greatest honor, and, after her love for Doris and her tenderness for her
sister, the greatest happiness of her life. She knew how great a man
this quiet, gray-haired, famous jurist was to a wider world than she had
ever known; and the flattery of his open and exclusive devotion filled
her gentle heart with sweet and tender pride. But there was something
far tenderer and sweeter than pride in the feeling with which Miss Judy
awaited the coming of John Stanley; for he was always John Stanley, and
never the famous judge, to her. She had loved him before he became a
judge, even before he had become a man. She had learned to love him soon
after his coming to Oldfield, when he was a mere lad, and her own youth
was not long past. She had loved him then as a young and happy mother
loves a son who is all that the happiest, proudest mother could
wish--noble, gifted, handsome, spirited, fearless--loving him as such a
mother loves such a son when they are young together. She loved him
afterward with a still more tender love--when, in the space of a pistol
shot, he had changed from a light-hearted boy into a sad, silent
man--loving him then as a tender mother loves a son who has suffered and
grown strong.
His blamelessness in the hideous tragedy which had darkened his life,
and the nobility with which he bore himself throughout the monstrous
ordeal of blood, claimed all that was strongest and finest in Miss
Judy's nature, and touched her romantic imagination as all the brilliant
success which came to him later never could have done. It was not for
such innocent gentleness as Miss Judy's ever fully to understand the
meaning of the tragedy; to comprehend how much more terrible it was than
the cruelest destiny of any one man, how much farther reaching through
the past and the future than the length of any one man's life. John
Stanley himself understood it at the time but dimly. Only by degrees did
he come to see the truth: that his forced taking of the life of a man
whom he did not know, whom he never had seen or heard of, had not been
simply an unavoidable necessity in self-defence, as he had tried to
believe,--nor an accident, as the verdict of the law and public opinion
had decreed, seeing that it was accidental only so far as his
instrumentality was concerned; that he himself was not the victim of
chance--_but the helpless transmitter of traditional bloodshed_.
It was revealed to him at the trial which acquitted him, that the man
whom he thus had been compelled to kill had been driven--ay, even
hounded--by public opinion into seeking the life of the man who had
taunted him, and in so doing into finding his own death at the hands of
a lad who had no quarrel with any one. It was then shown him that the
slain and the slayer were equal sacrifices to this monstrous tradition
for the shedding of blood. So that, as he began to see, and as he
continually looked back upon this blighting tragedy of his boyhood, it
thus became--to John Stanley, who was a thinker, and a christian, even
in his youth--infinitely more terrible than any really accidental or
necessary taking of another's life would have been. He saw in this
monstrous deed which he had been forced to commit, the direct result of
a tradition of bloody vengeance: the unmistakable outcome of generations
of false thinking, of false believing, of false teaching, of false
example, of false following; all the rank growth from one poisonous
root, all deeply rooted in a false sense of "honor," which, planted by
the Power of Evil, had grown into the very life of the people, until it
now towered, a deadly upas tree, darkening and poisoning that whole
sunny country, almost as darkly and killingly as its murderous kind had
ever darkened and poisoned beautiful Corsica.
When that awful truth first became plain to John Stanley--plain as the
handwriting on the wall--it altered not only his character, but the
whole trend of his life. From the day that he had first seen it through
the bloody tragedy of his youth, John Stanley had watched the growth of
the poison tree with ever deepening horror. He had seen its deadly shade
pass the limits of the wrong which could never be washed out by the
shedding of all the blood that ever flowed in human veins; he had
watched its creeping on to trivial and even fancied offences, till it
touched trifling discourtesies, till it reached at last inconceivably
small things--the too quick lifting of a hat to a lady, the too slow
response to the bow of another man--causing trifles light as air to be
measured against a human life. As John Stanley thus looked
on,--horror-stricken,--at the working of this deadly poison throughout
the body of the commonwealth, he came gradually to believe it to be even
more deadly and more widespread than perhaps it really was. His dread
and fear of any form of violence, his horror of any lightness in the
holding of life, his abhorrence of bloodshed under any provocation, grew
with this morbid brooding through sad and lonely years, until they
imperceptibly went beyond the bounds of perfect sanity, passing into the
fixed idea which much lonely thinking brings into many sad lives.
