Chapter VII: Part 7

At this moment, however, those who had conducted this secret conversation had their curiosity gratified by the spectacle of Northcote rising for the first time. He got up heavily and wearily, as though age had stricken him in every joint. His face was almost painful in its pallor. The last “unfortunate” had just made her half-audible reply to the final question that had been put to her by the amiable Mr. Topott.

“I believe you said you had been acquainted ten years with the accused?” said Northcote, in a voice that was curiously low and gentle.

“Yes, sir.”

“During that period you had known her many times to be under the influence of drink?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Would you say that drink excited her easily?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That a very small quantity was sufficient to excite her?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And that when in this condition she was inclined to be very free in her speech?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Also she had a tendency to make use of expressions that she was never known to permit herself when perfectly sober?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The same would apply to her statements when in this excited condition?”

“Yes, sir.”

“They were obvious exaggerations?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And some were pure inventions? You knew they were wholly untrue?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You and her other friends were well acquainted with her habit of giving way to exaggeration, and even to palpable untruth when under the influence of drink?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The habit was so well known that it was amusing to you? You have often laughed about it among yourselves?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You were known to say yourself on one occasion when she was what you call particularly ‘merry,’ ‘Emma would do for anybody on a quartern of gin’?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You have a distinct recollection of saying that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Your meaning was that when your friend had had that quantity of alcohol the airs of bravado she assumed were quite ridiculously out of keeping with her character?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the point of your saying lay in the fact that whether your friend had had drink or whether she had not, her character was so soft and gentle that you could not conceive her to be capable of hurting anybody?”

“Yes, sir.”

“She has been your friend for ten years?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Throughout that period you have found her to be generous, kind, impulsive, lovable?”

“Yes, sir.”

“No one’s enemy save her own?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Had it ever seemed possible to you that if she was capable of the commission of this atrocious crime of which she stands accused, she could never have enjoyed the ten years of your friendship, nor the ten years of affection you lavished on her?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It was no wish of your own that brought you to this court?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Indeed, you cannot say you came here of your own free will?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You were brought here under compulsion?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Without that compulsion nothing would have induced you to come here, and stand in this box, and speak words which might be used to hurt your friend?”

“Yes, sir.”

The witness had been weeping softly for some time. Her emotion, which in the circumstances was natural, was also felt to be a tribute to the examining counsel. The gentleness of a voice which touched the chord of pathos in every phrase it uttered without betraying a consciousness that it did so, invested a series of tame and unfruitful questions with an æsthetic quality which even the least educated of those present could appreciate.

At this point, however, Mr. Weekes rose brusquely and tartly with an objection. His friend had trespassed beyond the privilege of counsel. The objection was upheld by the judge, who with a kind of courteous acerbity informed Northcote in some very harmonious diction that he would do well to put his question in another form.

“I will do so, my lord,” said the young man, with admirable composure and raising his voice a little.

“You were forced to come here by the police?”

“Yes, sir.”

“In whom you stand in great fear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You are compelled to do all that they require of you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And when they take one of your friends to prison, and they come to you and suggest words that she may have used to you when she was not in a condition to weigh them, you know very well that whatever your own feeling is in the matter, you must say nothing, and you must do nothing that is likely to displease the police?”

A more emphatic protest was entered at this point by the counsel for the Crown. It was upheld by the judge with an equal access of emphasis. Northcote accepted the ruling with the nicely poised urbanity with which he had received the previous one; yet in the act of doing so he contrived, as if by an accident, to let his gaunt eyes alight on the jury. It was followed by a smile which crept over his haggard cheeks; and this was conveyed to each of them personally, as though he were covering a retreat with a little apology. Yet it was all contrived so delicately that it required a certain fineness of perception to notice it.

During the next few minutes these objections were frequent. They were raised with an ever-increasing vehemence by the counsel for the Crown, were embodied with an ever-increasing acerbity and sternness by the judge, and were received by the counsel for the defence with a deferential patience, the ironical side of which was immediately exposed by the next question he put to the witness, and also by the concentrated manner in which he smiled at the jury. After a perfect rain of objections, which for the purposes of our narrative must henceforward be taken as granted, the leader for the Crown could stand the carefully elaborated audacity of this unknown tyro no longer. He lost his temper.

