Mr. Topott, viewing the beef he had exchanged for the mutton with a
deep suspicion. “But seriously, Weekes,” said he, “I don’t want you to
leave me until they’ve returned their verdict. You can just let that
_nisi prius_ business alone this afternoon, and stay with me. I have a
presentiment that things might go wrong.”
“Presentiment!” said Mr. Weekes impatiently. “Deuce take your
presentiments! Waiter, bring me some red pepper.”
“The fact is, I am frightened to death by that young fellow,” said Mr.
Topott cheerfully. “I suppose you know who he is?”
“I know what he is,” said Mr. Weekes incisively. “He is a confounded
nuisance.”
“He is the greatest player of Rugby football the game ever saw,” said
Mr. Topott impressively.
“Pity he didn’t stick to it,” said Mr. Weekes. “Better for him, better
for us. But what has his football got to do with his advocacy?”
“Well, I always think, you know,” said Mr. Topott modestly, “a man is
all of a piece as you might say. If he is preëminent in one thing he
will be preëminent in another.”
“Not at all, my dear fellow,” said Mr. Weekes, breathing contradiction,
a pastime that was dear to him. “It doesn’t follow in the least. A man
may be supreme as a crossing-sweeper, but it does not follow that he
would be equally great as a member of Parliament.”
“I am only advancing a theory,” said Mr. Topott, more modestly
than ever, “but I rather contend that it does. It is a matter of
will-power. That to which his supremacy is due in one direction, if
evoked in an equal degree in another direction will result in an equal
supremacy. What I mean to say is, that it seems to me this truly great
football-player has made up his mind to become a truly great advocate.
And that is why I fear him.”
“Moonshine,” said Mr. Weekes. “He is clever, I grant you; but
football-playing and advocacy are not on all fours, as he will discover
this afternoon very speedily when he comes to address a British jury.”
“If you don’t mind my saying so,” said Mr. Topott, with a very
apologetic air, “it struck me this morning that his football-playing
and his advocacy were very much on all fours. They both struck me as
belonging unmistakably to the man. I have, as I say, a presentiment
that things might go wrong.”
“Confound your presentiments, Topott! How can things go wrong? And why
a man of your experience should funk a mere boy who has had none, I
don’t know. He is certain to come an imperial crowner with the jury.
There isn’t half a leg for him to stand on.”
“Well, he didn’t come much of a crowner this morning,” said Mr. Topott
deferentially, “in spite of Bow-wow and in spite of you. I don’t know
where he obtained his information, but I thought the whole thing was
most artistic. And if the fellow can cross-examine in that manner,
heaven knows what he can do when he gets up on his hind legs to address
the jury. I tell you, Weekes, I am frightened to death of this young
fellow. He’s deep.”
“I tell you what it is, my boy,” said Mr. Weekes tartly, “you stayed up
an hour longer than you ought to have done at the Betterton last night,
waiting for four aces which never turned up.”
At an adjoining table the barrister of elephantine proportions, who
had expressed his determination “to stand the fellow a bottle,” was
entertaining a select coterie of his learned friends. In his inn he was
justly celebrated as a trencherman among a society which had always
been famous for its prowess at the board. He rejoiced in the name of
“Jumbo;” and, although his practice was small, only his adipose tissue
imposed the bounds to his good nature. In every way he was designed by
nature to be one of her most popular efforts.
“Who’s Northcote?” was a question that was circulating freely. None
seemed to know.
“Never heard of him. Never seen his name.”
“Well known in the police-courts, I believe.”
“It’s time he gave them up. His talents call him elsewhere.”
“It was rather poor form, I must say, trying to score off Bow-wow.”
“It is a mistake a young man is likely to make.”
“Speaking for myself, I thought Bow-wow was asking for it. It is the
time-honored story of the old-established firm of the bench and the
Treasury. Once a Treasury counsel always a Treasury counsel.”
“Jealousy, jealousy, jealousy.”
“He was altogether wrong with the police.”
“I agree. He ought to have been handled more firmly.”
“Bow-wow furnishes a good example of a lath painted to look like iron.
I should like to have seen him face to face with Cunningham, or old
Tottie Turnbull. There would have been trouble for one.”
