"Still harping, but harping your praises. Century plants are not
necessarily old: they are all young at the beginning! I merely
meant you'd be blooming at a hundred."
"You are a sly old fox," she retorted with a spirit. "You give a
woman a dig on her age and then try to make her think it a
compliment."
"I gave myself a dig that time: the remark had to be excavated," he
said aloud but as though confidentially to himself. Open
disrespect marked his speech and manner with her always; and sooner
or later she exacted full punishment.
Meantime he had reached the steps. There he stopped and taking off
his straw hat looked up and shook it reproachfully at the heavens.
"What a night, what a night!" he exclaimed. "And what an injustice
to a man wading up to his knees in life's winters."
"How do you do," she said impatiently, always finding it hard to
put up with his lingerings and delays. "Are you coming in?"
"Thank you, I believe I am. But no, wait. I'll not come in until
I have made a speech. It never occurred to me before and it will
never again. It's now or never.
"The life of man should last a single year. He should have one
spring for birth and childhood, for play and growth, for the ending
of his dreams and the beginning of his love. One summer for strife
and toil and passion. One autumn in which to gather the fruits of
his deeds and to live upon them, be they sweet or bitter. One
winter in which to come to an end and wrap himself with resignation
in the snows of nature. Thus he should never know the pain of
seeing spring return when there was nothing within himself to bud
or be sown. Summer would never rage and he have no conflicts nor
passions. Autumn would not pass and he with idle hands neither
give nor gather. And winter should not end without extinguishing
his tormenting fires, and leaving him the peace of eternal cold."
"Really," she cried, "I have never heard anything as fine as that
since I used to write compositions at boarding-school."
"It may be part of one of mine!" he replied. "We forget ourselves,
you know, and then we think we are original."
"Second childhood," she suggested. "Are you really coming in?"
"I am, madam," he replied. "And guided by your suggestion, I come
as a second child."
When he had reached the top step, he laid his hat and cane on the
porch and took her hands in his--pressing them abstemiously.
"Excuse me if I do not press harder," he said, lowering his voice
as though he fancied they might be overheard. "I know you are
sensitive in these little matters; but while I dislike to appear
lukewarm, really, you know it is too late to be ardent," and he
looked at her ardently.
She twisted her fingers out of his with coy shame.
"What an old fox," she repeated gayly.
"Well, you know what goes with the fox--the foxess, or the foxina."
She had placed his chair not quite beside hers yet designedly near,
where the light of the chandelier in the hall would fall out upon
him and passers could see that he was there: she liked to have him
appear devoted. For his part he was too little devoted to care
whether he sat far or near, in front or behind. As the light
streamed out upon him, it illumined his noble head of soft, silvery
hair, which fell over his ears and forehead, forgotten and
disordered, like a romping boy's. His complexion was ruddy--too
ruddy with high living; his clean-shaven face beautiful with
candor, gayety, and sweetness; and his eyes, the eyes of a kind
heart--saddened. He had on a big loose shirt collar such as men
wore in Thackeray's time and a snow-white lawn tie. In the bosom
of his broad-pleated shirt, made glossy with paraffin starch, there
was set an old-fashioned cluster-diamond stud--so enormous that it
looked like a large family of young diamonds in a golden nest.
As he took his seat, he planted his big gold-headed ebony cane
between his knees, put his hat on the head of his cane, gave it a
twirl, and looking over sidewise at her, smiled with an equal
mixture of real liking and settled abhorrence.
For a good many years these two had been--not friends: she was
incapable of so true a passion; he was too capable to misapply it
so unerringly. Their association had assumed the character of one
of those belated intimacies, which sometimes spring up in the lives
of aged men and women when each wants companionship but has been
left companionless.
Time was when he could not have believed that any tie whatsoever
would ever exist between them. Her first husband had been his
first law partner; and from what he had been forced to observe
concerning his partner's fireside wretchedness during his few years
of married life, he had learned to fear and to hate her. With his
quick temper and honest way he made no pretence of hiding his
feeling--declined her invitations--cut her openly in society--and
said why. When his partner died, not killed indeed but
broken-spirited, he spoke his mind on the subject more publicly and
plainly still.
She brewed the poison of revenge and waited.
A year or two later when his engagement was announced her opportunity
came. In a single day it was done--so quietly, so perfectly, that
no one knew by whom. Scandal was set running--Scandal, which no
pursuing messengers of truth and justice can ever overtake and drag
backward along its path. His engagement was broken; she whom he was
to wed in time married one of his friends; and for years his own life
all but went to pieces.
