Part 6

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.”

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?”