THE SHADOW OF A DREAM
Judge Little was moving about mysteriously. It was said that he had
found track of Isom's heir, and that the county was to have its second
great sensation soon.
Judge Little did not confirm this report, but, like the middling-good
politician that he was, he entered no denial. As long as the public is
uncertain either way, its suspense is more exquisite, the pleasure of
the final revelation is more sweet.
Riding home from the trial on the day that Joe made his appearance on
the witness-stand, Sol Greening fell in with the judge and, with his
nose primed to follow the scent of any new gossip, Sol worked his way
into the matter of the will.
"Well, I hear you've got track of Isom's boy at last, Judge?" said he,
pulling up close beside the judge's mount, so the sound of the horses'
feet sucking loose from the clay of the muddy road would not cheat him
out of a word.
Judge Little rode a low, yellow horse, commonly called a "buckskin" in
that country. He had come to town unprovided with a rubber coat, and his
long black garment of ordinary wear was damp from the blowing mists
which presaged the coming rain. In order to save the skirts of it, in
which the precious and mysterious pockets were, the judge had gathered
them up about his waist, as an old woman gathers her skirts on wash-day.
He sat in the saddle, holding them that way with one hand, while he
handled the reins with the other.
"All things are possible," returned the judge, his tight old mouth
screwed up after the words, as if more stood in the door and required
the utmost vigilance to prevent them popping forth.
Sol admitted that all things were indeed possible, although he had his
doubts about the probability of a great many he could name. But he was
wise enough to know that one must agree with a man if one desires to get
into his warm favor, and it was his purpose on that ride to milk Judge
Little of whatever information tickling his vanity, as an ant tickles an
aphis, would cause him to yield.
"Well, he's got a right smart property waitin' him when he comes," said
Sol, feeling important and comfortable just to talk of all that Isom
left.
"A considerable," agreed the judge.
"Say forty or fifty thousand worth, heh?"
"Nearer seventy or eighty, the way land's advancing in this county,"
corrected the judge.
Sol whistled his amazement. There was no word in his vocabulary as
eloquent as that.
"Well, all I got to say is that if it was me he left it to, it wouldn't
take no searchin' to find me," he said. "Is he married?"
"Very likely he is married," said the judge, with that portentous
repression and caution behind his words which some people are able to
use with such mysterious effect.
"Shades of catnip!" said Sol.
They rode on a little way in silence, Sol being quite exhausted on
account of his consuming surprise over what he believed himself to be
finding out. Presently he returned to his prying, and asked:
"Can Ollie come in for her dower rights in case the court lets Isom's
will stand?"
"That is a question," replied the judge, deliberating at his pause and
sucking in his cheeks, "which will have to be decided."
"Does he favor Isom any?" asked Sol.
"Who?" queried the judge.
"Isom's boy."
"There doubtless is some resemblance--it is only natural that there
should be a resemblance between father and son," nodded the judge. "But
as for myself, I cannot say."
"You ain't seen him, heh?" said Sol, eyeing him sharply.
"Not exactly," allowed the judge.
"Land o' Moab!" said Sol.
They rode on another eighty rods without a word between them.
"Got his picture, I reckon?" asked Sol at last, sounding the judge's
face all the while with his eager eyes.
"I turn off here," said the judge. "I'm takin' the short cut over the
ford and through Miller's place. Looks like the rain would thicken."
He gave Sol good day, and turned off into a brush-grown road which
plunged into the woods.
Sol went on his way, stirred by comfortable emotions. What a story he
meant to spread next day at the county-seat; what a piece of news he was
going to be the source of, indeed!
Of course, Sol had no knowledge of what was going forward at the county
farm that very afternoon, even the very hour when Joe Newbolt was
sweating blood on the witness stand, If he had known, it is not likely
that he would have waited until morning to spread the tale abroad.
This is what it was.
Ollie's lawyer was there in consultation with Uncle John Owens regarding
Isom's will. Consultation is the word, for it had come to that
felicitous pass between them. Uncle John could communicate his thoughts
freely to his fellow-beings again, and receive theirs intelligently.
All this had been wrought not by a miracle, but by the systematic
preparation of the attorney, who was determined to sound the secret
which lay locked in that silent mind. If Isom had a son when that will
was made a generation back, Uncle John Owens was the man who knew it,
and the only living man.
