Henry Northcote

When Northcote returned with the basket heavily laden in one hand, and a frying-pan, aggressively new, in the other, his dismal chamber had already been transformed, for a fire was burning bravely, a kettle was singing upon it, the pool of water in the corner had been mopped up, the floor had been visited with a brush, and books and papers, two tables, and three chairs had received wholesome discipline from a duster.

“I could have done it all as well myself,” said Northcote, surveying this transformation with grim eyes, “although I do not deny it has the efficient professional touch. But I would have you to know I am a man of my hands. I am also a man of affairs. I have purchased extensively; and I am proud to say the best goods in the cheapest markets. I have ordered a ton of coal, although where we are going to put it I don’t quite know. Now, these things I surrender to your care; and in half an hour you will have the goodness to serve up a royal breakfast for two persons. In the meantime I will have a shave and a tub.”

The young man’s operations behind the curtain were conducted on an extensive scale, to judge by the noise and splashing that accompanied them. Yet presently he emerged with a well-scraped chin, a skin glowing with cleanliness, his ragged mass of hair reduced to a semblance of order, and his person arrayed in an extremely shabby and unfashionable but perfectly dry suit of clothes. The tea was at hand to be made, the pot heated, the eggs, bacon, and toast were delightfully warm and laid before the fire. And in accordance with instructions the table was set for two persons, with the blunt knives and forks and the decrepit crockery of his establishment.

“Will you wait till the other gentleman comes, sir?” asked the old woman.

“What other gentleman, Mrs. Brown?”

“The gentleman who is coming to breakfast.”

“Well, I can’t very well, seeing that she turns out to be a lady.”

“I beg your pardon, sir.”

“You, Mrs. Brown, are that lady. You will please sit just there, as near to the fire as you can get without burning yourself. I propose to make the tea, for I am so expert in the art that I yield to none. And I shall ask you to pour it out, while I proceed to serve the eggs and bacon, which look perfectly delicious.”

The charwoman, however, betrayed no sign of assenting to this arrangement.

“I am sure, sir, it is meant in great kindness,” she said humbly, “but I could not think of such a thing. You see I have been in good service, sir, and I beg your pardon, sir, but it is never done.”

“‘Never’ is a dangerous word to employ, Mrs. Brown,” said Northcote, towering over the old woman in a formidable manner. “In fact, I allow none to employ it to me. Sit down, if you please, and pour out the tea, and just have the goodness to imagine yourself the Lady Elizabeth Who-was-it, famous alike for her breeding and her beauty, while I shall endeavor to consider myself that distinguished nobleman, the Earl of What’s-his-name.”

“The Lady Elizabeth Plumptre, sir, and the Earl of Widmerpool.”

“Very well. Now I say, ‘Betty, my gal, have an egg with your bacon?’ and you reply with a quiet ease and distinction of manner, ‘Yes, papa, if you please,’ Now then, down you get into your chair, and spare me the necessity of arguing the point. I am so apt to lose my temper if I argue the point.”

The old woman, who was too much in fear of him to risk anything of the kind, took her place at the table immediately.

“One of these days,” said Northcote, handing her an egg and some bacon on the only plate that did not happen to be cracked, “I should like you to meet my mother. She is a very notable and good woman, with a remarkably resolute conception of her duty, which all her life she has rendered bluntly and directly without ever speaking of it to a human soul. She has ordered her life in the manner that she deems necessary to the rôle of an eminent Christian. She has brought up her only son in simple and pious resolves, educated him quite beyond her means, has found him money when in order to do so she has been compelled to deny herself life’s common necessaries, yet has asked alms of none, and at Christmas time never omits to dispense charity to others.”

“I should like to see your mother, sir,” said the charwoman, folding her hands meekly and sitting very upright on her chair. “I am sure she is a very good lady.”

“One of those noble narrow women, Mrs. Brown, upon whom life bears down so heavily. Yet she carries out her programme with a greatness of spirit which is almost demoralizing to one who tries to look at things as they are. I don’t know what there is in her life that carries her on so victoriously; for one never hears her utter a complaint against the buffets she has received from fate, or against the restrictions that her dismal surroundings impose on her nature. I have never heard an impatient word upon her lips, yet every morning, summer and winter, she rises at the hour of five, performs those domestic functions that can bring no satisfaction to her, and presently goes forth to labors still more arduous and equally devoid of meaning. What there is to carry her on I don’t know. Why that inflexible spirit has not been broken these many years I cannot conjecture.”

