Part 7
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.”