Henry Northcote

The old woman took her seat at the table obediently, but with a bewilderment as great as on the previous day. It was very strange that incidents such as these should arise to embellish her servitude.

This morning, however, she was not tormented with a string of questions. Northcote was silent, gloomy, and haggard; something appeared to be preying on his mind. The remorse he had shown for having failed to ask how her grandchild was seemed strange to her indeed, for until the previous day he had always stood in her mind as a member of the inaccessible classes. Something had appeared to happen to him by which, in a few short hours, the tenor and current of his life had been changed. There was a terrible excitement burning now under his pale skin; his eyes were restless, his fingers were twitching, and he drank cup after cup of the hot tea as though he were consumed with an intolerable thirst.

When he had finished his breakfast he took his wig and gown out of a cupboard, and placed them together with his brief in a small black bag. He was on the point of starting for the court, when through the open door he could hear footsteps on the stairs. Some one was coming up to the fourth story, an incident so rare in the experience of its occupant as always to be rendered memorable. In an instant the jovial outline of the solicitor presented itself to his imagination. With an agitation that was indescribable he foresaw that he was not to be allowed to take the brief into court after all.

Instead of Mr. Whitcomb, however, his visitor proved to be a boy with a telegram. He tore it out of its envelope. The contents were contained in three words: “Life, my son.” They were from his mother.

With this omen in his heart he set forth. A welcome change had taken place in the weather. The air had become sharp and dry; already misty beams were stealing out from the December sun. The press in the streets was immense, but he brushed through it with the elevating consciousness that he was overcoming a real obstacle. In his every fibre was the breath of contest, the joy of battle. His mother’s words, the faint beams of the new day, the rattle of the traffic, all conspired to endow him with a ruthless determination.

If it was to be that defeat and confusion should overtake him, at least he would not go out to greet them half-way. Once and for all he had put off those fears and misgivings that had tormented him. A great commander storming an inaccessible position does not pause to estimate the cost; he does not pause to contemplate the inevitability of disaster. He, too, would show himself of this quality: a great commander of his lurid and revolted imagination in the teeth of frightful odds.

He arrived at the Old Bailey at a quarter-past ten. He did not allow himself to glance at its profile, nor did he permit his mind to be distracted by one of the thousand details, common, depressing, and of no significance in themselves, yet likely to be so ominous in their effect on high-strung nerves. He passed from the barristers’ robing-room as soon as he could, for beyond everything he wished to avoid contact with his kind. Yet to the majority of those within its precincts he was not even known by name; and he felt himself to be looked on askance by all as a solitary, queer-headed fellow.

On entering the court he used great care in selecting his seat. It was in a situation from which he felt he could command the attention of all present; from which the jury would lose nothing of what he presented to it, and yet be sufficiently removed to be unable to discern the more intimate workings of his personality. Oratory like music demands a certain space and distance in which and at which to reveal itself. Before taking his seat he looked all around him into every part of the building, in order that he might familiarize himself with that which lay about him. Every seat allotted to the public was already in its occupation; the nature of the charge was itself sufficient to stimulate its curiosity in the highest degree. Among the members of the bar the interest was not so great. There was said to be no defence worthy of the name; the crime was of a common kind, presenting neither rare nor curious features; the absence of Tobin, the most brilliant common law advocate among the younger men, had become known; and the case was expected to be disposed of without difficulty. Its main interest in the eyes of the junior bar centred around the man who had been asked to conduct the defence. That one so obscure as Northcote should have been chosen to fill the place of Tobin in a murder case was one of those unexpected things which furnished a theme for the critic’s function; a function which the majority of those in their robes on the benches felt eminently qualified to undertake.

