by the solicitor. He could only smile and nod and wish him good night,
all of which was done with incoherence and abruptness. As the young man
passed out of the court, an elderly unfortunate, without any teeth,
one-half of whose face had been destroyed by disease, crept from her
hiding-place in a dark corner of the corridor. She grabbed the hem of
Northcote’s gown and carried it to her lips.
“Gawd bless yer, guv’ner,” she mumbled, in a thick, wheezy whisper.
In the barristers’ robing-room the entrance of Northcote created a
stir. Jumbo, a bencher of Northcote’s inn, and like all who are not
afraid to present themselves without reserve, just as nature devised
them, a man of immense popularity, hit the young advocate a blow on the
shoulder.
“When can I stand you a bottle, dear boy? Fine work!”
The son of the Master of the Rolls came up.
“I say, Northcote,” he said, “you don’t remember me? I’m Hutton. I was
in Foxey’s house with you at school.”
“Of course, of course,” said Northcote, hardly knowing a word that he
spoke; “I remember you perfectly well. You have not altered at all.”
“You’ve not altered much, although you look awfully old and very much
thinner than you used to look. I want you to mention an evening that
you can come round and dine with my governor--you remember the governor
I used to get ragged so tremendously for boasting about? He will be
delighted to meet you. I shall tell him all about this; he is the
kindest old soul.”
“Thanks, but I can’t dine with you until I’ve got my evening clothes
out of pawn.”
Northcote’s schoolfellow laughed heartily.
“No, you’ve not altered,” he said. “Just the same amusing cynical old
cuss you were at school--just the same cynical old cuss of whom we were
so much afraid and who was so frightfully unpopular.”
“Poverty and pride were never a popular combination,” said Northcote,
aroused from his preoccupation by the sympathy of one of the few
who had supported him in his youth. “If I hadn’t been a bit of a
football-player I don’t know what would have happened to me in those
days. I used to derive pleasure, I remember, from insulting everybody.”
“Foxey used to call you Diogenes.”
“He used to say that Diogenes was considerably the pleasanter fellow of
the two.”
“Poor old Foxey always feared you, I believe, just as did everybody
else. You were a gloomy, dreamy sort of chap when you were not merely
formidable. I remember once you were nearly superannuated. And do you
remember Foxey saying there was nothing you might not do, if only you
would apply your mind to it; but as it was, he was sure you would never
do anything?”
“I lived in a mental fog in those days,” said Northcote, with a dreary
laugh. “There was a thick vapor wrapped all round my brain. I could see
and understand nothing. One fact only was borne in upon me with any
sort of clearness. It was that I was vastly superior to everybody else.
There never was such a colossal self-esteem.”
“Well, you certainly despised everybody in those days. And you must
have gone on despising everybody to be capable of doing what you have.”
“I remember I was generally chosen to lead the scrum because I had a
big voice,” said Northcote, with the light of reminiscence softening
his grim mouth.
“But your voice is so much greater now than it was then, although it
was always an immense booming sort of thing that seemed to come out of
your boots. But your hands used to impress me more than anything else.
I used to think that if I had hands like that I should break ribs for
my private amusement. Do you remember standing the three-quarters on
their heads? You were a hefty brute in those days.”
“I was always more or less a man of my hands, yet at the same time was
always intensely interested in myself. I used to consider that ‘Cad’
Northcote--that was my name at school, although you are too polite to
remind me of it--was quite the most wonderful person who had ever
been born into this world or into any other. I used to lie awake all
night taking myself to pieces as though I had been a watch. Sometimes I
dreamed that I was Napoleon, and that it had come to pass that he had
been chosen to lead the English pack while he was still at school.”
“Well, that dream came true at any rate,” said his schoolfellow, with
an outburst of enthusiasm. “You were still with us when you pushed
those Welshmen all over the place.”
The conversation was curtailed at this point by the appearance of the
judge’s marshal.
“Mr. Northcote,” said this courteous and nicely dressed official, “Sir
Joseph would be very much obliged if you would come round and see him
in his room.”
