It was soon apparent to Judge Custis, from this and other silent things, that a light-hearted, affectionate, strong, yet womanly, engine of energy const.i.tuted the young Delaware lawyer-politician. Keen, cunning, impulsive, hopeful, his feet provincial, his head among the birds, he combined facility and earnestness in almost mercurial relations to each other, and the Judge saw that these must const.i.tute a remarkable jury lawyer.

His face was shaven smooth; his throat and chin showed an early tendency to flesh; the poise of his head and thoughtful darting of his eyes and slight aqualinity of his nose indicated one who loved mental action and compet.i.tion, yet drew that love from a great, healthy body that had to be watched lest it relapse into indolence. The loss of his wife so soon after marriage had been followed by nearly complete indifference to women, and he had made politics his only consolation and mistress, harnessing her like a young mare with his old roadster of the law, and driving them together in the slender confines of his princ.i.p.ality, and then locking the law up among his office students to drive politics into the national arena at Washington.

"You require to be very neighborly, Clayton, in a small bailiwick like this?" the Judge inquired, as they strolled along the square in the soft evening.

"We have the best people in the world in Delaware, friend Custis: few traders, little law, scarcely any violence, and they are easy to please; but it is a high offence in this state not to be what is called 'a clever man.' You must stop, whatever be your errand, and smile and inquire of every man at his gate for every individual member of his household. The time lost in such kind, trifling intercourse is in the aggregate immense. But, Goy! I do love these people."

"It seems to me that you encourage that exaction."

"Well, I do. As an electioneerer, I can get away with any of 'em. Goy!

Why, Jim Whitecar, Lord bless your dear soul!"--this addressed to a thick-set, sandy, uncertain-looking man who was about retreating into the Capitol Tavern--"what brings you to town, Jim?"

"It's a free country, I reckon," exclaimed the suspicious-looking man.

"Goy! that's so, Jimmy. We're all glad to see you in Dover behaving of yourself, Jim. Now don't give me any trouble this year, friend Jimmy.

Behave yourself, and be an honor to your good parents that I think so much of. Oblige me, now!"

As they turned to cross the middle of the square, Clayton said:

"I'll have him at that whipping-post, hugging of it, one of these days."

"What is he?"

"A kidnapper down here in Sock.u.m, and a bad one: a dangerous fellow, too. I hear he says if I ever push him to the extremity of his co-laborer, Joe Johnson--whom I sent to the post and then saved from cropping--that he'll kill me. Goy!"--Mr. Clayton looked around a trifle apprehensively--"I'm ready for him."

"Delaware kidnapping is a great inst.i.tution," Custis said.

"It has an antiquity and extent you would hardly believe, friend Custis.

Long before our independence, in the year 1760, the statutes of Delaware had to provide against it. Our laws have never permitted the domestic slave-trade with other states."

The little place seemed to have a good society, and the beauty of the young girls sitting at the doors or walking in the evening showed something of the florid North Europe skins, Batavian eyes, and rotund Dutch or Quaker figures.

As they returned to the public square, a room in the tavern, almost brilliantly lighted for that day of candles, displayed its windows to the gaze of Clayton, who exclaimed:

"Goy! that is surely John Randel, Junior."

"That distinguished engineer?" observed his visitor, who had been waiting all the evening to broach the subject of his errand. "I have the greatest admiration of him. Shall we call on him?"

"Why, yes, yes," answered Clayton, dubiously; "I'm not afraid of him.

I--goy! I owe him nothing. He is such a litigious fellow, though; so persistent with it; _barratry_, _champetry_, mad incorrigibility: he's the wildest man of genius alive. But come on!"

Knocking at a door on the second floor, a sharp, prompt reply came out:

"Come!"

A middle-sized man, with a large head and broad shoulders, and cloth leggings, b.u.t.toned to above his knee, sat in a nearly naked, carpetless room, writing, his table surrounded by burning wax candles, and his countenance was proud and intense. Mr. Clayton rushed upon him and seized his hand:

"How is my friend Randel? The indefatigable litigant, the brilliant engineer, to whom ideas, goy! are like persimmons on the tree, abundant, but seldom ripe, and only good when frosted. How is he now and what is he at?"

"Stand there," spoke the engineer, "and look at me while I read the sentence I was finishing upon John Middleton Clayton of Delaware."

"Go it, Randel! Now, Custis, he'll put a wick in me and just set me afire. Goy!"