“Mr.--er--er,” he said, referring to a paper for the name, “Mr. Thornton, you have no need to keep smiling at the jury in that way.”

Northcote turned to face his adversary with a deliberation that astonished the bar, and even caused a grim flicker to play about the mouth of the judge.

“I trust, Mr. Weekes,” he said, “you will withdraw your objection to these amenities. If you do not, I feel sure his lordship will be bound to uphold it. And if, Mr. Weekes, I might urge you to be patient, I can promise that your time to receive them will arrive.”

The measured dryness of the young man’s manner set the bar in a twitter.

“Damn his young eyes,” said a barrister of elephantine proportions on the back bench to a colleague; “two birds with one stone. I shall stand him a bottle. I like his mug.”

The opinion of the ex-president of the Oxford Union was less favorable.

“Funny chap, isn’t he?” drawled the product of Eton and Christchurch. “What can he do for the case by trying to score off the judge and a silk gown?”

“Theoretically he’s wrong,” said the son of the Master of the Rolls; “but it was very nicely done. I am sure my guv’nor would have liked it.”

Divested of its endless interruptions, the cross-examination of the woman was conducted with that persuasiveness he had used from the first. 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.

“It is due to the courtesy of the police that you are able to follow your calling?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The police could take away your means of livelihood without giving you warning; and without giving you a moment’s notice they could put you in prison?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And whenever the police ask you to serve them, whenever they ask you to oblige them in any way, you feel obliged to carry out their wishes, whatever the cost may be to yourself?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Even when they cause you to hurt a friend by stating that which you know to be not quite true?”

“Yes, sir.”

“On one occasion, Mrs. Walsingham, to help the police, you identified a man whom they suggested had robbed you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And your own testimony and the testimony of several of your friends enabled them to send this unfortunate man into penal servitude?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I use the word ‘unfortunate,’ Mrs. Walsingham, because this man, after languishing many years in prison, was able to prove, to the satisfaction of his fellow creatures, that he was perfectly innocent of the scandalous charge that was brought against him. But at the time of his conviction, when the police had called upon you for your help, you did not dare to tell the judge and the jury that you had not been robbed by this man, and that you had never seen him in your life before?”

“Yes, sir.”

“This was an instance in which you felt the necessity, in spite of all that it cost you, to help the police in obtaining one of those ‘convictions’ which they consider so necessary to their own well-being?”

“Yes, sir.”

“One of those ‘convictions’ which mean an extra stripe on the arm, and the addition of a few shillings a week to the pay of one or two of these natural enemies of yours, of whom you and your friends stand in constant dread?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And so, Mrs. Walsingham, these enemies of whom you stand in such great fear having, in the first instance, caused you in your weakness to affirm that which was untrue, in order that the liberty of an unhappy man, whom you had never met, might be taken away from him, they cause you now to come again into this court to swear away, not the liberty, but the life, of a poor friend, whose only fault, as far as you know, is that occasionally she drank a glass more than was good for her?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mrs. Harrison often spoke to you of this Mr. Barron?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Of late Mrs. Harrison had complained to you of Mr. Barron being unkind to her?”

“Yes, sir.”

“She told you that he had even threatened to leave her altogether?”

“Yes, sir.”

