By Advice of Counsel Part 27

Samuel Tutt used his influence this afternoon to try to persuade a young man not to carry out his father's wishes--expressed in a legally ineffective way--and I think he succeeded--although I'm not quite sure."

"That must have been Payson Clifford," answered Mr. Tutt. "What were the paternal wishes?"

"Mr. Tutt found a letter with the will in which the father asked the son to give twenty-five thousand dollars to a Miss Sadie Burch."

"Miss Sadie Burch!" repeated Mr. Tutt. "And who is she?"

"n.o.body knows," said Miss Wiggin. "But whoever she is, our responsibility stops with advising Mr. Payson Clifford that the letter has no legal effect. Mr. Tutt went further and tried to induce Mr.

Clifford not to respect the request contained in it. That, it seems to me, is going too far. Don't you think so?"

"Are you certain you never heard of this Miss Burch?" suddenly asked Mr.

Tutt, peering at her sharply from beneath his s.h.a.ggy eyebrows.

"Never," she replied.

"H'm!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mr. Tutt. "A woman in the case!"

"What sort of a young fellow is this Payson Clifford?" inquired Miss Wiggin after a moment.

"Oh, not so much of a much!" answered Mr. Tutt whimsically.

"And what was the father like?" she continued with a woman's curiosity.

"He wasn't so much of a much, either, evidently," answered Mr. Tutt.

We have previously had occasion to comment upon the fact that no client, male or female, consults a lawyer with regard to what he ought to do.

Women, often having decided to do that which they ought not to do, attempt to secure counsel's approval of the contemplated sin; but while a lawyer is sometimes called upon to bolster up a guilty conscience, rarely is he sincerely invited to act as spiritual adviser. Most men being worse than their lawyers, prefer not to have the latter find them out. If they have made up their minds to do a mean thing they do not wish to run the chance of having their lawyer shame them out of it. That is their own business. And it should be! The law presents sufficiently perplexing problems for the lawyer without his seeking trouble in the dubious complexities of his client's morals! Anyhow, that is the regulation way a lawyer looks at it and that is the way to hold one's clients. Do what you are instructed to do--so long as it isn't too raw!

Question the propriety of his course and while your client may follow your advice in this single instance he probably will not return again.

The paradoxical aspect of the matter with Mr. Tutt was that while he was known as a criminal lawyer whenever he was asked for advice he concerned himself quite as much with his client's moral as his legal duty. The rather subtle reason for this was probably to be found in the fact that since he found the law so easy to circ.u.mvent he preferred to disregard it entirely as a sanction of conduct and merely to ask himself "Now is this what a sportsman and a gentleman would do?" The fact that a man was a technical criminal meant nothing to him at all; what interested him was whether the man was or was not a "mean" man. If he was, to h.e.l.l with him! In a word, he applied to any given situation the law as it ought to be and not the law as it was. A very easy and flexible test! say you, sarcastically. Do you really think so? There may be forty different laws upon the same subject in as many different states of our political union, but how many differing points of view upon any single moral question would you find among as many citizens? The moral code of decent people is practically the same all over the terrestrial ball, and fundamentally it has not changed since the days of Hammurabi. The ideas of gentlemen and sportsmen as to what "is done" and "isn't done" haven't changed since Fabius Tullius caught snipe in the Pontine marshes.

Mr. Tutt was a crank on this general subject and he carried his enthusiasm so far that he was always tilting like Don Quixote at some imaginary windmill, dragging a very unwilling Sancho Panza after him in the form of his reluctant partner. Moreover, he had a very keen sympathy for all kinds of outcasts, deeming most of them victims of the sins of their own or somebody's else fathers. So when he learned from Miss Wiggin that Tutt had presumed to interfere with the financial prospects of the unknown Miss Sadie Burch he was distinctly aggrieved, less on her account to be sure than upon that of his client's whom he regarded more or less in his keeping. And, as luck would have it, the object of his grievance, having forgotten something, at that moment unexpectedly reentered the office to retrieve it.

