Henry Northcote

It was a quarter-past seven by the time Mr. Justice Brudenell had concluded his summing-up. Long before he had reached the end, a prediction of the result had formed in every mind. This case which in the beginning had been as clear and strong as the sun at noon had become so vitiated by contact with these legal wits, that by now even its most salient points had become obscure. No jury in the frame of mind of this present one, each component of which had been played upon like the strings of a harp by the hand of a master performer, was in the least likely to convict. There were those who even inclined to the belief that they would not leave the box.

This, however, proved to be an extreme view. They did leave the box, but in exactly nine minutes had returned into court. As slowly they defiled back again into the court with their verdict, the excitement depicted in their looks was painful to observe. Their drawn faces were livid and perspiring; they kept down their heads without glancing to the right or to the left. The foreman, a coal dealer in a small way of business in the Commercial Road, was seized with a violent twitching of the body.

“Are you agreed upon your verdict, gentlemen?” whispered the Clerk of the Arraigns.

“We are,” said the foreman of the jury, in a voice that could hardly be heard.

“What is your verdict, gentlemen?”

“We return a verdict of—of—”

The conclusion of the sentence seemed to die in the foreman’s throat.

“Will you please speak in such a manner that his lordship may hear you?” said the clerk.

“We return a verdict of not guilty,” said the foreman, with his eyes fixed on the rail before him. To the horror of many who observed him, he appeared to trace some words upon it with his finger.

The demonstration which followed the verdict had been anticipated, and accordingly on this occasion the officers of the court were able in some measure to control it.

No sooner had the judge uttered a few words, which in the clamor were inaudible, than he rose hastily from his seat. In the same instant Northcote rose also, and that voice and presence which for so many hours had exercised such an unquestioned sway at once detained those who were thronging eagerly through the doors into the raw December darkness.

“Before the court rises,” said Northcote, “I crave your lordship’s indulgence for a brief moment.”

The judge bowed courteously and resumed his seat, a little unsteadily as was thought by those who were near to him.

“I desire to offer to your lordship,” said the young advocate, with a humility that was affecting, “in a public manner, an ample and an unreserved apology for an allusion which had the misfortune to fall from my lips. I gave utterance to it in a moment of great mental excitement, and at that moment I did not realize, so completely was I under the domination of the end I had in view, that in a sense such an allusion was an indictment of your lordship and of that high office upon which, during a quarter of a century past, your lordship has conferred honor. I beg to be allowed to crave your lordship’s forgiveness. Had these words not been spoken at a time when I was overcome by the heat of advocacy, they would never have been spoken at all.”

“Thank you, Mr. Northcote,” said the judge in a low but distinct voice. “I understand perfectly well the circumstances in which these words were spoken. They gave me pain, but I do not hold you blameworthy. I viewed with keen sympathy the position in which you were placed; and I accept without reservation the apology which with an equal absence of reservation you have conceived it your duty to tender to me. I don’t know whether I can be permitted to offer a suggestion in a matter of this kind, but if, Mr. Northcote, you could see your way towards the inclusion of your friend Mr. Weekes in this extremely honorable amende—”

“I will, my lord—I do!” cried the impetuous young man, turning towards the place of the senior counsel for the Treasury.

“I regret to say, my lord,” said Mr. Topott, rising and bowing to the judge and to Northcote, “that my learned friend has already left the precincts of the court; but I feel sure I am entitled to state, that were he now present he would accept these words of Mr. Northcote in the spirit in which they are offered.”

The judge left the bench and the court emptied rapidly. Mr. Whitcomb, who had remained most of the day in Northcote’s vicinity, plucked him by the sleeve as he rose and gathered his papers.

“I know now what you mean by the genie,” said he. “I shall send a wire to Tobin at the hospital. I should like to see his face when he gets it.”

