CHAPTER V. — DEBUT.
A brief interval now passed over, after my connection begun with Mr. Edgerton, in which time the world went on with me more smoothly, perhaps, than ever. My patron—for so this gentleman deserves to be called—was as indulgent as I could wish. He soon discerned the weaknesses in my character, and with the judgment of an old practitioner, he knew how to subdue and soften, without seeming to perceive them. I need not say that I was as diligent and industrious, and not less studious, while in his employ, than I had been in that of my mercantile acquaintance. The entire toils of the desk soon fell upon my shoulders, and I acquired the reputation among my small circle of acquaintance, of being a very good attorney for a young beginner. It is true, I was greatly helped by the continued perusal of an admirable collection of old precedents, which a long period of extensive practice had accumulated in the collection of my friend. But to be an attorney, simply, was not the bound of my ambition. I fancied that the forum was, before all others, my true field of exertion. The ardency of my temper, the fluency of my speech, the promptness of my thought, and the warmth of my imagination, all conspired in impressing on me the belief that I was particularly fitted for the arena of public disputation. This, I may add, was the opinion of Mr. Edgerton also; and I soon sought an occasion for the display of my powers.
It was the custom at our bar—and a custom full of danger—for young beginners to take their cases from the criminal docket. Their “'prentice han',” was usually exercised on some wretch from the stews, just as the young surgeon is permitted to hack the carcass of a tenant of the “Paupers' Field,” the better to prepare him for practice on living and more worthy victims. Was there a rascal so notoriously given over to the gallows that no hope could possibly be entertained of his extrication from the toils of the evidence, and the deliberations of a jury, he was considered fair game for the young lawyers, who, on such cases, gathered about him with all the ghostly and keen propensities of vultures about the body of the horse cast out upon the commons.
The custom was evil, and is now, I believe, abandoned. It led to much irreverence among thoughtless young men—to an equal disregard of that solemnity which should naturally attach to the court of justice, and to the life of the prisoner arraigned before it. A thoughtless levity too frequently filled the mind of the young lawyer and his hearers, when it was known that the poor wretch on trial was simply regarded as an agent, through whose miserable necessity, the beginner was to try his strength and show his skill in the art of speech-making. It was my fortune, acting rather in compliance with the custom than my own preference, to select one of these victims and occasions for my debut. I could have done otherwise. Mr. Edgerton freely tendered to me any one of several cases of his own, on the civil docket, in which to make my appearance; but I was unwilling to try my hand upon a case in which the penalty of ill success might be a serious loss to my friend's client, and might operate to the injury of his business; and, another reason for my preference was to be found—though not expressed by me—in the secret belief which I entertained that I was peculiarly gifted with the art of appealing to the passions, and the sensibilities of my audience.
Having made my determination, I proceeded to prepare myself by a due consideration of the case at large; the history of the transaction, which involved the life of my client—(the allegation was for murder)—and of the testimony of the witnesses so far as it had been suggested in the EXPARTE examination before the grand jury. I reviewed the several leading principles on the subject of the crime; its character, the sort of evidence essential to conviction, and certainly, to do myself all justice, as effectually prepared myself for the duties of the trial as probably any young man of the time and community was likely to have done. The case, I need not add, was hopelessly against me; the testimony conclusive; and I had nothing to do but to weigh its character with keen examination, pick out and expose its defects and inconsistencies, and suggest as plausible a presumption in favor of the accused, as could be reasonably made out from the possibilities and doubts by which all human occurrences are necessarily attended. Something, too, might be done by judicious appeals to the principle of mercy, assuming for the jury a discretion on this subject which, by the way, they have no right to exercise.
I was joined in the case by my friend, young Edgerton. So far our boyish fortunes had run together, and he was not unwilling, though against his father's counsel, to take the same occasion with me for entering the world in company. The term began; the case was one of the last on the criminal docket, and the five days which preceded that assigned for the trial, were days, I am constrained to confess, of a thrilling and terrible agitation to my mind. I can scarcely now recall the feelings of that week without undergoing a partial return of the same painful sensations. My soul was striving as with itself, and seeking an outlet for escape. I panted, as if for breath—my tongue was parched—my lips clammy—my voice, in the language of the poet, clove to the roof of my throat. Altogether, I have never felt such emotions either before or since.
