"I know it." The mother's fingers trembled as she rested them on the work in her lap.
"It was only yesterday that I learned of his drinking at these parties to which he goes so often. What are the fathers and mothers of Merton thinking of, that they allow their boys to learn these habits in the best society?" Judge Vernon spoke with a force that lost sight, for the time, of the fact that he himself was one of the very fathers that he so severely condemned.
"Do you think it is the best society, John?" asked Mrs. Vernon with a boldness that was not a part of her character.
"No! And yet we say we belong to it. And we let our girls and Claude frequent these entertainments night after night. Eliza, I cannot endure it any longer. The thought of Claude's growing into the wild, dissipated, society fast young man is a horror to me." Judge Vernon paused, and then went on with an unusual agitation in his voice and manner. "Eliza, I have not been able to shut out the picture, since I heard of Claude's drinking, of his appearance in court, in my court some day, charged with some crime. That picture has haunted me all day. While I was sentencing that colored man, I kept thinking, 'What is to prevent Claude, my own son, from standing here some day, here or in some court, charged with some crime while under the influence of drink, just as the negro committed his crime while under the influence of liquor?'"
"O John, don't talk so!" Mrs. Vernon let her work fall on the floor, and her face was pale and her lips quivered nervously. She had never known her husband to break out so forcibly from his habitual stern repression of feeling, and it frightened her.
"It is simply what we must face sooner or later. Our girls—." The judge crowded down a rising passion, and for a moment there was perfect silence in the room. "Each of our girls one of these days will marry one of these society young men, such men as I am free to confess I never would choose for them."
Mrs. Vernon was silent. She was astonished at her husband's words.
"I see things in my court, Eliza, that convince me daily of the need of a great transformation in the city of Merton in its social life. I am simply appalled at the number of divorce cases. I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that the fast life lived by so many of the young people is utterly ruinous to soul and body. Hardly a case comes up that does not illustrate in some form the terrible influence of drink and gambling, much of it learned at the very parties where Claude is a frequent guest, at the very party, no doubt, where he is now."
He rose and walked up and down the room again. Mrs. Vernon sat silent and agitated.
"And I cannot help thinking of the people in Freetown. In the very heart of our Christian (as we call it) city there is a condition of lawlessness and impurity that very few realize. I see the results of it daily in my court, and my heart grows sick as I feel my powerlessness. Somehow—" Judge Vernon turned to his wife with a look and manner she had never known in him before. "Eliza, somehow I cannot help connecting the crime in Freetown, the dissipation and immorality in that district, with the same thing in what we call our best society. Somehow I am oppressed by the feeling that this city will suffer some great calamity even in its best homes because we have allowed such evils to grow up uncorrected in the right way. It seems to me sometimes as I sit in my place on the bench, that a judgment is hanging over this city, so fair in its outward appearance, yet so wrong in much of its human life."