Henry Northcote

“ The wide and curving nostrils of the prostitute were the mansion of a subtle but brutally dominating power.
For the moment, however, Northcote was only aware that a splendid, supple, and entrancing thing had stolen unperceived, like a beast of prey, into the room. The strong, fine, and beautiful line that had been traced along the convergence of the thin but full lips addressed him like an unexpected but supreme artifice of a great painter, who has learned to use his pigments with effrontery. ”

“ Northcote sat in his chambers in Shepherd’s Inn. Down below was Fleet Street, in the thrall of a bitter December twilight. A heavy and pervasive thaw pressed its mantle upon the gaslit air; a driving sleet numbed the skin and stung the eyes of all who had to face it. Pools of slush, composed in equal parts of ice, water, and mud, impeded the pavements. They invaded the stoutest boots, submerged those less resolute, and imposed not a little inconvenience upon that section of the population which, unaddicted to the wearing of boots, had dispensed with them altogether. ”

“ Northcote turned up the lamp to its highest point and resumed his scrutiny. The voice and manner were those of a man of education; and although [8] the garb was that of a scarecrow, and the face was wan with hunger and slightly debased by suffering, a strange refinement was underlying it.
“This is all very mysterious,” said the young advocate; and indeed the wretched figure that confronted him appeared to have no credentials to present. “May I ask who and what you are?”
“How race reveals itself!” said the visitor, with a faint air of disappointment. ”

“ The room in which Northcote kept was no more than a large and draughty garret, which abutted from the northern end of a crazy rectangular building on this curious byway of the world’s affairs. Only a few decrepit tiles, a handful of rotten laths, and a layer of cracked plaster intervened between him and the night. The grate had no fire in it; there was no carpet to the floor. A table and two chairs were the sole furniture, and in a corner could be heard the stealthy drip of icy water as it percolated through the roof. ”

“ Northcote, while I exhaust the stock of my superlatives; you see you have carried an old advocate away just as completely, nay, even more completely than you carried those honest laymen. This afternoon you furnished an old warrior, weary of the arena, with a few more of those priceless moments which he had not dared to hope again to enjoy. For over and above all your other qualities you have the divine gift which fuses every quality you possess. You have that sympathetic imagination which is the gift of heaven. It is a key which unlocks every bosom. ”

“ This powerful impulse, whose impact upon the mind of the advocate was almost terrible, merged the surroundings in itself. Time and place were obliterated; the evening was imperceptibly eaten away. The clocks of the neighborhood gave out the hour of midnight just as Northcote, gasping, with all the breath driven out of his body, emerged from the vortex to grasp his final decision. For six hours he had not been sufficiently accessible to the external to heed the hours as they struck. But now, as the long-drawn strokes announced a new day, a thrill of excitement convulsed his being. ”

“ Northcote, whose delicately poised sensibilities vibrated to the simplest of external things, was fain to believe that paradise itself could not have shaped a bolder contrast to that bleak squalor which he had been doomed to inhabit year after year. Somewhere apart in the sanctuary of the spirit, the home of so many complex and marvellous things, were chords responsive to the challenge of the beautiful. They could thrill before the manifestation of its power, even in that which was exterior, material, unmeaning. ”

“ A sensation of awe began to surmount the pity and the patronage that the outer semblance of his visitor had first aroused in the breast of the young man.
“With your permission, sir,” he said, “I will go back to my original question, and I will frame it with a deeper sincerity: To what does Henry Northcote owe the honor of this visit?”
“This visit is paid to you, my friend, because for [10] some inscrutable reason Nature mixed blood and fire with your brains. You, too, will go down into the depths of the sea and ascend also into the mountain places.” ”

“ Her eyes were bright; her features, each of which seemed to add a personal brilliancy to her expression, had a lustre at once naïve and opulent, as becomes one who accepts greedily all the thousand and one glittering and delightful minutiæ that money adds to life; who has both hands outstretched to receive them; who carries them joyously, like a child, to her bosom; who presses them to her lips.
“His name is Northcote,” said the solicitor, patting her white arm. “From the window of his [96] garret in Fleet Street he surveys the universe with the haughtiest eyes imaginable.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ An infant staring with its ruthless curiosity into the human soul could have hardly dealt less in implication. Yet the act itself seemed to acquire for the young man the nature of a feat so meaningless, yet so charged with meaning did it appear. Only the support of a confident personal beauty rendered it possible; yet it was nothing at all, not even a comment, nor the formation of an opinion, hardly the faint awakening of an interest; all the same the blood had invaded Northcote’s ears.
“You mustn’t look at him so long,” said Mr. Whitcomb, laughing. “You are making him shy.” ”

“ His skin was so pale, his cheeks so wasted, that when his eyes flamed out in all their cadaverous lustre the prosperous shrank from him as though he were a ghost or a leper.
However, he did not covet the heritage of others. Sharp as his belly was to-night, ragged as was his back, he must not purchase the cuisine and raiment of princes at the price that was asked. Were he to inhabit the body of Crœsus, he would have also to inhabit his soul. Throned amid pomp, he would have dined that evening to the strains of Beethoven under the shadows of Velasquez and Raphael. ”