“She has got into the habit of going on, sir, I suppose,” said the charwoman.

“The habit must be a very strange one, Mrs. Brown, when to-morrow is always the same as yesterday.”

“It is like being a clock, sir, which goes on because it has been wound up.”

“Yes, but I never found a clock that could wind up itself. Every clock must have some kind of a key.”

“It is God, sir, who is the key,” said the charwoman.

“That throws us back,” said Northcote, “to our original necessity to have a religion. To my mind, Mrs. Brown, you have indicated that need in a very lucid and practical manner. And how, Mrs. Brown, as you appear to have given some thought to these things, do you suppose this reticent mother of mine views this God who holds the key to the watch, who winds it up and keeps it going? How would you say she regards Him personally?”

“Perhaps she doesn’t think about Him much, sir. Perhaps as a girl she troubled her head about Him a bit; but when she got older and had to take heavy burdens on her shoulders, she was always too tired to think of Him, except when she said her prayers.”

“Do you suppose there have been times when in her great fatigue she has fallen asleep while she has been in the act of saying them?”

“Yes, sir, I suppose there may have been,” said the old woman.

“So, then, you would say there is nothing definite, forceful, all-compelling about this God of hers? You would say He had no particular personality to speak of?”

“Perhaps He is very real to her, sir, just as to the watch the key must be very real that winds it up and keeps it going.”

“I suppose, Mrs. Brown, you have never by any lucky chance arrived at the reason why He does wind you up and keep you going? Yet surely you have asked yourself the question why it is necessary that you should be wound up and kept going.”

“I may have done, sir, now and again. But then it has been a wicked thought.”

“It is an intensely natural thought, and the wickedness of sheer undraped nature is one of those hard doctrines I have never been able to accept. When in the depth of winter you have laid an old skirt on your bed because you did not happen to possess an extra blanket, and you have crept with your shivering limbs into the cold sheets, I suppose you have asked yourself occasionally why you who do not even perform the humble functions of a clock, since you keep no time, should yet be wound up and set going, when, as a matter of choice, you would prefer to remain in bed in the morning and be allowed to sleep on forever?”

“There are my five little grandchildren, sir, who have no mother or father.”

“They would go to the workhouse; and the state would transform them into honorable, capable, and industrious citizens with even greater efficiency than you would yourself.”

“The workhouse, sir, is a very disgraceful thing for a respectable family.”

“Ah, you impale me on another spike of your religion. Its points are fixed at a sharper angle than you are willing to allow. For I would ask you, is it not enough to enrich the state with five healthy and able-bodied citizens without being called upon to maintain them at one’s own expense?”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said the old woman, “but when you have children of your own you may not say so.”

“I do not doubt that you are right. By exercising as keenly as possible the very inadequate number of wits with which nature has seen fit to arm me, I am able to discern that the more reasonable we become the less do we order our conduct by the light of reason. As you suggest, it is extremely probable when I become a father, if I am ever called to that beatitude, I shall rise every morning from my bed to prevent my children going to the workhouse, however strenuously reason may urge that the workhouse is their natural and appointed home. And assuming, Mrs. Brown, that I am not marked out for the honor of paternity, that crowning achievement of every citizen, why then should I rise from my bed—that is, assuming that I regard the person who presumes to wind up the watch to be a meddlesome busybody, a bore, and a nuisance?”

“If you work very hard, sir, you will have no time to think such thoughts,” said the old woman.

“It is, I suppose, the satisfaction of depriving yourself of the opportunities of thinking such thoughts that brings you here every morning of the year at a quarter to eight to tidy up the garret of a starving materialist who is bleeding to death of his ideals?”

“Yes, sir, you might say partly that and partly to help to bring up my grandchildren.”

“Well, my good woman, if it is partly to bring up your grandchildren, why, may I ask, do you continue to toil on behalf of this person, when for two months past he has paid you no wage, and may I ask also why have you lent him sums of money, when you must have been aware that it was in the highest degree unlikely that it would ever be paid to you again?”

