"AS YOU BELIEVE IN GOD!"
Aurora Lane and Judge Henderson both started back as they faced one
another. For the moment neither spoke.
Aurora was pale, quite beyond her wont, haggard-looking about the eyes.
She had come direct from her home, without alteration of her usual daily
costume. In spite of all, she was very far from uncomely as she stood
now, about her the old indefinable stamp of class which always had clung
to her. Certainly she was quite the equal in appearance of this tall
man, soft from easy living, who faced her now, a trifle pasty of skin, a
trifle soft about the jaws, a trifle indefinite about the waist--a man
with a face as pale and haggard as her own.
Tense as she was, her long schooling in repression stood her in such
stead as to leave her in the better possession of self-control.
"My dear--my dear Madam----" began Judge Henderson.
The hearer in the room beyond must have caught the pause in his voice,
its agitation--and must have heard the even tones of the woman as she
spoke at last, after a long silence.
"I have come to your office, as you know, for the first time," said
Aurora Lane. She gave him no title, no formal address. "It is the first
time in twenty years."
"You have lived a somewhat secluded life, yes, my dear Madam." His
voice, his manner, his attitude, all were labored. He at least knew or
suspected that he was talking to two women, and not one; for there was
no way for Anne to escape and no way in which he could be sure she did
not hear.
"You know about him--about the boy? Of course, everyone in town does. He
didn't die. He's been away--in college. I never wanted him to see this
place. But now he's come back--you know all about it. He's in jail.
We've been thinking perhaps you could do something--that you would help
us."
Her high, clear, staccato voice, easily audible far, now showed her own
keyed-up condition.
Judge Henderson raised a large white hand. "My dear Madam," said he,
himself very far from calm, "let us be calm! Let us above all things be
calm and practical."
Aurora Lane's face froze into a sudden icy mask of wonder, of
astonishment. She gulped a little. "I'm trying to be calm. I'm
desperate, or I'd never have come here. You know that."
He was mumbling and clucking in his throat, gesturing imploringly,
trying to stop her swift speech, which might be overheard, but she went
on, not understanding.
"Until just now I was so happy. He was done with his schooling--ready to
go out at his work. The expenses were very heavy for us, but we've
managed. Look!"
She drew from her worn pocketbook the single bill that she had left in
all the world, a tight-creased, worn thing. "In some way I've managed to
hold on to this," said she. "It's all I've got left in all the world.
That's my twenty-odd years of savings--except what I've spent to bring
up my boy. I've got no more."
"My dear Madam," said Judge Henderson again, sighing, "life certainly
has its trials at times." A remark sufficiently banal to pass muster
with both his hearers, Aurora Lane here and Anne Oglesby in the room
beyond. But, still ignorant of any other auditor, Aurora went on as
though she had not heard him:
"I thought I'd come and talk to you--at last. If only Don could get out,
I'd be willing to leave with him. We'd never trouble anybody any more."
Her face was turned to him beseechingly.
"I know, of course, that you could save him if you liked.... I've had a
pretty hard time of it. Don't you want to do this for him--for us--how
can you _help_ wanting to? You, of all men! My God! Oh, my God!"
"Hush! Hush! Don't speak so loud! Pray compose yourself, my dear Madam,"
exclaimed Judge Henderson, himself so far from composed. His own face
was ghastly in its open apprehension. "He's ruined himself, that's all,
that boy," he concluded lamely.
She stood before him, stony cold, for a time, growing whiter and whiter.
"And what about my own ruin? What does it leave to me, if they take my
boy--all I have in the world? I didn't think you could hesitate a
moment--not even you!" Her voice, icy cold, was that of another woman.
He turned from her, flinging out his hands. "He has disgraced you----"
he began, still weakly; for he at least knew he was doubly on the
defensive now, before these two women, terrible in their love.
"No, he has not!" flared Aurora Lane at last. "If I've had disgrace it's
not through any fault of his. If he raised a hand in my defense, it was
the first man's hand that has been raised for me in all this town--in
all my life!"
She held before him again the tight-folded little bill, seeking with
trembling fingers to unfold it so that he might see its pitifully small
denomination. She shook it in his face in sudden rage. "That's my life
savings! If there was such a thing as justice in the world, would I be
helpless as this--so helpless that I could find it possible to come here
to talk to you? Justice? Justice! Ah, my God in heaven!"
Aurora Lane's voice was slightly rising. She was fronting him in the
last courage of despair. "You'd see that boy perish--you'd let him die?
If I thought that was true, I'd be willing to do everything I could to
ruin this town. I'd pull the roof down on it if I were strong enough.
