Henry Northcote

For the second time that evening Northcote peered through the gloom of his chamber with a thrill of curious expectancy. The visit of the scarecrow had been forgotten in the torments of his passion, but the sound of his own name on the lips of the unknown resummoned that phantom to his mind. But in the room of one so frail was a robust and spreading presence.

“To whom do I owe a welcome?” muttered Northcote, and as he rose from his knees his words seemed to be lost in the vibrations of his heart.

“Mr. Northcote it is,” said the round and full tones of the invader.

The advocate, trembling in every limb, was conscious of a powerful and confident grasp of the hand. And then as his eyes encountered the outlines of his visitor, he was seized with a pang of disappointment, for he had looked to see something different.

“Don’t you know me, Mr. Northcote?” said the voice—the conventional voice which had already smote the starving man with a sense of the intolerable.

“I am afraid I do not,” he said, heavily.

“Well, I thought Samuel Whitcomb was known to every member of the bar.”

Mr. Whitcomb’s whimsical air strove to cloak a wound to his professional feelings.

“Ah, yes, of course, Mr. Whitcomb; of course,” said the young man, with a deeper disappointment fixing its talons upon him. “Of course—Mr. Whitcomb, the solicitor,” he added, hastily, as through the haze of the unreal which still enveloped his amazed and stupefied senses he caught a familiar aspect and a tone that he recalled.

“The same.”

“Excuse this inhospitable darkness,” said Northcote. “Here is a chair; and try, if you please, to keep your patience while I put some oil in the lamp and seek a piece of coal for the fire.”

“No elaborate scheme of welcome, I beg. Your client is not a prince of the blood, but a common lawyer.”

A well-fed and highly sagacious chuckle accompanied this sally on the part of the solicitor.

Still in the throes of his stupefaction, Northcote addressed himself to the oil-can and the coal-box, that as far as the circumstances would permit a reception might be accorded to this unexpected guest, whose common and prosaic quality had already jarred upon every fibre of his being. And these preparations, diffidently conducted, kindled again the well-fed chuckle of the solicitor; and so ingratiating was it that it seemed to banish all appearance of constraint by imparting an air of equality to everything in the world.

The lamp flared up under the influence of the dregs of fuel that had been added to it, and revealed the pale and wasted features of the garret’s inhabitant. The solicitor, with the quickness of the trained observer, pursed up his lips in a suppressed whistle. A kind of pity softened the relentless composure of his eyes as they beheld the haggard and unkempt bearing of the man before them. “Poor devil,” he muttered; “literally starving.” It was in this succinct yet compendious manner that Mr. Whitcomb filed for reference all facts which are sufficiently obvious to stand as knowledge.

“Do you know,” said Northcote, suddenly, “I was half-expecting somebody to-night.”

“Sitting in state to receive him, evidently,” the solicitor muttered, as he sniffed the temperature of the garret and glanced oddly from the fireless grate to the gloves and overcoat that Northcote was wearing.

“Dining out together, were you?”

“To speak the truth,” said the advocate, with an odd laugh, “I had hardly got so far as to consider the personage I was half-expecting in such a grossly material aspect.”

“Personage, eh?” said the solicitor. “They’re out of my line. I only have to do with persons, quite ordinary people, who are mightily interested in their meals.”

“Well, you see,” said Northcote, “I had hardly got so far as to formulate my expected visitant in actual terms of flesh and blood.”

“You deal in spooks!” said the solicitor. “A likely pitch for them, too.” Mr. Whitcomb began to stroke his moustache pensively, his invariable habit when confronted by the danger of going beyond his limit. “A creepy hole, by God!” he said, in another of his asides, for the simplicity and matter-of-fact of the advocate had a little discomposed him.

“I was half-expecting a genie,” said the advocate.

“A genie!” said the solicitor, with a laugh of embarrassment, for his surroundings oppressed him, and his vitality was impaired by not having yet had his dinner. “I never heard of a genie except in the ‘Arabian Nights.’”

“They abound in London,” said the advocate. “They are all about us.”

“You are right, I dare say,” said the solicitor, with a puzzled air. “The latest discovery of science, is it? They have found such marvellous things lately, even in the water we drink and the air we breathe. But if you will just stick on your hat, and do me the honor of eating a bite of supper,—I have had a deplorable day, which has ended by robbing me of my dinner,—I will talk to you of the business that has brought me here at such an odd sort of hour.”

“A bite of supper!” These magic words caused the advocate to enfold his visitor in a melancholy smile.

“Upon my soul,” said he, “you are the genie.”

The solicitor gave a laugh as ponderous as Gargantua’s.

“Have it your own way,” he said; “but for the love of heaven put on your hat and let us heed the intimations of Nature. Perhaps if we pet her a little she may do us well in this somewhat remarkable affair. Come, let us away.”

That robustness of bearing which made half the stock in trade of the first criminal lawyer in London had already an effect upon the advocate. Those luscious tones had dispelled his comatose condition. And who should say, after all, that this was not the genie; at least, here was the living embodiment of success, that jovial and gigantic swaggerer. What a smugness and sagacity were in the heavy inflections of this prosperous man! “A fellow is not fit to pare his own nails when he’s sharp-set, and I had my chop at a quarter-past one,” he chuckled, as he watched the advocate grappling with his boots. “Now, on with your hat, and we’ll take a cab to I know where.”

“As you will,” said the young man, reaching for his hat.

A reaction was stealing along his veins. Already his passionate despair had begun to cower. It looked like wizardry that one so famous should have been borne in person, dinnerless, at ten o’clock at night, up flight after flight of dark stairs, to the crazy fifth floor of that decrepit building in quest of one so poor and so obscure.

“I am sure you are the genie,” said Northcote, carrying the lamp to the door to light the distinguished visitor to the head of the rickety stairs. “Strike a match, sir, if you respect your neck.”

Northcote turned the key of his door, and Mr. Whitcomb descended, step by step, in a gingerly fashion.

“If there is the slightest fear,” said Northcote, pressing on behind the solicitor, “of burning your fingers with that match, I shall urge you not to stop to examine the array of old masters that line this perfectly damnable staircase of mine.”

“Is that an ‘Adoration of the Magi’ above me on the right?” said Mr. Whitcomb, with his jovial air.

“No; only a crack in the plaster and a cobweb. And that weird splotch to the left, which, at this distance, might stand for ‘Hercules Wrestling with Death for the Body of Alcestis,’ is the damp striking through the wall.”

When at last they had crept down these noisome stairways into the street, they found that the sleet had yielded to a light, murky rain. The solicitor summoned imperiously a passing hansom, and sent a thrill through the heart of his starving companion by naming for the cabman’s guidance one of the most luxurious restaurants in the world.