And John Stanley's life was still lonely, notwithstanding his late
marriage. Miss Judy felt this to be true, although she could not have
told how she knew. It always had been a source of distress to her that
she could know nothing of his wife, the beautiful, brilliant woman of
fashion whom he had married only a few years before. Miss Judy thought
wistfully that she would know why John seemed still so sad and lonely if
she could only see his wife. But the judge's fine-lady wife apparently
found no inducement to come to Oldfield; so that Miss Judy was compelled
to be content with asking how she was, whenever John came, and with
hearing him say every time that she was well--and nothing more.
But Miss Judy was not thinking about the judge's wife on that midsummer
night. It was enough for her perfect happiness merely to have him there,
settled for the evening in her father's arm-chair, which was fetched out
of the parlor for him and never for any one else. It was delight only to
look at him, smiling at her across the passage--wherein they sat because
it was cooler than the room--quite like old times. He was a very
handsome, very tall man, of slender but muscular build, stooping
slightly from his great height through much bending over books. His head
was fine, with a noble width of brow; his thick hair, once very dark,
was now silvered about the temples; but his eyes were as dark as ever,
and undimmed in their clear, steady brightness. His face was sensitive
in its clean-shaven delicacy, and pale with the pallor of the student.
It was not so sad though on that night as usual, nor nearly so grave. He
was rested and soothed and cheered--this famous man of large affairs--by
listening to Miss Judy's gentle twittering, so kind, so loving. It
pleased him to see the little things that she had done in preparation
for his coming. He smiled at the sight of the small basket of rosy
peaches daintily set about with maidenhair fern. He did not know that in
order to get the fruit Miss Judy had made a hard bargain with the
thrifty Mrs. Beauchamp, who had the only early peaches,--a very hard
bargain whereby the little lady went without butter on her bread for a
good many days. Nor did he suspect that she had climbed to the top of
the steepest hillside trying to reach the woods, regardless of the
fluttering of her heart; or that she had ventured bravely even into the
shadiest dell, heedless of her fear of snakes, in order to get his
favorite fern to wreathe his favorite fruit. Perhaps no man ever knows
what the pleasing of him costs a loving woman; certainly no loving woman
ever takes the cost into account.
But then, on the other hand, perhaps no woman, however loving, ever can
fully realize how much unstinted tenderness may mean to the greatest,
the gravest, the most reserved of men, when he has never found it in his
own home or anywhere else in all the cold world, which he has conquered
by giving up the warmth and sweetness of life--as they must be given up
by every conqueror of the region of perpetual ice. Miss Judy's gentle
love now enfolded him like a soft, warm mantle, so that the chill at his
heart melted away. It was then very sweet on that fragrant midsummer
night, to this sad and weary man, to hear Miss Judy babbling gently on.
He did not always listen to what she said; but the sound of her soft
voice seemed for the moment to take away all weariness and pain, as she
talked to him of the people and the things that he had known in his
youth. She said about the same over and over, to be sure, almost every
time he came, but that made no difference whatever; it was the sweetness
of her spirit, the peace of her presence, that the great judge craved
and loved and rested upon.
"And now, John, here are a few peaches--just the kind you like," Miss
Judy said, in her artlessly artful little way, as if the pretty basket
had only that moment fallen from the clouds--as she always said when he
had sat a certain length of time in her father's chair in the coolest
corner of the passage.
"Why,--so they are!" exclaimed the judge, in delighted surprise, as he
always exclaimed when the peaches were offered precisely at the time
when he expected them to be. "How in the world do you always
remember--never once forgetting--from year to year? And these are the
prettiest of all. See the rose velvet of that peach's bloom."
And then Miss Judy, delighted, and beaming, bustled about, spreading her
mother's best napkin over the judge's knees and under the plate (the
prettiest one with the wreath of forget-me-nots), wishing with all her
loving heart that she might find a pretext for tying something around
his dear neck. When she had put an old silver knife in his hand,--after
being as long about it as she could be--conscientiously,--she gave Miss
Sophia also a share of the rosy feast, and then sat down with a sigh of
complete content, and looked at them positively radiating happiness; the
happiness which only such a woman can feel in seeing those whom she
loves enjoying pleasures and privileges which she never claims nor even
thinks of, for herself.
