Part 22

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."

This was said loftily, almost carelessly, as though the large size of the pension made any unexpected demand upon it a mere trifle, and with a gentle, sweet look of pride. The judge could not help smiling, notwithstanding that he was touched and even troubled, knowing how grave a matter any call for money must be to Miss Judy. Looking down upon her from his great height, he thought he never before had known what a frail pretty little creature she was, nor how deeply, purely blue her eyes were, with the blue of fresh-blown flax-flowers, nor how like silver floss her hair was, till he now saw it new burnished by the sunlight. But he stood in silence, uncertain what to say, fearing to wound her.

"And the amount of the note? How much is it?" Miss Judy asked suddenly, after the momentary silence.