“For m’lud, I’ll lay a pony. This young sportsman is quite above the
ordinary. He is going a very long way.”
“It is too early to say. We see so many geese with the plumage of the
swan in this profession.”
“Name! name!” cried the table.
“I expect when it is all reckoned up,” said Jumbo, when order had been
restored, “my young pal, Jem Smith, is the son of ‘Pot’ Northcote who
went the northern circuit for years.”
“If that is so, Jum, he is already a better man than his father. Pot
died a recorder.”
“I hope the young un will open his mug for an hour this afternoon. He’s
got the finest mask on him for a young un I ever saw.”
“Weekes might easily have to play jack-in-the-box all the afternoon.”
“In that case poor old Bow-wow will have to do a frightful amount of
scratching at his leg.”
“But the case is too dead to be worth it.”
“That won’t matter to James. He threw down his gage this morning. The
jury will have to sit tight and hold on to the handle going round the
curves, or he’ll have them in a hat before he’s done with them. And
I’ve seen Bow-wow crumple up before now.”
“So have we all.”
“Like all notorious barkers his voice is the best part about him.”
“For my part, I think you are going too fast. The lad is not so
wonderful as all this. He has done nothing out of the common as far as
I can see.”
“No, dear boy,” said Jumbo, “because you can never see anything. But
a young sportsman who can cross-examine in that manner in his first
murder case is made of the right stuff.”
“But the witness was as easy as pie. She didn’t know where she was or
what she was saying.”
“And he took an amazing advantage of her.”
“So would any one else.”
“They would, but in a very different way.”
“His cross-examination will amount to nothing, in spite of the time it
wasted.”
“Will it not, though? That is all you know of a sentimental jury of
your countrymen.”
“His attack on the police was monstrous, and he had no right to put
questions in the form he did.”
“So thought Weekes, so thought Bow-wow, but he put them all the same.
And what is more, the foreman of the jury, a highly respectable
greengrocer, took cognizance.”
“Well, where does his amazingness come in? She only answered ‘yes’ to
everything.”
“Had he wanted her to answer ‘no’ to everything she would have done so.”
“Of course she would. Everybody could see that.”
“Yes, dear boy, and what does he do? Our young friend takes the
liberty of inventing every one of his facts as he goes along. All that
about her dealings with the police and the murdered man coming from
her native village was so much fiction. It was a marvellous piece of
improvisation.”
“We shall none of us believe that.”
“Of course you won’t, dear boys; you are not expected to. But as soon
as he realized his opportunity he took an amazing advantage of it. It
was daring, I grant you, an unparalleled piece of effrontery. I don’t
know another man at the bar who, had he been capable of a _coup_ of
that kind, would have ventured to play it. The whole thing was the most
audacious piece of work ever seen.”
“But, my dear Jum, he had no right to do a thing of that kind.”
“Of course not, dear boy, but he did it.”
“But why didn’t Weekes stop him?”
“Because Weekes did not know any more than you. He would be the last
man in the world to see a thing of that kind.”
“Then why didn’t Topott call his attention to it?”
“Topott also was completely taken in.”
“Then by your own showing, Jum, you were the cleverest man in court
this morning?”
“The cleverest but one, dear old boy. My young friend Jem Smith was
the cleverest by very long chalks, but my perspicacity is deserving of
honorable mention.”
“It is not the first time,” said the table, roaring with laughter,
“that this fatal drink habit has caused you to see things.”
XXVI
THE PLEA
Northcote lunched with Mr. Whitcomb in a secluded place, where he
partook of a concoction of egg and sherry, and two Abernethy biscuits.
The solicitor’s attitude towards him had already changed. The fact
that he had adhered to his refusal to call witnesses for the defence
was allowed to pass, because he had been able to show that after all
he was entitled to hold ideas of his own on the conduct of the case.
His remarkable essay in cross-examination had restored the solicitor’s
self-esteem; the dark horse he had chosen was not going to prove so
unworthy after all.
“Of course you have got the judge dead against you now,” said the
solicitor, “and I don’t quite see what it is going to do for you; but
as far as it went it was very well done. I can’t think how you came to
put all those questions. Where did you get your information? It was not
on your brief.”
