“Might you not use your education, sir, in some other way?”
“You would have me till the fields or be a clerk in an insurance office. Would that be honest in the sight of God, who has placed an instinct in me which I disobey? Surely one would say the truly dishonest man is he who is unfaithful to his nature. Had we not agreed upon that? If a man knows that he was designed by God to be an advocate, is he not called to practise? Why have the gift to prove that white is black and black is white if that gift is not to be carried to its appointed issue? If I do not barter it for a means of livelihood by proving the guilty to be innocent, how am I to discharge the higher function of proving the innocent to be not guilty? If, in my cowardice, I decline to go into court lest I save those who ought not to be saved, think of the innocent persons who will perish for the lack of a true advocate.”
“If we could only get to the real intention, sir,” said the charwoman solemnly, “of Him who winds up the watch and who is Himself the key, perhaps these things might not worry us. But God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.”
“Yes,” said Northcote, rising from the breakfast-table, “there we have the fruit of all that our curiosity can yield to us. The power may be given to us to show that blue is green, but what does it stand for in the presence of the dread materialism of our religions?”
The advocate took three sovereigns from his pocket, three sovereigns which he had yet to earn, and placed them in the palm of the old charwoman.
“Mrs. Brown,” he said, “in the bleak and uncomfortable eyes of science your virtue will not bear inquiry; but if it were possible to take a plebiscite of the opinions of your fellows as hastily as possible upon the bare facts, before a professional advocate had a chance to pervert them, I do not doubt that you would be voted to a position among the elect. I believe myself that there is a greater amount of purely disinterested nobility among all sections of society than is generally known. Fifteen shillings I owe you for services rendered; twenty-five for your timely contribution towards my rent; and here is a pound with which to pay the kind doctor who is going to thwart the Almighty in His intention of causing your small grandchild to die. One of these days, as I say, Mrs. Brown, I hope you may meet my mother, for I would like to render to you the homage that all men desire to be allowed to render to good women.”
He seized the blackened, shrivelled, and not particularly clean hand and carried it to his lips.
XVII
MESSRS. WHITCOMB AND WHITCOMB
After the old woman had cleared the table of the breakfast things and she had gone away, Northcote sat nearly two hours in his easy chair at the fire, whose grate had never been allowed to consume so much fuel since it had been in his occupation, and with the aid of his brief proceeded to rehearse all the points of the case as they presented themselves to him. Warmth, food, and rest had overthrown his weariness, and his mind which in its operations was habitually so energetic began to shape and docket every conceivable aspect of the matter that could be of the slightest service to the accused. His reasoning was so amazingly copious that he foresaw and proceeded immediately to guard against a very real danger.
He might easily overdo it. The jury would not be men of education to whom fine points would appeal. Most probably they would be petty tradesmen whom it would be impossible to touch through the mind at all. He must take aim at their emotions. “I must use,” he said to himself in his mental analysis, “not a word beyond three syllables, and I must keep to the language of the Bible as well as I can. All my little pieces of embroidery, all my little bravura passages must bear that singularly excellent model in mind; its power of touching the commonest clay is so unfailing. Happily, in the course of my somewhat eclectic studies it has not been neglected. But beyond all I must try to get my address quite fine and close. One word too much and the whole thing fizzles out in a haze of perplexity. For that reason I am afraid I must reject some of my choicest and neatest thrusts at the moral code, which ought to tickle to death all minds with a gleam of humor. No, I must deny myself those bright excursions in which the cloven hoof of the artist betrays itself, and put my faith in a few common tricks performed with mastery. They at least should set up the honest English grocer on his hind legs and make him purr like anything.”