"h.e.l.lo, Mr. Tutt!" he exclaimed. "Not gone yet!"

His senior partner glanced at him sharply, while Miss Wiggin hastily sidestepped into the corridor.

"Look here, Tutt!" said Mr. Tutt. "I don't know just what you've been telling young Clifford, or how you've been interfering in his private affairs, but if you've been persuading him to disregard any wish of his father plainly expressed in his own handwriting and incorporated with his will you've gone further than you've any right to go."

"But," expostulated Tutt, "you know how dangerous it is to meddle with things like that. Our experience certainly shows that it's far wiser to let the law settle all doubtful questions than to try to guess what the final testamentary intention of a dead testator really was. Don't you remember the Dodworth case? A hypersensitive conscience cost our widowed client ten thousand dollars! I say, leave well enough alone."

"'Well enough'! 'Well enough'!" snarled Mr. Tutt. "Are you going to const.i.tute yourself the judge of what is well enough for a young man's soul? I give you fair warning, Tutt: he's heard your side of it, but before he gets through he's going to hear mine as well!"

Samuel Tutt turned a faint pink in the region of his collar.

"Why, certainly, Mr. Tutt!" he stammered. "Do so, by all means!"

"You jolly well bet I will!" replied Mr. Tutt, jamming on his stovepipe.

Several days pa.s.sed, however, without the subject being mentioned further, while the proper steps to probate the will were taken as usual.

Payson Clifford's dilemma had no legal reaction. He had made up his mind and he was going to stick to it. He had taken the opinion of counsel and was fully satisfied with what he had done. n.o.body was going to know anything about it, anyway. When the proper time came he would burn the Sadie Burch letter and forget Sadie Burch. That is, he thought he was going to and that he could. But--as Plautus says: "_Nihil est miserius quam animus hominis conscius_."

You see, Payson Clifford, having been sent to a decent school and a decent college, irrespective of whether his father was a rotter or not, had imbibed something of a sense of honor. Struggle as he would against it, the shadow of Sadie Burch kept creeping athwart his mind. There were so many possibilities! Suppose she was in desperate straits? Hadn't he better look her up, anyhow? No, he most definitely didn't want to know anything about her! Supposing she really had rendered some service to his father for which she ought to be repaid as he had sought to repay her? These thoughts obtruded themselves upon Payson's attention when he least desired it, but they did not cause him to alter his intention to get his hooks into his father's whole residuary estate and keep it for himself. He had, you observe, a conscience, but it couldn't stand up against twenty-five thousand dollars reinforced by perfectly sound legal arguments.

No, he had a good excuse for not being a gentleman and a sportsman and he did not purpose to look for any reasons for doing differently. Then unexpectedly he was invited to dinner by Mr. Ephraim Tutt in a funny old ramshackle house on West Twenty-third Street with ornamented iron piazza railings all covered with the withered stalks of long dead wistarias, and something happened to him. "Payson Clifford's Twenty-five Thousand Dollar Dinner." He had no suspicion, of course, what was coming to him when he went there,--went, merely because Mr. Tutt was one of the very few friends of his father that he knew. And he held towards the old lawyer rather the same sort of patronizing att.i.tude that he had had towards the old man. It would be a rotten dinner probably followed by a deadly dull evening with a snuffy old fossil who would tell him long-winded, rambling anecdotes of what New York had been like when there were wild goats in Central Park.

The snuffy old fossil, however, made no reference whatever to either old New York or wild goats,--the nearest he came to it being wild oats.

Instead he began the dreary evening by opening a cupboard on his library wall and disclosing three long bottles, from which he partially filled a shining silver receptacle containing cracked ice. This he shook with astonishing skill and vigor, meantime uttering loud outcries of "Miranda! Fetch up the mint!" Then a buxom colored lady in calico--with a grin like that which made Aunt Sallie famous--having appeared, panting, with two large gla.s.ses and a bundle of green herbage upon a silver salver, the old fossil poured out a seething decoction--of which like only the memory remains--performed an incantation over each gla.s.s with the odoriferous greens, smiled fondly upon the work of his hands and remarked with amiable hospitality, "Well, my son! Glad to see you!--Here's how!"

