The judge’s life had been a curious combination of contradictions. He had fought valiantly in the Confederate army as a major, serving under “Stonewall” Jackson, whose memory he worshipped second only to that of his wife, who had died some ten years before. He bore a long scar, reminder of the wound that had laid him low during the battle of Atlanta. His mode of brushing his hair back was adopted to cover the mark, but when he talked, as he loved to do, of his martial experiences, he would always, at the same time in the narrative, brush, with one sweep of his hand, the hair down over his forehead and reveal the jagged scar of which he was inordinately proud.
With the end of the Civil War, he had reconciled himself to the result though it had meant the loss of most of his wealth. He harboured little bitterness towards the North, unlike most of his comrades in arms who never were willing to forgo any opportunity to vent their venomous hatred of their conquerors. Judge Stevenson had counselled against such a spirit. So vigorously had he done it, he had alienated most of those who had been his closest friends. Following a speech he had delivered at one of the reunions of Confederate veterans in which he urged his comrades at least to meet halfway the overtures of friendliness from the North, he had been denounced from the floor of the convention as a “Yankee-lover,” and threatened with violence. Judge Stevenson with flashing eye and belligerent manner had jumped to his feet, offered to fight any man, or any ten men, who thought him guilty of treachery to the cause of the Confederacy, and when none accepted the challenge, denounced them as cowards and quit the convention.
He had hoped that, with the passing on, one by one, of the unreconstructed veterans of the Confederacy, a newer and less embittered generation, with no personal memories of the gall of defeat, would right things. Instead had come the rise of the poor whites with none of the culture and refinement of the old Southern aristocracy, a nation of petty minds and morals, vindictive, vicious, dishonest, and stupid. Lacking in nearly all the things that made the old South, at least the upper crust of it, the most civilized section of America at that time, he saw his friends and all they stood for inundated by this flood of crudeness and viciousness, until only a few remained left high and dry like bits of wreckage from a foundered ship cast up on the shore to rot away, while all around them raged this new regime, no longer poor in purse but eternally impoverished in culture and civilizing influences. On these the judge spat his contempt and he poured upon their unconcerned heads the vials of his venom and wrath.
The second devastating blow he suffered was the succumbing, one by one, of his children to the new order. Nancy, his eldest daughter, had run away from home and married a merchant whose wealth had been gained through the petty thievery of padding accounts and other sharp practices on poorer whites and Negroes. Mary Ann, his other daughter, whom he loved above all others of his children, had fallen victim to an unfortunate love affair with a dashing but worthless son of their next-door neighbour. She had died in giving birth to her child, which, fortunately, the judge thought, had been born dead. His son had “gone in for politics.” He had been successful, as success was measured by the present-day South, but in his father’s eyes, judged by the uncompromising standards of that member of an older and nobler generation, he had sunk to levels of infamy from which he could never recover.
The crowning misfortune dealt the judge by an unkind fate was the loss of his gentle, kindly wife. She had uncomplainingly borne their misfortunes one after another, had calmed and soothed her husband’s irascible tantrums, had been a haven to which he could come and find repose when buffeted by a world which he did not and could not understand. As long as she lived, he had been able to bear up despite the bitter disappointments life had dealt him. He had gone away to try a case in a nearby county, had returned after a two days’ absence and found her with a severe cold and fever.
For three weeks he did not leave her bedside, drove away in anger the trained nurse Dr. Bennett brought to the house, ministered gently to his wife’s every need, and held her in his arms as she breathed her last breath. Frantic at this last and most crushing blow, he cursed the doctor, though Dr. Bennett had done all he could in his bungling way, cursed God, cursed everything and everybody he could think of in his grief. He never recovered from this loss. His hair rapidly became white, he neglected his profession and sat by the hour, his eyes half closed, dreaming of his dead wife. …
Had he chosen to adapt himself to the new order, he could have made money. This, however, he refused to do. He boasted proudly that never had he cheated any man or been a party to any transaction from which he emerged with any
