Chapter VIII: Part 8

“And then a strange thing happened. No sooner had this answer been written on the tablets of my brain, than this gaslit room grew dimmer than it already was, and there seemed to arise a kind of commotion among you gentlemen of the jury. And when at last I found the courage to lift my eyes outwards from my thoughts, and they looked towards you, I saw with a thrill of surprise, as if by the agency of magic, that each one of your faces had been blotted out. Each was shrouded in an intense darkness. But while I continued to gaze upon the place that had contained you, almost with a feeling of horror, a shadowy haze seemed to play over it, and a number of strange faces peopled the gloom. They were more than twelve in number; they were more than twenty; they were more than a hundred. For the most part they were those of men old and austere. Each face seemed to be that of a person of infinite power and dominion, of one accustomed to walk alone. Each was marked by a kind of superhuman composure, as though having spent its youth in every phase of stress, it had emerged at last upon the summits of the mountains, where the air is rarefied, and where it is possible to hold a personal intercourse with Truth. Some of the faces were grave, some a little sinister, but the eyes of each had a forward, upward look which conferred an expression upon them of entrancing beauty.

“Stealthily, rapidly, but with a superhuman composure these noble shadows ranged themselves in the jury-box, in the room of you gentlemen who had vacated it. And when I had overcome my stupefaction sufficiently to look upon these new jurors more closely, I was struck with amazement at the curious familiarity of those faces of theirs. They were those of persons that I had seemed to have known all my life.

“There and then a shiver of recognition crept through my veins. I knew them; I revered them, I had spent many hours in their company. The first face I had recognized was that of an old man, urbane and ironical, a citizen of the world; it was the face of Plato. Beside him was a man, older, less urbane, more ironical; it was the face of Socrates. Thinkers, warriors, saints, and innovators began to teem before my gaze. There was St. Augustine and St. Francis of Assisi, Shakespeare and Goethe, Leonardo and Dante, Washington and Cromwell, Kant and Spinoza, Isaac Newton, Giordano Bruno, Voltaire. I thought I discerned the faces of at least two women among this assembly; one was that of Joan of Arc, the other that of Mary the Magdalene. There appeared to be hosts of others of all times and countries which sprang into being as I gazed, but though I recognized them then, I cannot pause to enumerate them now. For this gathering was strangely representative, and the living were not excluded--I saw a great Russian, a great Englishman, and a great Frenchman of our own day--but I must resist the temptation to give the names of all I beheld.

“No sooner had the scope and representativeness of this gathering declared itself and it had ranged itself miraculously within a little room, than a kind of commotion overspread it. They seemed to be discussing some difficult point among themselves. However, this action of theirs had no time to engage my anxiety, for I understood immediately that they were seeking a foreman to their jury. Now you would suppose that among a concourse of all who had attained an immortal preëminence in mental and moral activity, to choose a leader from amongst them would be impossible. But this was not so. Their discussion was over almost before it began. They had no difficulty whatever in nominating one among their number to speak for them all.

“It was with an indescribable curiosity that I observed a slight, strangely garbed figure emerge from their midst. And when he came to assume his place at the head of his immortal companions, which you, sir, are occupying now, I was devoured by an overpowering eagerness to look upon his face. And by this time so immensely powerful had been the impact of this jury upon my imagination, that it had obtained an actual existence and proceeded in sober verity to conduct the business of the court. And I was sensible that the painful curiosity with which I awaited the foreman’s revelation of his identity was shared by all who were present. All were craning with parted lips to look upon his face. And when at last he lifted his head, and his pale and luminous features shone out of the gloom and overspread this assembly, a kind of half-stifled sob of surprise, a sort of shudder of recognition, passed over the crowded court. The face was that of the man called Jesus of Nazareth.

