SHORT STORY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2168, 12 September 1895, Page 45

SHORT STORY.

LIGHT IN DARKNESS. Mr Justice Oaon was sitting by the open window, looking dreamily out into Russell square. For the twentieth time that evening he took from his coat breast pocket a letter and read it carefully, and as he read his expression hardened and his face grew sterner. " Ob, my boy, and this is the end I " ho murmured bitterly. "Better it should be so— yes, far better ; and yet, cold and still as he lies now, he leaves some evil still behind him— his son and the son of the creature that he married. ' Father, lam dying,' he writes, • have mercy on my boy. 1 " Mercy 1 Ho bad no mercy on me when he disgraced my nam8 — when he made me the laughing-stock of London. • The Judge's Son and the Ballet Girl.' I can see it now on the placards of the mornicg papers." The door of the library opened, and a woman entered and crossed to the alcove where the judge was seated, and placed her hand pleadingly upon his shoulder. ""George," she whispered softly. Ha looked up. They were old, these two, past fifty both of them, and yet one could read love in their glances. The wife looked inquiringly into her husband's eyes. The light of the shaded lamp threw a gentle radiance about her that harmonised well with the sweet expression of her face. FiEty winters, fifty summers, had whitened her hair and furrowed her brow, but they had not robbed her of the youthful look of her girlhood days. •' George," she said, «• how are you going to answer that letter 1 Oar son is dead. You know how bitter it is for me. I know how terrible it is for you ; but you are going to be merciful — you are going to allow his boy to be with us?" " I am not." There was a silence, and the woman looked at the man with a longing in her face that should have been more potent than mere words. •' No, the child ia nothing to me. If I did what you suggest the evil breed would show itself. His father made me the jest of London by his follies, bis vices, his awful marriage. And listen, Mary, years ago I forbade you to mention his name. I have torn his memory from my heart ; you also must be brave, and try to forget we ever had a son." "Bat— but I loved him so," the woman anawwd bambly'.

The husband turned towards her, and said bitterly : " Did I not love him also 7 " They sat there in silence, looking out into the stillness of the cool leafy square, until a neighbouring clock boomed out 11. With one accord they rose and passed up the broad oak staircase. When they reached the landing the woman stopped and clutched her husband by the arm. "Do you remember 1 " she said, pointing to a steep and narrow staircase that terminated at the top with a little wicket gate. "Do you remember that little gate?— the nursery gate, we used to call it. Oan't you remember on summer mornings a little curly head peeping through and saying, • Morning, dada ; morning, mumma ' ? How proud you were of him then ; how you used to lov.e to listen to the music of bis baby voice. And then do you remember when the little feet were still, and we nursed him, you and I, through long days of delirium and fever, and then one night, just such another night as this, when his life was hanging in the balance, and you stood trembling on the stairs waiting to know if he was to live or die ? How I came out to you, and you read on my face that God had boen merciful, and we both passed down the stairs, weeping tears of thankfulness 7 " "Yes, yes, I remember," the man answered; " but he was only a child then." " Ab, but he gave you joy when he grew older. Dome I " And the wife slowly ascended the narrow stairs, and, opening the little wicket gate, crossed the landing and entered the nursery. The moonlight streamed in at the window, placing the room half in shadow, half in radiance. The judge stood at the open door and peered in. It was years — how many he could not count — Bince he had been in that room. Hosts of memories danced before him — memories of childish laughter, of childish tears, of boyish triumphs, of boyish escapades ; he could see his son, now halffearful, half-proud, his trunk already packed, just on the point of taking his first step in life, his first term at a public sohool. "Do you remember?" intenupted his wife softly; and she pointed to a cricket bat hanging over the mantelpiece. It was dented now, and soiled, and old. Underneath it was a sheet of paper, yellow with age, covered with a boy's irregular scrawl: "This bat made a hundred and two runs, Eton and Harrow match, 1866. (Signed) G. Oaon, Jun." "Do you remember 7 You were proud of him that day, George I " Yes, he remembered It, that glorious day at Lord's— the sunlight on the green sward, the dense mass of excited people; he remembered how he trembled with excitement when his boy stood^up to face the bowling ; how he cheered when he scut the first ball right over the boundary; how he shivered with apprehension when the lad gave the cover-point a chance ; and then he dotted . down the runs his boy made. And what a glorious record It was— one hundred and two, not out ! That day he seemed to live in the reflected glory of his son. Old college chums congratulated him, perfect strangers shook him by tie hand. Nobody knew him as Oaon, Q.O— he was simply young Oaon's father. "George!" His wife was speaking, and the sunlight of Lord's faded away and changed into the moonlit nursery. "You, can't tell how I long for another life to replace the one that I have lost. You see I have kept this room exactly as he left it. I sometimes sit for hours here and fancy that he is by my side. I never think of him as a man. I never want to. I only think of him as a boy. Husband, let me live my motherhood again ; let me have my son's son to cherish and protect i and love now that I am old and childless." " See ! " and proudly, yet apprehensively, she pulled aside a curtain which concealed a tiny bed. A baby was Bleeping tranquilly, the peace of innocence upon his face. " Have I done wrong 7 " the woman whispered. For answer the judge bent down and kissed the alumbering lips. — Agnes Thomas, in the Weekly Sun.