I will not undertake to analyze them, or account for those conflicting sensations which make us shrink, with something like terror, from the very object which we desire. At length the day came, and the man; attended by his father, William Edgerton, and myself, took our places, and stood prepared for the issue. I looked round me with a dizzy feeling of uncertainty. Objects appeared to swim and tremble before my sight. My eyes were of as little service to me then as if they had been gazing to blindness upon the sun. Everything was confused and imperfect. I could see that the courthouse was filled to overflowing, and this increased my feebleness. The case was one that had occasioned considerable excitement in the community, It was one of no ordinary atrocity. This was a sufficient reason why the audience should be large. There was yet another. There were two new debutants. In a community where popular eloquence is, of all others, perhaps the most desirable talent, this circumstance was well calculated to bring many listeners. Besides, something was expected from both Edgerton and myself. We had not reached our present position without making for ourselves a little circle, in which we had friends to approve and exult, and enemies to depreciate, and condemn.
The proceedings were at length opened by the attorney-general, the witnesses examined, and turned over to us for cross-examination. This part of the duty was performed by my associate. The business fairly begun, my distraction was lessened. My mind, driven to a point, made a decisive stand; and the sound of Edgerton's voice, as he proposed his questions, served still more to dissipate my confusion. I furnished him with sundry questions, and our examination was admitted to be quite searching and acute. My friend went through his part of the labor with singular coolness. He was in little or no respect excited. He, perhaps, was deficient in enthusiasm. If there was no faltering in what he said, there was no fine phrensy. His remarks and utterance were subdued to the plainest demands of the subject. They were shrewd and sensible, not particularly ingenious, nor yet deficient in the proper analysis of the evidence. He acquitted himself creditably.
It was my part to reply to the prosecuting attorney; but when I rose, I was completely confounded. Never shall I forget the pang of that impotence which seemed to overspread my frame, and to paralyze every faculty of thought and speech. I was the victim to my own ardor. A terrible reaction of mind had taken place, and I was prostrated. The desire to achieve greatness—the belief that it was expected from me—the consciousness that hundreds of eyes were then looking into mine with hungering expectation, overwhelmed me! I felt that I could freely have yielded myself for burial beneath the floor on which I stood. My cheeks were burning, yet my hands were cold as ice, and my knees tottered as with an ague. I strove to speak, however; the eyes of the judge met mine, and they looked the language of encouragement—of pity. But this expression only increased my confusion. I stammered out nothing but broken syllables and incoherent sentences. What I was saying, I know not—how long I presented this melancholy spectacle of imbecility to the eyes of my audience, I know not. It may have been a few minutes only. To me it seemed an age; and I was just endued with a sufficient power of reflection to ask myself whether I had not better sit down at once in irreversible despair, when my wandering and hitherto vacant eyes caught a glance-a single glance—of a face opposite.
It was that of my uncle! He was perched on one of the loftiest benches, conspicuous among the crowd—his eyes keenly fixed upon mine, and his features actually brightened by a smile of triumphant malice and exultation.
That glance restored me. That single smile brought me strength. I was timid, and weak, and impotent no longer. Under the presence of habitual scorn, my habitual pride and independence returned to me. The tremors left my limbs. The clammy huskiness which had loaded my tongue, and made it cleave to the roof of my mouth, instantly departed; and my whole mind returned to my control as if beneath the command of some almighty voice. I now saw the judge distinctly—I could see the distinct features of every juryman; and with the pride of my restored consciousness, I retorted the smile upon my uncle's face with one of contempt, which was not without its bitterness.
Then I spoke, and spoke with an intenseness, a directness of purpose and aim—a stern deliberateness—a fire and a feeling—which certainly electrified my hearers with surprise, if with no more elevated emotions. That one look of hostility had done more for my mind than could have been effected in my behalf by all the kind looks and encouraging voices of all the friends in creation.
After a brief exordium, containing some general proposition on the subject of human testimony, which meant no more than to suggest the propriety of giving to the prisoner the benefit of what was doubtful and obscure in the testimony which had been taken against him—I proceeded to compare and contrast its several parts. There were some inconsistencies in the evidence which enable me to make something of a case. The character of the witnesses was something more than doubtful and that, too, helped, in a slight degree, my argument. This was rapid, direct, closely wound together, and proved—such was the opinion freely expressed by others, afterward—that I had the capacity for consecutive arrangement of facts and inferences in a very remarkable degree. I closed with an appeal in favor of that erring nature, which, even in our own cases, led us hourly to the commission of sins and errors; and which, where the individual was poor, wretched, and a stranger, under the evil influences of destitution, vicious associations, and a lot in life, which, of necessity, must be low, might well persuade us to look with an eye of qualified rebuke upon his offences.