“To myself, however, the recognition brought an immediate and profound sense of joy. All my doubts, my terrors, my perplexities, were no more. They passed as completely as though they had never been. The business of the court proceeded, but I was inaccessible to its bearing upon my task. My every thought was merged in the personality of the foreman of the jury. The precise, calm, and harmonious legal diction of my learned friends lost all its meaning and coherence, and even the demeanor of the good and upright judge, who is making trial of this cause, became one with the glamour which environed the figure in the jury-box.

“That august jury seemed to sit and listen to all that passed. By an extreme courtesy which they were able to impose on their finely disciplined natures, they gave heed to the ceremonial that was enacted for their benefit. It is true that there were moments when they were unable to conceal the smile of soft irony which veiled their lips; but from the beginning to the end their patience and urbanity remained inviolate. The foreman, however, muttering continually inaudible words to himself, with fingers twitching, and the hectic pulse beating in his thin and fevered cheek, never took his eyes from the rail in front of him. And when at last the time came for the jury to consider their verdict, they were able to return it instantly, without leaving the box, as you would expect such a tribunal to do.

“I can scarcely hope to picture to your minds the scene that was presented when the foreman, so frail and thin and yet so full of compassion, rose humbly in his place. ‘Are you agreed upon your verdict, gentlemen?’ said the Clerk of Arraigns. ‘We are,’ said the voice of the divine mystic of the Galilean hills; yet I can convey to you the sound of it no better than could those poor fishermen who heard it nineteen centuries ago. ‘What is your verdict, gentlemen?’ said the Clerk of Arraigns, whose own voice sounded so ludicrously trite in comparison with that of the foreman, that it seemed to have no place in human nature. ‘I understand,’ said the foreman of the jury, ‘according to your laws the penalty is death.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said the Clerk of Arraigns, with a quiet dignity, ‘the penalty according to the law is death.’ ‘The jury return a verdict of Not Guilty,’ replied the foreman instantly, stooping to write with his finger on the rail in front of him, as though he had heard him not.”

At this point Mr. 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. He had been out of an engagement for two years, and he had left his home that morning with his wife sitting with a child at her breast before a grate without a fire in it.

“That’s true,” he muttered heavily.

“My lord, I appeal to you,” cried Mr. Weekes more excitedly than ever. “I did not come here to be browbeaten and insulted. I did not come here to witness religion made into mockery and dragged through the mire.”

“Mr. Weekes,” said Northcote with a depth of compassion in his tone which made many veins run cold, “a subterfuge of this kind will not serve you. The jury have no desire that you should make a parade of your feelings at such a moment as this. They desire that you will resume your seat, and relinquish any further attempt to make their task more hideous than it already is.”

“That is perfectly true,” exclaimed the foreman in a hoarse whisper.

It was observed by those who were behind Northcote that in the stress of the mental anguish through which he had already passed, by constantly plucking with his fingers at the back of his hands, the skin had been pulled away and the bleeding flesh was exposed.

“I appeal to your lordship,” cried Mr. Weekes.

“My lord, I also appeal to you,” said Northcote; and the poise of his head and the lift of his chin, as it was directed upwards to the bench, reminded those who had seen it of the figure of Balzac as modelled by Rodin in clay.

The dæmonic quality was dominant here, as is the case always when the gospel of force has its dealings with human nature. Few had suspected that this old judge, with his brusque manners and his great barking irascible voice was no longer fit to fill his position. His lionlike exterior was no more than the livery of his dignity. He was not the man to face a crisis, when above all things an iron nerve and an implacable will were needed to impose restraint upon a jury and an advocate who were in danger of trampling underfoot the accepted rules of decorum and procedure. And the week before the judge had buried his youngest daughter. When Northcote’s gaunt eyes were turned upon this old man, who was trembling violently under his ermine, the tears began to course down his face.

“My God, he’s settled Bow-wow,” said the fat barrister on the back bench.

“Always was a senile old fool at bottom,” said his companion. “That young bounder ought to lose his wig and gown.”

“Shut up! He’s speaking again.”