Almost immediately a benign animal magnetism pervaded the bosom of Payson Clifford, and from his bosom reached out through his arteries and veins, his arterioles and venioles, to the uttermost ends of his being.

He perceived in an instant that Mr. Tutt was no ordinary man and his house no ordinary house; and this impression was intensified when, seated at his host's shining mahogany table with its heavy cut gla.s.s and queer old silver, he discovered that Miranda was no ordinary cook. He began to be inflated over having discovered this Mr. Tutt, who pressed succulent oysters and terrapin stew upon him, accompanied by a foaming bottle of Krug '98. He found himself possessed of an astounding appet.i.te and a prodigious thirst. The gas lights in the old bronze chandelier shone like a galaxy of radiant suns above his head and warmed him through and through. And after the terrapin Miranda brought in a smoking wild turkey with two quail roasted inside of it, and served with currant jelly, rice cakes, and sweet potatoes fried in melted sugar. Then, as in a dream, he heard a soul-satisfying pop and Miranda placed a tall, amber gla.s.s at his wrist and filled it with the creaming redrose wine of ancient Burgundy. He heard himself telling Mr. Tutt all about himself,--the most intimate secrets of his heart,--and saw Mr. Tutt listening attentively, almost reverently. He perceived that he was making an astonishing impression upon Mr. Tutt who obviously thought him a great man; and after keeping him in reasonable doubt about it for awhile he modestly admitted to Mr. Tutt that this was so. Then he drank several more gla.s.ses of Burgundy and ate an enormous pile of waffles covered with maple syrup. "I'se in town, honey!" Mr. Tutt had grown several sizes larger--the whole room was full of him. Lastly he had black coffee and some port. It was an occasion, he a.s.serted,--er--always goo' weather,--or somethin'--when goo' fellows got together! He declared with an emphasis which was quite unnecessary, but which, however, did not disturb him, that there were too few men like themselves in the world,--men with the advantage of education,--men of ideals. He told Mr.

Tutt that he loved him. He no longer had a father, and, evidently relying on further similar entertainments, he wanted Mr. Tutt for one.

Mr. Tutt generously a.s.sented to act in that capacity and as the first step a.s.sisted his guest upstairs to the library where he opened the window a few inches.

Presently, Payson did not know how exactly, they got talking all about life,--and Mr. Tutt said ruminatively that after all the only things that really counted were loyalty and courage and kindness,--and that a little human sympathy extended even in what sometimes seemed at first glance the wrong direction often did more good--made more for real happiness--than the most efficient organized charity. He spoke of the loneliness of age--the inevitable loneliness of the human soul,--the thirst for daily affection. And then they drifted off to college, and Mr. Tutt inquired casually if Payson had seen much of his father, who, he took occasion to remark, had been a good type of straightforward, honest, hard-working business man.

Payson, smoking his third cigar, and taking now and then a dash of cognac, began to think better of his old dad. He really hadn't paid him quite the proper attention. He admitted it to Mr. Tutt--with the first genuine tears in his eyes since he had left Cambridge;--perhaps, if he had been more to him--. But Mr. Tutt veered off again--this time on university education; the invaluable function of the university being, he said, to preserve intact and untarnished in a materialistic age the spiritual ideals inherited from the past.

In this rather commonplace sentiment Payson agreed with him pa.s.sionately. He further agreed with equal enthusiasm when his host advanced the doctrine that after all to preserve one's honor stainless was the only thing that much mattered. Absolutely! declared Payson, as he allowed Mr. Tutt to press another gla.s.s of port upon him.

