Henry Northcote

by J. C. Snaith

“After my father’s death, my younger sister grew into a charming, accomplished, and beautiful woman. In the course of time she aspired to the prizes of her trade. For several years she lived in refinement and luxury with a judge of the High Court; and upon his demise was able to claim the interest of a prosperous and clever criminal lawyer of the name of Whitcomb.

“For many years now I have been dead to my sister’s knowledge, for brutalized and sordid as I have grown, she was the one thing in the world besides myself I have ever been able to pity. Even when I descended below my poor father’s level, I could never find it in my heart to ‘queer her pitch’ as we say in the gutter. She grew happy and prosperous, and forgot her childhood and all the sores that festered upon her name. Long ago she achieved the beatitude of that condition of mental and moral nullity as predicted by her distinguished parent; while I, as also predicted by that seer, was destined for sterner things.

“In those lucid intervals when drugs and drams had left me the use of my faculties, I sought to appease my cynicism by preying upon society. I cannot reveal to you the cold rage I nourished against the cosmogony that had been evolved by I know not how many generations of Pharisees. The lode-star of my father’s ambition was art for the sake of art; that of her he had nurtured upon it became crime for the sake of crime. Not that I was wanton or petty in the workings of my creed; like my father, I had usually some large aim in view. Yet again like my father, it was not to myself that material prosperity accrued from the exercise of my gift, but to the crimps and bullies by whom I was surrounded. It was one of these, a base, cold-blooded, brutal, calculating ruffian, whom so treacherously I did to death.

“I think I should enact that crime again; although when my guilt was fastened upon me, and I was brought into prison, my fear of the gallows was terrible. It was even stronger than my poor father’s dread of criticism of his works. And yet as I lay under the shadow of a fate that I did not know how to obtain the fortitude to accept, I amused myself with a stroke of that wantonness which has sometimes delighted my associates, and on occasions has even rendered them respectful. I chose Mr. Whitcomb to undertake my defence. My poverty and evil repute made him reluctant to accept the office, but like my father, I retain a little of the artist’s power of seeing into the future. In my dreams a voice whispered to me that he alone could ensure my safety. And to my importunity he yielded. He yielded to that importunity which when I have felt called upon to exert it, no man has ever been able to resist.

“What a sanctuary did this prison with its indescribable gloom offer to me! All the days of my life had been cast with drunkards, madmen, thieves, panders, and prostitutes. They had rendered the very breath of heaven unclean. From one slum to another slum, from one gutter to another gutter had my steps been traced. Will it astonish you that what after all was a powerful nature had founded its grand passion upon an irreconcilable hatred of its kind? Yet I was brought into prison, and for the first time I tasted the breath of the living God.

“It was the horror of my doom, I think, giving to a life that had never had any finite knowledge the certainty of the surgeon’s knife, which had the power to touch me for the first time with the instinct of beauty. I am sure I know not whether such was the case; but a pall was lifted from my brain, a stealthy drug seemed to evaporate out of my pores. There were times when I lay behind the bars of this prison in which I could have cried aloud for gladness. The open sores in my nature began to heal. All those dark mysteries, that had pressed me down like a curse, were spread out before me luminous with meaning at those hours when the dawn stole into my cell. Ere long I would lie awake all night to watch for its appearance, for I knew that every time it came to me I should gain in knowledge. I began to understand why the sun was warm, why the birds sang, why the rain was wet. I began to understand that to breathe, to move, to do, to think, to say ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ to wield despotic powers, to do battle with that underworld, that reflex action, to which I had always been so ready to succumb, were all acts of splendor and grace, all parts of a living idea that was a noble solution of my perplexity.

“As I lay behind the bars of my prison I dreamed again and again of some mighty and enfolding power that would take the whole of my trembling irresolution in its arms and bend me into the mould of its all-powerful will. I foresaw that some young god would emerge out of those clouds about heaven, which for the first time in my life my enraptured eyes had perceived, that he would break into my cell, that he would make me the bride of that majestic loveliness which had caused my sight to shed its first tears.

“When you came and spoke to me in darkness in the prison I knew who you were. I knew that my dreams had yielded a reality; and that the new birth which had unfolded itself in my nature had already found a shape. From that hour of our meeting I thought no longer of my doom. Now that such a one had consented to plead for me I knew that none could do me hurt. Even the dock itself was powerless to touch me with fear; although until you rose to speak I could neither hear nor see, and I did not know where I was. But at the first sound of your voice I sat entranced. I forgot that my wicked and degraded life was in your hands; I forgot that a subject so foul was the source of your beautiful words. I had never known before what the living voice of poetry was like. I had never beheld those heights to which a great and noble nature is able to aspire.

“As you spoke in the court and all my enemies hung upon your words, you became a part of this miracle which had happened in myself. You were the breathing embodiment of those august shapes which emerged in all their order and beauty from behind the dark curtains of my nature. Hour by hour, as I listened to the enchantments of your voice, it seemed to steal over me that you, my deliverer, in the empire of your youth would not only free me out of prison, but also you would deliver me out of the bondage of my own soul. Such a tumult of joy came upon me then as I could not believe could visit any human creature. The music of your lips was not only the earnest of my dreams, it was the consolation of my stains.”

When the woman had finished her story she rested her elbows on her knees and her chin on her hands. Northcote, who had followed so strange a recital with an interest which its attendant circumstances even rendered intense, felt no longer able to withhold an ample meed of pity. And how unfathomable it appeared to him that his defence, which had been inspired at a time when all was darkness concerning her, should yet be vindicated so completely by the facts of her life. Such an intuition was an uncanny weapon. Who could wonder that this buffeted, arrested, slowly maturing, late-developing creature should see in its transactions the revelation of a supernatural power? She was base and foul, yet she was suffused with the inspiration of his strength—with a strength that had been used in ignorance, with a sordid end in view. She must indeed engage his pity, she who had prostrated herself before a chimera, she the thrice unhappy one who had prostrated herself before an idol with feet of clay.