“Why, it’s such a good story to tell,” he expatiated; “and there must be a great deal in that. I never heard a better story for gaining sympathy—that fine old Southern aristocrat standing by the Union in a red-hot secessionist town—actually persecuted on account of it. He was persecuted, wasn’t he?” he enquired of Rupert.
“Well,” Rupert answered, “everybody was furious at him, of course—all his friends. People who had known him all his life passed him in the street without speaking. He’d been very popular, and he felt it terribly. He never was the same man after it began. He was old, and his spirit gave way.”
“Just so!” exclaimed the Judge, stopping upon the pavement, elated even to oratory by the picture presented. “Fine old Southern aristocrat—on the brink of magnificent fortune—property turned into money that he may realise it—war breaks out, ruins him—Spartan patriotism—one patriot in a town of rebels hated and condemned by everybody—but faithful to his country. Friends—old friends—refuse to recognise him. Fortune gone—friends lost—heart broken.” He snatched Tom’s big hand and shook it enthusiastically. “Tom!” he said; “I’d like to make a speech to the House about it myself. I believe they would listen to me. How set up Jenny would be—how set up she’d be.”
He left them all in a glow of enthusiasm; they could see him gesticulating a little to himself as he walked down the avenue in the moonlight.
“That’s just like him,” said Tom; “he’d rather please Jenny than set the House of Representatives on fire. And he’d undertake the whole thing—work to give a man a fortune for mere neighbourliness. We were a neighbourly lot in Hamlin, after all.”
The Judge went home to his boarding-house and sat late in his shabby armchair, his legs stretched out, his hands clasped on the top of his rough head. He was thinking the thing out, and as he thought it out his excitement grew. Sometimes he unclasped his hands and rubbed his hair with restless sigh; more than once he unconsciously sprang to his feet, walked across the floor two or three times, and then sat down again. He was not a sharp schemer, he had not even reached the stage of sophistication which would have suggested to him that sharp scheming might be a necessary adjunct in the engineering of such matters as Government claims. From any power or tendency to diplomatise he was as free as the illustrative bull in a china shop. His bucolic trust in the simple justice and honest disinterestedness of the political representatives of his native land (it being granted they were of the Republican party) might have appeared a touching thing to a more astute and experienced person who had realised it to its limits. When he rubbed his hair excitedly or sprang up to walk about, these manifestations were indications, not of doubt or distrust, but of elated motion. It was the emotional aspect of the situation which delighted and disturbed him, the dramatic picturesqueness of it. Here was Tom—good old Tom—all Hamlin knew Tom and his virtues and witticisms—Lord! there wasn’t a man in the county who didn’t love him—yes, love him. And here was Sheba that Tom had been a father to. And what a handsome little creature she’d grown into—and, but for Tom, the Lord knew what would have become of her. And there was that story of the De Willoughbys of Delisleville—handsome, aristocratic lot, among the biggest bugs in the State—the fine old Judge with his thousands of acres lying uncultivated, and he paying his taxes on them through sheer patriarchal pleasure in being a big landowner. For years the Government had benefited by his tax-paying, while he had gained nothing. And then there was the accidental discovery of the splendid wealth hidden in the bowels of the earth—and the old aristocrat’s energy and enterprise. Why, if the war had not brought ruin to him and he had carried out his plans, the whole State would have been the richer for his mines. Capital would have been drawn in, labour would have been in demand—things would have developed—outsiders would have bought land—new discoveries would have been made—the wealth of the country’s resources would have opened up—the Government itself would have benefited by the thing. And then the war had ruined all. And yet the old Judge, overwhelmed with disaster as he was, had stood by the Government and had been scorned and deserted, and had died broken-hearted at the end, and here were his sole descendants—good old Tom and his little beauty of a protégée—(no, Sheba wasn’t a descendant, but somehow she counted), and this fine young De Willoughby—all of them penniless. Why, the justice of the thing stared a man in the face; a claim like that must go through.
At this juncture of his thought Judge Rutherford was standing upright in the middle of his room. His hair was in high disorder and his countenance flushed. He struck his right fist hard against the palm of his left hand.
“Why, the whole thing’s as straight as a string,” he said. “It’s got to go through. I’ll go and see Farquhar to-morrow.”
Farquhar was a cleverer man than the representative from Hamlin County. He had been returned several times by his constituents, and his life had been spent in localities more allied to effete civilization than was Barnesville. He knew his Washington and had an astute interest in the methods and characteristics of new members of Congress, particularly perhaps such as the rural districts loomed up behind as a background. Judge Rutherford he had observed at the outset of his brief career, in the days when he had first appeared in the House of Representatives in his new broadcloth with its new creases, and with the uneasy but conscientious expression in his eye.