An eavesdropper trained, mayhap, in the psychology of tone and gesture might have divined from these small acts and this small utterance that Judge Priest had reasons for suspecting what was on his caller’s mind; as though this visit was not entirely unexpected, even though he had had no warning of it. There was in the judge’s words an intangible inflection of understanding, say, or sympathy; no, call it compassion – that would be nearer to it. The two old men – neither of them would ever see sixty-five again – lowered themselves into the two chairs and sat facing each other across the top of the judge’s piled and dusty desk. Through his steel-rimmed glasses the judge fixed a pair of kindly, but none-the-less keen, blue eyes on Mr. Lysander Curd’s sagged and slumped figure. There was despondency and there was embarrassment in all the drooping lines of that elderly frame. Judge Priest’s lips drew up tightly, and unconsciously he nodded – the brief nod that a surgeon might employ on privately confirming a private diagnosis.
The other did not detect these things – neither the puckering of the lips nor the small forward bend of the judge’s head. His own chin was in his collar and his own averted eyes were on the floor. One of his hands – a gnarly, rather withered hand it must have been – reached forth absently and fumbled at a week-old copy of the Daily Evening News that rested upon a corner of the desk. The twining fingers tore a little strip loose from the margin of a page and rolled it up into a tiny wad.
For perhaps half a minute there was nothing said. Then Judge Priest bent forward suddenly and touched the nearermost sleeve of Mr. Curd with a gentle little half-pat.
“Well, Lysandy?” he prompted.
“Well, Judge.” The words were the first the visitor had uttered since his opening speech, and they came from him reluctantly. “Well, sir, it would seem like I hardly know how to start. This is a mighty personal matter that I’ve come to see you in regards to – and it’s just a little bit hard to speak about it even to somebody that I’ve known most of my life, same as I’ve always known you. But things in my home have finally come to a head, and before the issue reaches you in an official capacity as the judge on the bench I sort of felt like it might help some – might make the whole thing pass off easier for all concerned – if I could have a few words with you privately, as a friend and as a former comrade in arms on the field of battle.”
“Yes, Lysandy, go ahead. I’m listenin’,” stated Judge Priest, as the other halted.
Old Mr. Curd raised his face and in his faded eyes there was at once a bewildered appeal and a fixed and definite resolution. He spoke on very slowly and carefully, choosing his words as he went, but without faltering:
“I don’t know as you know about it, Judge Priest – the chances are you naturally wouldn’t – but in a domestic way things haven’t been going very smoothly with me – with us, I should say – for quite a spell back. I reckon after all it’s a mistake on the part of a man after he’s reached middle age and got set in his ways to be taking a young wife, more especially if he can’t take care of her in the way she’s been used to, or anyhow in the way she’d like to be taken care of. I suppose it’s only human nature for a young woman to hanker after considerable many things that a man like me can’t always give her – jewelry and pretty things, and social life, and running round and seeing people, and such as that. And Luella – well, Luella really ain’t much more than a girl herself yet, is she?”
The question remained unanswered. It was plain, too, that Mr. Curd had expected no answer to it, for he went straight on:
“So I feel as if the blame for what’s happened is most of it mine. I reckon I was too old to be thinking about getting married in the first place. And I wasn’t very well off then either – not well enough off to have the money I should’ve had if I expected to make Luella contented. Still, all that part of it’s got nothing to do with the matter as it stands – I’m just telling it to you, Judge, as a friend.”
“I understand, Lysandy,” said Judge Priest almost in the tone which he might have used to an unhappy child. “This is all a strict confidence between us two and this is all the further it’ll ever go, so fur ez I’m concerned, without you authorise me to speak of it.”
He waited for what would come next. It came in slow, steady sentences, with the regularity of a statement painfully rehearsed beforehand: “Judge Priest, I’ve never been a believer in divorce as a general thing. It seemed to me there was too much of that sort of thing going on round this country. That’s always been my own private doctrine, more or less. But in my own case I’ve changed my mind. We’ve been talking it over back and forth and we’ve decided – Luella and me have – that under the circumstances a divorce is the best thing for both of us; in fact we’ve decided that it’s the only thing. I want that Luella should be happy and I think maybe I’ll feel easier in my own mind when it’s all over and done with and settled up according to the law. I’m aiming to do what’s best for both parties – and I want that Luella should be happy. I want that she should be free to live her own life in her own way without me hampering her. She’s young and she’s got her whole life before her – that’s what I’m thinking of.”
He paused and with his tongue he moistened his lips, which seemed dry.
“I don’t mind telling you I didn’t feel this way about it first-off. It was a pretty tolerably hard jolt to me – the way the proposition first came up. I’ve spent a good many sleepless nights thinking it over. At least I couldn’t sleep very much for thinking of it,” he amended with the literal impulse of a literal mind to state things exactly and without exaggeration. “And then finally I saw my way clear to come to this decision. And so – ”
“Lysandy Curd,” broke in Judge Priest, “I don’t aim to give you any advice. In the first place, you ain’t asked fur it; and in the second place, even ef you had asked, I’d hesitate a monstrous long time before I’d undertake to advice any man about his own private family affairs. But I jest want to ask you one thing right here: It wasn’t you, was it, that first proposed the idea of this here divorce?”
“Well, no, Judge, I don’t believe ‘twas,” confessed the old man whose misery-reddened eyes looked into Judge Priest’s from across the littered desk. “I can’t say as it was me that first suggested it. But that’s neither here nor there. The point I’m trying to get at is just this:
“The papers have all been drawn up and they’ll be bringing them in here sometime to-day to be filed – the lawyers in the case will, Bigger & Quigley. Naturally, with me and Luella agreeing as to everything, there’s not going to be any fight made in your court. And after it’s all over I’m aiming to sell out my feed store – it seems like I haven’t been able to make it pay these last few months, the same as it used to pay, and debts have sort of piled up on me some way. I reckon the fellow that said two could live as cheap as one didn’t figure on one of them being a young woman – pretty herself and wanting pretty things to wear and have round the house. But I shouldn’t say that – I’ve come to see how it’s mainly my fault, and I’m figuring on how to spare Luella in every way that it’s possible to spare her. So as I was saying, I’m figuring, when it’s all over, on selling out my interests here, such as they are, and going back to live on that little farm I own out yonder in the Lone Elm district. It’s got a mortgage on it that I put on it here some months back, but I judge I can lift that and get the place clear again, if I’m given a fair amount of time to do it in.
“And now that everything’s been made clear to you, I want to ask you, Judge, to do all in your power to make things as easy as you can for Luella. I’d a heap rather there wouldn’t be any fuss made over this case in the newspapers. It’s just a straight, simple divorce suit, and after all it’s just between me and my present wife, and it’s more our business than ‘tis anybody else’s. So, seeing as the case is not going to be defended,