Henry Northcote

The advocate handed the Age to the solicitor.

“You may have seen it,” he said. “I am honored with a leading article.”

“I have read it. It means your removal from the top story to the basement.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It ensures that your professional emoluments will not be less than two thousand a year.”

“That would be very well had I not arrived at the conclusion that the game is not worth the candle. The penalties are too great.”

“Why consider them, dear boy? Why not accept the gifts of the gods in a thankful and contrite spirit?”

“You would have me drink the nectar that they offer although they hand it in a poisoned cup?”

“You are a queer fellow. You accept starvation with a dignified humility, but the instant you touch success—and such a success!—you make a face.”

“Such a success—there you have it all!”

“My dear fellow, whoever in this world got off the mark with such a flying start? You have awoke this morning to find yourself famous.”

“Bah! I am poisoned; I have got my death!”

“Within five years, if you keep your head, you will be making a princely income.”

“I know it.”

“And two days ago you could not afford to pay for a fire in the middle of winter.”

“You are perfectly right.”

“Two days ago you could not fill your belly when you were hungry.”

“I shall never taste hunger again—that honest, bitter, medicinal hunger that merges the mind in the soul. I shall never taste again that ascetic clarity which makes the heart supple and arms the brain.”

“You talk like a Methodist.”

“My father was a country preacher.”

“I expect this is the swing of the pendulum. You must have undergone great mental excitement in making your effort—and what an effort it was! And now the clock has swung right back; you are below par: you have got the blues.”

“I hate myself; I hate my cursed profession.”

“Yes, the mercury has fallen. The higher the rise the greater the drop. But make an effort to be rational. Look at this.”

The solicitor handed the advocate a brief. It was marked with a retaining fee of a hundred guineas.

“Two days ago that was beyond the dreams of your avarice. And now it is a mere forerunner of the beginning. You will be compelled to change your quarters and keep a clerk.”

“You remind me of the devil—the real authentic mediæval Mephistopheles,” said Northcote, with his fingers trembling upon the tape. “You are in the pay of the genie, you smug-hearted materialist.”

“Ah, the genie again! I am afraid to confess that that genie of yours gave me a very bad quarter of an hour,” cried Mr. Whitcomb, laughing heartily at the recollection. “I was never in such a panic in my life. Had it not been the last moment, and had it not been impossible to get any one else, you would never have held that brief. You and your genie frightened me to death. I woke up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, wondering what would happen if you brought the infernal thing into court.”

“Well, I did bring it into court, did I not?”

“You would never have got your verdict without it.”

“Yet you were afraid?”

“That was before I knew what it was. But as soon as you got up to talk to the jury, and you could have heard a pin drop over the court, I gave in.”

“That is true enough,” said Northcote, in the hollow tone which had discomposed the solicitor at the restaurant, “but once having summoned this thing to my aid, once having taken it into court with me, once, as you might say, having let it taste blood in the arena, I shall be compelled to have it with me every time. It is already out of my control.”

“So much the better for you and for those who command your services. This genie of yours will one day be worth thirty thousand a year in cool coin of the realm. If you will deign to take the advice of one who is perfectly willing to be a father to you, I say to you, don’t overdo it. Employ as many devils as you please,—five, ten, or a hundred and ten,—but don’t be tempted into taking enough work to break down your nervous system. Keep that intact and you are predestined for the Woolsack.”

“I feel it; and yet, do you know, Whitcomb, it hangs in the balance whether I ever walk into court any more.”

“If you think so, it is little you know of your nature. What you call the genie will have the last word to say on that subject.”

“Like every other mud-colored materialist your intelligence is admirably lucid as far as it goes.”

“Compliments are flying. But is it not the faculty of youth to despise the common sense to which one day it is only too glad to return?”

“I would spew mediocrity out of my mouth,” said Northcote, suddenly overmastered by arrogance.

“Common sense and mediocrity are not quite the same; but you can take it from me, dear boy, that genius has always to learn sooner or later that mediocrity has its uses.”

The solicitor was amazed to see tears spring to the eyes of the advocate.

“I have learnt that already,” he said huskily; “I learnt it last night after the rising of the court.”

“I presume you are referring to poor old Bow-wow, the type of all mediocrity.”

“Yes, to the poor dear old blunderer who, after the manner of his kind, consecrated his life to a public display of his incapacity. Yet I weep for Adonais, he is dead!”

“I say, my boy,” said the solicitor, amazed by the depth of emotion that was revealed in the face of the young man, “you did not suppose for one moment that I was in earnest when I said you had killed him?”

“You struck so near to the truth,” said the young man, “that you made me bleed.”

“Well, this is a consummate kind of folly. You must feed well; build yourself up; go away for Christmas; take a rest. Future greatness cannot be allowed to play ducks and drakes with its chances.”

“I swear to you, Whitcomb, the weight of a feather would make me throw up the bar.”

“Impossible! That voice, that presence, that imagination, that extraordinary dynamic quality—in other words, your genie, leaves you no choice.”

“I swear to you, Whitcomb, if it were not for my countrified old mother, who has worked her fingers to the bone to provide an education for me, I would never go into court any more.”

“Ah, well, I shall continue to send you briefs all the same. I cannot recall another man who has got a start such as yours, and I shall be astounded if through a whim you show yourself unworthy of your good fortune. Here is a check for ‘the monkey’ you won of me at lunch yesterday.”

“Five hundred pounds! I don’t remember anything of the circumstances.”

“I laid five hundred to fifty against your getting a verdict.”

“When?”

“At lunch yesterday.”

“You must not take any notice of that. I was very excited. I am afraid I was not myself.”

“Why afraid? The money is yours.”

“I don’t want it; I won’t have it.”

Mr. Whitcomb had thrust the check in the hands of the advocate, who tore it up immediately.

“Well,” said the solicitor, “I should say at the present time you have undeniable claims to be considered the most remarkable man in London. I can’t fathom what has come over you.”

“I was thrown off my balance a little yesterday,” said Northcote hoarsely.

“Yesterday, my friend, you were a great man; to-day, you are a prig.”

“You are right. Yesterday, a great man stooping to foulness; to-day, a mediocrity aspiring to virtue.”

“Well, my dear boy,” said the solicitor earnestly, “my last words are these. Be guided by your talent. Greatness is written all over you; it is in your eyes; it proceeds out of your mouth. Play up to your destiny, like a wise fellow, and leave hymns and sermons and disquisitions upon morality to the official purveyors of those condiments.”

“You are the devil!”

“Well, Faust, dear old boy, if it come to that, it does amuse me sometimes to think that I have not dabbled in human nature in divers forms during the last twenty years without getting to know a little about it. And I put it to you, do you suppose I took the trouble—I, one of the most sagacious criminal lawyers in London—to climb up to this attic without my dinner at ten o’clock of a December night, without having taken your size in hats and your chest measurement?”

“I say, you are the devil.”

“Your estimate is too liberal. There is nothing of his Satanic Majesty about me; but, all the same, I am always perfectly willing to employ him. I am always prepared to pay him liberally to fight these causes of mine, wherever and whenever he is to be found. What you call the genie is, after all, a euphemism for the devil, although under the more chaste patronymic I failed at first to recognize that elderly swaggerer.”

“Well, yes, you are shrewd. But you leave a bad taste in the mouth.”

“Everything does that this morning. But I am not surprised that you are feeling cheap. The human frame has to pay for such colossal efforts. In the meantime, you have no need to worry about anything. The mercury will rise again; things will all come right; and you will attain an eminence that few could occupy. In the meantime, divert yourself with these, and mention your own time for the consultation.”

Leaving two briefs, one of which was marked with the sum to which he had previously referred, Mr. Whitcomb descended the stairs, much to the relief of the advocate.