Part 20

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.