Henry Northcote

As he was entering the vehicle Northcote came to his side.

“Good night,” said Mr. Whitcomb. “In the morning, perhaps, when you see things a bit clearer you will think better of this. In fact I am sure of it; and I hope you will not forget to send round the brief.”

Before he could close the door of the hansom, the young man had joined him in its interior.

“I hope you don’t mind my coming with you,” he said, entirely at his ease. “This matter is far too momentous for all concerned to be left in the unsatisfactory stage at which it has now arrived.”

“This fellow is the devil,” muttered the solicitor, suppressing a groan.

“Where, sir?” said the cabman through the hole in the roof.

“Norbiton.”

“Norbiton! Not to-night, sir; the ’oss is tired.”

“Take me to Norbiton,” said the solicitor sharply, “and never mind about your horse.”

“Very sorry, guv’nor—”

“Well, if you can afford to lose a sovereign—”

The cabman’s head disappeared immediately, and the horse started on its journey at a good round pace.

“These cabmen are the greatest robbers in Europe,” said the solicitor, settling himself in his corner. “They are a disgrace to London. One would like to see them taken over by the state.”

Although Mr. Whitcomb was ruffled by his companion’s strange pertinacity, his philosophic habit soon came to his aid.

“Have a weed?” he said, offering his cigar-case.

By the time each had lighted a cigar and ensconced himself in a measure of comfort in a corner of the vehicle, the irritation of the one and the aggressive tenacity of the other had been somewhat allayed.

“There are several points that still remain dark to me,” said Northcote, “in this odd affair. Having come in a moment of high inspiration to the attic of the obscure, having discovered its occupant to be of an uncommon faculty, having entrusted him with your business, all of a sudden, because of a singular revelation of his talent, you discard him and have recourse to an abject mediocrity.”

“You are certainly a queer fellow,” said the solicitor, amused by this piece of egotism. “A most unconventional fellow—quite the most unconventional fellow I have ever met.”

“Ah, there is my offence,” said the young man; “I have outraged the gods, I have disregarded the proprieties. Yet I would ask you, are not all conventions for the common vulgar? Are not nature’s most authentic specimens, those pioneers in every sphere of mundane activity who add the little more that means so much, are not these to walk about the earth just as nature fashioned them?”

“I am pleased to say,” said Mr. Whitcomb, emitting a soft purr of contentment, “I am a common lawyer. The whys and wherefores are not my province; I take things as they are.”

“That does not prevent all your instincts being up in arms when you encounter the unusual. How curious it is that the most deadly sin in the eyes of the average person is that shameless egotism which transacts the real business of the world.”

“If there were no rules to which one had to conform,” said the solicitor, “there would be no living in the world. Conventions to my mind are highly necessary. Of course every man has a perfect right to consider himself a tremendous fellow, but that is no reason why he should say as much to his neighbor. If he does, his neighbor will want to refute it.”

“And if he should throw down his gage, and prove to his neighbor in a perfectly logical and scientific manner that he is a tremendous fellow, his neighbor will not be content with wanting to refute him; his neighbor will want to shoot him, or hang him, or burn him, or crucify him, and it is long odds that his neighbor will succeed in so doing.”

“I am afraid I don’t follow you.”

“I am speaking of the fate that awaited upon the majority of the tremendous fellows whom we discover in the pages of history; the founders of the religions, the saints, the heroes, the discoverers, the makers of the philosophical systems.”

“One suspects,” said the solicitor, “it was because they made the world so uncomfortable while they were living in it.”

“I agree. But what a world we should have if they had not.”

“It is not at all clear to my mind,” said the solicitor, “that in the long run these fellows of whom you are speaking have not done more harm to the world than they have done good. Not only did their abnormal egotisms run am k during their own lives, but after their deaths, which as you suggest were often brutal and unnecessary, they continued in the guise of saints and martyrs, and inspired teachers to wreak iconoclasm and discomfort upon mankind.”

“One can readily believe,” said the young man, “that you, sir, in your capacity of a member of the comfortable classes, to which by fortune and education you belong, would fetter the march of ideas by every means in your power.”

“Yes,” said the solicitor, drawing peacefully at his cigar; “few things are more distasteful to me personally than ideas. Particularly those lawless ones which proceed from ill-regulated and ill-balanced natures. It seems to me that they are responsible for nine-tenths of the misery that is in the world.”

“Do I take it that, in your opinion, so far from these so-called ‘great men’ of whom we are speaking meriting esteem from their fellows, their doctrines as well as their persons should be pursued with the fire and the sword; and that means should be adopted to exterminate the growth of these ‘great’ ones from the comfortable republic which is inhabited by the average person?”

