Henry Northcote

Northcote lunched with Mr. Whitcomb in a secluded place, where he partook of a concoction of egg and sherry, and two Abernethy biscuits. The solicitor’s attitude towards him had already changed. The fact that he had adhered to his refusal to call witnesses for the defence was allowed to pass, because he had been able to show that after all he was entitled to hold ideas of his own on the conduct of the case. His remarkable essay in cross-examination had restored the solicitor’s self-esteem; the dark horse he had chosen was not going to prove so unworthy after all.

“Of course you have got the judge dead against you now,” said the solicitor, “and I don’t quite see what it is going to do for you; but as far as it went it was very well done. I can’t think how you came to put all those questions. Where did you get your information? It was not on your brief.”

“Never mind where I got it,” said Northcote, with a laugh.

His composure was much greater than when his client had conversed with him in the court.

“If only the whole case were not so dead it might have proved enormously useful,” said the solicitor. “Yes, it was very well done.”

“Would you say that Tobin would have done it better?” said the young man, with an odd smile.

“No, I would not,” said the solicitor. “I will pay you the compliment of saying that even Michael Tobin would not have done it better.”

“Thank you,” said the young man drily. “And now, what would you like to lay against an acquittal?”

“Well, you are a cool hand, I must say,” exclaimed Mr. Whitcomb, somewhat taken aback. “For a beginner I don’t think I’ve met your equal.”

“What will you lay against an acquittal?”

“I don’t mind laying five hundred to fifty,” said the solicitor.

“Done,” said Northcote.

“If you had asked me this morning before you went into court you might have had five thousand to fifty.”

“Sorry I forgot to mention it, because I was just as sure then as I am now what the result will be.”

“Why you should have this confidence I cannot understand. Really, you know, you haven’t a leg to stand on.”

“Well, well; I am going to leave you now to take a stroll for ten minutes. See you soon.”

Northcote went out into the traffic to take a few mouthfuls of the London air. Fiery chemicals seemed to be consuming his nerves, and his brain was like a sheet of molten flame. But sensations so extreme in nowise distressed him. He felt the exhilaration of this strange yet not unpleasant condition to be the pledge of a harmony between mental and physical passion. It seemed to promise that the overweening consciousness of power that had haunted him for so many weeks in his solitude was about to be fulfilled. The painful self-distrust, the afflicting self-consciousness which had tormented and atrophied his energies in smaller cases had vanished altogether.

As he recalled the achievement of the morning, he felt a glow of exaltation. Looking back upon it his mind had been as clear as a crystal, exquisitely responsive to the will. Every bolt and nut of the complex mechanism had been in perfect order. The very words he had wished to use had sprung to his lips, the very tones in which he sought to embody them had proceeded out of his mouth. So profoundly harmonious had been his mind in its most intimate workings, that he had been able to convey fine shades of meaning to the jury without addressing to them a single word.

Already he seemed to know all that was salient in the character of each individual who composed it. As he rejoiced in the masterful strength in which he was now cloaked so valiantly, he felt it had only to abide with him throughout the afternoon, and a signal victory would crown his efforts. And it would abide with him throughout that period, because all the power of his nature, which when aroused to action he felt to be without a limit, was pledged to this contingency. In this overmastering flush of virility in which he walked now, he stood revealed to himself as a Titan. Bestriding the crowded pavements he seemed to be in a world of pygmies. What was there in the life around him that could stem this vital force? No longer did he doubt that it was in him to dominate the judge, the jury, and the prosecution. They were none of his clay; their mould was not the mighty one nature had used for his fashioning.

With an extraordinary boldness and elasticity in his steps he walked back into the court. How dear, how precious, had the fetid and hideous room become to him already! It is a ruthless joy that consumes the orator, when, clad in his strength, he stands up in that forum which previously his failures have caused him to dread, but which the lust of triumph has rendered indispensable to his being. This day would be written in its memorials. It would mark the first of a succession of achievements within its precincts, achievements which would cause his name to be handed down in its archives forever. Who among the listless occupants of the surrounding benches foresaw that they were on the threshold of another miracle that was about to happen in the world? Who among them foresaw that a demigod was about to rise in their midst?