“When you first knew her, Mrs. Harrison seemed attached to him?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That is to say, she never complained about him?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But when latterly he grew unkind to her she became very unhappy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And was it not at such times that she was inclined to drink that extra glass to forget her great unhappiness?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yet it was only under these conditions, when a stimulant had excited her feelings, that she was heard to complain against him?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And then it seemed to you no more than the legitimate complaint of a highly emotional and affectionate nature which was suffering deeply?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You remember, Mrs. Walsingham, that on one occasion she made a reference to her previous history?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It was to the effect that this Mr. Barron and herself came from the same village in the north of England?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That they had been intimately acquainted in her youth?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That as a young girl she had been in domestic service at the house of Mr. Barron’s mother?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That Mr. Barron seduced her under a promise of marriage?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And it was the fact that that promise had not been kept which led directly, in the first instance, to the ruin of this young girl?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Mr. Barron having accomplished her ruin, fled from the house of his parents to London, to escape his duty?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And this girl, dismissed from her situation, disgraced in the eyes of her friends, followed in her despair to this huge city, in the slender hope of finding the man who had ruined her?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yet for many years she was unable to find him?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And during those years of inexpressible bitterness, in her ignorance of life, her helplessness, her friendlessness, in the abasement of her spirit, she sank deeper and deeper into degradation?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The pure-blooded north country girl became a harlot by the force of circumstances?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And then after many years of misery one evening at a music hall, in the pursuit of her calling, she chanced to meet the man who had been the first cause of her ruin?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And when he renewed a proposal that he had made years before, which as a young girl she had scornfully repudiated, that she should dwell in his house, not as his wife, but as his mistress, the pressure of her circumstances forced her to accept this proposal almost with a sense of gratitude?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And, Mrs. Walsingham, you do not believe for one moment that any thought of vengeance ever suggested itself to her mind?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You are prepared to swear that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Also, that even in these latter days, when Mr. Barron became cruel and violent in his conduct towards her, she never freed herself from his yoke, never passed from under the spell of a power which, from the first, had been so fatal to her?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And that this paltry sum of money which she believed had been left to her in his will, which has proved not to have been the case, could never have counted in the scale of his personal attraction for her, which, sinister, dreadful, tragical as it had proved, had caused her at his behest to forfeit friends, health, virtue, honor, all those things which dignify life?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I thank you, Mrs. Walsingham; I have nothing more to ask you.”

The poor drab, tottering, faint, dissolved in tears, had to be assisted from the witness-box.

This piece of cross-examination had made a strange impression. The manner in which it had been conducted by the young advocate had exerted a powerful emotion upon many besides the weak and flaccid creature who had been so much clay in his hands. It had had great success as a _coup de théâtre_. The trained perceptions present had an uneasy sense that they had been listening to a masterpiece. Forensically, the means had been entirely adequate to the end; a supremely difficult art had been surmounted by an exquisite skill. Each question had been shaped so naturally, each word was clothed with such true delicacy, that wonderful _nuances_ of feeling were shed by the magic of the living human voice over the sordid and the unclean. Sentence by sentence the fabric of a story that was as old as the world was unrolled until it became a piece of drama. Even professional criticism, which was avowedly hostile, was half-conquered by the infusion of human sympathy into that which could not bear the light. Irrelevant, destitute of real authority as was the whole thing, it was yet allowed to be a performance of rare technical beauty, a pledge of the controlled will-power of its creator. And like all things which are the fruit of an incomparable technique--in itself the reason to be of what is called “art”--it had evoked that subtle emotion which transcends reason and experience. And the least accessible to this malign influence were fain to see that the first nail had been hammered already into the coffin of the prosecution.

The indication of a fight on the part of the defence was extremely distasteful to Mr. Weekes and his junior. Nothing had been farther outside the prediction of these expert practitioners. It had been freely anticipated that by luncheon-time the end would be in view. By then, according to this prolepsis, the defence was to have called its witnesses to testify to the woman’s violence when in drink, which would count for little; this youthful novice was to have floundered through his few disconnected and incoherent remarks to the jury; the leader for the Crown was to have answered him in a few perfunctory sentences, which yet would be in striking contradistinction to the halting and rather inept performance of his youthful opponent; the whole was to have been transferred to the judge with a sense of perfect security, since the case for the prosecution was so clear and so entirely uncontroverted; and the judge, very excellent in his way, and highly in favor of the despatch of public business and economization of the public time, was even to have worked in his summing-up by the hour of the adjournment.

However, this lengthy and irrelevant cross-examination, which had had to be contested at every point, had somewhat demoralized this well-considered programme. A solid hour had been cut out of it, a solid hour in which both sides could have addressed the jury; in fact, a solid hour in which, by an effort, a verdict could have been obtained and the woman hanged. And when this tyro, who was conducting his first case of importance with a coolness that many of his elders might have envied, intimated that it was not his intention to call witnesses, and further claimed in that contingency the privilege of addressing the jury after the counsel for the Crown had spoken, Mr. Weekes was fain to inform the court that he would prefer to reserve his own address to the jury, brief as it would be, until after luncheon. Accordingly the adjournment was then taken.

XXV

MR. WEEKES, K. C.

