Some time later the judge was aware of a step on the path beyond
his door, and glancing up, saw the tall figure of a man pause on his
threshold. A whispered curse slipped from between his lips. Aloud he
said:
“Is that you, Mr. Mahaffy?” He got no reply, but the tall figure,
propelled by very long legs, stalked into the shanty and a pair of keen,
restless eyes deeply set under a high, bald head were bent curiously
upon him.
“I take it I'm intruding,” the new-comer said sourly.
“Why should you think that, Solomon Mahaffy? When has my door been
closed on you?” the judge asked, but there was a guilty deepening of the
flush on his face. Mr. Mahaffy glanced at the jug, at the half-emptied
glass within convenient reach of the judge's hand, lastly at the judge
himself, on whose flame-colored visage his eyes rested longest.
“I've heard said there was honor among thieves,” he remarked.
“I know of no one better fitted to offer an opinion on so delicate a
point than just yourself, Mahaffy,” said the judge, with a thick little
ripple of laughter.
But Solomon Mahaffy's long face did not relax in its set expression.
“I saw your light,” he explained, “but you seem to be raising first-rate
hell all by yourself.”
“Oh, be reasonable, Solomon. You'd gone down to the steamboat landing,”
said the judge plaintively. By way of answer, Mahaffy shot him a
contemptuous glance. “Take a chair--do, Solomon!” entreated the judge.
“I don't force my society on any man, Mr. Price,” said Mahaffy, with
austere hostility of tone. The judge winced at the “Mr.” That registered
the extreme of Mahaffy's disfavor.
“You feel bitter about this, Solomon?” he said.
“I do,” said Mahaffy, in a tone of utter finality.
“You'll feel better with three fingers of this trickling through your
system,” observed the judge, pushing a glass toward him.
“When did I ever sneak a jug into my shanty?” asked Mahaffy sternly,
evidently conscious of entire rectitude in this matter.
“I deplore your choice of words, Solomon,” said the judge. “You know
damn well that if you'd been here I couldn't have got past your place
with that jug! But let's deal with conditions. Here's the jug, with some
liquor left in it--here's a glass. Now what more do you want?”
“Have I ever been caught like this?” demanded Mahaffy.
“No, you've invariably manifested the honorable disabilities of a
gentleman. But don't set it all down to virtue. Maybe you haven't had
the opportunity, maybe the temptation never came and found you weak
and thirsty. Put away your sinful pride, Solomon--a sot like you has no
business with the little niceties of selfrespect.”
“Do I drink alone?” insisted Mahaffy doggedly.
“I never give you the chance,” retorted his friend. Mr. Mahaffy drew
near the table. “Sit down,” urged the judge.
“I hope you feel mean?” said Mahaffy.
“If it's any satisfaction to you, I do,” admitted the judge.
“You ought to.” Mahaffy drew forward a chair. The judge filled his
glass. But Mr. Mahaffy's lean face, with its long jaws and high
cheek-bones, over which the sallow skin was tightly drawn, did not relax
in its forbidding expression, even when he had tossed off his first
glass.
“I love to see you in a perfectly natural attitude like that, Solomon,
with your arm crooked. What's the news from the landing?”
Mahaffy brought his fist down on the table.
“I heard the boat churning away round back of the bend, then I saw
the lights, and she tied up and they tossed off the freight. Then she
churned away again and her lights got back of the trees on the bank.
There was the lap of waves on the shore, and I was left with the
half-dozen miserable loafers who'd crawled out to see the boat come in.
That's the news six days a week!”
By the river had come the judge, tentatively hopeful, but at heart
expecting nothing, therefore immune to disappointment and equipped
for failure. By the river had come Mr. Mahaffy, as unfit as the judge
himself, and for the same reason, but sour and bitter with the world,
believing always in the possibility of some miracle of regeneration.
Pleasantville's weekly paper, The Genius of Liberty, had dwelt at length
upon those distinguished services judge Slocum Price had rendered the
nation in war and peace, the judge having graciously furnished an array
of facts otherwise difficult of access. That he was drunk at the time
had but added to the splendor of the narrative. He had placed his ripe
wisdom, the talents he had so assiduously cultivated, at the services of
his fellow citizens. He was prepared to represent them in any or all
the courts. But he had remained undisturbed in his condition of
preparedness; that erudite brain was unconcerned with any problem beyond
financing his thirst at the tavern, where presently ingenuity, though it
expressed itself with a silver tongue, failed him, and he realized that
the river's spent floods had left him stranded with those other odds and
ends of worthless drift that cumbered its sun-scorched mud banks.
Something of all this passed through his mind as he sat there sodden and
dreamy, with the one fierce need of his nature quieted for the moment.
He had been stranded before, many times, in those long years during
which he had moved steadily toward a diminishing heritage; indeed,
nothing that was evil could contain the shock of a new experience. He
had fought and lost all his battles--bitter struggles to think of even
now, after the lapse of years, and the little he had to tell of
himself was an intricate mingling of truth and falsehood, grotesque
exaggeration, purposeless mendacity.
He and Mahaffy had met exactly one month before, on the deck of the
steamer from which they had been put ashore at the river landing two
miles from Pleasantville. Mahaffy's historic era had begun just there.