“I would suggest it. I have given little thought to this subject, but I cannot think of a single historical personage of whom I do not consider that in the long run mankind would have gained immeasurably had he never been born into its midst.”

“This is extreme doctrine,” said Northcote; “and may I pay you the compliment, sir, of saying that I find you to be one of a greater courage than I had suspected.”

“All the so-called ‘greatness’ one finds enshrined in history,” the solicitor continued, “proceeds from an abnormal egotism; and I think even a perfectly commonplace mind such as my own, which is content with the obvious, has only to take a most superficial look around to see that the abnormal is the only evil against which mankind has to contend.”

“Necessarily,” said Northcote, “since the self-consciousness of matter is the ugliest phenomenon known to natural law. But to follow the line of your reasoning, the abnormal person, whatever the sphere of his activity, is invariably the enemy of his kind?”

“That is my suggestion; the suggestion of an average mind that is content to rest on the plane of matter-of-fact common sense.”

“You would say that it would have been better for mankind had the poet Shakespeare never been given to it?”

“Unquestionably. In my view, all poetry, even in what we are pleased to call a sublime and concentrated form, is a direct emanation of morbid sensibility. It stimulates those already sufficiently irritable faculties of the mind which call for a never-ceasing vigilance to hold in check. Poetry is the chief enemy against which rational common sense has to contend.”

“Then in your view the greatest enemy of the human race of which history has taken cognizance is Jesus Christ?”

“I will not say the greatest; but He shares the opprobrium that attaches to His class. It was that type of abnormalism which developed the religious sense in man; and any sense more calculated to provoke infinite misery, any sense more completely out of harmony with the facts of existence, one cannot conceive.”

“In a word, excess of any kind is repugnant to the average person?”

“One would say so; mainly, I think, because it extorts such heavy toll of all who are brought in contact with it.”

“Then elevation of feeling, profundity of thought, subtlety of insight, austerity of morals, heroism, beauty, in short, the superlative in any guise whatever, should be eliminated from the republic of the average sensual person?”

“If the average sensual person could contrive a republic for himself, that would be its first decree.”

“Hence his hostility to those abnormal egotisms which are known as ‘greatness’?”

“As far as the average person can see, that appears to go down to the root of the matter.”

“Well, sir,” said the young advocate, “permit me to take a slight parable out of my own experience to refute this supposition.”

“Pray do so.”

The advocate selected as a preliminary a second cigar from the case of the solicitor, and resettled himself in comfort in the corner of the vehicle.

“All my life,” said Northcote, “from the farthest day to which my memory goes back, I have been persecuted with the consciousness of my own importance. In all my dealings with others, in the daily outlook upon my surroundings, not only have I been unable to detach myself from my own private entity, but I have also been obsessed with the knowledge that that entity was so much more powerful than any with which it happened to come in contact. As you will believe, a feeling of that kind spelt serious inconvenience to its possessor. At my private school I was the recipient of many cuffs in my capacity of a shy, nervous, and intensely self-centred child who detested games. It grew to be a special function of my youthful companions, and also that of every self-respecting master, to ‘knock the nonsense out of Northcote.’ However, so far from knocking it out, these disinterested efforts appeared to knock it farther in. And when in the fulness of time I ascended to the ampler region of a public school, my sufferings were materially increased. I was shunned, I was tormented, an opprobrious name was fastened upon me; and had not the fire which burned so intensely at the centre of myself kept me warm in spirit, life would have become intolerable.

“It was a consciousness of personal power haunting me day and night which caused me to scorn the gods of the little world in which I found myself, and to disregard the petty conventions which mean so much in every phase of human life. Accordingly I was marked out as an object of hatred and ridicule. However, as years went on, and I came to be endowed with the somewhat unusual physical frame which you may have observed I possess, I determined in a somewhat cynical spirit of revenge to devote myself to one of those stupid and unmeaning exercises, my contempt for which was one of the most potent causes of my unpopularity. Never before had I condescended to approach one of the usual school ‘games,’ other than in a spirit of levity; but when I awoke to the discovery that nature had somewhat ironically endowed me with a power of muscle, a suppleness of limb, and a bulk of inches which would in themselves make me the envy of every athlete in the school, I determined to turn them to account. It was in no spirit of open competition with those whom I despised that I resolved to become the most accomplished football-player who had ever appeared in the school. It was my somewhat curious method of avenging all the insults, all the barbarous forms of injustice, that had been wreaked upon me. I might have requited my assailants in other ways, but I was too proud to employ the methods of those whom I felt to be my mental, physical, and moral inferiors. Therefore I gave myself up to this mechanical exercise, and an abnormal concentration of will-power which I have always possessed, in conjunction with remarkable physical gifts, had the result for which I had prayed.

