MISS JULIA
It was now ten o'clock of this eventful morning in quiet old Spring
Valley. A hush seemed to have fallen on all the town. The streets were
well-nigh deserted so far as one might see from the public square. Only
one figure seemed animated by a definite purpose.
Miss Julia Delafield came rapidly as she might across the street from
the foot of the stair that led up to Judge Henderson's office. She had
hobbled up the stair and hobbled down again, and now was crossing the
street that led to the courthouse. She came through the little turnstile
and tap-tapped her way up the wide brick walk. Her face, turned up
eagerly, was flushed, full of great emotions.
Miss Julia was clad in her best finery. She had on a bright new
hat--which she had had over from Aurora's shop but recently. She had
worn it at the great event of Don Lane's homecoming--worn it to make
tribute to her "son." She wore it now in search of that son's
father--and she had not the slightest idea in the world who that father
in fact might be. Miss Julia's divination was only such stuff as dreams
are made on. The father of Don, the unborn father of her unborn
beloved--was not yet caught out of chaos, not yet resolved out of
time--he was but a creature of her dreams.
So Miss Julia walked haltingly through star dust. It whirled all about
her as she crossed the dirty street. Around her spun all the nebulae of
life yet to be. Somewhere on beyond and back of this was a soft, gray,
vague light, the light of creation itself, of the dawn, of the birth of
time. Perhaps some would have said it was the light shining down through
the courthouse hall from the farther open door. Who would deny poor
little Miss Julia her splendid dreams?
For Miss Julia was very, very happy. She had found how the world was
made and why it was made. And mighty few wise men ever have learned so
much as that.
She searched for the father of her first-born--a man tall and splendid
and beautiful--a man strong and just and noble. Such only might be the
father of her boy.... And she met him at the door of the county
treasurer's office, his silk hat slightly rumpled on one side.
"Oh!" she cried, and started back.
She had only been thinking. But here he was. This was proof to Miss
Julia's mind that God actually does engage in our daily lives. For here
he was!
Now she could bring father and son together; and that would correlate
this world of question and doubt with that world of the star dust and
the whirling nebulae.
"Miss Julia!" The judge stopped, suddenly embarrassed. He flushed, which
was all the better, for he had been ashen pale.
"Oh, I'm so glad!" she exclaimed. "I was looking for you, all over. I
was at your office, but did not find you. Of course you have heard?"
"Heard? No, what was it?"
"Why, the death of Johnnie Adamson--it was the sheriff, just now--Dan
Cowles shot him, right in front of Aurora Lane's house. He must have
been trying to break in or something. His father was there."
"Why, great heavens!--what are you telling me? The sheriff shot him?
Where is Cowles? I must see him."
"He's here in the courthouse now, they say. But it's all over now. Where
have you been? I was going over to Aurora's house early this morning,
but Mr. Brooks came in. I must go over at once----"
"Come this way, Miss Julia," he interrupted.
He led her into the room he had just left. Racked as he was himself, he
knew it would be too cruel an unkindness to tell Miss Julia now of what
had befallen Aurora Lane the night before.
"The reason I came to you first," said Miss Julia--"before I went to
Aurora--was about the boy--about Don. You see, he confessed--the
half-wit did--before he was killed. The sheriff and others and his own
father heard him say that he had killed Tarbush, don't you see? He'd
gone wild, don't you see--he was a maniac. It was a madman killed
Tarbush. Why, Don didn't do it--I _told_ you he couldn't have done it!
Didn't I?
"So now it's all cleared--and I'm so glad!" she concluded, breathless.
"What's all this you are telling me, Miss Julia? Why, this is basic
evidence--it does end the case! But you say there were witnesses to this
confession?" A vast relief came into Judge Henderson's ashen face.
"Yes, yes, the sheriff and Eph Adamson and Nels Jorgens--they all heard
him. And the poor boy--his body's in the justice's office now. They've
sent a messenger after his mother--poor thing--oh, poor woman that she
is!"
"Where is Adamson now--where's the sheriff?"
"As I said, the sheriff is here in the building somewhere. Old Eph
Adamson won't speak to anyone. He seems half out of his own mind now.
But he doesn't blame the sheriff. They say he's sorry for Aurora. Why?
