In the end, Mary being consulted and feeling as Laurence did about the money, a compromise was effected. Generous legacies were left to the near relatives, and the remainder, for those days a small fortune, to Laurence in trust for his children, the income to be Laurence's for his life. The Judge, having drawn up and executed what he considered an ironclad will with these provisions, was easier in his mind, and felt that he had nothing more to do in life, except to watch Laurence's progress and give an occasional counsel. Laurence was fairly launched, business poured in upon him, he had two juniors in the office. The Judge rather regretted his tendency to take criminal cases whenever they appealed to him; but he recognized too that Laurence's talent lay in this direction. And then the boy could afford it now, he needn't be looking closely after money. He could afford to take cases that brought him little except reputation, and to have it said that every poor man in trouble knew the way to Lawyer Carlin's office. If Laurence wanted to be the champion of the poor and oppressed, if he could be more eloquent in behalf of an ignorant negro cheated out of his small property than when he had a fat fee in prospect—why, let him go ahead. He was provided for, anyhow.
In his many vacant hours, the Judge fell back on reading, of which he had always been fond. He had a respectable library of classics, bound in calf. He liked Laurence to read aloud in the evenings when work permitted. The Judge had a taste for lofty and magnificent diction. Shakespeare, the Old Testament, Milton, Burton and Macaulay were his favourites. He liked De Quincey too, and Burke's speeches. He could listen by the hour to Milton's prose, or the "Anatomy of Melancholy." He often dwelt on the advantages of such reading, in forming a style. He did not consider that Laurence as yet had a style—he was too simple, too colloquial in his speaking. Rolling sonorous periods, balanced and built up, a wide range of allusion and metaphor, a sombre and weighty splendour, was the Judge's ideal of eloquence.
Mary was usually present at these readings, sitting by and sewing. But her thoughts often wandered—she had not much æsthetic feeling, and poetry bored her. However, she liked the sound of Laurence's voice, as an accompaniment to thoughts which might have no concern with him.
One evening a strange thing happened—Hilary Robertson came to call on the Judge. Laurence happened to be away on business at the county seat—perhaps Hilary knew this. What the purpose of his visit was, did not appear at that time. The Judge received him politely, though a little nervous, and begged Mary to stay when she was about to leave them together. There was a little general conversation, which presently fell upon literature and ended by Hilary's reading at the Judge's request the "Urn Burial" of Sir Thomas Browne. The effect of this stately prose in Hilary's wonderful voice thrilled the two listeners. Mary dropped her work. Something of the feeling of old days came back upon her—some mysterious lifting of the heart, vague pain and yearning at the touch of unearthly beauty. She had hardly felt this since her girlhood, her present life had too much absorbed her. Her eyes were fixed upon Hilary with startled feeling—no one but he, she was thinking, had ever had the power to move this feeling in her, to make her conscious of a world beyond this narrow world she lived in, to make her dissatisfied with herself, unhappy.... And he could do this just by the tone of his voice, reading something that she did not attend to. Music, what little she had heard, produced a similar effect upon her—it was the only form of art that touched her.... But now she resented Hilary's power, she did not want to be stirred or made unhappy. Especially now, when she was carrying a child. Hearing the Judge issue a cordial invitation to Hilary to repeat his visit, she decided that next time she would avoid him.
In the next few months Laurence was away a good deal, and was obliged also to work late in the evenings when at home. The Judge came to depend upon Hilary for at least two weekly visits, when they would read and talk together, and Mary often sat with them, in spite of her judgment. Sometimes she was sorry for it, sometimes not.
Laurence learned of this intimacy with astonishment. Finding how it had begun, he was struck with Hilary's audacity. He had received the Judge's praise of his new friend in silence; all the more incensed because he couldn't openly oppose Hilary nor keep him out of the house.
"I think the Judge is getting childish," he said to Mary darkly.
"He is much weaker," she agreed.
"He must be—to let the preacher get hold of him. That would never have happened if he'd been himself."