horror were mingled with their overwrought surprise. As the
advocate stood with his huge and livid face turned upwards towards the
judge, with an ineffable emotion suffusing it, and the old man, with
tears dripping quickly on to his ermine, put his two fat, white hands
before his eyes, a feeling of silence and terror seemed to pervade the
court.
The advocate sat down with parched lips. The hush that ensued was so
long that it seemed it would never come to an end.
It was broken by a commotion among the public benches. A woman who had
fainted was being carried out at the back of the court. The incident
served to unloose the electricity which was pent up in the atmosphere.
A voice from the solicitor’s well was heard to pronounce the word
“Shame!” In an instant it was answered by the multitude with a volley
of the wildest cheers that was ever heard in a court of justice. All
the ragged, tattered, despised, broken and rejected units of the
population, those humble, hungry, and inarticulate creatures upon whom
Jesus himself had wrought his magic, upon whom he had depended for
countenance, took up the challenge, and with their wild and hoarse
cries flung it back upon him who had uttered it.
For a time the scene was one of consternation. The judge was but a
poor, senile, old man, from whom the tears were leaping. Every official
looked towards him for his prop and stay, but all there was to see was
feeble and inept old age. The Clerk of Arraigns, as pale as a ghost
and trembling violently, was spreading his hands before an alderman.
Policemen stood dismayed, and officers of the court, who had grown old
and despotic in its service, looked towards one another helplessly,
seeking for that authority which none had the power to exercise.
“I never thought,” said the companion of the fat barrister, “we should
come to this in England. It is a disgrace to English justice. That
fellow must be brought before the general council. They must take away
his wig and gown.”
“A little less prejudice and a little more appreciation, dear boy,”
said the fat barrister, wiping his eyes stealthily. “That lad will be a
peer of the realm long before they make you a stipendiary.”
“He is either the greatest madman or the greatest genius who was ever
called to the bar.”
“Probably both, dear boy.”
XXVIII
THE SUMMING UP
The barrister who had ventured to give a public expression to his
opinion was that nursling of wealth, the youthful ex-president of the
Oxford Union.
“You’ve done it now,” said the son of the Master of the Rolls. “They
will have in the roof. They were only waiting for a leader.”
“With all respect to your school,” said the ex-president heatedly,
“this fellow is a disgrace to it, also to his profession. It was the
act of a black-guard to throw that at the judge. He is not a gentleman.”
“Rough, of course, on the poor old judge, but he’s playing to win, as
he always did. Hullo, the poor old boy is coming up to the scratch.”
Order had been at last restored, or more correctly had restored itself;
and in thin and shaken tones the judge began his summing-up. He had
conquered his emotion, and in a perfectly simple, plain, and audible
manner he was able to give expression to that which he desired to say.
It afforded the keenest relief to the bar, which was so profoundly
jealous of professional prestige, that after all the presiding judge
should be able to reassert himself sufficiently to invest with a
certain dignity his own procedure in his own court. His words were
charged with deep feeling, but the most critical among his listeners
could discern nothing derogatory to his office in his mode of utterance.
“Gentlemen of the jury,” he began; and although the sound of his
voice was divested of that roughness and irascibility by which it was
known, it yet enchained the attention of his hearers, since intensity
of feeling had rendered it singularly harmonious, “Gentlemen of the
Jury, before I refer to the details of this terrible case I desire to
record my opinion of the manner in which it has been conducted. The
counsel for the defence is a young man, and in the nature of things
his experience in cases of this kind cannot be extensive. But I would
like to affirm that never within my own knowledge has a more remarkable
presentation of the art of advocacy come within the purview of this
court. Mr. Northcote is a young man, but the display of his genius--I
can use no smaller word--which recently he has made, is an honor to
human nature. As an old advocate, I tender my sincere congratulations
to him, and I hope that the career he has chosen to follow will in
every way be worthy of the nobility of his talent.”
A murmur of applause greeted this eulogium. It had been rendered with
such obvious feeling and delicacy that every word rang true, and
touched the chord that was dominant in the hearts of all.
“Well done, Bow-wow,” said the fat barrister, sniffing and blowing his
nose, “I trust some old pal will stand you a bottle at the Forum this
evening.”
“That is the English gentleman,” said his companion. “I expect that
young cad is feeling rather cheap just at present.”
“Expect nothing, dear boy. Who the devil are you that you should expect
anything? You could no more have saved that woman from the gallows than
you could have jumped across the moon.”
“There is a vexed point which the counsel for the defence has touched
upon,” said the learned judge, “upon which I hope I shall be excused
if I say a few words before approaching the case which occupies your
painful attention. In Crown cases it happens frequently that the
prisoner is at a serious disadvantage in the matter of representation.
Counsel of great eminence may be briefed for the prosecution, while
the defence, for whose conduct, as a general rule, very little money
is forthcoming, has not the means to secure the aid of counsel of
tried worth and experience. In theory the judge is assumed to hold a
kind of watching brief for the accused, inasmuch that it is his duty
to be alive to any loophole of escape that may present itself in the
course of the evidence, and represent that loophole to the jury. But my
experience has shown to me that that loophole is extremely unlikely to
appear where the opposing counsel are unequally matched. In theory it
is expected of the counsel for the Crown that he shall keep a perfectly
open mind and not allow his own position to sway his conduct of the
case; but a long experience has imposed the conclusion upon me that
such an impartiality as this is not practicable for an advocate who, in
the exercise of his art, is compelled by the fact that he holds a brief
to exert his talent, in spite of an unwritten law, and even in spite of
himself, to the fullest capacity on behalf of his client.
“These words, gentlemen, will not be misconstrued, I am sure. Nothing
is farther from my intention than to suggest that Crown advocates
wantonly overstep their duty or go outside their jurisdiction. But
I do suggest that they feel impelled to do their utmost for their
client, and that client is the Treasury. And having that very proper
and natural feeling in their minds it is humanly impossible for them to
approach their task of promoting a conviction in the academic spirit
which in theory is imposed upon them. Therefore you will conceive how
difficult becomes the function of a judge who is called upon in the
prisoner’s interest to hold the scales and to adjust the balance,
when there is, as occurs so frequently, a grave disparity between the
ability and the professional experience of the contending counsel. The
judge himself, gentlemen, is only human, and although his familiarity
with the procedure of a criminal trial may render him less vulnerable
to the art of a skilful advocate than those who are not so familiar
with those forms of procedure, at the same time I feel entitled to
assert that every judge must in a measure be susceptible to the manner
in which evidence is conveyed to his notice, and the manner in which it
is dissected before his eyes.
“You will forgive me, gentlemen, I hope, in making what may seem to
be a digression from this extremely painful case we are considering,
but it is a point that arises very naturally out of it. The counsel
for the defence saw fit to touch upon it in the course of his address,
and I would like to assure him and to assure you that during the
five and twenty years I have had the honor to occupy a seat on the
judicial bench, this question has seemed to me of such paramount
importance that it has been constantly before my mind. This is the last
opportunity I shall have of making a reference to it in the presence of
you gentlemen of the jury; this is the last occasion on which I shall
take my seat in this or any other court; therefore I feel a desire to
record, with whatever authority twenty-five years of public service may
confer on a mere expression of opinion, the conclusion at which I have
arrived.
“In the ears of many my conclusion will sound utopian, in many
minds it will seem to be a counsel of perfection, for it is this.
In important criminal cases it is the duty of the Crown to make
the same ample provision for the accused as it does for itself. It
should afford equal facilities to the accused person to establish his
innocence as it affords to itself to establish his guilt. After many
profound searchings of heart, more particularly upon circuit, where
cases affecting the life and liberty of the subject are so often
left entirely to the discretion of a rural practitioner, this is the
conclusion I have reached. Such a conclusion will, I fear, be taken
as a confession of weakness on the part of an individual judge. It is
a confession of weakness, gentlemen, but I do not think I shall be
contradicted when I urge that it is a confession which the strongest
and most able of my learned brethren have been called upon over and
over again in their heart of hearts to make.
“The terrible miscarriage of justice which occurred a year ago in
this court, for which I alone can accept responsibility, for which to
this present hour I have not ceased to mourn, would not have taken
place had the defence been in a position to present its testimony,
and to marshal its facts with a skill equal to that enjoyed by the
prosecution. The most material issue in the case was never presented
at all. Its existence was not even revealed. Neither the prosecuting
counsel nor the presiding judge was aware that the defence had this
implement in its possession until long after this miscarriage had
been consummated. Do not misunderstand me, gentlemen; I hold no
brief for myself; I accept the whole of the responsibility for what
took place. It was my duty to unveil that which was hidden, and to
present it adequately to the jury. I failed in that duty, because from
the beginning of the case the defence was overshadowed. The actual
murderer himself was called in evidence by the Crown; it was upon his
unshaken testimony that the verdict was rendered; but as was only
learned when too late, had one obscure question been pressed home in
cross-examination to this murderer who had perjured himself to conceal
his guilt, his testimony could not have lived five minutes in any
impartial mind, and a lamentable, a grievous miscarriage of justice
would not have stained the annals of this English justice of which very
rightly and properly we are so proud.”
Again a profound silence had descended upon the court. The painful and
close-breathing intensity with which all in that crowded assembly had
followed the prisoner’s advocate through the devious courses of his
address was now extended to the judge. There was nothing in the words
he used to call forth this hush of excited expectation, but the emotion
with which they were invested seemed to furnish them with life and
magnetism.
“All his life,” whispered the fat barrister to his friend, in a tone
of curious tenderness, “he has been a blusterer and a blunderer,
overanxious, pedantic, weak-willed, easily led, but--but his end is
glorious. This is a note he has never touched before.”
“This state defence of prisoners is so much mischievous nonsense,”
said the other almost angrily. “Where does he suppose it will land
the country? A judge has no right to advance such an opinion from the
bench.”
“Bill,” said the fat barrister, with a solemnity for which none of
his friends would have been prepared, “when you have been one of
His Majesty’s judges for twenty-five years you may not hold quite
such definite opinions. Dear old Bow-wow; all the world knows that
underneath his armor he has kept the kindest heart that ever beat, but
this is the first time he has made me feel that I wanted to blub.”
“’Pon my word, Jumbo,” said his friend, impatiently, “don’t you begin.
We have had enough mawkishness this afternoon to last us for the rest
of our lives. I expect Weekes will be falling on the neck of Topott
soon, and the clerk will be kissing the sheriff.”
“Dear old Bow-wow, dear old boy, how old he is getting. They say this
John Davis affair has cut him up dreadfully. There is not a judge on
the bench who would feel it more.”
“Probably the weakest judge who ever took his seat on the bench. What
is he maundering about now? Ah, at last he’s got to the summing-up.”
The hour was advancing, and happily the judge’s speech was not of
the length which at one time it had threatened to be. The summing-up
was short but indecisive. It was plain that the prisoner’s advocate
had done his work with the judge as well as with the jury. There was
nothing in the judge’s presentment of the evidence, which at one time
had looked so damning, to compare with the resolution and conviction
of Northcote. The magnetic splendor and brilliancy which had overcome,
one by one, the twelve good men and true in the box, had fastened also
upon this old man. His confidence was shaken, and the definite line the
counsel for the Crown had so confidently expected him to take was far
to seek.
“This is doing us no good,” grunted Mr. Weekes to his junior. By now
the leader for the Crown was in a very bad temper. His afternoon had
been wasted, he was going to be late for his dinner, and he was about
to lose a verdict upon which he had counted with certainty. “My dear
Bow-wow, you are positively maudlin. Why the deuce don’t you leave the
doubt alone and confine yourself to the evidence? There is no doubt.
There is not a leg for them to stand on.”
“There was not half a leg for them to stand on at the beginning,” said
Mr. Topott, with scrupulous modesty, “but now as the end approaches,
they appear to be standing upon two thoroughly sound ones. I think I
said at lunch I was frightened to death of that fellow.”
“Much good that did the case,” snapped Mr. Weekes.
“You were so sanguine, my dear fellow,” said Mr. Topott, with his
modesty taking an almost angelic note. He was a young man, able and
ambitious; and his private opinion of his leader was of a nature that
wild horses would not have caused him to expose. “You pooh-poohed
everybody and everything at lunch. The case was as dead as mutton;
their man was a beginner; you and Bow-wow were going to take care that
he did no harm.”
“Well, Topott, I must say you never lose an opportunity of rubbing
things in.”
“Perhaps that is so,” said Mr. Topott, dreamily. “Perhaps I am rather
good at rubbing things in. Perhaps that is my _métier_.”
“Then perhaps you will provide yourself with another. To my mind this
one is not at all amusing.”
“I suspect that is so. But now this case has gone to pot, I hope you
will not be angry, Weekes, if I inform you that the fault is not yours.
You have simply been knocked out in a fair and square battle. But I
hope you will not repine; because there is not a man in England to-day
who could have stood up against that fellow. He chose extraordinary
weapons, but they were those he knew how to use. No disgrace attaches
to you; you have taken the knock quite honestly; and if the attorney
had been here he would have had to take it too.”
“Thank you, Topott,” said Mr. Weekes, tartly; “I wish I could have your
testimonial in writing.”
“By all means,” said Mr. Topott.
“Just listen to that old fool,” said Mr. Weekes, petulantly. “Whoever
heard such rubbish as he is talking? It is time he resigned. Nobody
actually saw her put the poison in. Absence of motive. Prisoner
entitled to every doubt that may arise. Every link must be forged in
the chain of all evidence that is purely circumstantial. No credence
can be given to the testimony of half the witnesses for the Crown. My
dear Bow-wow, I really never heard such nonsense in my life.”
“An hour ago you never heard such blasphemy.”
“I would to God the attorney had held this brief!” said Mr. Weekes,
desperately.
“You may count on one thing,” said Mr. Topott; “he will never let you
hear the last of this. Won’t he chuckle? He will pull your leg about it
for the next ten years.”
“I hope you will tell him, Topott,” said Mr. Weekes anxiously, “that he
would have done no better.”
“Oh, I don’t say he would have done no better,” said the impartial Mr.
Topott. “He would have done better. He would never have let that chap
get as far as he did, even if he had had to ascend the bench and take
poor old Bow-wow by the tippet. But I do say he also would have had to
take his gruel, and he would have lost his verdict.”
“Oh, we have not lost it yet.”
“We shall have lost it in another quarter of an hour.”
XXIX
THE VERDICT
It was a quarter-past seven by the time Mr. Justice Brudenell had
concluded his summing-up. Long before he had reached the end, a
prediction of the result had formed in every mind. This case which
in the beginning had been as clear and strong as the sun at noon had
become so vitiated by contact with these legal wits, that by now even
its most salient points had become obscure. No jury in the frame of
mind of this present one, each component of which had been played upon
like the strings of a harp by the hand of a master performer, was in
the least likely to convict. There were those who even inclined to the
belief that they would not leave the box.
This, however, proved to be an extreme view. They did leave the box,
but in exactly nine minutes had returned into court. As slowly they
defiled back again into the court with their verdict, the excitement
depicted in their looks was painful to observe. Their drawn faces were
livid and perspiring; they kept down their heads without glancing to
the right or to the left. The foreman, a coal dealer in a small way of
business in the Commercial Road, was seized with a violent twitching of
the body.
“Are you agreed upon your verdict, gentlemen?” whispered the Clerk of
the Arraigns.
“We are,” said the foreman of the jury, in a voice that could hardly be
heard.
“What is your verdict, gentlemen?”
“We return a verdict of--of--”
The conclusion of the sentence seemed to die in the foreman’s throat.
“Will you please speak in such a manner that his lordship may hear
you?” said the clerk.
“We return a verdict of not guilty,” said the foreman, with his eyes
fixed on the rail before him. To the horror of many who observed him,
he appeared to trace some words upon it with his finger.
The demonstration which followed the verdict had been anticipated, and
accordingly on this occasion the officers of the court were able in
some measure to control it.
No sooner had the judge uttered a few words, which in the clamor were
inaudible, than he rose hastily from his seat. In the same instant
Northcote rose also, and that voice and presence which for so many
hours had exercised such an unquestioned sway at once detained those
who were thronging eagerly through the doors into the raw December
darkness.
“Before the court rises,” said Northcote, “I crave your lordship’s
indulgence for a brief moment.”
The judge bowed courteously and resumed his seat, a little unsteadily
as was thought by those who were near to him.
“I desire to offer to your lordship,” said the young advocate, with
a humility that was affecting, “in a public manner, an ample and an
unreserved apology for an allusion which had the misfortune to fall
from my lips. I gave utterance to it in a moment of great mental
excitement, and at that moment I did not realize, so completely was
I under the domination of the end I had in view, that in a sense
such an allusion was an indictment of your lordship and of that high
office upon which, during a quarter of a century past, your lordship
has conferred honor. I beg to be allowed to crave your lordship’s
forgiveness. Had these words not been spoken at a time when I was
overcome by the heat of advocacy, they would never have been spoken at
all.”
“Thank you, Mr. Northcote,” said the judge in a low but distinct voice.
“I understand perfectly well the circumstances in which these words
were spoken. They gave me pain, but I do not hold you blameworthy. I
viewed with keen sympathy the position in which you were placed; and I
accept without reservation the apology which with an equal absence of
reservation you have conceived it your duty to tender to me. I don’t
know whether I can be permitted to offer a suggestion in a matter
of this kind, but if, Mr. Northcote, you could see your way towards
the inclusion of your friend Mr. Weekes in this extremely honorable
_amende_--”
“I will, my lord--I do!” cried the impetuous young man, turning towards
the place of the senior counsel for the Treasury.
“I regret to say, my lord,” said Mr. Topott, rising and bowing to the
judge and to Northcote, “that my learned friend has already left the
precincts of the court; but I feel sure I am entitled to state, that
were he now present he would accept these words of Mr. Northcote in the
spirit in which they are offered.”