“I have had no time to think about it like that, sir.”

“That is not a very strong answer, Mrs. Brown. I felt sure I should be able before long to impale this religion of yours upon a paradox. And I suppose that when you put this shrivelled old hand that I am holding into that ridiculous old dogskin purse of yours, which must have been an heirloom in your family in the year one, you had not time to reflect that you were robbing your poor little grandchildren? You had not time to reflect that the twenty-five shillings which you lent a weak-natured, self-indulgent sentimentalist in order that he might not be turned out into the street would keep them in boots for a year?”

“I don’t say I had not time to think about it, sir, but I could never have seen you turned out into the street without a roof above your head.”

“Why could you not, Mrs. Brown? It was no part of your duties to provide a home for a stalwart and able-bodied young man who was living in idleness, when you had your five little, orphan grandchildren to consider.”

“I did not look at it in that light, sir.”

“Surely it was very wrong of you to fail to do so. One would think a reasonable, right-minded person would hardly need to have it pointed out.”

“Well, sir,” said the old woman nervously, “I beg your pardon, I’m sure; but even if I had seen it in that way I might not have acted upon it.”

“Then I grieve to say, Mrs. Brown, that you appear to have no very exact standard of probity.”

“I—I—I’m sure, sir, I always try to do what is right.”

The charwoman had become the prey of a deep confusion.

“But,” said Northcote, sternly, “I have just had your own assurance that you do not. You would not, it seems, scruple to rob your poor grandchildren to gratify a whim; indeed, it may be said you have robbed them to gratify one. If I had to prosecute you before a jury of twelve of your honest countrymen, I could easily get you put into prison.”

“Well, sir,” said the old charwoman, beginning to tremble violently before this grim realism, “I—I am sure I have always tried to do my duty.”

“On the contrary, Mrs. Brown, you can scarcely be said to have a conception of what is your duty. At least the best that can be said for that conception is that it is arbitrary, perverse, contradictory. Expedience is the only duty known to the laws which regulate all forms of nature. The man called Jesus, the chief exponent of the contrary doctrine which appears to have had some kind of attraction for you, received a somewhat severe handling when He ventured to show Himself upon the platform; and you who in your dumb and vague and invertebrate manner have been seeking to imitate Him in one or two minor particulars, owe it to the generous forbearance of the recipient of your charity that you do not find yourself in prison. If the Crown in its expansive vindictiveness were to instruct me to prosecute you in what it is pleased to call a ‘court of justice,’ woe would betide you.”

The old woman grew as pale as ashes when confronted with the stern eyes of this advocate who turned white into black so easily.

“Why—why, sir,” she stammered, “you—you will make me think I have committed a murder if you go on!”

“I think I might do that without much difficulty. It would be quite simple to indicate to you in a very few words in what manner the Almighty has already seen fit to mark the sense of His personal displeasure. Is it not your own conduct, do you not suppose, which has provoked Him to strike down your innocent little grandchild with diphtheria? And if the child dies, which we will pray it will not, what would be easier than to render you responsible for its death? You see that is the worst of evil, it is so cumulative in its effect. Once it has begun its dread courses, who shall predict their end? A good action is self-contained and stops where it began; a bad one fructifies with immortal seed and practically goes on for ever—vide the poet Shakespeare. Why, you are eating nothing. I am afraid I am spoiling your breakfast.”

“Oh, sir, I didn’t know I was so wicked,” said the charwoman, with tears in her eyes.

“Opinions are easily formed. As for reputations, they can be made and unmade and made again in an hour. But might I suggest, Mrs. Brown, that if one happens to be righteous in one’s own eyes, it does not very greatly matter if one goes to jail to expiate so pious an opinion. Do I make myself clear?”

“I—I don’t say I am good, sir, but—I hope I am not a downright bad one.”