“Right you are! I will be round in a minute,” said Northcote, shaking
hands with his old schoolfellow and declining an invitation to dine in
Eaton Square the next evening but one.
XXX
SIR JOSEPH BRUDENELL
In the judge’s room Northcote found its occupant seated in an armchair
at the side of the fire. The light was subdued, and the face of the old
man was in shadow even while he rose to receive his visitor.
“I thank you for coming to see me, Mr. Northcote,” he said, in a low
voice. “I will not detain you long, but I hope you will sit down.”
Northcote accepted the seat that was indicated opposite to the judge’s
armchair. His curiosity was roused in a strange fashion by the manner
and tone of this old man. They were extremely kind and gentle, almost
those which an aged and benevolent parent might employ when about to
take leave of a favorite son.
“If you will allow an old advocate,” said the judge, leaning back in
his chair and placing the tips of his fingers together, “to affirm it
again, I have been impressed by your conduct of this case. My memory
carries me back a long way; I have been more than fifty years at the
bar and on the bench. During that period I have been brought into
contact with the greatest advocates of their day, and I have been
called upon to bear a part in many of the leading causes. But never,
Mr. Northcote,--I emphasize the word,--has it been my privilege to
witness a performance so remarkable on the part of one who is young
and untried as the one given by you to-day.
“In the first place, and bearing in mind the limited character of your
opportunities, I cannot pretend to know how it has been achieved.
Your cross-examination of the last witness called for the Crown was,
in my view, masterly. I have always held, and many will support me, I
am sure, that the art of cross-examination is a searching test of an
advocate. To the ordinary person even moderate skill in that supremely
difficult branch only comes with years and experience. But you begin,
Mr. Northcote, where many of true distinction are only able to leave
off.
“I have always been proud, jealous--I might say overjealous perhaps--of
my profession, to which I have given the flower of my maturity; and I
have always felt that whatever degree of talent it may please God to
bestow upon a man, this great profession of ours offers a field which
brings it to the test. You must let me say, Mr. Northcote, that when
I heard you deal with that poor woman this morning, and I heard you
frame those questions which you put to her with a really beautiful
sincerity which told heavily with the jury, I felt proud that so young
a man could stand up so fearlessly and so collectedly in his first
great criminal cause and put to so fine a use the talents that God had
given to him. Had you been my own son I could not have felt prouder
of you, and prouder of the traditions that you were upholding. Many
of the great lights of the past came before my eyes--Pearson, now the
Lord Chief Justice; Hutton, the Master of the Rolls; poor, dear Fred
Markham, in many respects the most brilliant of them all, who was cut
off, poor fellow, almost before he had reached his prime; the late
George Stratton; Lord Ballinogue; Walker; Skeffington; and I know not
how many more--but I did not hesitate to believe, although we old men
are tenacious of our prejudices, that the bounty of nature had placed
you already on their level, and that great and good and glorious as
were all these names I have mentioned, you were starting at the point
where they were content to end.”
Northcote leaned forward and lowered his head with a fierce, almost
uncontrollable sensation of bewilderment, in which, however, pain was
predominant. Every word that was uttered by that low, trembling, old
voice appeared to spring from the heart. It was something more than
an old man babbling of his youth. There was a pride, an eagerness, a
solicitude, in the manner of this aged judge which seemed to clasp
Northcote like the impersonal devotion of a noble woman to something
more radiant but less pure and less rare than that which emanates from
herself. In the keenness of his distress it was as much as Northcote
could do to refrain from rushing from the room.