The judge left the bench and the court emptied rapidly. Mr. Whitcomb,
who had remained most of the day in Northcote’s vicinity, plucked him
by the sleeve as he rose and gathered his papers.
“I know now what you mean by the genie,” said he. “I shall send a wire
to Tobin at the hospital. I should like to see his face when he gets
it.”
Northcote was too highly wrought to appreciate a word that was uttered
by the solicitor. He could only smile and nod and wish him good night,
all of which was done with incoherence and abruptness. As the young man
passed out of the court, an elderly unfortunate, without any teeth,
one-half of whose face had been destroyed by disease, crept from her
hiding-place in a dark corner of the corridor. She grabbed the hem of
Northcote’s gown and carried it to her lips.
“Gawd bless yer, guv’ner,” she mumbled, in a thick, wheezy whisper.
In the barristers’ robing-room the entrance of Northcote created a
stir. Jumbo, a bencher of Northcote’s inn, and like all who are not
afraid to present themselves without reserve, just as nature devised
them, a man of immense popularity, hit the young advocate a blow on the
shoulder.
“When can I stand you a bottle, dear boy? Fine work!”
The son of the Master of the Rolls came up.
“I say, Northcote,” he said, “you don’t remember me? I’m Hutton. I was
in Foxey’s house with you at school.”
“Of course, of course,” said Northcote, hardly knowing a word that he
spoke; “I remember you perfectly well. You have not altered at all.”
“You’ve not altered much, although you look awfully old and very much
thinner than you used to look. I want you to mention an evening that
you can come round and dine with my governor--you remember the governor
I used to get ragged so tremendously for boasting about? He will be
delighted to meet you. I shall tell him all about this; he is the
kindest old soul.”
“Thanks, but I can’t dine with you until I’ve got my evening clothes
out of pawn.”
Northcote’s schoolfellow laughed heartily.
“No, you’ve not altered,” he said. “Just the same amusing cynical old
cuss you were at school--just the same cynical old cuss of whom we were
so much afraid and who was so frightfully unpopular.”
“Poverty and pride were never a popular combination,” said Northcote,
aroused from his preoccupation by the sympathy of one of the few
who had supported him in his youth. “If I hadn’t been a bit of a
football-player I don’t know what would have happened to me in those
days. I used to derive pleasure, I remember, from insulting everybody.”
“Foxey used to call you Diogenes.”
“He used to say that Diogenes was considerably the pleasanter fellow of
the two.”
“Poor old Foxey always feared you, I believe, just as did everybody
else. You were a gloomy, dreamy sort of chap when you were not merely
formidable. I remember once you were nearly superannuated. And do you
remember Foxey saying there was nothing you might not do, if only you
would apply your mind to it; but as it was, he was sure you would never
do anything?”
“I lived in a mental fog in those days,” said Northcote, with a dreary
laugh. “There was a thick vapor wrapped all round my brain. I could see
and understand nothing. One fact only was borne in upon me with any
sort of clearness. It was that I was vastly superior to everybody else.
There never was such a colossal self-esteem.”
“Well, you certainly despised everybody in those days. And you must
have gone on despising everybody to be capable of doing what you have.”
“I remember I was generally chosen to lead the scrum because I had a
big voice,” said Northcote, with the light of reminiscence softening
his grim mouth.
“But your voice is so much greater now than it was then, although it
was always an immense booming sort of thing that seemed to come out of
your boots. But your hands used to impress me more than anything else.
I used to think that if I had hands like that I should break ribs for
my private amusement. Do you remember standing the three-quarters on
their heads? You were a hefty brute in those days.”
“I was always more or less a man of my hands, yet at the same time was
always intensely interested in myself. I used to consider that ‘Cad’
Northcote--that was my name at school, although you are too polite to
remind me of it--was quite the most wonderful person who had ever
been born into this world or into any other. I used to lie awake all
night taking myself to pieces as though I had been a watch. Sometimes I
dreamed that I was Napoleon, and that it had come to pass that he had
been chosen to lead the English pack while he was still at school.”
“Well, that dream came true at any rate,” said his schoolfellow, with
an outburst of enthusiasm. “You were still with us when you pushed
those Welshmen all over the place.”
The conversation was curtailed at this point by the appearance of the
judge’s marshal.
“Mr. Northcote,” said this courteous and nicely dressed official, “Sir
Joseph would be very much obliged if you would come round and see him
in his room.”
“Right you are! I will be round in a minute,” said Northcote, shaking
hands with his old schoolfellow and declining an invitation to dine in
Eaton Square the next evening but one.
XXX
SIR JOSEPH BRUDENELL
In the judge’s room Northcote found its occupant seated in an armchair
at the side of the fire. The light was subdued, and the face of the old
man was in shadow even while he rose to receive his visitor.
“I thank you for coming to see me, Mr. Northcote,” he said, in a low
voice. “I will not detain you long, but I hope you will sit down.”
Northcote accepted the seat that was indicated opposite to the judge’s
armchair. His curiosity was roused in a strange fashion by the manner
and tone of this old man. They were extremely kind and gentle, almost
those which an aged and benevolent parent might employ when about to
take leave of a favorite son.
“If you will allow an old advocate,” said the judge, leaning back in
his chair and placing the tips of his fingers together, “to affirm it
again, I have been impressed by your conduct of this case. My memory
carries me back a long way; I have been more than fifty years at the
bar and on the bench. During that period I have been brought into
contact with the greatest advocates of their day, and I have been
called upon to bear a part in many of the leading causes. But never,
Mr. Northcote,--I emphasize the word,--has it been my privilege to
witness a performance so remarkable on the part of one who is young
and untried as the one given by you to-day.
“In the first place, and bearing in mind the limited character of your
opportunities, I cannot pretend to know how it has been achieved.
Your cross-examination of the last witness called for the Crown was,
in my view, masterly. I have always held, and many will support me, I
am sure, that the art of cross-examination is a searching test of an
advocate. To the ordinary person even moderate skill in that supremely
difficult branch only comes with years and experience. But you begin,
Mr. Northcote, where many of true distinction are only able to leave
off.
“I have always been proud, jealous--I might say overjealous perhaps--of
my profession, to which I have given the flower of my maturity; and I
have always felt that whatever degree of talent it may please God to
bestow upon a man, this great profession of ours offers a field which
brings it to the test. You must let me say, Mr. Northcote, that when
I heard you deal with that poor woman this morning, and I heard you
frame those questions which you put to her with a really beautiful
sincerity which told heavily with the jury, I felt proud that so young
a man could stand up so fearlessly and so collectedly in his first
great criminal cause and put to so fine a use the talents that God had
given to him. Had you been my own son I could not have felt prouder
of you, and prouder of the traditions that you were upholding. Many
of the great lights of the past came before my eyes--Pearson, now the
Lord Chief Justice; Hutton, the Master of the Rolls; poor, dear Fred
Markham, in many respects the most brilliant of them all, who was cut
off, poor fellow, almost before he had reached his prime; the late
George Stratton; Lord Ballinogue; Walker; Skeffington; and I know not
how many more--but I did not hesitate to believe, although we old men
are tenacious of our prejudices, that the bounty of nature had placed
you already on their level, and that great and good and glorious as
were all these names I have mentioned, you were starting at the point
where they were content to end.”
Northcote leaned forward and lowered his head with a fierce, almost
uncontrollable sensation of bewilderment, in which, however, pain was
predominant. Every word that was uttered by that low, trembling, old
voice appeared to spring from the heart. It was something more than
an old man babbling of his youth. There was a pride, an eagerness, a
solicitude, in the manner of this aged judge which seemed to clasp
Northcote like the impersonal devotion of a noble woman to something
more radiant but less pure and less rare than that which emanates from
herself. In the keenness of his distress it was as much as Northcote
could do to refrain from rushing from the room.
“Yet, Mr. Northcote,” the old man went on, “if I say this of your
cross-examination, which as far as you are concerned was a thing of
the moment, a mere piece of _esprit_ thrown off without premeditation,
what shall I say of that address with which you conquered all who
listened to it? I speak no longer as a judge, Mr. Northcote; my livery
is laid by. As I sat there in court with every chord in my heart
responsive to the noble music of your voice, I felt that you had
brought home to me that the time had come when I had ceased to be of
service to the public. I shall take my seat on the bench no more. But
henceforward I shall always carry your words in my heart. They were
noble words, nobly spoken; nature has been almost wantonly lavish
to you in her gifts. It has been given to you, a young man, to show
that the completest abasement of human nature is not in the gutter. I
read the deeper and the truer meaning that was innermost, the divine
message that was unfolded by the deep vibrations of your singularly
beautiful voice. You revealed to one in that court, Mr. Northcote, who
should have been engaged in performing his duty to the public, that no
sore festers in our social life to-day like the organized degradation
of the police-court, where learning, wisdom, courage, and integrity
are debased to even fouler depths than the gutter by their constant
traffic in human misery. Many times, Mr. Northcote, have I cowered in
spirits since I have been called to my office, but it has remained for
you, a young advocate, a fledgling of a newer and grander generation,
which will touch this material world of ours to finer issues--it has
remained for you to knock at the door of the citadel of the oldest of
his Majesty’s judges, and to put questions that he cannot answer. You
forced him to say to himself, ‘Tell me, Joseph Brudenell, what law you
are obeying when you take your seat on these cushions, and you endeavor
to fulfil the functions of the office to which you have allowed
yourself to be called?’
“When, Mr. Northcote, in the height of your conviction you dared
to swear in your own jury, you made every member of it actual and
visible to me. You may have been uttering a profounder truth than
you knew--which is one of the many prerogatives of genius--when you
asserted that every one of those fearful and unhappy tradesmen had that
jury within him in the jury-box. As you pointed out, we are the heirs
of all the ages: the prisoner and the policeman, the advocate and the
judge. And he whom you caused this jury of yours to elect as their
foreman showed to me how responsible and authentic that jury was. By
the magic, Mr. Northcote, in which you deal, you not only evoked that
foreman in the spirit, but by some miracle you clothed him in flesh.
That was a terrible achievement. It was the first occasion that the
redeemer of mankind was seen to be in the occupation of a seat at the
court of Old Bailey.
“I have heard all the great advocates of my time. I was present on that
memorable occasion when Selwyn Anstruther made his appeal on behalf of
Smith. Anstruther spoke during the whole of three days; as an orator he
would, with equal opportunities, have been the peer of Gladstone and
John Bright. Anstruther’s tradition is such--he had killed himself with
overwork by the time he was forty--that he has become almost a myth.
But even this speech of his to which I allude, many phrases of which I
can recall after all these years, does not compare forensically with
this appeal of yours, to which we had the awful privilege of listening
this afternoon.
“Nature, Mr. Northcote, as I have said, has in your case been almost
wantonly lavish of her gifts. Like one who was compounded of pure
wisdom, you appear to have sprung from Jupiter’s forehead completely
armed. You have the voice and presence of the tribune; you add to the
power of the demagogue a cool, elastic, and a subtle brain. I know
not which to marvel at the more, your almost reckless courage, or
that wonderful self-discipline which bends a courser so fiery to your
lightest behest.
“You must bear with me in patience, Mr. Northcote, while I exhaust the
stock of my superlatives; you see you have carried an old advocate
away just as completely, nay, even more completely than you carried
those honest laymen. This afternoon you furnished an old warrior,
weary of the arena, with a few more of those priceless moments which
he had not dared to hope again to enjoy. For over and above all your
other qualities you have the divine gift which fuses every quality you
possess. You have that sympathetic imagination which is the gift of
heaven. It is a key which unlocks every bosom. The rich and the poor
must alike bow before it. Things and men, Nature herself, even the
universe itself, if you care to address your questions to it, can deny
to you none of their secrets. The foreman of your jury, the divine
mystic of the Galilean hills, was the man who was endowed with that
rare jewel beyond all others; and he, as we read, carried the multitude
from place to place and caused the sea to open that it might walk
across.”
The voice of the judge grew lower and lower. He had spoken very
rapidly, and under the impetus of an excitement almost painful in one
of his years. Northcote was entranced by the vivid energy of the old
man, and the tremulous emotion with which his words were charged.
It seemed to be uncanny that he should be sitting there to listen.
There was not a member of the bar who would have identified in the
transfigured zealot who was pouring forth such strange words the
personality of Bow-wow Brudenell, the irascible old blusterer who was
considered to be so unsympathetic and hard to please. There was not a
word, not a gesture by which the outer man who had become so “famous”
with the public could be recognized. This intense mental energy,
burning like a lamp behind the harsh creases in his face, seemed to
have refined him and rendered him beautiful. The grand passion which
Northcote had unmasked filled the young man with awe. What did his own
imperious qualities amount to in the presence of this simplicity? How
foolish, how divine it was! This old man, whom he had dubbed in his
arrogance the type of all mediocrity, shone forth with a lustre which
filled its beholder with shame.
The judge rose from his chair with an effort. Northcote also rose. The
old man seized his hand with a humble gesture which yet transcended a
parent’s tenderness.
“My dear boy,” he said in a whisper, “I did not call you here to listen
to this unbridled praise of your own gifts. But I felt that I must
speak all that was in my mind concerning you, because I love you--I
love you for what you are and for what you will be. All my life I have
had a passion for my profession, and I bring myself to speak these
words to you, because I feel that I hold within my grasp the newer,
the wiser, the grander generation which has sprung already from the
loins of us effete old warriors. You, my dear boy, I dare to prophesy,
will be its protagonist. There is not a prize which our profession
offers which is not already in your hand. One of these days you will
be called to its highest dignities. I foresee that you are likely to
become a dictator. The imperious will by which you are impelled invests
you with a power that soon or late will control the destinies of the
state. Therefore an old public servant ventures to speak to you as he
would speak to his own son were he living to hear his words.
“The material lures of your profession are powerful, but I entreat
you never to consider them. Be a strong and great advocate who will
take his stand only upon truth. In the infinity of your nature you
are fitted to walk alone in the strait places. The temptations which
will accost one of such powers will not be light ones, but if you can
acquire that reverence for your calling, that mediocrities like myself
have been endowed with throughout their days owing to the infinite
mercy of God, that calling has nothing to fear at your hands. It will
derive a new sanction from your genius. But, my dear boy, this is a
terrible gift which you possess. It is a two-edged sword, and if in a
moment of unwariness, such as has been known to visit the heroes of
which we read, one of its sharp edges should be turned against the
society in which you dwell, I beseech you to remember the other edge
will be turned against yourself. He who affirms this is a humble and
aged servitor of truth, and on that plea I beg you to forgive his
importunity.”
All this time the judge had been holding Northcote’s hand. Towards the
end his voice seemed to fail, but the pressure of his fingers increased.
“These are my last words,” he said feebly. “Guard your trust; take your
stand upon truth. May God keep you. One who is old will remember you in
his prayers.”
Almost involuntarily the judge placed his hands on the shoulders of the
young man and pressed his lips to his forehead.
For a moment Northcote seemed petrified with bewilderment. This strange
message from one who had run his course to one who was entering upon
his own atrophied the powers of speech and motion. At last he tore
his hand from the judge’s weakening grasp and ran from the room. In
his flight he seemed to detect the sound of something dull and heavy
falling behind him. Yet in the depths of his agitation and his shame he
did not stay to look back.
He was soon out in the dark streets. Their coldness and commotion,
their secrecy, and above all their freedom, were painfully welcome.
He had hardly been able to draw breath in that arena in which he had
fought his battle during so many dreadful hours. The old madness of
movement, the old insensate desire for liberty overcame him again, and
hungry and weary as he was he proceeded to tramp fiercely about the raw
winter night.
As he marched without aim hither and thither, up one street and down
another, he had no thought of the astonishing victory he had gained.
The words of the judge had overcome everything else. They dealt with
the future; his victory was already a part of the past. His pride
was so arbitrary that it appalled and humiliated him to reflect that
any man, that even an aged servitor of the truth, in the moment of
renunciation of the arduous labors that had oppressed him for so many
years, should have had the temerity to address words of such import to
him.
From one pair of eyes at least, his talents, which had at last wrested
recognition from a jealous, narrow, conventional world, had not been
able to hide the dangers with which they were girt. This aged judge had
pierced the secret. Those senile old eyes, alone of those in the court,
had seen the pitfalls which lay beneath his triumph.
He ought to have been overwhelmingly happy in this new perambulation of
the darkness. Yet the sense of humiliation was paramount. That strength
upon which all his life his extravagant hopes had been nourished had
proved to be even greater than he had known, but the under side of his
nature, to which he had given rein in order to grasp success, opened up
possibilities that were strange and awful. Truth and justice had had no
meaning for the terrible genie he had called to his aid. They had been
used as so many cards in a game. The judge was right: so grievous a
prostitution of a noble talent was a grave public danger. On the first
occasion it had been employed it had compassed a notable miscarriage of
justice.
Towards ten o’clock his wanderings carried him into Leicester Square.
He stayed his steps under the ghastly lights of a music hall and made
the discovery that he was faint with hunger and fatigue. With a dismal
sense of foreboding, which habit had rendered involuntary, he thrust
his hands in those pockets which on many occasions had had nothing
to yield. To his joy his search was rewarded with a sovereign and a
halfpenny. As he held the coins in his fingers a strange weary feeling
of gratitude stole over him. His days of bodily privation were at an
end. Not again would he know what it was to need food and yet lack
the wherewithal of obtaining it. After all he must not dare to deride
success. Its attributes were substantial, definite, necessary.
As he crossed the square in search of a restaurant of whose merits
he was aware, the large letters of the news-bill of an evening
journal caught his eye. Murder Trial--Sensational Speech for the
Defence--Scenes in Court--Verdict.
“Here, boy, a paper,” he said, holding out the halfpenny.
He clutched the paper greedily and crumpled it in his fist. It almost
seemed as he did so that fame itself was tangible, that it was
something that he could crumple in his hand.