In pursuit of this mystery, the lawyer had caused to be printed many
little strips of cardboard in the language of the blind. These covered
all the ground that he desired to explore, from preliminaries to climax,
with every pertinent question which his fertile mind could shape, and
every answer which he felt was due to Uncle John to satisfy his
curiosity and inform him fully of what had transpired.
The attorney had been waiting for Uncle John to become proficient enough
in his new reading to proceed without difficulty. He had provided the
patriarch with a large slate, which gave him comfortable room for his
big characters. Several days before that which the lawyer had set for
the exploration of the mystery of Isom Chase's heir, they had reached a
perfect footing of understanding.
Uncle John was a new man. For several weeks he had been making great
progress with the New Testament, printed in letters for the blind, which
had come on the attorney's order speedily. It was an immense volume, as
big as a barn-door, as Uncle John facetiously wrote on his slate, and
when he read it he sat at the table littered over with his interlocked
rings of wood, and his figures of beast and female angels or demons,
which, not yet determined.
The sun had come out for him again, at the clouded end of his life. It
reached him through the points of his fingers, and warmed him to the
farthest spot, and its welcome was the greater because his night had
been long and its rising late.
On that afternoon memorable for Joe Newbolt, and all who gathered at the
court-house to hear him, Uncle John learned of the death of Isom Chase.
The manner of his death was not revealed to him in the printed slips of
board, and Uncle John did not ask, very likely accepting it as an event
which comes to all men, and for which he, himself, had long been
prepared.
After that fact had been imparted to the blind preacher, the lawyer
placed under his eager fingers a slip which read:
"Did you ever witness Isom Chase's will?"
Uncle John took his slate and wrote:
"Yes."
"When?"
"Thirty or forty years ago," wrote Uncle John--what was a decade more or
less to him? "When he joined the Order."
Uncle John wrote this with his face bright in the joy of being able to
hold intelligent communication once more.
More questioning brought out the information that it was a rule of the
secret brotherhood which Isom had joined in those far days, for each
candidate for initiation to make his will before the administration of
the rites.
"What a sturdy old goat that must have been!" thought the lawyer.
"Do you remember to whom Isom left his property in that will?" read the
pasteboard under the old man's hands.
Uncle John smiled, reminiscently, and nodded.
"To his son," he wrote. "Isom was the name."
"Do you know when and where that son was born?"
Uncle John's smile was broader, and of purely humorous cast, as he bent
over the slate and began to write carefully, in smaller hand than usual,
as if he had a great deal to say.
"He never was born," he wrote, "not up to the time that I lost the
world. Isom was a man of Belial all his days that I knew him. He was set
on a son from his wedding day.
"The last time I saw him I joked him about that will, and told him he
would have to change it. He said no, it would stand that way. He said he
would get a son yet. Abraham was a hundred when Isaac was born, he
reminded me. Did Isom get him?"
"No," was the word that Uncle John's fingers found. He shook his head,
sadly.
"He worked and saved for him all his life," the old man wrote. "He set
his hope of that son above the Lord."
Uncle John was given to understand the importance of his information,
and that he might be called upon to give it over again in court.
He was greatly pleased with the prospect of publicly displaying his new
accomplishment. The lawyer gave him a printed good-bye, shook him by the
hand warmly, and left him poring over his ponderous book, his dumb lips
moving as his fingers spelled out the words.
They were near the end and the quieting of all this flurry that had
risen over the property of old Isom Chase, said the lawyer to himself as
he rode back to town to acquaint his client with her good fortune. There
was nothing in the way of her succession to the property now. The
probate court would, without question or doubt, throw out that
ridiculous document through which old Judge Little hoped to grease his
long wallet.
With Isom's will would disappear from the public notice the one
testimony of his only tender sentiment, his only human softness; a
sentiment and a softness which had been born of a desire and fostered by
a dream.
Strange that the hard old man should have held to that dream so
stubbornly and so long, striving to gain for it, hoarding to enrich it,
growing bitterer for its long coming, year by year. And at last he had
gone out in a flash, leaving this one speaking piece of evidence of
feeling and tenderness behind.
Perhaps Isom Chase would have been different, reflected the lawyer, if
fate had yielded him his desire and given him a son; perhaps it would
have softened his hand and mellowed his heart in his dealings with those
whom he touched; perhaps it would have lifted him above the narrow
strivings which had atrophied his virtues, and let the sunlight into the
dark places of his soul.
So communing with himself, he arrived in town. The people were coming
out of the court-house, the lowering gray clouds were settling mistily.
But it was a clearing day for his client; he hastened on to tell her of
the turn fortune had made in her behalf.