Part 19

“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.