“When this new prowess was first bruited abroad it was received with derision. But in spite of an organized public opinion which in every walk of life assails the unconventional, this ability became a source of distress to the expert. ‘It comes to this,’ said the captain of the School Fifteen, after a House cup-tie in which dismay had been carried into the camp of the opposition, ‘if this sort of thing goes on, we shall have to think about playing “Cad” Northcote for the School.’ The shouts of derision with which this prophecy was received are still in my ears. However ‘this sort of thing’ continued to go on, and sure enough, to the amazement of men and gods, the day dawned on which ‘Cad’ Northcote did play for the School. He dominated the scene of action in every game in which he took part; but such was the strength of public opinion that the ruling powers withheld his ‘cap’ until the very last moment, the eve of the chief game of the year. It was the match against our great school rivals, a neighboring seminary, of which, sir, I discern by certain unfortunate tricks of manner that you are an alumnus.”

“Never mind about that,” said the solicitor; “get on with your story. It is enormously interesting. Did you play against us in the great match?”

“Yes, I played against you in the great match. The ‘fez’ of the School Fifteen, which should have been mine weeks before, was duly presented to me on the eve of ‘Waterloo,’ for although it was a dreadful crime to be ‘unpopular,’ it was yet highly necessary to ‘take on’ the French. And I recall now with some amusement the manner in which I contrived to flout the amour propre of the venerable institution into whose service I was pressed. Instead of turning out in the garish colors with which I had been honored at the eleventh hour, I appeared upon the scene in a costume of the most immaculate whiteness. As soon as the captain beheld this apparition on the field of play, he came to me and said insolently: ‘Northcote, what do you mean by getting yourself up like this? Go back at once and put on the School colors.’ I rejoined: ‘I play for the School in my own colors on my own terms. I would like you to understand that if I am with you, I am not of you.’ There was a hurried consultation among my fourteen fellow players, and although their sense of outrage was enormous, that was neither the time nor the place to indulge it.

“The French were ‘taken on’ as they had never been ‘taken on’ before. But the debacle was the work of one man. Such a game as was played on that occasion by ‘Cad’ Northcote was never seen before or afterwards. According to tradition, which to this day invests his pious memory, he spent half his time in crossing the line of his adversaries, and the other half in standing the opposing three-quarters on their heads. He felt himself to be equipped for the part of the man of destiny. I believe the rout of our hereditary rivals on that occasion came near to approaching three figures.”

“You don’t mean to say,” exclaimed the solicitor, “that you are the great Northcote, the fellow who led the English pack while he was still at school?”

“No less.”

“Why, then I saw you play at the Rectory Field sometime in the ’nineties. I remember you had those damned Welshmen over the line three times in the first five minutes. You pushed them all over the place.”

“Yes, we pushed them all over the place. You saw me at the summit of my fame. And I am now coming to the point of my parable. From those days of my inordinate success, which conferred not only lustre upon myself, but upon my school and all who were associated with me, I became not only a hero, but a figure of legend. The opprobrious title ‘Cad’ Northcote was dropped as completely as though it had never been. My lightest opinion was treasured, and heaven only can tell us how many they were on every point under the sun. I became a dictator where formerly I had suffered infinite misery and persecution. By a display of personal force criticism was laid low; yet, sir, according to this theory of yours, it must have been inimical to all who came within its sphere of influence.”

“I would say so certainly; demoralizing alike to its possessor, and to those who despised it in its growth and abased themselves before it in its flower.”

“Yet was it not with bated breath that you inquired whether I was the ‘great’ Northcote?”

“Pray do not overlook the fact, my dear fellow, that however much the average sensual mind may deplore the false gods before which it kneels, it has not the power to deliver itself from their thrall. This passion to ‘excel’ is a flaw inherent in the race.”

“It is at least pleasant to discover,” said Northcote, “that the average sensual mind is unable to banish the sentiment of admiration from its republic.”

“If it could,” said the solicitor, “there would be an end of these abnormal egotisms of which we have been speaking.”

“I do not agree,” said Northcote. “It is not a thirst for admiration from which they spring, but a thirst for power. And it is an uncomfortable reflection for those who belong to your republic that the world has been so arranged that mere power will always have its devotees. How lamentably your own practice breaks down before your theory. You have reverence for me as a player of football, and Tobin’s powers as an advocate fill you with enthusiasm.”

“True; and it is men like Tobin and yourself who forbid any reconciliation between theory and practice. A phenomenon is always inimical to the society in which it appears. It may stand forth as memorable and fascinating as you please, but it does so at the expense of balance, law, and reason. Your presence in the football match ruined the game as a game, just as I have observed that the presence of Tobin in a case has been disastrous to the cause of justice.”