In the eating-house he passed a glorious hour in which he devoured
beefsteak and potatoes and consumed a tankard of ale. He read the
account of the trial over and over again, although as rendered by the
evening journal it had no meaning for him. Even the bald _résumé_ of
bare facts seemed far otherwise than those as rendered to himself.
He could not recognize one of the incidents. Hardly a word was
intelligible to the chief actor in that crowded and pregnant drama.
“Mr. Norcutt for the defence spoke for two hours fifty-eight minutes.
His speech was full of Biblical quotations, and even the judge was
affected by it.”
When he turned out again into the streets a newsboy came running round
the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue. He was crying, “Here y’are hextry
special. Sensational murder trial--sudden deff of the judge.”
Northcote bought another newspaper and opened it under a lamp. In the
space reserved for the latest telegrams, these words were printed
upside down, “We regret to learn that Mr. Justice Brudenell expired
in his room shortly after the conclusion of the murder trial at the
Central Criminal Court this evening. The cause of death is believed to
be heart failure.”
XXXI
MEDIOCRITY VERSUS GENIUS
Northcote could confess no surprise. But it struck him with a sense
of drama, the thrill of the unexpected which underlies the impact of
the common, that he should not have discerned the end of this aged
man to be so near. The sounds he had heard as he rushed from the room
must have been caused by that venerable figure falling to the floor.
Sharply, however, as he felt the knife of reality in all its brutal
power, he yet refrained from speculating upon the scope of its present
operation. He was now tired out; his brain was heavy. He pushed on
straight to his attic, climbed the dark stairs, and in a little while
was curled under a blanket with a merciful sleep blotting out the
actual.
He was summoned peremptorily from oblivion by the noise made by the old
charwoman in drawing back the curtains which divided his garret into
two apartments.
“Quarter to eight, sir.”
“Ay, ay,” he muttered, stretching his limbs and brushing the sleep
from his eyes. His slumber had been that of abject weariness;
deep, dreamless, undisturbed. He jumped out of bed, slipped on a
dressing-gown that hung in rags, and felt himself to be once more the
complete and valiant man.
When he sat down to breakfast he sent out the old woman to procure
the morning journals. Throughout the operation of dressing, his mind,
inflamed with conquest as it was, was filled with thoughts of the
judge. In spite of its length, his career on the bench had only been a
qualified success; he had never lacked adverse criticism. In the eyes
of many he had never been quite strong enough for his position.
Upon the arrival of the newspapers, Northcote turned first to the
obituary notices, rather than to the accounts of the trial in which
his own personal triumph would be displayed. Following the custom of
bestowing even more indiscriminate eulogy upon mediocrity when it is
dead than it receives when it is living, the newspapers vied with
one another in descanting upon Sir Joseph Brudenell’s services to
the public, and his qualities of heart and mind. It brought immense
relief to Northcote that this was the case. He was in no mood to suffer
disparagement of that venerable figure.
The _Age_ had a leading article upon the trial, and it was soon
apparent to the advocate that its hostility towards himself was very
marked. It said: “We venture to think that a more singular speech was
never heard in a court of justice. It is not our province to advance
opinions which encroach upon the right of counsel to settle for
themselves what is proper and what is improper in the means they may
adopt to safeguard the interests of an accused person, particularly
in cases of this nature. But it does seem to us, and we believe this
view is shared by the majority of competent persons who were present
in court, that the course adopted by the counsel for the defence, if
it were to become general, would constitute a grave public danger.
Mr. Northcote is a young advocate, whose reputation is yet in the
making; and in yielding to the call of his ambition, he adopted a
means for the display of his forensic skill the propriety of which we
venture seriously to call in question. Had Mr. Justice Brudenell--whose
tragically sudden death (to which we refer on page 9) occurred within
an hour of the rising of the court--been in the complete enjoyment
of that mental and bodily vigor which during a period of twenty-five
years he had taught the public to look for in the performance of his
avocations, we are sure that, to use a mild term, such a travesty as
that with which Mr. Northcote assailed the ears of the jury would not
have been allowed to invade a British Court of Judicature. We are sure
it would have been stopped peremptorily at the outset. As it was, a
concatenation of unforeseen circumstances vouchsafed to the counsel for
the defence a license of which he availed himself to the full. And the
result we can only regard as lamentable.
“The youth and the limited experience of the counsel for the defence
are entitled to be urged on his behalf; while the physical condition
of the judge which resulted, almost immediately this extremely painful
case had concluded, in his tragically sudden death, removes from his
shoulders the least onus for what was allowed to take place. But
at the same time it is to be urged upon ambitious members of the
junior bar that yesterday’s precedent is not one to be followed with
impunity. Whatever the exigencies of the moment may dictate to young
counsel in course of a trial for a capital offence, public opinion
will not permit the introduction of the doctrines of Nietsche into a
British Court of Justice. The parody which was perpetrated yesterday
upon religion at the Central Criminal Court must have been peculiarly
repugnant to every reverently constituted mind, while its effect upon
the verdict can only be characterized as a total failure of justice.
Again the effect upon the advocate who permitted himself to indulge in
an occupation so perilous was demonstrated in a remarkable and dramatic
manner at the conclusion of his address. The reference he was led into
making, for which afterwards he was impelled to make an unreserved
apology, to the miscarriage of justice which occurred in the case of
the unfortunate man John Davis a year ago, a reference which took the
form of an impeachment of the learned judge himself, and of Mr. Weekes,
K. C., the senior counsel for the Crown, can only be characterized as a
gross breach of taste, and an equally gross disregard of those higher
tenets of humanity which Mr. Northcote in addressing the jury put to a
use so questionable.”
“Well done, old Blunderer,” said the recipient of this castigation,
his mouth full of buttered toast, and attempting the delicate feat
of propping against the teapot the instrument with which it had been
administered. “In the performance of your ‘daily avocations,’ my dear
old friend, you are to be admired. The ‘doctrines of Nietsche’ is
distinctly good. Whatever will happen to us in this country when you
can no longer be bought for threepence I am sure I don’t know.”
However, when the young man had finished his breakfast, and he had
read the article again, he did not view it with quite the same air of
detachment with which he had contemplated it at first. By nature he
was immensely impatient of criticism. He accepted his own superiority
to all the rest of the world without question, but like an arbitrary
despot, he could not suffer the power of which he felt so secure to
suffer misinterpretation, or the motives that impelled it to be called
in question. His pride, after all, was of a ferocious and aggressive
kind. The old judge’s appeal had humiliated him bitterly. This
newspaper article filled him with the fury that it would have filled
Voltaire.
“I see what it is,” he said, filling his pipe. “They are all in the
ring, and they are afraid a rank outsider is going to break it. And so
he shall!”
He finished with a volley of oaths.
The next moment tears had sprung to his eyes. Tears of chagrin, rage,
disgust, of resentment against himself. How dare he be so arrogant
when the words of the honest old man, spoken while the hand of death
was upon him, were still in his ears. Mediocrity had its function, its
reason to be. Until he had grasped that elementary truth he could never
emerge, clad in valor and completeness, upon that high platform which
nature had designed him to occupy. “Cad” Northcote had been the name
bestowed upon him at school by his humbler but honester fellows: the
same term of opprobrium had now been applied to him in a more public
manner.
It was unworthy that he should ascribe the bitter antagonism he had
raised against himself to the eternal feud of mediocrity versus
genius. That fine gentleman, the old judge, was incapable of bearing
false testimony. Outface it as he might, the flaw was in himself. It
had been there from the beginning. The genie in which his intellectual
pride was centred was the seat of the canker. Every time he employed
it he must be aware of his fatal gift. It was a sinister talisman, or,
in the words of the judge, a two-edged sword. Better a thousand times
not to be distinguished from the mediocrity he was never weary of
despising, than to be at the mercy of a genius that would compass his
destruction.
He took up another newspaper, and turned his attention to an article
entitled: “‘Bow-wow’ Brudenell, by an Old Friend.” In the course of
a column of appreciation it said: “Public life is the poorer to-day
by a memorable figure. Mr. Justice Brudenell had achieved an odd sort
of fame. It rested upon his idiosyncrasies upon the bench; upon the
curious, irascible, barking delivery he affected, which earned him
the name by which he was always spoken of in the circles in which he
moved. In the judgment of his profession he was hardly considered
to be a ‘strong’ judge, nor was he widely popular; yet although he
had detractors, he was always listened to with respect. His queer
little tricks of manner and his somewhat formidable aspect created an
impression in the public mind which cannot be said to have been wholly
in his favor. Yet none could have told from his demeanor on the bench
what the man was at heart. It would require the pen of a Charles Lamb
to limn him in his quiddity. To his private friends he was a perpetual
delight and stimulus; he stood for all that was worthiest in the human
character. He kept a too fearful conscience ever to be truly eminent in
public life, but no kinder, humbler, humaner gentleman ever walked the
earth than Joseph Brudenell.
“It is to be feared that the closing days of this good man’s life
were darkened by tragedy. The present writer was sitting with him in
the smoking-room of a club, when a fellow member, an occupant of the
Episcopal bench, carried over to him the evening paper containing the
confession of the man Burcell in whose stead John Davis had suffered
the extreme penalty a few days before. It would engage the pen of a
dramatist to portray the self-righteousness of the bishop and the
horror and bewilderment of the judge. ‘It has overtaken me at last,’
said the old judge, covering his eyes as though he had been poor
blind Œdipus. ‘This is the shadow that has darkened my life during
twenty-five years.’
“His distress will never be forgotten by those who witnessed it. From
that hour he was never the same. The tragic suddenness of his end was
not unforeseen by those who knew him best. Yet to the last he was the
same gentle, courteous compound of scholarship and refinement. In no
sense could he ever have been looked upon as brilliant. No epigrams, no
pregnant sayings, no flashes of wit are recorded of him; upon the bench
he was too much in earnest even to be genial. Every cause that came
before him appeared to engage the very blood of his veins and the whole
life of his intellect. It was a ruthless kind of irony that fixed upon
such shoulders as these the responsibility for as grave a miscarriage
as ever darkened the annals of English justice.
“In his private life he had known great sorrows. His only son was
drowned twenty years ago while a freshman at Oxford. Had he lived,
he was destined for that profession for which his father had so
profound a reverence. Nothing could have been more exquisite than
Joseph Brudenell’s childlike devotion to his calling, yet he was
always haunted by the consciousness that the ideals he had set up were
beyond his grasp. This son was to have been the truer, the wiser,
the stronger, the more penetrating man; yet it was never to be. The
accident that deprived him of this enlarged and completer edition of
himself added something to his latter years that his faithful circle of
old friends found wistful and affecting. And only last week he lost the
devoted daughter who had been the stay of his declining years.
“It is safe to say that no man was ever called to the bar who was more
honestly beloved by all who understood the secret workings of his mind
than was Joseph Brudenell. Subtle it was not, it was not agile, and it
was not profound; indeed the possession of that simple and unsagacious
implement conferred only one claim to preëminence. It is as a great and
honest gentleman that Joseph Brudenell will be called to the Valhalla
of his gods. He was past master in one art only: the art which embraces
the amenities of life. Unsympathetic critics he has had in his public
capacity. He has been called a pedant, a weakling, one deficient in
insight; even his scholarship, which was so laboriously honorable, has
not escaped inquiry; but the void left by that massive and ungainly
form can never be filled. In this time, at least, his like will not
be seen. A rare jewel has been resolved to its element; earth is the
poorer by an English gentleman.”
These words served to heighten Northcote’s indignation against himself.
The stab he had directed at the judge increased in infamy. Already it
seemed as if he had paid an exorbitant price for his success. However,
in the midst of his anguish and perplexity, he heard feet on his
staircase. There came a knock to his door. It was the solicitor.
“Well, my boy,” said Mr. Whitcomb, shaking his hand affectionately, “do
you see you have killed the judge?”
“Yes,” said Northcote, “but I saved the life of your client.”
XXXII
MEDIOCRITY ASPIRING TO VIRTUE
The advocate handed the _Age_ to the solicitor.
“You may have seen it,” he said. “I am honored with a leading article.”
“I have read it. It means your removal from the top story to the
basement.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It ensures that your professional emoluments will not be less than two
thousand a year.”
“That would be very well had I not arrived at the conclusion that the
game is not worth the candle. The penalties are too great.”
“Why consider them, dear boy? Why not accept the gifts of the gods in a
thankful and contrite spirit?”
“You would have me drink the nectar that they offer although they hand
it in a poisoned cup?”
“You are a queer fellow. You accept starvation with a dignified
humility, but the instant you touch success--and such a success!--you
make a face.”
“Such a success--there you have it all!”
“My dear fellow, whoever in this world got off the mark with such a
flying start? You have awoke this morning to find yourself famous.”
“Bah! I am poisoned; I have got my death!”
“Within five years, if you keep your head, you will be making a
princely income.”
“I know it.”
“And two days ago you could not afford to pay for a fire in the middle
of winter.”
“You are perfectly right.”
“Two days ago you could not fill your belly when you were hungry.”
“I shall never taste hunger again--that honest, bitter, medicinal
hunger that merges the mind in the soul. I shall never taste again that
ascetic clarity which makes the heart supple and arms the brain.”
“You talk like a Methodist.”
“My father was a country preacher.”
“I expect this is the swing of the pendulum. You must have undergone
great mental excitement in making your effort--and what an effort it
was! And now the clock has swung right back; you are below par: you
have got the blues.”
“I hate myself; I hate my cursed profession.”
“Yes, the mercury has fallen. The higher the rise the greater the drop.
But make an effort to be rational. Look at this.”
The solicitor handed the advocate a brief. It was marked with a
retaining fee of a hundred guineas.
“Two days ago that was beyond the dreams of your avarice. And now it
is a mere forerunner of the beginning. You will be compelled to change
your quarters and keep a clerk.”
“You remind me of the devil--the real authentic mediæval
Mephistopheles,” said Northcote, with his fingers trembling upon the
tape. “You are in the pay of the genie, you smug-hearted materialist.”
“Ah, the genie again! I am afraid to confess that that genie of yours
gave me a very bad quarter of an hour,” cried Mr. Whitcomb, laughing
heartily at the recollection. “I was never in such a panic in my life.
Had it not been the last moment, and had it not been impossible to get
any one else, you would never have held that brief. You and your genie
frightened me to death. I woke up in a cold sweat in the middle of the
night, wondering what would happen if you brought the infernal thing
into court.”
“Well, I did bring it into court, did I not?”
“You would never have got your verdict without it.”
“Yet you were afraid?”
“That was before I knew what it was. But as soon as you got up to talk
to the jury, and you could have heard a pin drop over the court, I gave
in.”
“That is true enough,” said Northcote, in the hollow tone which had
discomposed the solicitor at the restaurant, “but once having summoned
this thing to my aid, once having taken it into court with me, once,
as you might say, having let it taste blood in the arena, I shall
be compelled to have it with me every time. It is already out of my
control.”
“So much the better for you and for those who command your services.
This genie of yours will one day be worth thirty thousand a year in
cool coin of the realm. If you will deign to take the advice of one who
is perfectly willing to be a father to you, I say to you, don’t overdo
it. Employ as many devils as you please,--five, ten, or a hundred
and ten,--but don’t be tempted into taking enough work to break down
your nervous system. Keep that intact and you are predestined for the
Woolsack.”
“I feel it; and yet, do you know, Whitcomb, it hangs in the balance
whether I ever walk into court any more.”
“If you think so, it is little you know of your nature. What you call
the genie will have the last word to say on that subject.”
“Like every other mud-colored materialist your intelligence is
admirably lucid as far as it goes.”
“Compliments are flying. But is it not the faculty of youth to despise
the common sense to which one day it is only too glad to return?”
“I would spew mediocrity out of my mouth,” said Northcote, suddenly
overmastered by arrogance.
“Common sense and mediocrity are not quite the same; but you can take
it from me, dear boy, that genius has always to learn sooner or later
that mediocrity has its uses.”
The solicitor was amazed to see tears spring to the eyes of the
advocate.
“I have learnt that already,” he said huskily; “I learnt it last night
after the rising of the court.”
“I presume you are referring to poor old Bow-wow, the type of all
mediocrity.”
“Yes, to the poor dear old blunderer who, after the manner of his kind,
consecrated his life to a public display of his incapacity. Yet I weep
for Adonais, he is dead!”
“I say, my boy,” said the solicitor, amazed by the depth of emotion
that was revealed in the face of the young man, “you did not suppose
for one moment that I was in earnest when I said you had killed him?”
“You struck so near to the truth,” said the young man, “that you made
me bleed.”
“Well, this is a consummate kind of folly. You must feed well; build
yourself up; go away for Christmas; take a rest. Future greatness
cannot be allowed to play ducks and drakes with its chances.”
“I swear to you, Whitcomb, the weight of a feather would make me throw
up the bar.”
“Impossible! That voice, that presence, that imagination, that
extraordinary dynamic quality--in other words, your genie, leaves you
no choice.”
“I swear to you, Whitcomb, if it were not for my countrified old
mother, who has worked her fingers to the bone to provide an education
for me, I would never go into court any more.”
“Ah, well, I shall continue to send you briefs all the same. I cannot
recall another man who has got a start such as yours, and I shall be
astounded if through a whim you show yourself unworthy of your good
fortune. Here is a check for ‘the monkey’ you won of me at lunch
yesterday.”
“Five hundred pounds! I don’t remember anything of the circumstances.”
“I laid five hundred to fifty against your getting a verdict.”
“When?”
“At lunch yesterday.”
“You must not take any notice of that. I was very excited. I am afraid
I was not myself.”
“Why afraid? The money is yours.”
“I don’t want it; I won’t have it.”
Mr. Whitcomb had thrust the check in the hands of the advocate, who
tore it up immediately.
“Well,” said the solicitor, “I should say at the present time you have
undeniable claims to be considered the most remarkable man in London. I
can’t fathom what has come over you.”
“I was thrown off my balance a little yesterday,” said Northcote
hoarsely.
“Yesterday, my friend, you were a great man; to-day, you are a prig.”