XXVII

THE PERORATION

“It is too much the custom, my friends,” Northcote continued to the jury when Mr. Weekes had sat down as spasmodically as he had got up, “to regard this divine mystic of whom I have spoken as a supernatural being whose name can only be mentioned with propriety in the presence of an elaborate ritual. That fetish dies hard, my friends, but dying it is, for if ever a human being walked this earth, whose life and opinions are a great poem that deserves to be recited in our bosoms and our businesses during every hour that we dwell, it is the life and opinions of him who has already given his verdict in this case. There are very few things that are of any importance to us upon which we have not his pronouncement in one form or another; and though that pronouncement may not always be coincident with the technical lawyer’s law of the time, which is understanded of no man, least of all of themselves, these _obiter dicta_ of his, delivered upon the spur of the occasion, have already outlasted kings, dynasties, and nations; and they are likely to endure when court-houses, jury-boxes, and scaffolds have long ceased to be.

“A few centuries ago such words as I am now addressing to you would have sent me to the lions, and you also would have been torn in pieces for having deigned to listen to them. It is not a hundred years since small children were hanged in this country for stealing five shillings. A hundred years before that a woman was burned at the stake for the practice of witchcraft. It was the custom to disembowel those who were guilty of a felony; to break on the wheel those who did not hold orthodox political opinions; and to burn, maim, cut off the heads, and inflict indescribable physical torments upon any person because of his religious views.

“I am going to ask you, my friends, how these monstrous enactments were overcome. By the lawyers who drew their fees from the Crown to put them in practice? Not so. By those educated minds that conducted the business of the state? Not so. These unspeakable crimes committed in the name of justice were overcome by a handful of prophets, seers, and reformers, who arose in Israel. They were common and unrefined, of small education, and less culture; poor and obscure herdsmen and fishermen, a pedlar by the wayside; the keeper of a public-house; a small tradesman in Lambeth; a miserable grocer of Spitalfields; a wretched old tinker who passed the choicest part of his days in Bedford jail. This very Jesus himself, the foreman of this jury which is sitting with you in the box, which at this moment urges these words to my lips, was a common rustic by trade, a carpenter. And you will remember that he paid for the extreme unorthodoxy of his religious and political views by crucifixion upon the tree.

“The tree has gone, my friends, but he remains. I say the tree has gone. That tree has gone, but as mankind in the present imperfect stage of its development, does not dare as yet to trust itself without a tree of some kind to lean upon, a substitute has been provided for that cross of wood upon which it nailed the redeemer of his kind. And it seems to me that if the divine mystic of whom I am speaking were again to roam the hills of Galilee, his fate would be the same to-day as it was yesterday. In the present phase which has been attained by our sympathies with those who share the burden of our so dark and so inscrutable inheritance, it would be extremely easy for some learned Treasury counsel in the performance of his duty to the Crown, to reënact the supreme tragedy of a world which is filled with tragedies.

“At the present time there is still a tree standing in England upon which we nail women. They may be guilty of dark offences, as were the associates of that Nazarene Jew of whom I have spoken; their fate, according to the written statutes, may be sound in equity; some wretched Magdalene in falling by the way may have stained the pavements of the street with blood. But if we, her peers and coadjutors, are to continue at this time of day to visit her with reprisals, I am forced to believe, my friends, that all we most cherish in our national life will perish. And I think I discern by that which is written in your faces that you are of this opinion also.

“I have alluded to the two unhappy outcasts who were nailed upon the tree with Jesus. Technically they were malefactors; it was right that they should be immolated upon the altar of the law. Doubtless the instant the counsel for the Crown had compassed this desirable end, he repaired to his home with a substantial emolument and a perfect security of soul, ate a good dinner, and afterwards lay on a mat and harkened to the sounds of the lyre. But I do not think from that day to this the associate of these malefactors was ever shown to be guilty of any crime at all, at least of any crime known to the judicial calendar. His only offence, if offence there was, was in living before his day and generation, which, in the eyes of those who are contemporary, is a misdemeanor of a heinous character. Posterity only is able to condone a greatness which transcends its own era. Yet do not misunderstand me. Technically he was blameless, technically he had committed no crime.

