The Mettle of the Pasture Part 8

True, in after years she had come back to him as far as friendship could bring her back, since she was then the wife of another; but every year of knowing her thus had only served to deepen the sense of his loss. He had long since fallen into the habit of thinking this over of Sunday evenings before going to bed, and as the end of life closed in upon him, he dwelt upon it more and more.

These familiar thoughts swarmed back to-night, but with them were mingled new depressing ones. Nothing now perhaps could have caused him such distress as the thought that Rowan and Isabel would never marry. All the love that he had any right to pour into any life, he had always poured with pa.s.sionate and useless yearnings into Rowan's--son, of the only woman he had ever loved--the boy that should have been his own.

There came an interruption. A light quick step was heard mounting the stairs. A latch key was impatiently inserted in the hall door.

A bamboo cane was dropped loudly into the holder of the hat-rack; a soft hat was thrown down carelessly somewhere--it sounded like a wet mop flung into a corner; and there entered a young man straight, slender, keen-faced, with red hair, a freckled skin, large thin red ears, and a strong red mouth. As he stepped forward into the light, he paused, parting the haircut of his eyes and blinking.

"Good evening, uncle," he said in a shrill key.

"Well, sir."

Barbee looked the Judge carefully over; he took the Judge's hat and cane from the table and hung them in the hall; he walked over and picked up the newspaper from between the Judge's legs and placed it at his elbow; he set the ash tray near the edge of the table within easy reach of the cigar. Then he threw himself into a chair across the room, lighted a cigarette, blew the smoke toward the ceiling like the steam of a little whistle signalling to stop work.

"Well, uncle," he said in a tone in which a lawyer might announce to his partner the settlement of a long-disputed point, "Marguerite is in love with me!"

The Judge smoked on, his eyes resting on the wall.

"Yes, sir; in love with me. The truth had to come out sometime, and it came out to-night. And now the joy of life is gone for me!

As soon as a woman falls in love with a man, his peace is at an end. But I am determined that it shall not interfere with my practice."

"What practice?"

"The practice of my profession, sir! The profession of yourself and of the great men of the past: such places have to be filled."

"Filled, but not filled with the same thing."

"You should have seen the other hapless wretches there to-night!

Pining for a smile! Moths begging the candle to scorch them! And the candle was as cold as the north star and as distant."

Barbee rose and took a turn across the room and returning to his chair stood before it.

"If Marguerite had only waited, had concealed herself a little longer! Why did she not keep me in doubt until I had won some great case! Think of a scene like this: a crowded court room some afternoon; people outside the doors and windows craning their necks to see and hear me; the judge nervous and excited; the members of the bar beside themselves with jealousy as I arise and confront the criminal and jury. Marguerite is seated just behind the jury; I know why she chose that seat: she wished to study me to the best advantage. I try to catch her eye; she will not look at me. For three hours my eloquence storms. The judge acknowledges to a tear, the jurors reach for their handkerchiefs, the people in the court room sob like the skies of autumn. As I finish, the accused arises and addresses the court: 'May it please your honor, in the face of such a masterly prosecution, I can no longer pretend to be innocent. Sir (addressing me), I congratulate you upon your magnificent service to the commonwealth. Gentlemen of the jury, you need not retire to bring in any verdict: I bring it in myself, I am guilty, and my only wish is to be hanged. I suggest that you have it done at once in order that nothing may mar the success of this occasion!' That night Marguerite sends for me: that would have been the time for declaration! I have a notion that if I can extricate myself without wounding this poor little innocent, to forswear matrimony and march on to fame."

"March on to bed."

"Marguerite is going to give a ball, uncle, a brilliant ball merely to celebrate this irrepressible efflux and panorama of her emotions. Watch me at that ball, uncle! Mark the rising Romeo of the firm when Marguerite, the youthful Juliet of this town--"

A hand waved him quietly toward his bedroom.

"Well, good night, sir, good night. When the lark sings at heaven's gate I'll greet thee, uncle. My poor Marguerite!--Good night, uncle, good night."

He was only nineteen.

The Judge returned to his thoughts.

He must have thought a long time: the clock not far away struck twelve. He took off his gla.s.ses, putting them negligently on the edge of the ash tray which tipped over beneath their weight and fell to the floor: he picked up his gla.s.ses, but let the ashes lie.

Then he stooped down to take off his shoes, not without sounds of bodily discomfort.

Aroused by these sounds or for other reasons not to be discovered, there emerged from under a table on which was piled "The Lives of the Chief Justices" a bulldog, cylindrical and rigid with years.

Having reached a decorous position before the Judge, by the slow action of the necessary machinery he lowered the posterior end of the cylinder to the floor and watched him.

"Well, did I get them off about right?"

The dog with a private glance of sympathy up into the Judge's face returned to his black goatskin rug under the Chief Justices; and the Judge, turning off the burners in the chandelier and striking a match, groped his way in his sock feet to his bedroom--to the bed with its one pillow.