“Never mind where I got it,” said Northcote, with a laugh.
His composure was much greater than when his client had conversed with
him in the court.
“If only the whole case were not so dead it might have proved
enormously useful,” said the solicitor. “Yes, it was very well done.”
“Would you say that Tobin would have done it better?” said the young
man, with an odd smile.
“No, I would not,” said the solicitor. “I will pay you the compliment
of saying that even Michael Tobin would not have done it better.”
“Thank you,” said the young man drily. “And now, what would you like to
lay against an acquittal?”
“Well, you are a cool hand, I must say,” exclaimed Mr. Whitcomb,
somewhat taken aback. “For a beginner I don’t think I’ve met your
equal.”
“What will you lay against an acquittal?”
“I don’t mind laying five hundred to fifty,” said the solicitor.
“Done,” said Northcote.
“If you had asked me this morning before you went into court you might
have had five thousand to fifty.”
“Sorry I forgot to mention it, because I was just as sure then as I am
now what the result will be.”
“Why you should have this confidence I cannot understand. Really, you
know, you haven’t a leg to stand on.”
“Well, well; I am going to leave you now to take a stroll for ten
minutes. See you soon.”
Northcote went out into the traffic to take a few mouthfuls of the
London air. Fiery chemicals seemed to be consuming his nerves, and
his brain was like a sheet of molten flame. But sensations so extreme
in nowise distressed him. He felt the exhilaration of this strange
yet not unpleasant condition to be the pledge of a harmony between
mental and physical passion. It seemed to promise that the overweening
consciousness of power that had haunted him for so many weeks in his
solitude was about to be fulfilled. The painful self-distrust, the
afflicting self-consciousness which had tormented and atrophied his
energies in smaller cases had vanished altogether.
As he recalled the achievement of the morning, he felt a glow of
exaltation. Looking back upon it his mind had been as clear as a
crystal, exquisitely responsive to the will. Every bolt and nut of the
complex mechanism had been in perfect order. The very words he had
wished to use had sprung to his lips, the very tones in which he sought
to embody them had proceeded out of his mouth. So profoundly harmonious
had been his mind in its most intimate workings, that he had been able
to convey fine shades of meaning to the jury without addressing to them
a single word.
Already he seemed to know all that was salient in the character of each
individual who composed it. As he rejoiced in the masterful strength
in which he was now cloaked so valiantly, he felt it had only to abide
with him throughout the afternoon, and a signal victory would crown his
efforts. And it would abide with him throughout that period, because
all the power of his nature, which when aroused to action he felt to be
without a limit, was pledged to this contingency. In this overmastering
flush of virility in which he walked now, he stood revealed to himself
as a Titan. Bestriding the crowded pavements he seemed to be in a world
of pygmies. What was there in the life around him that could stem this
vital force? No longer did he doubt that it was in him to dominate the
judge, the jury, and the prosecution. They were none of his clay;
their mould was not the mighty one nature had used for his fashioning.
With an extraordinary boldness and elasticity in his steps he walked
back into the court. How dear, how precious, had the fetid and hideous
room become to him already! It is a ruthless joy that consumes the
orator, when, clad in his strength, he stands up in that forum which
previously his failures have caused him to dread, but which the lust
of triumph has rendered indispensable to his being. This day would be
written in its memorials. It would mark the first of a succession of
achievements within its precincts, achievements which would cause his
name to be handed down in its archives forever. Who among the listless
occupants of the surrounding benches foresaw that they were on the
threshold of another miracle that was about to happen in the world? Who
among them foresaw that a demigod was about to rise in their midst?
Those venal, high-living men, whose flesh was overlaid in luxury, how
could they hope to understand the miracle that was about to occur? How
could the poor drab, cowering in the dock, whose life so ironically
had become the pretext for the first announcement of his genius, how
could she hope to understand that a new force was about to take its
walk in the world? How dismal, coarse, and sordid everything seemed!
Not a glimpse of light, beauty, or hope was anywhere to be discerned
in the whole of that crowded and suffocating room. The darkness and
horror which oppress us so much in the streets of a great city, all
the festering sores, all the blunt evils which discolor human nature
and conspire against its dignity, seemed to have congregated here.
