“But,” said Northcote, sternly, “I have just had your own assurance that you do not. You would not, it seems, scruple to rob your poor grandchildren to gratify a whim; indeed, it may be said you have robbed them to gratify one. If I had to prosecute you before a jury of twelve of your honest countrymen, I could easily get you put into prison.”
“Well, sir,” said the old charwoman, beginning to tremble violently before this grim realism, “I—I am sure I have always tried to do my duty.”
“On the contrary, Mrs. Brown, you can scarcely be said to have a conception of what is your duty. At least the best that can be said for that conception is that it is arbitrary, perverse, contradictory. Expedience is the only duty known to the laws which regulate all forms of nature. The man called Jesus, the chief exponent of the contrary doctrine which appears to have had some kind of attraction for you, received a somewhat severe handling when He ventured to show Himself upon the platform; and you who in your dumb and vague and invertebrate manner have been seeking to imitate Him in one or two minor particulars, owe it to the generous forbearance of the recipient of your charity that you do not find yourself in prison. If the Crown in its expansive vindictiveness were to instruct me to prosecute you in what it is pleased to call a ‘court of justice,’ woe would betide you.”
The old woman grew as pale as ashes when confronted with the stern eyes of this advocate who turned white into black so easily.
“Why—why, sir,” she stammered, “you—you will make me think I have committed a murder if you go on!”
“I think I might do that without much difficulty. It would be quite simple to indicate to you in a very few words in what manner the Almighty has already seen fit to mark the sense of His personal displeasure. Is it not your own conduct, do you not suppose, which has provoked Him to strike down your innocent little grandchild with diphtheria? And if the child dies, which we will pray it will not, what would be easier than to render you responsible for its death? You see that is the worst of evil, it is so cumulative in its effect. Once it has begun its dread courses, who shall predict their end? A good action is self-contained and stops where it began; a bad one fructifies with immortal seed and practically goes on for ever—vide the poet Shakespeare. Why, you are eating nothing. I am afraid I am spoiling your breakfast.”
“Oh, sir, I didn’t know I was so wicked,” said the charwoman, with tears in her eyes.
“Opinions are easily formed. As for reputations, they can be made and unmade and made again in an hour. But might I suggest, Mrs. Brown, that if one happens to be righteous in one’s own eyes, it does not very greatly matter if one goes to jail to expiate so pious an opinion. Do I make myself clear?”
“I—I don’t say I am good, sir, but—I hope I am not a downright bad one.”
“Well, to relieve your feelings, we will take it that you are a nebulous half-and-half and somewhat unsatisfactory sort of person who blindly follows a bundle of instincts she knows less than nothing about, just like a dog or a cat or a rabbit. And is not that what this elaborate moral code of ours throws back to if we take the trouble to examine it? And is not one entitled to say that a dog is a good dog, a cat a good cat, a rabbit a good rabbit, just as faithfully as it follows the instincts under its fur, whatever they happen to be? I have taken this excursus, Mrs. Brown, and have ventured to theorize a little, quite unprofitably, I grant, and at the risk of causing you some ill-founded alarm, because to-morrow I have to exercise all the talents with which the good God has endowed me in the cause of an extremely wicked woman who has committed a murder. Her crime is of a vulgar and calculating kind, perpetrated in cold blood; there is not a rag of evidence to save her from the gallows; but Providence has called upon me to attempt to save her from the fate she so richly merits. And there is an instinct within me, her advocate, for which I am at a loss to account by the rules of reason and logic, which calls on its possessor to save this abandoned creature at all hazard. If I obey that instinct I shall be a good advocate and a bad citizen; if I disobey it I shall be a good citizen but a bad advocate. Yet if I obey it I shall have fulfilled to the best of my ability the legal contract into which I have entered, and in so doing I shall be called on to commit a serious misdemeanor against human nature. On the other hand, if I disobey it I shall be causing human nature to be vindicated in a becoming manner, yet shall be guilty of an equally serious misdemeanor against myself; and further, I shall be false to the interests of my unfortunate client whose money I have taken, and render myself indictable for the offence of entering into a contract which I have wilfully refrained from carrying out. Please have another cup of tea, and kindly pass the marmalade.”