Part 7

“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.”

“Well, little gal,” said the solicitor, “I shall heed you once more, since your luck is proverbial. I am prepared to back our latest discovery pretty heavily, although I must confess that when in cold blood I catch myself thinking of his infernal genie he frightens me to death.”

XIV

A JURY OF TWO

In the meantime the subject of these speculations had entered the night. Food and wine in unaccustomed quantities, the romance of events, the spells cast by music and by a woman of signal beauty and accomplishment, had provoked his energies to an insurgency that had rendered them overbearing. He walked like a whirlwind, up one street and down another, in the chill wet darkness, not knowing whither he was bound. Soft yet wild strains of melody which still floated through his brain mingled with a swarm of ideas which were whirling about in it like so many atoms in a protoplasm. He moved so fast in the endeavor to keep abreast of his thoughts that at times he broke into a run.

The seductive, amiable, and brilliant woman, who had so nearly succeeded in casting over him a delicious spell, began to fade from his consciousness like the intangible occupant of a dream. She had no appeal for him now. The feast at the restaurant, that phase of color, warmth, and splendor in which for an hour the squalor of his existence had been dispelled; the struggle to retain the treasure which had been entrusted to his keeping by a supernatural agent; the bizarre incident of the hansom cabman; and the personality of the genial god out of the machine had now ceased to have significance.

Indeed one thing alone merged his faculties in his overstimulated thoughts. It was the packet which he could feel in the breast-pocket of his coat, towards which his hands were straying constantly. These pages of foolscap bound with red tape, were they not his magic talisman? By that occult presence had not his thwarted bleak and empty life been changed into an electrical existence crowded with glory?

His brain bursting with ideas, he began to run faster and faster through the maze of endless streets, lined with high garden walls, portentously respectable dwelling-houses, lamps, shops, and secretive silent-footed policemen. These frequently flashed their lanterns upon him, for the manner of his progress had an illegal air. Even at the height of this orgy of freedom, the question shaped itself with the oddest definiteness as to whether it would not be expedient to curb his paces, since if he were stopped, he feared lest he should be able to render an account of himself that would be sufficiently lucid to commend itself to the myrmidons of the law.

When at last his exertions had thrown him out of breath, and his frame did not respond with quite the same unanimity to his passion, he stopped under a lamp in the middle of a street on the side of a steep hill, took out the precious document he carried, and began to peruse it for sheer human pleasure. He even pressed his lips to this prosaic thing, with no less of fervor, indeed with more abandonment than he had saluted the hand of the sorceress who had been the means of restoring it to his care.

“I must make her my saint, I must burn candles to her,” he muttered, recalling her image with a sense of rapture.

As he stood under the lamp, a very large and slow-footed policeman waddled up towards him, trying doors and casting the light of his lantern down the areas he passed. As he went by, keenly scrutinizing the figure of the young man, yet pretending not to notice it, Northcote hailed him.

“Where might I be, policeman? I am strange to these parts.”

“Well,” said the policeman slowly and with effort, “you might be in Balham, but you ain’t. Likewise, you might be at Charing Cross, but you are not there, nuther.”

“I observe, policeman, that you have graduated in the school of judicial humor,” said Northcote, delighted by the suavity of outline of X012. “If every man had his rights, which of course it is utopian to expect, you would be adding lustre to the bench. Your mental gifts fit you equally to be a judge, a recorder, or a stipendiary magistrate.”

Such an exaggerated view of his merits produced a deep-founded suspicion in the honest breast of X012.

“If every man had ’is rights,” said the custodian of the peace, speaking slowly and with effort, and eying Northcote with the solemnity of a horse, “you’d be took up on suspicion, young feller, and charged with loitering with intent.”

Northcote dispelled the suburban quietude with a guffaw.

“Being unwilling,” said he, “to impale myself upon that spiked railing which calls itself the law, I ought to be extremely careful to refrain in its presence from the vexed and overmuch discussed question of whether the badinage of its minions is wit, wisdom, humor, or a veritable cesspool of human inanity.”

X012 was so much astonished by these words and the forcible mode of their delivery that he pulled his whistle out of his coat, and proceeded to toy with it in an irresolute fashion. Before he had decided to summon aid by blowing it, there appeared round the corner of an adjacent street a second constable, in all essentials of bearing, physique, and mental energy the perfect replica of himself.

“I’m glad you’ve come, Bill,” said X012. “I’ve got a rum one ’ere. I don’t know what he’s been drinking, but you should just hear his languidge. Here he was under this lamp, a-purtendin’ to read a newspaper at twenty past four by the mornin’.”

“Noticed his mug?” said his confrère Z9. “Bob Capper, the ’ousebreaker, who just done in ’is last seven stretch an’ was let out on license last Tuesday.”