"'It is the curse of lawyers,'" the unrelaxing stranger read, "'to let their judgment for hire, from early manhood, to easy clients, or to suppress it in the cringing necessities of popular politics: hence that residue and fruit of all talents, the honest conviction of a man's bravest sagacity, perishes in lawyers' souls ere half their powers are fledged: they become the registers of other men, they think no more than wax.'"

Here Mr. Randel blew out one of the candles. The ill.u.s.tration was cogent. Mr. Clayton lighted it again with another candle.

"There's method in his madness, Custis," he said, with a wink. "Let me introduce my great friend to you, Randel?"

"Stop there," the engineer repeated, sternly, "till I have read my sentence. 'Seldom it is that a lawyer of useful parts, in a community as detached and pastoral as the State of Delaware, has a cause appealing to his manliness, his genius, and his avarice, like this of John Randel, Junior, civil engineer! No equal public work will probably be built in the State of Delaware during the lifetime of the said Clayton. No fee he can earn in his native state will ever have been the reward of a lawyer there like his who shall be successful with the suit of John Randel, Junior, against the Ca.n.a.l Company. No principle is better worth a great lawyer's vindication than that these corporations, in their infancy, shall not trample upon the private rights of a gentleman, and treat his scholarship and services like the labor of a slave.'"

"Well said and highly thought," interposed Judge Custis.

"'The said Clayton,'" continued John Randel, still reading, "'refuses the aid of his abilities to a stranger and a gentleman inhospitably treated in the State of Delaware.'"

"No, no," cried Clayton; "that is a charge against me I will not permit."

"'The said Clayton,'" read Randel, inflexibly, "'with the possibilities of light, riches, and honor for himself, and justice for a fellow-man, chooses cowardice, mediocrity--and darkness. He extinguishes my hopes and his.'"

With this, Mr. Randel, by a singular fanning of his hands and waft of his breath, put out all the candles at once and left the whole room in darkness.

Judge Custis was the first to speak after this extraordinary ill.u.s.tration:

"Clayton, I believe he has a good case."

"That is not the point now," Mr. Clayton said, with rising spirit and emphasis. "The point now is, 'Am I guilty of inhospitality?' Goy! that touches me as a Delawarean, and is a high offence in this little state.

It is true that this suitor is a stranger. He comes to me with an introduction from my brilliant young friend, Mr. Seward, of New York, who vouches for him. But the corporation he menaces is also ent.i.tled to hospitality: it is, in the main, Philadelphia capital. Girard himself, that frugal yet useful citizen, is one of its promoters. My own state, and Maryland, too, have interests in this work. Is it the part of hospitality to be taking advantage of our small interposing geography, and laying by the heels, through our local courts, a young, struggling, and, indeed, national undertaking?"

"Let the courts of your state, which are pure, decide between us," said John Randel, Junior, relighting the candles with his tinder-box.

"No lawyer ought to refuse the trial of such a public cause because of any state scruples," Judge Custis put in, in his grandest way. "That is not national; it is not Whig, Brother Clayton." The Judge here gave his entire family power to his facial energy, and expressed the Virginian and patrician in his treatment of the Delaware _bourgeois_ and plebeian.

"Granted that this corporation is young and untried: let it be disciplined in time, that it may avoid more expensive mistakes in the future. No cause, to a true lawyer, is like a human cause; the time may come when the talent of the American bar will be the parasite of corporations and monopolists, but it is too early for that degradation for you and me, Senator Clayton. The rights of a man involve all progress; progress, indeed, is for man, not man for progress. As a son of Maryland, if he came helpless and penniless to me, I would not let this gentleman be sacrificed."

"If I were a rich man, Clayton would take my case," the engineer said; "my poverty is my disqualification in his eyes."

He again essayed, in a dramatic way, to fan out the candles, but his breath failed him; his hands became limp, and then hastily covered his eyes, and he sank to the table with a groan, and put his head upon it convulsively.

"Gentlemen," he uttered, in a voice touching by its distress, "oh!

gentlemen, professional life--my art--is, indeed, a tragedy."

The easy sensibilities of Judge Custis were at once moved. Senator Clayton, looking from one to the other in nervous indecision, seeing Custis's dewy eyes, and Randel's proud breaking down, was himself carried away, and shouted:

"I goy! This is a conspiracy. But, Randel, I'll take your case; I can't see a man cry. Goy!"

As they all arose sympathetically and shook hands, a knock came on the door, and there was a call for Mr. Clayton. He returned in a few minutes, with a rather grim countenance, and said:

"Randel, I have just declined a big round retaining-fee to defend the very suit your tears and Brother Custis's have persuaded me to prosecute. But, goy! a tear always robbed me of a dollar."