This was, of course, no argument, and was only to be considered the natural close of my labors. Before I was half through I saw my uncle rise from his seat, and hastily leave the court-room; and then I knew that I was successful—that I had triumphed, through that stimulating influence of his hate, over my own fears and feebleness. I felt sure that the speech must be grateful to the rest of my hearers, which HE could not stay to hear; and in this conviction, the tone of my spirits became elevated—the thoughts gushed from me like rain, in a natural and unrestrainable torrent of language—my voice was clear and full, far more so than I had ever thought it could be made—and my action far more animated, perhaps, than either good taste or the occasion justified. The criminal was not acquitted; but both William Edgerton and myself were judged to have been eminently successful.
The result of my debut, in other respects, was flattering far beyond my expectations. Business poured in upon me. My old employers, the merchants, were particularly encouraging and friendly. They congratulated me warmly on my success, assured me that they had always thought I was better calculated for the law than trade; and ended by putting into my hands all their accounts that needed a legal agency for collection. Mr. Edgerton was loud in his approbation, and that very week saw his son and myself united in co-partnership, with the prospect of an early withdrawal of the father from business in my favor. Indeed, the latter gave us to understand that his only purpose now was to see us fairly under way, with a sufficient knowledge of the practice, and assured of the confident of his own friends, in order to give his years and enfeebled health a respite from the toils of the profession.
My worthy uncle, true to himself, played a very different part from these gentlemen. He hung back, forbore all words on the subject of my debut, and of the promising auspices under which my career was begun, and actually placed certain matters of legal business into the hands of another lawyer. Of this, he himself gave me the first information in very nearly this language:—
“I have just had to sue Yardle & Fellows, and a few others, Edward, and I thought of employing you, but you are young, and there may be some legal difficulties in the way:—but when you get older, and arrive at some experience, we will see what can be done for you.”
“You are perfectly right, sir,” was my only answer, but the smile upon my lips said everything. I saw, then, that HE COULD NOT SMILE. He was now exchanging the feeling of scorn which he formerly entertained for one of a darker quality. Hate was the necessary feeling which followed the conviction of his having done me wilful injustice—not to speak of the duties left undone, which were equally his shame.
There were several things to mortify him in my progress. His sagacity as a man of the world stood rebuked—his conduct as a gentleman—his blood as a relation, who had not striven for the welfare and good report of his kin, and who had suffered unworthy prejudices, the result of equal avarice and arrogance, to operate against him.
There is nothing which a base spirit remembers with so much malignant tenacity as your success in his despite. Even in the small matter just referred to, the appropriation of his law business, the observant fates gave me my revenge. By a singular coincidence of events, the very firm against which he had brought action the day before were clients of Mr. Edgerton. That gentleman was taken with a serious illness at the approach of the next court, and the business of their defence devolved upon his son and myself; and finally, when it was disposed of, which did not happen till near the close of that year, it so happened that I argued the case; and was successful.
Mr Clifford was baffled, and you may judge the feeling with which he now regarded me. He had long since ceased to jest with me and at my expense. He was now very respectful, and I could see that his dislike grew daily in strict degree with his deference. But the deportment of Mr. Clifford—springing as it did from that devil, which each man is supposed to carry at times in his bosom, and of whose presence in mine at seasons I was far from unaware—gave me less annoyance than that of another of his household. Julia, too, had put on an aspect which, if not that of coldness, was at least, that of a very marked reserve. I ascribed this to the influence of her parents—perhaps, to her own sense of what was due to their obvious desires—to her own feeling of indifference—to any and every cause but the right one.