Many were surprised, some were a little grieved, and the ambitious were rather disconcerted that Northcote should be entrusted with a brief of this nature. Obscure as he was in practice, he had acquired a kind of reputation at the bar mess as one who was singularly unsocial in his habits. As the brief in the first instance had been marked with a figure large enough to command the services of Tobin, the defence could not be wholly destitute of means. It was strange that a firm so notoriously astute as Whitcomb and Whitcomb should have handed it to one of no experience when the extremely able counsel they had retained originally had been compelled to throw up the case. There was quite a number assembled in that court who were far more competent to deal with it than this young and unknown practitioner. In the opinion of many, this circumstance was taken as the clearest indication of all that the case had no life in it.

Hardly had Northcote taken his seat in the court when he felt a hand on his shoulder; it belonged to Mr. Whitcomb.

“No nonsense, now,” he said anxiously. “The witnesses are here, and we shall expect you to call them.”

“It is quite impossible for me to alter my line at the last moment,” said Northcote, while every nerve he had in his body seemed to be ticking furiously. “Besides,” he added, in a hoarse whisper, “don’t you see that if they are not called I shall get the last word with the jury, as the attorney is not in the case?”

“Pray, what is the use of that? What will that do for you?”

“You must wait and see,” said the young man, with a red haze before his eyes.

“My dear fellow, I must insist on your calling the witnesses.”

“It is impossible,” said the young man, in a voice the solicitor could hardly hear.

“Really, you know, this is carrying things too far.”

“I would to God,” exclaimed the young advocate, with his voice breaking in the middle in the queerest manner, “you had never retained me at all!”

This outburst of petulance conferred upon the solicitor a renewed sense of the young man’s situation.

“Well, well,” he rejoined, with a certain kindness, “I suppose you must do as you please. A case is not over until a verdict’s brought in. But the witnesses are here—if you change mind.”

The young advocate turned his haggard face and bloodshot eyes upon his monitor, but his rejoinder, whatever its nature, was banished from his lips by the entrance of the judge. Almost in the same instant the prisoner was put up. She was called upon at once to plead to the indictment, “for that she was accused of the wilful murder of Thomas Henry Barron upon the 12th of September.” In a voice that was scarcely audible she pleaded, “I am not guilty.”

The jury was sworn immediately, and justice proceeded on its course with considerable expedition. The case presented no feature that was warranted to arrest the progress of the legal mind. The woman’s guilt was indisputable; it was known that the defence had nothing material to advance; and even had it been placed more fortunately, it was unlikely to be marshalled to advantage in its present hands. The judge and the counsel for the Treasury were at one in their eagerness to press the opportunity of getting the case through, since every few minutes they could rest from the course of the public business was inexpressibly dear to their hearts. They would be able to get off to a week-end in the country by an earlier train.

Mr. Weekes, K. C., who led for the Treasury, commenced briskly and volubly without the delay of a moment. He was a small, thin man, with very straight and attenuated hair, sandy in color, and a pair of side-whiskers. A pair of gold pince-nez suspended by a cord contrived by some means to add to the quickness and irascibility of his frequent gestures. His voice was keen and piercing and somewhat metallic in sound; his language had great facility but no distinction; his delivery was rapid; but manner, diction, appearance, were equally destitute of style.

In opening the case to the jury, this expert occupied less than an hour. He unfolded the nature of the charge in easy, fluent, almost deprecating terms. It amounted to this: the accused, whose reticence in regard to her antecedents was impenetrable, and whose age appeared on the charge-sheet as thirty-nine, had for several years past cohabited with the deceased, who had followed the profession of a book-maker.

It was known that previous to this she had lived the life of the streets. It would be shown by several of her associates, who would be called in evidence—women like herself of ill-fame—that during the last year in which she had lived with this man, she had more than once been heard to express the determination “to do for him.” It would appear that the man, although said to treat her well enough at first, had latterly evinced signs of growing tired of her. Further, he was a man of intemperate habits, and on many occasions she had been heard to complain with bitterness of his violence and brutality towards her.

The accused had been aware that by the man’s will a sum of money had been left to her. She had often, when in drink particularly, to which she also was addicted, mentioned this fact boastfully to her associates; and a few days prior to the commission of the crime had asserted in the presence of three of them, “that if she did not mind what she was about she would lose it, as he was always threatening to leave her.”