“You are right. Yesterday, a great man stooping to foulness; to-day, a
mediocrity aspiring to virtue.”
“Well, my dear boy,” said the solicitor earnestly, “my last words
are these. Be guided by your talent. Greatness is written all over
you; it is in your eyes; it proceeds out of your mouth. Play up
to your destiny, like a wise fellow, and leave hymns and sermons
and disquisitions upon morality to the official purveyors of those
condiments.”
“You are the devil!”
“Well, Faust, dear old boy, if it come to that, it does amuse me
sometimes to think that I have not dabbled in human nature in divers
forms during the last twenty years without getting to know a little
about it. And I put it to you, do you suppose I took the trouble--I,
one of the most sagacious criminal lawyers in London--to climb up
to this attic without my dinner at ten o’clock of a December night,
without having taken your size in hats and your chest measurement?”
“I say, you are the devil.”
“Your estimate is too liberal. There is nothing of his Satanic Majesty
about me; but, all the same, I am always perfectly willing to employ
him. I am always prepared to pay him liberally to fight these causes
of mine, wherever and whenever he is to be found. What you call the
genie is, after all, a euphemism for the devil, although under the
more chaste patronymic I failed at first to recognize that elderly
swaggerer.”
“Well, yes, you are shrewd. But you leave a bad taste in the mouth.”
“Everything does that this morning. But I am not surprised that you are
feeling cheap. The human frame has to pay for such colossal efforts.
In the meantime, you have no need to worry about anything. The mercury
will rise again; things will all come right; and you will attain an
eminence that few could occupy. In the meantime, divert yourself with
these, and mention your own time for the consultation.”
Leaving two briefs, one of which was marked with the sum to which he
had previously referred, Mr. Whitcomb descended the stairs, much to the
relief of the advocate.
XXXIII
THE HIGHWAY OF THE MANY
Success had spread out both hands to Northcote, but the emotion she
had aroused in him was not one of gratitude. He had spent many days
of suffering, of mental darkness, during the years of his obscurity,
but none had engulfed him in such humiliation as this upon which he
had entered now. He had tasted coldness and hunger; he had known the
stings of rage and despair; but these sensations appeared salutary in
comparison with a hopelessness such as this.
How could he cherish an illusion in the matter, he who knew so much?
He had made his choice deliberately under the spur of need; he had
foreseen its enormous penalties; he had foreseen the degradation that
was implied in the honors and emoluments that would accrue from its
exercise. Yet, now these things had come upon him, he smote his breast
and lifted up his voice in woe. Less than a week ago, in the freedom
of his penury, in the license of his failure, he had had the power to
spurn these lures. Yet in almost the next breath he had yielded to the
call of his ambition; and in his first walk upon the perilous path he
had elected to choose, he had shown an ease and lightness of motion
that were audacious, astonishing.
What was there to deplore? His triumph had been so patent as to win
the applause of the world. For the first time in his life money was
in his pocket. That woman of courage who had striven so heroically
for his welfare would meet with her reward. She would be enabled to
end her days at ease. In those somewhat unilluminated eyes Money had
always seemed to divide the place of honor with Duty. She would go to
her grave, this upright and courageous one, with a p an upon her lips,
because her son, her one talent, had in her old age been increased to
her tenfold. Those worn hands would need to toil no more.
After all, this success, which to an honest nature was so embittering,
had a curious virtue of its own if it could fulfil such an office.
And it was hardly for the like of himself to be troubled with these
intimations. Morality, like other privileges, was for those who could
afford to enjoy it; it was for those who had a snug little annuity in
the funds. Those who had shivered in penury, who had known the look of
want, had purchased their right to walk unfearingly by the light of
their necessity. And he had only parted with his dreams after all; he
had only transmuted airy nothings into explicit gold of the state. Let
the visionary who nourished his heart upon the unattainable despise
Crœsus as before, but let the well-fed and valiant materialist render
due homage to that lusty and pagan old fellow. You could not keep your
cake and eat it; you could not resign your ideals and yet hope to
inhabit your castle in Spain.
It always came back to the question of the Choice. Was it not a
sign-post that headed every path; did it not denote the convergence
and the parting of every road? It was his own will which had selected
the broad and muddy highway of the many, instead of the narrow and
precipitous mountain ascent which was only for the feet of the few.
In a choice of this kind there might be an affront to his nature, but
once having embraced it, it was weakness to repine. He must shed this
ferocious arrogance of his. He was now of the common herd, no longer of
the sacred few.
The strangeness of his position held his thoughts all day. That which
he had purchased had been obtained at a cost beyond rubies; it was
not worth one-half he had paid for it, but as he could never recover
his outlay he was bound to go on. It remained for him now to play the
part of the cynic and philosopher. It was not the highest style of the
hypersensitive man on the defensive, but the patchwork target would
have to serve until he found the cunning to provide himself with a more
efficient cover for his wounds. Yet when all was said the shaft had
sunk to a cruel depth in that quivering nature. Heart and mind were
lacerated.
At the table at the aerated breadshop at which he took his lunch, two
middle-aged clerks from a city counting-house, musty, cowed, and solemn
men, were discussing the trial wherein the morning journals with their
unerring instinct had discovered the element of sensation.
“----so she got off?”
“Yes, they brought in a verdict of not guilty. My father-in-law was on
the jury. He says it was her lawyer’s speech that saved her. He says
there wasn’t a dry eye in the court, and the poor old judge cried just
like a child.”
“No!”
“Yes! He says he never heard a speech like that before in his life, and
he says if he lives to be a hundred years old he will never forget it.”
“Who was her lawyer? Sir Somebody, K. C., M. P.?”
“My father-in-law says not. He says he was quite a young chap without
any reputation. But such a voice--he says it just went through you and
made you shiver.”
“Something like Irving?”
“My father-in-law says he must have been acting, yet there didn’t seem
to be a bit of the actor about him. That’s where he was so wonderful;
struck no attitudes; never even raised his voice. Every word seemed to
come straight out of him, as though he just couldn’t help it, and yet
at first all the jury thought she was a thorough bad one.”
“So she was, I expect.”
“I dare say; but after what her lawyer had said they never thought
of bringing in a verdict of guilty. My father-in-law says he was a
wonderfully read young fellow, and he must have known the Bible almost
by heart from the way in which he used it in his speech. And such an
eye as he had too! My father-in-law says it looked like that of an
eagle; and when the jury retired to consider the verdict the foreman,
who had got a weak heart, had to have brandy or he would have fainted
dead away.”
“It was very strange that the judge should have died suddenly.”
“Excitement killed him, they do say.”
“You would think that a judge would be so used to that sort of thing
that it wouldn’t affect him.”
“Well, my father-in-law has been many times on the common jury, but he
says this young lawyer beat all he had ever heard. He says it doesn’t
matter how clever the ordinary lawyer may be, you can always tell when
he’s putting it on. But this young chap was so quiet and solemn that he
simply made you shiver.”
“Just a trick.”
“They all knew that, yet he made them so that they couldn’t help
their feelings. My father-in-law says as soon as they retired to the
jury-room to find their verdict, old Bill Oaks--you know the old
prize-fighter what keeps the Blue Swan at Hackney--who was on the jury,
he just spat in the corner and wiped his eyes on his sleeve, and he
says, ‘Well, mateys, I’d reckon we’d ’ang no more women.’”
“Bill Oaks said that?”
“Those were his words. And it just shows the power that young chap must
have had to make a common fellow like old Bill Oaks say a thing like
that.”
“Some men are born lucky. With a mind of that sort he will have made
a fortune in no time. In a year or so he will be keeping his yacht
and driving his motor-car. It is a funny world when you come to think
about it. Here is a chap like me, been a clerk in the Providential for
thirty-five years. My hours are nine-thirty till five; I have never
once been late, nor had a day off for illness; and my salary per week
is thirty-eight and a tizzey, with a pound a week pension at sixty
provided I keep up my payments to the fund. I have never done a wrong
action as far as I know; I go to church once on Sunday; I teach in
the Sunday school; I give five shillings to the poor every Christmas;
I have brought up five children well and decently; I always acted the
part of the gentleman to my wife while she was alive, and now she is
dead I always keep fresh flowers on her grave summer and winter; I’ve
paid my rates and taxes regular; the landlord has never had to ask me
twice for the rent; and what’s it all amount to? Why, I leave off just
where I began. Yet I consider myself a cut above this young man, with
all his gifts, who will make a fortune by saving murderers from the
gallows.”
The speaker, a sallow, stunted little fellow, uttered his words in a
quiet, yet dogged staccato, as though he were issuing a challenge which
he knew could not be taken up. His sharp, quaint cockney speech was
almost musical in its incisive energy.
“Happiness don’t depend on money,” said his friend.
“You have got to have money, though, before you can believe it.”
Northcote overheard this conversation while he munched a sandwich. It
afforded him the keenest interest. He moved out into the eager crowd
which thronged the Strand. Yet again his old passion for perambulating
the streets came upon him. There was a sense of adventure in dodging
the traffic at a breakneck pace, and in elbowing his way through the
press. Until the evening he wandered about in the mud and the December
mists. He was sick and weary; the conflict within him gave him no rest;
yet there was a fierce joy to be gained in mingling with the virile,
many-sided life that was about him everywhere.
Thoroughly tired out at last, he took a frugal dinner at a restaurant,
and accompanied it with a bottle of inexpensive wine. He lingered
over his meal and made an attempt to read an evening paper, but found
he could not do so. The vortex in which his nature had been plunged
absorbed the whole of his thoughts.
XXXIV
MAGDALENE OR DELILAH
About nine he returned to his lodging. He lit the lamp, drew the
curtains across the window, and built up a good fire. He set himself to
do three hours’ reading before he turned into bed. However, that power
of will it was his wont to exert to its fullest capacity was for once
insubordinate. There were not two consecutive sentences upon any of the
pages which he tried that displayed a meaning. He had never known this
impotence before.
In the midst of these futile attempts to fix his mind on the task
before it, he thought he heard the creaking of the stairs. He listened
acutely. Late as was the hour, the clerk of some attorney might be
bringing him more briefs. A moment later his door was softly tried and
opened as softly as some one entered the room.
To the profound astonishment of the young man he saw that it was the
figure of a woman. She was tall and pale and clad sombrely in close
black draperies. Her entrance was somewhat stealthy, yet it had neither
reluctance nor timidity. Unhesitatingly she approached the chair in
which the advocate sat with a book on his knee. He rose to greet her
with an air of bewilderment.
“I knew you were a great student,” said his visitor in a low voice,
letting two large and dark eyes fall upon the page of the book.
“I beg your pardon,” said Northcote, “I am afraid I don’t know you.”
“You do not know me?” said his visitor in a tone that entered his
blood. “I will give you a moment to think.”
Northcote seemed to recoil with a half-born pang of recollection which
refused to take shape.
“I have not the faintest knowledge of having met you before,” he said,
feeling how vain was the effort to fix his thought.
“Think,” said his visitor.
“It is in vain.”
“I should not have expected you to have so short a memory,” said the
woman. “You saw me yesterday and you saw me the day before that.”
“I do not recognize you at all,” said Northcote faintly.
“Should I have remembered that you were a busy man who was unable to
spare a thought outside of his profession?”
There was something curiously stealthy in the fall of the voice which
startled the advocate.
“That is a voice I seem to recall,” he said, with an air almost of
distress.
“A voice you seem to recall,” said his visitor, with a sombre laughter
which made his heart beat violently. “How strange it is that you
should recall it! You only heard it once, and that was in the stifling
darkness of a prison!”
Northcote gave a cry of stupefaction.
“Impossible, impossible!” he said weakly. “You--you cannot be the woman
Emma Harrison!”
“Emma Murray, alias Warden, alias Harrison,” said his visitor, whose
tone of gentleness was now charged with deliberation.
“Then how and why do you dare to come here?” cried Northcote.
“I bring you my thanks,” she said, with a sudden consummate transition
to humility. “I bring the gratitude of an outcast to him who has
delivered her from a deeper shame than any she has suffered.”
At first the bewilderment of the advocate would not yield; the
revelation of the last creature in the world he looked to see in his
attic had seemed to arrest his nature. But hardly had she rendered him
her homage with somewhat of the sombre dignity of one who seeks by
suffering to efface her stains, than the old devouring curiosity of two
evenings previously returned to him. In the prison he had not seen her
face; in the dock he had not permitted his eyes once to stray towards
her. She was engraved in the tablets of his imagination as a foul
and sordid creature, dead to feeling, yet susceptible of the loss of
freedom, horrified by the too-definite thought of a barbarous doom; yet
over and above everything a denizen of the gutter, wretched, stupid,
and unclean. It was amazing to see her stand before him in this frank
guise.
Peering at her through the subdued flames of the fire and the lamp, he
saw that she had contrived to inhabit her stains in a kind of chastity.
It was a trick of her calling, perhaps; yet if trick it was, it was
subtle, consummate, and complete. As far as his eyes could pierce the
texture of her secrecy, her face was that of a woman of forty. It
was pale and unembellished; the cheeks were wan; the features, but
slightly defaced, were possessed of a certain original fineness of
line, like the handiwork of some little known craftsman who had been
touched by genius. There were the remains of a not inconsiderable
splendor strewn about her, particularly in her dark, enfolding, and
luminous eyes. Suffering was everywhere visible, even in the hair,
whose natural sallow hue was peeping through its dye. In form she was
large, but not massive; ample, flowing in contour, with the powerful,
yet graceful, moulding of a panther.
“Had you not expected something different?” she said, standing up
before a scrutiny he did not disguise, and speaking with a mournfulness
that seemed to challenge him.
“You have guessed my thoughts,” said Northcote, without lowering his
gaze.
“I was not always as I was,” she said, letting each syllable fall
passionless. “I sank deeply, but I am risen again. I am praying that
with the aid of one I may scale the heights. I even hope to reach that
which in the beginning was above my stature.”
“I am glad to hear it,” Northcote muttered.
“That is cruel,” said his visitor with a shiver. “Such a phrase from
your mouth wounds me like a sword.”
“I am afraid I don’t understand,” said Northcote, almost with
indifference.
“This is not him whom I came to see,” said the woman. “This is not
him who saved my base body; him who, if he will, may redeem my whole
nature.”
“I?” cried the incredulous young advocate.
“You, my deliverer!”
“I--I don’t think I like you; I think you had better go away,” said the
young man, with a brutality of which he was unconscious.
The woman replied to this speech by sinking slowly to her knees. She
lifted the noble line of her chin, which intense suffering had seemed
to refine, up towards him with an ineffable gesture of appeal. It
almost vouchsafed to him a sense of his own degradation.
“I see you as the one whose noble strength will heal me,” she said,
prostrating herself more completely, and clasping her arms about his
ankles.
“Better rise, better leave me,” said Northcote, bewildered by a sense
of pity for his own impotence.
“You are striking me again,” said the woman with a shudder that even to
Northcote seemed terrible, “but every blow you give may help to make me
whole.”
“What can heal a murderess, a prostitute?” he asked, with a candor of
selection that was intended to lacerate.
“You. You who brought me out of prison--you who delivered me from a
shame to which even I dared not yield.”
“Get up,” said Northcote, filled with an unaccountable pang. “Sit
there, and try to compose yourself a little.”
With an indescribable impulse, which he had no means of fathoming, he
raised the trembling, shuddering form by the shoulders, and let it into
the chair nearest the fire. The act was wholly without premeditation,
but there was nothing in it that partook of the uncouth harshness of
his voice. A few scalding drops crept out of her eyes on to his hands,
and when he lifted her the heat of her body communicated itself to the
tips of his fingers.
“Oh, why do you not speak to me with the voice with which you terrified
my judges?” she moaned.
“I cannot make up my mind about you,” said Northcote calmly. “I do not
know whether you are the Magdalene, or whether you are Delilah.”
“When you pleaded for my life before my judges yesterday in the court,
I looked upon you as Jesus,” said the woman, pressing the tips of her
fingers against the balls of her eyes.
“At that hour I felt myself to be no less. And I believe there were
those among my hearers who had that hallucination too.”
“Would _he_ have cut me into pieces when I crept to him for sanctuary?”
The young man pressed his hands to his sides. An ineffable anguish had
pierced him.
“No man ever felt less like that Nazarene than do I this day,” he
cried, with a face that was transfigured with terror. “A holocaust has
taken place in my nature. I know that I shall never take my stand with
the gods any more. Henceforward I am filled with roughness, brutality,
and rage; I hate myself, I hate my species.”
“Wherefore, O my prince!”
“Am I not fallen deeper than her I redeemed from her last ignominy?
Have I not prostituted a supreme talent; have I not poisoned the wells
of truth?”
“Can this be he who preached the Sermon upon the Mount? Can this be he
who said to the woman taken in adultery, ‘Daughter, go thy ways, and
sin no more’?”
Already the roughness of the advocate was melted into blood and tears.
His callous rage had yielded before the figure of the Magdalene. This
nondescript animal he had picked out of a sewer had proved to be a
woman who had bled for abasement, and who strove for reinstatement by
bleeding for it again.
“I have a curiosity about your history,” said Northcote, with a gaze
that devoured her. “You see you are pictured in my imagination as the
denizen of a slum.”
“I entered upon life,” said the woman, yielding to the domination of
his eyes, “as the eldest daughter of an artist whose existence was a
misery. He was a painter of masterpieces that no one would buy. He
had not been in his grave a year when they began to realize sums that
during his life would have appeared to him as fabulous. His two girls,
who comprised his family, never got the benefit of the recognition that
had been denied to their maker; but the dealers in pictures, who had
begrudged him so much as oils and canvas, grew rich by trading upon a
great name.
