The Mettle of the Pasture

by James Lane Allen

Her expression showed that she did not understand.

"Years ago, when he was about Rowan's age, scandals like these were circulated about him. We know how much his life is wrapped up In Rowan. He has not been well this summer: we spared him."

"But you must tell him at once. Say that I beg him to write to Rowan to come to see him. I want Rowan to tell him everything—and to tell you everything."

All the next day Judge Morris stayed in his rooms. The end of life seemed suddenly to have been bent around until it touched the beginning. At last he understood.

"It was she then," he said. "I always suspected her; but I had no proof of her guilt; and if she had not been guilty, she could never have proved her innocence. And now for years she has smiled at me, clasped my hands, whispered into my ear, laughed in my eyes, seemed to be everything to me that was true. Well, she has been everything that is false. And now she has fallen upon the son of the woman whom she tore from me. And the vultures of scandal are tearing at his heart. And he will never be able to prove his innocence!"

He stayed in his rooms all that day. Rowan, in answer to his summons, had said that he should come about the middle of the afternoon; and it was near the middle of the afternoon now. As he counted the minutes, Judge Morris was unable to shut out from his mind the gloomier possibilities of the case.

"There is some truth behind all this," he said. "She broke her engagement with him,—at least, she severed all relations with him; and she would not do that without grave reason." He was compelled to believe that she must have learned from Rowan himself the things that had compelled her painful course. Why had Rowan never confided these things to him? His mind, while remaining the mind of a friend, almost the mind of a father toward a son, became also the mind of a lawyer, a criminal lawyer, with the old, fixed, human bloodhound passion for the scent of crime and the footsteps of guilt.

It was with both attitudes that he himself answered Rowan's ring; he opened the door half warmly and half coldly. In former years when working up his great cases involving life and death, it had been an occasional custom of his to receive his clients, if they were socially his friends, not in his private office, but in his rooms; it was part of his nature to show them at such crises his unshaken trust in their characters. He received Rowan in his rooms now. It was a clear day; the rooms had large windows; and the light streaming in took from them all the comfort which they acquired under gaslight: the carpets were faded, the rugs were worn out and lay in the wrong places. It was seen to be a desolate place for a desolated life.

"How are you, Rowan?" he said, speaking as though he had seen him the day before, and taking no note of changes in his appearance. Without further words he led the way into his sitting room and seated himself in his leather chair.

"Will you smoke?"