There were other circumstances to alarm me, in connection with this maiden. She was, as I have said, singularly beautiful; and, as I thought, until now, singularly meek and considerate. Her charms, about which there could be no two opinions, readily secured her numerous admirers, and when these were strengthened by the supposed fortune of which she was to be the heiress, the suitors were, some of them, almost as pressing, after the fashion of the world in which we lived, as those of Penelope. I now no longer secured her exclusive regard at the evening fireside or in our way to church. There were gallants on either hand—gay, dashing lads, with big whiskers, long locks, and smart ratans, upon whom madame, our lady-mother, looked with far more complacency than upon me. The course of Julia, herself, was, however, unexceptionable. She was singularly cautious in her deportment, and, if reserved to me the most jealous scrutiny—after due reflection—never enabled me to discover that she was more lavish of her regards to any other. But the discovery of her position led me to another discovery which the reader will wonder, as I did myself, that I had not made before. This was the momentous discovery that my heart was irretrievably lost to her—that I loved her with all the intensity of a first passion, which, like every other passion in my heart, was absorbing during its prevalence. I could name my feelings to myself only when I perceived that such feelings were entertained by others;—only when I found that the prize, which I desired beyond all others, was likely to be borne away by strangers, did I know how much it was desirable to myself.
The discovery of this affection instantly produced its natural effects as well upon my deportment as upon my feelings; and that sleepless spirit of suspicion and doubt—that true creature and consequence of the habitual distrust which my treatment from boyhood had instilled into my mind—at once rose to strength and authority within me, and swayed me even as the blasts of November sway the bald tops of the slender trees which the gusts have already denuded of all foliage. The change in Julia's deportment, of which I have already spoken, increased the febrile fears and suspicions which filled my soul and overcame my judgment. She too—so I fancied—had learned to despise and dislike me, under the goading influences of her father's malice and her mother's silly prejudices. I jumped to the conclusion instantly, that I was bound to my self to assert my superiority, my pride and independence, in such a manner, as most effectually to satisfy all parties that their hate or love was equally a matter of indifference.
You may judge what my behavior was after this. For a time, at least, it was sufficiently unbecoming. The deportment of Julia grew more reserved than ever, and her looks more grave. There was a sadness evidently mingled with this gravity which, amid all the blindness of my heart, I could not help but see. She became sadder and thinner every day; and there was a wo-begone listlessness about her looks and movements which began to give me pain and apprehension. I discovered, too after a while, that some apprehensions had also crept into the minds of her parents in respect to her health. Their looks were frequently addressed to her in evident anxiety. They restrained her exercises, watched the weather when she proposed to go abroad, strode in every way to keep her from fatigue and exposure; and, altogether, exhibited a degree of solicitude which at length had the effect of arousing mine.
Involuntarily, I approached her with more tenderness than my vexing spirit had recently permitted me to show; but I recoiled from the effects of my own attentions. I was vexed to perceive that my approaches occasioned a start, a flutter—a shrinking inward—as if my advance had been obtrusive, and my attempts at familiarity offensive.
I was then little schooled in the intricacies of the female heart. I little conjectured the origin of that seemingly paradoxical movement of the mind, which, in the case of one, sensitive and exquisitely delicate, prompts to flight from the very pursuit which it would yet invite; which dreads to be suspected of the secret which it yet most loves to cherish, and seeks to protect, by concealment, the feelings which it may not defend; even as the bird hides the little fledglings of its care from the hunter, whom it dare not attack.
Stupid, and worse than stupid, my blind heart saw nothing of this, and perverted what it saw. I construed the conduct of Julia into matter of offence, to be taken in high dudgeon and resolutely resented; and I drew myself up stiffly when she appeared, and by excess of ceremonious politeness only, avoided the reproach of brutality. Yet, even at such moments, I could see that there was a dewy reproach in her eyes, which should have humbled me, and made me penitent. But the effects of fifteen years of injudicious management were not to be dissipated in a few days even by the Ithuriel spells of love. My sense of independence and self-resource had been stimulated to a diseased excess, until, constantly on the QUI VIVE, it became dogged and inflexible. It was a work of time to soften me and make me relent; and the labor then was one of my own secret thoughts, and unbiased private decision. The attempt to persuade or reason me into a conviction was sure to be a failure.
Months passed in this manner without effecting any serious change in Julia, or in bringing us a step nearer to one another. Meanwhile, the sphere of my observation and importance increased, as the circle of my acquaintance became extended. I was regarded as a rising young man, and one likely to be successful ultimately in my profession. The social privileges of my friends, the Edgertons, necessarily became mine; and it soon occurred that I encountered my uncle and his family in circles in which it was somewhat a matter of pride with him to be permitted to move. This, as it increased my importance in his sight, did not diminish his pains. But he treated me now with constant deference, though with the same unvarying coldness. When in the presence of others, he warmed a little. I was then “his nephew;” and he would affect to speak with great familiarity on the subject of my business, my interests, the last case in which I was engaged, and so forth—the object of which was to persuade third persons that our relations were precisely as they should be, and as people would naturally suppose them.