“Well, to relieve your feelings, we will take it that you are a nebulous half-and-half and somewhat unsatisfactory sort of person who blindly follows a bundle of instincts she knows less than nothing about, just like a dog or a cat or a rabbit. And is not that what this elaborate moral code of ours throws back to if we take the trouble to examine it? And is not one entitled to say that a dog is a good dog, a cat a good cat, a rabbit a good rabbit, just as faithfully as it follows the instincts under its fur, whatever they happen to be? I have taken this excursus, Mrs. Brown, and have ventured to theorize a little, quite unprofitably, I grant, and at the risk of causing you some ill-founded alarm, because to-morrow I have to exercise all the talents with which the good God has endowed me in the cause of an extremely wicked woman who has committed a murder. Her crime is of a vulgar and calculating kind, perpetrated in cold blood; there is not a rag of evidence to save her from the gallows; but Providence has called upon me to attempt to save her from the fate she so richly merits. And there is an instinct within me, her advocate, for which I am at a loss to account by the rules of reason and logic, which calls on its possessor to save this abandoned creature at all hazard. If I obey that instinct I shall be a good advocate and a bad citizen; if I disobey it I shall be a good citizen but a bad advocate. Yet if I obey it I shall have fulfilled to the best of my ability the legal contract into which I have entered, and in so doing I shall be called on to commit a serious misdemeanor against human nature. On the other hand, if I disobey it I shall be causing human nature to be vindicated in a becoming manner, yet shall be guilty of an equally serious misdemeanor against myself; and further, I shall be false to the interests of my unfortunate client whose money I have taken, and render myself indictable for the offence of entering into a contract which I have wilfully refrained from carrying out. Please have another cup of tea, and kindly pass the marmalade.”

Northcote having shifted the ground of his reasoning from the personal to the abstract, the old woman regained sufficient confidence to pour out the tea without spilling it.

“Now,” said Northcote, “if you were in my position, would you try to enable one whom you knew to be a murderess to escape the gallows?”

“If I might say so, sir, I would try to have nothing to do with her at all.”

“In other words, you would rather starve than take her money?”

“Yes, sir, I think I would.”

“And cause you to rob your poor little grandchildren?”

“I—I—don’t say that, sir.”

“Let us be as logical as we can. Again, would it not cause me to rob my poor old mother who has contributed her all towards my education, which I put to no useful end?”

“You would be honest, sir.”

“Honest, do you say! Do you call it honest to pervert and misapply the money my mother has lavished on my education?”

“Might you not use your education, sir, in some other way?”

“You would have me till the fields or be a clerk in an insurance office. Would that be honest in the sight of God, who has placed an instinct in me which I disobey? Surely one would say the truly dishonest man is he who is unfaithful to his nature. Had we not agreed upon that? If a man knows that he was designed by God to be an advocate, is he not called to practise? Why have the gift to prove that white is black and black is white if that gift is not to be carried to its appointed issue? If I do not barter it for a means of livelihood by proving the guilty to be innocent, how am I to discharge the higher function of proving the innocent to be not guilty? If, in my cowardice, I decline to go into court lest I save those who ought not to be saved, think of the innocent persons who will perish for the lack of a true advocate.”

“If we could only get to the real intention, sir,” said the charwoman solemnly, “of Him who winds up the watch and who is Himself the key, perhaps these things might not worry us. But God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.”

“Yes,” said Northcote, rising from the breakfast-table, “there we have the fruit of all that our curiosity can yield to us. The power may be given to us to show that blue is green, but what does it stand for in the presence of the dread materialism of our religions?”

The advocate took three sovereigns from his pocket, three sovereigns which he had yet to earn, and placed them in the palm of the old charwoman.

“Mrs. Brown,” he said, “in the bleak and uncomfortable eyes of science your virtue will not bear inquiry; but if it were possible to take a plebiscite of the opinions of your fellows as hastily as possible upon the bare facts, before a professional advocate had a chance to pervert them, I do not doubt that you would be voted to a position among the elect. I believe myself that there is a greater amount of purely disinterested nobility among all sections of society than is generally known. Fifteen shillings I owe you for services rendered; twenty-five for your timely contribution towards my rent; and here is a pound with which to pay the kind doctor who is going to thwart the Almighty in His intention of causing your small grandchild to die. One of these days, as I say, Mrs. Brown, I hope you may meet my mother, for I would like to render to you the homage that all men desire to be allowed to render to good women.”

He seized the blackened, shrivelled, and not particularly clean hand and carried it to his lips.