The Broken Gate Part 23

"He could never say that!" said Aurora Lane. "But I told him he must leave you."

"Did he say he would?"

"Yes, yes, of course! But when I told him that, I didn't know you; and I did not think Don ever would know who his father was. He doesn't know even now."

Judge Henderson turned suddenly, catching at a thought which came to him from Aurora's words.

"Why should anyone _ever_ know!" he began. "If this whole matter could be quieted down--if this case could be dismissed----

"Would you promise me," he turned toward Aurora--"if I could manage in some way to get all this hushed down--if I could save the boy's life--would you promise me, both of you, never to tell a soul in the world--never to let anyone get a breath of this? You are the only two that really know it at all--you said, Aurora, that even the boy doesn't know it all. Why should he, ever? It's been hid this long, why not longer?"

"Anne and I, and yourself, are the only human beings in the world who know it all," said Aurora Lane.

"Can _you_ keep such a secret?" Judge Henderson turned more doubtfully to Anne Oglesby, whose cold, quiet scorn had cut him even more deeply than the bitterer words of the older woman.

"I'd do anything for Don--anything I thought he'd be willing to have me do. But I don't see how such a thing as this could be kept down. How can the law be set aside?"

"Listen here," he said, facing her, a little color of hope at last in his face. "You don't in the least know what you've been starting here, and you don't know anything about the remedy for it. The law? It's close to politics, sometimes! If I fall--can't you see--I drag down plenty of others--I drag down my own town--I drag down my whole judiciary--I've been on the bench here myself. Oh, you two don't know all about how things are done in politics. I'd drag down all the machinery of my own party in this state--the thing would go even wider than that--I'd be compromising the national administration itself. I tell you, it's ruin, ruin, if this thing gets out. This is the very crisis of all my life--my whole fate, my whole past and future, are in your hands now, and much more beside--in the hands of you two women.

"But I've got to fight the best I may," he added, walking excitedly apart, and smiting one hand into the other. "Look here, now," and he turned to them with a new look on his haggard face. "Your fate's _in my hands_, too! Go beyond reason with me--threaten and goad me too far--and I'll see what can be done to ruin you two, if you succeed in ruining me!"

"I've not asked that," said Aurora Lane. "I don't care about that.

What's revenge to me? And what's ruin? I've asked nothing of you--nothing, but my boy's life, and never that till now. You gave it to me once, unasked. I'm asking it again, now--his life--my boy's. I bore him in grief and sorrow. It's your time of travail now. That's all."

Judge Henderson almost wept in his own self-pity.

"Think how horribly, how grotesquely unjust all this is," his voice trembled--"raking up all the deeds of a man's youth. The past ought to be _forgotten_. A man's past----"

"Or a woman's?" said Aurora.

"Well, yes, or a woman's. But it's men like me who have to build up things, do things, administer things, wisely and justly. I've been a judge on the bench here, before the world, I say. And here you two women--why, it's ghastly, it's terrible, its _criminal_. Your dragging me down--it--it's a h.e.l.lish thing to do."

"What? What's that?" The voice of Aurora Lane rose again. "If there's any h.e.l.l, it's for a false judge. You once sat on the bench, yonder--yes. Oh, Judas--worse--you are ten times worse than Judas!--Drag you down--drag all the town, all the state, all the society down? Why, yes, I would if I could! I will, I will!"

But, sobbing as she was, and desperate, she felt the light hand of Anne Oglesby now swiftly patting her shoulder for silence. The girl faced her guardian with the same light smile on her lips, cool and contemptuous.

"Wait a minute, Uncle," she said. "A moment ago you spoke of our fate being in your hands, too--of one ruin offset against another. Come now, you're a trader--you have been all your life, Uncle--it seems you're always willing to trade in the practice of the law. That's how you've got up where you are."

Her smile, her words, cut him beyond measure, but he clung to his idea.

"Very well, then. Now, suppose we trade!" He spoke sneeringly, but inwardly he was trembling, for he knew not what moment Aurora Lane might publicly make good her threat.

"What can he mean?" Aurora turned to Anne. But Anne, shrewder at the time, broke in: "Leave him alone. Let him go on."