“This consideration brings me to the final word I shall venture to speak--the supreme danger of the tree. It is very dangerous to keep a tree at all. Whatever is once nailed upon it can never be removed. The stains sink into the wood, and, strive as they may, the labors of those who undertake to cleanse it and purify it cannot avail. Like corrosive acids these stains percolate through the fibres and change them to wormwood and fungus. And do not forget, my friends, that the fibres of the tree are the fibres also of the national life. A nation pledges its honor when it seeks reprisal.

“We do well to shudder at the many bitter degradations which have sprung from this habit of keeping a tree. Jesus was not the first innocent person whose blood was spilt upon that oft-humiliated wood. And he was not the last. Our human faculties play us such strange tricks that they can render us certain of nothing. Even a poor outcast who has fainted by the bleak wayside of life, who has occasionally drunk a glass of spirits to keep her from the river, may by some obscure possibility which the counsel for the prosecution has not been able to reveal to us have refrained from destroying the man who has been the first cause of her fall, although it devolves upon all who love justice--in whatever justice may consist--to explain away the coincidence of a packet of poison having been found in her possession. But, as I say, it is within the bounds of possibility that the theory of the prosecution is wrong.

“It would not be the first occasion that an uncommon zeal has led it into error. A year ago to-morrow, at these sessions, one John Davis, a butler, who for thirty years had been a faithful servant in the household of his mistress, was found guilty of the crime of compassing the death of that aged lady, in order that he might spend his own latter days in the enjoyment of a small legacy she had left him in her will. In the mind of the counsel for the Crown, and in the mind of the judge, the evidence against this man was overwhelming. At first you gentlemen of the jury were disposed to see a doubt in the case, but the learned counsel for the prosecution was so consummate in his arguments, the learned judge was so emphatic, the array of witnesses for the Crown was so formidable, from zealous police-constables, with their way to make in the world, to experts and past-masters in criminology who had made theirs long ago; and the youthful advocate, whom the butler’s legal adviser had selected to defend him, was so unused to a trial of this magnitude, for his experience had been limited, that he failed in cross-examination to elucidate from a hostile witness an extremely important fact; and in his address to you, gentlemen of the jury, he was unable to soften the impression that the Crown had been able to build up in your minds.

“I have hardly a need, gentlemen, to reveal to you the sequel of this painful story. As all the world remembers, you had in the end to submit to the inevitable. You, gentlemen of the jury, consented to a verdict of guilty; a month later the unhappy man was hanged; and he had not been five days in his grave when a nephew of the murdered woman gave himself up to a justice that had already wreaked itself on an innocent man, and confessed that he himself had murdered his aunt because he was in need of her money.

“These facts are green in the minds of you all. But there is a coincidence connected with this atrocious story and this grievous case which is engaging your attention. The counsel for the prosecution in both cases is identical. He stands before you framing yet another of those objections with which he has endeavored to impede the cause of humanity. I point my finger at him, and challenge him to deny the truth of the statement I am making. And by a perfectly logical and natural extension of this coincidence, the judge who sent the butler to his doom is seated above you now in all the panoply of his office. I leave him now if he is able to deal in a like manner with this poor Magdalene, who may or may not have fallen by the way.”

Northcote sat down after having spoken for nearly three hours. The December darkness had long fallen upon the court. The feeble gas-jets seemed to enhance the shadows that they cast. The intense faces of the overcrowded building, bar, jury, populace all electrified, seemed to belong to so many ghosts, so pale, shining, and transfigured did they gleam. For nearly three hours had the advocate cast his spell; yet moment by moment, in the dominion of his voice and the cumulation of his effects, he had increased the hold upon his hearers. At times the tension had been so great that it had seemed that somebody must break it with a laugh; but no one had done so. One and all were swept forward by the contained impetuosity of the orator; by the restrained and gentle modulations of a power that played through every word he used; by a ferocious irony which looked like tenderness, so little did they understand its nature; and above all by the irresistible magnetism of a personal genius which rendered the most perilous obstacles of no account.