Those venal, high-living men, whose flesh was overlaid in luxury, how could they hope to understand the miracle that was about to occur? How could the poor drab, cowering in the dock, whose life so ironically had become the pretext for the first announcement of his genius, how could she hope to understand that a new force was about to take its walk in the world? How dismal, coarse, and sordid everything seemed! Not a glimpse of light, beauty, or hope was anywhere to be discerned in the whole of that crowded and suffocating room. The darkness and horror which oppress us so much in the streets of a great city, all the festering sores, all the blunt evils which discolor human nature and conspire against its dignity, seemed to have congregated here. The most cruel fact of human existence, the knowledge of man’s innate imperfection, appeared to be concentrated, to be rendered visible in this inferno in which every aperture was kept so close.

As soon as the judge returned into court, Mr. Weekes rose to address the jury. Northcote sought sternly to curb his own impatience while the trite voice of the counsel for the prosecution marshalled the array of facts. They were so damning that they hardly called for comment. None could dispute the tale that they told; and the Crown had no wish to waste the time of the court by laboring the obvious. Reposing an implicit confidence in the triumph of a virgin reason, that one imperishable gift of nature to mankind, Mr. Weekes was yet able to exhibit a profound sorrow for the terrible predicament of the accused, and the awful alternative with which twelve of her countrymen were confronted. But painful as was their duty, and painful as was his, it was imposed upon them by the law. Mr. Weekes resumed his seat in the midst of a deep and respectful silence, which indicated how crucial the situation was to all, after having spoken for three-quarters of an hour.

The uninspired but adequate words of his opponent had galled Northcote at first, so overpowering was his desire to rise at once and deliver that utterance with which his whole being was impregnated. But as perforce he waited and his ears were fed by the formal phrases of his adversary, his nervous energy seemed to concentrate under the effort of repression. And when at last a curious hush informed him that his hour had arrived, which at a time less momentous would have unnerved him altogether, and he rose to his feet, to such an extent was he surcharged with emotion that at first he could not begin.

Every eye in the crowded building was strained upon him almost painfully, as he stood with locked lips looking at an old woman in a bright red shawl in the public gallery. He was as pale as a ghost, his cheeks were so cadaverous that in the murky light of the gaslit winter afternoon they presented the appearance of bones divested of their flesh. But there was a profound faith among the majority of the slow-breathing multitude. Since the morning the name of the advocate had come to be bruited among them; and in spite of his silence, which was grinding against their tense nerves, there was that in his bearing which excluded all sense of foreboding from their minds.

A full minute passed in complete silence while the advocate stood staring at the old woman in the red shawl. At last his lips were unsealed, slowly and reluctantly; the first words that proceeded from them were of a quietude which pinned every thought. All listened with a painful intensity without knowing why.

“My lord, gentlemen of the jury: It is with feelings of awe that I address you. This is the first occasion on which my inexperience has been summoned to bear the yoke of a great task; and here on its threshold I confess to you without shame that I should faint under its burden, had I not the knowledge that I hold a mandate to plead the cause of not the least of God’s creatures.

“You must have heard with admiration the words which have fallen from the lips of the learned gentleman who has pleaded the cause of the Crown. Impregnable in his learning, ripe in his judgment, he has made it impossible for the tyro who stands before you to imitate his force and his integrity. Indeed, I do not know how this tyro would derive the courage to follow him at all were it not that a special sanction had been given to him by the grievous circumstances of this case. It is because its nature is so terrible that he who has to share its onus is able to forget his youth, his weakness, his absence of credentials.

“We are proud, we citizens of London, that we are born of the first race of mankind, in the most fortunate hour of its history. It is our boast that we are the inheritors of a freedom that was never seen before on the earth; a freedom not only of conduct and intercourse, but more rarely, more preciously, a freedom of opinion, a freedom of ideas. And we prize this birthright of ours not merely because our fathers purchased it for us with their blood, but also because its possession is of inestimable worth in the progress of human nature. And in the very centre of this pride of ours, which is intellectual in its source, there arises, as the bulwark of our homage, the more than sacred edifice which has crystallized the national life. I refer to the constitution of England.

“We do well to accept this institution with an unreserved emotion which, as a race, we regard as unworthy. For there are some who hold that this hiatus between our precepts and our practice confers a yet deeper lustre upon our love of justice. For, gentlemen, that love is innate in the heart of every Englishman; it is the stuff of which our constitution is composed, which quickens our pulses and tightens our throats; it helps to form the most magnificent of all our traditions; it is the woof of a fabric which is imperishable.