On the afternoon of the tenth of September she purchased a quantity of vegetable poison of a chemist. On the evening of the eleventh the man sat up drinking heavily into the small hours of the morning; and at noon on the twelfth he expired in the presence of a doctor, who had been fetched by a maid servant, although the woman herself had done her best to prevent a doctor from being summoned. In the doctor’s opinion the symptoms pointed to death by poisoning. A post-mortem was held the same afternoon; as the result of it the woman was taken into custody, the house was searched, and a quantity of strychnine was found concealed in her bedroom. Subsequently the contents of the man’s stomach was submitted to a public analyst; and in his evidence he would testify to the presence of strychnine in sufficient quantities to cause death.

This was the case for the Crown. Evidence was called in corroboration; first the detective who had taken the woman into custody, and another who had discovered the poison. These were examined briefly by Mr. Topott, the junior counsel for the Treasury. The doctors then described the cause of death and the result of the post-mortem; and these were confirmed in their opinion by the analyst when he came to describe the result of his researches. All of these were soon disposed of, as Northcote did not attempt a word in cross-examination.

Two of the members of the junior bar, young men and critical, who were not disinclined to see a personal affront in Northcote’s preferment, were not slow to note his passiveness, and to add it to the estimate they had already formed of his incapacity.

“I never saw a fellow look in such a funk,” said the first of these gentlemen, one who had been nurtured in an atmosphere of wealth and influence, and himself a former president of the Oxford Union. “The case will be over by lunch.”

“They are not wasting much time, certainly,” said his friend, the son of the Master of the Rolls.

Two maid servants were called in evidence, and examined by Mr. Topott with the same convincing brevity as the previous witnesses. Here again Northcote refrained from cross-examination.

“Ought to do something,” whispered the ex-president in the ear of his friend. “Missing opportunities. Why don’t he ask if she saw it administered?”

The chemist’s assistant who had supplied the poison, and who had identified the portion found in the possession of the accused as part of that which had been sold to her, also escaped without a challenge. Five of her female associates were then called one after another. Their evidence was extremely damning. With the skilled aid of the junior counsel for the Crown, every rag of decency was stripped from the woman in the dock. She stood forth a veritable harpy and monster, several shades more infamous than themselves. As one after another of these witnesses was permitted to stand down without being subjected to the ordeal of cross-examination, the ex-president of the Oxford Union was moved to express his personal disappointment.

“Something might have been done with these, at any rate.”

“I think you are right,” said his friend; “but what’s the good, after all. It is a waste of time to say anything.”

“There is no defence, I am told.”

“He will call evidence to show that she was subject to violent fits of passion when in drink.”

“Ah, that is where Tobin will be missed. Really, one is surprised at Whitcomb and Whitcomb.”

“They saw the futility of fighting, and are doing it on the cheap.”

“Poor brute! But I don’t altogether agree with you. Something might have been done by a man of ability. I should like to have seen Tobin in it.”

“I don’t think Tobin would have attempted to touch their witnesses. We must wait till he calls his own to see what he is worth.”

At this moment, however, those who had conducted this secret conversation had their curiosity gratified by the spectacle of Northcote rising for the first time. He got up heavily and wearily, as though age had stricken him in every joint. His face was almost painful in its pallor. The last “unfortunate” had just made her half-audible reply to the final question that had been put to her by the amiable Mr. Topott.

“I believe you said you had been acquainted ten years with the accused?” said Northcote, in a voice that was curiously low and gentle.

“Yes, sir.”

“During that period you had known her many times to be under the influence of drink?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Would you say that drink excited her easily?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That a very small quantity was sufficient to excite her?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And that when in this condition she was inclined to be very free in her speech?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Also she had a tendency to make use of expressions that she was never known to permit herself when perfectly sober?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The same would apply to her statements when in this excited condition?”

“Yes, sir.”