And thus passed the first two hours of the three hours that the judge
always spent with Miss Judy on the first evening of his coming to
Oldfield. There was something which he felt that he must say before he
went away, but he shrunk from saying it, fearing to disturb Miss Judy;
and so put it off as long as he could, waiting indeed till the last. He
was not sure that it was a matter of real importance; he was rather of
the opinion that it was not of any actual consequence, and yet he could
not help mentioning it in justice to Miss Judy. In glancing over the
docket for the term, as he usually glanced immediately upon reaching the
village, he was surprised to find that a suit had been brought against
the estate of Major Bramwell for the payment of a note given by him to
Colonel Fielding. Looking farther, he saw that the note had been
transferred to Alvarado years before, and that the suit was brought in
the Spaniard's name. This was the shadow now coming over the judge's
visit to Miss Judy--this, and the blacker shadow cast by the past
whenever John Stanley was compelled to remember the existence of the
Spaniard, and the passion, cruelty, and deceit which had so ruthlessly
shut the light out of three hapless lives. He never thought of him if he
could help it; he never had been known to speak of him nor heard to call
his name. When Alvarado--mad with hate and jealousy that death itself
had not been able to soften or to cool--had continued to thrust himself
into the court upon first one wild pretext and then another wilder
pretext, during term after term, the judge had steadily looked away, had
steadily held himself from all anger as well as all violence, avoiding
the clash which the madman sought. The coolness and skill of the jurist
had enabled him to do this without great difficulty up to the present
time, and he had no fear of not being able to do the same in the present
case. He was not even any longer afraid of himself. Still, it was
necessary that he should explain the matter to Miss Judy, since she must
almost certainly hear of it and might naturally be hurt at his silence.
His first impulse had been to send the amount of the note with interest
to the holder of it by some third person, and so to dispose of the suit
without Miss Judy's knowledge. But a second thought made plain to him
that the money was not what the Spaniard wanted, and that such a step,
even if possible, would be utterly useless. It would also be worse than
useless to appeal to Colonel Fielding or to try to learn how and when
the note had come into Alvarado's possession. The old man had always
been a child in heart; he was now a child in mind. And then--the
unhappiness of John Stanley's youth had so warped his maturer judgment
of the causes of his misery--he had never been able to hold Alice
Fielding's father quite without blame for her sacrifice. No, he could
not go to Colonel Fielding, not even now, in his age and feebleness, not
even for Miss Judy's sake.
The strong often find it hard to understand how blamelessly the weak may
yield to violence. The wise, for all their wisdom, hardly ever can see
how innocence itself may lead the unwise into the pit digged by the
wicked. No, John Stanley could not go to Colonel Fielding, who, although
but as an innocent, helpless child himself now, alas! had been the
father of the girl whom he had loved, and who had been given to a
bloodthirsty beast in human form. No, he could not do that, even for
Miss Judy's sweet sake. So John Stanley thought, under a sudden great
wave of the old bitterness, with the pain of memory rushing back as if
the flood of wretchedness had engulfed him but yesterday. He could do
nothing else than tell Miss Judy, and he must tell her at once--lest she
hear it from some other source--and so gently that she could not be
frightened, timid as she was. There need be no trouble about the mere
money; he did not consider that at all; unknown to Miss Judy, he could
shield her from that. Nor was there any danger of so much as a collision
of words with the Spaniard, now or at any time. Nothing that could ever
come to pass--nothing in the vast power of evil--could make him, whose
hands had once been innocently dyed in a fellow-creature's blood, lift
his hand against another man, or force him to utter one word to tempt
another to raise a hand against himself.
Little by little the shadow had deepened, till Miss Judy saw it in his
sensitive face, and had begun to grow uneasy before he spoke.
"Do you know, or, rather, did you ever know, anything about your
father's having given his note to Colonel Fielding," he said, finally,
when he could wait no longer. "A note of hand, and without security, I
believe."
Miss Judy's blue eyes opened wide in startled surprise. Then she blushed
vividly; even by the poor light of the one flickering candle the judge
could see the rose color flush her fair face, which had been so pale of
late. Her father's debts had ever been a sore subject, and, although it
was now many years since they had been recalled to her memory by
mention, her sensitiveness had not lessened in the least.
