PARIS HERBERT Q.C.A SKETCH

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, Volume V, Issue 1, 1 October 1901, Page 23

PARIS HERBERT Q.C.A SKETCH

Hv Kdoak M. Dkll.

fIPWELVE o'clock, midnight. S% King William Street was dell^ sorted; only the red light — it was mail night — on the Post Office clock tower burned brightly. The gas lamps did not attempt to pierce the darkness which lay on the broad roadway and in the shadow of the houses.

From the window of one office, however, there still shines a bright light.

Sitting at his mahogany office table which, like the other fittings of that office, had a heavy, thoroughly respectable and monied look about it, Paris Jlerbert, Q.C., the youngest and best-known wearer of silk in the colony, was engaged in tying up, methodically ticketing and putting away the papers which lay in heaps all over the table. As midnight struck, he put the last bundle into the deed box at his side, and closed the lid.

The papers might just as well have been destroyed. Like the wounded soldiers after a, battle, they were of no more use except as relics — trophies to be occasionally sunned and petted, not for their intrinsic worth,

Illustrated by K. H. Vauqhtiv

»ut as mementoes of a great and glorious

Some such thought — il was not weariness — made Paris Herbert sijj^li. That day, which closed with the (shutting of the box lid, vvns his " Waterloo." He had won a case — a battle of intellect — so signal and triumphant, that the hill of his ambition seemed already climbed. The plateau reached, ease and comfort assured, he almost regretted the paths of danger — the precipices, the unexpected obstructions, across and over which his clear, strong will had gone without a waver. But he was not, a man to waste time in reflection. His life had been so busy that rest merely meant a few hours' sleep — dreamless sleep, from which his mind arose clarified and fresh, ready once more to contend with the fog and obscurity of his professional labours. He had taken as much from life as ho could get ; you could see that in the stoop which prematurely bowed his big muscular shoulders, in the grey hairs about his temples, in the hard lines about his mouth, in the watchful expression of his eyes, that seemed to have lost the power of mere sight in their eagerness to look beyond the surface of people and things ; you could hoar it in his precise, crisp voice, whose tones had forgotten to falter with love or tremble with passion.

Probably ho did not know that twenty years of work and continual application had done their work, and turned out a mere machine, a wonderful machine certainly — the most wonderful — but no more.

He had forgotten lon^r ago that love, sentiment, and tenderness nre the wings of the soul on which man sours above the mere machine — the perfected animal. He had no time to think of snch thing's. He despised the man who believed in them. He sympathized with only one human weakness — ambition. And in him even that was a well-trained, docile weakness, never allowed

to grow precocious or overweening, or too heavy to carry fis h<> Rtrn«rsclerl up the hill.

He put out the lamp, locked the office door, and walked downstairs in the dark, ■walked firmly and heavily as a strong man does along a well-beaten track. In the street he commenced his walk home, going

no more hurriedly than if it had been daytime, bearing himself as he always did — upright and unflurried.

Some men have different manners by day and night — manners and carriage dependent on who is looking. But the policeman who chanced to meet Paris Herbert returning from night, work saw the same staid, selfcontained man who walked to his place at the table in the Supreme Court. Turning the corner by the Town Hall a man, hurrying along with quick nervous steps, bumped up against him. " Again, Richard !' ' said the lawyer, in his usual unruffled tones. "Dreaming! Careless where you are going, or what you are doing." " Hullo, Paris !" replied the man, stopping himself with a jerk, and speaking in a gasping way as if he was out of breath. "Going home? Well, you're to be congratulated — you always are — as I told Simpson. ' The poor devil will have no chance,' I said, meaning the what-do-you-call 'em, the plaintiff, and no more he did. Damned shame — though you're to be congratulated." " I wish 1 could congratulate you on anything," Paris replied, not bitterly or even fretfully, but as one stating an acknowledged fact. "I don't know," said the man, laughing cheerlessly. " I don't know. Of course you have a good balance at the bank. You are respected. You will be a judge and God knows what some day. And T — l'm the ne'er-do-well brother — the black sheep — and I've got a wife and six children to feed, thank God ! and precious little to feed 'em on. But I'm hanged if I can see that you're the happier man. I couldn't be happy if I were you — hang me, no! My little Kate more than balances your judgeship." The optimistical black sheep laughed gaily. He was thinking of the wife who would open the door of his ferry-built villa residence, who would give him a kiss before she allowed him to take his coat off, who would wait on him, as no servant of his

