Part 5

“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.