"No, I do not," she said, with a touch of stiffness. "Our father was not
in the habit of speaking to us of business. He thought that gentlewomen
should be shielded from all sordid matters," she added, her gentle tone
marking a wider distance than had ever before existed between John
Stanley and herself.
The judge felt it, and realized instantly that he had made a bad
beginning, one very far indeed from his intention.
"But why do you ask?" inquired Miss Judy, while he hesitated.
"My dear Miss Judy, nothing was further from my thoughts than to startle
or offend you; but you know that--I only meant to tell you that--that a
small matter has arisen which--that an unimportant suit has been
filed--"
Miss Judy arose suddenly, and stood before him like a sentinel guarding
a post. "Am I to understand, John, that some one is suing my father for
debt," she said stiffly, and almost coldly; but the stiffness and
coldness now were not for him. "Tell me all about it at once, please."
"It is nothing to trouble you. If such a note be in existence, it must
have been barred by the statute of limitation long ago. How long has it
been since your father died?" asked the judge.
"Over twenty-five years,--twenty-six years this coming October." And as
Miss Judy spoke she turned, with a soft sigh, and looked tenderly at
Miss Sophia, and was glad to see that she was fast asleep, sitting
straight up in her chair.
"And this note, if given at all, must, of course, have been drawn before
that date. Your father was in Virginia a long time."
"Yes," sighed Miss Judy, glancing again lovingly and protectingly at
Miss Sophia. "It is very painful to sister Sophia and myself to remember
how long."
"Don't think any more about it," said the judge. "There can be no
necessity for your giving it another thought. The length of time, the
statute of limitation, protects you. The note cannot possibly be of any
value."
Miss Judy stood still for a moment in perplexed thought, with her little
hands very tightly clasped before her.
"But if my father gave the note,--if he ever owed Colonel Fielding the
money, and it never has been paid, I don't see that time can make any
difference," she said at last, a little absently and a little
uncertainly, as if she did not yet quite understand, but was,
nevertheless, firmly feeling her way to the light.
"Well, most people would think it made a difference," the judge
responded, smiling in spite of his sympathy with her troubled
perplexity.
"I can't believe that Colonel Fielding can have meant to bring such a
suit. He loved my father and honored him above all other men. I cannot
believe that he would knowingly smirch the memory of his best friend;
unless, poor old man, his mind is entirely gone. And why has the note
not been known about before? Why have I never been told--all these
years? Are you sure, John, that there is no mistake? Are you sure that
the colonel has actually brought the suit?" asked Miss Judy, piteously,
with her blue eyes--clouded and filling with tears--fixed on the judge's
face.
"It is not the colonel," murmured the judge.
"Then who is it?" persisted Miss Judy, with growing bewilderment and
distress. "Who comes at this late day claiming that my father did not
pay what he owed,--when he could have paid?"
"Alvarado," John Stanley said, in so low a tone that she barely heard,
thus forced himself to utter the name of the Spaniard for the first time
since it had become to him an unspeakable thing.
"John--John, I humbly beg your pardon. I didn't dream--oh, my son," Miss
Judy cried, forgetting her own trouble.
She ran to him and laid her tender little hands on his broad shoulders,
and gazed into his pale, calm face, all unconscious that her own was
quivering and wet with tears--tears for the pain which she saw in his
set face, for his sacrificed youth, for his lost happiness--tears most
of all for gentle Alice Fielding, the girl whom he still loved, although
she had rested so long in the grave of the broken-hearted.
XXIII
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
Misfortune never comes singly to a community any more than to an
individual. No life anywhere may ever stand or fall quite alone, so are
the living all bound together. In a village where every door stands wide
and all lives are in the open, and where no high, hard walls rise
between the people,--as they do in a city,--the bond is closer than it
can be elsewhere. So that the uneasiness which the judge communicated so
unwillingly to Miss Judy on that quiet midsummer night was the beginning
of the end of the peace of many of the good people of Oldfield, for a
long time afterward.
