He got upon his feet too. He crumpled the paper into a ball and thrust it out of sight as though it had been a thing abominable and unclean. He took no note that in wadding the sheet he had overturned the inkwell and a stream from it was trickling down his trouser legs, marking them with long black zebra streaks. He looked at her, she standing there, a stooped and meager shape in her scant, ill-fitting gown of sleazy black, yet seeming to him an embodiment of all the beat.i.tudes and all the beauties of this mortal world.

"Ma'am," he said, "your wishes shall be respected. It shall be ez you say. My lawyer's sense tells me that you are wrong--foolishly, blindly wrong. But my memory of my own mother tells me that you are right, and that no mother's son has got the right to question you or try to persuade you to do anything different. Ma'am, I'd count it an honor to be able to call myself your friend."

Already, within the hour, Judge Priest had broken two constant rules of his daily conduct. Now, involuntarily, without forethought on his part, he was about to break another. This would seem to have been a night for the smashing of habits by our circuit judge. For she put out to him her hand--a most unlovely hand, all wrinkled at the back where dimples might once have been and corded with big blue veins and stained and shriveled and needle scarred. And he took her hand in his fat, pudgy, awkward one, and then he did this thing which never before in all his days he had done, this thing which never before he had dreamed of doing. Really, there is no accounting for it at all unless we figure that somewhere far back in Judge Priest's ancestry there were Celtic gallants, versed in the small sweet tricks of gallantry. He bent his head and he kissed her hand with a grace for which a Tom Moore or a Raleigh might have envied him.

Let us now for a briefened s.p.a.ce cast up in a preliminary way the tally on behalf of the whimsical devils of circ.u.mstance and the part they are to play in the culminating and concluding periods of this narrative. On the noon train of the day following the night when that occurred which has been set forth in the foregoing pages, Judge Priest, in the company of Doctor Lake and Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, late of King's h.e.l.l Hounds, C.S.A., departs for Reelfoot Lake upon his annual fishing trip. In the afternoon Jeff Poindexter, the judge's body servant, going through his master's wardrobe seeking articles suitable for his own adornment in the master's absence, is pained to discern stripings of spilled ink down the legs of a pair of otherwise unmarred white trousers, and, having no intention that garments which will one day come into his permanent possession shall be thus disfigured and sullied, promptly bundles them up and bears them to the cleansing, pressing and repairing establishment of one Hyman Pedaloski. The coat which matches the trousers goes along too. Upon the underside of one of its sleeves there is a big ink blob.

Include in the equation this _emigre_, Hyman Pedaloski, newly landed from Courland and knowing as yet but little of English, whether written or spoken, yet destined to advance by progressive stages until a day comes when we proudly shall hail him as our most fashionable merchant prince--Hy Clay Pedaloski, the Square Deal Clothier, Also Hats, Caps & Leather Goods. Include as a factor Hyman by all means, for lacking him our chain of chancy coincidence would lack a most vital link.

At Reelfoot Lake many black ba.s.s, bronze-backed and big-mouthed, meet the happy fate which all true anglers wish for them; and the white perch do bite with a whole-souled enthusiasm only equaled by the whole-souled enthusiasm with which also the mosquitoes bite. This brings us to the end of the week and to the fifth day of the expedition, with Judge Priest at rest at the close of a satisfactory day's sports, exhaling scents of the oil of penny-royal. Sitting-there under a tent fly, all sun blistered and skeeter stung, all tired out but most content, he picks up a two-day-old copy of the _Daily Evening News_ which the darky boatman has just brought over to camp from the post office at Walnut Log, and he opens it at the department headed Local Laconics, and halfway down the first column his eye falls upon a paragraph at sight of which he gives so deep a snort that Doctor Lake swings about from where he is shaving before a hand mirror hung on a tree limb and wants to know whether the judge has happened upon disagreeable tidings. What the judge has read is a small item in this wise, namely:

Born last evening to Mr. and Mrs. Dallam Wybrant, at their palatial mansion on Chickasaw Drive, in the new Beechmont Park Realty Development tract, an infant daughter, their first-born. Mother and child both doing well; the proud papa reported this morning as being practically out of danger and is expected to be entirely recovered shortly, as Dock Boyd, the attending medico, says he has brought three hundred babies into the world and never lost a father yet. Ye editor extends heartiest congrats. Dal, it looks like the cigars were on you!

The next chapter in the sequence of chapters leading to our climax is short but essential. Returning home Sunday evening, Judge Priest is informed that twice that day a strange young white lady has stopped at the house urgently requesting that immediately upon his arrival he be so good as to call on Mrs. Dallam Wybrant on a matter of pressing moment.

Bidden to describe the messenger, Jeff Poindexter can only say that she 'uz a powerful masterful-lookin' Yankee-talkin' lady, all dressed up lak she mout belong to some kind of a new secret s'ciety lodge, which is Jeff's way of summing up his impressions of the first professional trained nurse ever imported, capped, caped and white shod, to our town.