I'd throw myself away, indeed. I'd curse God--I'd die. Above all, I'd
curse you, with my last breath."
Anne, in the next room, rooted in the horror of her silence, could not
have heard his reply, but almost she might have pictured him, standing
white, ghastly, trembling, as he was when he heard these words.
"But you can't do it--you can't deny him--he's a human being like
yourself--he's part of----Ah, you'll get him free, I know!" Aurora's
voice was pleading now. Judge Henderson's own voice was hoarse,
unnatural, when at last he got it.
"Look at this message," he croaked, in a half whisper; and showed her
the crumpled bit of paper which he had held in his own hand. He beckoned
to her--yet again--for silence, but she did not understand.
"What is it?" asked Aurora. "What do you mean?"
"From the state's attorney! I have accepted this retainer. I'm of the
prosecution! You have come too late. What can I do?"
"Prosecution--what do you mean? Prosecute him--_Don_? Too late--my God!
Am I always too late--is it always in all the world for me--too late!
Prosecute _him_? What do you _mean_?"
The sudden, wailing cry broke from her. Then her voice trailed off into
a whisper--a whisper which might have been heard very far--which was
heard through the half-closed door which led to the inner room. "Too
late!" And at length the long-tried soul of Aurora Lane broke out in a
final and uncontrolled rebellion, all bounds down, all restraint
forgotten, every instinct at last released of its long fettering:
"You disown him--you'd disown your own flesh and blood--you'd let him
die! Why, you'd betray your own Master for the price of office and of
honor! Oh, I know, I know! The limelight! Publicity! Oh, you Judas!--Ah,
Judas! Judas! You, his father! _Your own son!_"
Then sobs, deep, convulsive.
Came sudden rustling of garments in the adjoining room. The intervening
door was flung wide. Anne Oglesby, her face pale, tense, came out into
the room where stood these two.
"What is this?" she demanded of Judge Henderson. "This is Mrs. Lane?
_Don's your son?_"
She turned to Aurora inquiringly.
"I have heard--I could not help hearing. His father! Don told me his
father was dead. What's all this? Tell me!"
For a moment they stood apart, three individuals only. Then, slowly,
with subtle affiliation of sex, the women drew together, allied against
the man.
It was Anne who again was first to speak. Her voice was high, clear,
cold as ice, with a patrician note which came from somewhere out of the
past.
"Let me have all this quite plain," said she. "Mrs. Lane said 'flesh and
blood!' Mrs. Lane said '_your own son!_' I heard her. What does it
mean?"
"This is what it means!" said Aurora Lane, suddenly drawing Anne to her
closely, after her one swift glance. "My boy's in jail. This--this
man--Judge Henderson--is his father. He says he's hired to murder
him--and he's our child."
"I didn't know!" broke out Judge Henderson, now facing both his hearers.
"I never knew! You said he was dead--you told me so. It's all half a
lifetime ago. I've had nothing to do with you, nor you with me, since we
broke off more than twenty years ago. That was as you wished. God! I was
only a man. You _said_ the child died."
"Yes," said Aurora Lane, turning to Anne; "that's true--I did. I told
that one lie to protect the boy. I sent him away when he was a baby to
protect him. I said he was dead--to protect him--to keep him from ever
knowing. But you know--you saw him--you _felt_ it--you must have known,
yesterday." She confronted the trembling man once more.
"Yesterday?" said Anne Oglesby.
"Yes. There was another trial then--and Judge Henderson prosecuted then
also!" She turned again to him for his answer.
"I dropped the case."
"You dropped it because you were paid to drop it! You traded another man
out of his own life's ambition--a better man than you are--that's what
you did when you dropped the case. There's nothing more to trade--we've
nothing more to pay--but how can you prosecute him--now--when his very
life's at stake--when he's charged with murder? The punishment's death!
You'd send him to the gallows now--my boy--and yours? You didn't know
him then! Is it likely? Don't lie about it--if you didn't know him,
_why_ didn't you? Were you so busy looking at your own picture on the
wall--so wrapped up in your own ambitions, that you couldn't see
anything else? Couldn't you see your own flesh and blood--and mine?
What's twenty years? Haven't I lived them, and wouldn't I know
him--didn't I--when I saw him? You Judas!"
Motionless, she stood looking at the speechless man before her, until
she felt the closer drawing to her of the tall young beauty at her side.
"And you're Anne?" she said, turning to the girl, her own large dark
eyes now soft. "I know. He loves you, Don. Has he said good-by to you?