“It is the thought of this love of justice dominant in the breast of every London citizen, which sustains him who pleads the cause of the accused. For in a charge of this awful nature the constitution enacts with a noble wisdom that the prisoner at the bar is entitled to any doubt that may arise in any one of your minds in regard to the absolute conclusiveness of all the evidence that may be urged against her. That is a humane provision, gentlemen. It is worthy of the source from which it springs. Without this provision I do not know how any advocate would be prevailed upon to incur his responsibility; nor, gentlemen, do I know how any jury of twelve humane and enlightened Englishmen would be gathered into this court to adjudicate upon the life or death of an Englishwoman. It is a humane and far-sighted provision, and it enables the advocate of this unhappy Englishwoman to address you with a feeling of security which otherwise he could never have hoped to possess.

“I feel, gentlemen, that the exigencies of this case may compel me to speak to you at great length, but of one thing you may be assured. I shall not speak at all unless every word I am called to utter is weighed with care and fidelity in the scales of the reason that God has given to me, and I know, gentlemen, from the look upon your faces, that with equal care and equal fidelity you will weigh them in the scales of the reason God has given to you. I have placed myself in the most favorable position for addressing you I can devise. I shall hope to speak with the utmost distinction of which I am capable; and I shall hope not to employ a word whose meaning is obscure to you, or a phrase which is equivocal or open to misconstruction. That you are prepared to surrender your whole attention to me you tell me with your looks. That I shall hold that attention I dare to believe, unless the hand of Providence deprives me of the power to give utterance to those things with which my mind is charged to the bursting-point.

“You will not refute me when I assert that the fact in our common experience which at the present time has the greatest power to oppress us is the imperfection of human nature. And upon entering a court of justice this fact is apt to demoralize a feeling mind. The science of appraising criminal evidence has been carried among us to a curious pitch, as witness the unexampled skill of my learned friend; the paraphernalia of incrimination, if the expression may be allowed to me, is consummate; but in spite of the rare ingenuity of great legal minds, human nature is fallible. It is liable to err. It does err. To the deep grief of science it errs with great frequency. Indeed, its errors are so numerous that they even impinge upon the sacred domain of justice. Miscarriages of justice occur every day.

“In a cause of this nature it is most necessary that steps should be taken to exclude the element of injustice by all means that are known to us. We are bound, gentlemen, to keep that contingency constantly before our eyes. Such a contingency fills me with trembling; and I believe it fills you, for in this instance a miscarriage of justice would not only be irreparable, it would be a crime against our human nature.

“The question arises, how can we safeguard ourselves against this element of injustice? What means can we adopt to keep it out? Gentlemen, it devolves upon me, the advocate of the accused, to furnish that means. By taking thought I shall endeavor to provide it. To that end I propose to divide what I have to say to you into three parts. The first will deal with your legal duty. The second will deal with the duty to which every Christian Englishman must subscribe or forfeit his name, and with his name the title-deeds of his humanity. The third will show the consequences which must and do wait upon the evasion of this second duty, which is the highest and noblest known to mankind, which in itself completely transcends this legal one, this technical one you are sworn to obey.”

“I can see he means to be all night,” said Mr. Weekes to his junior, with marked irritation. “Lover of the sound of his own voice.”

“He is going wrong already,” said Mr. Topott complacently. “Saying too much; overdoing it generally.”

“Every inch a performer,” said Jumbo at the back to a companion. “There’s a fortune in that voice and manner. Hope the lad won’t say too much.”

“Has done already,” said his companion. “That cant of a duty higher than the legal one is merely ridiculous.”

The ex-president of the Oxford Union and his friend, whose youth rendered them sternly critical, were following Northcote’s every word with the closest attention.

“He’s got a brogue you could cut with a knife,” said the ex-president, with an air of resenting a personal injury.

“You are wrong,” said his friend, with an absence of compromise. “He was at school with me.”