It was this same professional, a cool and starchy vision, who led the way up the wide stairs of the Chickasaw Drive house, the old judge, much mystified, following close behind her. She ushered him into a bedroom, bigger and more gorgeous than any bedroom he had ever seen, and leaving him standing, hat in hand, at the bedside of her chief charge, she went out and closed the door behind her.

From the pillows there looked up at him a face that was paler than when he had last seen it, a face still drawn from pangs of agony recently endured, but a face transfigured and radiant. The Madonna look was in it now. Outside, the dusk of an August evening was thickening; and inside, the curtains were half drawn and the electrics not yet turned on, but even so, in that half light, the judge could mark the change here revealed to him. He could sense, too, that the change was more spiritual than physical, and he could feel his animosity for this woman softening into something distantly akin to sympathy. At her left side, harbored in the crook of her elbow, lay a cuddling bundle; a tiny head, all red and bare, as though offering to Judge Priest's own bald, pinkish pate the sincere flattery of imitation, was exposed; and the tip of a very small ear, curled and crinkled like a sea sh.e.l.l. You take the combination of a young mother cradling her first-born within the hollow of her arm and you have the combination which has tautened the heartstrings of man since the first man child came from the womb. The old man made a silent obeisance of reverence; then waited for her to speak and expose the purpose behind this totally unexpected summons.

"Judge Priest," she said, "I have been lying here all day hoping you would come before night. I have been wishing for you to come ever since I came out from under the ether. Thank you for coming."

"Ma'am, I started fur here ez soon ez I got your word," he said. "In whut way kin I be of service to you? I'm at your command."

She slid her free hand beneath the pillow on which her head rested and brought forth a crinkled sheet of paper and held it out to him.

"Didn't you write this?" she asked.

He took it and looked at it, and a great astonishment and a great chagrin screwed his eyes and slackened his lower jaw.

"Yes, ma'am," he admitted, "I wrote it. But it wuzn't meant fur you to see. It wuzn't meant fur anybody a-tall to see--ever. And I'm wonderin', ma'am, and waitin' fur you to tell me how come it to reach you."

"I'll tell you," she answered. "But first, before we get to that, would you mind telling me how you came to write it, and when, and all? I think I can guess. I think I have already pieced the thing together for myself. Women can't reason much, you know; but they have intuition." She smiled a little at this conceit. "And I want to know if my deductions and my conclusions are correct."

"Well, ma'am," he said, "ez I wuz sayin', no human eye wuz to have read this here. But since you have read it, I feel it's my bounden duty, in common justice to another, to tell you the straight of it, even though in doin' so I'm breakin' a solemn pledge."

So he told her--the how and the why and the where and the when of it; details of which the reader is aware.

"I thought I wasn't very far wrong, and I wasn't," she said when he had finished his confession. She was quiet for a minute, her eyes fixed on the farther wall. Then: "Judge Priest, unwittingly, it seems, you have been the G.o.d of the machine. I wonder if you'd be willing to continue to serve?"

"Ef it lies within my powers to do so--yessum, and gladly."

"It does lie within your power. I want you to have the necessary papers drawn up which will signalize my giving over to my mother my share of that money which the railway paid two weeks ago, and then if you will send them to me I will sign them. I want this done at once, please--as soon as possible."

"Ma'am," he said, "it shall be as you desire; but ef it's all the same to you I'd like to write out that there paper with my own hand. I kin think of no act of mine, official or private, in my whole lifetime which would give me more honest pleasure. I'll do so before I leave this house." He did not tell her that by the letter of the law she would be giving away what by law was not hers to give. He would do nothing to spoil for her the sweet savor of her surrender. Instead he put a question: "It would appear that you have changed your mind about this here matter since I seen you last?"

"It was changed for me," she said. "This paper helped to change it for me; and you, too, helped without your knowledge; and one other, and most of all my baby here, helped to change it for me. Judge Priest, since my baby came to me my whole view of life seems somehow to have been altered. I've been lying here to-day with her beside me, thinking things out. Suppose I should be taken from her, and suppose her father should be taken, too, and she should be left, as I was, to the mercy of the world and the charity of strangers. Suppose she should grow up, as I did--although until I read that paper I didn't know it--beholden to the goodness and the devotion and the love of one who was not her real mother. Wouldn't she owe to that other woman more than she could have owed to me, her own mother, had I been spared to rear her? I think so--no, I know it is so. Every instinct of motherhood in me tells me it is so."

"Lady," he answered, "to a mere man woman always will be an everlastin'

puzzle and a riddle; but even a man kin appreciate, in a poor, faint way, the depths of mother love. It's ez though he looked through a break in the clouds and ketched a vision of the glories of heaven. But you ain't told me yit how you come to be in possession of this here sheet of note paper."

"Oh, that's right! I had forgotten," she answered. "Try to think now, judge--when my mother refused to let you go farther with your plan that night at her house, what did you do with the paper?"

"I shoved it out of sight quick ez ever I could. I recall that much anyway."

"Did you by any chance put it in your pocket?"