"Well, now," said Judge Henderson, and actually half began to clear his throat, so sweet did his new thought appear to him, "as I was saying--there's no actual indictment yet--there's been no trial--the coroner has only held him over. Say I'd take on this prosecution, ostensibly--ostensibly--conditionally--ostensibly--to keep down any suspicion; and then, later on, after several continuances and delays, you know, and the disappearance of all the witnesses for the state--hum!--yes, I'll say it might be done. I'm not sure it couldn't be done more or less easily, now I come to think of it--I know Reeves, and I know how much he'd like to be governor of this state--they have to come downstate every once in a while for available timber.

"So, my dear girl," he turned to Anne in virtuous triumph, "after all, since this would do two things--save the boy's life and save my reputation, it might not be discreditable to be what you call a 'trader'!" There really was exultation in his smile.

"What do you want for it?" asked Anne Oglesby coldly. "Where would it leave Don? In jail indefinitely?"

"I could not state it more precisely! _He looks like me!_ Oh, I'll admit that--my feeling was right, my conscience was right! He _is_ my son.

But _because_ he is and _because_ he looks like me, he's got to stay in jail where he'll not be _seen_,--a year or two, perhaps. There can't be any bail."

The two white-faced women looked each into the other's face, sad-eyed.

Anne's breath came tremblingly. "It's the best we can do!" said she at last; and Aurora, seeing how it was, nodded mutely.

"What do you want for it, Uncle?" demanded Anne contemptuously again.

"I want--silence!" said he harshly, at last beginning to a.s.sert himself.

"Silence! And I've got to be sure about it."

Suddenly he pulled open a drawer in the table before him. The women started, fearing a weapon; but it was only a book he drew out--an old, dusty book, the edges of its leaves once gilded--a copy of the Holy Scriptures, very old and dusty.

Judge Henderson by accident now saw the fly leaf, for the first time in years. It was the little Bible his own father had given him, half a lifetime ago, when he was first starting out into the practice of the law. On the yellowed leaf in paled ink could still be seen the inscription his father had written there in Latin for his son:

"_Filio meo; Crede Deo._--To my son; Believe in G.o.d!"

"Will you swear on the Bible?" demanded Judge Henderson, "both of you, that you'll never tell nor hint a word of this to any human being in the world--not even to him--the boy?"

The hand which held the dusty little volume was trembling, but Judge Henderson was not thinking of his own father, nor of the inscription in the little book.

"Yes!" said Aurora Lane at once. But Anne Oglesby raised a hand for pause.

"I'll not swear to keep back anything from him, my husband. I'm not sure I could."

"Your husband----"

"I'm going to marry him, unless he sends me away."

"It can't be soon--it may be very long--it will be years----" Judge Henderson was getting back a little color now, a little self-a.s.sertiveness, a little more readiness to argue.

"I can wait," said Anne. "But I can't buy him cheap--Don wouldn't let me. I know who his father is, and he ought to know it, too. That's his right."

"Anne," said Aurora Lane, "I denied him that right. You got my secret by accident. Can't you keep it, too? It's a heavy weight that Judge Henderson has laid on more than one woman--a load to be borne by three women, myself, Miss Julia, and you. But this is to save Don's life."

"You'll swear secrecy on the Book?" broke in Judge Henderson.

"Yes!" said Anne Oglesby at length. "If you'll swear to perjure yourself against your oath of office as judge and as attorney--as you've said you would--I'll swear. Is that the trade?"

"It's the only hope he has, the only hope that you have, and the only hope that I have. Absolute silence! Absolute secrecy! I'm going to save him--but I'm going to save my own self, too." A slight color was in Henderson's gray face.

"Oh, you trader!" said Anne Oglesby, all her scorn for him now patent, fully voiced. "You sepulcher of a man! You failure! Oh, yes, yes, I'll swear! And I'll keep my oaths and my promises all my life, so help me G.o.d! Lift up the Book! You, too, Aurora."

"I swore it twenty years ago," said Aurora Lane. "I will again. You Judas! You coward! Lift up the Book! Lift it up, so that I may see! Is that the book they call the Bible--that tells of love and mercy, and truth, and justice, and forgiveness of sins? Lift it up, so that I may see!"

They faced him, their right hands raised, and he held up the Book, his thumb under the cover, exposing the inscription which he had not seen for years and did not now see.

"As you believe in G.o.d!" began Judge William Henderson.