obituary notices, rather than to the accounts of the trial in which
his own personal triumph would be displayed. Following the custom of
bestowing even more indiscriminate eulogy upon mediocrity when it is
dead than it receives when it is living, the newspapers vied with
one another in descanting upon Sir Joseph Brudenell’s services to
the public, and his qualities of heart and mind. It brought immense
relief to Northcote that this was the case. He was in no mood to suffer
disparagement of that venerable figure.
The _Age_ had a leading article upon the trial, and it was soon
apparent to the advocate that its hostility towards himself was very
marked. It said: “We venture to think that a more singular speech was
never heard in a court of justice. It is not our province to advance
opinions which encroach upon the right of counsel to settle for
themselves what is proper and what is improper in the means they may
adopt to safeguard the interests of an accused person, particularly
in cases of this nature. But it does seem to us, and we believe this
view is shared by the majority of competent persons who were present
in court, that the course adopted by the counsel for the defence, if
it were to become general, would constitute a grave public danger.
Mr. Northcote is a young advocate, whose reputation is yet in the
making; and in yielding to the call of his ambition, he adopted a
means for the display of his forensic skill the propriety of which we
venture seriously to call in question. Had Mr. Justice Brudenell--whose
tragically sudden death (to which we refer on page 9) occurred within
an hour of the rising of the court--been in the complete enjoyment
of that mental and bodily vigor which during a period of twenty-five
years he had taught the public to look for in the performance of his
avocations, we are sure that, to use a mild term, such a travesty as
that with which Mr. Northcote assailed the ears of the jury would not
have been allowed to invade a British Court of Judicature. We are sure
it would have been stopped peremptorily at the outset. As it was, a
concatenation of unforeseen circumstances vouchsafed to the counsel for
the defence a license of which he availed himself to the full. And the
result we can only regard as lamentable.
“The youth and the limited experience of the counsel for the defence
are entitled to be urged on his behalf; while the physical condition
of the judge which resulted, almost immediately this extremely painful
case had concluded, in his tragically sudden death, removes from his
shoulders the least onus for what was allowed to take place. But
at the same time it is to be urged upon ambitious members of the
junior bar that yesterday’s precedent is not one to be followed with
impunity. Whatever the exigencies of the moment may dictate to young
counsel in course of a trial for a capital offence, public opinion
will not permit the introduction of the doctrines of Nietsche into a
British Court of Justice. The parody which was perpetrated yesterday
upon religion at the Central Criminal Court must have been peculiarly
repugnant to every reverently constituted mind, while its effect upon
the verdict can only be characterized as a total failure of justice.
Again the effect upon the advocate who permitted himself to indulge in
an occupation so perilous was demonstrated in a remarkable and dramatic
manner at the conclusion of his address. The reference he was led into
making, for which afterwards he was impelled to make an unreserved
apology, to the miscarriage of justice which occurred in the case of
the unfortunate man John Davis a year ago, a reference which took the
form of an impeachment of the learned judge himself, and of Mr. Weekes,
K. C., the senior counsel for the Crown, can only be characterized as a
gross breach of taste, and an equally gross disregard of those higher
tenets of humanity which Mr. Northcote in addressing the jury put to a
use so questionable.”
“Well done, old Blunderer,” said the recipient of this castigation,
his mouth full of buttered toast, and attempting the delicate feat
of propping against the teapot the instrument with which it had been
administered. “In the performance of your ‘daily avocations,’ my dear
old friend, you are to be admired. The ‘doctrines of Nietsche’ is
distinctly good. Whatever will happen to us in this country when you
can no longer be bought for threepence I am sure I don’t know.”
However, when the young man had finished his breakfast, and he had
read the article again, he did not view it with quite the same air of
detachment with which he had contemplated it at first. By nature he
was immensely impatient of criticism. He accepted his own superiority
to all the rest of the world without question, but like an arbitrary
despot, he could not suffer the power of which he felt so secure to
suffer misinterpretation, or the motives that impelled it to be called
in question. His pride, after all, was of a ferocious and aggressive
kind. The old judge’s appeal had humiliated him bitterly. This
newspaper article filled him with the fury that it would have filled
Voltaire.