Has he said he wasn't worthy of you, because he had--no father? _This_
is his father--Don's father--Judge William Henderson. He'll not deny it.
I told Don he mustn't think of you--of all women in the world--just
because you are so close to Judge Henderson--Don's father.
"Now you see why I told my boy that lie--I didn't want him ever to know
his father--yes, I'd told him his father was dead. And I don't want to
seem a worse liar to my own boy--I've been bad enough, the way it is."
She felt Anne Oglesby's arm draw her closer yet, felt the soft warm body
of the girl against her own.
"I make only trouble," said Aurora, murmuring. "And you--you're so
beautiful. I don't blame him."
"I love him, too!" said Anne Oglesby steadily. "I'm not going to give
him up."
Aurora Lane's tears came then.
"You--you two women--" gasped Judge Henderson--"do you know what you're
doing here? Do you think I don't suffer, too?" Then Anne saw that every
accusation Aurora Lane had made was true and more than true.
"About that trial yesterday"--he turned to Aurora--"I _did_ have some
sort of superstitious feeling--I own that--I couldn't account for it--I
couldn't explain it. But you had assured me that your--our--er--the
child--had died in infancy. I thought--I hoped it was only my own guilty
conscience making me see things. I--I _have_ had a conscience. But I
knew nothing--we'd not met for years."
"That's all true," said Aurora to Anne, nodding toward Judge Henderson.
"I've scarce spoken more than twenty words to him in twenty years. I've
kept the secret, and carried the blame. Until yesterday Don never knew
about himself--about his having no father. He hasn't a guess even now
who his father was--or is--at least he'll never make the right guess. No
one has, no one ever will. They may wrong another man, but they'll not
suspect the right one."
She felt the strong young arm of Anne still about her, and so went on,
nodding again toward Judge Henderson--"I asked him to defend his own
son--you heard me, then? And he's told me he's hired to hang his son!
And I called him 'Judas.' And I pray God to sink him in hell if he does
this work. After all, there must be a hell somewhere--I think there must
be. This is not right--it's not right! I've stood it all till now, but I
can't stand this."
"Wait!" exclaimed Judge Henderson. "Give me time to think, I tell you!
My whole life's up on this, as well as yours. You've had twenty years to
think about this, and I've not had that many minutes. You and I've not
met, I say--our paths have lain totally apart. It was in the past--we'd
lived it down."
"_We_ had lived it down!" Aurora Lane's laugh was bitter enough, and she
made no other comment.
Still she felt, closer and closer, the warm young body of the girl who
stood by her as the two women faced the man in the ancient and undying
battle of sex.
"Well, I dropped that case," resumed Judge Henderson, "name or claim the
reason as you like. But _this_ case is different----"
"Why?" asked Anne Oglesby. "What's the difference between the two cases?
You say you didn't know, then. Now you know."
"But I've my reputation to keep clean, Anne! The higher you climb, the
riskier the ladder. I could drop that little case yesterday, but let me
drop _this_ case, with all the whole town back of it--and all my whole
political party back of it, too--that's another matter!"
"Is it, indeed!"
"Yes!" he rasped. "I put Judge Reeves on the bench here. It's a big
case. If I withdrew a second time--if things got stirred up and people
began to talk--why, that would be enough to put Old Hod Brooks on the
scent. He'd well enough take care of all the rest! It would be the end
of my career--in twenty minutes. There'd be nothing left of my
chances--there'd be nothing left of my reputation--the work of twenty
years would be undone. I'd be ruined!"
"The work of twenty years!" whispered Aurora Lane to herself. "Twenty
years! And--ruin!" Her voice rose again. "What about us others? You're
talking about yourself, your reputation, your success--how about Don?
His _life's_ at stake. So is mine--I'd not survive it if they killed my
boy."
"What's he to you, anyhow?" broke out Judge Henderson--"this man Brooks?
Are you in any conspiracy of his? What's under this? What's he to you?
Was he ever--has he ever----"
"Stop!" said Aurora Lane, her voice sharp, her face cameo-cold. "Not
another word!" And even the sullen and distracted soul of the man before
her acknowledged the imperative command. "You traded him out of his
place. You're trying to trade now in your own son's life! Is that--can
that really be true of any man?"
"Don't bait me too far!" he rejoined savagely. "Don't you go on now and
drive me into fighting these charges."
"I don't think you would, Uncle," said the calm voice of Anne Oglesby.
"I don't think you would.
"So this," she added softly, "is what my guardian was! _In loco
parentis!_"
The man before her writhed in his own bitter suffering, flinging out his
hands imploringly under the lash of her words.