Northcote was too highly wrought to appreciate a word that was uttered by the solicitor. He could only smile and nod and wish him good night, all of which was done with incoherence and abruptness. As the young man passed out of the court, an elderly unfortunate, without any teeth, one-half of whose face had been destroyed by disease, crept from her hiding-place in a dark corner of the corridor. She grabbed the hem of Northcote’s gown and carried it to her lips.

“Gawd bless yer, guv’ner,” she mumbled, in a thick, wheezy whisper.

In the barristers’ robing-room the entrance of Northcote created a stir. Jumbo, a bencher of Northcote’s inn, and like all who are not afraid to present themselves without reserve, just as nature devised them, a man of immense popularity, hit the young advocate a blow on the shoulder.

“When can I stand you a bottle, dear boy? Fine work!”

The son of the Master of the Rolls came up.

“I say, Northcote,” he said, “you don’t remember me? I’m Hutton. I was in Foxey’s house with you at school.”

“Of course, of course,” said Northcote, hardly knowing a word that he spoke; “I remember you perfectly well. You have not altered at all.”

“You’ve not altered much, although you look awfully old and very much thinner than you used to look. I want you to mention an evening that you can come round and dine with my governor—you remember the governor I used to get ragged so tremendously for boasting about? He will be delighted to meet you. I shall tell him all about this; he is the kindest old soul.”

“Thanks, but I can’t dine with you until I’ve got my evening clothes out of pawn.”

Northcote’s schoolfellow laughed heartily.

“No, you’ve not altered,” he said. “Just the same amusing cynical old cuss you were at school—just the same cynical old cuss of whom we were so much afraid and who was so frightfully unpopular.”

“Poverty and pride were never a popular combination,” said Northcote, aroused from his preoccupation by the sympathy of one of the few who had supported him in his youth. “If I hadn’t been a bit of a football-player I don’t know what would have happened to me in those days. I used to derive pleasure, I remember, from insulting everybody.”

“Foxey used to call you Diogenes.”

“He used to say that Diogenes was considerably the pleasanter fellow of the two.”

“Poor old Foxey always feared you, I believe, just as did everybody else. You were a gloomy, dreamy sort of chap when you were not merely formidable. I remember once you were nearly superannuated. And do you remember Foxey saying there was nothing you might not do, if only you would apply your mind to it; but as it was, he was sure you would never do anything?”

“I lived in a mental fog in those days,” said Northcote, with a dreary laugh. “There was a thick vapor wrapped all round my brain. I could see and understand nothing. One fact only was borne in upon me with any sort of clearness. It was that I was vastly superior to everybody else. There never was such a colossal self-esteem.”

“Well, you certainly despised everybody in those days. And you must have gone on despising everybody to be capable of doing what you have.”

“I remember I was generally chosen to lead the scrum because I had a big voice,” said Northcote, with the light of reminiscence softening his grim mouth.

“But your voice is so much greater now than it was then, although it was always an immense booming sort of thing that seemed to come out of your boots. But your hands used to impress me more than anything else. I used to think that if I had hands like that I should break ribs for my private amusement. Do you remember standing the three-quarters on their heads? You were a hefty brute in those days.”

“I was always more or less a man of my hands, yet at the same time was always intensely interested in myself. I used to consider that ‘Cad’ Northcote—that was my name at school, although you are too polite to remind me of it—was quite the most wonderful person who had ever been born into this world or into any other. I used to lie awake all night taking myself to pieces as though I had been a watch. Sometimes I dreamed that I was Napoleon, and that it had come to pass that he had been chosen to lead the English pack while he was still at school.”

“Well, that dream came true at any rate,” said his schoolfellow, with an outburst of enthusiasm. “You were still with us when you pushed those Welshmen all over the place.”

The conversation was curtailed at this point by the appearance of the judge’s marshal.

“Mr. Northcote,” said this courteous and nicely dressed official, “Sir Joseph would be very much obliged if you would come round and see him in his room.”

“Right you are! I will be round in a minute,” said Northcote, shaking hands with his old schoolfellow and declining an invitation to dine in Eaton Square the next evening but one.