“It's the fact, however, severe or not. There's nothing in our relations to each other that should prevent my speaking my mind about him. My mother had the bad luck to marry him, and being gifted with a temper not very unlike his own, they discovered the singular fact that two people who resemble each other can become perfectly incompatible. I used to think that she could n't be matched. I recant, however, and acknowledge candidly he could 'give her a distance.'”
Pemberton gave a little laugh, as it were of encouragement to go on, and the other proceeded.
“My wife understands him best of all. She gives way in everything; all he says is right, all he opines is wisdom, and it's astonishing how this yielding, compliant, submissive spirit breaks him down; he pines under it, just as a man accustomed to sharp exercise would waste and decay by a life of confinement. I declare there was one week here we had got him to a degree of gentleness that was quite edifying, but my mother came and paid a visit when we were out, and when we returned there he was! violent, flaring, and vigorous as ever, wild with vanity, and mad to match himself with the first men of the day.”
While Sewell talked in this open and indiscreet way of the old Judge, his meaning was to show with what perfect confidence he treated his companion, and at the same time how fair and natural it would be to expect frankness in return. The crafty lawyer, however, trained in the school where all these feints and false parries are the commonest tricks of fence, never ventured beyond an expression of well-got-up astonishment, or a laugh of enjoyment at some of Sewell's smartnesses.
“You want a light?” said Sewell, seeing that the other held his cigar still unlit in his fingers.
“Thanks. I was forgetting it. The fact is, you kept me so much amused, I never thought of smoking; nor am I much of a smoker at any time.”
“It 's the vice of the idle man, and you are not in that category. By the way, what a busy time you must have of it now, with all these commitments?”
“Not so much as one might think. The cases are numerous, but they are all the same. Indeed, the informations are identical in nearly every instance. Tim Branegan had two numbers of the 'Green Flag' newspaper, some loose powder in his waistcoat-pocket, and an American drill-book in the crown of his hat.”
“And is that treason-felony?”
“With a little filling-up it becomes so. In the rank of life these men belong to, it's as easy to find a rebel as it would be in Africa to discover a man with a woolly head.”