brother's could, while he drank a cup of tea and eat an unbuttered sandwich. He thought of these things, and laughed merrily, without any discordant note of bitterness or envy to spoil the harmony of his mirth. "It ip, a matter of opinion," said the successful brother, drily. "Good-night, Richard." He went on his way to the mansion, which was his home, where a well-paid butler, aided by a well-paid cook, had prepared for him a delicate and well-chosen repast — not forgetful of that '63 port which the master had bought and imported from the cellars of a bankrupt client in London. The loneliness and silence of the house did not jar on him as he let himself in with his latch key, nor, as he solemnly eat his supper, did any vision of a talkative, sympathetic wife trouble him. He smacked his lips, and drank an extra glass of wine. A wife with inquisitive questions would have disturbed him ; the rich full-bodied wine cheei'ed him. As he leisurely undressed — taking each garment off, and folding it with a care which explained how he managed to dress on fifteen pounds a year — his thoughts reverted to his brother. hven in the darkness of their meeting that evening the lawyer's practised eye had not been unobservant, of the ne'er-do-well's threadbare raiment. " Richard will be wanting another loan," he mused, giving his frock coat a final pat before laying it carefully on a chair for the night. " I should say that five pounds is the utmost he can repay in three months. Yes, out of ten pounds' wages one pound thirteen and four is as much as he can possibly manage a month."

Paris gave his butler ten pounds a month. Not that he cured for servants or ostentatious expense of any description, but because, after mature reflection, he had decided that his position required a butler.

There was do such reason to induce him to give his brother anything, and he sometimes thought he was rather weak to lend him an occasional " liver." Still he

excused himself with tho thought that his brother was after all very honest, and always repaid him, "I must warn him, though," hu continued, as he turned over on his side in bed preparatory to going to sleep, " that no habit requires more checking than that of living continually in advance of one's income. It inevitably ends in the Bankruptcy Court." His own income was some tive thousand pounds a year, and he lived very far behind it — a habit more likely, as in his wisdom he judged, to lead to very different places — to the Court of St. James 1 , to tho Council Chamber — in fjict, to a chair amongst the seats of the mighty. He had slept for nearly an hour, dreamless and still as wjis his wont, when lie woke with a start. His heart was beating rapidly, and its throbbing shook him painfully. Ho was not frightened. This was not the iirst attack of heart palpitation he had had, so he turned over and lay flat on his back, waiting calmly for the furious pulsation to cease. The room was lightened by a moonbeam, which stole between the folds of the heavy curtains covering the windows. He glanced carelessly at the little beam in which a thousand motes were dancing, but his eye passed over it, heedless of its charm, to where, in the shadow beyond, he could discern si durk shape slowly taking form and substance till he could distinguish that it was a man. Even as he made this discovery the man stepped forward, ami advancing till the moonbeam fell full on his face, stood there motionless, looking towards the bed. His would have been h hideous face at any time, but now, silhouetted by the ray of light, appearing almost like a detached head — for the man's body and limbs were invisible in the darkness — it had a ghostly and loathsome appearance. The low forehead, the squinting eyes, the thin sneering lips, and the skin wrinkled and seamed with deep furrows, everyone of which was unmistakably ploughed by some

hideous and degrading vice, all stood out plainly in the death light that played on them. Still the. lawyer was not frightened. He intuitively arrived at the conclusion that he was dreaming. " Indigestion and over excitement," he murmured. " I must see Smiles in the ■morning. He will order me a holiday, I know." He sighed. After twenty years without a holiday, it was hard to have to take one. He glanced at the face in the moonbeam again, not with any horror. The features — at least most of them — were familiar to him. He had defended the possessors of some of those features, and he only smiled as he noted the insatiable cruelty, lust, envy and malice that glared at him from that fearful countenance.

" That face would hang him," he mused " Unless he had a very clever advocate at his

back." Pie brought to uiind with satisfaction a case which he had won for the owner of such a face only a few weeks before. A case of attempted wife. ' murder — a case unparalleled for brutality, a case so clear that there seemed no hope for his client. But he had won it. The jury had acquitted the man — not for his innocence, but for the brilliance of

The lawyer smiled proudly a of the circumstances of the case

" I believe," he said aloud, " I could induce a jury to find the Serpent not guilty of Eve's fall."

Across the face in the moonbeam a grim smile flitted, and almost instantly the face

vanished

" I knew it was a dream," remarked the lawyer placidly, and shut his eyes. His heart was still throbbing when he opened them again.

"It is wonderful how long a dream seems to last," he said, looking towards the light. " Probably the whole thing only takes a few seconds." The hideous face was gone, but in its place, from the dazzling white moonbeam, there looked at him a vision so soft and pure that the ethereal whiteness of the light seemed a proper and suitable setting for such a picture. It was the face of a young girl, yet a face infinitely sad, and gentle as the face of Magdalen, who sought and found forgiveness, but not forgetfulness. " I never forget a face,'' said the lawyer, eyeing the face critically. " That is Alice." He had not forgotten — even twenty years of grind, grind, grind at the same monotonous legal mill had not quite crushed that. But the face meaut no more to him than the papers — dead and useless — in the deed boxes at his office. They both served to remind him of episodes in his life — that was all. " It is a good thing for me," he continued aloud, " that Alice did die.