It was in no amiable mood that Mr. Weekes went to lunch with his junior. All his arrangements had been spoiled by “the fellow on the other side.” Instead of the case being in a stage that would permit him to leave it to devote his afternoon to business in another court, it began to seem that it might be prolonged indefinitely.

“So like a beginner,” said the leader to his junior; “must spread himself on the slightest opportunity. When he’s been at it as long as we have he’ll be wiser. So stupid to waste an hour of valuable time in that way. But, after all, it’s a golden rule to expect a beginner to fight a hopeless case. One ought to have known.”

“Quite sure it is hopeless, Weekes?” said his junior quietly.

“Why ask the question?” said Mr. Weekes, irritably. “The case is as dead as this mutton.”

“Then I am afraid there is a little life in,” said Mr. Topott, tasting the mutton ominously. “Waiter, if you don’t mind, I’ll try the beef.”

“That confounded cross-examination--so stupid--so unnecessary--put everybody out,” said Mr. Weekes, snappishly, at each mouthful. “Waste of public time--may well want more judges--ought to allow judges more power--better for everybody--save time and money--save youngsters from making fools of themselves.”

“Also enable us to get in an extra round of golf on a Saturday,” said Mr. Topott, viewing the beef he had exchanged for the mutton with a deep suspicion. “But seriously, Weekes,” said he, “I don’t want you to leave me until they’ve returned their verdict. You can just let that _nisi prius_ business alone this afternoon, and stay with me. I have a presentiment that things might go wrong.”

“Presentiment!” said Mr. Weekes impatiently. “Deuce take your presentiments! Waiter, bring me some red pepper.”

“The fact is, I am frightened to death by that young fellow,” said Mr. Topott cheerfully. “I suppose you know who he is?”

“I know what he is,” said Mr. Weekes incisively. “He is a confounded nuisance.”

“He is the greatest player of Rugby football the game ever saw,” said Mr. Topott impressively.

“Pity he didn’t stick to it,” said Mr. Weekes. “Better for him, better for us. But what has his football got to do with his advocacy?”

“Well, I always think, you know,” said Mr. Topott modestly, “a man is all of a piece as you might say. If he is preëminent in one thing he will be preëminent in another.”

“Not at all, my dear fellow,” said Mr. Weekes, breathing contradiction, a pastime that was dear to him. “It doesn’t follow in the least. A man may be supreme as a crossing-sweeper, but it does not follow that he would be equally great as a member of Parliament.”

“I am only advancing a theory,” said Mr. Topott, more modestly than ever, “but I rather contend that it does. It is a matter of will-power. That to which his supremacy is due in one direction, if evoked in an equal degree in another direction will result in an equal supremacy. What I mean to say is, that it seems to me this truly great football-player has made up his mind to become a truly great advocate. And that is why I fear him.”

“Moonshine,” said Mr. Weekes. “He is clever, I grant you; but football-playing and advocacy are not on all fours, as he will discover this afternoon very speedily when he comes to address a British jury.”

“If you don’t mind my saying so,” said Mr. Topott, with a very apologetic air, “it struck me this morning that his football-playing and his advocacy were very much on all fours. They both struck me as belonging unmistakably to the man. I have, as I say, a presentiment that things might go wrong.”

“Confound your presentiments, Topott! How can things go wrong? And why a man of your experience should funk a mere boy who has had none, I don’t know. He is certain to come an imperial crowner with the jury. There isn’t half a leg for him to stand on.”

“Well, he didn’t come much of a crowner this morning,” said Mr. Topott deferentially, “in spite of Bow-wow and in spite of you. I don’t know where he obtained his information, but I thought the whole thing was most artistic. And if the fellow can cross-examine in that manner, heaven knows what he can do when he gets up on his hind legs to address the jury. I tell you, Weekes, I am frightened to death of this young fellow. He’s deep.”

“I tell you what it is, my boy,” said Mr. Weekes tartly, “you stayed up an hour longer than you ought to have done at the Betterton last night, waiting for four aces which never turned up.”

At an adjoining table the barrister of elephantine proportions, who had expressed his determination “to stand the fellow a bottle,” was entertaining a select coterie of his learned friends. In his inn he was justly celebrated as a trencherman among a society which had always been famous for its prowess at the board. He rejoiced in the name of “Jumbo;” and, although his practice was small, only his adipose tissue imposed the bounds to his good nature. In every way he was designed by nature to be one of her most popular efforts.