V

Out in the country next morning it was not yet break of dawn. The stars, thickly flung about, were flashing low and yellow as at midnight, but on the horizon the great change had begun. Not with colors of rose or pearl but as the mysterious foreknowledge of the morning, when a vast swift herald rushes up from the east and sweeps onward across high s.p.a.ce, bidding the earth be in readiness for the drama of the sun.

The land, heavy with life, lay wrapped in silence, steeped in rest.

Not a bird in wet hedge or evergreen had drawn nimble head from nimble wing. In meadow and pasture fold and herd had sunk down satisfied. A black brook brawling through a distant wood sounded loud in the stillness. Under the forest trees around the home of the Merediths only drops of dew might have been heard splashing downward from leaf to leaf. In the house all slept. The mind, wakefullest of happy or of suffering things, had lost consciousness of joy and care save as these had been crowded down into the chamber which lies beneath our sleep, whence they made themselves audible through the thin flooring as the noise of dreams.

Among the parts of the day during which man may match the elements of the world within him to the world without--his songs with its sunrises, toil with noontide, prayer with nightfall, slumber with dark--there is one to stir within him the greatest sense of responsibility: the hour of dawn.

If he awaken then and be alone, he is earliest to enter the silent empty theatre of the earth where the human drama is soon to recommence. Not a mummer has stalked forth; not an auditor sits waiting. He himself, as one of the characters in this ancient miracle play of nature, pauses at the point of separation between all that he has enacted and all that he will enact. Yesterday he was in the thick of action. Between then and now lies the night, stretching like a bar of verdure across wearying sands. In that verdure he has rested; he has drunk forgetfulness and self-renewal from those deep wells of sleep. Soon the play will be ordered on again and he must take his place for parts that are new and confusing to all. The servitors of the morning have entered and hung wall and ceiling with gorgeous draperies; the dust has been sprinkled; fresh airs are blowing; and there is music, the living orchestra of the living earth. Well for the waker then if he can look back upon the role he has played with a quiet conscience, and as naturally as the earth greets the sun step forth upon the stage to continue or to end his brief part in the long drama of destiny.

The horizon had hardly begun to turn red when a young man, stretched on his bed by an open window, awoke from troubled sleep.

He lay for a few moments without moving, then he sat up on the edge of the bed. His hands rested listlessly on his kneecaps and his eyes were fixed on the sky-line crimsoning above his distant woods.

After a while he went over and sat at one of the windows, his eyes still fixed on the path of the coming sun; and a great tragedy of men sat there within him: the tragedy that has wandered long and that wanders ever, showing its face in all lands, retaining its youth in all ages; the tragedy of love that heeds not law, and the tragedy of law forever punishing heedless love.

Gradually the sounds of life began. From the shrubs under his window, from the orchard and the wet weeds of fence corners, the birds reentered upon their lives. Far off in the meadows the cattle rose from their warm dry places, stretched themselves and awoke the echoes of the wide rolling land with peaceful lowing. A brood mare in a grazing lot sent forth her quick nostril call to the foal capering too wildly about her, and nozzled it with rebuking affection. On the rosy hillsides white lambs were leaping and bleating, or running down out of sight under the white sea-fog of the valleys. A milk cart rattled along the turnpike toward the town.

It had become broad day.

He started up and crossed the hall to the bedroom opposite, and stood looking down at his younger brother. How quiet Dent's sleep was; how clear the current of his life had run and would run always! No tragedy would ever separate him and the woman he loved.

When he went downstairs the perfect orderliness of his mother's housekeeping had been before him. Doors and windows had been opened to the morning freshness, sweeping and dusting had been done, not a servant was in sight. His setters lay waiting on the porch and as he stepped out they hurried up with glistening eyes and soft barkings and followed him as he pa.s.sed around to the barn.

Work was in progress there: the play of currycombs, the whirl of the cutting-box, the noise of the mangers, the bellowing of calves, the rich streamy sounds of the milking. He called his men to him one after another, laying out the work of the day.

When he returned to the house he saw his mother walking on the front pavement; she held flowers freshly plucked for the breakfast table: a woman of large mould, grave, proud, n.o.ble; an ideal of her place and time.

"Is the lord of the manor ready for his breakfast?" she asked as she came forward, smiling.

"I am ready, mother," he replied without smiling, touching his lips to her cheek.

She linked her arm in his as they ascended the steps. At the top she drew him gently around until they faced the landscape rolling wide before them.

"It is so beautiful!" she exclaimed with a deep narrow love of her land. "I never see it without thinking of it as it will be years hence. I can see you riding over it then and your children playing around the house and some one sitting here where we stand, watching them at their play and watching you in the distance at your work.

But I have been waiting a long time for her to take my place--and to take her own," and she leaned heavily on his arm as a sign of her dependence but out of weakness also (for she did not tell him all). "I am impatient to hear the voice of your children, Rowan.

Do you never wish to hear them yourself?"

As they stood silent, footsteps approached through the hall and turning they saw Dent with a book in his hand.

"Are you grand people never coming to breakfast?" he asked, frowning with pretended impatience, "so that a laboring man may go to his work?"

He was of short but well-knit figure. Spectacles and a thoughtful face of great refinement gave him the student's stamp. His undergraduate course at college would end in a few weeks.