The most cruel fact of human existence, the knowledge of man’s innate
imperfection, appeared to be concentrated, to be rendered visible in
this inferno in which every aperture was kept so close.
As soon as the judge returned into court, Mr. Weekes rose to address
the jury. Northcote sought sternly to curb his own impatience while the
trite voice of the counsel for the prosecution marshalled the array
of facts. They were so damning that they hardly called for comment.
None could dispute the tale that they told; and the Crown had no wish
to waste the time of the court by laboring the obvious. Reposing
an implicit confidence in the triumph of a virgin reason, that one
imperishable gift of nature to mankind, Mr. Weekes was yet able to
exhibit a profound sorrow for the terrible predicament of the accused,
and the awful alternative with which twelve of her countrymen were
confronted. But painful as was their duty, and painful as was his, it
was imposed upon them by the law. Mr. Weekes resumed his seat in the
midst of a deep and respectful silence, which indicated how crucial the
situation was to all, after having spoken for three-quarters of an hour.
The uninspired but adequate words of his opponent had galled Northcote
at first, so overpowering was his desire to rise at once and deliver
that utterance with which his whole being was impregnated. But as
perforce he waited and his ears were fed by the formal phrases of his
adversary, his nervous energy seemed to concentrate under the effort
of repression. And when at last a curious hush informed him that his
hour had arrived, which at a time less momentous would have unnerved
him altogether, and he rose to his feet, to such an extent was he
surcharged with emotion that at first he could not begin.
Every eye in the crowded building was strained upon him almost
painfully, as he stood with locked lips looking at an old woman in a
bright red shawl in the public gallery. He was as pale as a ghost,
his cheeks were so cadaverous that in the murky light of the gaslit
winter afternoon they presented the appearance of bones divested of
their flesh. But there was a profound faith among the majority of the
slow-breathing multitude. Since the morning the name of the advocate
had come to be bruited among them; and in spite of his silence, which
was grinding against their tense nerves, there was that in his bearing
which excluded all sense of foreboding from their minds.
A full minute passed in complete silence while the advocate stood
staring at the old woman in the red shawl. At last his lips were
unsealed, slowly and reluctantly; the first words that proceeded from
them were of a quietude which pinned every thought. All listened with a
painful intensity without knowing why.
“My lord, gentlemen of the jury: It is with feelings of awe that I
address you. This is the first occasion on which my inexperience
has been summoned to bear the yoke of a great task; and here on its
threshold I confess to you without shame that I should faint under its
burden, had I not the knowledge that I hold a mandate to plead the
cause of not the least of God’s creatures.
“You must have heard with admiration the words which have fallen from
the lips of the learned gentleman who has pleaded the cause of the
Crown. Impregnable in his learning, ripe in his judgment, he has made
it impossible for the tyro who stands before you to imitate his force
and his integrity. Indeed, I do not know how this tyro would derive the
courage to follow him at all were it not that a special sanction had
been given to him by the grievous circumstances of this case. It is
because its nature is so terrible that he who has to share its onus is
able to forget his youth, his weakness, his absence of credentials.
“We are proud, we citizens of London, that we are born of the first
race of mankind, in the most fortunate hour of its history. It is our
boast that we are the inheritors of a freedom that was never seen
before on the earth; a freedom not only of conduct and intercourse,
but more rarely, more preciously, a freedom of opinion, a freedom of
ideas. And we prize this birthright of ours not merely because our
fathers purchased it for us with their blood, but also because its
possession is of inestimable worth in the progress of human nature.
And in the very centre of this pride of ours, which is intellectual in
its source, there arises, as the bulwark of our homage, the more than
sacred edifice which has crystallized the national life. I refer to the
constitution of England.
“We do well to accept this institution with an unreserved emotion
which, as a race, we regard as unworthy. For there are some who hold
that this hiatus between our precepts and our practice confers a yet
deeper lustre upon our love of justice. For, gentlemen, that love is
innate in the heart of every Englishman; it is the stuff of which our
constitution is composed, which quickens our pulses and tightens our
throats; it helps to form the most magnificent of all our traditions;
it is the woof of a fabric which is imperishable.
