Part 6
“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.”