“I see what it is,” he said, filling his pipe. “They are all in the
ring, and they are afraid a rank outsider is going to break it. And so
he shall!”
He finished with a volley of oaths.
The next moment tears had sprung to his eyes. Tears of chagrin, rage,
disgust, of resentment against himself. How dare he be so arrogant
when the words of the honest old man, spoken while the hand of death
was upon him, were still in his ears. Mediocrity had its function, its
reason to be. Until he had grasped that elementary truth he could never
emerge, clad in valor and completeness, upon that high platform which
nature had designed him to occupy. “Cad” Northcote had been the name
bestowed upon him at school by his humbler but honester fellows: the
same term of opprobrium had now been applied to him in a more public
manner.
It was unworthy that he should ascribe the bitter antagonism he had
raised against himself to the eternal feud of mediocrity versus
genius. That fine gentleman, the old judge, was incapable of bearing
false testimony. Outface it as he might, the flaw was in himself. It
had been there from the beginning. The genie in which his intellectual
pride was centred was the seat of the canker. Every time he employed
it he must be aware of his fatal gift. It was a sinister talisman, or,
in the words of the judge, a two-edged sword. Better a thousand times
not to be distinguished from the mediocrity he was never weary of
despising, than to be at the mercy of a genius that would compass his
destruction.
He took up another newspaper, and turned his attention to an article
entitled: “‘Bow-wow’ Brudenell, by an Old Friend.” In the course of
a column of appreciation it said: “Public life is the poorer to-day
by a memorable figure. Mr. Justice Brudenell had achieved an odd sort
of fame. It rested upon his idiosyncrasies upon the bench; upon the
curious, irascible, barking delivery he affected, which earned him
the name by which he was always spoken of in the circles in which he
moved. In the judgment of his profession he was hardly considered
to be a ‘strong’ judge, nor was he widely popular; yet although he
had detractors, he was always listened to with respect. His queer
little tricks of manner and his somewhat formidable aspect created an
impression in the public mind which cannot be said to have been wholly
in his favor. Yet none could have told from his demeanor on the bench
what the man was at heart. It would require the pen of a Charles Lamb
to limn him in his quiddity. To his private friends he was a perpetual
delight and stimulus; he stood for all that was worthiest in the human
character. He kept a too fearful conscience ever to be truly eminent in
public life, but no kinder, humbler, humaner gentleman ever walked the
earth than Joseph Brudenell.
“It is to be feared that the closing days of this good man’s life
were darkened by tragedy. The present writer was sitting with him in
the smoking-room of a club, when a fellow member, an occupant of the
Episcopal bench, carried over to him the evening paper containing the
confession of the man Burcell in whose stead John Davis had suffered
the extreme penalty a few days before. It would engage the pen of a
dramatist to portray the self-righteousness of the bishop and the
horror and bewilderment of the judge. ‘It has overtaken me at last,’
said the old judge, covering his eyes as though he had been poor
blind Œdipus. ‘This is the shadow that has darkened my life during
twenty-five years.’
“His distress will never be forgotten by those who witnessed it. From
that hour he was never the same. The tragic suddenness of his end was
not unforeseen by those who knew him best. Yet to the last he was the
same gentle, courteous compound of scholarship and refinement. In no
sense could he ever have been looked upon as brilliant. No epigrams, no
pregnant sayings, no flashes of wit are recorded of him; upon the bench
he was too much in earnest even to be genial. Every cause that came
before him appeared to engage the very blood of his veins and the whole
life of his intellect. It was a ruthless kind of irony that fixed upon
such shoulders as these the responsibility for as grave a miscarriage
as ever darkened the annals of English justice.
“In his private life he had known great sorrows. His only son was
drowned twenty years ago while a freshman at Oxford. Had he lived,
he was destined for that profession for which his father had so
profound a reverence. Nothing could have been more exquisite than
Joseph Brudenell’s childlike devotion to his calling, yet he was
always haunted by the consciousness that the ideals he had set up were
beyond his grasp. This son was to have been the truer, the wiser,
the stronger, the more penetrating man; yet it was never to be. The
accident that deprived him of this enlarged and completer edition of
himself added something to his latter years that his faithful circle of
old friends found wistful and affecting. And only last week he lost the
devoted daughter who had been the stay of his declining years.