“My childhood was bitter, cruel, and demoralizing. Art for the sake
of art was the doctrine of my poor father, and in pursuing it he took
to drink. That honest and virtuous world which I have never been
allowed to enter, viewed him afar off as an outcast, as an idle and
dissolute vagabond, as a worthless citizen, whose nature was reflected
in his calling. Perhaps he was all this; perhaps he was more. Yet he
would shut himself up in a little back parlor in the squalid little
house in which we lived, and there he would work in a frenzy for days
together. He would emerge with his nerves in rags, his skin pale, his
eyes bloodshot, his linen foul, his clothes and person in disorder, yet
under his arm was a new masterpiece, twelve inches by sixteen, which
he would carry round to a dealer, who would bully and browbeat him,
and screw him down to the last shilling, which he already owed for the
rent. He would return home worn out in mind and body by his labors;
and for weeks he was unable to bear the sight of a brush or a skin of
paint. It was then he would seek to assuage his morbid irritation with
the aid of drink. ‘They will place a tablet over this hovel when I am
dead,’ he would say, ‘but while I am alive the rope which is needed to
hang me outbuys the worth of this tattered carcass.’
“My poor father, rare artist as he was, was right in this estimate of
himself. As a man, as a father, as a citizen, I cannot find a word
to say for him. He never brought a moment of happiness to either of
his girls. He dwelt in a world of his own; a beautiful and enchanted
world, the Promised Land of his art. He was a man of strange ambition;
of an ambition that had something ferocious in it; of an ambition
that was unfitted to cope with the sordid and material aims, by whose
aid persons of not one-tenth part of his quality achieved wealth,
respectability, power, and the fame of the passing hour. There was a
thread of noble austerity in my poor father’s genius, which remained
in it, like a vein of gold embedded in the mud of a polluted river,
throughout the whole time of his degradation and his ruin. His pride
seemed to grow more scornful with each year that witnessed more
completely the consummation of the darkening and overthrow of his
nature. I can remember his saying of a picture by the president of the
Academy, ‘I would rather have my flesh pecked by daws than prostitute
myself with such blasphemies as that;’ and at that time he stood upon
the verge of the grave of a drunken madman.
“I have said he was not a good citizen. Nor was he a good father to his
girls. He did not offer them physical violence; but it never occurred
to him to shield them from the indignities thrust upon them by want and
debt, and the despair which was sown in their hearts by the foulness
of every breath they drew. It would need my father’s own gift to limn
the picture of this beautiful talent living its appointed life in its
own way, yet indifferent to the most elementary duties of a righteous
parent and an honest citizen. As a young man he had been handsome,
with a fine, delicate, even an entrancing beauty; it was one of his
favorite sayings that the face of every true artist borrowed something
from heaven. I can only recall that face in its latter days, when it
was that of a petulant, arrogantly imperious, yet hideous and bloated
old creature, whose body and soul had been undermined; but from the
numerous pictures he painted of himself in his youth he had the divine
look of a poet.
“I have always considered it as both cruel and ironical of nature
that she should have bestowed upon the daughters of this drunkard and
madman, a little of his own originality--divinity, that taint of
genius, which brought him to the gutter. Look at me well, my deliverer,
and you will see what I mean. If you choose you may read my dreadful
secret in my eyes; in the shape of my lips; in the expanse of my
nostril. It is there still, although drink and the gutter have defaced
its bloom. Look at me, I say, and you will read my poor father’s
history. You will see in my face that ambition for which he sought
an anodyne in the drinking of drams. Sometimes when he grew tired of
painting himself he would have me to sit to him, and he would tell me
I was amazingly like him in his youth. He would also take my younger
sister as his model, but she did not interest him as much as I. ‘Polly
is destined for middle courses,’ he would say. ‘She is neither good
fowl, fish, nor flesh. One of these days she will effect a compromise,
and will be admitted to membership of the Great Trades Union.’
“‘As for thee, thou little slattern of a wench,’ he would say, running
his fingers through my hair, as he cuffed me affectionately, ‘I am
afraid to cast thy horoscope. I cannot predict what will become of
thee. Such a face as thine, thou dirty one, is born to a dreadful and
cynical hatred of things as they are. I can see a bitter scorn in thee
for those hare-hearted rogues who run the show. Like thy illustrious
father thou wilt live to be a thorn in the bowels of the canaille.’ I
was too young at that time to understand what was the meaning of my
illustrious parent, but often since, as I have sunk from one stratum
of my calling to another--there are degrees in this profession of
mine--have I recalled his words, and I have marvelled at his power of
seeing into the future.
“It was this father of ours, who before he deferred to the hand of
death, launched my sister and myself upon our respective careers in the
world. There was nothing hypocritical or pharisaical about this painter
and lyric poet. In his heart he never aspired to those principles which
he denounced with his lips. He sent our beauty to market as soon as it
had reached the age of puberty. He caused us to cease the scrubbing of
floors, lest it should roughen our hands. We were turned out upon the
streets with rouge on our cheeks; for it seemed to dawn upon him all at
once, in one of his Titanic flashes of inspiration, that there was a
rational way of obtaining money to buy the brandy for which he craved
during every hour of the day.
“After my father’s death, my younger sister grew into a charming,
accomplished, and beautiful woman. In the course of time she aspired to
the prizes of her trade. For several years she lived in refinement and
luxury with a judge of the High Court; and upon his demise was able to
claim the interest of a prosperous and clever criminal lawyer of the
name of Whitcomb.
“For many years now I have been dead to my sister’s knowledge, for
brutalized and sordid as I have grown, she was the one thing in the
world besides myself I have ever been able to pity. Even when I
descended below my poor father’s level, I could never find it in my
heart to ‘queer her pitch’ as we say in the gutter. She grew happy and
prosperous, and forgot her childhood and all the sores that festered
upon her name. Long ago she achieved the beatitude of that condition
of mental and moral nullity as predicted by her distinguished parent;
while I, as also predicted by that seer, was destined for sterner
things.
“In those lucid intervals when drugs and drams had left me the use of
my faculties, I sought to appease my cynicism by preying upon society.
I cannot reveal to you the cold rage I nourished against the cosmogony
that had been evolved by I know not how many generations of Pharisees.
The lode-star of my father’s ambition was art for the sake of art; that
of her he had nurtured upon it became crime for the sake of crime. Not
that I was wanton or petty in the workings of my creed; like my father,
I had usually some large aim in view. Yet again like my father, it was
not to myself that material prosperity accrued from the exercise of my
gift, but to the crimps and bullies by whom I was surrounded. It was
one of these, a base, cold-blooded, brutal, calculating ruffian, whom
so treacherously I did to death.
“I think I should enact that crime again; although when my guilt was
fastened upon me, and I was brought into prison, my fear of the gallows
was terrible. It was even stronger than my poor father’s dread of
criticism of his works. And yet as I lay under the shadow of a fate
that I did not know how to obtain the fortitude to accept, I amused
myself with a stroke of that wantonness which has sometimes delighted
my associates, and on occasions has even rendered them respectful. I
chose Mr. Whitcomb to undertake my defence. My poverty and evil repute
made him reluctant to accept the office, but like my father, I retain a
little of the artist’s power of seeing into the future. In my dreams
a voice whispered to me that he alone could ensure my safety. And to
my importunity he yielded. He yielded to that importunity which when I
have felt called upon to exert it, no man has ever been able to resist.
“What a sanctuary did this prison with its indescribable gloom offer
to me! All the days of my life had been cast with drunkards, madmen,
thieves, panders, and prostitutes. They had rendered the very breath
of heaven unclean. From one slum to another slum, from one gutter to
another gutter had my steps been traced. Will it astonish you that what
after all was a powerful nature had founded its grand passion upon an
irreconcilable hatred of its kind? Yet I was brought into prison, and
for the first time I tasted the breath of the living God.
“It was the horror of my doom, I think, giving to a life that had
never had any finite knowledge the certainty of the surgeon’s knife,
which had the power to touch me for the first time with the instinct
of beauty. I am sure I know not whether such was the case; but a pall
was lifted from my brain, a stealthy drug seemed to evaporate out of
my pores. There were times when I lay behind the bars of this prison
in which I could have cried aloud for gladness. The open sores in my
nature began to heal. All those dark mysteries, that had pressed me
down like a curse, were spread out before me luminous with meaning at
those hours when the dawn stole into my cell. Ere long I would lie
awake all night to watch for its appearance, for I knew that every time
it came to me I should gain in knowledge. I began to understand why
the sun was warm, why the birds sang, why the rain was wet. I began to
understand that to breathe, to move, to do, to think, to say ‘yes’ and
‘no,’ to wield despotic powers, to do battle with that underworld, that
reflex action, to which I had always been so ready to succumb, were all
acts of splendor and grace, all parts of a living idea that was a noble
solution of my perplexity.
“As I lay behind the bars of my prison I dreamed again and again
of some mighty and enfolding power that would take the whole of my
trembling irresolution in its arms and bend me into the mould of its
all-powerful will. I foresaw that some young god would emerge out of
those clouds about heaven, which for the first time in my life my
enraptured eyes had perceived, that he would break into my cell, that
he would make me the bride of that majestic loveliness which had caused
my sight to shed its first tears.
“When you came and spoke to me in darkness in the prison I knew who
you were. I knew that my dreams had yielded a reality; and that the
new birth which had unfolded itself in my nature had already found a
shape. From that hour of our meeting I thought no longer of my doom.
Now that such a one had consented to plead for me I knew that none
could do me hurt. Even the dock itself was powerless to touch me with
fear; although until you rose to speak I could neither hear nor see,
and I did not know where I was. But at the first sound of your voice I
sat entranced. I forgot that my wicked and degraded life was in your
hands; I forgot that a subject so foul was the source of your beautiful
words. I had never known before what the living voice of poetry was
like. I had never beheld those heights to which a great and noble
nature is able to aspire.
“As you spoke in the court and all my enemies hung upon your words, you
became a part of this miracle which had happened in myself. You were
the breathing embodiment of those august shapes which emerged in all
their order and beauty from behind the dark curtains of my nature. Hour
by hour, as I listened to the enchantments of your voice, it seemed to
steal over me that you, my deliverer, in the empire of your youth would
not only free me out of prison, but also you would deliver me out of
the bondage of my own soul. Such a tumult of joy came upon me then as
I could not believe could visit any human creature. The music of your
lips was not only the earnest of my dreams, it was the consolation of
my stains.”
When the woman had finished her story she rested her elbows on her
knees and her chin on her hands. Northcote, who had followed so
strange a recital with an interest which its attendant circumstances
even rendered intense, felt no longer able to withhold an ample meed
of pity. And how unfathomable it appeared to him that his defence,
which had been inspired at a time when all was darkness concerning
her, should yet be vindicated so completely by the facts of her life.
Such an intuition was an uncanny weapon. Who could wonder that this
buffeted, arrested, slowly maturing, late-developing creature should
see in its transactions the revelation of a supernatural power?
She was base and foul, yet she was suffused with the inspiration of
his strength--with a strength that had been used in ignorance, with
a sordid end in view. She must indeed engage his pity, she who had
prostrated herself before a chimera, she the thrice unhappy one who had
prostrated herself before an idol with feet of clay.
In looking at her now she had lost half of her strangeness, half of her
mystery. The foulness and ugliness that must recently have been stamped
upon her was now effaced. He could not doubt that since she had been
brought into prison her nature had been sanctified by a new birth. This
squalid criminal whom life had pressed out of the ranks had actually
gained eyes to see and ears to hear. Such a confession was not a
charlatan’s trick; this enkindling experience of the divine beauty was
a true renascence; a cleansing of a fœtid heart by the instinct of joy.
Faith in its childlike naïveté had appeared by some miracle amid that
expanse of corruption. It was as though a violet had raised its head in
a sewer.
Now that the young man had become the witness of the phenomenon that
he himself had wrought he was abashed, yet also he was sensible of
recompense. Not in vain had he suffered those creative pangs by which
so strange a thing was born. Fame and money were the only guerdons
he had sought to compensate his gifts in their highest walk; yet
that travail of the mind, that expenditure of spirit were to receive
emolument more fitting. This wanton, with her crimes and her sores upon
her, whom he had delivered from the last indignity her fellows could
devise, would issue from Gehenna healed and purified into the mellow
light of the afternoon.
Northcote had suffered extreme misgiving throughout that day, but
now as he stood to gaze upon her who was undergoing a resurrection
by the wand of his genius, he felt an exquisite joy in this special
and peculiar gift that heaven had vouchsafed to him. It had wrought
beyond his knowledge. This genie which had derided and tormented him
had achieved an intrinsic glory in allowing itself to be called to the
highest, the most disinterested of human offices. Here was the apologia
for the art he had practised. The black magic in which he had dealt,
the shame of which had stricken him, had actually wrought a divine
miracle. In the light of its sanction he need repine no more.
“It is truly wonderful,” the woman muttered softly as if to herself,
“to live forty years without knowledge and without curiosity, and then
to awake in a night to the seas of color, the harmonies of music that
make the enchantments of the life we have never perceived.”
“You are like a bird,” said the young man, “who has been born in a
cage, yet who contrives at last to break through its bars. It flies
into heaven, mounting rapturously into the void, and it sees the sun,
the tops of the trees, the green fields, the fleecy clouds, and it
tastes the bright air.”
“Yes; and hears for the first time the free and joyous songs of its
kind.”
They seemed to pause to look upon one another with violently beating
hearts: the man in his strength, in his insolent domination; the woman
in her weakness, in her pitiful need.
“Strange, is it not,” said the young advocate, speaking aloud his
thought involuntarily, “that I should not be acquainted with your
history when I made my appeal?”
“Would it have been made had you known all?”
“Indeed, yes,” said Northcote, with a fervor in which he tried to
rejoice; “your baseness is now less in my sight than it then was.”
The fierceness of the woman’s breathing arrested her speech.
“You force me to believe,” she cried in choking accents, “you show me
what faith is, you unfold the meaning of affirmation. Never again can
I be nourished by denial. You are, indeed, the Cloud-dweller who in my
vision I saw break forth out of the stars.”
The sword with which these words pierced the advocate was too sharp for
his fortitude. His wounds of that day had left him faint and spent with
the blood that had flowed from his veins. He grew frail and numb.
“You had better hear the truth,” he said, gasping. “It is the
death-knell of us both, but there is a limit to mortal endurance.
I would have you divorce the instrument from his works. Your
Cloud-dweller is not a god, but even as yourself a thing of dross and
clay.”
“I deny it, I deny it,” said the woman, in a voice of passion.
The man seemed to cower before the anguish of her eyes.
“You owe your deliverance to an unworthy instinct which rendered me
invulnerable.”
“Unworthy, my deliverer!”
“A thousand times unworthy, poor deluded one. It was not for the sake
of the abandoned wretch who was presented to my mind, that I bought her
life and freedom. It was not for her, it was not even for her cause
that I spent the last drop of my power.”
“It was not, then, a divine magnanimity that taught you to forget my
stains?”
“No.”
“It was not that you drew your sword for a marvellous gospel--for a
gospel that dazzled the poor outcast in the dock with its magnificence?”
“No, no.”
“Then why did your voice seem to wail like a flute? Why did you pluck
the back of your hands until the blood flowed from them? Why did you
conclude in a whisper so gentle that it could only be heard by the
spirit?”
“I was in a frenzy of avarice. I was fighting for myself.”
“No, no! Your words were inspired from heaven.”
“No, no! It was no more than the baleful power of the earth. I was
fighting for a roof over my head, regular meals, a reputation, material
needs.”
A thrill passed through the eyes of the woman. They seemed suddenly to
be blinded by a thousand black thoughts she had half-forgotten. She
sprang to her feet, possessed by an excitement that he who had made his
pitiful confession was afraid to plumb. She placed her hands on his
shoulders and peered into his face; and he did not shrink from contact
with her, for by some occult power, which was her own genie, her own
special and peculiar gift, he was disarmed.
“You have the voice, the bearing, of a god,” she said, quivering with
terror, “but your speech belongs to the underworld whence I have come.
Persist in it and we return to it together, walking hand in hand.”
The advocate strove feebly to escape from the demonic faculty which
already had been exerted upon him. She resisted him mournfully.
“You cannot put me off, my deliverer. Henceforward your ways are my
ways. I go with you to the bright fields of your native kingdom, or
I return to the horrors of my own. I beseech you to take me by the
hand and lead me along the golden paths to those mountain fastnesses
in which you were born, in which the sun shines forever. You know how
I have been dreaming that some saint and hero would lead me to them;
you must make my dreams come true again, my deliverer, as you did but
yesterday.”
“Oh, why did you come to me?” cried Northcote weakly, as he strove in
vain to free himself of the yoke that was already on his neck.
He seemed hardly to understand that he had to deal with a desperate
gambler who was staking all upon a final cast.
“Do not let me perish,” cried the woman. “Do not say this is an
illusion upon which I have built my miraculous faith. Do not tell me
that the gods walk the earth no more!”
The tragic distension of her countenance filled the young man with
horror, yet also with a sense of its weird poetry.
“You must not hurl me back into the abyss out of which I have crawled
with bare life,” she cried, seizing his hands with an astounding
passion. “You are the god who has breathed upon the poor outcast who
knows no heaven apart from your nobility; you cannot, you must not,
reject her.”
Again the wretched creature sank down upon her knees before him.
XXXV
DELILAH
As Northcote gazed upon her, despair beat him down like a flail. It was
not for him, man of genius as he was, to heal this outcast with his
touch. Only a perfect chastity could do that; and this was the jewel
with which he had parted two days before to save her from the gallows.
If he touched her now, it would be as the inhabitant of her own level.
She cried for the living god, yet now he was become a counterfeit of
arid clay. She had asked for bread, and he had only a stone to yield.
“You must go,” he said, and the words seemed to thicken as they fell
from his throat. “You must fly from me. I have nothing to offer you.”
The woman shuddered and clasped him by the ankles, but otherwise made
no sign that she had heard.
“My power is gone,” he said. “I am no longer the strong and valiant
one, but the poor outcast even as are you. Two days ago I flung my
birthright away.”
