The Voice of the People Part 2

The sun was still high when the judge came out upon his porch, a smile of indecision on his face and his hat in his hand. Pausing upon the topmost step, he cast an uncertain glance sideways at the walk leading past the church, and then looked straight ahead through the avenue of maples, which began at the smaller green facing the ancient site of the governor's palace and skirted the length of the larger one, which took its name from the court-house. At last he descended the steps with his leisurely tread, turning at the gate to throw a remonstrance to an old negro whose black face was framed in the library window.

"Now, Caesar, didn't I--"

"Lord, Ma.r.s.e George, dis yer washed-out blue bowl, wid de little white critters sprawlin' over it, done come ter pieces--"

"Now, Caesar, haven't I told you twenty times to let Delilah wash my Wedgwood?"

"Fo' de Lord, Ma.r.s.e George, I ain't breck hit. I uz des' hol'n it in bofe my han's same es I'se hol'n dis yer broom, w'en it come right ter part. I declar 'twarn my fault, Ma.r.s.e George, 'twarn n.o.body's fault 'cep'n hit's own."

The judge closed the gate and waved the face from the window.

"Go about your business, Caesar," he said, "and keep your hands off my china--"

Then his tone lost its asperity as he held out his hands to a pretty girl who was coming across the green.

"So you are back from school, Miss Juliet," he said gallantly. "I was telling your mother only yesterday that I didn't approve of sending our fairest products away from Kingsborough. It wasn't done in my day. Then the prettiest girls stayed at home and gave our young fellows a chance."

The girl shook her head until the blue ribbons on her straw hat fluttered in the wind, and blushed until her soft eyes were like forget-me-nots set in rose leaves. She possessed a serene, luminous beauty, which became intensified beneath the gaze of the beholder.

"I have come back for good, now," she answered in a serious sweetness of voice; "and I am out this afternoon looking up my Sunday-school cla.s.s.

The children have scattered sadly. You will let me have Tom again, won't you?"

"Have Tom! Why, you may have him every day and Sunday too--the lucky scamp! Ah, I only wish I were a boy again, with a soul worth saving and such a pair of eyes in search of it."

The girl dimpled into a smile and flushed to her low, white forehead, on which the soft hair was smoothly parted before it broke into sunny curls about the temples. She exhaled an atmosphere of gentleness mixed with a saintly coquetry, which produced an impression at once human and divine, such as one receives from the sight of a rose in a Bible or a curl in the hair of a saint. The judge looked at her warmly, sighing half happily, half regretfully.

"And to think that the young rogues don't realise their blessings," he said. "There's not one of them that wouldn't rather be off fis.h.i.+ng than learn his catechism. Ah, in my day things were different--things were different."

"Were you very pious, sir?" asked the girl with a flash of laughter.

The judge shook his stick playfully.

"I can't tell tales," he answered, "but in my day we should have taken more than the catechism at your bidding, my dear. When your father was courting your mother--and she was like you, though she hadn't your eyes, or your face, for that matter--he went into her Bible cla.s.s, though he was at least five and twenty and the others were small boys under ten.

She was a sad flirt, and she led him a dance."

"He liked it," said the girl. "But, if you will give my message to Tom, I won't come in. I am looking for Dudley Webb, and I see his mother at her gate. Good-bye! Be sure and tell Tom to come Sunday."

She nodded brightly, lifted her muslin skirts, and recrossed the street.

The judge watched her until the flutter of her white dress vanished down the lane of maples; then he turned to speak to the occupants of a carriage that had drawn up to the sidewalk.

The vehicle was of an old-fas.h.i.+oned make, bare of varnish, with rickety, mud-splashed wheels and rusty springs. It was drawn by an ill-matched pair of horses and driven by a lame coloured boy, who carried a peeled hickory branch for a whip.

"Ah, General Battle," said the judge to a stout gentleman with a red face and an expansive s.h.i.+rt front from which the collar had wilted away; "fine afternoon! Is that Eugenia?" to a little girl of seven or eight years, with a puppy of the pointer breed in her arms, and "How are you, Sampson?" to the coloured driver.

