A private chivalry

Having done what he might for his friend on the Saturday, Antrim thought he should not err in devoting the Sunday afternoon to his own affair, and to this end he turned his face to the Highlands as soon as he could break away from the Sunday duties which entangle the railway servant. He was a little later than usual; and Isabel, after waiting half an hour, avenged her pique by going out with Mrs. Hobart. Dorothy, meeting Antrim at the gate as she was starting for the mission school, was unable to tell him whither they had gone. Wouldn’t he go in and wait?

Piqued in his turn, Antrim decided he would not go in and wait. He had meant to do no more at present than to try to resume the old relation with Isabel, and he thought she might have suffered this, the more willingly since it was her own expressed wish. But if she were not yet complaisant——

Before he had argued the case to its irritant conclusion he found himself walking townward with Dorothy. They missed a car by a minute or two, and Antrim halted at the corner to wait for the next.

“I have time enough, and we can walk on until a car overtakes us, if you care to,” said Dorothy, who had a reason of her own for desiring an uninterrupted interview with her companion.

“I’d like to walk,” replied Antrim, whose mood welcomed a diversion of any sort.

They went on together, and mutual constraint immediately thrust a barrier of silence between them. Antrim thought he knew enough of Brant’s secret to make him hesitate to speak first of the thing which he imagined was uppermost in Dorothy’s mind; and Dorothy was made dumb by a great sympathy for Antrim in his disappointment. None the less, she was the first to break the silence.

“Have you—have you been to see Mr. Brant since the—” She could not give it a name, and Antrim promptly forestalled the necessity.

“Yes; I was with him for half an hour yesterday afternoon.”

Dorothy meant to go straight on to the end she had in view, but her courage failed, and she had to bridge the gap with a commonplace. “Isn’t it dreadful!” she said.

“That depends upon how you look at it,” rejoined Antrim, forgetting for the moment to whom he was talking. “I don’t believe Brant is guilty.”

“O Harry!” Dorothy stopped, and the quick tears blinded her.

Whereupon Antrim realized, with a pang of remorse for his thoughtlessness, what such an assertion must mean to William Langford’s sister, and he made haste to comfort her.

“You mustn’t take it for granted that I am accusing Will. I am not; I just leave him out of the question altogether, and stick to Brant for what I know of him. He wouldn’t do such a thing any more than I would.”

Dorothy could not so easily avoid the apparently inevitable conclusion, but her enthusiasm rose unbidden at the tribute to the worth of the man whom she loved.

“I want to think so too, Harry—oh, so much! But papa says he doesn’t deny it.”

“No, he doesn’t; and he doesn’t affirm it, either. And till he does, I am not going to believe it,” said Antrim stoutly.

At this conjuncture it occurred to Dorothy that Antrim was behaving very nobly toward his successful rival, and she found space to lay a little offering on the altar of manly friendship.

“It is very generous of you, Harry, to feel that way after what has happened. I have been afraid you might feel just the least bit vindictive.”

“Vindictive? You don’t know what I owe him, Dorothy. It is a bigger debt than I ever owed any one before, and I’d pay it if it took the last thing I have in the world.”

“It has taken the thing you valued most, hasn’t it?” said Dorothy, with heartfelt sympathy in voice and eyes. “Poor Isabel! It is a dreadful blow for her! And she is taking it so strangely.”

Antrim was properly mystified, but he got no farther than to say: “Isabel? I am afraid I don’t quite understand.”

“Surely she has told you,” said Dorothy, who could not imagine anything like duplicity on the part of her outspoken sister.

Now Isabel had told him but one thing of any considerable importance to a lover, and Antrim’s thought naturally reverted to that thing.

“Oh, yes,” he rejoined, trying to speak lightly. “She gave me my quittance for good and all a while back, but—” He was going on to add that it is a long lane that has no turning, when Dorothy interrupted:

“I knew she would tell you first! And now this dreadful thing has come between them. Harry, I believe it will kill her if she has to give him up now. She is acting so strangely that I fairly tremble for her reason.”

Antrim throttled a wild impulse to give place to madness and forced himself to say, as calmly as might be, “Then she has told you that—that she loves Brant?”

Dorothy decided on the spur of the moment that it was no time for half confidences.

“Yes; and that isn’t the worst of it. She sent him away because—because she didn’t know her own heart, I suppose. I told her he would come back; and now he never can. Isn’t it too pitiful!”

Antrim thought it was—in more senses than one. More than that, it was blankly incredible, or rather it would be apart from Dorothy’s positive assertion. Could he have been so purblind as not to have seen what was going on before his very eyes? Reason said No; but a misconception, once endowed with the breath of life, is sure to find plenty to fatten upon, and the atoms of corroborative evidence began to assemble quickly with Dorothy’s declaration for a nucleus.

This was why Brant had been so sure that he knew Isabel’s preference; and he had been mistaken, after all. This was why he had stopped going to Hollywood, and why he had been so quick to deny even the hint of a love affair with Dorothy. And Isabel: had she not steadfastly refused to say in so many words that she did not love any one else?