"So you see," said Miss Julia, leaping over a vast sea of intervening
facts, "everything's all right now." And she sighed a great soft sigh
of complete content. "Of course Don didn't do it. I knew that all
along."
"Where's Anne--my ward?" asked Judge Henderson suddenly. "I want to
speak to her a moment."
"I don't know," said Miss Julia. But she smiled, and all her choicest
dimples came out in fine array. "I shouldn't wonder if she was in jail!
Now I've got to go over to Aurora's. All this news, you know----"
But Miss Julia did not hasten away. To the contrary, she seemed not
unwilling to linger yet a time--unconsciously. The truth was that all
her heart was happy, with the one supreme happiness possible for her in
all her life. For a second time she was here, standing face to face with
her hero. So she sighed and smiled and dimpled and talked over this
thing and that--until at length she turned and caught sight of the two
pictures, the one on the wall, the other on the desk--which both men had
left there, forgotten.
"Why, what's this?" said she. "I gave Mr. Brooks this one this morning,"
she said. "He might at least have returned it to me. He said he wanted
to borrow it for a little while. Was he here?"
"He just went away," said Judge Henderson uneasily. "He was here just
now."
Miss Julia was taking up the little photograph and looking from it to
the lithograph with soft eyes.
"Isn't it fine?" said she. "Fine!" But she did not say which one of the
two faces she saw before her was most in her mind.... And then in the
little room with its dusty windows and its tumbled books and map-hung
walls, Miss Julia leaped to the great fundamental conclusion of her own
life.
She saw out far into the time of star dust and the soft vague light and
the whirling nebulae. She saw all the great truths--saw the one great
truth for any woman--saw her hero standing here--the dream father of her
own dream child.... But Miss Julia never grasped the real, the inferior,
the human truth at all. On the contrary, she made a vast and very
beautiful mistake. She had assigned a dream father to her dream son, but
no more. That Judge William Henderson was the father indeed of Dieudonne
Lane she no more suspected than she suspected herself to be his actual
mother. So, therefore, it had been only a path of dreams that Horace
Brooks had followed when he saw her look from the boy's to the father's
face. It was only a path of dreams now that again her eyes followed, as
she looked from the portrait of the youth to the man who stood before
her. Ah! Miss Julia. Poor, little, happy Miss Julia!
"So now, Judge," said she at last, "you can clear him, after all. It
will be so fine for you to do that--so dramatic--so fitting, won't it?"
If Judge Henderson could have spoken, perhaps he would have done so; but
she misunderstood his choking silence. She was miles away from the
actual truth; and never was to know it in all her life.
"Don hadn't any father," said she. "His father's dead long ago, or
Aurora would have told me. He's in his grave--and she'll not open it
even for me, who have loved her so much. But if he had had a father..."
Her voice ceased wistfully.
Judge Henderson coughed, his hands at his throat. She did not see his
face.
"... If only he could have had a father like--this!"
Her own little hand fell gently--ever so gently--on the lithographed
face of the great man, her hero, her champion--who always was to be such
for her. It was the boldest act of all her quiet life. Her hand was very
gentle, but as it fell, perhaps it dealt the heaviest blow to the
vanity, the egotism, the innate selfishness of the man ever he had
known, even in this swift series of blows he was now receiving. For once
remorse, regret, understanding smote him sore. He saw how little he had
earned what life had given him. He saw--himself!
"But then," she added hastily, and flushed to the roots of her hair--"I
beg your pardon. That could not have been, of course. Don's father--the
way he was born--why, _Don's_ father couldn't have been a man like
_you_! We all know that."
Miss Julia hobbled on away now to find her friend, Aurora Lane. She did
not know the story of the night before. Miss Julia was very, very
happy. She had her boy and his father after all--and both were above
reproach! And she never told, not in all her life--and she never knew,
not in all her life. And as she hobbled now up the walk beyond the
little gate--somewhat repentant that her own eagerness had kept her away
thus long from Aurora, she felt no remorse in her heart that she had not
told Aurora Lane the real secret of her own life. "Because," remarked
Miss Julia, to herself, like any woman, "there is one secret she has
never told me--she has never told me who was Don's father!"
Poor little Miss Julia! Ah, very happy, very happy, little Miss Julia!
Because she was a woman.