The Mettle of the Pasture

by James Lane Allen

"He helps me to dress and undress. You'd know this if you studied his face when I struggle to brush the dust off of my back and shoulders: the mortification, the sense of injustice done him, in his having been made a quadruped. When I stoop over to take off my shoes, if I do it without any noise and he lies anywhere near, very well; but if I am noisy about it, he always comes and takes a seat before me and assists. Then he makes his same speech: 'What a shame that you should have to do this for yourself, when I am here to do it for you, but have no hands.'

"You know his portrait in my sitting room. When it was brought home and he discovered it on the wall, he looked at it from different angles, and then came across to me with a wound and a grievance: 'Why have you put that thing there? How can you, who have me, tolerate such a looking object as that? See the meanness in his face! See how used up he is and how sick of life! See what a history is written all over him—his crimes and disgraces! And you can care for him when you have me, your Brown.' After I am dead, I expect him to publish a memorial volume entitled 'Reminiscences of the late Judge Ravenel Morris, By his former Friend, afterward his Valet, Taurus-Canis.'"

The long drowsing days of summer had come. Business was almost suspended; heat made energy impossible. Court was not in session, farmers were busy with crops. From early morning to late afternoon the streets were well-nigh deserted.

Ravenel Morris found life more active for him during this idlest season of his native town. Having no business to prefer, people were left more at leisure to talk with him; more acquaintances sat fanning on their doorsteps and bade him good night as he passed homeward. There were festivals in the park; and he could rest on one of the benches and listen to the band playing tunes. He had the common human heart in its love of tunes. When tunes stopped, music stopped for him. If anything were played in which there was no traceable melody, when the instruments encountered a tumult of chords and dissonances, he would exclaim though with regretful toleration:

"What are they trying to do now? What is it all about? Why can't music be simple and sweet? Do noise and confusion make it better or greater?"

One night Barbee had him serenaded. He gave the musicians instruction as to the tunes, how they were to be played, in what succession, at what hour of the night. The melodists grouped themselves in the middle of the street, and the Judge came out on a little veranda under one of his doors and stood there, a great silver-haired figure, looking down. The moonlight shone upon him. He remained for a while motionless, wrapped loosely in what looked like a white toga. Then with a slight gesture of the hand full of mournful dignity he withdrew.

It was during these days that Barbee, who always watched over him with a most reverent worship and affection, made a discovery. The Judge was breaking; that brave life was beginning to sink and totter toward its fall and dissolution. There were moments when the cheerfulness, which had never failed him in the midst of trial, failed him now when there was none; when the ancient springs of strength ceased to run and he was discovered to be feeble. Sometimes he no longer read his morning newspaper; he would sit for long periods in the front door of his office, looking out into the street and caring not who passed, not even returning salutations: what was the use of saluting the human race impartially? Or going into the rear office, he would reread pages and chapters of what at different times in his life had been his favorite books: "Rabelais" and "The Decameron" when he was young; "Don Quixote" later, and "Faust"; "Clarissa" and "Tom Jones" now and then; and Shakespeare always; and those poems of Burns that tell sad truths; and the account of the man in Thackeray who went through so much that was large and at the end of life was brought down to so much that was low. He seemed more and more to feel the need of grasping through books the hand of erring humanity. And from day to day his conversations with Barbee began to take more the form of counsels about life and duty, about the ideals and mistakes and virtues and weaknesses in men. He had a good deal to say about the ethics of character in the court room and in the street.

One afternoon Barbee very thoughtfully asked him a question: "Uncle, I have wanted to know why you always defended and never prosecuted. The State is supposed to stand for justice, and the State is the accuser; in always defending the accused and so in working against the State, have you not always worked against justice?"

The Judge sat with his face turned away and spoke as he sat—very gravely and quietly: "I always defended because the State can punish only the accused, and the accused is never the only criminal. In every crime there are three criminals. The first criminal is the Origin of Evil. I don't know what the Origin of Evil is, or who he is; but if I could have dragged the Origin of Evil into the court room, I should have been glad to try to have it hanged, or have him hanged. I should have liked to argue the greatest of all possible criminal cases: the case of the Common People vs. the Devil—so nominated. The second criminal is all that coworked with the accused as involved in his nature, in his temptation, and in his act. If I could have arraigned all the other men and women who have been forerunners or copartners of the accused as furthering influences in the line of his offence, I should gladly have prosecuted them for their share of the guilt. But most of the living who are accessory can no more be discovered and summoned than can the dead who also were accessory. You have left the third criminal; and the State is forced to single him out and let the full punishment fall upon him alone. Thus it does not punish the guilty—it punishes the last of the guilty. It does not even punish him for his share of the guilt: it can never know what that share is. This is merely a feeling of mine, I do not uphold it. Of course I often declined to defend also."

They returned to this subject another afternoon as the two sat together a few days later: