CHAPTER XIX
THE SHADOW OF A DREAM
Judge Little was moving about mysteriously. It was said that he hadfound track of Isom's heir, and that the county was to have its secondgreat sensation soon.
Judge Little did not confirm this report, but, like the middling-goodpolitician that he was, he entered no denial. As long as the public isuncertain either way, its suspense is more exquisite, the pleasure ofthe final revelation is more sweet.
Riding home from the trial on the day that Joe made his appearance onthe witness-stand, Sol Greening fell in with the judge and, with hisnose primed to follow the scent of any new gossip, Sol worked his wayinto the matter of the will.
"Well, I hear you've got track of Isom's boy at last, Judge?" said he,pulling up close beside the judge's mount, so the sound of the horses'feet sucking loose from the clay of the muddy road would not cheat himout of a word.
Judge Little rode a low, yellow horse, commonly called a "buckskin" inthat country. He had come to town unprovided with a rubber coat, and hislong black garment of ordinary wear was damp from the blowing mistswhich presaged the coming rain. In order to save the skirts of it, inwhich the precious and mysterious pockets were, the judge had gatheredthem up about his waist, as an old woman gathers her skirts on wash-day.He sat in the saddle, holding them that way with one hand, while hehandled the reins with the other.
"All things are possible," returned the judge, his tight old mouthscrewed up after the words, as if more stood in the door and requiredthe utmost vigilance to prevent them popping forth.
Sol admitted that all things were indeed possible, although he had hisdoubts about the probability of a great many he could name. But he waswise enough to know that one must agree with a man if one desires to getinto his warm favor, and it was his purpose on that ride to milk JudgeLittle of whatever information tickling his vanity, as an ant tickles anaphis, would cause him to yield.
"Well, he's got a right smart property waitin' him when he comes," saidSol, feeling important and comfortable just to talk of all that Isomleft.
"A considerable," agreed the judge.
"Say forty or fifty thousand worth, heh?"
"Nearer seventy or eighty, the way land's advancing in this county,"corrected the judge.
Sol whistled his amazement. There was no word in his vocabulary aseloquent as that.
"Well, all I got to say is that if it was me he left it to, it wouldn'ttake no searchin' to find me," he said. "Is he married?"
"Very likely he is married," said the judge, with that portentousrepression and caution behind his words which some people are able touse with such mysterious effect.
"Shades of catnip!" said Sol.
They rode on a little way in silence, Sol being quite exhausted onaccount of his consuming surprise over what he believed himself to befinding out. Presently he returned to his prying, and asked:
"Can Ollie come in for her dower rights in case the court lets Isom'swill stand?"
"That is a question," replied the judge, deliberating at his pause andsucking in his cheeks, "which will have to be decided."
"Does he favor Isom any?" asked Sol.
"Who?" queried the judge.
"Isom's boy."
"There doubtless is some resemblance--it is only natural that thereshould be a resemblance between father and son," nodded the judge. "Butas for myself, I cannot say."
"You ain't seen him, heh?" said Sol, eyeing him sharply.
"Not exactly," allowed the judge.
"Land o' Moab!" said Sol.
They rode on another eighty rods without a word between them.
"Got his picture, I reckon?" asked Sol at last, sounding the judge'sface all the while with his eager eyes.
"I turn off here," said the judge. "I'm takin' the short cut over theford and through Miller's place. Looks like the rain would thicken."
He gave Sol good day, and turned off into a brush-grown road whichplunged into the woods.
Sol went on his way, stirred by comfortable emotions. What a story hemeant to spread next day at the county-seat; what a piece of news he wasgoing to be the source of, indeed!
Of course, Sol had no knowledge of what was going forward at the countyfarm that very afternoon, even the very hour when Joe Newbolt wassweating blood on the witness stand, If he had known, it is not likelythat he would have waited until morning to spread the tale abroad.
This is what it was.
Ollie's lawyer was there in consultation with Uncle John Owens regardingIsom's will. Consultation is the word, for it had come to thatfelicitous pass between them. Uncle John could communicate his thoughtsfreely to his fellow-beings again, and receive theirs intelligently.
All this had been wrought not by a miracle, but by the systematicpreparation of the attorney, who was determined to sound the secretwhich lay locked in that silent mind. If Isom had a son when that willwas made a generation back, Uncle John Owens was the man who knew it,and the only living man.
