“You’re looking pale, deary,” said Mrs. Taylor to her, a few days later.
“Am I?”
“And you don’t eat anything.”
“Oh, yes, I do.” And Molly retired to her cabin.
“George,” said Mrs. Taylor, “you come here.”
It may seem severe—I think that it was severe. That evening when Mr. Taylor came home to his family, George received a thrashing for disobedience.
“And I suppose,” said Mrs. Taylor to her husband, “that she came out just in time to stop ’em breaking Bob Carmody’s neck for him.”
Upon the day following Mrs. Taylor essayed the impossible. She took herself over to Molly Wood’s cabin. The girl gave her a listless greeting, and the dame sat slowly down, and surveyed the comfortable room.
“A very nice home, deary,” said she, “if it was a home. But you’ll fix something like this in your real home, I have no doubt.”
Molly made no answer.
“What we’re going to do without you I can’t see,” said Mrs. Taylor. “But I’d not have it different for worlds. He’ll be coming back soon, I expect.”
“Mrs. Taylor,” said Molly, all at once, “please don’t say anything now. I can’t stand it.” And she broke into wretched tears.
“Why, deary, he—”
“No; not a word. Please, please—I’ll go out if you do.”
The older woman went to the younger one, and then put her arms round her. But when the tears were over, they had not done any good; it was not the storm that clears the sky—all storms do not clear the sky. And Mrs. Taylor looked at the pale girl and saw that she could do nothing to help her toward peace of mind.
“Of course,” she said to her husband, after returning from her profitless errand, “you might know she’d feel dreadful.
“What about?” said Taylor.
“Why, you know just as well as I do. And I’ll say for myself, I hope you’ll never have to help hang folks.”
“Well,” said Taylor, mildly, “if I had to, I’d have to, I guess.”
“Well, I don’t want it to come. But that poor girl is eating her heart right out over it.”
“What does she say?”
“It’s what she don’t say. She’ll not talk, and she’ll not let me talk, and she sits and sits.”
“I’ll go talk some to her,” said the man.
“Well, Taylor, I thought you had more sense. You’d not get a word in. She’ll be sick soon if her worry ain’t stopped someway, though.”
“What does she want this country to do?” inquired Taylor. “Does she expect it to be like Vermont when it—”
“We can’t help what she expects,” his wife interrupted. “But I wish we could help her.”
They could not, however; and help came from another source. Judge Henry rode by the next day. To him good Mrs. Taylor at once confided her anxiety. The Judge looked grave.
“Must I meddle?” he said.
“Yes, Judge, you must,” said Mrs. Taylor.
“But why can’t I send him over here when he gets back? Then they’ll just settle it between themselves.”
Mrs. Taylor shook her head. “That would unsettle it worse than it is,” she assured him. “They mustn’t meet just now.”
The Judge sighed. “Well,” he said, “very well. I’ll sacrifice my character, since you insist.”
Judge Henry sat thinking, waiting until school should be out. He did not at all relish what lay before him. He would like to have got out of it. He had been a federal judge; he had been an upright judge; he had met the responsibilities of his difficult office not only with learning, which is desirable, but also with courage and common sense besides, and these are essential. He had been a stanch servant of the law. And now he was invited to defend that which, at first sight, nay, even at second and third sight, must always seem a defiance of the law more injurious than crime itself. Every good man in this world has convictions about right and wrong. They are his soul’s riches, his spiritual gold. When his conduct is at variance with these, he knows that it is a departure, a falling; and this is a simple and clear matter. If falling were all that ever happened to a good man, all his days would be a simple matter of striving and repentance. But it is not all. There come to him certain junctures, crises, when life, like a highwayman, springs upon him, demanding that he stand and deliver his convictions in the name of some righteous cause, bidding him do evil that good may come. I cannot say that I believe in doing evil that good may come. I do not. I think that any man who honestly justifies such course deceives himself. But this I can say: to call any act evil, instantly begs the question. Many an act that man does is right or wrong according to the time and place which form, so to speak, its context; strip it of its surrounding circumstances, and you tear away its meaning. Gentlemen reformers, beware of this common practice of yours! beware of calling an act evil on Tuesday because that same act was evil on Monday!
Do you fail to follow my meaning? Then here is an illustration. On Monday I walk over my neighbor’s field; there is no wrong in such walking. By Tuesday he has put up a sign that trespassers will be prosecuted according to law. I walk again on Tuesday, and am a lawbreaker. Do you begin to see my point? or are you inclined to object to the illustration because the walking on Tuesday
