CHAPTER VII.
THE JUDGE MAKES A DISCOVERY.
After the adventure at the army post Mr. Allison called not infrequently at the home of the Thorns, and though, of course, cordially received by both Jean and her father, nearly always succeeded in leaving Jean thoroughly vexed with him. She made speeches and drew statistics for him, enough in strength and numbers to convert the traffic itself, and was generally rewarded for her pains by an amused look and a good-natured laugh. He seemed to her to be asleep, sound asleep; and try as best she might, it seemed impossible to awaken him; and yet she looked for his visits and enjoyed the task she had set herself about more than she would have cared to admit.
The fact was, Mr. Allison had been born asleep as far as his relation with the liquor question was concerned. From his father he inherited his interest in the business firm of which he was the junior member, and having been brought up in this atmosphere, he neither knew nor cared for any other. A man possessing even half a portion of real integrity is so rarely found engaged in the liquor business that this man's character was often spoken of. Whether he was honest may be doubted, but certain it was, he was not bidding for the church vote by making promises and prayers. Yet the cloak of respectability that he wore made him ten times more dangerous than one of baser worth would have been; but his cloak, it is well to remember, differed only in color from the cloak worn by unnumbered men, to-day posing before a long-suffering people as Christian leaders.
In spite of the indifference of Mr. Allison and the vexation of Jean, each felt the subtle power of attraction in the other that neither could explain.
One night when sitting closer than usual to her side, he calmly possessed himself of one of her hands.
"You are quite an enigma to me," he said. "How can you be a bit comfortable in such close proximity to a representative of the ungodly traffic?"
"I cannot," she answered, pulling at her hand. "I will go away."
"Will you?" and he tightened the pressure of his fingers.
Jean dropped her head on her free hand and was very still. Mr. Allison, watching her, presently saw a tear-drop on her cheek.
He put his arm around her, and would have drawn her to him, but with a firm, gentle touch, the meaning of which was unmistakable, she pushed his arm aside, and, rising, stood before him.
The faint trace of tears still marked her eyes, and her voice was a trifle unsteady.
"Mr. Allison, we cannot be even friends! We just cannot! You are a 'man atom of the great iniquity.'"
She crossed the room, and, raising a shade, stood looking absently into the moonlight. Gilbert Allison leaned forward and seemed trying to obtain the solution of some mystery from the outlines of her figure.
She still stood there when Judge Thorn entered from an adjoining room, and while he conversed with her liquor-dealer lover, Jean left the room to return no more that night.
But Mr. Allison was not thus to be disposed of.
A few evenings passed, and he was again announced a visitor at the Thorn home, and Jean appeared really very glad to see him, considering that they were never to be friends. After a few moments of casual conversation he took from his pocket an evening paper, folded so that she could not miss the reading, and held it before her eyes.
From the item thus displayed she learned that Gilbert Allison, late of the firm of Allison, Russell & Joy, had withdrawn his interest in the firm to be placed in other investments.
The conversation that followed the reading of this announcement, while confidential, was not a long one, but at its close Gilbert Allison knew more of that firmness born of a woman's conviction than he had ever dreamed.
* * * * *
Judge Thorn looked comfortable in his leather chair, his slippered feet on a hassock and a new book in his hand. At any rate, Jean thought so, as she studied him from between the parted curtains, but she was relentless. Stealing softly behind him, she pressed her hands over his eyes. The judge started, and the young lady laughed merrily.
Then she tried to steal away his book, but he held it.
"Let me put it up, father, I want to talk to you."
The judge still held the book.
"Then I will say 'please.'"
"Is it to be a political conversation?" he asked, gravely.
"Not a breath of politics about it," she answered.
"Any statistics to be brought in?" he questioned further.
Jean laughed again.
"Really, father," she said, "I think I may hope to win you yet. When a judge, and a Republican at that, finds it hard to vindicate his party's doings, and finds statistics overwhelmingly against his party's policy on moral questions, he will look for better things in better places. At this period of his political transmigration I believe a man is more to be pitied for misplaced confidence than blamed for tardy understanding. No, father, not a statistic to-night, unless you compel me to bring them out in self-defense."
Judge Thorn slowly released his book.
"Now," said Jean triumphantly, "we are ready for a nice long talk, that is, if you feel equal to the task of talking. What I have to say will not take long. It is about a little interview between Mr. Allison and—Judge Thorn's daughter, and if I had been less of a 'crank,' I suppose you would have had another son-in-law in prospect."
"Yes?" questioned the judge. "Then I have been mistaken when I have thought at times that you cared for him."
Jean remained silent a few minutes, then looked up quickly into her father's face.
"You are my best, my dearest friend, father. I will tell you truly. You have not been mistaken. I love Gilbert Allison, and I cannot help it to save my life."
When Judge Thorn spoke again his voice had changed somewhat. He spoke as if his words were escaping from beneath a weight.
"Better than you do me, Jean?"
She did not answer at once; then she caught her father's eye, and smiled as she said:
"You want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?"
"Go on," was the judge's quiet reply.
"Then it is 'yes,' father."
A shadow passed over the face of the judge for an instant that carried Jean back to her childhood days, when she used to wonder, as she mused, why it was that her father always looked so sad.
"You have all the sweet ways of your mother, child," said the old man; "and in you I know the traits and intellect that I had hoped to nurture in the boy. For years you have been my comrade—my best loved daughter. I am growing old, now, quite old, and you must leave me."
As he spoke he ran his fingers through his hair, as if in its thinness and fading color he could discern advancing years.
Jean caught the hand that hung over the arm of the chair between her two and pressed it to her cheek.