“Will you send me back to the charnel-house?” said the woman with a low
moan.
Northcote drew up his body rigidly, erectly.
“I have no choice,” were the words that were forced from between his
lips.
Vein by vein the creature before him was invaded by death. She crouched
lower and lower upon the ground until she was no more than a shapeless
and ignominious mass on the bare boards in front of the fire. Every
line of her body was merged and outspread into something amorphous,
without form. Her helplessness was too complete to arouse pity. Such a
flaccidity was greater than that of an infant, whose frame is too puny
even to allow it to crawl.
Northcote had no disgust. He had too sharp a sense of horror that the
power should be denied to him to succor such an invertebrate thing.
Presently, by an effort which seemed to shatter her flesh, the creature
was able to move. She rose from her knees, issuing from the state of
coma with all the heavy and desperate pangs of one who attempts to
throw off the fumes of a deadly venom. She rubbed her eyes with the
back of her hands, and folded her arms in front of her.
“If you could have touched me once with the hem of your garment you
would have healed me. As it is, I walk back with my wounds into the
world.”
A singular change had occurred in the voice of the suppliant. It
was far other than that which had clothed the language of entreaty
which had previously fallen from her lips. In the ear of Northcote
the change wrought relief. Yet even as he imbibed this clear, this
definite, this pungent tone with the eagerness of one who presses cold
water to his throat at a time when the pangs of his thirst have become
insupportable, a rapid and bewildering transformation took place in her
who confronted him. She who a minute ago had presented the appearance
of a nebula, suddenly broke out all over into light like a star. Out
of the sprawling shapelessness there was seen to issue something as
strong, graceful, and agile as a leopard. The hue of her skin became
luminous as though a fire had been kindled beneath it; and her eyes,
which so lately had been dull and without nascency, shot forth a lustre
that added light to the room.
There was nothing baleful or malevolent in an apparition so profoundly
wonderful. In standing aside to witness the evolutions of any force,
in the act of obeying the laws by which it is governed, however
inimical its operations may be to our personal safety, the feeling of
repulsion bears no part. The spring of the tiger, the long white teeth
of the wolf, the pinions of the eagle, the motions of the serpent,
are in themselves beautiful, for in them are manifested the free and
unconquerable expression of that force which nature has taken for its
highest gospel. The wide and curving nostrils of the prostitute were
the mansion of a subtle but brutally dominating power.
For the moment, however, Northcote was only aware that a splendid,
supple, and entrancing thing had stolen unperceived, like a beast of
prey, into the room. The strong, fine, and beautiful line that had been
traced along the convergence of the thin but full lips addressed him
like an unexpected but supreme artifice of a great painter, who has
learned to use his pigments with effrontery.
As a revelation of power she was more than his equal; she challenged
him with eyes whose insolent domination exceeded his own. Furtively,
yet boldly, she had discarded her stealthiness; she had already the
strength that disdains a mesh. She looked upon him now with the same
hidden but imperious scornfulness with which he had looked upon the
judge, the jury, and the bar under the excitement his speech on her
behalf had generated. Strong, subtle, and secure as he had been in the
exercise of his specific and audacious talent, this siren was equally
so in hers. He had delivered a great prostitute from the gallows in
order that she might lead him to it.
“I came here with no thought of destroying you,” she said.
With perfect composure she proceeded to divest herself of her hat
and coat, and carried them confidently behind the curtain, as though
already she were perfect mistress of his house. When she returned she
seated herself in the chair against the fire.
Northcote had not protest to raise. He could not meet the challenge
in the eyes of Medusa. In their baleful lustre he had read the abrupt
limit to his own imperious will, he beheld as through a mirage the
prefiguration of his own doom. Even as he had conquered others by the
fearlessness of his own quality, he had himself been conquered by the
fearlessness of hers. He was no common advocate, but this was no common
harlot. Prayer and devotion alone could have saved him from toils such
as these; but of prayer and devotion he no longer commanded the use.
There was a fissure in his armor; and through that aperture, small as
it was, the deadly, unnamable thing that had crawled into his room had
been able to plant its look.
“I am trying to think,” said his visitor, as she reclined in the chair
with her elbows outspread and her hands clasped behind her hair, which
was profuse and ordered with rare precision, “I am trying to think
what it is about you that has caused me to love you. I do not think it
can be your voice altogether, for although when it chooses it can sound
so low and delicious, it can also sound harsh and rude. No, my noble
warrior, I think there is a deeper cause. Is it not that our natures
are alike? Are they not so similar? We are not of the common herd.
We can think, we can feel, we have a little knowledge, and do we not
possess enormous powers of resentment? Life has not been very gentle
with you and me, but we will not complain about it much. Can we not
quietly choose our own weapons and go our own way to work in order that
we may avenge ourselves? It is for your strength and spirit that I love
you. Give me a kiss.”
Northcote obeyed.
She caressed his hands with an extreme tenderness.
“How strong, square, massive, and beautifully ugly they are!” she
exclaimed. “I am sure you could fell a bullock if you doubled your
fist. I love you even for these. I would rather be strangled by strong
hands than I would be fondled by weak ones. If you cared to drive your
fist into the world, you could knock a hole in it and let out a few
of its wrongs. How tall and young and splendid you look. And strength
means bravery.”
Her words, the careless complacency which accompanied them, the ease
of her posture with her head thrown far back in the chair and her eyes
directed steadfastly to Northcote’s face, filled him with a cruel
sensation of pleasure. Knowledge translated into the grace of physical
perfection had an all-conquering attraction for his nature. Every
blemish upon her, and as she lay back in the shadow of the lamp they
appeared surprisingly few, were additions to her value. They were so
many receipted acknowledgments of the heavy sums she had paid for what
she possessed. There was a short but deep scar over one eye. There was
a suggestion of coarseness in her jaw; her bust looked a little too
full.
“What shall I call you?” said the young advocate with shining eyes.
“Shall I call you Diomeda?”
“Do, my beloved Achilles!”
“How do you come to have heard about him? Is it that Greek is
compulsory in the University of the Gutter?”
“Achilles was perfectly familiar to me before I attended it. My dear
father used to tell us stories from Homer when he was drunk.”
“Well, Diomeda, I have come to believe that your father must have been
a very remarkable man.”
“The world will arrive at a similar belief two hundred years hence.
But how can you have acquired such an important piece of information
concerning him when you have never seen one of his works?”
“Do not forget that for the past hour I have been gazing upon his
_chef-d’œuvre_, the masterpiece among his masterpieces.”
“On the contrary, my beloved, you are judging him by his one great
failure. In conception, in design, I have no peer in this time of ours,
but the inspiration of the artist failed suddenly and lamentably
before he could touch me with the magic that would have rendered me
immortal. I am a splendid thing, my beloved, but I shall perish.
Therefore the artist has failed.”
“This is a masculine intellect of yours,” said Northcote, who was
captivated by the celerity with which she had interpreted an idea that
in his own mind had still the nebulosity of recent birth. “Is it usual
to your sex to have such powers?”
“You will confess that you would not say so? Are they not eternally
dunces and fools in the austere eyes of the male?”
“Perhaps I make that confession if you insist upon the measure of my
ignorance.”
“Say rather, my hero, the measure of your inexperience. You see you
have only studied those of my sex who are affiliated to the Great
Trades’ Union. They take eternal vows of foolishness and duncishness
before they are admitted to membership of that sanctified order. But
with us black-legs it is different. We are allowed to know everything.
You may not know that in our University of the Gutter we have the
most learned staff of professors in the world. There is a chair for
everything.”
“Except for honesty. If there was a chair for that, would there not at
once be an end to your intellectual subtlety?”
“You do not know the great university to which I have the honor to
belong if you think intellectual dishonesty is tolerated among us. The
moment we become intellectually dishonest we have done forever with
Alma Mater. She sends us down immediately, and there is nothing for us
then but the river or the Great Trades’ Union.”
“That is what the world would call being ‘sent up.’ Yet if the simplest
terms were not subject to totally different meanings in the varying
strata of our society, we should not have so many of these pretty
paradoxes to subsist upon. But I feel, Diomeda, that I am entitled to
ask you one question. Was it in my capacity as a mentally dishonest
person that you came to me to-night to ask me to arrange for you to be
‘sent down’ from your university?”
“Answer that question to your own liking, beloved one. It was your
appeal on my behalf that brought me here to-night. Would you have me
ask whether you were mentally honest when you made it?”
Her laugh had an edge that cut him like a keen blade. But she was quick
to read the sharp thrill of pain that made his eyes grow dark.
“Do not repine, my beloved Achilles,” she said with a softness that had
the power to caress, “I found you after all to be as honest as I am
myself.”
“At least,” said the young man, sensible that even her lightest
caresses possessed the ferocity of those of the snake and the tiger,
“you are the first of your sex with whom I have conversed who appears
to understand the uses of paradox.”
“There is no other means by which the honest mind can carry on its
thinking.”
“If that is the case, you conduct the thinker to his doom with
atrocious certainty. You conduct him to the gutter.”
“That is true, O Achilles,” said the woman with a quiet laugh.
“In other words,” pursued Northcote, “he demonstrates in his own person
the impossibility of a reconciliation in any terms whatever between the
ideal world of the spirit and the material world of the flesh.”
“Why trouble to put it into so many words, dear lad? Briefly, I am the
child of the poor drunken man of genius, my father; and I suspect that
you had a poor drunken man of genius for your father also.”
“I would have you to know that my father was ordained a clergyman of
the Church of England.”
“How old was he when he died?”
“About thirty.”
“Did it never occur to you that the poor fellow killed himself in the
struggle to become an honest man?”
“These eyes of yours are dreadfully piercing. I remember my mother
saying of him that the clock of his intellect was always set a little
too fast.”
“She never informed you by any chance, dear lad, that if he had not
taken an overdose of opium he would have died a lunatic?”
“Or that he killed himself with drinking brandy after the manner of
your own illustrious parent. By the way, you have yet to give me a
description of your mother. Can you recall her?”
“She died, worn out, I believe, by slavery when I was about four
years old. She reminded me of a cow; her eyes were so placid and her
movements were so slow. But she had been affiliated to the Trades’
Union from her earliest days. I believe she was a life member with her
policy or whatever they call it--I have no first-hand knowledge--fully
paid up. She was buried in consecrated ground in Kensal Green cemetery
with wreaths on her coffin in consequence. Non-members of the Union are
mostly buried in a prison or in the Thames. And now about your mother,
the clergyman’s widow? She, I presume, would be a vice-president of the
Union, or on its committee, or one of its trustees, or she might even
aspire to be one of its honorary secretaries? Her social rank would
render it necessary.”
“Yes, dear old woman,” said Northcote softly. “She is on the committee
right enough. As you say, her social rank has rendered it necessary.”
XXXVI
THE HONORABLE SECRETARY
On the following morning Northcote was late for breakfast. When the
old charwoman shook his curtains at a quarter to eight, a sleepy voice
murmured: “I may be a bit late. I will cook the bacon myself and make
the tea. Lay a knife and fork for two and don’t stay.”
It was between ten and eleven o’clock by the time he had completed his
toilet. And it befell that at that hour the kettle was singing on the
fire, and he himself was kneeling before it, toasting pieces of bacon
upon a fork, when there came a knock on the door of his room.
“Come in,” he called cheerfully.
He expected to see an attorney’s clerk with further business for his
attention.
Instead, two persons entered whose appearance caused him to drop the
fork and the bacon among the ashes.
A moment ensued in which he had to fight with all his resolution to
regain his self-possession. The first to enter the room was his mother,
and immediately behind her was the young girl whom he was under a
pledge to marry.
Mrs. Northcote was a tall, strong woman, past fifty, with assured
movements and a resolute-looking face. It was large and rather square.
Her cheeks were red with country life; her hair had streaks of white
in it; her eyes were bluish gray. Her clothes, severe in outline,
fitted close to her broad and powerful frame. They helped to sustain a
somewhat rural appearance, which was not altogether unprepossessing and
had a sort of education in it. Her speech was decisive, while the voice
was somewhat harsh, and left an impression that it would be easy for it
to domineer.
The young girl who accompanied her was not moulded in these Amazonian
lines. She was straight and slender, only a little above the medium
height, neat of hand, delicate of foot. Her complexion could only
have been produced by generations of country air. It was perfectly
clear, and of an exquisite tawny pinkish whiteness. Her eyes were
large, soft, and long-lashed, and although as clear and bright as a
pair of crystals, as meaningless as those of a dumb animal. Her simple
straw hat and thick gray coat and skirt were in themselves innocent
of coquetry, but their inhabitant was in her kind a sweetly beautiful
thing--half-child and half-woman--therefore these articles, rough and
primitive as they were, had significance in every crease and fold.
The moment Northcote had managed to strangle the first pangs of his
stupefaction, he rose from his knees and ran forward to greet them. He
kissed his mother on both cheeks, and seized both of the young girl’s
hands in his own.
“I could not believe my own eyes,” were the first words he spoke to
his mother. “You should have given me warning that you were coming up
to London, my dearest. It is the merest chance you have caught me at
home.”
“It was not until last evening that we decided to come,” said Mrs.
Northcote. “Margaret had happened to see the advertisement of an
excursion, only eight shillings here and back.”
“Why not telegraph, my dear?” Northcote expostulated gently. “I would
then have met you at St. Pancras.”
“It would have cost sixpence,” said his mother. “Besides it was too
late last night.”
“Always the woman of action,” said her son, with a hollow laugh.
“Always an arbitrary and drastic old woman in the execution of her
ideas.”
Northcote kissed his mother again with the pride and affection which
for the moment overlay this wound.
“I wonder,” said she, with an air of one who has come upon something
profound, “why men have such a dislike to being taken by surprise. Your
father was the same, Henry. He could not bear to be taken by surprise
in anything. And I think you are wonderfully like your father in some
things.”
“What is your opinion of this room of mine?” said her son abruptly.
“I don’t think I like it,” she said decisively, after making a
catalogue of everything with an immensely critical glance. “It has a
dismal look. And a hole in the roof, I declare! You must have it mended
at once; it might help you to catch a cold. And you are right up at the
top just under the tiles; I should think you must get frozen in winter.
And it must be extremely draughty with those cracks in the door. And,
my dear boy, I must say it looks very bare and untidy with not even a
piece of carpet to the floor. I have meant for years to come and see
you; and when I received that money you so kindly sent me, I thought
now or never is the time. How I wish I could have come before, to have
made you a little more comfortable!”
“How I wish you could, old woman!” said Northcote gently, taking both
her hands.
“I think this room is rather sweet myself,” said the girl, who also had
been examining it very critically. “Somehow every room looks sweet with
a nice fire and a lot of books.”
“That unnecessarily large grate takes all the heat up the chimney,”
said Mrs. Northcote, “and moreover is very wasteful of the coal. And
what have you got behind the curtain, Henry?”
“That is where I sleep.”
“Well, that is sensible, my boy; a saving of money.”
“What a large room this must be altogether!” said the girl, with a
sudden growth of her curiosity.
“I can see neither of you will rest until you have penetrated into the
heart of all my mysteries,” said Northcote, laughing loudly, as he
interposed himself between the entrance to his chamber and his mother,
who, full of inquiry, was plucking at the curtain.
“Why, Henry,” cried the girl, with a thrill of consternation in her
voice, “you have not had your breakfast!”
“Why should I? This is not Chittingdon, you know. Eleven o’clock is the
fashionable hour in town. It wants ten minutes yet.”
“Bad habits,” said Mrs. Northcote solemnly. “My dearest, eleven o’clock
is wrong.”
“When one is in Rome you must do like the Romans, you know.”
“I have never agreed with that proverb,” said Mrs. Northcote. “I
consider it weak. When in Rome one should make the Romans do as one
does.”
“Imagine me knocking at the gates of Buckingham Palace at a quarter to
seven.”
“I am quite sure, my dear boy, the royal family is addicted to good
habits. I am quite sure you would not find the king having his
breakfast at eleven o’clock.”
“Oh, this dear dogmatic old woman of mine,” said Northcote, tapping her
cheek in tender remonstrance. “A fixed rule and a definite opinion for
everything under the sun.”
“You must have fixed rules and definite opinions if you are to succeed,
my dear boy. Those who have their doubts always end by failing
miserably.”
“So they do, old woman, so they do!” cried Northcote fervently, in
spite of being stabbed by consternation. Yet he never conversed
with his mother on the most trivial topics without feeling that her
simplicity rendered her invulnerable.
“I see your table is laid for two, Henry,” said the girl. “Are you
expecting a friend?”
“If he comes, he comes,” said Northcote, with a clever assumption of
carelessness, “and if he don’t he stops away. Do you understand, Miss
Inquisitive? I generally have an extra knife and fork, you know, in
case a friend should happen to drop in.”
“He will have a wretched breakfast this morning if he comes,” said the
girl, taking off her gloves gaily, and fishing out the fork and the
bacon from among the ashes. “I must say, Henry, whoever your friends
may be, they cannot be very nice about their cookery.”
“Consecrated by the cook, don’t you see, Miss Impertinence. That bacon
is toasted by mine own fair hands.”
“Really, my boy,” said his mother, “you have grown most Bohemian in
your ways.”
She took off a pair of shabby and much-mended gloves with that air of
resolution she imparted to her lightest action, and insisted on being
allowed to make the tea. She measured two spoonfuls of tea from the
caddy with great care.
“I allow myself three spoonfuls now I live in London,” said her son.
“Three is extravagance, Henry, three is not necessary,” said his mother
quietly. “One for each person and one for the pot is correct.”
“Suppose a friend turns up?”
“More can be made. I fear you have formed very bad habits in London.”
“We have a surprise for you, Henry,” said the girl gaily.
She left the room to fetch a basket she had left at the top of the
stairs.
“Guess what we have brought for you,” she cried as she produced it.
“Butter and eggs.”
“How awfully clever that you should have guessed them at once,” she
said, with her eagerness sinking into disappointment.
