Chapter 8 THE WIND CHANGES.

"Good evening, Squire," said the stranger, in a deep voice,—a voice that would have been gruff, but for the melodizing influences of the soft southern climate. "My name is Corlew—John Corlew, of Williston. I came to see if you would consent to take charge of a case of mine, which is to be called to-morrow."

"To-morrow!" repeated Bergan, in much surprise. "That is very short notice."

"I know it. But it is of the greatest consequence to me that the case should be tried at this time, and not carried over to another term. It was in the hands of Squire Fielder, one of our Williston lawyers; but he was taken sick this afternoon,—fell down in court, some brain difficulty or other,—and is forbidden by the physicians to do a thing. So I inquired for a lawyer that hadn't got his hands full of business, and somebody mentioned you. I remembered your name; I happened to be North five years ago, and heard your Commencement speech, and knew what sort of a reputation you graduated with; so I quickly made up my mind that you were the man for my need. I've brought all the papers,—Squire Fielder's notes and all,—he couldn't well do less than give them to me, under the circumstances. I understand matters pretty well myself; and we've got the night before us. If you'll undertake to master the case by ten o'clock to-morrow morning, I am willing to put it in your hands."

"I will do my best," said Bergan, after a brief consideration.

Mr. Corlew immediately began to open and sort his papers; Bergan brought writing materials, drew his chair to the opposite side of the table, and bent all the powers of his mind to the hard task before him. It was an action for ejectment, involving trial of title, and with the usual mixed and intricate character of such things; interwoven, too, with a pathetic story of misfortune. Bergan patiently examined and questioned; Mr. Corlew intelligently explained and answered. The investigation was scarce half concluded, when Bergan quietly pushed Mr. Fielder's notes aside.

"They do not help me," he explained, in answer to a glance from Mr. Corlew, "In my judgment, he has mistaken the point on which the case really hangs. At all events, I shall do better to manage it in my own way."

Midnight came and went on silent feet; the "wee, sma' hours," sacred to love rather than law, hastened, one after another, to join their numerous kin in the misty vale of the Heretofore; the stars went out like spent lamps; the dim night-silence began to stir with vague premonitions of light and sound; finally, gray dawn looked solemnly in through the windows. Then Bergan lifted his head, and pushed back the hair from his brow.

"Now leave me," he said to his companion, with unwonted sombreness. "The rest must be done by myself. I will meet you at the court-house, in good time."

He made an almost imperceptible pause. Then, looking Mr. Corlew full in the face, he said, in a tone half-assertive, half-questioning;—

"You wish to succeed in this suit?"

Mr. Corlew's eyes fell under his penetrating gaze. "Of course I do," he answered a little surlily. "What else am I here for?"

Bergan seemed to muse for a moment. "Well," said he, at length, in the tone of a man who recalls his thoughts from an episodical flight to the main subject, "I think you may reasonably expect success, if your witnesses testify as is here set down. The law is clearly in your favor."

"I am glad to hear it," returned Mr. Corlew, heartily. Yet he looked slightly annoyed, none the less; and his "Good morning," as he went out, was a little stiff.

Bergan leaned back in his chair, folded his arms, and knitted his brow. He looked like a man assailed by some miserable doubt or suspicion, which yet he is half-inclined to regard, as illegitimate.

"It is a necessity of my profession," he muttered, at last; and, with a mighty effort, he tore himself free from the teasing phantom, and addressed himself anew to his work.

There is no need to burden these pages with the tedious formalities of a trial at law. Suffice it to say that Bergan conducted the case with an ease and ability that surprised his legal associates. They had looked for some nervousness, some hesitation, some solicitude, some awkwardness, in the manner of the young legal débutant; they could detect nothing of the sort. He made his opening speech with consummate clearness and composure; and he examined and cross-examined witnesses, quoted authorities, took exceptions, and made points, with a quiet ease, and even, at times, with a touch of listlessness, that argued excellent training and profound knowledge.

Perhaps his quietude of manner was the more perfect, that a slight cloud hung on his brow, all through the two days of the trial; though his observers were too little acquainted with the wonted expression of his face to discover it. Not till he rose to make his final speech did the shadow lift. Then, indeed, the spectators noticed a change. He had spoken but a few sentences, when his eyes kindled, his brow cleared, his voice gathered fulness and melody, he forgot himself and his doubt in the glow of an irresistible inspiration, in the glad exercise of a natural gift of oratory so wondrous, so unexpected, and so potent, that court and spectator were alike taken by storm. Only in dim tradition had such a speech ever been heard in that court room,—so fluent, so animated, so skilfully throwing an ideal grace around dry, bare legal facts, without dimming their outline or destroying their logical connection. People held their breath to listen, unwilling to lose one delicate shade of thought, one fit, luminous expression. Two or three times, the judge was forced to suppress outbursts of applause, in which, nevertheless, his pleased and interested face concurred; and when Bergan took his seat, gray-headed lawyers stretched their hands across the table in hearty congratulation.