“Yet, Mr. Northcote,” the old man went on, “if I say this of your
cross-examination, which as far as you are concerned was a thing of
the moment, a mere piece of _esprit_ thrown off without premeditation,
what shall I say of that address with which you conquered all who
listened to it? I speak no longer as a judge, Mr. Northcote; my livery
is laid by. As I sat there in court with every chord in my heart
responsive to the noble music of your voice, I felt that you had
brought home to me that the time had come when I had ceased to be of
service to the public. I shall take my seat on the bench no more. But
henceforward I shall always carry your words in my heart. They were
noble words, nobly spoken; nature has been almost wantonly lavish
to you in her gifts. It has been given to you, a young man, to show
that the completest abasement of human nature is not in the gutter. I
read the deeper and the truer meaning that was innermost, the divine
message that was unfolded by the deep vibrations of your singularly
beautiful voice. You revealed to one in that court, Mr. Northcote, who
should have been engaged in performing his duty to the public, that no
sore festers in our social life to-day like the organized degradation
of the police-court, where learning, wisdom, courage, and integrity
are debased to even fouler depths than the gutter by their constant
traffic in human misery. Many times, Mr. Northcote, have I cowered in
spirits since I have been called to my office, but it has remained for
you, a young advocate, a fledgling of a newer and grander generation,
which will touch this material world of ours to finer issues--it has
remained for you to knock at the door of the citadel of the oldest of
his Majesty’s judges, and to put questions that he cannot answer. You
forced him to say to himself, ‘Tell me, Joseph Brudenell, what law you
are obeying when you take your seat on these cushions, and you endeavor
to fulfil the functions of the office to which you have allowed
yourself to be called?’
“When, Mr. Northcote, in the height of your conviction you dared
to swear in your own jury, you made every member of it actual and
visible to me. You may have been uttering a profounder truth than
you knew--which is one of the many prerogatives of genius--when you
asserted that every one of those fearful and unhappy tradesmen had that
jury within him in the jury-box. As you pointed out, we are the heirs
of all the ages: the prisoner and the policeman, the advocate and the
judge. And he whom you caused this jury of yours to elect as their
foreman showed to me how responsible and authentic that jury was. By
the magic, Mr. Northcote, in which you deal, you not only evoked that
foreman in the spirit, but by some miracle you clothed him in flesh.
That was a terrible achievement. It was the first occasion that the
redeemer of mankind was seen to be in the occupation of a seat at the
court of Old Bailey.
“I have heard all the great advocates of my time. I was present on that
memorable occasion when Selwyn Anstruther made his appeal on behalf of
Smith. Anstruther spoke during the whole of three days; as an orator he
would, with equal opportunities, have been the peer of Gladstone and
John Bright. Anstruther’s tradition is such--he had killed himself with
overwork by the time he was forty--that he has become almost a myth.
But even this speech of his to which I allude, many phrases of which I
can recall after all these years, does not compare forensically with
this appeal of yours, to which we had the awful privilege of listening
this afternoon.
“Nature, Mr. Northcote, as I have said, has in your case been almost
wantonly lavish of her gifts. Like one who was compounded of pure
wisdom, you appear to have sprung from Jupiter’s forehead completely
armed. You have the voice and presence of the tribune; you add to the
power of the demagogue a cool, elastic, and a subtle brain. I know
not which to marvel at the more, your almost reckless courage, or
that wonderful self-discipline which bends a courser so fiery to your
lightest behest.
“You must bear with me in patience, Mr. Northcote, while I exhaust the
stock of my superlatives; you see you have carried an old advocate
away just as completely, nay, even more completely than you carried
those honest laymen. This afternoon you furnished an old warrior,
weary of the arena, with a few more of those priceless moments which
he had not dared to hope again to enjoy. For over and above all your
other qualities you have the divine gift which fuses every quality you
possess. You have that sympathetic imagination which is the gift of
heaven. It is a key which unlocks every bosom. The rich and the poor
must alike bow before it. Things and men, Nature herself, even the
universe itself, if you care to address your questions to it, can deny
to you none of their secrets. The foreman of your jury, the divine
mystic of the Galilean hills, was the man who was endowed with that
rare jewel beyond all others; and he, as we read, carried the multitude
from place to place and caused the sea to open that it might walk
across.”
The voice of the judge grew lower and lower. He had spoken very
rapidly, and under the impetus of an excitement almost painful in one
of his years. Northcote was entranced by the vivid energy of the old
man, and the tremulous emotion with which his words were charged.
It seemed to be uncanny that he should be sitting there to listen.