At all these places and periods, when it was my lot to meet with Julia, she was most usually the belle of the night. A dozen attendants followed in her train, solicitous of all her smiles, and only studious how to afford her pleasure. I, only, stood aloof—I, who loved her with a more intense fervor than all, simply because I had none, or few besides to love. The heart which has been evermore denied, will always burn with this intensity. Its passion, once enkindled, will be the all-absorbing flame. Devoted itself, it exacts the most religious devotion; and, unless it receives it, recoils upon its own resources, and shrouds itself in gloom, simply to hide its sufferings from detection.
I affected that indifference to the charms of this maiden, which no one of human sensibilities could have felt. Opinions might have differed in respect to her beauty; but there could be none on the score of her virtues and her amiability, and almost as few on the possessions of her mind. Julia Clifford, though singularly unobtrusive in society, very soon convinced all around her that she had an excellent understanding, which study had improved, and grace had adorned by all the most appropriate modes of cultivation. Her steps were always followed by a crowd—her seat invariably encircled by a group to itself. I looked on at a distance, wrapped up in the impenetrable folds of a pride, whose sleeves were momently plucked, as I watched, by the nervous fingers of jealousy and suspicion. Sometimes I caught a timid glance of her eye, addressed to the spot where I stood, full of inquiry, and, as I could not but believe, of apprehension;—and yet, at such moments; I turned perversely from the spot, nor suffered myself to steal another look at one, all of whose triumphs seemed made at my expense.
On one of these occasions we met—our eyes and hands, accidentally; and, though I, myself, could not help starting back with a cold chill at my heart, I yet fancied there was something monstrous insulting in the evident recoil of her person from the contact with mine, at the same moment. I was about to turn hurriedly away with a slight bow of acknowledgment, when the touching tenderness of her glance, so full of sweetness and sadness, made me shrink with shame from such a rudeness. Besides, she was so pale, so thin, and really looked so unwell, that my conscience, in spite of that blind heart whose perversity would still have kept me to my first intention, rebuked me, and drove me to my duty. I approached—I spoke to her—and my words, though few, under the better impulses of the moment, were gentle and solicitous, as they should have been. My tones, too, were softened:—wilfully as I still felt, I could not forbear the exercise of that better ministry of the affections which was disposed to make amends for previous misconduct. I do not know exactly what I said—I probably did nothing more than utter the ordinary phrases of social compliment;—but everything was obliterated from my mind in an instant, by the startling directness of what was said by her. Looking at me with a degree of intentness by which, alone, she was, perhaps, able to preserve her seeming calmness, she replied by an inquiry as remote from what my observation called for as possible, yet how applicable to me and my conduct!
“Why do you treat me thus, Edward? Why do you neglect me as you do—as if I were a stranger, or, at least, not a friend? What have I done to merit this usage from one who—-”
She did not finish the sentence, but her reproachful eyes, full of a dewy suffusion that seemed very much like tears, appeared to conclude it thus—
“One who—used to love me!”
So different was this speech from any that I looked for—so different from what the usage of our conventional world would have seemed to justify—so strange for one so timid, so silent usually on the subject of her own griefs, as Julia Clifford—that I was absolutely confounded. Where had she got this courage? By what strong feeling had it been stimulated? Had I been at that time as well acquainted with the sex as I have grown since, I must have seen that nothing but a deep interest in my conduct and regard, could possibly have prompted the spirit of one so gentle and shrinking, to the utterance of so searching an appeal. And in what way could I answer it? How could I excuse myself? What say, to justify that cold, rude indifference to a relative, and one who had ever been gentle and kind and true to me. I had really nothing to complain of. The vexing jealousies of my own suspicious heart had alone informed it to its perversion; and there I stood—dumb, confused, stupid-speaking, when I did speak, some incoherent, meaningless sentences, which could no more have been understood by her than they can now be remembered by me. I recovered myself, however, sufficiently soon to say, before we were separated by the movements of the crowd:—
“I will come to you to-morrow, Julia. Will you suffer me to see you in the morning, say at twelve?”
“Yes, come!” was all her answer; and the next moment the harsh accents of her ever-watchful mother warned us to risk no more.