“I am afraid I never had any tact worth mentioning,” said Northcote.
“It was very stupid of me to have guessed butter and eggs.”
“But we have brought you some holly as well,” said Margaret, a little
mollified. “Christmas will soon be here.”
“I am so glad I was not clever enough to guess holly,” said Northcote.
The contents of the basket were unpacked and laid along the books on
the writing-table. He had to submit, not without a passage of arms, to
having an egg cooked for his immediate delectation. His mother also
insisted on being allowed to toast him a slice of bread.
“You are spoiling me completely,” said Northcote, being forced at last
into making a pretence of eating after his own half-hearted offers of
hospitality had been uncompromisingly repelled.
By an effort of the will that seemed superhuman to himself he forced
himself to swallow a few mouthfuls, yet as he did so he followed the
smallest movements of his guests. One eye never left the curtain that
ran across the room. Whenever one or the other of his too curious
visitors was seen to approach it incautiously he made ready to spring
to his feet.
The only alleviation to the bareness of the walls was several
photographic groups of football-players, over which velvet caps
decorated with tassels were suspended.
“See that group in the middle?” said Northcote. “Look at it well. That
is the finest pack that ever turned out for England. We walloped Wales
twenty-nine points to three. Pushed ’em all over the shop. Notice that
little chap sitting between my legs. He was a half if you like. Cunning
as a trout and quicker than a hare.”
“I think, my dear boy, this is perfectly uninteresting,” said his
mother, fixing her spectacles and examining the photograph sternly.
“This is a stupid pursuit, not only a waste of time, but also a waste
of money. It has been the ruin of many young men. One of these days it
might even prove to be the ruin of England.”
“All work and no play, my dear,” said her son, “makes Jack a dull boy,
you know. Personally I would suggest that a game like football is a
rare training for the character.”
“I think football is a fine and manly game, Henry,” said the girl, with
a little air of defiance. “I shall never forget seeing you come home
with your twisted knee.”
“The doctor’s bill was thirty pounds,” said Mrs. Northcote simply.
These words, spoken in a manner that was almost childlike, came upon
Northcote with the force of a blow. He was perfectly accustomed to his
mother’s voice and manner, that voice and manner which were so direct
and so unqualified. But for the first time they had driven a deep flush
of shame to his cheek. This dauntless unimaginative creature, who
measured spoonfuls of tea, who counted pennies, whose staff of life was
hard facts, what had she not performed at the call of her religion?
What lions had she not removed from the path of this one ewe lamb of
hers, in order that one day he should win his way to the kingdom she
had designed for him? Night and day, year after year, had she labored
with this object in view. He was her only son, and material greatness
was to be his destiny. He recalled the unflinching figure of this
woman tramping over the moors in the depth of winter, through rain and
wind, through frost and snow, to earn a pittance by her tutelage; he
recalled the resolution with which she performed the meanest household
duties in order that money might be saved; he recalled her sitting
beneath the insufficient light of a lamp through the midnight hours,
transcribing, for the sake of a few miserable sovereigns, foreign
masterpieces out of their native French, German, and Italian into
trite, colorless, and rather wearisome English prose. All in an instant
Northcote seemed to be fascinated, overcome, by the sudden revelation
of the pathetic beauty of the commonplace.
“I won’t have you think I have become idle and extravagant,” he said,
rising from the table and placing both his hands on her shoulders. “You
see I have had to fight my battle, and a long, a stern, a lonely one
it has been. What was I in the midst of six millions of fighters, most
of them as sturdy, as fierce, and, in many cases, far better equipped
than I was myself? But I must tell you, my dear, I believe I have
conquered at last. I think I have got the turn of the tide. If health
and strength remain to me, and never in my life have I been physically
more robust than I am at present, I am about to make an income at the
bar which, to frugal people like you and me, mammy, will seem fabulous
wealth. For I ought to tell you I won my first big case the day before
yesterday, and I think I am entitled to say I made an impression.”
“I know that you saved that poor woman, my dearest boy,” said his
mother, with a tenderness that was almost grim.
“Tell me, by what means did you learn that?”
“I walked over to the Hall and borrowed the _Age_ of Sir John.”
“The _Age_!” said her son, in a tone that had a thrill of horror in
it. “Why walk all that distance to the Hall to get a look at the _Age_
when Parson Nugent would have been only too pleased to lend you his
_Banner_?”
“The reason is this, my dear boy,” said his mother impressively. “All
my life I have been accustomed to look upon the _Age_ as the first
English newspaper.”
“I expect you are right, you dear old Amazon,” said her son, strangling
a groan.
“No, Henry, I am not right. I am prepared to believe there was a time
when the _Age_ was the first English newspaper, but in my opinion it is
so no longer. I shall never place my trust in the _Age_ again.”
“A heavy blow for Printing Press Square,” said Northcote, laughing to
restrain his tears.
“I consider that leading article it had about the trial, and the terms
in which it referred to you, my boy, to be a disgrace to English
journalism. In fact, I wrote to the editor to say so.”
“What did you find to say to the editor?” asked Northcote feebly.
“I said it was contemptible that a newspaper of such a widespread
influence as the _Age_ should lend itself to a faction whose aim was to
suppress young men of talent.”
“And what had the editor to say to that?”
“Very wisely he did not reply. Perhaps I was somewhat severe in my
letter, but I felt very strongly upon the point and I do not regret
that I expressed myself at length.”
“In the name of wonder, what else did you say to the editor?”
“I said this faction of which I complained had been very mischievous in
its influence in this country, but in the end it had always failed in
its object, as in the end, Henry, everything that is merely negative
and destructive and retardatory must fail. I cited the cases of
Benjamin Disraeli and the poet Keats.”
“I suppose,” said Northcote, with a dull sense of agony overspreading
his veins, “it could not occur to you, old woman, that by any
possibility the _Age_ was justified in the course it took?”
“It could not, Henry,” said his mother.
Her air of finality bewildered him. Yet involuntarily he raised his
eyes to her face, and, for the first time in his life as he looked
at it, he was able to penetrate through its heroic commonness. The
features were harsh and aggressive and scarcely lit by the mind, but
the rigidity of such a nature in the teeth of public opinion had
appeared to shed over them a little of the bloom that proceeds from
the elevation of the intellect. It was a kind of apotheosis of the
power of faith. Her eyes were deep blue, strangely unfearing and clear,
wide-lidded, steady in their gaze. It was little enough that they
had the capacity to see, but whatever they lacked in range derived
compensation from mere force of vision. They were inaccessible to the
changes which are wrought by influences from without. Whatever they had
looked on once could never be modified by external causes.
Northcote carried the toil-stained hand to his lips with a reverence
that was more profound than any he had ever felt for it before.
“Every man needs to have known one truly good woman,” he said,
strengthening his grasp of the roughened fingers, “before he can even
begin his own education.”
It darkened his eyes to see the muscles of the harsh face relax as they
yielded to the slight softness of an infrequent emotion.
“Your father was constantly making speeches like these,” she said,
with that simplicity which was so formidable. “I was never able to
understand them.”
XXXVII
INDELIBLE EVIDENCE
For some time Northcote stood holding her hand and looking down into
her eyes. A sense of deep wonder was percolating slowly to every part
of his being. What a haven was here to embrace when the frail bark of
his nature had been flung, like the cockle-shell that it was, upon the
crest of tempestuous and multitudinous seas. How blind and undeveloped
he had been not to have understood this before! From what ignominy
could this anchorage have saved him! It would not have been necessary
to founder upon the shoals had he been aware of this harbor that would
have been so willing to embrace him. He was already broken into pieces;
and those tears which appeared to suffuse his eyes with such facility
and to suffuse hers with such a painful reluctance were falling from
him.
“You must ignore that unmannerly attack in the _Age_,” she said in
a stern voice which yet was full of redress. “The enemies of the
friendless have no kingdom into which they can enter. A few years
hence, when you are a rich and honored man, you will forgive them for
having once stabbed you.”
The silence which followed her words was broken by the hard and intense
breathing of the figure that clasped her.
“There is one thing I shall ask of you,” said Northcote at last. “I
shall ask you to give me the pledge from your own lips that you will
always believe in me as completely as you do at this moment, whatever
doubts, charges, or suspicion the future hurls against me.”
“It is not necessary for me to give this assurance, but, since you
demand it, I give it.”
“It is part of my weakness to demand it,” said her son, “although none
is so well aware as am I that there is no need to give expression to
your faith.”
“As you say, there is no need. But I remember your father saying to
me shortly before that illness which was fatal to him, the greater
the gifts the greater the lenity to be meted out to their unhappy
possessors. On that account I have always treated you with more
indulgence than otherwise I should have done.”
“Had you been more Spartan you might have strangled the genie at its
birth.”
“I might.”
“And yet made of its possessor a more upright and God-fearing citizen.”
“That is impossible.”
“You never could conceive of his being other than you see him now?”
“I could not.”
“Even if the indelible evidence were laid before you?”
“Evidence is never indelible to us. So-called facts have no worth
in our eyes. We believe or we do not believe. Nothing changes our
emotions; they are what we understand by religion.”
“You speak for wise and great women.”
“I speak for the humblest of wives and mothers who cannot accept credit
for blind obedience to an instinct which alone gives her life.”
“I begin to understand why even the most imperious natures, which are
as ruthless as volcanoes in action, cannot live without your aid. It
is not that you enslave and fetter them; your function is to cleanse,
renew, rehabilitate.”
As Northcote spoke a feeling of profound joy overspread the humiliation
whose penalties had been far more grievous to him than those of
despair. Hardly had he tasted it, however, than the nightmare at
the back of his thoughts assumed a visible shape. Of a sudden there
came a sharp screech from the curtain. Margaret, who throughout the
conversation with his mother had been engaged in fixing pieces of
holly over the photographs on the wall, was still employed in this
decoration. It was not she who was responsible for the sudden shrieking
of the brass rings along the curtain pole.
With a single comprehensive movement the curtain had been flung back
and the bed revealed. Seated upon it, half-dressed, with her hair
hanging loose, and her bare arms exposed by her chemise, was his
visitor of the previous night. Half a dozen hairpins were stuck in
a row in her mouth. In the cold grayness of the December morning,
which seemed to envelop her malignity in a bald realism, her features
appeared blunt, pale, and hideous. The almost incredibly bitter and
mocking glance was not directed upon the man, but upon the elderly,
unprepossessing, and countrified figure in the shabby clothes and
antique hat whom he was holding by the hand.
Northcote let the hand fall, and recoiled from his mother with a gasp
of fear mixed with passion.
The young girl, whom life had done nothing to enlighten, stood in dumb
amazement upon the chair on which she was poised.
There was a moment in which the older woman quivered with terror.
The brutal eyes of the prostitute, fixed upon her face with a blunt
contempt, seemed to change her into stone. Observing her to be
petrified like a bird in the presence of a serpent, the woman seated
upon the bed picked the row of hairpins from between her teeth with
the circumspection of an actress who, upon the stage, is notorious for
her power, and who, having a stupendous scene to enact, prepares her
audience for it by a display of quietude. She proceeded to coil up her
hair with a deliberation that had value as drama.
“Vice-president of the Great Trades’ Union,” she said, removing the
last hairpin from her mouth.
The elder woman stood looking helplessly away. Those indomitable eyes
were cowed for the first time in their history. For the first time they
had come upon something upon which they had no opinion to deliver. She
had barely the strength to carry her gaze to her son, who stood ten
paces from her as pale and rigid as a statue.
“Better go--better take Peggy,” he whispered in a voice that she did
not know to be his.
Margaret, still holding the holly, had come down from the chair, and
like a child had come to stand at the side of her natural protectress.
She was visibly afraid; and she had clutched the holly so tightly that
blood was trickling from the wounds in her soft fingers.
The spectacle of her childishness restored to the elder woman that
capacity for action which she was never without.
“Get your coat and gloves, child,” she said in her harsh tones.
“Where’s the basket?”
She herself took up the basket, and, without venturing to look at her
son or her who sat upon the bed, neither of whom had changed their
postures nor spoken again, she led the way out with resolute steps to
the top of the stairs. The young girl followed in her wake with a timid
obedience, pulling on her cotton gloves over her bleeding fingers as
she went.
At the head of the stairs this new resolution of the elder woman’s
appeared to fail her.
“Go down, child; take the basket. I will follow you in a minute,” she
said, handing the basket to the girl.
She turned suddenly and went back into the room. Her son was still
standing in the attitude in which she had left him. There was a curious
glare in his eyes. Advancing to him she placed her hands on his
shoulders, pressed her lips against his forehead, and then, in a kind
of headlong flight, darted away like a rabbit out of the room and down
the stairs.
XXXVIII
CLEANSING FIRE
This irrational proceeding served to liberate Northcote from his
thrall. Even as he felt his mother’s lips and witnessed her ridiculous
flight, he was able to divine the nature of the impulse. It was the
expression of that unconquerable instinct by which her sex affirms
itself.
He walked to the window which commanded a view of the pavements below.
He watched the two figures mingle in all their rustic quaintness
with the heterogeneous streams of persons and traffic which defiled
before his gaze. It followed their every deviation among this
ruthless swarm of Londoners until they were swallowed by the mist of
the December morning. The last detail he was able to discern, which
served to emphasize their slightly ridiculous character as seen from
this altitude, was the large empty basket bobbing about in the hand
of the girl. Their rusticity in combination with the wild hurry of
their flight marked them out as almost grotesque among the spruce and
purposeful crowd through which they made their way. With a pang he
remembered that neither of them had ever seen the metropolis before.
Whither were they flying? How would they spend their day? What would be
the end of their ill-starred adventure?
He continued to strain his eyes after them until they grew dark with
the effort. He then left the window and turned round to find that his
visitor was standing in front of the fire. She was yawning.
“A facer for the old Methodist,” she said, with a short, nonchalant
laugh.
Northcote clenched his hands. An almost ungovernable fury caused his
ears to sing.
“I know what is in your mind,” said the woman calmly. “Get it done.”
“I hope you will go,” said Northcote in a low tone.
“Get it done,” said the woman. “Tear my head from my body and I shall
respect you.”
Northcote was barely able to point to the door. The woman looked at him
with supreme effrontery. She was utterly divested of fear. Her nostrils
seemed to be dilated in scorn, and her dark eyes were full of mockery.
“I never saw anything half so funny,” she said, “as the worthy old
widow of the clergyman running back shamefaced to kiss her saint and
hero. The three of you made a picture for an almanac, as my dear father
would have said. You reminded me of nothing so much as a stuck pig.
The dear old hymnologist and psalm-singer, who had spoken such brave
nonsense, looked just like a poor silly old cow with a red face; and
that stupid little baby-face sticking up the holly, well, she was just
like one of those silly dolls with wax cheeks, which has a button which
you press and it changes its color.”
Northcote was faint already with the dreadful struggle he was waging.
Suddenly, as if touched by inspiration, he turned in the direction of
the door. Yet the woman was too quick for him. She leaped before him
and barred his course.
“I am asking you to pluck my throat out with your great hands,” she
cried with fury. “Don’t you understand, you fool? Don’t you understand,
I say? I cannot, I will not go back to the gutter; yet I cannot go
anywhere else. Why don’t you do as you are told?”
“Do go!” he cried weakly, piteously. The veins were swelling in his
neck.
He strove to thrust her aside, but she resisted him; and when he tried
again she fixed her strong teeth in his hand ferociously.
“Do it now!” she cried, watching his eyes with the baleful hunger of a
she-wolf.
“You are not worth it,” said Northcote, recovering possession of
himself.
She spat in his face.
Northcote began to realize that he had to deal with a mad woman.
She plucked a knife from the table. By this time, however, the man had
all his wits about him, and the movement was anticipated. He had seized
her before she could make use of it.
He knew immediately that he had entered upon a terrible struggle. He
possessed immense physical power, but the creature upon whom he had to
exercise it was extremely supple and vigorous, and, above all, was now
a maniac. She fought with the fury of a lioness. Her unbridled rage
seemed to make her more than a match for him. Screaming foul oaths,
and resorting to devices that a wild beast would not have employed,
the issue hung in the balance. Inch by inch, however, he obtained a
stronger purchase on her body, and it writhed under his great hands
like that of a huge snake. He grunted under the Titanic exertion of
forcing her to the ground. He shifted his hands to her throat, and once
he felt it yield to their gripe, his own pent-up fury broke forth in an
uncontrollable manner. Hardly conscious of what he did, he shook her
with the passion of a wounded bear. She gave a low moan, and a spray of
blood came on to her lips.
It fell upon him with a shock of surprise that her struggles had
ceased. She had fallen stiff under his hands. When he relaxed his grip
she fell to the ground, measuring her length with dull heaviness like
a sack of flour. In an instant a revolting idea stifled the dreadful
frenzy of the demoniac. She was dead. Those enormous hands of his had
pressed out her life without knowing it.
Overcome with horror, Northcote sank to his knees beside the body.
It was stark, and already a little cold. He rolled the corpse over,
so that its face was exposed; he felt for the beating of the heart.
There was not a movement of any sort to enkindle his touch. The face
was convulsed, tinged with purple, mottled with gray. The eyes were
glazed, and even more hideous than when he looked into them last. In
his anguish, he gave a little cry, and rose from his knees, and pressed
his hands to his head.
His first thought was for himself. By this irrevocable act he was
destroyed. His dreams had come to a brutally abrupt termination. That
high destiny which was to shake the world had petered out in a shameful
public ignominy.
In a pitiable state of terror he fell on his knees again. There was a
sort of morbid reflex action within him that seemed to draw him back to
the body, to force him to pass his hands across the corpse. It was now
cold. A stinging fury made him writhe. Was it for this foul, uncanny
monster that he must forfeit one of the most precious jewels that had
ever been devised by nature? He was a young man; life was before him;
there was the magic talisman in his spirit that could bend the whole
world to his purposes. He gnashed his teeth with impotent fury, and
rose biting at his nails.