“ Whitcomb indulgently, “but if you are gentle with him you may find him amusing.”
“Mr. Northcote will amuse me enormously,” said the lady, with a demure glance.
“Is it thus you rebuke his madness?” the young man asked.
“On the contrary, I don’t think I have ever seen a sanity that is quite so perfect.”
“Drop it,” said the solicitor, roguishly pinching her ear. “Beware of dangerous turnings, my son. She is quite prepared to play George Sand to anybody’s Alfred de Musset. She even does it to the greengrocer when he comes round with his barrow. ”

“ All this time the judge had been holding Northcote’s hand. Towards the end his voice seemed to fail, but the pressure of his fingers increased.
“These are my last words,” he said feebly. “Guard your trust; take your stand upon truth. May God keep you. One who is old will remember you in his prayers.”
Almost involuntarily the judge placed his hands on the shoulders of the young man and pressed his lips to his forehead.
For a moment Northcote seemed petrified with bewilderment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Northcote kissed his mother again with the pride and affection which for the moment overlay this wound.
“I wonder,” said she, with an air of one who has come upon something profound, “why men have such a dislike to being taken by surprise. Your father was the same, Henry. ”

“ And you cannot think how sweet it is to me. Everything has become so beautiful: the birds, the trees, and the sky, and the crowds of people and the mud of the great city.”
She clutched the hand of the young advocate with a convulsive shudder.
[183] “Your quietness tells me that you understand.” Her voice was touched with ecstasy. “You do not answer or seek to console me. You are the one I have dreamed of in prison. Where is your hand?”
Again Northcote yielded to her entreaty, this time without a sense of repulsion. ”

“ It must be left to the future to place the name of Henry Northcote, but let me confess that in the meantime the bearer of it has not wholly escaped my vigilance.”
“In your capacity as a connoisseur in young men of promise?”
“Precisely.”
“Upon what data have you built, when you have never seen him in open court?”
“My dear fellow, you are as curious as a woman.”
[52] “Every comprehensive mind is partly feminine.”
“No mind can be in any sense feminine. It is a contradiction in terms.” ”

“ But God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.”
“Yes,” said Northcote, rising from the breakfast-table, “there we have the fruit of all that our curiosity can yield to us. The power may be given to us to show that blue is green, but what does it stand for in the presence of the dread materialism of our religions?”
The advocate took three sovereigns from his pocket, three sovereigns which he had yet to earn, and placed them in the palm of the old charwoman.
“Mrs. Brown,” he said, “in the bleak and uncomfortable eyes of science your virtue will not bear inquiry ”

“ Bestowing a succession of brutal strokes of the whip upon his even more unfortunate horse, he was lost immediately in the sleet and darkness of the morning, leaving Northcote, who was only slightly less astonished than his bleeding and blasphemous self, standing at the side of the solicitor against the gate of the latter’s residence.
[91] XI
MR. WHITCOMB’S FOIBLES
“In moments of relaxation from my studies,” said Northcote, taking his companion by the arm, “I like to look upon myself as something of an amateur of the human mind. ”

“ How I wish I could have come before, to have made you a little more comfortable!”
“How I wish you could, old woman!” said Northcote gently, taking both her hands.
“I think this room is rather sweet myself,” said the girl, who also had been examining it very critically. “Somehow every room looks sweet with a nice fire and a lot of books.”
“That unnecessarily large grate takes all the heat up the chimney,” said Mrs. Northcote, “and moreover is very wasteful of the coal. And what have you got behind the curtain, Henry?” ”

“ During the interview the young advocate had known and understood little, but now, under the spell of his passion, an ampler knowledge enfolded him in its mantle. It is not until we look down upon them from the altitude of some momentous phase, that those moments which are destined to assume a permanence in our lives become crystallized into our mental history. The terror and the reticence [205] of this pitiable creature had pierced him like a sword, yet it was not until this remote hour that Northcote understood the miracle they had wrought in his nature. ”

“ SUMMONING THE GENIE
The passion of Lear when on the heath he bares his head to the storm mounted in his veins. Leaning far out of the window of his garret to confront the rage of heaven, with the unbridled insolence of his youth he called upon the elements to wreak themselves upon him. Let them stab his eyes with tears, let them curdle the breath upon his lips. Nature had charged his being with that dynamic force which makes the world vibrate, only to withhold the master-key without whose aid his quality could not announce itself. ”

“ By the magic, Mr. Northcote, in which you deal, you not only evoked that foreman in the spirit, but by some miracle you clothed him in flesh. That was a terrible achievement. It was the first occasion that the redeemer of mankind was seen to be in the occupation of a seat at the court of Old Bailey.
“I have heard all the great advocates of my time. I was present on that memorable occasion when Selwyn Anstruther made his appeal on behalf of Smith. Anstruther spoke during the whole of three days; as an orator he would, with equal opportunities, have been the peer of Gladstone and John Bright. ”

“ Those who have their doubts always end by failing miserably.”
“So they do, old woman, so they do!” cried Northcote fervently, in spite of being stabbed by consternation. Yet he never conversed with his mother on the most trivial topics without feeling that her simplicity rendered her invulnerable.
“I see your table is laid for two, Henry,” said the girl. “Are you expecting a friend?”
“If he comes, he comes,” said Northcote, with a clever assumption of carelessness, “and if he don’t he stops away. ”