Time is naught, existence a span. One evening when she was old
Mrs. Conyers, and he old Judge Morris, she sixty and he sixty-five,
they met at an evening party. In all those years he had never
spoken to her, nurturing his original dislike and rather suspecting
that it was she who had so ruined him. But on this night there had
been a great supper and with him a great supper was a great
weakness: there had been wine, and wine was not a weakness at all,
but a glass merely made him more than happy, more than kind. Soon
after supper therefore he was strolling through the emptied rooms
in a rather lonesome way, his face like a red moon in a fog,
beseeching only that it might shed its rays impartially on any
approachable darkness.
Men with wives and children can well afford to turn hard cold faces
to the outside world: the warmth and tenderness of which they are
capable they can exercise within their own restricted enclosures.
No doubt some of them consciously enjoy the contrast in their two
selves--the one as seen abroad and the other as understood at home.
But a wifeless, childless man--wandering at large on the heart's
bleak common--has much the same reason to smile on all that he has
to smile on any: there is no domestic enclosure for him: his
affections must embrace humanity.
As he strolled through the rooms, then, in his appealing way,
seeking whom he could attach himself to, he came upon her seated in
a doorway connecting two rooms. She sat alone on a short sofa,
possibly by design, her train so arranged that he must step over it
if he advanced--the only being in the world that he hated. In the
embarrassment of turning his back upon her or of trampling her
train, he hesitated; smiling with lowered eyelids she motioned him
to a seat by her side.
"What a vivacious, agreeable old woman," he soliloquized with
enthusiasm as he was driven home that night, sitting in the middle
of the carriage cushions with one arm swung impartially through the
strap on each side. "And she has invited me to Sunday evening
supper. Me!--after all these years--in that house! I'll not go."
But he went.
"I'll not go again," he declared as he reached home that night and
thought it over. "She is a bad woman."
But the following Sunday evening he reached for his hat and cane:
"I must go somewhere," he complained resentfully. "The saints of
my generation are enjoying the saint's rest. Nobody is left but a
few long-lived sinners, of whom I am a great part. They are the
best I can find, and I suppose they are the best I deserve."
Those who live long miss many. Without exception his former
associates at the bar had been summoned to appear before the Judge
who accepts no bribe.
The ablest of the middle-aged lawyers often hurried over to consult
him in difficult cases. All of them could occasionally listen
while he, praiser of a bygone time, recalled the great period of
practice when he was the favorite criminal lawyer of the first
families, defending their sons against the commonwealth which he
always insisted was the greater criminal. The young men about
town knew him and were ready to chat with him on street
corners--but never very long at a time. In his old law offices he
could spend part of every day, guiding or guying his nephew Barbee,
who had just begun to practice. But when all his social resources
were reckoned, his days contained great voids and his nights were
lonelier still. The society of women remained a necessity of his
life; and the only woman in town, always bright, always full of
ideas, and always glad to see him (the main difficulty) was Mrs.
Conyers.
So that for years now he had been going regularly on Sunday
evenings. He kept up apologies to his conscience regularly also;
but it must have become clear that his conscience was not a fire to
make him boil; it was merely a few coals to keep him bubbling.
In this acceptance of her at the end of life there was of course
mournful evidence of his own deterioration. During the years
between being a young man and being an old one he had so far
descended toward her level, that upon renewing acquaintance with
her he actually thought that she had improved.
Youth with its white-flaming ideals is the great separator; by
middle age most of us have become so shaken down, on life's rough
road, to a certain equality of bearing and forbearing, that
miscellaneous comradeship becomes easy and rather comforting; while
extremely aged people are as compatible and as miserable as
disabled old eagles, grouped with a few inches of each other's
beaks and claws on the sleek perches of a cage.
This evening therefore, as he took his seat and looked across at
her, so richly dressed, so youthful, soft, and rosy, he all but
thanked heaven out loud that she was at home.
"Madam," he cried, "you are a wonderful and bewitching old
lady"--it was on the tip of his tongue to say "beldam."
"I know it," she replied briskly, "have you been so long in finding
it out?"
"It is a fresh discovery every time I come."
"Then you forget me in the meanwhile."
"I never forget you unless I am thinking of Miss Isabel. How is
she?"
"Not well."
"Then I'm not well! No one is well! Everybody must suffer if she
is suffering. The universe sympathizes."
"She is not ill. She is in trouble."
"But she must not be in trouble! She has done nothing to be in
trouble about. Who troubles her? What troubles her?"
"She will not tell."
"Ah!" he cried, checking himself gravely and dropping the subject.
She noted the decisive change of tone: it was not by this direct
route that she would be able to enter his confidence.
"What did you think of the sermon this morning?"