"Anne! Anne!"--Aurora turned to the girl at her side--"I wish all this
might have been spared you. You're so young! But it all had to come out
some time, I suppose, and I'd rather have you learn it from me than from
Don. You've not seen him--he has not told you?"
"No. We only had a moment--not alone--just a little while ago. They took
him away--I didn't know why, till just now. We've just heard what the
coroner's jury said. But I'll not leave him till he tells me, to, and
only then if he says he doesn't love me."
"He could never say that!" said Aurora Lane. "But I told him he must
leave you."
"Did he say he would?"
"Yes, yes, of course! But when I told him that, I didn't know you; and I
did not think Don ever would know who his father was. He doesn't know
even now."
Judge Henderson turned suddenly, catching at a thought which came to him
from Aurora's words.
"Why should anyone _ever_ know!" he began. "If this whole matter could
be quieted down--if this case could be dismissed----
"Would you promise me," he turned toward Aurora--"if I could manage in
some way to get all this hushed down--if I could save the boy's
life--would you promise me, both of you, never to tell a soul in the
world--never to let anyone get a breath of this? You are the only two
that really know it at all--you said, Aurora, that even the boy doesn't
know it all. Why should he, ever? It's been hid this long, why not
longer?"
"Anne and I, and yourself, are the only human beings in the world who
know it all," said Aurora Lane.
"Can _you_ keep such a secret?" Judge Henderson turned more doubtfully
to Anne Oglesby, whose cold, quiet scorn had cut him even more deeply
than the bitterer words of the older woman.
"I'd do anything for Don--anything I thought he'd be willing to have me
do. But I don't see how such a thing as this could be kept down. How can
the law be set aside?"
"Listen here," he said, facing her, a little color of hope at last in
his face. "You don't in the least know what you've been starting here,
and you don't know anything about the remedy for it. The law? It's close
to politics, sometimes! If I fall--can't you see--I drag down plenty of
others--I drag down my own town--I drag down my whole judiciary--I've
been on the bench here myself. Oh, you two don't know all about how
things are done in politics. I'd drag down all the machinery of my own
party in this state--the thing would go even wider than that--I'd be
compromising the national administration itself. I tell you, it's ruin,
ruin, if this thing gets out. This is the very crisis of all my life--my
whole fate, my whole past and future, are in your hands now, and much
more beside--in the hands of you two women.
"But I've got to fight the best I may," he added, walking excitedly
apart, and smiting one hand into the other. "Look here, now," and he
turned to them with a new look on his haggard face. "Your fate's _in my
hands_, too! Go beyond reason with me--threaten and goad me too far--and
I'll see what can be done to ruin you two, if you succeed in ruining
me!"
"I've not asked that," said Aurora Lane. "I don't care about that.
What's revenge to me? And what's ruin? I've asked nothing of
you--nothing, but my boy's life, and never that till now. You gave it to
me once, unasked. I'm asking it again, now--his life--my boy's. I bore
him in grief and sorrow. It's your time of travail now. That's all."
Judge Henderson almost wept in his own self-pity.
"Think how horribly, how grotesquely unjust all this is," his voice
trembled--"raking up all the deeds of a man's youth. The past ought to
be _forgotten_. A man's past----"
"Or a woman's?" said Aurora.
"Well, yes, or a woman's. But it's men like me who have to build up
things, do things, administer things, wisely and justly. I've been a
judge on the bench here, before the world, I say. And here you two
women--why, it's ghastly, it's terrible, its _criminal_. Your dragging
me down--it--it's a hellish thing to do."
"What? What's that?" The voice of Aurora Lane rose again. "If there's
any hell, it's for a false judge. You once sat on the bench,
yonder--yes. Oh, Judas--worse--you are ten times worse than Judas!--Drag
you down--drag all the town, all the state, all the society down? Why,
yes, I would if I could! I will, I will!"
But, sobbing as she was, and desperate, she felt the light hand of Anne
Oglesby now swiftly patting her shoulder for silence. The girl faced her
guardian with the same light smile on her lips, cool and contemptuous.
"Wait a minute, Uncle," she said. "A moment ago you spoke of our fate
being in your hands, too--of one ruin offset against another. Come now,
you're a trader--you have been all your life, Uncle--it seems you're
always willing to trade in the practice of the law. That's how you've
got up where you are."
Her smile, her words, cut him beyond measure, but he clung to his idea.
"Very well, then. Now, suppose we trade!" He spoke sneeringly, but
inwardly he was trembling, for he knew not what moment Aurora Lane might
publicly make good her threat.