There was not a member of the bar who would have identified in the
transfigured zealot who was pouring forth such strange words the
personality of Bow-wow Brudenell, the irascible old blusterer who was
considered to be so unsympathetic and hard to please. There was not a
word, not a gesture by which the outer man who had become so “famous”
with the public could be recognized. This intense mental energy,
burning like a lamp behind the harsh creases in his face, seemed to
have refined him and rendered him beautiful. The grand passion which
Northcote had unmasked filled the young man with awe. What did his own
imperious qualities amount to in the presence of this simplicity? How
foolish, how divine it was! This old man, whom he had dubbed in his
arrogance the type of all mediocrity, shone forth with a lustre which
filled its beholder with shame.
The judge rose from his chair with an effort. Northcote also rose. The
old man seized his hand with a humble gesture which yet transcended a
parent’s tenderness.
“My dear boy,” he said in a whisper, “I did not call you here to listen
to this unbridled praise of your own gifts. But I felt that I must
speak all that was in my mind concerning you, because I love you--I
love you for what you are and for what you will be. All my life I have
had a passion for my profession, and I bring myself to speak these
words to you, because I feel that I hold within my grasp the newer,
the wiser, the grander generation which has sprung already from the
loins of us effete old warriors. You, my dear boy, I dare to prophesy,
will be its protagonist. There is not a prize which our profession
offers which is not already in your hand. One of these days you will
be called to its highest dignities. I foresee that you are likely to
become a dictator. The imperious will by which you are impelled invests
you with a power that soon or late will control the destinies of the
state. Therefore an old public servant ventures to speak to you as he
would speak to his own son were he living to hear his words.
“The material lures of your profession are powerful, but I entreat
you never to consider them. Be a strong and great advocate who will
take his stand only upon truth. In the infinity of your nature you
are fitted to walk alone in the strait places. The temptations which
will accost one of such powers will not be light ones, but if you can
acquire that reverence for your calling, that mediocrities like myself
have been endowed with throughout their days owing to the infinite
mercy of God, that calling has nothing to fear at your hands. It will
derive a new sanction from your genius. But, my dear boy, this is a
terrible gift which you possess. It is a two-edged sword, and if in a
moment of unwariness, such as has been known to visit the heroes of
which we read, one of its sharp edges should be turned against the
society in which you dwell, I beseech you to remember the other edge
will be turned against yourself. He who affirms this is a humble and
aged servitor of truth, and on that plea I beg you to forgive his
importunity.”
All this time the judge had been holding Northcote’s hand. Towards the
end his voice seemed to fail, but the pressure of his fingers increased.
“These are my last words,” he said feebly. “Guard your trust; take your
stand upon truth. May God keep you. One who is old will remember you in
his prayers.”
Almost involuntarily the judge placed his hands on the shoulders of the
young man and pressed his lips to his forehead.
For a moment Northcote seemed petrified with bewilderment. This strange
message from one who had run his course to one who was entering upon
his own atrophied the powers of speech and motion. At last he tore
his hand from the judge’s weakening grasp and ran from the room. In
his flight he seemed to detect the sound of something dull and heavy
falling behind him. Yet in the depths of his agitation and his shame he
did not stay to look back.
He was soon out in the dark streets. Their coldness and commotion,
their secrecy, and above all their freedom, were painfully welcome.
He had hardly been able to draw breath in that arena in which he had
fought his battle during so many dreadful hours. The old madness of
movement, the old insensate desire for liberty overcame him again, and
hungry and weary as he was he proceeded to tramp fiercely about the raw
winter night.
As he marched without aim hither and thither, up one street and down
another, he had no thought of the astonishing victory he had gained.
The words of the judge had overcome everything else. They dealt with
the future; his victory was already a part of the past. His pride
was so arbitrary that it appalled and humiliated him to reflect that
any man, that even an aged servitor of the truth, in the moment of
renunciation of the arduous labors that had oppressed him for so many
years, should have had the temerity to address words of such import to
him.
From one pair of eyes at least, his talents, which had at last wrested
recognition from a jealous, narrow, conventional world, had not been
able to hide the dangers with which they were girt. This aged judge had
pierced the secret. Those senile old eyes, alone of those in the court,
had seen the pitfalls which lay beneath his triumph.