None had foreseen the cruel, terrible, yet melodramatic climax to which the advocate was leading; and when it came over the minds of those present, all of whom in the course of the speech, even the most hardened officers of the court, the ushers, the chaplain, the javelin men, and the newspaper reporters, had passed in one form or another through all the anguish of the spirit of which they were capable, pity and horror were mingled with their overwrought surprise. As the advocate stood with his huge and livid face turned upwards towards the judge, with an ineffable emotion suffusing it, and the old man, with tears dripping quickly on to his ermine, put his two fat, white hands before his eyes, a feeling of silence and terror seemed to pervade the court.

The advocate sat down with parched lips. The hush that ensued was so long that it seemed it would never come to an end.

It was broken by a commotion among the public benches. A woman who had fainted was being carried out at the back of the court. The incident served to unloose the electricity which was pent up in the atmosphere. A voice from the solicitor’s well was heard to pronounce the word “Shame!” In an instant it was answered by the multitude with a volley of the wildest cheers that was ever heard in a court of justice. All the ragged, tattered, despised, broken and rejected units of the population, those humble, hungry, and inarticulate creatures upon whom Jesus himself had wrought his magic, upon whom he had depended for countenance, took up the challenge, and with their wild and hoarse cries flung it back upon him who had uttered it.

For a time the scene was one of consternation. The judge was but a poor, senile, old man, from whom the tears were leaping. Every official looked towards him for his prop and stay, but all there was to see was feeble and inept old age. The Clerk of Arraigns, as pale as a ghost and trembling violently, was spreading his hands before an alderman. Policemen stood dismayed, and officers of the court, who had grown old and despotic in its service, looked towards one another helplessly, seeking for that authority which none had the power to exercise.

“I never thought,” said the companion of the fat barrister, “we should come to this in England. It is a disgrace to English justice. That fellow must be brought before the general council. They must take away his wig and gown.”

“A little less prejudice and a little more appreciation, dear boy,” said the fat barrister, wiping his eyes stealthily. “That lad will be a peer of the realm long before they make you a stipendiary.”

“He is either the greatest madman or the greatest genius who was ever called to the bar.”

“Probably both, dear boy.”

XXVIII

THE SUMMING UP

The barrister who had ventured to give a public expression to his opinion was that nursling of wealth, the youthful ex-president of the Oxford Union.

“You’ve done it now,” said the son of the Master of the Rolls. “They will have in the roof. They were only waiting for a leader.”

“With all respect to your school,” said the ex-president heatedly, “this fellow is a disgrace to it, also to his profession. It was the act of a black-guard to throw that at the judge. He is not a gentleman.”

“Rough, of course, on the poor old judge, but he’s playing to win, as he always did. Hullo, the poor old boy is coming up to the scratch.”

Order had been at last restored, or more correctly had restored itself; and in thin and shaken tones the judge began his summing-up. He had conquered his emotion, and in a perfectly simple, plain, and audible manner he was able to give expression to that which he desired to say. It afforded the keenest relief to the bar, which was so profoundly jealous of professional prestige, that after all the presiding judge should be able to reassert himself sufficiently to invest with a certain dignity his own procedure in his own court. His words were charged with deep feeling, but the most critical among his listeners could discern nothing derogatory to his office in his mode of utterance.

“Gentlemen of the jury,” he began; and although the sound of his voice was divested of that roughness and irascibility by which it was known, it yet enchained the attention of his hearers, since intensity of feeling had rendered it singularly harmonious, “Gentlemen of the Jury, before I refer to the details of this terrible case I desire to record my opinion of the manner in which it has been conducted. The counsel for the defence is a young man, and in the nature of things his experience in cases of this kind cannot be extensive. But I would like to affirm that never within my own knowledge has a more remarkable presentation of the art of advocacy come within the purview of this court. Mr. Northcote is a young man, but the display of his genius--I can use no smaller word--which recently he has made, is an honor to human nature. As an old advocate, I tender my sincere congratulations to him, and I hope that the career he has chosen to follow will in every way be worthy of the nobility of his talent.”