"What can he mean?" Aurora turned to Anne. But Anne, shrewder at the
time, broke in: "Leave him alone. Let him go on."
"Well, now," said Judge Henderson, and actually half began to clear his
throat, so sweet did his new thought appear to him, "as I was
saying--there's no actual indictment yet--there's been no trial--the
coroner has only held him over. Say I'd take on this prosecution,
ostensibly--ostensibly--conditionally--ostensibly--to keep down any
suspicion; and then, later on, after several continuances and delays,
you know, and the disappearance of all the witnesses for the
state--hum!--yes, I'll say it might be done. I'm not sure it couldn't be
done more or less easily, now I come to think of it--I know Reeves, and
I know how much he'd like to be governor of this state--they have to
come downstate every once in a while for available timber.
"So, my dear girl," he turned to Anne in virtuous triumph, "after all,
since this would do two things--save the boy's life and save my
reputation, it might not be discreditable to be what you call a
'trader'!" There really was exultation in his smile.
"What do you want for it?" asked Anne Oglesby coldly. "Where would it
leave Don? In jail indefinitely?"
"I could not state it more precisely! _He looks like me!_ Oh, I'll admit
that--my feeling was right, my conscience was right! He _is_ my son.
But _because_ he is and _because_ he looks like me, he's got to stay in
jail where he'll not be _seen_,--a year or two, perhaps. There can't be
any bail."
The two white-faced women looked each into the other's face, sad-eyed.
Anne's breath came tremblingly. "It's the best we can do!" said she at
last; and Aurora, seeing how it was, nodded mutely.
"What do you want for it, Uncle?" demanded Anne contemptuously again.
"I want--silence!" said he harshly, at last beginning to assert himself.
"Silence! And I've got to be sure about it."
Suddenly he pulled open a drawer in the table before him. The women
started, fearing a weapon; but it was only a book he drew out--an old,
dusty book, the edges of its leaves once gilded--a copy of the Holy
Scriptures, very old and dusty.
Judge Henderson by accident now saw the fly leaf, for the first time in
years. It was the little Bible his own father had given him, half a
lifetime ago, when he was first starting out into the practice of the
law. On the yellowed leaf in paled ink could still be seen the
inscription his father had written there in Latin for his son:
"_Filio meo; Crede Deo._--To my son; Believe in God!"
"Will you swear on the Bible?" demanded Judge Henderson, "both of you,
that you'll never tell nor hint a word of this to any human being in the
world--not even to him--the boy?"
The hand which held the dusty little volume was trembling, but Judge
Henderson was not thinking of his own father, nor of the inscription in
the little book.
"Yes!" said Aurora Lane at once. But Anne Oglesby raised a hand for
pause.
"I'll not swear to keep back anything from him, my husband. I'm not sure
I could."
"Your husband----"
"I'm going to marry him, unless he sends me away."
"It can't be soon--it may be very long--it will be years----" Judge
Henderson was getting back a little color now, a little
self-assertiveness, a little more readiness to argue.
"I can wait," said Anne. "But I can't buy him cheap--Don wouldn't let
me. I know who his father is, and he ought to know it, too. That's his
right."
"Anne," said Aurora Lane, "I denied him that right. You got my secret by
accident. Can't you keep it, too? It's a heavy weight that Judge
Henderson has laid on more than one woman--a load to be borne by three
women, myself, Miss Julia, and you. But this is to save Don's life."
"You'll swear secrecy on the Book?" broke in Judge Henderson.
"Yes!" said Anne Oglesby at length. "If you'll swear to perjure yourself
against your oath of office as judge and as attorney--as you've said you
would--I'll swear. Is that the trade?"
"It's the only hope he has, the only hope that you have, and the only
hope that I have. Absolute silence! Absolute secrecy! I'm going to save
him--but I'm going to save my own self, too." A slight color was in
Henderson's gray face.
"Oh, you trader!" said Anne Oglesby, all her scorn for him now patent,
fully voiced. "You sepulcher of a man! You failure! Oh, yes, yes, I'll
swear! And I'll keep my oaths and my promises all my life, so help me
God! Lift up the Book! You, too, Aurora."
"I swore it twenty years ago," said Aurora Lane. "I will again. You
Judas! You coward! Lift up the Book! Lift it up, so that I may see! Is
that the book they call the Bible--that tells of love and mercy, and
truth, and justice, and forgiveness of sins? Lift it up, so that I may
see!"
They faced him, their right hands raised, and he held up the Book, his
thumb under the cover, exposing the inscription which he had not seen
for years and did not now see.
"As you believe in God!" began Judge William Henderson.