Payson, in spite of the slight beading of his forehead and the blurr about the gas jets, began to feel very much the man of the world,--not a "six bottle man" perhaps, but--and he laughed complacently--a "two bottle man." If he'd lived back in the good old sporting days very likely he could have done better. But he's taken care of two full bottles, hadn't he? Mr. Tutt replied that he'd taken care of them very well indeed. And with this opening the old lawyer launched into his favorite topic,--to wit, that there were only two sorts of men in the world--gentlemen, and those who were not. What made a man a gentleman was gallantry and loyalty,--the readiness to sacrifice everything--even life--to an ideal. The hero was the chap who never counted the cost to himself. That was why people revered the saints, acclaimed the cavalier, and admired the big-hearted gambler who was ready to stake his fortune on the turn of a card. There was even, he averred, an element of spirituality in the gambler's carelessness about money.

This theory greatly interested Payson, who held strongly with it, having always had a secret, sneaking fondness for gamblers. On the strength of it he mentioned Charles James Fox--there was a true gentleman and sportsman for you! No mollycoddle--but a roaring, six bottle fellow--with a big brain and a scrupulous sense of honor. Yes, sir!

Charley Fox was the right sort! He managed to intimate successfully that Charley and he were very much the same breed of pup. At this point Mr.

Tutt, having carefully committed his guest to an ethical standard as far removed as possible from one based upon self-interest, opened the window a few more inches, sauntered over to the mantel, lit a fresh stogy and spread his long legs in front of the sea-coal fire like an elongated Colossus of Rhodes. He commenced his dastardly countermining of his partner's advice by complimenting Payson on being a man whose words, manner and appearance proclaimed him to the world a true sport and a regular fellow. From which flattering prologue he slid naturally into said regular fellow's prospects and aims in life. He trusted that Payson Clifford, Senior, had left a sufficient estate to enable Payson, Junior, to complete his education at Harvard?--He forgot, he confessed just what the residue amounted to. Then he turned to the fire, kicked it, knocked the ash off the end of his stogy and waited--in order to give his guest a chance to come to himself,--for Mr. Payson Clifford had suddenly turned a curious color, due to the fact that he was unexpectedly confronted with the necessity of definitely deciding then and there whether he was going to line up with the regular fellows or the second raters, the gentlemen or the cads, the C.J. Foxes or the Benedict Arnolds of mankind. He wasn't wholly the real thing, a conceited young a.s.s, if you choose, but on the other hand he wasn't by any means a bad sort. In short, he was very much like all the rest of us. And he wasn't ready to sign the pledge just yet. He realized that he had put himself at a disadvantage, but he wasn't going to commit himself until he had had a good chance to think it all over carefully. In thirty seconds he was sober as a judge--and a sober judge at that.

"Mr. Tutt," he said in quite a different tone of voice. "I've been talking pretty big, I guess,--bigger than I really am. The fact is I've got a problem of my own that's bothering me a lot."

Mr. Tutt nodded understandingly.

"You mean Sadie Burch."

"Yes."

"Well, what's the problem? Your father wanted you to give her the money, didn't he?"

Payson hesitated. What he was about to say seemed so disingenuous, even though it had originated with Tutt & Tutt.

"How do I know really what he wanted? He may have changed his mind a dozen times since he put it with his will."

"If he had he wouldn't have left it there, would he?" asked Mr. Tutt with a smile.

"But perhaps he forgot all about it,--didn't remember that it was there," persisted the youth, still clinging desperately to the lesser Tutt. "And, if he hadn't would have torn it up."

"That might be equally true of the provisions of his will, might it not?" countered the lawyer.

"But," squirmed Payson, struggling to recall Tutt's arguments, previously so convincing, "he knew how a will ought to be executed and as he deliberately neglected to execute the paper in a legal fashion, isn't it fair to presume that he did not intend it to have any legal force?"

"Yes," replied Mr. Tutt with entire equanimity, "I agree with you that it is fair to a.s.sume that he did not intend it to have any legal effect."