“It is safe to say that no man was ever called to the bar who was more
honestly beloved by all who understood the secret workings of his mind
than was Joseph Brudenell. Subtle it was not, it was not agile, and it
was not profound; indeed the possession of that simple and unsagacious
implement conferred only one claim to preëminence. It is as a great and
honest gentleman that Joseph Brudenell will be called to the Valhalla
of his gods. He was past master in one art only: the art which embraces
the amenities of life. Unsympathetic critics he has had in his public
capacity. He has been called a pedant, a weakling, one deficient in
insight; even his scholarship, which was so laboriously honorable, has
not escaped inquiry; but the void left by that massive and ungainly
form can never be filled. In this time, at least, his like will not
be seen. A rare jewel has been resolved to its element; earth is the
poorer by an English gentleman.”
These words served to heighten Northcote’s indignation against himself.
The stab he had directed at the judge increased in infamy. Already it
seemed as if he had paid an exorbitant price for his success. However,
in the midst of his anguish and perplexity, he heard feet on his
staircase. There came a knock to his door. It was the solicitor.
“Well, my boy,” said Mr. Whitcomb, shaking his hand affectionately, “do
you see you have killed the judge?”
“Yes,” said Northcote, “but I saved the life of your client.”
XXXII
MEDIOCRITY ASPIRING TO VIRTUE
The advocate handed the _Age_ to the solicitor.
“You may have seen it,” he said. “I am honored with a leading article.”
“I have read it. It means your removal from the top story to the
basement.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It ensures that your professional emoluments will not be less than two
thousand a year.”
“That would be very well had I not arrived at the conclusion that the
game is not worth the candle. The penalties are too great.”
“Why consider them, dear boy? Why not accept the gifts of the gods in a
thankful and contrite spirit?”
“You would have me drink the nectar that they offer although they hand
it in a poisoned cup?”
“You are a queer fellow. You accept starvation with a dignified
humility, but the instant you touch success--and such a success!--you
make a face.”
“Such a success--there you have it all!”
“My dear fellow, whoever in this world got off the mark with such a
flying start? You have awoke this morning to find yourself famous.”
“Bah! I am poisoned; I have got my death!”
“Within five years, if you keep your head, you will be making a
princely income.”
“I know it.”
“And two days ago you could not afford to pay for a fire in the middle
of winter.”
“You are perfectly right.”
“Two days ago you could not fill your belly when you were hungry.”
“I shall never taste hunger again--that honest, bitter, medicinal
hunger that merges the mind in the soul. I shall never taste again that
ascetic clarity which makes the heart supple and arms the brain.”
“You talk like a Methodist.”
“My father was a country preacher.”
“I expect this is the swing of the pendulum. You must have undergone
great mental excitement in making your effort--and what an effort it
was! And now the clock has swung right back; you are below par: you
have got the blues.”
“I hate myself; I hate my cursed profession.”
“Yes, the mercury has fallen. The higher the rise the greater the drop.
But make an effort to be rational. Look at this.”
The solicitor handed the advocate a brief. It was marked with a
retaining fee of a hundred guineas.
“Two days ago that was beyond the dreams of your avarice. And now it
is a mere forerunner of the beginning. You will be compelled to change
your quarters and keep a clerk.”
“You remind me of the devil--the real authentic mediæval
Mephistopheles,” said Northcote, with his fingers trembling upon the
tape. “You are in the pay of the genie, you smug-hearted materialist.”
“Ah, the genie again! I am afraid to confess that that genie of yours
gave me a very bad quarter of an hour,” cried Mr. Whitcomb, laughing
heartily at the recollection. “I was never in such a panic in my life.
Had it not been the last moment, and had it not been impossible to get
any one else, you would never have held that brief. You and your genie
frightened me to death. I woke up in a cold sweat in the middle of the
night, wondering what would happen if you brought the infernal thing
into court.”
“Well, I did bring it into court, did I not?”
“You would never have got your verdict without it.”
“Yet you were afraid?”
“That was before I knew what it was. But as soon as you got up to talk
to the jury, and you could have heard a pin drop over the court, I gave
in.”