“Who’s Northcote?” was a question that was circulating freely. None seemed to know.

“Never heard of him. Never seen his name.”

“Well known in the police-courts, I believe.”

“It’s time he gave them up. His talents call him elsewhere.”

“It was rather poor form, I must say, trying to score off Bow-wow.”

“It is a mistake a young man is likely to make.”

“Speaking for myself, I thought Bow-wow was asking for it. It is the time-honored story of the old-established firm of the bench and the Treasury. Once a Treasury counsel always a Treasury counsel.”

“Jealousy, jealousy, jealousy.”

“He was altogether wrong with the police.”

“I agree. He ought to have been handled more firmly.”

“Bow-wow furnishes a good example of a lath painted to look like iron. I should like to have seen him face to face with Cunningham, or old Tottie Turnbull. There would have been trouble for one.”

“For m’lud, I’ll lay a pony. This young sportsman is quite above the ordinary. He is going a very long way.”

“It is too early to say. We see so many geese with the plumage of the swan in this profession.”

“Name! name!” cried the table.

“I expect when it is all reckoned up,” said Jumbo, when order had been restored, “my young pal, Jem Smith, is the son of ‘Pot’ Northcote who went the northern circuit for years.”

“If that is so, Jum, he is already a better man than his father. Pot died a recorder.”

“I hope the young un will open his mug for an hour this afternoon. He’s got the finest mask on him for a young un I ever saw.”

“Weekes might easily have to play jack-in-the-box all the afternoon.”

“In that case poor old Bow-wow will have to do a frightful amount of scratching at his leg.”

“But the case is too dead to be worth it.”

“That won’t matter to James. He threw down his gage this morning. The jury will have to sit tight and hold on to the handle going round the curves, or he’ll have them in a hat before he’s done with them. And I’ve seen Bow-wow crumple up before now.”

“So have we all.”

“Like all notorious barkers his voice is the best part about him.”

“For my part, I think you are going too fast. The lad is not so wonderful as all this. He has done nothing out of the common as far as I can see.”

“No, dear boy,” said Jumbo, “because you can never see anything. But a young sportsman who can cross-examine in that manner in his first murder case is made of the right stuff.”

“But the witness was as easy as pie. She didn’t know where she was or what she was saying.”

“And he took an amazing advantage of her.”

“So would any one else.”

“They would, but in a very different way.”

“His cross-examination will amount to nothing, in spite of the time it wasted.”

“Will it not, though? That is all you know of a sentimental jury of your countrymen.”

“His attack on the police was monstrous, and he had no right to put questions in the form he did.”

“So thought Weekes, so thought Bow-wow, but he put them all the same. And what is more, the foreman of the jury, a highly respectable greengrocer, took cognizance.”

“Well, where does his amazingness come in? She only answered ‘yes’ to everything.”

“Had he wanted her to answer ‘no’ to everything she would have done so.”

“Of course she would. Everybody could see that.”

“Yes, dear boy, and what does he do? Our young friend takes the liberty of inventing every one of his facts as he goes along. All that about her dealings with the police and the murdered man coming from her native village was so much fiction. It was a marvellous piece of improvisation.”

“We shall none of us believe that.”

“Of course you won’t, dear boys; you are not expected to. But as soon as he realized his opportunity he took an amazing advantage of it. It was daring, I grant you, an unparalleled piece of effrontery. I don’t know another man at the bar who, had he been capable of a _coup_ of that kind, would have ventured to play it. The whole thing was the most audacious piece of work ever seen.”

“But, my dear Jum, he had no right to do a thing of that kind.”

“Of course not, dear boy, but he did it.”

“But why didn’t Weekes stop him?”

“Because Weekes did not know any more than you. He would be the last man in the world to see a thing of that kind.”

“Then why didn’t Topott call his attention to it?”

“Topott also was completely taken in.”

“Then by your own showing, Jum, you were the cleverest man in court this morning?”

“The cleverest but one, dear old boy. My young friend Jem Smith was the cleverest by very long chalks, but my perspicacity is deserving of honorable mention.”

“It is not the first time,” said the table, roaring with laughter, “that this fatal drink habit has caused you to see things.”

XXVI

THE PLEA

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.’