“They were obvious exaggerations?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And some were pure inventions? You knew they were wholly untrue?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You and her other friends were well acquainted with her habit of giving way to exaggeration, and even to palpable untruth when under the influence of drink?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The habit was so well known that it was amusing to you? You have often laughed about it among yourselves?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You were known to say yourself on one occasion when she was what you call particularly ‘merry,’ ‘Emma would do for anybody on a quartern of gin’?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You have a distinct recollection of saying that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Your meaning was that when your friend had had that quantity of alcohol the airs of bravado she assumed were quite ridiculously out of keeping with her character?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the point of your saying lay in the fact that whether your friend had had drink or whether she had not, her character was so soft and gentle that you could not conceive her to be capable of hurting anybody?”

“Yes, sir.”

“She has been your friend for ten years?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Throughout that period you have found her to be generous, kind, impulsive, lovable?”

“Yes, sir.”

“No one’s enemy save her own?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Had it ever seemed possible to you that if she was capable of the commission of this atrocious crime of which she stands accused, she could never have enjoyed the ten years of your friendship, nor the ten years of affection you lavished on her?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It was no wish of your own that brought you to this court?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Indeed, you cannot say you came here of your own free will?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You were brought here under compulsion?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Without that compulsion nothing would have induced you to come here, and stand in this box, and speak words which might be used to hurt your friend?”

“Yes, sir.”

The witness had been weeping softly for some time. Her emotion, which in the circumstances was natural, was also felt to be a tribute to the examining counsel. The gentleness of a voice which touched the chord of pathos in every phrase it uttered without betraying a consciousness that it did so, invested a series of tame and unfruitful questions with an æsthetic quality which even the least educated of those present could appreciate.

At this point, however, Mr. Weekes rose brusquely and tartly with an objection. His friend had trespassed beyond the privilege of counsel. The objection was upheld by the judge, who with a kind of courteous acerbity informed Northcote in some very harmonious diction that he would do well to put his question in another form.

“I will do so, my lord,” said the young man, with admirable composure and raising his voice a little.

“You were forced to come here by the police?”

“Yes, sir.”

“In whom you stand in great fear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You are compelled to do all that they require of you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And when they take one of your friends to prison, and they come to you and suggest words that she may have used to you when she was not in a condition to weigh them, you know very well that whatever your own feeling is in the matter, you must say nothing, and you must do nothing that is likely to displease the police?”

A more emphatic protest was entered at this point by the counsel for the Crown. It was upheld by the judge with an equal access of emphasis. Northcote accepted the ruling with the nicely poised urbanity with which he had received the previous one; yet in the act of doing so he contrived, as if by an accident, to let his gaunt eyes alight on the jury. It was followed by a smile which crept over his haggard cheeks; and this was conveyed to each of them personally, as though he were covering a retreat with a little apology. Yet it was all contrived so delicately that it required a certain fineness of perception to notice it.

During the next few minutes these objections were frequent. They were raised with an ever-increasing vehemence by the counsel for the Crown, were embodied with an ever-increasing acerbity and sternness by the judge, and were received by the counsel for the defence with a deferential patience, the ironical side of which was immediately exposed by the next question he put to the witness, and also by the concentrated manner in which he smiled at the jury. After a perfect rain of objections, which for the purposes of our narrative must henceforward be taken as granted, the leader for the Crown could stand the carefully elaborated audacity of this unknown tyro no longer. He lost his temper.

“Mr.—er—er,” he said, referring to a paper for the name, “Mr. Thornton, you have no need to keep smiling at the jury in that way.”

Northcote turned to face his adversary with a deliberation that astonished the bar, and even caused a grim flicker to play about the mouth of the judge.

“I trust, Mr. Weekes,” he said, “you will withdraw your objection to these amenities. If you do not, I feel sure his lordship will be bound to uphold it. And if, Mr. Weekes, I might urge you to be patient, I can promise that your time to receive them will arrive.”

The measured dryness of the young man’s manner set the bar in a twitter.

“Damn his young eyes,” said a barrister of elephantine proportions on the back bench to a colleague; “two birds with one stone. I shall stand him a bottle. I like his mug.”

