Henry Northcote

by J. C. Snaith

The solicitor turned into his offices and Northcote sauntered along Chancery Lane. The twilight which had enveloped the city all day was now yielding to the authentic hues of evening. The dismal street-lamps were already lit, the gusts of rain, sleet, and snow of the previous night had been turned into a heavy downpour which had continued without intermission since the morning. The pavements were bleached by the action of water, but a miasma arose from the overburdened sewers, whose contents flowed among the traffic and were churned by its wheels into a paste of black mud. Northcote was splashed freely with this thick slushy mixture, even as high as his face, by the countless omnibuses; and in crossing from one pavement to another he had a narrow escape from being knocked down by a covered van.

It was in no mood of courage that the young man pushed his way to his lodgings through the traffic and the elbowing crowds who thronged the narrow streets. Even the mental picture that was thrown before his eyes of this garret which had already devoured his youth had the power to make him feel colder than actually he was. Never had he felt such a depression in all the long term of his privation as now in wending his way towards it laboriously, heavily, with slow-beating pulses.

He was sore, disappointed, angry; his pride was wounded by the attitude of his client. His self-centred habit caused him to take himself so much for granted, that at first he could discern no reason for this volte-face. In his view it was inconsiderate to withhold the moral support of which at this moment he stood so much in need. Truly the lot of obscurity was hard; its penalties were of a kind to bring many a shudder to a proud and sensitive nature. The patronizing insolence of one whom he despised was beginning to fill him with a bootless rage, yet in his present state how impotent he was before it. He must suffer such things, and suffer them gladly, until that hour dawned in which his powers announced themselves.

That time was to-morrow—terrible, all-piercing, yet entrancing thought! The measure of his talent would then be proclaimed. Yet all in an instant, like a lightning-flash shooting through darkness, for the first time the true nature of his task was revealed to him. Doubt took shape, sprang into being. Its outline seemed to loom through the dismal shadows cast by the lamps in the street. Who and what was he, after all, in comparison with a task of such immensity? With startling and overwhelming force the solicitor’s meaning was suddenly unfolded to him.

He took himself for granted no more. He must be mad to have gone so far without having paused to subject himself to the self-criticism that is so salutary. How could he blame the solicitor whose eminently practical mind had resented this inaccessibility to the ordinary rules of prudence? Was he not the veriest novice in his profession, without credentials of any kind? And yet he arrogated to himself the right to embark upon a line of conduct that was in direct opposition to the promptings of a mature judgment.

How could he have been so sure of this supreme talent? It had never been brought to test. The only measure of it was his scorn of others, the scorn of the unsuccessful for those who have succeeded. The passion with which it had endowed him was nothing more, most probably, than a monomania of egotism. How consummate was the folly which could mistake the will for the deed, the vaulting ambition for the thing itself!

On the few occasions, some seven or eight in all, in which he had turned an honest guinea, mostly at the police-court, he had betrayed no surprising aptitude for his profession. There had been times, even in affairs so trivial, when his highly strung nervous organization had overpowered the will. He had not been exempt from the commission of errors; he recalled with horror that once or twice it had fallen to his lot to be put out of countenance by his adversary; while once at least he had drawn down upon himself the animadversions of the presiding deity. Surely there was nothing in this rather pitiful career to provide a motive for this overweening arrogance.

He grew the more amazed at his own hardihood as he walked along. To what fatal blindness did he owe it that from the beginning his true position had not been revealed to him? Where were the credentials that fitted him to undertake a task so stupendous? What achievement had he to his name that he should venture to launch his criticisms against those who had been through the fray and had emerged victorious? How could he have failed to appreciate that abstract theory was never able to withstand the impact of experience! It was well enough in the privacy of his garret to conceive ideas and to sustain his faculties with dreams of a future that could never be, but once in the arena, when the open-mouthed lion of the actual lay in his path, he would require arms more puissant than these.

To overcome those twin dragons Tradition and Precedent, behind which common and vulgar minds entrenched themselves so fearlessly, the sword of the sophist would not avail. It would snap in his fingers at the first contact with these impenetrable hides. His blade must be forged of thrice-welded steel if he were to have a chance on the morrow. He had decided to promulgate like a second Napoleon the doctrine of force, and for his only weapon he had chosen a dagger of lath. Well might Mr. Whitcomb smile with contempt. Where would he find himself if he dared to preach the most perilous of gospels, if he could not support it with an enormous moral and physical power?

For years he had dwelt in a castle which he had built out of air, secure in the belief that he was endowed in ample measure with attributes whose operations were so diverse yet so comprehensive, that in those rare instances in which they were united they became superhuman in their reach. An Isaiah or a Cromwell did not visit the world once in an era. How dare such a one as he fold his nakedness in the sacred mantle of the gods! It was the act of one whose folly was too rank even to allow him to pose as a charlatan. If he ventured to deliver one-half of these astonishing words he had prepared for the delectation of an honest British jury, these flatulent pretensions would be unveiled, he would be mocked openly, his ruin would be complete and irretrievable.