“Then why in thunder doesn't he come in?”
Mr. Richter opened the private door, and in Stephen walked. The door closed again, and there he was in the dragon's dens face to face with the dragon, who was staring him through and through. The first objects that caught Stephen's attention were the grizzly gray eye brows, which seemed as so much brush to mark the fire of the deep-set battery of the eyes. And that battery, when in action, must have been truly terrible.
The Judge was shaven, save for a shaggy fringe of gray beard around his chin, and the size of his nose was apparent even in the full face.
Stephen felt that no part of him escaped the search of Mr. Whipple's glance. But it was no code or course of conduct that kept him silent. Nor was it fear entirely.
“So you are Appleton Brice's son,” said the Judge, at last. His tone was not quite so gruff as it might have been.
“Yes, sir,” said Stephen.
“Humph!” said the Judge, with a look that scarcely expressed approval. “I guess you've been patted on the back too much by your father's friends.” He leaned back in his wooden chair. “How I used to detest people who patted boys on the back and said with a smirk, 'I know your father.' I never had a father whom people could say that about. But, sir,” cried the Judge, bringing down his fist on the litter of papers that covered his desk, “I made up my mind that one day people should know me. That was my spur. And you'll start fair here, Mr. Brice. They won't know your father here—”
If Stephen thought the Judge brutal, he did not say so. He glanced around the little room—at the bed in the corner, in which the Judge slept, and which during the day did not escape the flood of books and papers; at the washstand, with a roll of legal cap beside the pitcher.
“I guess you think this town pretty crude after Boston, Mr. Brice,” Mr. Whipple continued. “From time immemorial it has been the pleasant habit of old communities to be shocked at newer settlements, built by their own countrymen. Are you shocked, sir?”
Stephen flushed. Fortunately the Judge did not give him time to answer.
“Why didn't your mother let me know that she was coming?”
“She didn't wish to put you to any trouble, sir.”
“Wasn't I a good friend of your father's? Didn't I ask you to come here and go into my office?”
“But there was a chance, Mr. Whipple—”
“A chance of what?”
“That you would not like me. And there is still a chance of it,” added Stephen, smiling.
For a second it looked as if the Judge might smile, too. He rubbed his nose with a fearful violence.
“Mr. Richter tells me you were looking for a bank,” said he, presently.
Stephen quaked.
“Yes, sir, I was, but—”
But Mr. Whipple merely picked up the 'Counterfeit Bank Note Detector'.
“Beware of Western State Currency as you would the devil,” said he. “That's one thing we don't equal the East in—yet. And so you want to become a lawyer?”
“I intend to become a lawyer, sir.”
“And so you shall, sir,” cried the Judge, bringing down his yellow fist upon the 'Bank Note Detector'. “I'll make you a lawyer, sir. But my methods ain't Harvard methods, sir.”
“I am ready to do anything, Mr. Whipple.”
The Judge merely grunted. He scratched among his papers, and produced some legal cap and a bunch of notes.
“Go out there,” he said, “and take off your coat and copy this brief. Mr. Richter will help you to-day. And tell your mother I shall do myself the honor to call upon her this evening.”
Stephen did as he was told, without a word. But Mr. Richter was not in the outer office when he returned to it. He tried to compose himself to write, although the recollection of each act of the morning hung like a cloud over the back of his head. Therefore the first sheet of legal cap was spoiled utterly. But Stephen had a deep sense of failure. He had gone through the ground glass door with the firm intention of making a clean breast of the ownership of Hester. Now, as he sat still, the trouble grew upon him. He started a new sheet, and ruined that: Once he got as far as his feet, and sat down again. But at length he had quieted to the extent of deciphering ten lines of Mr. Whipple's handwriting when the creak of a door shattered his nerves completely.
He glanced up from his work to behold—none other than Colonel Comyn Carvel.
Glancing at Mr. Richter's chair, and seeing it empty, the Colonel's eye roved about the room until it found Stephen. There it remained, and the Colonel remained in the middle of the floor, his soft hat on the back of his head, one hand planted firmly on the gold head of his stick, and the other tugging at his goatee, pulling down his chin to the quizzical angle.
“Whoopee!” he cried.
The effect of this was to make one perspire freely. Stephen perspired. And as there seemed no logical answer, he made none.
Suddenly Mr. Carvel turned, shaking with a laughter he could not control, and strode into the private office the door slammed behind him. Mr. Brice's impulse was flight. But he controlled himself.
First of all there was an eloquent silence. Then a ripple of guffaws. Then the scratch-scratch of a quill pen, and finally the Judge's voice.
“Carvel, what the devil's the matter with you, sir?”
A squall of guffaws blew through the transom, and the Colonel was heard slapping his knee.
“Judge Whipple,” said he, his voice vibrating from suppressed explosions, “I am happy to see that you have overcome some of your ridiculous prejudices, sir.”
“What prejudices, sir?” the Judge was heard to shout.
“Toward slavery, Judge,” said Mr. Carvel, seeming to recover his gravity. “You are a broader man than I thought, sir.”
An unintelligible gurgle came from the Judge. Then he said.
“Carvel, haven't you and I quarrelled enough on that subject?”
“You didn't happen to attend the nigger auction this morning when you were at the court?” asked the Colonel, blandly.
“Colonel,” said the Judge, “I've warned you a hundred times against the stuff you lay out on your counter for customers.”
“You weren't at the auction, then,” continued the Colonel, undisturbed. “You missed it, sir. You missed seeing this young man you've just employed buy the prettiest quadroon wench I ever set eyes on.”
Now indeed was poor Stephen on his feet. But whether to fly in at the one entrance or out at the other, he was undecided.
“Colonel,” said Mr. Whipple, “is that true?”
“Sir!” “MR. BRICE!”
It did not seem to Stephen as if he was walking when he went toward the ground glass door. He opened it. There was Colonel Carvel seated on the bed, his goatee in his hand. And there was the Judge leaning forward from his hips, straight as a ramrod. Fire was darting from beneath his bushy eyebrows. “Mr. Brice,” said he, “there is one question I always ask of those whom I employ. I omitted it in your case because I have known your father and your grandfather before you. What is your opinion, sir, on the subject of holding human beings in bondage?”
The answer was immediate—likewise simple.
“I do not believe in it, Mr. Whipple.”
The Judge shot out of his chair like a long jack-in-the box, and towered to his full height.