“Nevertheless, you invoke the aid of Tobin on every possible occasion.”

“I do.”

“Upon what pretext, may I ask, since you deplore his gifts so deeply?”

“The answer is simple. To whatever extent I may deplore the condition of things into which, through no fault of my own, I have been projected, beyond everything I am of a comfortable and conforming disposition. Therefore I make my subscription to the things that are. I have none of the reformer’s zeal; and it is one of the things for which I am thankful.”

At this stage of the conversation the voice of the cabman was heard from the roof.

“We’re in Norbiton, sir. Which house?”

“Straight on to the end of the road,” said Mr. Whitcomb; “then first to the right, second to the left, and it is the first house you come to at the corner of Avenue Road.”

“How quickly we’ve come,” said Northcote. “One would not have thought it possible to cover the distance in this time; with a tired horse, too.”

“The sound of your own voice may have been as agreeable to you,” said the solicitor, “as it has been to me. I confess it has passed the time very well.”

Northcote deduced from the more indulgent air of his companion that this imperious personality of his, of whose possession he was so conscious and upon which he built so much, had not been without an effect. He was thinking of the victory that he felt sure would crown his tenacity, when the hansom drew up at the gate of a very comfortable-looking suburban residence. It was girt with a high stone wall, and stood in a pleasant plot of ground amid tall trees.

As they got out of the hansom, the solicitor, after searching his pockets in leisurely fashion, collected four shillings and a sixpence and handed them up to the cabman on his perch.

“Wot’s this ’ere?” said the cabman gruffly. “This ain’t no use ter me, guv’nor. Yer promised me a quid.”

“In one’s dealings with the criminal classes,” said the solicitor, “one finds that the only method of self-protection is the use of their own weapons.”

“Yer promised me a quid, guv’nor,” said the cabman, who was too excited to follow the course of this reasoning.

“May I say,” rejoined the solicitor, with great suavity, “that a promise is considered to be a thing of no particular value among the members of the criminal classes.”

“Criminal classes! Wot!” cried the cabman, in a gust of fury. “Breaks yer promises and calls yerself a toff! Not a-going to part with that quid. Well, guv’nor, we’ll just see abaht it.”

Emitting a string of foul expressions, the cabman hopped down from his perch.

“Call yerself a toff? Give me that quid or I’ll knock out yer —— eye.”

“Try,” said the solicitor, with a coolness that his companion felt to be inimitable.

Inflamed a little by drink as well as by a sense of injury, the cabman prepared to exact a summary vengeance. Breathing slaughter he came at Mr. Whitcomb with his fists in the air; and that gentleman, stepping aside coolly and nimbly, hit him with a hand ungloved for the purpose a heavy blow in the face. The cabman dropped like a log in the slush of the gutter.

“A broken nose,” said Mr. Whitcomb, turning to his companion, while they stood watching the unfortunate cabman gather himself slowly and painfully together.

“I feel for you, cabby,” said the solicitor, to his rueful assailant, “but I can assure you this is wholly in the public interest. Thieves and bullies, as well as fools, have to be taught by experience.”

“Why the ’ell didn’t yer sye so?” whimpered the cabman, as he strove in vain to stanch the blood that poured from his nose. “’Ow the ’ell should I know yer could use ’em? I piked yer fer a toff in yer ’igh ’at and yer fur coat and yer glass eye; ’ow the ’ell should I know yer could use ’em?”

“That is for you banditti to discover,” was the rejoinder of his fare. “It is perhaps my chief recreation to thrash hansom cabmen in the interests of society. I am proud to say your case is one of many.”

“Blow me tight, a prize-fighter!”

“It is not too much to say I might have aspired to that calling, if the somewhat material nature of my ambitions had not summoned me to a more lucrative if less honorable practice. Twenty years ago I was considered rather useful with the gloves.”

“Not so rusty nah, guv’nor,” said the cabman, imperfectly mollified, and stanching his nose with his sleeve. “Give us a extra bob an’ I’ll drive to the ’orspital.”

“Here is your sovereign,” said Mr. Whitcomb. “Training and education make one so punctilious in regard to one’s word, although common sense assures one that like the majority of your class you are a rogue, a liar, and a bully; in a word, a common pirate. Here is your money; and have the goodness to take yourself off as reticently as you can.”

There was not a more astonished Jehu amid the ranks of his London brethren than this unfortunate specimen, as he climbed into the seat he had left so injudiciously. Bestowing a succession of brutal strokes of the whip upon his even more unfortunate horse, he was lost immediately in the sleet and darkness of the morning, leaving Northcote, who was only slightly less astonished than his bleeding and blasphemous self, standing at the side of the solicitor against the gate of the latter’s residence.