Chapter XXII Told Him Good-Bye
At the breakfast table the next morning the Judge paid no attention to Howard, though he knew that his departure was to take place that day. He had striven to be genial when Mrs. Elbridge was present, and for a time had succeeded, but all effort was thrown off now.
Howard went to his room to make ready, and his mother went with him. The Judge was walking up and down in his office as they passed his door. Florence entered, and the Judge bowed to her.
“Are you going to tell Howard good-bye?” she asked.
“That’s easy enough,” he answered.
“He will come in here to see you before he goes.”
“How do you know?”
“I know because it is not possible for him to prove so unnatural as—”
The Judge raised his hand. “Don’t say it, please.”
She stood looking at him. “Don’t you think you ought to tell him why you have hardened your heart against him?”
“I shall tell him nothing.”
“And is that the part of a true man? Is it not almost inhuman to let him suffer in ignorance?”
The Judge raised his hand and looked toward the door. “I tell you, it is to protect her. Can’t you see?”
“It is well enough to protect her, but you ought to give him an opportunity to defend himself.”
“There is no defense. Mind, your oath.”
“Oh, I am sick of that,” she said. “Every time I say a word in his behalf you remind me of a foolish vow. Judge, I am weary of this senseless and insane drama, seeing the others stumble about in the dark while you and I stand in the light. No, you do not stand in the light, I alone am in the light of truth; and if I did not think that the trip out West would be good for him. I would not let him go; I would stop him short with what you have told me and made me swear by the memory of my mother not to repeat. No wonder you put your hand to your head. It must ache. But, there, I won’t reproach you.”
He had sat down. She went to him and put her hand on his shoulder. He looked up, and then looked down again. “I believe something is going to clear it all up one of these days,” she said. He got up and resumed his walk. Howard’s voice came down the hall: “Has the trunk gone yet?”
“I think he is coming,” she said.
“Stay with me, Florence.”
“No, you must face him, the injured, alone.”
“I have not injured him; he has injured me.”
She went out and the Judge stood there waiting for Howard. He came in, more serious now that everything had been made ready. “I am about to start for the West, sir,” he said. “I can’t stand it here any longer. You frown at me, and when I beg you to tell me—”
“How long do you expect to be gone?” the Judge interrupted.
“Till the day when I am to marry almost in secret, or when you send for me.”
The Judge was walking up and down. He turned and replied. “I shall not send for you.”
“Do you still deny us the right to be married in a church?”
“You shall never marry her at all with my sanction, and if you marry her without it, you marry out West or in there,” he added, waving toward the drawing room. “There must be no guests.”
“I should like to marry in my father’s house, but on the prairie or in the woods will do as well; it makes no difference.” He looked hard at his father, and, after a time, added: “I didn’t think that a man could change so much—be so unnatural.”
“None of that, sir!” the Judge exclaimed, turning upon him. “It is not for you to call me unnatural.”
“Father, if I have committed a crime in your eye, why don’t you tell me what it is?”
“In my eye! You must have studied long to frame that speech.”
“But why don’t you tell me?”
“Don’t mock me, sir.”
Howard looked at him, as if trying to study out something in his countenance, in his eye. “May I ask you something?”
“Why should you desire my permission since you would pay no attention to my refusal? What is it that you wish to ask?”
“May I ask if there has ever been any insanity in our family?”
The Judge started. “In our family—in my family there has been something worse than insanity.”
Howard slowly nodded his head as if admitting a sad fact. “Yes, there has been the death of affection—in your family.”
“Ah,” cried the Judge, “the shrouding of a hope.”
“The murder of a jovial spirit,” said Howard.
“Don’t shoot your poisonous arrows at me. Go on, away. Good-bye.” He waved his hand. Howard turned toward the door, but halted, faced about and looked at the Judge with troubled tenderness. “Father, I don’t know exactly where I am going, but out in the wilds somewhere to find a place for me and mine. I did not believe—couldn’t have foreseen such a moment as this. It seems to me that my father is gone.” He paused, and the Judge stood with his face turned away. “Shall I write to you?”
“No,” said the Judge, without looking round.
Mrs. Elbridge came in and found them standing apart, the Judge still with his back toward Howard. “Howard,” she said, “the cab is waiting. Judge, Howard is going away from us.”
The old man turned slightly, looked at her, nodded his head, said “yes,” and walked to the opposite side of the room. Mrs. Elbridge touched her forehead. “You must bear with him,” she whispered. “You can see where the trouble lies.”
“Yes, and it is a sorrowful thought. I can hardly believe it. And to think that he should select me as the object of his contempt.”
“He will get over it soon and send for you,” she said in a low voice. “A disordered mind turns against the loved one—nearly always.” Then, advancing toward the old man, she said: “Judge, tell him good-bye.”