A murmur of applause greeted this eulogium. It had been rendered with such obvious feeling and delicacy that every word rang true, and touched the chord that was dominant in the hearts of all.

“Well done, Bow-wow,” said the fat barrister, sniffing and blowing his nose, “I trust some old pal will stand you a bottle at the Forum this evening.”

“That is the English gentleman,” said his companion. “I expect that young cad is feeling rather cheap just at present.”

“Expect nothing, dear boy. Who the devil are you that you should expect anything? You could no more have saved that woman from the gallows than you could have jumped across the moon.”

“There is a vexed point which the counsel for the defence has touched upon,” said the learned judge, “upon which I hope I shall be excused if I say a few words before approaching the case which occupies your painful attention. In Crown cases it happens frequently that the prisoner is at a serious disadvantage in the matter of representation. Counsel of great eminence may be briefed for the prosecution, while the defence, for whose conduct, as a general rule, very little money is forthcoming, has not the means to secure the aid of counsel of tried worth and experience. In theory the judge is assumed to hold a kind of watching brief for the accused, inasmuch that it is his duty to be alive to any loophole of escape that may present itself in the course of the evidence, and represent that loophole to the jury. But my experience has shown to me that that loophole is extremely unlikely to appear where the opposing counsel are unequally matched. In theory it is expected of the counsel for the Crown that he shall keep a perfectly open mind and not allow his own position to sway his conduct of the case; but a long experience has imposed the conclusion upon me that such an impartiality as this is not practicable for an advocate who, in the exercise of his art, is compelled by the fact that he holds a brief to exert his talent, in spite of an unwritten law, and even in spite of himself, to the fullest capacity on behalf of his client.

“These words, gentlemen, will not be misconstrued, I am sure. Nothing is farther from my intention than to suggest that Crown advocates wantonly overstep their duty or go outside their jurisdiction. But I do suggest that they feel impelled to do their utmost for their client, and that client is the Treasury. And having that very proper and natural feeling in their minds it is humanly impossible for them to approach their task of promoting a conviction in the academic spirit which in theory is imposed upon them. Therefore you will conceive how difficult becomes the function of a judge who is called upon in the prisoner’s interest to hold the scales and to adjust the balance, when there is, as occurs so frequently, a grave disparity between the ability and the professional experience of the contending counsel. The judge himself, gentlemen, is only human, and although his familiarity with the procedure of a criminal trial may render him less vulnerable to the art of a skilful advocate than those who are not so familiar with those forms of procedure, at the same time I feel entitled to assert that every judge must in a measure be susceptible to the manner in which evidence is conveyed to his notice, and the manner in which it is dissected before his eyes.

“You will forgive me, gentlemen, I hope, in making what may seem to be a digression from this extremely painful case we are considering, but it is a point that arises very naturally out of it. The counsel for the defence saw fit to touch upon it in the course of his address, and I would like to assure him and to assure you that during the five and twenty years I have had the honor to occupy a seat on the judicial bench, this question has seemed to me of such paramount importance that it has been constantly before my mind. This is the last opportunity I shall have of making a reference to it in the presence of you gentlemen of the jury; this is the last occasion on which I shall take my seat in this or any other court; therefore I feel a desire to record, with whatever authority twenty-five years of public service may confer on a mere expression of opinion, the conclusion at which I have arrived.