“That is true enough,” said Northcote, in the hollow tone which had
discomposed the solicitor at the restaurant, “but once having summoned
this thing to my aid, once having taken it into court with me, once,
as you might say, having let it taste blood in the arena, I shall
be compelled to have it with me every time. It is already out of my
control.”
“So much the better for you and for those who command your services.
This genie of yours will one day be worth thirty thousand a year in
cool coin of the realm. If you will deign to take the advice of one who
is perfectly willing to be a father to you, I say to you, don’t overdo
it. Employ as many devils as you please,--five, ten, or a hundred
and ten,--but don’t be tempted into taking enough work to break down
your nervous system. Keep that intact and you are predestined for the
Woolsack.”
“I feel it; and yet, do you know, Whitcomb, it hangs in the balance
whether I ever walk into court any more.”
“If you think so, it is little you know of your nature. What you call
the genie will have the last word to say on that subject.”
“Like every other mud-colored materialist your intelligence is
admirably lucid as far as it goes.”
“Compliments are flying. But is it not the faculty of youth to despise
the common sense to which one day it is only too glad to return?”
“I would spew mediocrity out of my mouth,” said Northcote, suddenly
overmastered by arrogance.
“Common sense and mediocrity are not quite the same; but you can take
it from me, dear boy, that genius has always to learn sooner or later
that mediocrity has its uses.”
The solicitor was amazed to see tears spring to the eyes of the
advocate.
“I have learnt that already,” he said huskily; “I learnt it last night
after the rising of the court.”
“I presume you are referring to poor old Bow-wow, the type of all
mediocrity.”
“Yes, to the poor dear old blunderer who, after the manner of his kind,
consecrated his life to a public display of his incapacity. Yet I weep
for Adonais, he is dead!”
“I say, my boy,” said the solicitor, amazed by the depth of emotion
that was revealed in the face of the young man, “you did not suppose
for one moment that I was in earnest when I said you had killed him?”
“You struck so near to the truth,” said the young man, “that you made
me bleed.”
“Well, this is a consummate kind of folly. You must feed well; build
yourself up; go away for Christmas; take a rest. Future greatness
cannot be allowed to play ducks and drakes with its chances.”
“I swear to you, Whitcomb, the weight of a feather would make me throw
up the bar.”
“Impossible! That voice, that presence, that imagination, that
extraordinary dynamic quality--in other words, your genie, leaves you
no choice.”
“I swear to you, Whitcomb, if it were not for my countrified old
mother, who has worked her fingers to the bone to provide an education
for me, I would never go into court any more.”
“Ah, well, I shall continue to send you briefs all the same. I cannot
recall another man who has got a start such as yours, and I shall be
astounded if through a whim you show yourself unworthy of your good
fortune. Here is a check for ‘the monkey’ you won of me at lunch
yesterday.”
“Five hundred pounds! I don’t remember anything of the circumstances.”
“I laid five hundred to fifty against your getting a verdict.”
“When?”
“At lunch yesterday.”
“You must not take any notice of that. I was very excited. I am afraid
I was not myself.”
“Why afraid? The money is yours.”
“I don’t want it; I won’t have it.”
Mr. Whitcomb had thrust the check in the hands of the advocate, who
tore it up immediately.
“Well,” said the solicitor, “I should say at the present time you have
undeniable claims to be considered the most remarkable man in London. I
can’t fathom what has come over you.”
“I was thrown off my balance a little yesterday,” said Northcote
hoarsely.
“Yesterday, my friend, you were a great man; to-day, you are a prig.”
“You are right. Yesterday, a great man stooping to foulness; to-day, a
mediocrity aspiring to virtue.”
“Well, my dear boy,” said the solicitor earnestly, “my last words
are these. Be guided by your talent. Greatness is written all over
you; it is in your eyes; it proceeds out of your mouth. Play up
to your destiny, like a wise fellow, and leave hymns and sermons
and disquisitions upon morality to the official purveyors of those
condiments.”
“You are the devil!”
“Well, Faust, dear old boy, if it come to that, it does amuse me
sometimes to think that I have not dabbled in human nature in divers
forms during the last twenty years without getting to know a little
about it. And I put it to you, do you suppose I took the trouble--I,
one of the most sagacious criminal lawyers in London--to climb up
to this attic without my dinner at ten o’clock of a December night,
without having taken your size in hats and your chest measurement?”