Antrim called himself hard names under his breath, and in the first flush of the new misery would have been glad to be able to charge his friend with insincerity. He saw the injustice of that in time to fight it down, and then rancour gave place to honest admiration. How unselfishly Brant had effaced himself, and how quick he had been to succour and to offer comfort and countenance to his rival! That, too, seemed incredible, even to Brant’s best friend; but since incredible things were the order of the day, it was decently in keeping with all the other happenings of a time which was hopelessly out of joint.

So Antrim assured himself, with what resignation he could command; but for all that, this latest buffet of the boxer Misfortune was as a bolt from the blue, and he staggered under it, though not toward the abyss, since he had lately had his lesson and had profited by it.

While he was trying to face the necessity of discussing this newest phase of the many-sided problem with becoming stoicism a car overtook them and privacy was at an end. By the time the car had reached the crossing nearest the mission school he had fought and won his battle—the fiercest, and, as it chanced, the most unnecessary, that had ever been thrust upon him—and was ready with an assurance of good faith which was quite as sincere as it was costly.

“We mustn’t be discouraged, and we must just go on hoping against hope,” he said, when he took Dorothy’s hand at parting. “It is a most intricate tangle, and I can’t begin to unravel it yet; but you may count on one thing: what one man may do to help Brant will be done. You have told me some things that I didn’t know before, but I shall work all the harder for knowing them. And if—if you think it will do any good, you may tell Isabel that.”

After which generous confession of faith he left her and went to his office, being minded to dull the keen edge of the new trouble on the grindstone of hard work. The dulling process was but fairly in train when the door opened to admit Forsyth.

“Do you allow a man to trespass on Sunday?” he asked, feeling for the latch of the gate in the counter-railing.

“Surely, when the man is as good a friend as you are. Come in and sit down.”

“It is about Brant, or I shouldn’t trouble you,” explained the editor, drawing up a chair. “I have been to see him again, and he is more obstinate than ever—if that be possible. He said you were there yesterday, and I came to see if you had been able to do anything with him.”

“I wasn’t.”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t be. Have you anything new to offer?”

“No.”

“Well, I have. It is pretty plain to you that Brant will hang, lacking strong counsel, isn’t it?”

“Plainer than I wish it were.”

“Very good. Now there is just one lawyer in Christendom, so far as I know, whose services he can’t well refuse.”

“Who is it?”

“Judge Langford,” said the editor, crossing his legs and nursing one knee.

“But, good Lord, Forsyth, you are losing your grip! Have you forgotten that the judge is William Langford’s father?”

“I have forgotten nothing. From your point of view it would be out of the question, I grant you; but so far as heard from, you are the only person who doesn’t believe Brant did it. Now I am convinced that he did, and the judge is quite as sure that he did; so the difficulties on that side vanish. I don’t see what is to prevent the judge from taking the case, if he chooses to.”

“I do. If he should clear Brant it would reopen the entire question as to Will. You know that as well as I do.”

“He can’t clear him; nobody can do more than get him a light sentence. But if he could clear him, the boy is well out of it. You were with Jarvis last night, and you helped him make the discovery that the shot was fired in line with the door; that it could not well have been fired from young Langford’s position.”

“Yes, but——”

“But what? Will you say that the judge is an invalid? or that his family connection with the affair should exempt him?”

“Ye-yes; either or both. That is about what I was going to say.”

“Waiving the first objection,—the judge is a good deal better than a sick man,—the second is precisely the reason why he should be willing to offer his services—why he must offer them.”

“How so?”

“Because the thing happened while Brant was in the service of the family. You know what I mean.”

“I do; but I’d like to know how you found it out.”

Forsyth laughed. “You have forgotten that you told Jarvis the whole story last night. But no matter about that: don’t you see the judge’s necessity now?”

“Yes, I don’t know but I do. But supposing the judge doesn’t see it?”

“He must be made to see it; and that brings me up to date. You know him well; can’t you undertake to enlist him?”

“Frankly, I can’t; and you have given the reason: I know him too well. He has been a second father to me since my own died.”

“All right; I didn’t know,” said the editor, rising to go. “Somebody has it to do, and I thought perhaps you might be able to do it best.”

“Who else have you in mind?”

“Nobody. I am going to tackle him myself.”

“You?”

“Yes. Why not? I know the facts, and not being a personal friend, I sha’n’t scruple to use them. I am going over there now. Will you come along?”

“Not unless you make a point of it. I should only hamper you.”

“I don’t make a point of it. Let me see; the house is Number Sixteen, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Altamont Terrace. Don’t be too savage with him, Forsyth. He has had lots of grief lately.”

“He will have more if he shirks in this affair. But I sha’n’t be any harsher with him than I have to be.”

Half an hour later Forsyth rang the Hollywood door bell, and sent his card to the judge, who presently received his visitor in the library.