The opinion of the ex-president of the Oxford Union was less favorable.

“Funny chap, isn’t he?” drawled the product of Eton and Christchurch. “What can he do for the case by trying to score off the judge and a silk gown?”

“Theoretically he’s wrong,” said the son of the Master of the Rolls; “but it was very nicely done. I am sure my guv’nor would have liked it.”

Divested of its endless interruptions, the cross-examination of the woman was conducted with that persuasiveness he had used from the first. And to those acquainted with the immensely difficult art Northcote was essaying, it became a source of surprise that so young a man should evince this perfect command over the means he employed, when the high-strung nerves of the natural man were subjected to such severe trials from an opponent. And the reward of his restraint came to him as he proceeded, for the wretched woman was melted to tears by such a sympathetic tenderness; and further, the intercourse he had already established with the jury seemed to deepen.

“It is due to the courtesy of the police that you are able to follow your calling?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The police could take away your means of livelihood without giving you warning; and without giving you a moment’s notice they could put you in prison?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And whenever the police ask you to serve them, whenever they ask you to oblige them in any way, you feel obliged to carry out their wishes, whatever the cost may be to yourself?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Even when they cause you to hurt a friend by stating that which you know to be not quite true?”

“Yes, sir.”

“On one occasion, Mrs. Walsingham, to help the police, you identified a man whom they suggested had robbed you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And your own testimony and the testimony of several of your friends enabled them to send this unfortunate man into penal servitude?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I use the word ‘unfortunate,’ Mrs. Walsingham, because this man, after languishing many years in prison, was able to prove, to the satisfaction of his fellow creatures, that he was perfectly innocent of the scandalous charge that was brought against him. But at the time of his conviction, when the police had called upon you for your help, you did not dare to tell the judge and the jury that you had not been robbed by this man, and that you had never seen him in your life before?”

“Yes, sir.”

“This was an instance in which you felt the necessity, in spite of all that it cost you, to help the police in obtaining one of those ‘convictions’ which they consider so necessary to their own well-being?”

“Yes, sir.”

“One of those ‘convictions’ which mean an extra stripe on the arm, and the addition of a few shillings a week to the pay of one or two of these natural enemies of yours, of whom you and your friends stand in constant dread?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And so, Mrs. Walsingham, these enemies of whom you stand in such great fear having, in the first instance, caused you in your weakness to affirm that which was untrue, in order that the liberty of an unhappy man, whom you had never met, might be taken away from him, they cause you now to come again into this court to swear away, not the liberty, but the life, of a poor friend, whose only fault, as far as you know, is that occasionally she drank a glass more than was good for her?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mrs. Harrison often spoke to you of this Mr. Barron?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Of late Mrs. Harrison had complained to you of Mr. Barron being unkind to her?”

“Yes, sir.”

“She told you that he had even threatened to leave her altogether?”

“Yes, sir.”