By this time the advocate had cut into the heart of his subject. In a few swift yet unemphasized sentences he had proved the existence of a doubt in the case. He pressed home the significance of that fact with a power that was so perfectly disciplined that it did not appear to exert itself, yet it carried a qualm into the camp of the enemy. He was content to indicate that the doubt was there, and with apparent magnanimity differentiated it from that which in his view must ever accompany circumstantial evidence. Every gesture that he used in the demonstration of its presence, each vibration of a voice which had become marvellously flexible, was a living witness of the dynamic quality he had in his possession.

“He will be wise to let it go at that,” was the opinion of Mr. Weekes. “He has done quite as well as was to have been expected. We shall just get home, and for a beginner he will have done very nicely.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me if he is only just starting,” said Mr. Topott mournfully.

“I have done now, gentlemen,” Northcote continued, “with the legal aspect of this case. That aspect, as I have shown, makes an acquittal necessary. But whenever we are content to base our judgment upon technicalities, we tie our hands. We furnish room for one of those sophistries which trained intellects, the intellects of those who are far more learned in the law than we are, find it so easy to introduce. There is always the danger that a body of laymen, however unimpeachable their integrity, may be led from the plain and obvious path of their duty by a cunning stratagem. Again, in all those matters that seek ascertained fact for their basis, we must not forget that its supply is partial. Science is doing stupendous things for the world, but even it cannot yet supply mankind with anything beyond half-truths. There is no field of man’s activities—philosophy, religion, politics, law—which does not depend upon these. Science can furnish us with sufficient evidence to hang a fellow creature, but the time is at hand when it will also have furnished us with such abundant knowledge of our eternal fallibility, that we shall cease to exact these reprisals. For are not all reprisals, which we include under the comprehensive term ‘justice,’ the fruit of an imperfect apprehension of the nature of man? It has been said truly that a little knowledge is dangerous, for in looking at the history of human opinion in all the phases through which it has passed, we see how the habit of basing our actions upon half-truths has been the cause of the manifold wounds of the world.

“I think, gentlemen, I have said enough to indicate the dangers which lurk in the temptation to apply in its arid literalness the letter of the law. I am aware that such a precaution tells against the cause I am pleading, because, as I think I have made clear to you, the letter of the law demands the acquittal of the prisoner at the bar. But those who seek for direction in great issues must strive to forget their personal cause. According to the law you are pledged to obey your duty is clear; but as every day its tendency to err becomes more visible, I feel I must not, I feel I dare not, place too implicit a trust in its clemency. Therefore, gentlemen, I am about to supplement this law, I am about to reinforce it, and to reinforce you, by a reference to that moral code which each and every one of God’s citizens carries in his own heart, that is the only tribunal known to mankind that is not liable to error. And I think you will agree with me that the nature of this case allows me to partake of the inestimable boon of appealing to it.

“When I watched you defile into this dismal room this morning, one after another, faltering and uncertain in your steps, and bearing about you many evidences of having been overcome by the cruel task which had been imposed upon you by no will of your own, my heart went out to you, and I could not help reflecting that I would rather be in my own case, awful as it was to me, than I would be in yours. I at least could walk upon the higher ground without misgiving. I had not been pressed into the service of this court of justice to make obeisance to a ruthless and obsolete formula. I was not called upon to subscribe to a compact that was repugnant to my moral nature; I was not called upon to enact the brutal travesty of sealing it with my lips. But, my friends, as I marked you this morning, with a great fire burning in my veins, I wondered by what miracle it was, I wondered by what signal act of grace, I too did not stand among you in my capacity of a private citizen, to bear my part in this saturnalia of justice. Who was I, that I should not be plucked from among my family and my friends, from my peaceful vocations and my modest toil, to do to death a woman? Who was I, that I should be exempt from this bitter degradation which my peers are called upon to suffer? And in thinking these thoughts, my friends, it came upon me suddenly—call it a prophetic foresight if you will—that one of these days I should be called to sit among you. And I said to myself, ‘When that comes to pass, what will you do?’ I said to myself, ‘What will you do?’

“At first I could make no answer. I was stupefied by the thought my too active imagination had conjured up. And then at last I said to myself, ‘I shall ask for guidance in this matter; I shall ask for guidance from that tribunal which lies within my own nature.’ And, my friends, there and then I turned to it, as though this thing had come of a verity to pass, for the sight of you all seated there in your despair had borne upon me so heavily that your situation had become my own.