“This is a dreadful tragedy,” he muttered. “This is a dreadful tragedy.
Think of such a one as myself being lost to mankind.”
His own grotesque words caused him to laugh. That surprising genie,
that had been destined to conquer a stupidly material world, enabled
him to present himself to himself in his amazing predicament. He could
hardly preserve his gravity before a spectacle so astonishing.
“The genie is deriding me,” he said.
That mute and distorted face that was looking up at him with an insane
leer had no message of its own. It was only significant to the advocate
as the price of all that he was about to give up. Yet suddenly he
remembered this strange creature he had broken with his hands as he
had first encountered her in the prison. In no animate thing could the
desire for life have been more intensely strong. Overmastering as was
his own desire at this moment, hers, at that time, had been no less so.
She must have life; she must see the sun and the clouds and the trees.
The common earth had acquired fresh symbols for that debauched vision.
And how nearly she had come to possess this strange new thing that she
craved. One heaven-born man had all but given it to her. He had so
nearly done so, that for one brief instant she had been able to taste
it with those blood-stained lips. And when she had discovered that
strong and shining as this one man was, his was not the divine valiance
of those early mystics who roamed the hills in the childhood of the
world, that he had not the simplicity to provide her with that which
she craved, she insisted on receiving death at his hands in lieu of the
life he could not give her.
It was then, that he took a little compassion. It was a loathsome and
terrible destiny to which this human being had been called. By what
subtle twist or abrogation of her noble faculties had she come to
live her days on such lines as these. This avowed and ruthless enemy
of society had been of no common or spurious clay. It was not a small
nature that had taken a revenge so bitter. A little more and it had
been how much? Another grain of courage, another ounce of power, and
she, too, poor maimed and twisted thing of beauty, would have been
numbered among the valiant.
It added a sharp touch to her slayer’s compassion, that, in regarding
her mutilated image, she became the mirror of his own. He saw the
parallel between the living and the dead. Every point in this analogy
was so perfect that a mental fascination lurked in its rendering. Did
the texture of his own fate admit of any more lenient inquiry? He also
would have entered his kingdom had he but possessed the little more
that meant so much. Were they not both in the beginning the victims
of a fine and original talent, for she whom he had slain had been the
offspring of a man of the first genius. Her thoughts were his thoughts;
her desires were his desires; the tragedy of each had been that their
fineness had been immolated upon the altar of its base surroundings;
both had failed to scale those precipitous mountain-places from which
alone it was possible to stand in true perspective to their own
characters.
As he pressed home this analogy with that curious grim subtlety that
was always one of his chief pleasures to employ, he began to feel in
his own veins that intense desire of hers to live the life that nature
had appointed, to discover an ampler, a truer self-expression. How was
it possible to arrest those functions that had not had an opportunity
to fulfil themselves? There was a ravishing vigor in his blood; he must
not perish as a felon, he to whom all things were so full of meaning.
The overwhelming force of these thoughts translated them into action.
It had already come to him that to obey his overmastering desire he
must conceal his deed. He raised the heavy corpse in his arms; yet
powerful as he was it proved too much for him to bear. Therefore he
dragged it across the room, and with herculean labor contrived to hoist
it on to the bed. He then drew the curtain across to hide it from
the view of those who should chance to enter the room. Afterwards he
proceeded to ponder the evolution of a means to ensure his own personal
security.
He was still engrossed with this occupation when the old charwoman
entered his room. She had brought him some clean linen. It was
contained in a basket which it was her custom to deposit on a chair
behind the curtain at the foot of his bed.
“You can leave it here, Mrs. Brown,” said Northcote, indicating with
his finger a place on the floor.
“I had better take it out of the way, sir,” said the old woman.
“Besides, I have not made the bed.”
“Never mind the bed,” said Northcote; “that won’t matter at all.”
“Oh, no, sir, it would never do for you not to have your bed made,”
said the old woman, in a tone of quiet but determined expostulation.
“I tell you I don’t want it made,” said Northcote. “You can go.”
The tone of his voice seemed to strike the old woman. Formerly he had
always been kind and gentle to her; he had never used such a tone to
her before.
“Very well, sir,” she said meekly, looking at him with scared eyes.
Still, however, with a perversity which in the circumstances he could
only regard as diabolical, she did not go. For suddenly she recollected
that the day before she had lost her shawl, and it occurred to her now
that it was not at all unlikely that she had left it beneath the bed.
It was not in the least probable that she would find it there, but one
of those irrational side-currents to mental activity, which science
finds so baffling, had suggested to her that she might.
“What do you want now?” cried Northcote, as she moved towards the
curtain.
“I want my shawl, sir.”
Her meekness exasperated him beyond endurance.
“Where is your shawl?”
“I think, sir, it might be under the bed.”
Her hand was already stretched towards the curtain. Northcote was
standing against his writing-table, and near his elbow was the leaden
paper-weight which he used for the destruction of rats. He took it in
his hand and poised it in a fashion that would enable him to hurl it
with all his force at the back of the old woman’s head.
For some occult reason she withdrew her hand from the curtain, and
retired without pulling it back.
“Of course I remember now,” she said. “I lent my shawl to Mary Parker
while the snow was about. I have such a bad memory,” she added
plaintively.
“There is one little errand I should like you to do for me,” said
Northcote, looking at her calmly. “Do you mind fetching me a gallon of
paraffin? You can get it at an oilman’s or an ironmonger’s. I am going
to try a new kind of fire.”
He handed her half a crown.
“Very good, sir,” said the old woman.
As he listened to her descending the stairs with little toddling steps,
he balanced the paper-weight thoughtfully in the palm of his hand.
“Those five grandchildren will never come much nearer to the workhouse,
you perverse old woman,” he said with a whimsical laugh.
He had already formed his plan, and like all subtle minds which yearn
for a finality which they so seldom obtain, the definiteness of its
nature enhanced his capacity for action. He discarded his carpet
slippers in favor of boots, and set his hat, gloves, and overcoat in
a place where he could take them up immediately. He placed the briefs
confided to him by the solicitor carefully in his pocket. There were no
other portable objects of value belonging to him except a quantity of
large and loose manuscript sheets, numbering some two thousand pages,
the “Note towards an Essay on Optimism,” that fruit of six years’
labor. These he collected from divers drawers in the writing-table, and
piled them into one upstanding heap.
He stood surveying this proud edifice with a rueful smile when the old
woman returned at last, bearing a gallon of paraffin contained in a tin.
“Thank you,” he said, taking it from her. “You may keep the change. If
I spoke to you rather roughly just now, I hope you will not mind it.
The fact is, I have a great deal of work to get through, and it has
made me rather irritable.”
The old charwoman, immensely mollified by the tone in which she
was now addressed, thanked him humbly, and after standing a moment
irresolutely, in which she further considered the question of how
far it would be now expedient to attempt the making of the bed, a
daily duty which with all her soul she yearned to perform, decided
it would not be politic to reopen the subject. Therefore she retired
crestfallen, because she had failed to carry out a régime which was the
foremost function of her life; yet a little exalted also by the apology
which had been so feelingly rendered to her by one who wore a nimbus;
and above all, tremulous with excitement by reason of having ninepence
in her pocket which was pure gain, a solid lump of treasure-trove.
As soon as she had gone, Northcote “sported his oak” and locked the
door. It was indeed necessary that he should not be disturbed in his
labors; and he took elaborate precautions to render them effectual.
First he broke up all the chairs he possessed, and strewed the
fragments over the corpse. He pulled down the curtains, and flung them
upon the pyre. He gathered several armfuls of books of jurisprudence
and philosophy, dilapidated articles which had been purchased
second-hand, tore them in pieces, and strewed them about. He pulled a
wooden box from under the bed, flung out the contents, consisting of
old clothes, and having broken up the box into splinters, heaped those
up also. Finally, he gathered in his arms that formidable bundle, the
“Note towards an Essay on Optimism,” and sprinkled its two thousand
leaves upon the sacrifice.
By pressing into service every combustible article the room contained,
the pile that he built mounted up to the roof. Having arranged the
great mass to his satisfaction, he poured the paraffin over it. He then
kindled one of the splinters of the chair into a fagot, and applied the
lighted end to one of the saturated blankets of the bed. He then ran
to the door, catching up his hat and coat as he did so, and unlocked
it. Barely had he time to do this ere the whole of the pyre, under the
excitation of the oil, had burst into a sheet of flame. He changed the
key, and locked the door after him.
Putting on his hat and coat and gloves he walked down the four flights
of stairs, past various open doors with clerks behind them, yet in so
doing betrayed neither sign of haste nor discomposure. At the bottom
of the last flight he was accosted by an elderly lame man, who bore
unmistakable traces of being the clerk of an attorney.
“Can you tell me if Mr. Northcote’s chambers are on the top floor,
sir?” he asked courteously.
“My name is Northcote. Can I be of service to you?”
The clerk opened a small bag that he carried, and selecting an oblong
piece of paper from among half a dozen similar documents lying within
it, handed it to the advocate.
“Messrs. Peberdy, Ward, and Peberdy, No. 3 Shortt’s Yard, sir,” he said.
“Thanks,” said Northcote, placing it in the inner pocket of his
overcoat.
At that moment a clerk from one of the upper stories came running down
the stairs.
“The place is on fire,” he cried. “The top landing is so full of smoke
you can’t go up to it.”
“I thought there was a smell of burning,” said Northcote. “I say, it
must be my room!”
“If you are Mr. Northcote, it is certainly your room.”
The advocate turned round hastily, and proceeded to ascend the steep
and rickety old stairs. He was turned back, however, as he had
anticipated, by other clerks who were running down.
“The place is on fire,” they cried excitedly. “The smoke will choke
you.”
XXXIX
WITHOUT FEAR AND WITHOUT STAIN
Northcote made no further show of resistance to the inevitable, but
accompanied the excited clerks into Fleet Street. The window of his
room abutting on to it had already attracted the notice of the crowd
that thronged its pavements. By the time he had crossed to the other
side of the road and had taken up his stand with the knot of spectators
that was rapidly assembling at the end of a bystreet, the smoke had
increased considerably in volume.
“Not much doubt about there being a fire,” was the verdict of those
around him.
The bunch of witnesses in the side street increased every instant.
Persons riding on the outsides of the omnibuses stood up to look.
Policemen on point-duty came out of the press of the traffic to gaze
with concern and inquiry at the smoke which now was belching forth in a
black mass.
“Must ha’ begun in the chimbley,” said one of Northcote’s neighbors, a
man without a collar. “That’s soot.”
“It’s Pearmain’s Hotel,” said another.
“No,” said a third, “it’s Shepherd’s Inn.”
“If it’s Shepherd’s Inn it will take it all,” said a fourth. “It has
been condemned by the County Council for the past two years. It is so
crazy it can hardly stand up in a gale.”
“It is rotten and rat-ridden from top to bottom. It must be five
hundred years old.”
“Five ’undred me leg,” said the man without a collar. “It ain’t more
than two.”
“Lord Bacon lived in it, anyway.”
“Wot if he did? I tell you it ain’t more than two.”
The controversialist spat on the pavement authoritatively, and those
who surrounded him, who knew he was wrong, deferred to his opinion
humbly.
“There’s the flame,” said a quiet man excitedly. “Why don’t they bring
the engines?”
“They want it to get a firm ’old,” said the man without a collar, “so
that they can put it out in style.”
“They will have something to go at when they do come,” said a nervous
man, who wore spectacles. “There it goes through the roof. Look, look,
see that!”
There could be no measure of uncertainty as to the power the fire had
acquired already. Smoke and flame were pouring and leaping out of the
windows and through the old red tiles into the dull December sky. A
stern joy held Northcote as he gazed. Every instant of delay increased
his chance. It needed a holocaust to ensure his safety. He derived
that thrill of impersonal satisfaction which visits a good craftsman
when a work is placed before him which has been adequately planned and
executed.
“The engines ought to have been round from Fenchurch Street afore now,”
said one, whose mustache bristled like that of a county councillor.
“Fenchurch Street, did yer sye?” said the man without a collar. “Lord
love me, they’ll send ’em round from ’Olborn.”
“They are taking a lifetime about it,” said the nervous man in a voice
of intense anxiety.
However, at that moment there sounded a curious rattle of warning;
policemen came running up, and immediately afterwards came the first
of the engines. The crowd was now dense and the traffic was impeded.
In the next few moments it had been stopped altogether and diverted
into side streets. By now a large posse of constables had appeared, and
they succeeded in clearing a space in which the firemen could carry out
their operations. Before the hose had been placed in position two other
engines had arrived.
Northcote had managed to place himself in an admirable situation among
the excited throng; and although those in front of him were somewhat
roughly thrust back by the police, he was able to maintain his coign of
vantage. By the time the first spray of water had been flung upon the
conflagration, it had not only burnt through his room into the story
beneath, but also it had spread some twenty yards along the tiles.
“If it takes to burning down, it will be awkward,” said a voice near
him.
“How it is spreading! They will find it difficult to keep it off the
hotel.”
Northcote, in the midst of the frenzy of destruction that possessed
him, now grew conscious that a hand had gripped his arm. He managed
to turn his head sideways and discovered that his old schoolfellow,
Hutton, was standing next to him.
“This crazy old hole has been waiting for this,” said Hutton. “It burns
like tinder. If there are any poor devils who keep there, I pity them.”
“I’m one,” said Northcote quietly.
“Well, I call that really bad luck,” said his old schoolfellow
fervently. “Upon my word, it will take the whole place.”
“Job’s comforter,” said Northcote.
“I say though, it is a blaze! By Jove, it has got into the hotel! It
will take half Fleet Street if they don’t look out.”
“More engines,” said Northcote with satisfaction, as their hideous
rattles pierced the air. “Well, they will all be wanted.”
“I say, though,” said his companion, with the growing excitement of his
surroundings communicating itself to him, “this is going to be really
awful. It has got down another story, and it is certainly in the hotel,
and if they don’t look out it will be in the bank.”
Although half a dozen engines had arrived by this time and the supply
of water was copious, the fire had spread on all sides with such
alarming rapidity that the liquid sheets that were flung upon it
seemed only to increase the virulence of the flames. The surrounding
buildings were all more or less decrepit, while the old inn itself had
not the slightest resistance to offer to the flames. The whole of its
quadrangular roof, most of which lay behind, appeared, as far as the
onlookers could discern, by now to be involved.
“There is something strange, fascinating, exhilarating,” said Northcote
with a thrill of exaltation in his voice, “in witnessing a really great
fire. The fire of London must have been the finest sight the world
ever saw.”
“You don’t appear to mind very much about your rooms, I must say,” said
his companion. “If I were looking on at the destruction of my goods and
chattels and the roof that protects my head, I don’t think I should be
able to raise much enthusiasm for the spectacle.”
“It will probably take half Fleet Street. What is my wretched little
attic in comparison with that?”
“Somehow in the circumstances I don’t think I could play the
philosopher myself.”
“It is all up with the hotel,” said Northcote. “It will be into a few
of these newspaper offices before long. Conceive a holocaust that
places the press of England in danger! Ha, ha, there goes the roof of
my room!”
“Why, that is where the fire began! You don’t mean to say the fire
began in your room?”
“Yes, that is where the fire began.”
“No! How did it begin? Were you in it when it started?”
“Yes, I was in it when it started.”
“No!”
“I started it myself.”
“Did you overturn a lamp? Or did it begin in the chimney?”
“Well, if you must know,” said Northcote, “you shall hear the true
facts. A lady called upon me last evening, and very kindly stayed the
night. But this morning when I wanted to turn her out she refused
to go. And further, she showed temper and made herself distinctly
objectionable. Therefore I lost patience with her, and being a man
of my hands I twisted her neck. But when I had managed to do that--by
Jove, it is into the bank! we shall soon be able to reckon the damage
by a cool million and it has only just begun!--but when I had managed
to twist her neck, the question arose how to get rid of her remains.
You see to have her unvirtuous person found in my room would not help
this career at the bar I am just about to begin. How could I get rid
of the body, that was the question? Now mark the really fertile mind
of genius. Why not burn down the whole place? And that, you see, is
exactly what I have done, although I will admit the idea is a plagiary
from that excellent old author, Charles Lamb. You remember his Chinaman
who burnt down the house of his parents every time he wanted to eat
roast pig?”
“Well, North, you have a pretty mind, I must say,” said his companion
to whom this recital, in the circumstances which attended it, had
afforded keen amusement. “But you were always a bit of a lunatic at
school. Now if you had tried to persuade me that you had insured your
furniture, and that you had fired your place to keep out an execution,
I might have tried to swallow it.”
“That is mediocrity all over, my son,” said Northcote, linking his
arm through that of his companion. “It is always craving for hard
facts. It cries aloud for hard facts; they are the staff of its life,
its daily bread, but you have only to present hard facts to it in a
somewhat unconventional form--my God, look at the bank!--in a somewhat
unconventional form, and it flings them back in your face and asks you
what you take it for.”
“My dear old lunatic, what _are_ you talking about?”
“Merely this. Your alternative of the insurance company and the
furniture is ingenious but lacking in comprehensiveness. The insurance
company would, after the fashion of insurance companies, have insisted
on an investigation into the cause of the disaster; they might even
have preferred a charge against me to save themselves a few wretched
shillings; litigation would almost certainly have ensued--there goes
the roof of the hotel!--and litigation which touches myself is the last
thing I should be willing to risk.”
“All this is very elaborate, North, but it is hardly convincing. Why
are you so unwilling to risk litigation when your whole life--and a
rather important one I expect--will be bound up in it?”
“The less my name is associated in the public mind with any shady
transaction the better for my career.”
“A point of honor, North. You always had the reputation at school of
being rather nice about it.”
“To be frank, it is a point of expedience, my son. Henceforward you
will find the notorious ‘Cad’ Northcote without fear and without stain.”
“Why?”
“Why! Because one of these days they will make him a judge.”
THE END.
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