“When you first knew her, Mrs. Harrison seemed attached to him?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That is to say, she never complained about him?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But when latterly he grew unkind to her she became very unhappy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And was it not at such times that she was inclined to drink that extra glass to forget her great unhappiness?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yet it was only under these conditions, when a stimulant had excited her feelings, that she was heard to complain against him?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And then it seemed to you no more than the legitimate complaint of a highly emotional and affectionate nature which was suffering deeply?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You remember, Mrs. Walsingham, that on one occasion she made a reference to her previous history?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It was to the effect that this Mr. Barron and herself came from the same village in the north of England?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That they had been intimately acquainted in her youth?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That as a young girl she had been in domestic service at the house of Mr. Barron’s mother?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That Mr. Barron seduced her under a promise of marriage?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And it was the fact that that promise had not been kept which led directly, in the first instance, to the ruin of this young girl?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Mr. Barron having accomplished her ruin, fled from the house of his parents to London, to escape his duty?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And this girl, dismissed from her situation, disgraced in the eyes of her friends, followed in her despair to this huge city, in the slender hope of finding the man who had ruined her?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yet for many years she was unable to find him?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And during those years of inexpressible bitterness, in her ignorance of life, her helplessness, her friendlessness, in the abasement of her spirit, she sank deeper and deeper into degradation?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The pure-blooded north country girl became a harlot by the force of circumstances?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And then after many years of misery one evening at a music hall, in the pursuit of her calling, she chanced to meet the man who had been the first cause of her ruin?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And when he renewed a proposal that he had made years before, which as a young girl she had scornfully repudiated, that she should dwell in his house, not as his wife, but as his mistress, the pressure of her circumstances forced her to accept this proposal almost with a sense of gratitude?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And, Mrs. Walsingham, you do not believe for one moment that any thought of vengeance ever suggested itself to her mind?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You are prepared to swear that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Also, that even in these latter days, when Mr. Barron became cruel and violent in his conduct towards her, she never freed herself from his yoke, never passed from under the spell of a power which, from the first, had been so fatal to her?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And that this paltry sum of money which she believed had been left to her in his will, which has proved not to have been the case, could never have counted in the scale of his personal attraction for her, which, sinister, dreadful, tragical as it had proved, had caused her at his behest to forfeit friends, health, virtue, honor, all those things which dignify life?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I thank you, Mrs. Walsingham; I have nothing more to ask you.”

The poor drab, tottering, faint, dissolved in tears, had to be assisted from the witness-box.

This piece of cross-examination had made a strange impression. The manner in which it had been conducted by the young advocate had exerted a powerful emotion upon many besides the weak and flaccid creature who had been so much clay in his hands. It had had great success as a coup de théâtre. The trained perceptions present had an uneasy sense that they had been listening to a masterpiece. Forensically, the means had been entirely adequate to the end; a supremely difficult art had been surmounted by an exquisite skill. Each question had been shaped so naturally, each word was clothed with such true delicacy, that wonderful nuances of feeling were shed by the magic of the living human voice over the sordid and the unclean. Sentence by sentence the fabric of a story that was as old as the world was unrolled until it became a piece of drama. Even professional criticism, which was avowedly hostile, was half-conquered by the infusion of human sympathy into that which could not bear the light. Irrelevant, destitute of real authority as was the whole thing, it was yet allowed to be a performance of rare technical beauty, a pledge of the controlled will-power of its creator. And like all things which are the fruit of an incomparable technique—in itself the reason to be of what is called “art”—it had evoked that subtle emotion which transcends reason and experience. And the least accessible to this malign influence were fain to see that the first nail had been hammered already into the coffin of the prosecution.

The indication of a fight on the part of the defence was extremely distasteful to Mr. Weekes and his junior. Nothing had been farther outside the prediction of these expert practitioners. It had been freely anticipated that by luncheon-time the end would be in view. By then, according to this prolepsis, the defence was to have called its witnesses to testify to the woman’s violence when in drink, which would count for little; this youthful novice was to have floundered through his few disconnected and incoherent remarks to the jury; the leader for the Crown was to have answered him in a few perfunctory sentences, which yet would be in striking contradistinction to the halting and rather inept performance of his youthful opponent; the whole was to have been transferred to the judge with a sense of perfect security, since the case for the prosecution was so clear and so entirely uncontroverted; and the judge, very excellent in his way, and highly in favor of the despatch of public business and economization of the public time, was even to have worked in his summing-up by the hour of the adjournment.

However, this lengthy and irrelevant cross-examination, which had had to be contested at every point, had somewhat demoralized this well-considered programme. A solid hour had been cut out of it, a solid hour in which both sides could have addressed the jury; in fact, a solid hour in which, by an effort, a verdict could have been obtained and the woman hanged. And when this tyro, who was conducting his first case of importance with a coolness that many of his elders might have envied, intimated that it was not his intention to call witnesses, and further claimed in that contingency the privilege of addressing the jury after the counsel for the Crown had spoken, Mr. Weekes was fain to inform the court that he would prefer to reserve his own address to the jury, brief as it would be, until after luncheon. Accordingly the adjournment was then taken.