“Now the answer that tribunal vouchsafed to me was this: ‘Consider what your pastors and masters would do were they placed in your case. Consider what would be the attitude of those great minds that still burn like candles in the night of the time, whose radiance has warmed your veins, whose immortality has enriched your own personal nature. Consider what would be the conduct of those representative spirits of whom you proud Englishmen of the twentieth century are the heirs.’

“And then a strange thing happened. No sooner had this answer been written on the tablets of my brain, than this gaslit room grew dimmer than it already was, and there seemed to arise a kind of commotion among you gentlemen of the jury. And when at last I found the courage to lift my eyes outwards from my thoughts, and they looked towards you, I saw with a thrill of surprise, as if by the agency of magic, that each one of your faces had been blotted out. Each was shrouded in an intense darkness. But while I continued to gaze upon the place that had contained you, almost with a feeling of horror, a shadowy haze seemed to play over it, and a number of strange faces peopled the gloom. They were more than twelve in number; they were more than twenty; they were more than a hundred. For the most part they were those of men old and austere. Each face seemed to be that of a person of infinite power and dominion, of one accustomed to walk alone. Each was marked by a kind of superhuman composure, as though having spent its youth in every phase of stress, it had emerged at last upon the summits of the mountains, where the air is rarefied, and where it is possible to hold a personal intercourse with Truth. Some of the faces were grave, some a little sinister, but the eyes of each had a forward, upward look which conferred an expression upon them of entrancing beauty.

“Stealthily, rapidly, but with a superhuman composure these noble shadows ranged themselves in the jury-box, in the room of you gentlemen who had vacated it. And when I had overcome my stupefaction sufficiently to look upon these new jurors more closely, I was struck with amazement at the curious familiarity of those faces of theirs. They were those of persons that I had seemed to have known all my life.

“There and then a shiver of recognition crept through my veins. I knew them; I revered them, I had spent many hours in their company. The first face I had recognized was that of an old man, urbane and ironical, a citizen of the world; it was the face of Plato. Beside him was a man, older, less urbane, more ironical; it was the face of Socrates. Thinkers, warriors, saints, and innovators began to teem before my gaze. There was St. Augustine and St. Francis of Assisi, Shakespeare and Goethe, Leonardo and Dante, Washington and Cromwell, Kant and Spinoza, Isaac Newton, Giordano Bruno, Voltaire. I thought I discerned the faces of at least two women among this assembly; one was that of Joan of Arc, the other that of Mary the Magdalene. There appeared to be hosts of others of all times and countries which sprang into being as I gazed, but though I recognized them then, I cannot pause to enumerate them now. For this gathering was strangely representative, and the living were not excluded—I saw a great Russian, a great Englishman, and a great Frenchman of our own day—but I must resist the temptation to give the names of all I beheld.

“No sooner had the scope and representativeness of this gathering declared itself and it had ranged itself miraculously within a little room, than a kind of commotion overspread it. They seemed to be discussing some difficult point among themselves. However, this action of theirs had no time to engage my anxiety, for I understood immediately that they were seeking a foreman to their jury. Now you would suppose that among a concourse of all who had attained an immortal preëminence in mental and moral activity, to choose a leader from amongst them would be impossible. But this was not so. Their discussion was over almost before it began. They had no difficulty whatever in nominating one among their number to speak for them all.

“It was with an indescribable curiosity that I observed a slight, strangely garbed figure emerge from their midst. And when he came to assume his place at the head of his immortal companions, which you, sir, are occupying now, I was devoured by an overpowering eagerness to look upon his face. And by this time so immensely powerful had been the impact of this jury upon my imagination, that it had obtained an actual existence and proceeded in sober verity to conduct the business of the court. And I was sensible that the painful curiosity with which I awaited the foreman’s revelation of his identity was shared by all who were present. All were craning with parted lips to look upon his face. And when at last he lifted his head, and his pale and luminous features shone out of the gloom and overspread this assembly, a kind of half-stifled sob of surprise, a sort of shudder of recognition, passed over the crowded court. The face was that of the man called Jesus of Nazareth.

“To myself, however, the recognition brought an immediate and profound sense of joy. All my doubts, my terrors, my perplexities, were no more. They passed as completely as though they had never been. The business of the court proceeded, but I was inaccessible to its bearing upon my task. My every thought was merged in the personality of the foreman of the jury. The precise, calm, and harmonious legal diction of my learned friends lost all its meaning and coherence, and even the demeanor of the good and upright judge, who is making trial of this cause, became one with the glamour which environed the figure in the jury-box.

