These law offices were raised a foot or two above the level of the street. The front rooms could be used for clients who were so important that they should be seen; the back rooms were for such as brought business, but not necessarily fame. Driving through this street, the wives of the lawyers could lean forward in their carriages and if their husbands were busy, they could smile and bow; if their husbands were idle, they could look straight ahead.
He passed under the shadow of the old court-house where in his prime he had fought his legal battles against the commonwealth. He had been a great lawyer and he knew it (if he had married he might have been Chief Justice). Then he turned the corner and entered the street of jurisprudence and the gaol. About midway he reached the staircase opening from the sidewalk; to his rooms above.
He was not poor and he could have lived richly had he wished. But when a man does not marry there are so many other things that he never espouses; and he was not wedded to luxury. As he lighted the chandelier over the centre-table in his sitting room, the light revealed an establishment every article of which, if it had no virtues, at least possessed habits: certainly everything had its own way. He put his hat and cane on the table, not caring to go back to the hatrack in his little hall, and seated himself in his olive morocco chair. As he did so, everything in the room—the chairs, the curtains, the rugs, the card-table, the punch-bowl, the other walking-sticks, and the rubbers and umbrellas–seemed to say in an affectionate chorus: "Well, now that you are in safe for the night, we feel relieved. So good night and pleasant dreams to you, for we are going to sleep;" and to sleep they went.
The gas alone flared up and said, "I'll stay up with him."
He drew out and wiped his glasses and reached for the local Sunday paper, his Sunday evening Bible. He had read it in the morning, but he always gleaned at night: he met so many of his friends by reading their advertisements. But to-night he spread it across his knees and turning to the table lifted the top of a box of cigars, an orderly responsive family; the paper slipped to the floor and lay forgotten behind his heels.
He leaned back in the chair with his cigar in his mouth and his eyes directed toward the opposite wall, where in an oval frame hung the life-size portrait of an old bulldog. The eyes were blue and watery and as full of suffering as a seats; from the extremity of the lower jaw a tooth stood up like a shoemaker's peg; and over the entire face was stamped the majesty, the patience, and the manly woes of a nature that had lived deeply and too long. The Judge's eyes rested on this comrade face.
The events of the day had left him troubled. Any sermon on the prodigal always touches men; even if it does not prick their memories, it can always stir their imaginations. Whenever he heard one, his mind went back to the years when she who afterwards became Rowan's mother had cast him off, so settling life for him. For after that experience he had put away the thought of marriage. "To be so treated once is enough," he had said sternly and proudly. 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 passionate 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—"