“Got it in one!” said X012, not without enthusiasm. “We ’ad better take him to the station and have ’im searched.”

“This is the result of a misplaced jocularity in the presence of professional wits,” said Northcote, with an amiability that was viewed with considerable disfavor by both constables. “I hope you will forgive me, my friends. The only excuse I can urge for impinging upon the prerogative of the legal supernumerary, if I may so express myself, is that as one day I am certain to be a judge, I feel it to be due to the lofty elevation I shall be called to occupy, and of which I intend to be so signal an ornament, to neglect no opportunity of acquiring these cardinal principles of humor, dangerous, double-edged implement though it be, which can only be done by association with those past-masters who as the crowning glory of our admirable legal system inhabit it in choice perfection in all its branches. I hope, my friends, I have made myself perfectly clear.”

“Clear as mud,” said Z9.

“Impidence!” exclaimed X012; “downright impidence! Certin to be a judge! Why, Lord love me, young feller, if ever they ax you to be the judge of a pair o’ pullets at a poultry show you’ll be lucky.”

“Balmy,” said Z9, tapping his forehead with an air of Christian pity.

“You are very probably right,” said Northcote. “I suspect there is a basis of truth in this scientific opinion which you have embodied in so expressive an idiom. But at the same time I would ask you, is it not a somewhat extreme view to take of the mental condition of a barrister-at-law who has been nominated to appear at the court of the Old Bailey to-morrow morning at the hour of ten-thirty to defend one Emma Harrison, who at that time and in that place will stand her trial for wilful murder?”

“A-going to defend Emma Harrison!” exclaimed the constables. “Why, what will he be saying next?”

“I do say that, my friends,” said Northcote, with a note of imperiousness in his voice that was not without its effect on these astonished minions of the law. “And I want you both to stand back a yard or two against the railings, while I advance to the curb; and further, I want you for a few minutes to imagine that you are the jury, and I will rehearse the opening of my speech for the defence. I shall begin something like this.”

“Oh, will you now?” muttered Z9 to his companion. “Well, if this don’t beat cock-fighting!”

Both these constables, overawed already by the authentic manner of the advocate, were now devoured by curiosity.

“Listen,” said he. “I rise in my place with this bundle of papers in my hand, which I shall not consult, but shall cling to to gain confidence, and I shall say: May it please your lordship and gentlemen of the jury, this is a dreadful issue you are sworn to try. Indeed it would be difficult for the human conscience to conceive an ordeal more repugnant to the moral nature of man, one in sharper antagonism to those principles that are his priceless inheritance, than is revealed to you by the situation in which you stand. It is not by your own choice that you come to take your places in this assembly. It is not in obedience to your own instincts that you have left your toil to subscribe to a law which is not of your own making. I venture to affirm this without fear, for is not this ordeal into which you are thrown in deadly conflict with the behests of that unfearing spirit who, nineteen centuries ago, discovered the only possible faith for His kind?

“It is as the inheritors, gentlemen, of an inimitable tradition, not as administrators of a penal code, that I venture to address to you these words. And let me tell you why I venture to address you in this fashion. It is because the life of a fellow creature is at stake; it is because sitting here in conclave in this place you are enmeshed in the most grievous ordeal that the fruit of human imperfection is able, at this time of day, to impose upon you. For that reason, gentlemen, I conceive that you are entitled to take your stand upon a lofty and secure platform to survey this issue, a platform which has been raised for the oppressed, the unhappy, and those who are doubtful of their way, by the travail of the choicest spirit in the annals of human nature.

“Gentlemen, you are called upon to adjudicate upon the life of a woman. You are called upon to do so at the bidding of a formula, whose hideous and obsolete enactments are the fruit of an imperfect culture of a partial and unsympathetic interpretation of those laws to which every civilized community owes its name. Gentlemen, you are called upon to adjudicate upon the life of a woman; you rate-payers of London, you gentle and devout citizens, you to whom life has given as the crown of your endeavor, as the consecration of your painful daily labor, mothers, wives, and daughters of your own.

“Yes, gentlemen, we must indeed ascend the loftiest and most secure platform known to us, to survey the ordeal that our own imperfection has presented to us.

“You have heard the words that have fallen from the lips of my learned friend, the counsel for the Crown. You have examined the facts which he has marshalled before you. You have noted the inferences which he has not been afraid to draw. You have been thrilled by the union of a consummate skill with a consummate learning. All that is base, sordid, and unworthy in the human heart has been stripped naked before your eyes. The smallest acts of this unfortunate woman have been shown to you as vile; even the aspirations which are allowed to ennoble her sex have been rendered abominable. Every kind of mental and moral degradation has been made to defile before you; for verily there is no limit to the talent of this accomplished gentleman.