Accordingly, they passed their respective examinations, and John took rooms with another budding solicitor in the City, while James hired chambers in Pump-court. But there the matter stopped, for as John did not get any work, of course he could not give any to James. And so it came to pass that for the past three years neither of the twins had found the law as profitable as they anticipated. In vain did John sit and sigh in the City. Clients were few and far between: scarcely enough to pay his rent. And in vain did James, artistically robed, wander like the Evil One, from court to court, seeking what he might devour. Occasionally he had the pleasure of taking a note for another barrister who was called away, which means doing another man’s work for nothing. Once, too, a man with whom he had a nodding acquaintance, rushed up to him, and, thrusting a brief into his hands, asked him to hold it for him, telling him that it would be on in a short time, and that there was nothing in it—“nothing at all.” Scarcely had poor James struggled through the brief when the case was called on, and it may suffice to say that at its conclusion, the Judge gazed at him mildly, over his spectacles, and “could not help wondering that any learned counsel had been found who would consent to waste the time of the Court in such a case as the one to which he had been listening.” Clearly James’ friend would not so consent, and had passed on the responsibility, minus the fee. On another occasion, James was in the Probate Court on motion day, and a solicitor—a real live solicitor—came up to him and asked him to make a motion (marked Mr.——, 2 gns.) for leave to dispense with a co-respondent. This motion he made, and the co-respondent was dispensed with in the approved fashion; but when he turned round the solicitor had vanished, and he never saw him more or the two guineas either. However, the brief, his only one, remained, and, after that, he took to hovering about the Divorce Court, partly in the hope of once more seeing that solicitor, and partly with a vague idea of drifting into practice in the Division.
Now, Eustace had often, when in the Shorts’ sitting-room in the lodging-house in the Strand, heard the barrister James hold forth learnedly on the matter of wills, and, therefore, he naturally enough turned towards him in his recent dilemma. Knowing the address of his chambers in Pump-court, he hurried thither, and was in due course admitted by a very small child, who apparently filled the responsible office of clerk to Mr. James Short and several other learned gentlemen, whose names appeared upon the door.
The infant regarded Eustace, when he opened the door, with a look of such preternatural sharpness, that it almost frightened him. The beginning of that eagle glance was full of inquiring hope, and the end of resigned despair. The child had thought that Eustace might be a client come to tread the paths which no client ever had trod. Hence the hope and the despair in his eyes. Eustace had nothing of the solicitor’s clerk about him. Clearly he was not a client.
Mr. Short was in “that door to the right.” Eustace knocked, and entered into a bare little chamber about the size of a large housemaid’s closet, furnished with a table, three chairs (one a basket easy), and a book-case, with a couple of dozen of law books, and some old volumes of reports, and a broad window-sill, in the exact centre of which lay the solitary and venerated brief.
Mr. James Short was a short, stout young man, with black eyes, a hooked nose, and a prematurely bald head. Indeed, this baldness of the head was the only distinguishing mark between James and John, and, therefore, a thing to be thankful for, though, of course, useless to the perplexed acquaintance who met them in the street when their hats were on. At the moment of Eustace’s entry Mr. Short had been engaged in studying that intensely legal print, the Sporting Times, which, however, from some unexplained bashfulness, he had hastily thrown under the table, filling its space with a law book snatched at hazard from the shelf.
“All right, old fellow,” said Eustace, whose quick eyes had caught the quick flutter of the vanishing paper; “don’t be alarmed, it’s only me.”
“Ah!” said Mr. James Short, when he had shaken hands with him, “you see I thought that it might have been a client—a client is always possible, however improbable, and one has to be ready to meet the possibility.”
“Quite so, old fellow,” said Eustace; “but do you know, as it happens, I am a client—and a big one, too; it is a matter of two millions of money—my uncle’s fortune. There was another will, and I want to take your advice.”
Mr. Short fairly bounded out of the chair in exultation, and then, struck by another thought, sank back into it again.
“My dear Meeson,” he said, “I am sorry I cannot hear you.”