“I have,” replied the old man, standing with his face turned from her. She went to him and, touching his arm, said: “But not in your old way—not as you would have told him good-bye before—before you were ill.”
“I am not ill,” he said, without turning his eyes toward her. “I never was better in my life.”
“But, tell him good-bye, please.”
“I tell you I have!” he exclaimed, stamping upon the floor; and turning with his hand uplifted, he cried: “Can’t you see—no, you cannot,” he broke off, his hand shaking, and slowly falling to his side. “No, you cannot see, must not see. I beg your pardon for speaking so impatiently, but I am worried, Rachel; worried, and—”
“Yes, I know,” she said, taking the arm which he had raised from under her gentle touch. “But, you must tell him good-bye.”
The Judge struggled against her, though not with violence; the struggle, indeed, was more against himself. She led him toward Howard, who stood looking on, sorrowfully.
“Put your arm about him,” she said to the Judge. “For me, please.”
“For you,” he said, and suffered her to put his arm on Howard’s shoulder. She raised his other arm, and now he stood with both arms about the boy’s neck.
“Good-bye, father,” said Howard.
For a moment the old man’s countenance was aglow with the light of love and sympathy; convulsively he pressed Howard to his bosom—but a horror seemed to seize him, the light of sympathy went out as if blown by a cold wind, and, stepping back, he said:
“There. Go. Not another word. Why do you continue to stand there gazing at me? Rachel, can’t you take him away? I have told him good-bye to please you—now, why don’t you oblige me by taking him away?”
“But, dear, have you no word for him?”
“Word, yes. Good-bye.”
“No word of advice?”
“Advice! Don’t mock me. Go away, please. Can’t you see—no, you cannot, and why should I expect it? Now go.”
“We are going,” she said.
“Yes, but—I beg your pardon—but why don’t you?”
She took Howard’s arm and walked out, looking back as if she hoped that the Judge might repent and follow, but he did not; he resumed his walk up and down the room. Suddenly he turned. “Now, what are you doing, William?” The brother had entered and was turning over papers on the desk.
“I am looking for a slip of paper I dropped out of my pocket-book.”
“You didn’t leave anything here.”
“That may be,” said William, “but I don’t know whether I did or not till I find out. A man never knows—”
“Some men never know,” the Judge broke in, going over to the desk and taking a paper out of William’s hand. “Go away, please.” William stepped back, shocking himself from the storage battery of his dignity. “Oh, I can go, if that’s what you want.”
“That’s what I want.”
“It is? All right. John, I’ll be hanged if I know what’s the matter with you.” The Judge was paying no attention. He was listening to a cab driving off from the door. “I say, sir, I’ll be hanged if I know what’s the matter with you.”
“I heard what you said.”
“I don’t know whether you did or not. There’s no living in the house with you. And last night, after I had been knocked down in the street—and I’m going to kill him if detectives can find him—last night when I merely intimated that something had taken place on the fourteenth of September, you—”
“William, are you going to begin all that over again?”
“I don’t know what you mean by again. John, you talk in riddles. I can’t for the life of me get at your meaning. Yes, sir, and last night you flew off like a jug handle when I told you that Carl Miller—”
“Oh, damn Carl Miller.”
“That’s all right. I don’t care how much you damn him. He deserves it—broke a pair of boots for me and made ’em so kidney footed that I couldn’t walk in ’em. But I am positive about that other date, John. It was the tenth.”
The Judge looked at him, drew a long breath, and said: “William, you are an old fool.”
“An old fool, John—old? Did you say old?”
“That is what I said. Old.”
William sighed. “Then, that settles it. It isn’t so bad to be simply a fool—for we may grow out of that as time goes on—but to be an old fool—John, I’ll leave your house. I can’t stand your abuse any longer. I am without means, broke, you might say, and I don’t know which way to turn, except to turn my back on your ill-treatment of me. I may starve to death or be killed in the street or on some freight car, stealing a ride from misery to misery, but I am going.”
“William, sit down and behave yourself.”
“Never again will I sit down in your house. I have joked with you, I know, and have said a great many things that I didn’t mean, but I am in deadly earnest this time. I am going away.”
The Judge put his hand on William’s shoulder. “Look at me,” he said. “Don’t leave me. I need you. I am mean, and I know it, but I beg of you not to leave me.”
“Mean!” William cried. “Who the deuce said you were mean? Show the villain to me. Show him to me, I tell you.”
“There, now, sit down; it is all right.”
“No, sir, it is not all right, and it never will be till I find the scoundrel that called you mean. Was it Bradley? Tell me, and I’ll choke him till his eyes pop out. Was it Bradley?”
The Judge smiled. “Bradley,” said he, “is one of my props. He is the son of my old friend, and I think the world of him.”
“Well, let him congratulate himself on his escape, for before the Lord I would choke him. It is all right, yes, sir—but, really, John, if I tell you earnestly it was on the tenth won’t you believe—”
“Yes, yes; let it be the tenth.”