“It is the thought of this love of justice dominant in the breast of
every London citizen, which sustains him who pleads the cause of the
accused. For in a charge of this awful nature the constitution enacts
with a noble wisdom that the prisoner at the bar is entitled to any
doubt that may arise in any one of your minds in regard to the absolute
conclusiveness of all the evidence that may be urged against her. That
is a humane provision, gentlemen. It is worthy of the source from which
it springs. Without this provision I do not know how any advocate would
be prevailed upon to incur his responsibility; nor, gentlemen, do I
know how any jury of twelve humane and enlightened Englishmen would be
gathered into this court to adjudicate upon the life or death of an
Englishwoman. It is a humane and far-sighted provision, and it enables
the advocate of this unhappy Englishwoman to address you with a feeling
of security which otherwise he could never have hoped to possess.
“I feel, gentlemen, that the exigencies of this case may compel me to
speak to you at great length, but of one thing you may be assured.
I shall not speak at all unless every word I am called to utter is
weighed with care and fidelity in the scales of the reason that God has
given to me, and I know, gentlemen, from the look upon your faces, that
with equal care and equal fidelity you will weigh them in the scales
of the reason God has given to you. I have placed myself in the most
favorable position for addressing you I can devise. I shall hope to
speak with the utmost distinction of which I am capable; and I shall
hope not to employ a word whose meaning is obscure to you, or a phrase
which is equivocal or open to misconstruction. That you are prepared
to surrender your whole attention to me you tell me with your looks.
That I shall hold that attention I dare to believe, unless the hand of
Providence deprives me of the power to give utterance to those things
with which my mind is charged to the bursting-point.
“You will not refute me when I assert that the fact in our common
experience which at the present time has the greatest power to oppress
us is the imperfection of human nature. And upon entering a court of
justice this fact is apt to demoralize a feeling mind. The science of
appraising criminal evidence has been carried among us to a curious
pitch, as witness the unexampled skill of my learned friend; the
paraphernalia of incrimination, if the expression may be allowed to me,
is consummate; but in spite of the rare ingenuity of great legal minds,
human nature is fallible. It is liable to err. It does err. To the deep
grief of science it errs with great frequency. Indeed, its errors are
so numerous that they even impinge upon the sacred domain of justice.
Miscarriages of justice occur every day.
“In a cause of this nature it is most necessary that steps should be
taken to exclude the element of injustice by all means that are known
to us. We are bound, gentlemen, to keep that contingency constantly
before our eyes. Such a contingency fills me with trembling; and I
believe it fills you, for in this instance a miscarriage of justice
would not only be irreparable, it would be a crime against our human
nature.
“The question arises, how can we safeguard ourselves against this
element of injustice? What means can we adopt to keep it out?
Gentlemen, it devolves upon me, the advocate of the accused, to furnish
that means. By taking thought I shall endeavor to provide it. To that
end I propose to divide what I have to say to you into three parts. The
first will deal with your legal duty. The second will deal with the
duty to which every Christian Englishman must subscribe or forfeit his
name, and with his name the title-deeds of his humanity. The third will
show the consequences which must and do wait upon the evasion of this
second duty, which is the highest and noblest known to mankind, which
in itself completely transcends this legal one, this technical one you
are sworn to obey.”
“I can see he means to be all night,” said Mr. Weekes to his junior,
with marked irritation. “Lover of the sound of his own voice.”
“He is going wrong already,” said Mr. Topott complacently. “Saying too
much; overdoing it generally.”
“Every inch a performer,” said Jumbo at the back to a companion.
“There’s a fortune in that voice and manner. Hope the lad won’t say too
much.”
“Has done already,” said his companion. “That cant of a duty higher
than the legal one is merely ridiculous.”
The ex-president of the Oxford Union and his friend, whose youth
rendered them sternly critical, were following Northcote’s every word
with the closest attention.
“He’s got a brogue you could cut with a knife,” said the ex-president,
with an air of resenting a personal injury.
“You are wrong,” said his friend, with an absence of compromise. “He
was at school with me.”