He ought to have been overwhelmingly happy in this new perambulation of
the darkness. Yet the sense of humiliation was paramount. That strength
upon which all his life his extravagant hopes had been nourished had
proved to be even greater than he had known, but the under side of his
nature, to which he had given rein in order to grasp success, opened up
possibilities that were strange and awful. Truth and justice had had no
meaning for the terrible genie he had called to his aid. They had been
used as so many cards in a game. The judge was right: so grievous a
prostitution of a noble talent was a grave public danger. On the first
occasion it had been employed it had compassed a notable miscarriage of
justice.
Towards ten o’clock his wanderings carried him into Leicester Square.
He stayed his steps under the ghastly lights of a music hall and made
the discovery that he was faint with hunger and fatigue. With a dismal
sense of foreboding, which habit had rendered involuntary, he thrust
his hands in those pockets which on many occasions had had nothing
to yield. To his joy his search was rewarded with a sovereign and a
halfpenny. As he held the coins in his fingers a strange weary feeling
of gratitude stole over him. His days of bodily privation were at an
end. Not again would he know what it was to need food and yet lack
the wherewithal of obtaining it. After all he must not dare to deride
success. Its attributes were substantial, definite, necessary.
As he crossed the square in search of a restaurant of whose merits
he was aware, the large letters of the news-bill of an evening
journal caught his eye. Murder Trial--Sensational Speech for the
Defence--Scenes in Court--Verdict.
“Here, boy, a paper,” he said, holding out the halfpenny.
He clutched the paper greedily and crumpled it in his fist. It almost
seemed as he did so that fame itself was tangible, that it was
something that he could crumple in his hand.
In the eating-house he passed a glorious hour in which he devoured
beefsteak and potatoes and consumed a tankard of ale. He read the
account of the trial over and over again, although as rendered by the
evening journal it had no meaning for him. Even the bald _résumé_ of
bare facts seemed far otherwise than those as rendered to himself.
He could not recognize one of the incidents. Hardly a word was
intelligible to the chief actor in that crowded and pregnant drama.
“Mr. Norcutt for the defence spoke for two hours fifty-eight minutes.
His speech was full of Biblical quotations, and even the judge was
affected by it.”
When he turned out again into the streets a newsboy came running round
the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue. He was crying, “Here y’are hextry
special. Sensational murder trial--sudden deff of the judge.”
Northcote bought another newspaper and opened it under a lamp. In the
space reserved for the latest telegrams, these words were printed
upside down, “We regret to learn that Mr. Justice Brudenell expired
in his room shortly after the conclusion of the murder trial at the
Central Criminal Court this evening. The cause of death is believed to
be heart failure.”
XXXI
MEDIOCRITY VERSUS GENIUS
Northcote could confess no surprise. But it struck him with a sense
of drama, the thrill of the unexpected which underlies the impact of
the common, that he should not have discerned the end of this aged
man to be so near. The sounds he had heard as he rushed from the room
must have been caused by that venerable figure falling to the floor.
Sharply, however, as he felt the knife of reality in all its brutal
power, he yet refrained from speculating upon the scope of its present
operation. He was now tired out; his brain was heavy. He pushed on
straight to his attic, climbed the dark stairs, and in a little while
was curled under a blanket with a merciful sleep blotting out the
actual.
He was summoned peremptorily from oblivion by the noise made by the old
charwoman in drawing back the curtains which divided his garret into
two apartments.
“Quarter to eight, sir.”
“Ay, ay,” he muttered, stretching his limbs and brushing the sleep
from his eyes. His slumber had been that of abject weariness;
deep, dreamless, undisturbed. He jumped out of bed, slipped on a
dressing-gown that hung in rags, and felt himself to be once more the
complete and valiant man.
When he sat down to breakfast he sent out the old woman to procure
the morning journals. Throughout the operation of dressing, his mind,
inflamed with conquest as it was, was filled with thoughts of the
judge. In spite of its length, his career on the bench had only been a
qualified success; he had never lacked adverse criticism. In the eyes
of many he had never been quite strong enough for his position.