The Day of Judgment

by Joseph Hocking

"Yes, that was plain enough. He must have suffered the torments of the damned!"

"All the same, it was a plucky thing to do! Would you have done it if you had been in his place?"

"A man doesn't know what he would do under such circumstances. All the same, we can't help admiring him. You see, Bolitho always had a strain of religion in him, and although he was as hard as nails in many respects, he possessed the remains of an old conscience."

Slowly the court emptied itself, and the people found their way into the street, still eagerly discussing every phase of the question, still asking and answering questions.

"I tell thee what," a rough collier was heard to say. "God Almighty's been to work, and when God Almighty gets to work wonderful things happen! When I get back to Brunford I'm going to our minister straight away and ask him to call a meeting for prayer. We mun pray, I tell you. We mun!"

During this time Paul was led back to his cell. The warders would far rather have remained in the court and talked the matter over with the others, but still the influence of discipline was upon them, and they had to do their duty. As a consequence, Paul was soon away from the noise of the excited crowd, and a few minutes later was alone in his cell. As may be imagined, if the scene that morning had caused such excitement among the spectators, it had aroused his nature to the very depths. Everything was so unexpected, so unthought of. In all his calculations Paul had never thought of this. He had wondered in what way Judge Bolitho, whenever the truth became known to him, would meet the difficulties which arose, but he had never dreamt he would stand up in a crowded court like that and make such a confession. Paul knew him to be a proud man, knew, too, that he was sensitive to the least approach of shame, knew that he valued the name he owned—one of the oldest in England. One part of the judge's speech remained in his memory. He repeated the words over again and again to himself as if trying to understand their inwardness: "In a sense there is no need that I should make this explanation in this way, but I do it because my conscience binds me to do so and because I wish, here and now, to ask my son's forgiveness."

In spite of himself he was moved. He realised what it must have cost the judge to utter such words; realised, too, the battle which he had fought during the night, before he had decided to make such a statement. "Because I wish, here and now, to ask my son's forgiveness."

Even yet he hated his father, and fought against the kinder feelings which surged up in his heart. He could not forget the dastardly deed which the man had committed before he was born: the base betrayal, the almost baser desertion, and those long years when his mother suffered in silence and solitude. For himself he did not care so much, but his mother he loved with all the strength of his nature. And a few lachrymose words could not atone for the misery of a lifetime. Still, they had their effect upon him. He called to mind, too, the look in the judge's eyes as he left the court, the simple words he had spoken: "Paul, my son, can you forgive me?"

He wanted to forgive him. A thousand forces which he could not understand seemed to be pleading with him. All the same, his heart remained adamant. The shadow of the gallows was still upon him, the weary weeks he had been lying in a dark cell, covered with ignominy and shame. His portrait had appeared in almost every scurrilous rag in the country. His name and history had been debated among those who always fastened upon every foul bit of garbage they could find. And in a way Paul traced everything to this man, Judge Bolitho; why, he did not know, but he could not help it.

Still, the happenings of that morning impressed him. They seemed to change his intellectual and spiritual whereabouts. They broke the hard crust of his nature. They appealed to him in a way which he thought impossible, and he wondered with a great wonder.