"The sermon on the prodigal? Well, it is too late for such sermons
to be levelled at me; and I never listen to those aimed at other
people."
"At what other people do you suppose this one could have been
directed?" She asked the question most carelessly, lifting her
imponderable handkerchief and letting it drop into her lap as a
sign of how little her interest weighed.
"It is not my duty to judge."
"We cannot help our thoughts, you know."
"I think we can, madam; and I also think we can hold our tongues,"
and he laughed at her very good-naturedly. "Sometimes we can even
help to hold other people's--if they are long."
"Oh, what a rude speech to a lady!" she exclaimed gallantly. "Did
you see the Osborns at church? And did you notice him? What an
unhappy marriage! He is breaking Kate's heart. And to think that
his character--or the lack of it--should have been discovered only
when it was too late! How can you men so cloak yourselves before
marriage? Why not tell women the truth then instead of leaving
them to find it out afterward? Are he and Rowan as good friends as
ever?" The question was asked with the air of guilelessness.
"I know nothing about that," he replied dryly. "I never knew Rowan
to drop his friends because they had failings: it would break up
all friendships, I imagine."
"Well, I cannot help _my_ thoughts, and I think George Osborn was
the prodigal aimed at in the sermon. Everybody thought so."
"How does she know what everybody thought?" commented the Judge to
himself. He tapped the porch nervously with his cane, sniffed his
heliotrope and said irrelevantly:
"Ah me, what a beautiful night! What a beautiful night!"
The implied rebuff provoked her. Irritation winged a venomous
little shaft:
"At least no woman has ever held _you_ responsible for her
unhappiness."
"You are quite right, madam," he replied, "the only irreproachable
husband in this world is the man who has no wife."
"By the way," she continued, "in all these years you have not told
me why you never married. Come now, confess!"
How well she knew! How often as she had driven through the streets
and observed him sitting alone in the door of his office or walking
aimlessly about, she had leaned back and laughed.
"Madam," he replied, for he did not like the question, "neither
have you ever told me why you married three times. Come now,
confess."
It would soon be time for him to leave; and still she had not
gained her point.
"Rowan was here this afternoon," she remarked carelessly. He was
sitting so that the light fell sidewise on his face. She noted how
alert it became, but he said nothing.
"Isabel refused to see him."
He wheeled round and faced her with pain and surprise.
"Refused to see him!"
"She has told me since that she never intends to see him."
"Never intends to see Rowan again!" he repeated the incredible
words, "not see Rowan again!"
"She says we are to drop him from the list of our acquaintances."
"Ah!" he cried with impetuous sadness, "they must not quarrel!
They _must_ not!"
"But they _have_ quarrelled," she replied, revealing her own
anxiety. "Now they must be reconciled. That is why I come to
you. I am Isabel's guardian; you were Rowan's. Each of us wishes
this marriage. Isabel loves Rowan. I know that; therefore it is
not her fault. Therefore it is Rowan's fault. Therefore he has
said something or he has done something to offend her deeply.
Therefore if you do not know what this Is, you must find out. And
you must come and tell me. May I depend upon you?"
He had become grave. At length he said: "I shall go straight to
Rowan and ask him."
"No!" she cried, laying her hand heavily on his arm, "Isabel bound
me to secrecy. She does not wish this to be known."
"Ah!" he exclaimed, angry at being entrapped into a broken
confidence, "then Miss Isabel binds me also: I shall honor her
wish," and he rose.
She kept her seat but yawned so that he might notice it. "You are
not going?"
"Yes, I am going. I have stayed too long already. Good night!
Good night!" He spoke curtly over his shoulders as he hurried down
the steps.
She had forgotten him before he reached the street, having no need
just then to keep him longer in mind. She had threshed out the one
grain of wheat, the single compact little truth, that she wanted.
This was the certainty that Judge Morris, who was the old family
lawyer of the Merediths, and had been Rowan's guardian, and had
indeed known him intimately from childhood, was in ignorance of any
reason for the present trouble; otherwise he would not have said
that he should go to Rowan and ask the explanation. She knew him
to be incapable of duplicity; in truth she rather despised him
because he had never cultivated a taste for the delights and
resources of hypocrisy.
Her next step must be to talk at once with the other person vitally
interested--Rowan's mother. She felt no especial admiration for
that grave, earnest, and rather sombre lady; but neither did she
feel admiration for her sterling knife and fork: still she made
them serviceable for the ulterior ends of being.