“I am right glad to see you, Mr. Forsyth,” he said, rising and shaking hands cordially with the editor. “No, don’t apologize for coming; you are very welcome. Be seated.”

Forsyth took the proffered chair and plunged at once into the midst of his errand.

“It is about Brant, as you will infer. Yesterday you asked me to try again to make him listen to reason in the matter of employing counsel. I have tried thrice, and failed.”

“Does he still refuse to give his reasons?”

“He does.”

“And is he fully aware of the probable consequences?”

“As fully aware as we are.”

“H’m! that is bad. Have you anything to suggest, Mr. Forsyth?”

“Yes. There is one person whose services he can not well decline.”

“There is? And who is this person?”

“Yourself.”

The judge rose quickly and went to the window, turning his back upon his visitor. It was full five minutes before he spoke again, and the editor waited patiently.

“I can scarcely believe you know what you ask, Mr. Forsyth,” said the judge at length, coming slowly back to his chair. “If the circumstances were different, if my own son were not unfortunately involved, I should be the first to volunteer.”

“My dear sir, that is precisely the reason why you should volunteer,” said Forsyth firmly. “Bear with me a moment while I show you how the matter presents itself to an unbiassed outsider. Your son absents himself, and, knowing his habits, you and the other members of the family are justly anxious. In response to a request from one of your daughters——”

“Pardon me, but how did you learn that? From him?”

“No, indeed. I learned it, indirectly, from Miss Dorothy herself. As I was saying, in response to this request my friend undertakes the not unhazardous task of finding and rescuing your son. He does the first, and in trying to do the second he commits a crime which, account for it as you may, would not have been committed at that time and place if Brant had been less willing to help you and yours. Do I make my point of view quite clear?”

“Quite.”

“Very well. Under such circumstances the least you can do for my friend is to defend him. No one else can do it as well. Your mere presence in court as his counsel may well save his life. Ask yourself the question seriously, Judge Langford, and if your own sense of justice will allow you to refuse, I have nothing more to say.”

The judge leaned back in his chair and stared absently at the handful of fire in the grate. Forsyth’s appeal reopened the question which he thought he had settled once for all the day before, and the arguments for and against began once more to marshal themselves for a fiercer conflict. Before the battle began he made one more effort to postpone it.

“You ignore the fact that I might end by directing suspicion against my own son, Mr. Forsyth.”

“I do. I ignore everything but the question of simple justice and a just man’s obligations.”

The fight was on, and the judge left his chair to pace the floor with his hands behind him and his head bowed. Forsyth had told him no new thing. His duty had been clear enough from the moment of Dorothy’s confession. But the frankness of the editor’s appeal; the grave ruthlessness with which he held the responsibility up as something to be decided apart from personal considerations—a thing affecting justice, and honour, and uprightness—this touched him very nearly. But opposed to this his fatherhood rose up in mighty protest pleading as only paternal love can plead for the supremacy over all abstractions of whatsoever kind or degree. The struggle was long and bitter; and seeing the story of it writing itself in deeply graven lines upon the judge’s face as he paced slowly back and forth, Forsyth had to harden his heart more than once while he awaited the outcome. “It is the father against the man, but the man will win,” he said to himself; and as he prophesied, so it came to pass.

“You have won your cause, Mr. Forsyth.” The judge stopped before the editor’s chair and spoke abruptly. “Go you to the young man and tender him my services, and let me know as soon as may be if he will accept them.”

Forsyth sprang to his feet and wrung the elder man’s hand gratefully.

“God bless you, Judge Langford; it is a noble thing for you to do! Don’t think for a moment that I undervalue the cost. And now let me tell you something which will make your task easier. One of my young men made some experiments last night in the card room at the Osirian. The result proved conclusively that the shot was fired from some point in line with the door; that it could not well have been fired from the chair in which your son was sitting.”

“Thank God for that!” exclaimed the judge fervently; but he added quickly: “I am glad you withheld that—glad you gave me the opportunity to give of my best. You will see Brant at once?”

Forsyth hesitated. “As my friend’s friend, I am entirely at his service and yours. But don’t you think it will be as well if you go to him unannounced?”

The judge thought about it for a moment.

“In view of his most singular obstinacy, perhaps it will. It is worth trying, at all events. I will go to-morrow morning.”

“Thank you again,” said the editor, finding his hat. “I presume I need not say that we have little time to lose. The Grand Jury meets to-morrow, and Brant will doubtless be indicted during the week.”

“So I have been informed. No matter; we shall be diligent. If the young man will only confide in me we may be able to discover something which will serve to—to palliate his crime and to mitigate the severity of the inevitable sentence.”

So spoke the judge, as though the question of his client’s guilt was a question fully answered. But when he went to the door with his visitor he ventured a query which seemed to admit the thin edge of the wedge of uncertainty.

“There is no shadow of doubt in your mind, is there, Mr. Forsyth?—as to his guilt, I mean.”

“None whatever,” rejoined the editor sorrowfully. And he went his way saddened by the thought that he could answer no otherwise.