“Let it be! Why, confound it, I tell you it was the tenth.”
“All right. When you go out I wish you would tell Florence to come here.”
William grunted. “Oh, I can go out. By the way, John, Howard asked me a pertinent question this morning. And it staggered me a little. He wanted to know whether there had ever been any insanity in our family.”
The Judge showed signs of coming agitation, but he fought with himself as it was his custom to fight. “What did you tell him?”
“I lied, I told him no. John, do you remember the night when they came from the mad-house and told us children that father was dead?”
“Don’t, William; don’t. Please tell Florence to come here.”
William went out and the Judge resumed his walk up and down the pathway of trouble. Yes, he did remember the night when they came from the mad-house, two men in a doctor’s gig; he remembered the lamps on each side of the vehicle, eyes of a great bug, they seemed. But his father’s malady had not come of inheritance, but of fever. But other men had fever and did not go mad. Could it be that he himself had been touched with the disease—touched in the eye with a vision? No, for there was Bodney. He had seen it. “My mind is sound, even in distress,” he mused. “But wouldn’t it have been better if I had talked to him kindly about his crime? I ought to have let him know that I saw him. No, his mother would have drawn it out of him—love sucking poison from a wound.”
Florence entered the room, advanced a few paces, halted, and stood, looking at him. “Well, you sent for me and I am here.”
“Yes, sit down, please.”
“No, I thank you.”
The Judge looked at her sorrowfully. “Did Howard tell you where he intends to go?”
Florence looked at him with a smile, but in the smile he saw bitterness. “Does it concern you?” she asked.
“I am not a brute, Florence.”
“No,” she said. “A brute is not unnatural.”
“Don’t, please. I am trying not to be unnatural. There can be a broken heart shielding a heart to keep it from breaking.”
“You were a judge, a man of justice. And was it just to let him suffer in the dark? Was it right to lock your own lips and put a seal on mine. Judge, I ought to have told him in your presence.”
“Don’t say that.”
“But I do say it. You presume upon what you are pleased to think is my strength of character. I am beginning to believe that I was weak instead of strong. Yes, I ought to have told him in your presence. I ought to have said: ‘Your father, who has been a judge, has passed sentence upon you without giving you a hearing. He says you are a thief.’”
“Hush,” said the Judge, in a loud whisper, motioning toward the door. “Don’t talk that way to me. Ah, I have killed all the love you ever had for me.”
“You have choked it and it is gasping.”
“I am grieved—but it cannot be undone—the fingers are stiffened about your gasping love.” He walked up and down for a time, and then turned again to her. “When you get a letter from him will you let me read it?”
“No. His heart will write to mine, and your eye would blur the words.”
“Don’t say that. I am not without a heart. I had a heart—it is broken.” He walked off again, but turned quickly. “Florence, I sometimes wonder if my eye could have deceived me—could have lied to me.”
She moved toward him, her hands uplifted, hope in her face. “A man’s mind lies to him, and why not his eyes?” the Judge continued. Florence caught him by the arm and looked appealingly at him. “But your brother, Florence—your brother. He saw him, too.”
“What!” she cried, stepping back. “Brother saw him! You didn’t tell me that.”
“I promised him I would not tell you.”
“Ah, you break your promises and expect me to keep mine. I will go this moment and tell his mother.”
He caught her arm and poured out a distressful imploration, a prayer. “I would rather you’d stab me,” he said, concluding. “I would rather you’d kill us both. But I didn’t swear, Florence. You have taken an oath.”
“Judge, that is cowardly.”
“Yes, it is. I am a coward—but only for her. A bitter word, Florence.”
“Yes, forgive me. I didn’t mean that. You are not a coward, but you are blind.” He held forth his hands. She stepped back, shaking her head.
“All gone,” said he, “all respect, all confidence. And you were my daughter.”
“I was.”
“In love and in duty,” he said.
“In both,” she replied. “In both, yes, and now love is gasping and duty has become a hard master.” Suddenly she sprang toward him. “Brother saw him! I am just beginning to realize what you said. I don’t believe it. His eyes lied, too.”
“Oh, beautiful faith, it would move a mountain.”
“It would pluck a mote from an eye. May I go now?”
“I am not on the bench to discharge or restrain you. But, just a moment. You feel that I am a tyrant. That could not have been possible with your former self. What is so cold as frozen gentleness? And now it is only through the frost-crusted windows that I can catch a glimpse of your other spirit.”
“In the hall, yesterday,” she said, “I thought that I heard a lurking echo of your old laughter.”
He made a gesture of distress. “Don’t remind me of it,” he said.
“May I go?”
“Yes. But let me ask you one more favor. Don’t tell your brother that I mentioned him.”
“Another chain,” she said.