Her plan then embraced a visit to Mrs. Meredith in the morning with
the view of discovering whether she was aware of the estrangement,
and if aware whether she would in any unintentional way throw light
upon the cause of it. Moreover--and this was kept clearly in
view--there would be the chance of meeting Rowan himself, whom she
also determined to see as soon as possible: she might find him at
home, or she might encounter him on the road or riding over his
farm. But this visit must be made without Isabel's knowledge. It
must further be made to appear incidental to Mrs. Meredith
herself---or to Rowan. She arranged therefore with that tortuous
and superfluous calculation of which hypocrisy is such a
master--and mistress--that she would at breakfast, in Isabel's
presence, order the carriage, and announce her intention of going
out to the farm of Ambrose Webb. Ambrose Webb was a close neighbor
of the Merediths. He owned a small estate, most of which was good
grass-land that was usually rented for pasture. She had for years
kept her cows there when dry. This arrangement furnished her the
opportunity for more trips to the farm than interest in her dairy
warranted; it made her Mrs. Meredith's most frequent incidental
visitor.
Having thus determined upon her immediate course for the prompt
unravelling of this mysterious matter, she dismissed it from her
mind, passed into her bedroom and was soon asleep: a smile played
over the sweet old face.
The Judge walked slowly across the town in the moonlight.
It was his rule to get home to his rooms by ten o'clock; and people
living on the several streets leading that way were used to hearing
him come tapping along before that hour. If they sat in their
doorways and the night was dark, they gave him a pleasant greeting
through the darkness; if there was a moon or if he could be seen
under a lamp post, they added smiles. No one loved him supremely,
but every one liked him a little--on the whole, a stable state for
a man. For his part he accosted every one that he could see in a
bright cheery way and with a quick inquiring glance as though every
heart had its trouble and needed just a little kindness. He was
reasonably sure that the old had their troubles already and that
the children would have theirs some day; so that it was merely the
difference between sympathizing with the present and sympathizing
with the future. As he careened along night after night, then,
friendly little gusts of salutation blew the desolate drifting
figure over the homeward course.
His rooms were near the heart of the town, In a shady street well
filled with law offices: these were of red brick with green
shutters--green when not white with dust. The fire department was
in the same block, though he himself did not need to be safeguarded
from conflagrations: the fires which had always troubled him could
not have been reached with ladder and hose. There were two or
three livery stables also, the chairs of which he patronized
liberally, but not the vehicles. And there was a grocery, where he
sometimes bought crystallized citron and Brazil nuts, a curious
kind of condiment of his own devising: a pound of citron to a pound
of nuts, if all were sound. He used to keep little brown paper
bags of these locked in his drawer with legal papers and munched
them sometimes while preparing murder cases.
At the upper corner of the block, opposite each other, were a
saloon and the jail, two establishments which contributed little to
each other's support, though well inclined to do so. The law
offices seemed of old to have started in a compact procession for
the jail, but at a certain point to have paused with the
understanding that none should seek undue advantage by greater
proximity. Issuing from this street at one end and turning to the
left, you came to the courthouse--the bar of chancery; issuing from
it at the other end and turning to the right, you came to the
hotel--the bar of corn. The lawyers were usually solicitors at
large and impartial practitioners at each bar. In the court room
they sometimes tried to prove an alibi for their clients; at the
hotel they often succeeded in proving one for themselves.
These law offices were raised a foot or two above the level of the
street. The front rooms could be used for clients who were so
important that they should be seen; the back rooms were for such as
brought business, but not necessarily fame. Driving through this
street, the wives of the lawyers could lean forward in their
carriages and if their husbands were busy, they could smile and
bow; if their husbands were idle, they could look straight ahead.
He passed under the shadow of the old court-house where in his
prime he had fought his legal battles against the commonwealth. He
had been a great lawyer and he knew it (if he had married he might
have been Chief Justice). Then he turned the corner and entered
the street of jurisprudence and the gaol. About midway he reached
the staircase opening from the sidewalk; to his rooms above.
He was not poor and he could have lived richly had he wished. But
when a man does not marry there are so many other things that he
never espouses; and he was not wedded to luxury. As he lighted the
chandelier over the centre-table in his sitting room, the light
revealed an establishment every article of which, if it had no
virtues, at least possessed habits: certainly everything had its
own way. He put his hat and cane on the table, not caring to go
back to the hatrack in his little hall, and seated himself in his
olive morocco chair. As he did so, everything in the room--the
chairs, the curtains, the rugs, the card-table, the punch-bowl, the
other walking-sticks, and the rubbers and umbrellas---seemed to say
in an affectionate chorus: "Well, now that you are in safe for the
night, we feel relieved. So good night and pleasant dreams to you,
for we are going to sleep;" and to sleep they went.