In pursuit of this mystery, the lawyer had caused to be printed manylittle strips of cardboard in the language of the blind. These coveredall the ground that he desired to explore, from preliminaries to climax,with every pertinent question which his fertile mind could shape, andevery answer which he felt was due to Uncle John to satisfy hiscuriosity and inform him fully of what had transpired.
The attorney had been waiting for Uncle John to become proficient enoughin his new reading to proceed without difficulty. He had provided thepatriarch with a large slate, which gave him comfortable room for hisbig characters. Several days before that which the lawyer had set forthe exploration of the mystery of Isom Chase's heir, they had reached aperfect footing of understanding.
Uncle John was a new man. For several weeks he had been making greatprogress with the New Testament, printed in letters for the blind, whichhad come on the attorney's order speedily. It was an immense volume, asbig as a barn-door, as Uncle John facetiously wrote on his slate, andwhen he read it he sat at the table littered over with his interlockedrings of wood, and his figures of beast and female angels or demons,which, not yet determined.
The sun had come out for him again, at the clouded end of his life. Itreached him through the points of his fingers, and warmed him to thefarthest spot, and its welcome was the greater because his night hadbeen long and its rising late.
On that afternoon memorable for Joe Newbolt, and all who gathered at thecourt-house to hear him, Uncle John learned of the death of Isom Chase.The manner of his death was not revealed to him in the printed slips ofboard, and Uncle John did not ask, very likely accepting it as an eventwhich comes to all men, and for which he, himself, had long beenprepared.
After that fact had been imparted to the blind preacher, the lawyerplaced under his eager fingers a slip which read:
"Did you ever witness Isom Chase's will?"
Uncle John took his slate and wrote:
"Yes."
"When?"
"Thirty or forty years ago," wrote Uncle John--what was a decade more orless to him? "When he joined the Order."
Uncle John wrote this with his face bright in the joy of being able tohold intelligent communication once more.
More questioning brought out the information that it was a rule of thesecret brotherhood which Isom had joined in those far days, for eachcandidate for initiation to make his will before the administration ofthe rites.
"What a sturdy old goat that must have been!" thought the lawyer.
"Do you remember to whom Isom left his property in that will?" read thepasteboard under the old man's hands.
Uncle John smiled, reminiscently, and nodded.
"To his son," he wrote. "Isom was the name."
"Do you know when and where that son was born?"
Uncle John's smile was broader, and of purely humorous cast, as he bentover the slate and began to write carefully, in smaller hand than usual,as if he had a great deal to say.
"He never was born," he wrote, "not up to the time
that I lost theworld. Isom was a man of Belial all his days that I knew him. He was seton a son from his wedding day.
"The last time I saw him I joked him about that will, and told him hewould have to change it. He said no, it would stand that way. He said hewould get a son yet. Abraham was a hundred when Isaac was born, hereminded me. Did Isom get him?"
"No," was the word that Uncle John's fingers found. He shook his head,sadly.
"He worked and saved for him all his life," the old man wrote. "He sethis hope of that son above the Lord."
Uncle John was given to understand the importance of his information,and that he might be called upon to give it over again in court.
He was greatly pleased with the prospect of publicly displaying his newaccomplishment. The lawyer gave him a printed good-bye, shook him by thehand warmly, and left him poring over his ponderous book, his dumb lipsmoving as his fingers spelled out the words.
They were near the end and the quieting of all this flurry that hadrisen over the property of old Isom Chase, said the lawyer to himself ashe rode back to town to acquaint his client with her good fortune. Therewas nothing in the way of her succession to the property now. Theprobate court would, without question or doubt, throw out thatridiculous document through which old Judge Little hoped to grease hislong wallet.
With Isom's will would disappear from the public notice the onetestimony of his only tender sentiment, his only human softness; asentiment and a softness which had been born of a desire and fostered bya dream.
Strange that the hard old man should have held to that dream sostubbornly and so long, striving to gain for it, hoarding to enrich it,growing bitterer for its long coming, year by year. And at last he hadgone out in a flash, leaving this one speaking piece of evidence offeeling and tenderness behind.
Perhaps Isom Chase would have been different, reflected the lawyer, iffate had yielded him his desire and given him a son; perhaps it wouldhave softened his hand and mellowed his heart in his dealings with thosewhom he touched; perhaps it would have lifted him above the narrowstrivings which had atrophied his virtues, and let the sunlight into thedark places of his soul.
So communing with himself, he arrived in town. The people were comingout of the court-house, the lowering gray clouds were settling mistily.But it was a clearing day for his client; he hastened on to tell her ofthe turn fortune had made in her behalf.
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