Page:Henry Northcote (IA henrynorthcote00snairich).pdf/198

 XXII

LIFE OR DEATH

The final consultation of Northcote and his client took place in the open street in the heavily raining December afternoon, with their backs against Mr. Whitcomb's brass plate. The spot selected for their last utterances on this momentous affair was incongruous indeed, but each had grown so impatient of the other, that if their last words were spoken here, the clash of their mental states was the less likely to invite disaster than in a more formal council-chamber of four walls.

The robust common sense of the solicitor had never shown itself to be more incisive than now as he stood with his back to his own door, under a dripping umbrella, his hat pushed to the back of his head, and his trousers turned up beyond his ankles. His twenty years of immensely successful practice, his exact knowledge of human nature, his ruthless worldliness, his reverence for the hard fact, stood forth here in the oddest contrast with the somewhat "special" and rarefied quality of this youthful advocate whom he had seen fit to entrust with so important a case.

"It's a pity, it's a pity," he brought himself to say at last, his veneer falling off a little under the stress of his chagrin, and revealing a glimpse of the baffled human animal beneath. "It is a serious mistake to have made; but we have got to stand to it.