The three greeted him simultaneously, whereupon he leaned forward, resting his hand upon the side of the carriage.

"The young folks are growing up," he said. "I have just seen Juliet Burwell, and, on my life, she gets prettier every day. We shan't keep her long."

"Keep her!" replied the general vigorously, wiping his large face with a large pocket handkerchief. "Keep her! If I were thirty years younger, you shouldn't keep her a day--not a day, sir."

The little girl looked up gravely from the corner of the seat, tossing her short, dark plait from her shoulder. "What would you do with her, papa?" she asked. "We've got no place to put her at home."

The general threw back his great head and laughed till his wide girth shook like a bag of meal.

"Oh, you needn't worry, Eugie," he said. "I'm not the man I used to be.

She wouldn't look at me. Bless your heart, she wouldn't look at me if I asked her--"

Eugenia clasped her puppy closer and turned her eyes upon her father's jovial face.

"I don't see how she could help it if you stood in front of her," she answered gravely, in a voice rich with the blending of negro intonations.

The general shook again until the carriage creaked on its rusty springs, and the coloured boy, Sampson, let the reins fall and joined in the hilarity.

"She won't let me so much as look at a girl!" exclaimed the general delightedly, stooping to recover the brown linen lap robe which had slipped from his knees. "She's as jealous as if I were twenty and had a score of sweethearts."

The little girl did not reply, but she flushed angrily. "Don't, precious," she said to the puppy, who was licking her cheek with his warm, red tongue.

"What have you named him, Eugie?" asked the judge, changing the subject with that gracious tact which was mindful of the least emergency. "He is nicely marked, I see."

"I call him Jim," replied Eugenia. She spoke gravely, and the gravity contrasted oddly with the animation of her features. "But his real name is James Burwell Battle. Bernard and I christened him in the spring-house--so he'll go to heaven."

"Cap'n Burwell gave him to her, you know," explained the general, who laughed whenever his daughter spoke, as if the fact of her talking at all was a source of amazement to him, "and she hasn't let go of him since she got him. By the way, Judge, you have a first-rate garden spot.

I hear your asparagus is the finest in town. Ours is very poor this year. I must have a new bed made before next season. Ah, what is it, daughter?"

"You've forgotten to buy the sugar," said Eugenia, "and Aunt Chris can't put up her preserves. And you told me to remind you of the whip--"

"Bless your heart, so I did. Sampson lost that whip a month ago, and I've never remembered it yet. Well, good-day--good-day."

The judge raised his hat with a stately inclination; the general nodded good-naturedly, still grasping the linen robe with his plump, red hand; and the carriage jolted along the green and disappeared behind the glazed brick walls of the church.

The judge regarded his walking-stick meditatively for a moment, and continued his way. The smile with which he had followed the vanis.h.i.+ng figure of Juliet Burwell returned to his face, and his features softened from their usual chilly serenity.

He had gone but a short distance and was pa.s.sing the iron gate of the churchyard, when the droning of a voice came to him, and looking beyond the bars, he saw little Nicholas Burr lying at full length upon a marble slab, his head in his hands and his feet waving in the air.

Entering the gate, the judge followed the walk of moss-grown stones leading to the church steps, and paused within hearing of the voice, which went on in an abstracted drawl.

"The most cel-e-bra-ted sys-tem of juris-pru-dence known to the world begins, as it ends, with a code--" He was not reading, for the book was closed. He seemed rather to be repeating over and over again words which had been committed to memory.

"With a code. From the commencement to the close of its history, the ex-posi-tors of Ro-man Law con-sistently em-ployed lan-guage which implied that the body of their sys-tem rested on the twelve De-cem-viral Tables--Dec-em-vi-ral--De-cem-vi-ral Tables."

"Bless my soul!" said the judge. The boy glanced up, blushed, and would have risen, but the judge waved him back.

"No--no, don't get up. I heard you as I was going by. What are you doing?"

"Learnin'."

"Learning! Dear me! What do you mean by learning?"