“In the ears of many my conclusion will sound utopian, in many minds it will seem to be a counsel of perfection, for it is this. In important criminal cases it is the duty of the Crown to make the same ample provision for the accused as it does for itself. It should afford equal facilities to the accused person to establish his innocence as it affords to itself to establish his guilt. After many profound searchings of heart, more particularly upon circuit, where cases affecting the life and liberty of the subject are so often left entirely to the discretion of a rural practitioner, this is the conclusion I have reached. Such a conclusion will, I fear, be taken as a confession of weakness on the part of an individual judge. It is a confession of weakness, gentlemen, but I do not think I shall be contradicted when I urge that it is a confession which the strongest and most able of my learned brethren have been called upon over and over again in their heart of hearts to make.

“The terrible miscarriage of justice which occurred a year ago in this court, for which I alone can accept responsibility, for which to this present hour I have not ceased to mourn, would not have taken place had the defence been in a position to present its testimony, and to marshal its facts with a skill equal to that enjoyed by the prosecution. The most material issue in the case was never presented at all. Its existence was not even revealed. Neither the prosecuting counsel nor the presiding judge was aware that the defence had this implement in its possession until long after this miscarriage had been consummated. Do not misunderstand me, gentlemen; I hold no brief for myself; I accept the whole of the responsibility for what took place. It was my duty to unveil that which was hidden, and to present it adequately to the jury. I failed in that duty, because from the beginning of the case the defence was overshadowed. The actual murderer himself was called in evidence by the Crown; it was upon his unshaken testimony that the verdict was rendered; but as was only learned when too late, had one obscure question been pressed home in cross-examination to this murderer who had perjured himself to conceal his guilt, his testimony could not have lived five minutes in any impartial mind, and a lamentable, a grievous miscarriage of justice would not have stained the annals of this English justice of which very rightly and properly we are so proud.”

Again a profound silence had descended upon the court. The painful and close-breathing intensity with which all in that crowded assembly had followed the prisoner’s advocate through the devious courses of his address was now extended to the judge. There was nothing in the words he used to call forth this hush of excited expectation, but the emotion with which they were invested seemed to furnish them with life and magnetism.

“All his life,” whispered the fat barrister to his friend, in a tone of curious tenderness, “he has been a blusterer and a blunderer, overanxious, pedantic, weak-willed, easily led, but--but his end is glorious. This is a note he has never touched before.”

“This state defence of prisoners is so much mischievous nonsense,” said the other almost angrily. “Where does he suppose it will land the country? A judge has no right to advance such an opinion from the bench.”

“Bill,” said the fat barrister, with a solemnity for which none of his friends would have been prepared, “when you have been one of His Majesty’s judges for twenty-five years you may not hold quite such definite opinions. Dear old Bow-wow; all the world knows that underneath his armor he has kept the kindest heart that ever beat, but this is the first time he has made me feel that I wanted to blub.”

“’Pon my word, Jumbo,” said his friend, impatiently, “don’t you begin. We have had enough mawkishness this afternoon to last us for the rest of our lives. I expect Weekes will be falling on the neck of Topott soon, and the clerk will be kissing the sheriff.”

“Dear old Bow-wow, dear old boy, how old he is getting. They say this John Davis affair has cut him up dreadfully. There is not a judge on the bench who would feel it more.”

“Probably the weakest judge who ever took his seat on the bench. What is he maundering about now? Ah, at last he’s got to the summing-up.”

The hour was advancing, and happily the judge’s speech was not of the length which at one time it had threatened to be. The summing-up was short but indecisive. It was plain that the prisoner’s advocate had done his work with the judge as well as with the jury. There was nothing in the judge’s presentment of the evidence, which at one time had looked so damning, to compare with the resolution and conviction of Northcote. The magnetic splendor and brilliancy which had overcome, one by one, the twelve good men and true in the box, had fastened also upon this old man. His confidence was shaken, and the definite line the counsel for the Crown had so confidently expected him to take was far to seek.

“This is doing us no good,” grunted Mr. Weekes to his junior. By now the leader for the Crown was in a very bad temper. His afternoon had been wasted, he was going to be late for his dinner, and he was about to lose a verdict upon which he had counted with certainty. “My dear Bow-wow, you are positively maudlin. Why the deuce don’t you leave the doubt alone and confine yourself to the evidence? There is no doubt. There is not a leg for them to stand on.”

