“Well, Lysandy?” he prompted.
“Well, Judge.” The words were the first the visitor had uttered since his opening speech, and they came from him reluctantly. “Well, sir, it would seem like I hardly know how to start. This is a mighty personal matter that I've come to see you in regards to—and it's just a little bit hard to speak about it even to somebody that I've known most of my life, same as I've always known you. But things in my home have finally come to a head, and before the issue reaches you in an official capacity as the judge on the bench I sort of felt like it might help some—might make the whole thing pass off easier for all concerned—if I could have a few words with you privately, as a friend and as a former comrade in arms on the field of battle.”
“Yes, Lysandy, go ahead. I'm listenin',” stated Judge Priest, as the other halted.
Old Mr. Curd raised his face and in his faded eyes there was at once a bewildered appeal and a fixed and definite resolution. He spoke on very slowly and carefully, choosing his words as he went, but without faltering:
“I don't know as you know about it, Judge Priest—the chances are you naturally wouldn't—but in a domestic way things haven't been going very smoothly with me—with us, I should say—for quite a spell back. I reckon after all it's a mistake on the part of a man after he's reached middle age and got set in his ways to be taking a young wife, more especially if he can't take care of her in the way she's been used to, or anyhow in the way she'd like to be taken care of. I suppose it's only human nature for a young woman to hanker after considerable many things that a man like me can't always give her—jewelry and pretty things, and social life, and running round and seeing people, and such as that. And Luella—well, Luella really ain't much more than a girl herself yet, is she?”
The question remained unanswered. It was plain, too, that Mr. Curd had expected no answer to it, for he went straight on:
“So I feel as if the blame for what's happened is most of it mine. I reckon I was too old to be thinking about getting married in the first place. And I wasn't very well off then either—not well enough off to have the money I should've had if I expected to make Luella contented. Still, all that part of it's got nothing to do with the matter as it stands—I'm just telling it to you, Judge, as a friend.”
“I understand, Lysandy,” said Judge Priest almost in the tone which he might have used to an unhappy child. “This is all a strict confidence between us two and this is all the further it'll ever go, so fur ez I'm concerned, without you authorise me to speak of it.”
He waited for what would come next. It came in slow, steady sentences, with the regularity of a statement painfully rehearsed beforehand: “Judge Priest, I've never been a believer in divorce as a general thing. It seemed to me there was too much of that sort of thing going on round this country. That's always been my own private doctrine, more or less. But in my own case I've changed my mind. We've been talking it over back and forth and we've decided—Luella and me have—that under the circumstances a divorce is the best thing for both of us; in fact we've decided that it's the only thing. I want that Luella should be happy and I think maybe I'll feel easier in my own mind when it's all over and done with and settled up according to the law. I'm aiming to do what's best for both parties—and I want that Luella should be happy. I want that she should be free to live her own life in her own way without me hampering her. She's young and she's got her whole life before her—that's what I'm thinking of.”
He paused and with his tongue he moistened his lips, which seemed dry.