"Well, by Nathan Bedford Forrest!" he exclaimed. "I believe that's purzackly the very identical thing I did do. And bein' a careless old fool, I left it there instid of tearin' it up or burnin' it, and then I went on home and plum' furgot it wuz still there--not that I now regret havin' done so, seein' whut to-night's outcome is."

"And did your servant, after you were gone, send the suit you had worn that night downtown to be cleaned or repaired? Or do you know about that?"

"I suspicion that he done that very thing," he said, a light beginning to break in upon him. "Jeff is purty particular about keepin' my clothes in fust-rate order. He aims fur them to be in good condition when he decides it's time to confiscate 'em away frum me and start in wearin'

'em himself. Yessum, my Jeff's mighty funny that way. And now, come to think of it, I do seem to reckerlect that I spilt a lot of ink on 'em that same night."

"Well, then, the mystery is no mystery at all," she said. "On that very same day--the day your darky sent your clothes to the cleaner's--I had two of Dallam's suits sent down to be pressed. That little man at the tailor shop--Pedaloski--found this paper crumpled up in your pocket and took it out and then later forgot where he had found it. So, as I understand, he tried to read it, seeking for a clue to its ownership. He can't read much English, you know, so probably he has had no idea then or thereafter of the meaning of it; but he did know enough English to make out the name of Wybrant. Look at it and you'll see my name occurs twice in it, but your name does not occur at all. So don't you see what happened--what he did? Thinking the paper must have come from one of my husband's pockets, he smoothed it out as well as he could and folded it up and pinned it to the sleeve of Dallam's blue serge and sent it here.

My maid found it when she was undoing the bundle before hanging up the clothes in Dallam's closet, and she brought it to me, thinking, I suppose, it was a bill from the cleaner's shop, and I read it. Simple enough explanation, isn't it, when you know the facts?"

"Simple," he agreed, "and yit at the same time sort of wonderful too.

And whut did you do when you read it?"

"I was stunned at first. I tried at first not to believe it. But I couldn't deceive myself. Something inside of me told me that it was true--every word of it. I suppose it was the woman in me that told me.

And somehow I knew that you had written it, although really that part was not so very hard a thing to figure out, considering everything. And somehow--I can't tell you why though--I was morally sure that after you had written it some other person had forbidden your making use of it in any way, and instinctively--anyhow, I suppose you might say it was by instinct--I knew that it had reached me, of all persons, by accident and not by design.

"I tried to reach you--you were gone away. But I did reach that funny little man Pedaloski by telephone, and found out from him why he had pinned the paper on Dallam's coat. I did not tell my husband about it.

He doesn't know yet. I don't think I shall ever tell him. For two days, judge, I wrestled with the problem of whether I should send for my mother and tell her that now I knew the thing which all her life she had guarded from me. Finally I decided to wait and see you first, and try to find out from you the exact circ.u.mstances under which the paper was written, and the reason why, after writing it, you crumpled it up and hid it away.

"And then--and then my baby came, and since she came my scheme of life seems all made over. And oh, Judge Priest"--she reached forth a white, weak hand and caught at his--"I have you and my baby and--yes, that little man to thank that my eyes have been opened and that my heart has melted in me and that my soul has been purged from a terrible selfish deed of cruelty and ingrat.i.tude. And one thing more I want you to know: I'm not really sorry that I was born as I was. I'm glad, because--well, I'm just glad, that's all. And I suppose that, too, is the woman in me."

One given to sonorous and orotund phrases would doubtless have coined a most splendid speech here. But all the old judge, gently patting her hand, said was:

"Well, now, ma'am, that's powerful fine--the way it's all turned out.

And I'm glad I had a blunderin' hand in it to help bring it about. I sh.o.r.ely am, ma'am. I'd like to keep on havin' a hand in it. I wonder now ef you wouldn't like fur me to be the one to go right now and fetch your mother here to you?"

She shook her head, smiling.

"Thank you, judge, that's not necessary. She's here now. She was here when the baby came. I sent for her. She's in her room right down the hall; it'll be her room always from now on. I expect she's sewing on things for the baby; we can't make her stop it. She's terribly jealous of Miss McAlpin--that's the trained nurse Dallam brought back with him from St. Louis--but Miss McAlpin will be going soon, and then she'll be in sole charge. She doesn't know, Judge Priest, that what she told to you I now know. She never shall know if I can prevent it, and I know you'll help me guard our secret from her."

"I reckin you may safely count on me there, ma'am," he promised. "I've frequently been told by disinterested parties that I snore purty loud sometimes, but I don't believe anybody yit caught me talkin' in my sleep. And now I expect you're sort of tired out. So ef you'll excuse me I'll jest slip downstairs, and before I go do that there little piece of writin' we spoke about a while ago."

"Wouldn't you like to see my baby before you go?" she asked. Her left hand felt for the white folds which half swaddled the tiny sleeper.

"Judge Priest, let me introduce you to little Miss Martha Millsap Wybrant, named for her grandmammy."

"Pleased to meet you, young lady," said he, bowing low and elaborately.

"At your early age, honey, it's easier fur a man, to understand you than ever it will be agin after you start growin' up. Pleased indeed to meet you."