Apparently he had no past of which he could be brought to speak. He
admitted having been born in Boston some sixty years before, and was a
printer by trade; further than this, he had not revealed himself, drunk
or sober.
At the judge's elbow Mr. Mahaffy changed his position with nervous
suddenness. Then he folded his long arms.
“You asked if there was any news, Price; while we were waiting for the
boat a raft tied up to the bank; the fellow aboard of it had a man he'd
fished up out of the river, a man who'd been pretty well cut to pieces.”
“Who was he?” asked the judge.
“Nobody knew, and he wasn't conscious. I shouldn't be surprised if he
never opens his lips again. When the doctor had looked to his cuts, the
fellow on the raft cast off and went on down the Elk.”
It occurred to the judge that he himself had news to impart. He must
account for the boy's presence.
“While you've been taking your whiff of life down at the steamboat
landing, Mahaffy, I've been experiencing a most extraordinary
coincidence.” The judge paused. By a sullen glare in his deep-sunk eyes
Mr. Mahaffy seemed to bid him go on. “Back east--” the judge jerked
his thumb with an indefinite gesture “back east at my ancestral
home--” Mahaffy snorted harshly. “You don't believe I had an ancestral
home?--well, I had! It was of brick, sir, with eight Corinthian columns
across the front, having a spacious paneled hall sixty feet long. I had
the distinguished honor to entertain General Andrew Jackson there.”
“Did you get those dimensions out of the jug?” inquiry Mahaffy, with a
frightful bark that was intended for a sarcastic laugh.
“Sir, it is not in your province to judge me by my present degraded
associates. Near the house I have described--my father's and his
father's before him, and mine now--but for the unparalleled misfortunes
which have pursued me--lived a family by the name of Hazard. And when I
went to the war of '12--”
“What were you in that bloody time, a sutler?” inquired Mahaffy
insultingly.
“No, sir--a colonel of infantry!--I say, when I went to the war, one of
these Hazards accompanied me as my orderly. His grandson is back of that
curtain now--asleep--in my bed!” Mahaffy put down his glass.
“You were like this once before,” he said darkly. But at that instant
the shuck tick rattled noisily at some movement of the sleeping boy.
Mahaffy quitted his chair, and crossing the room, drew the quilt aside.
A glance sufficed to assure him that in part, at least, the judge spoke
the truth. He let the curtain fall into place and resumed his chair.
“He's an orphan, Solomon; a poor, friendless orphan. Another might
have turned him away from his door--I didn't; I hadn't the heart to. I
bespeak your sympathy for him.”
“Who is he?” asked Mahaffy.
“Haven't I just told you?” said the judge reproachfully. Mahaffy
laughed.
“You've told me something. Who is he?”
“His name is Hannibal Wayne Hazard. Wait until he wakes up and see if it
isn't.”
“Sure he isn't kin to you?” said Mahaffy.
“Not a drop of my blood flows in the veins of any living creature,”
declared the judge with melancholy impressiveness. He continued with
deepening feeling, “All I shall leave to posterity is my fame.”
“Speaking of posterity, which isn't present, Mr. Price, I'll say it is
embarrassed by the attention,” observed Mahaffy.
There was a long silence between them. Mr. Mahaffy drank, and when
he did not drink he bit his under lip and studied the judge. This was
always distressing to the latter gentleman. Mahaffy's silence he
could never penetrate. What was back of it--judgment, criticism,
disbelief--what? Or was it the silence of emptiness? Was Mahaffy dumb
merely because he could think of nothing to say, or did his silence
cloak his feelings-and what were his feelings? Did his meditations
outrun his habitually insulting speech as he bit his under lip and
glared at him? The judge always felt impelled to talk at such times,
while Mahaffy, by that silence of his, seemed to weigh and condemn
whatever he said.
The moon had slipped below the horizon. Pleasantville had long since
gone to bed; it was only the judge's window that gave its light to the
blackness of the night. There was a hoofbeat on the road. It came nearer
and nearer, and presently sounded just beyond the door. Then it ceased,
and a voice said:
“Hullo, there!” The judge scrambled to his feet, and taking up the
candle, stepped, or rather staggered, into the yard. Mahaffy followed
him.
“What's wanted?” asked the judge, as he lurched up to horse and rider,
holding his candle aloft. The light showed a tail fellow mounted on a
handsome bay horse. It was Murrell.
“Is there an inn hereabouts?” he asked.
“You'll find one down the road a ways,” said Mahaffy. The judge said
nothing. He was staring up at Murrell with drunken gravity.
“Have either of you gentlemen seen a boy go through here to-day? A
boy about ten years old?” Murrell glanced from one to the other. Mr.
Mahaffy's thin lips twisted themselves into a sarcastic smile. He turned
to the judge, who spoke up quickly.
“Did he carry a bundle and rifle?” he asked. Murrell gave eager assent.
“Well,” said the judge, “he stopped here along about four o'clock and
asked his way to the nearest river landing.” Murrell gathered up his
reins, and then that fixed stare of the judge's seemed to arrest his
attention.
“You'll know me again,” he observed.
“Anywhere,” said the judge.
“I hope that's a satisfaction to you,” said Murrell.
“It ain't--none whatever,” answered the judge promptly. “For I don't
value you--I don't value you that much!” and he snapped his fingers to
illustrate his meaning.