"You make me happy, father!" she whispered. "Do you remember long ago I told you that you would some day be glad I was your boy? And so you are. Perhaps it is because I am so like you—I only wish I knew I was—or perhaps I have always loved you best, and yet I have not loved you enough, father."
"Yes, child. Yes, enough to drive away a grief and make me happy."
"Then, remember, father; remember always and forever, that I do not love you any less. If I have come to love another more, I tell you truly, I cannot help it. It has come to me—just come and—come and come; and I have fought it every step of the way. A few times I have pictured to myself such a man as I might some time call my husband. He has been learned and clean and upright, with an irrepressible spirit of patriotism, hindered by no party ties that bind to money instead of moral questions; daunted by no fear, and bound by no memory of a past; and the man has come, and he is—a gentlemanly liquor dealer. But I will not leave you, father. I have no thought other than to stay here."
This information did not seem to impress the judge.
"You say so, Jean. You mean so; but you will be married, and a wife's duties come before a daughter's."
Jean laughed again.
"You look almost as disconsolate as Mr. Allison did the last time I saw him. Cheer up! I am not going to be married that I know of."
"No?"
"No, father."
"Why, Jean?"
"I see you know that Mr. Allison is a liquor dealer no longer, or you would hardly ask."
"I know. And I know that he sacrifices something in getting out of it at this time. He is a clean man, and though his name has been connected with the interest, that has been all. One could hardly imagine him standing behind a bar."
"He said something like that in his own defense. Let me see—he said the national politics was the great mother of all lesser political plays, and that at such elections he had cast his vote just as you and your preacher have always done. Therefore, as you were temperance men, so he was a temperance man. How was that for argument?"
Judge Thorn laughed.
"Well, I should not wonder if he were as much of a temperance man as some other folks, after all."
"The more shame for the 'other folks,'" said Jean, a touch of sternness in her voice.
"Have it that way if you wish, but to the original question. I am in no hurry for you to marry, but I suppose you will some time, and Allison is a square man. What he has done in this business move he has done not because he has changed his views on some matters, but all for the love of a woman, and that means much, my girl, these days of fortune hunters and deceivers."
"All for the love of a woman," Jean repeated softly to herself. "That is what he said."
They were both silent a few seconds.
"You have not answered my question, Jean."
"Ah! I forgot, father. You asked me why I could not promise to be the wife of Mr. Allison. I will tell you, as I told him, and I think you will understand as he did.
"If I ever have a husband, he must do right from an honest conviction of right, and because humanity and justice and God demand the right, and never for the 'love of a woman,' although that is a beautiful temptation."
Judge Thorn looked inquiringly at his daughter, and she continued:
"He was not prepared for this, I think, but he understood what I meant, and said that I asked of him the impossible; that it was impossible for him to see the liquor traffic in the light that I do.
"But I am sure, father, that the underlying principle of my idea is right, and God makes it possible for all men to see the right, if they seek to."
Jean had risen and stood before her father, her face aglow and her eyes shining.
This mood passed shortly, and she returned to her chair. She clasped her hands behind her head and began again softly, as if speaking to herself:
"And then—then he sat down in a chair by the window, with his face turned away. It was very still in the room.
"I went and stood close by his side, but I hardly dared to speak, it all seemed so strange somehow. I wanted—Oh, you do not know how I longed to throw myself into his arms, just to try to wake him; but you know 'propriety'.
"After a time—perhaps an hour, perhaps a minute—he suddenly rose and kissed me on the forehead.
"'Goodby, dear,' he said, 'I think I had better not come any more,' and he left the room without another word.
"After the door had closed behind him and I heard him stepping down the walk, I put both my hands over my heart, just so, and held it tight, for it seemed that it would bound out and go with him."
They sat in silence a little while after Jean ceased speaking, and then she stepped behind her father's chair and dropped her arms around his neck.
"No, father, you shall never be left alone as long as this big world holds Jean. Lonesomeness is so big and dreary!"
She pressed her lips to his forehead and turned away.
Had such a favor been meted out to the disconsolate Mr. Allison, he would no doubt have been immediately transported to a state of unalloyed happiness. Not so with the judge. The very act, the very words, told him that the woman's affections had been divided, and the streak of selfishness that runs through all humanity had not been overlooked in his make-up.
"Are you not really ashamed of me, father? Just think of it! Me, Jean Thorn, of sound mind and adult years, falling in love with a liquor dealer! It is too strange to believe, and yet I believe the situation would be perfectly delightful if—if—well, if I were not 'my father's boy.' But I will survive, let it be hoped, and if this maddening, sickening, altogether unmanageable love one reads of had rushed upon me like a whirlwind, it would be the same. The man I marry must not be a 'man atom of the great iniquity,' not even to the extent of his vote."
And lest she should mar the impression she hoped to leave upon her father, Jean hurried from the room, waving her hand to him as she passed through the door.
* * * * *
In her own room she sat down to think. Mechanically she unbound the coils of red-brown hair that crowned her head, and holding the quaintly carved silver pins which seemed a part of her identity in her hand, she began a march to and fro across the room. There was no smile on her face, rather a pained, unnatural look that her dearest friend would not have recognized. Presently she stopped.
Raising her hands, the shining hair rippling over her shoulders like a garment, she lifted her face heavenward.
"My Father!" she whispered, brokenly, "he is asleep. Touch his eyes with kindly fingers that the scales may drop away. Put the hollow of thy hand around his heart and kindle there the love that means the brotherhood of man, for I love him—I love him!"
Even as she stood, with her face upturned from the wealth of flowing hair, the man of her prayer was in the toils of fate, seeing a "face" and hearing a voice that touched his ear and clung to his heart, "like the wail of a lost soul."