Sorely troubled, Miss Judy had lain awake hour after hour looking into
the darkness, and trying to see the way to do that which she knew was
right. She had seen her duty distinctly enough as soon as the judge's
meaning was clear; the only uncertainty was as to the means of doing it.
The money must be paid, the length of time during which it had been
owing only making the payment more urgent. No loophole of the law could
afford any means of escape to a sense of honor as fine and true as hers.
Such a possibility did not cross her mind as she lay thinking in the
silence of the night, which was broken only by the peaceful little
puffing sound that came tranquilly from Miss Sophia's side of the big,
high bed. Miss Judy again softly put out her thin little hand in the
dark, and softly patted her sister's round, plump shoulder with
protecting tenderness, as she always instinctively caressed her when
trouble drew near. Come what would, this sister, so tenderly loved,
should not know or suffer any privation that could be prevented. It
would be hard to keep her from knowing if the payment of the note should
require the entire amount of the next pension money, which was every
cent they would have for months. Still, Miss Judy remembered how she had
managed, several times ere this, in keeping other unpleasant things from
her sister's knowledge, and she now lay revolving transparent schemes
and innocent fictions, alternately smiling and sighing, half proud and
half ashamed of her own deep duplicity.
The result of the night's reflection was that she went early on the next
morning to the tavern to see Judge Stanley, hoping to be able to speak
to him before he left his room for the court-house. But some little
delay had been required--so at least Miss Judy imagined--in order to
allay Miss Sophia's suspicions, and the judge was already gone when Miss
Judy reached the tavern. She hesitated for a few moments, blushing,
embarrassed, confused, and utterly thrown out of her plans. She had
never entered the court-house; she had never heard of a gentlewoman's
doing such a thing. The very thought of approaching the door of it
shocked her as something improper and almost immodest. And yet it was
absolutely necessary for her to see the judge immediately, so that she
might tell him of her decision before the case could be called. She
would do almost anything rather than allow her father's honored name to
be dishonorably mentioned in the hearing of the people of Oldfield, who
had revered him all their lives, and looked up to him as the finest of
gentlemen, the most valiant of soldiers. Without giving herself time to
shrink or to flinch, she turned desperately and hurried toward the
court-house, as she would have marched to the cannon's mouth.
The court was barely opened, the judge was just taking his seat on the
bench, when the sheriff came and told him that Miss Judy was at the door
and would like to see his Honor if he "would kindly step outside." The
sheriff smiled in bringing him the message, his broad, kind face
broadening and growing kinder with the affectionate indulgence which
everybody always felt for Miss Judy's harmless peculiarities. Even the
judge's grave face relaxed somewhat, lighting and softening, as he
promptly arose from the bench and went to do the little lady's bidding.
He found her on the other side of the big road, and not at the door of
the court-house, where he had expected to find her. She had, indeed,
hastily retreated as far as she dared, after sending for him, and now
stood awaiting him, terrified and trembling, at being even as near the
door as she was--hovering like a bird just alighted but ready to take
flight. In her agitation she held the front breadth of her best
bombazine very, very high indeed, so that her neat little prunella
gaiters were plainly visible, and even her trim ankles were quite
distinctly in sight; and there were also unmistakable glimpses of
snow-white ruffles of an antiquated fashion, like the delicate feathers
about the feet of a white bantam.
"I wanted to see you, John, before the suit could come up," she began
pantingly at once. "I thought it all over last night,--after you were
gone."
"Everything is right, Miss Judy. I considered the matter again when I
went back to the tavern. Don't give it another thought. The suit is
barred by limitation long ago," the judge said gently, as if soothing a
frightened child.
"But is it really a note of my father's? Did he ever owe the money? And
is it true that the debt never has been paid? That is what I wish to
know," persisted Miss Judy, with all the earnestness of a woman who
knows well the meaning of her words.
Her blue eyes were uplifted to his face, and she read in it the answer
which he would have been glad to withhold.
"Then it must be paid," she said firmly, promptly, conclusively. She had
been drifting out of her depth ever since the stunned plunge of the
first shock; but she now felt solid ground once more under her feet.
"There is my dear and honored father's pension for his services in the
War for Independence. A portion of that could scarcely be better used
than in discharging any pecuniary obligation of his, which he may
naturally have forgotten, or chanced to overlook."