CHAPTER IXTHE EYE TO THE STRING
Inthe Langford household the judge and Dorothy were the only early risers, and on the morning following Will’s home-bringing they breakfasted alone together as usual. Dorothy and her mother had sat up for the wayward one the night before; but at the breakfast table the daughter saw that the news of his son’s return brought small comfort to her father. The cause of his disquietude was not far to seek. The morning papers lay unopened beside his plate, and he left them there when he retreated to the library.
Being a woman, Dorothy did not thus deny herself the luxury of suffering with full knowledge. She opened the papers and read the reports of the raid on Draco’s; and she did not fail to put up a little pæan of thanksgiving when she found that her brother’s name was omitted in the list of the arrests. Stopping only long enough to make assurance doubly sure, she hastened to the library.
“Here are the papers, father,” she began, and when he looked up from his book and shook his head in refusal, she went on quickly: “You needn’t be afraid to read them; Will’s name isn’t mentioned.”
The judge took the papers and scanned them with interest newly aroused. The fine old face of the master of Hollywood, with its heavy white mustache and pointed goatee, was military rather than judicial, andDorothy was joyed to see the lines of stern sorrow soften a little as he read.
“You are right,” he said, after he had scanned the list of the incriminated ones. “Let us thank God that we are spared so much. But I don’t understand it.”
“Perhaps Will gave an assumed name,” Dorothy suggested.
“And so added a lie to his other misdoings?” rejoined the father bitterly. “No, he didn’t do that. I saw the record at the police station.”
Dorothy was puzzled for a moment, and then a light broke in upon her.
“I think I know how it happened,” she said, and then she gave him a brief summary of the talk with Brant on the veranda.
The judge heard her through, and being in nowise less shrewd because he happened to be his daughter’s father, he was at no loss to account for Brant’s motive. Nevertheless, he did not forget to be grateful, and he gave the helpful one his just meed of praise.
“It was a thoughtful thing to do, and the man who would think of it at such a time must know how it grinds to have a good old name dragged in the mire,” he said warmly. “I shall remember it. Was Mr. Brant with Will when he came home?”
“I couldn’t tell. I saw the carriage drive up, and saw Will stop to speak to some one inside after he got out. Then he came up the walk alone, and the carriage went back toward the boulevard.”
“Well, it was a kindly deed, well meant and well done, and we are Mr. Brant’s poor debtors,” said the judge, taking up one of the papers again. “I shall go down by and by and thank him for it.”
Dorothy went at that, and when the library door closed behind her the judge put the paper down, ostensiblyto polish his eyeglasses, but really because the problem of his old age had grown great enough to banish interest in everything else. He had always prided himself on being a good judge of human nature, and so he was when the point of view was the judge’s bench in a courtroom. But it is a wise father who knows his own son; and Judge Langford was just beginning to suspect that his experience with human nature, and his courtroom studies therein, had counted for little in the training of his son. More than this, he was coming to understand that there is a time when a father’s lost opportunities may not be regained; that the saving of William Langford, if salvage there were to be, must be at other and alien hands.
That conclusion set him upon the search for his own substitute, and most naturally he thought of Brant. There was that about Colonel Bowran’s assistant which made him easily a beau ideal for a younger man whose tastes were not wholly vitiated. He was a man of the world—a much wider world than his present position with the colonel bespoke, the judge decided; and he was of the masterful type out of which boys are most likely to fashion their heroes. If the thing might only come about without suggestion; if— But there were too many “if’s” in the way, and the judge fell to polishing his eyeglasses again, letting the summing up of the matter slip into spoken words: “I wish he might be able to tell me what to do with the boy. It is far enough beyond me.”
The door had opened noiselessly, and the mother of the problem crossed the threshold in good time to overhear the summing up.
“What is beyond you?” she asked, knowing well enough what the answer would be.
“The one thing that is always beyond me, Martha—what we are to do with William.”
The mother had not yet been to breakfast, but she sat down and prepared to argue her son’s case.
“Doesn’t it sometimes occur to you that possibly you may try to do too much?”
“No,” said the judge firmly, knowing by sorrowful experience whereunto the argument would lead. “By some means—I don’t pretend to know how—the boy always manages to whitewash himself with you. But I am coming to know him better. We may as well face the fact first as last, Martha. He is thoroughly, utterly, recklessly bad. God forgive me that I should have it to say of the son for whom I am responsible!”
But Mrs. Langford protested indignantly, as was her maternal privilege.
“That is just where you are mistaken—in assuming that he is bad at heart. You don’t understand him at all, and sometimes I’m tempted to think you don’t want to. Are there no allowances to be made for youthful thoughtlessness?”
“Youthful depravity, you would better say.” The judge left his chair and began to walk the floor. “Why don’t you call things by their right names? I should think this last affair would open your eyes, if nothing else has.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Please sit down, Robert; you make me nervous. I had a long talk with him last night, and he told me everything without reserve. I know it was all wrong—his being in such a place—but it was rather foolish than intentionally wicked.”
“You make a nice distinction,” said the judge, but the sorrow in his voice dulled the edge of the sarcasm. “What is his story?”
“Why, just this. It seems that he has a friend—a Mr. Harding, a wealthy mine owner—and they went around together to see the sights, purely out of curiosity, William says, and I believe him. They just happenedto be in this Draco place night before last; and when the police rushed in they took everybody, guilty and innocent. William says his friend tried to explain that they were only onlookers, but it was no use, and—well, we know the rest.”
“Yes, rather better than I could wish. As a result of his curiosity, or this Mr. Harding’s, I find my son in the police station, charged with gambling.”
“Of course, in such a case the charge would be made against everybody.”
“As it should be. If William had been at home, instead of prowling about town with a disreputable companion——”
Mrs. Langford raised deprecatory hands.
“Wait and hear the sequel before you do the man an injustice. When Will went downtown last night, feeling desperate and discouraged enough to do anything, this Mr. Harding found him and insisted on his coming straight home—brought him home in a carriage, in fact. A bad man would not have done that.”
The judge looked perplexed, as well he might. “Brought him home in a carriage, you say? Why, I thought—” But he did not add what he thought.
“Yes, and that wasn’t all. It seems that Mr. Harding knows Mr. Brant, and he told William his whole history. Will wouldn’t repeat it—he said it wasn’t fit for me to hear—but he told me enough so that I shall know what to say to Mr. Brant if he ever has the effrontery to come here again.”
Here was a fresh mystery, but the judge was wise enough not to repeat what Dorothy had told him. Moreover, he knew his son’s failings too well to place implicit confidence in any story of his told in a peace-making moment after an escapade. Wherefore he counselled moderation.
“I shouldn’t take too much for granted if I wereyou, Martha,” he said. “There are always two sides to an accusation like that, and possibly Mr. Brant may have something to say for himself. Anyway, I should give him a chance.”
“That is precisely what I shall do,” Mrs. Langford rejoined, with a tightening of the firm lips that boded ill for the man who was to be given the chance; after which she went to breakfast, leaving her husband to the company of his own thoughts—thoughts which were far from comforting.
How much of William’s story could be believed? And who was this man Harding who claimed to know Brant? If the latter was the one who had prevailed upon Will to come home, how was it that the boy had come in a carriage with the former? And which of the two had suppressed the mention of William Langford’s name in the published lists of the accused? These and many more perplexing questions suggested themselves, and the judge was no nearer the heart of the tangle when he finally went out to seek Brant at the railway offices.