“I say, you are the devil.”
“Your estimate is too liberal. There is nothing of his Satanic Majesty
about me; but, all the same, I am always perfectly willing to employ
him. I am always prepared to pay him liberally to fight these causes
of mine, wherever and whenever he is to be found. What you call the
genie is, after all, a euphemism for the devil, although under the
more chaste patronymic I failed at first to recognize that elderly
swaggerer.”
“Well, yes, you are shrewd. But you leave a bad taste in the mouth.”
“Everything does that this morning. But I am not surprised that you are
feeling cheap. The human frame has to pay for such colossal efforts.
In the meantime, you have no need to worry about anything. The mercury
will rise again; things will all come right; and you will attain an
eminence that few could occupy. In the meantime, divert yourself with
these, and mention your own time for the consultation.”
Leaving two briefs, one of which was marked with the sum to which he
had previously referred, Mr. Whitcomb descended the stairs, much to the
relief of the advocate.
XXXIII
THE HIGHWAY OF THE MANY
Success had spread out both hands to Northcote, but the emotion she
had aroused in him was not one of gratitude. He had spent many days
of suffering, of mental darkness, during the years of his obscurity,
but none had engulfed him in such humiliation as this upon which he
had entered now. He had tasted coldness and hunger; he had known the
stings of rage and despair; but these sensations appeared salutary in
comparison with a hopelessness such as this.
How could he cherish an illusion in the matter, he who knew so much?
He had made his choice deliberately under the spur of need; he had
foreseen its enormous penalties; he had foreseen the degradation that
was implied in the honors and emoluments that would accrue from its
exercise. Yet, now these things had come upon him, he smote his breast
and lifted up his voice in woe. Less than a week ago, in the freedom
of his penury, in the license of his failure, he had had the power to
spurn these lures. Yet in almost the next breath he had yielded to the
call of his ambition; and in his first walk upon the perilous path he
had elected to choose, he had shown an ease and lightness of motion
that were audacious, astonishing.
What was there to deplore? His triumph had been so patent as to win
the applause of the world. For the first time in his life money was
in his pocket. That woman of courage who had striven so heroically
for his welfare would meet with her reward. She would be enabled to
end her days at ease. In those somewhat unilluminated eyes Money had
always seemed to divide the place of honor with Duty. She would go to
her grave, this upright and courageous one, with a p an upon her lips,
because her son, her one talent, had in her old age been increased to
her tenfold. Those worn hands would need to toil no more.
After all, this success, which to an honest nature was so embittering,
had a curious virtue of its own if it could fulfil such an office.
And it was hardly for the like of himself to be troubled with these
intimations. Morality, like other privileges, was for those who could
afford to enjoy it; it was for those who had a snug little annuity in
the funds. Those who had shivered in penury, who had known the look of
want, had purchased their right to walk unfearingly by the light of
their necessity. And he had only parted with his dreams after all; he
had only transmuted airy nothings into explicit gold of the state. Let
the visionary who nourished his heart upon the unattainable despise
Crœsus as before, but let the well-fed and valiant materialist render
due homage to that lusty and pagan old fellow. You could not keep your
cake and eat it; you could not resign your ideals and yet hope to
inhabit your castle in Spain.
It always came back to the question of the Choice. Was it not a
sign-post that headed every path; did it not denote the convergence
and the parting of every road? It was his own will which had selected
the broad and muddy highway of the many, instead of the narrow and
precipitous mountain ascent which was only for the feet of the few.
In a choice of this kind there might be an affront to his nature, but
once having embraced it, it was weakness to repine. He must shed this
ferocious arrogance of his. He was now of the common herd, no longer of
the sacred few.
The strangeness of his position held his thoughts all day. That which
he had purchased had been obtained at a cost beyond rubies; it was
not worth one-half he had paid for it, but as he could never recover
his outlay he was bound to go on. It remained for him now to play the
part of the cynic and philosopher. It was not the highest style of the
hypersensitive man on the defensive, but the patchwork target would
have to serve until he found the cunning to provide himself with a more
efficient cover for his wounds. Yet when all was said the shaft had
sunk to a cruel depth in that quivering nature. Heart and mind were
lacerated.