“There was not half a leg for them to stand on at the beginning,” said Mr. Topott, with scrupulous modesty, “but now as the end approaches, they appear to be standing upon two thoroughly sound ones. I think I said at lunch I was frightened to death of that fellow.”

“Much good that did the case,” snapped Mr. Weekes.

“You were so sanguine, my dear fellow,” said Mr. Topott, with his modesty taking an almost angelic note. He was a young man, able and ambitious; and his private opinion of his leader was of a nature that wild horses would not have caused him to expose. “You pooh-poohed everybody and everything at lunch. The case was as dead as mutton; their man was a beginner; you and Bow-wow were going to take care that he did no harm.”

“Well, Topott, I must say you never lose an opportunity of rubbing things in.”

“Perhaps that is so,” said Mr. Topott, dreamily. “Perhaps I am rather good at rubbing things in. Perhaps that is my _métier_.”

“Then perhaps you will provide yourself with another. To my mind this one is not at all amusing.”

“I suspect that is so. But now this case has gone to pot, I hope you will not be angry, Weekes, if I inform you that the fault is not yours. You have simply been knocked out in a fair and square battle. But I hope you will not repine; because there is not a man in England to-day who could have stood up against that fellow. He chose extraordinary weapons, but they were those he knew how to use. No disgrace attaches to you; you have taken the knock quite honestly; and if the attorney had been here he would have had to take it too.”

“Thank you, Topott,” said Mr. Weekes, tartly; “I wish I could have your testimonial in writing.”

“By all means,” said Mr. Topott.

“Just listen to that old fool,” said Mr. Weekes, petulantly. “Whoever heard such rubbish as he is talking? It is time he resigned. Nobody actually saw her put the poison in. Absence of motive. Prisoner entitled to every doubt that may arise. Every link must be forged in the chain of all evidence that is purely circumstantial. No credence can be given to the testimony of half the witnesses for the Crown. My dear Bow-wow, I really never heard such nonsense in my life.”

“An hour ago you never heard such blasphemy.”

“I would to God the attorney had held this brief!” said Mr. Weekes, desperately.

“You may count on one thing,” said Mr. Topott; “he will never let you hear the last of this. Won’t he chuckle? He will pull your leg about it for the next ten years.”

“I hope you will tell him, Topott,” said Mr. Weekes anxiously, “that he would have done no better.”

“Oh, I don’t say he would have done no better,” said the impartial Mr. Topott. “He would have done better. He would never have let that chap get as far as he did, even if he had had to ascend the bench and take poor old Bow-wow by the tippet. But I do say he also would have had to take his gruel, and he would have lost his verdict.”

“Oh, we have not lost it yet.”

“We shall have lost it in another quarter of an hour.”

XXIX

THE VERDICT

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.

XXX

SIR JOSEPH BRUDENELL

In the judge’s room Northcote found its occupant seated in an armchair at the side of the fire. The light was subdued, and the face of the old man was in shadow even while he rose to receive his visitor.

“I thank you for coming to see me, Mr. Northcote,” he said, in a low voice. “I will not detain you long, but I hope you will sit down.”

Northcote accepted the seat that was indicated opposite to the judge’s armchair. His curiosity was roused in a strange fashion by the manner and tone of this old man. They were extremely kind and gentle, almost those which an aged and benevolent parent might employ when about to take leave of a favorite son.

“If you will allow an old advocate,” said the judge, leaning back in his chair and placing the tips of his fingers together, “to affirm it again, I have been impressed by your conduct of this case. My memory carries me back a long way; I have been more than fifty years at the bar and on the bench. During that period I have been brought into contact with the greatest advocates of their day, and I have been called upon to bear a part in many of the leading causes. But never, Mr. Northcote,--I emphasize the word,--has it been my privilege to witness a performance so remarkable on the part of one who is young and untried as the one given by you to-day.