“That august jury seemed to sit and listen to all that passed. By an extreme courtesy which they were able to impose on their finely disciplined natures, they gave heed to the ceremonial that was enacted for their benefit. It is true that there were moments when they were unable to conceal the smile of soft irony which veiled their lips; but from the beginning to the end their patience and urbanity remained inviolate. The foreman, however, muttering continually inaudible words to himself, with fingers twitching, and the hectic pulse beating in his thin and fevered cheek, never took his eyes from the rail in front of him. And when at last the time came for the jury to consider their verdict, they were able to return it instantly, without leaving the box, as you would expect such a tribunal to do.

“I can scarcely hope to picture to your minds the scene that was presented when the foreman, so frail and thin and yet so full of compassion, rose humbly in his place. ‘Are you agreed upon your verdict, gentlemen?’ said the Clerk of Arraigns. ‘We are,’ said the voice of the divine mystic of the Galilean hills; yet I can convey to you the sound of it no better than could those poor fishermen who heard it nineteen centuries ago. ‘What is your verdict, gentlemen?’ said the Clerk of Arraigns, whose own voice sounded so ludicrously trite in comparison with that of the foreman, that it seemed to have no place in human nature. ‘I understand,’ said the foreman of the jury, ‘according to your laws the penalty is death.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said the Clerk of Arraigns, with a quiet dignity, ‘the penalty according to the law is death.’ ‘The jury return a verdict of Not Guilty,’ replied the foreman instantly, stooping to write with his finger on the rail in front of him, as though he had heard him not.”

At this point Mr. Weekes rose excitedly.

“My lord,” he cried, “this blasphemous travesty has gone too far. It must be carried no farther. It must cease.”

“Mr. Weekes,” said Northcote, turning to confront him, while a wave of emotion swept over the court which seemed to make the air vibrate, “I must ask you resume your seat.” He pointed with a finger with sorrowful sternness. “I cannot submit to interruption at such a moment as this. You hold your brief for the Crown; I hold mine for God and human nature.”

The hush which followed was broken by a poor actor among the jury. He had been out of an engagement for two years, and he had left his home that morning with his wife sitting with a child at her breast before a grate without a fire in it.

“That’s true,” he muttered heavily.

“My lord, I appeal to you,” cried Mr. Weekes more excitedly than ever. “I did not come here to be browbeaten and insulted. I did not come here to witness religion made into mockery and dragged through the mire.”

“Mr. Weekes,” said Northcote with a depth of compassion in his tone which made many veins run cold, “a subterfuge of this kind will not serve you. The jury have no desire that you should make a parade of your feelings at such a moment as this. They desire that you will resume your seat, and relinquish any further attempt to make their task more hideous than it already is.”

“That is perfectly true,” exclaimed the foreman in a hoarse whisper.

It was observed by those who were behind Northcote that in the stress of the mental anguish through which he had already passed, by constantly plucking with his fingers at the back of his hands, the skin had been pulled away and the bleeding flesh was exposed.

“I appeal to your lordship,” cried Mr. Weekes.

“My lord, I also appeal to you,” said Northcote; and the poise of his head and the lift of his chin, as it was directed upwards to the bench, reminded those who had seen it of the figure of Balzac as modelled by Rodin in clay.

The dæmonic quality was dominant here, as is the case always when the gospel of force has its dealings with human nature. Few had suspected that this old judge, with his brusque manners and his great barking irascible voice was no longer fit to fill his position. His lionlike exterior was no more than the livery of his dignity. He was not the man to face a crisis, when above all things an iron nerve and an implacable will were needed to impose restraint upon a jury and an advocate who were in danger of trampling underfoot the accepted rules of decorum and procedure. And the week before the judge had buried his youngest daughter. When Northcote’s gaunt eyes were turned upon this old man, who was trembling violently under his ermine, the tears began to course down his face.

“My God, he’s settled Bow-wow,” said the fat barrister on the back bench.

“Always was a senile old fool at bottom,” said his companion. “That young bounder ought to lose his wig and gown.”

“Shut up! He’s speaking again.”