If I had married her — as I believe I would have bat for my father's wise advice — I should have been hampered in all my labours by a woman with nerves, and fancies and a hundred follies. I should not have succeeded as I have. Really it was not ray fault (he began to feel irritated by the sad, pare face) that she committed

suicide. I offered her a good settlement — few men do that." In the girl's eyes there arose a look of tender compassion, of intense yearning, and her lips trembled as though she strove to utter some word, befoi'e she vanished from his sight for ever. This time the lawyer did not close his eyes, for another face almost instantly replaced the girl's. " Charlie!" said the lawyer sharply, as if he had expected this vision to follow the other. The familiar name seemed strange on his lips, who was the only person to call his brother Richard rather than Dick. The name spoke of sometime anterior to those twenty methodical years, and the appearance of the vision told that also. It was hard to believe that this boyish face, crowned with long, wavy hair, a face on whose every feature was written " dreamer and poet," could be the face of a sometime friend of the hard, practical lawyer. " My two follies," continued Paris, " Alice and Charlie." He frowned as if he remembered something annoying. " Everybody has their individual skeleton in the closet. Charlie is mine. Luckily he is never likely to speak from the grave, and as to papers, I have been a lawyer too long to retain incriminating documents in my possession." His voice was softened for a second, but on further reflection hardened again. " Really he was very good to let me off. But I don't know — it was his nature. Reckless, extravagant., careless of money, how could he value what I " He did not utter the last word, but he cast a look of contempt at the boyish face before it vanished like the others. The lawyer closed his eyes. His heart pulsated more normally. He would soon, he thought, pass again into dreamless sleep. Suddenly something or someone touched him on the forehead. Something seemed to rise in his throat and choke him. He opened his eyes and

gasped for breath — gasped as one who has looked on some deadly and unspeakable terror. # * * * # While Paris Herbert, in his mansion home, saw visions and dreamed dreams, his brother Richard, in his jerry-built villa, conversed with his wife on the- ways and means of their little establishment. "i shall have to get a 'tenner' from Paris, I'm afraid," said Richard with a sigh. " Marjorie must jhave a new frock you say, and old Blobbs won't give us any more meat till his account is squared." "Oh! Dick!" cried his wife, "d'ye mean to say that Paris will give us all that?" " Not (/ioc, my dear," answered the ne'er-do-well, laughing at the idea, " but ho may lend it to me, you know. I'll see him at any rate at dinner time to-morrow." "But how will you pay it back?" she asked anxiously. " Oh, Paris is very good in that way. Me will give me plenty of time. 1 shall have to walk into town every morning, and take sandwiches with me instead of buying lunch, I might give up tobacco, too, for a bit, I suppose." His wife sighed. She could never quite come to think us he did that it was very kind of Paris, out of his riches, to sometimes lend them money on no security. She was feminine enough to think he could afford to give it. At twelve o'clock, punctually, on the following day, Richard, looking still more needy and generally out-at-elbows in the glaring daylight, made his way up to his brother's office. He was surprised to find the clerks, genei'ally so busy, congregated together idly in the outer office, all talking in loud and unsubdued tones. Directly he entered their voices hushed, and one of them, with great politeness, whispered that the managing clerk was waiting to see him. When he passed into that gentleman's sanctum he was further surprised by tho very low bow with which he was Baluted.

" Ah, Mr. Herbert !" said the manager, who usually addressed him casually as Mr. Richard, "you have, of course, stopped round to find out what I know as to Mr. Paris's monetary arrangements. There is — ah ! — there is no will. And you will — forgive the pun — ah ! — inherit a very pretty little fortune. Something under fifty thousand, for probate purposes." " What the deuce d'ye mean ?" cried the ne'er-do-well, collapsing into the nearest chair. " G-ood gracious !" cried the manager, in his turn fcoo astonished to retain the demeanour of blended sorrow, sympathy, and jocular servility with which he had prepared to greet the needy-looking heir.

"You don't mean to say that you are unaware that Mr. Paris died last night? Died suddenly in his sleep of heart failure — syncope — whatever the doctors call it. A beautiful death they say — no pain — nothing — just whiff like a child falling asleep. And this morning the colony is sorry — ah ! — that is, regrets the loss of her most prominent lawyer — the ablest pleader — that she has ever had." As Richard — Dick no more — told his wife that evening, people are very peculiar. Everybody regretted the loss to the colony of the great lawyer — the future judge, and perhaps member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council — but no one seemed sorry for Paris Herbert himself.