A verdict for his client was almost immediately rendered. Then he stepped out into the crowd, to be met on all sides by extended hands and enthusiastic compliments. People that had always studiously avoided him, now sought to catch his eye; gentlemen who had never vouchsafed him more than a stiff nod, now waited to give him a friendly hand-grasp and a few congratulatory words. One of the magnates of the neighborhood publicly stamped him, as it were, with the seal of his high approbation, by engaging him for a few moments in conversation, and then parting from him with an intimation that he might expect an early invitation to dinner.

Turning away from the dog-day smile of this personage,—late and sultry,—Bergan encountered the meaning gaze of a pair of blear eyes.

"Sudden change of weather," remarked Dick Causton, dryly. "'it never rains but it pours.' You are in a heavy shower, Mr. Arling."

And with unwonted consideration, Dick waited till Bergan had passed on, before he muttered, "In picciol tempo passa ogni gran pioggia,—a heavy shower is soon over."

Dr. Remy came next. "I never sing in chorus," said he, shrugging his shoulders, and putting his hands behind him; "I shall keep my compliments for a day of dearth. But what a weathercock is public opinion!"

Yet the change was not altogether so sudden and radical as it appeared. Bergan's upright, independent course of conduct, so quietly persisted in, through all these months, despite every discouragement, had at last begun to tell upon the prejudices of the community. Mrs. Lyte's warm advocacy and indignant protest, in her small circle, had also had its weight. Probably both would have availed much earlier, but for the curiously infelicitous language in which Dr. Remy had all along chosen to couch his responses to such persons as had approached him in relation to Bergan's character and habits.

"As talented a fellow as ever lived," he replied to one inquirer,—"and as deep a one. Ah! he knows well what he's about!"

"Sober?" he answered another,—"certainly; as sober as an anchorite. I hope he will keep so."

"Mr. Arling is my neighbor and friend, as friendship goes," he said to another; "I neither make, nor listen to, derogatory remarks about him. If you want confirmation for your prejudice, go elsewhere. I am not in that line."

Intentionally or not, Dr. Remy's cool cynicism rather damaged than helped Bergan's cause.

Nevertheless, the steadfast testimony of his upright life remained, and could not be wholly ignored. The feeling was fast becoming general that the young man deserved somewhat better at the hands of the community than he had received. And the feeling would doubtless have manifested itself in good time, and with due caution, if Bergan's unexampled success in the court-room had not fairly dazzled out of sight the last lingering shadow of prejudice, and caused a popular reaction toward the other extreme of enthusiastic admiration and approval,—a reaction all the stronger because spurred on by a lurking sense of past injustice.

Moreover, the little, sleepy town, whose intellectual brilliants were few, and not of the first water, naturally felt that it could not afford to ignore the fine talent which had so suddenly blazed out in its midst, and which might be regarded as, in some sense, of its own creation.

"He really belongs to us, you know," remarked one townsman proudly to another. "He comes of the Bergans of Bergan Hall, on the mother's side,—good old aristocratic stock. And he's an honor to it!"

And so, as has been said before, Bergan's exit from the court-room was a scene of triumph that might easily have turned an older head, and quickened the beating of a chiller heart.

But Bergan took it all quietly, gravely,—almost indifferently. The cloud had settled back upon his brow, and never stirred for any compliment, or congratulation, or friendliness. Most persons attributed it to wounded pride, not yet healed. In the midst of the ovation, they believed that he kept a rankling remembrance of the coldness and neglect which had preceded it. One observer only, a little clearer eyed than the rest, said to him:—

"You look tired."

"And well he may!" responded Mr. Corlew, standing by with a face of unalloyed satisfaction. "He never saw the case until evening before last; and he has not slept for two nights."

There was another, and a stronger, burst of admiration, mingled with wonder; but the complacent, satisfied tone of Mr. Corlew's voice only deepened the shadow on Bergan's brow. Quickly extricating himself from both crowd and client, he walked swiftly home, meditating, as he went, upon the seeming churlishness of human existence, in that it never gives us what we want, or gives it only in such way and shape as to neutralize its sweetness.

What, then, was the drop of bitterness in his cup of triumph?

Not the paltry pride that had been attributed to him, nor yet the depressing reaction that comes after excitement, but an uneasy suspicion that he had helped to do an injustice. He had discovered,—or seemed to discover,—as the intricacies of the recent case had unfolded themselves before him, that law and justice stood on opposite sides of it. Of his client's legal right to the property in dispute, admitting his statements to be true, there seemed to be no question; but of his moral right to it, as well as of his own personal integrity, and that of his principal witness, Bergan had grave doubts. And these doubts had followed him, and planted a heavy footstep on his conscience, all the way down through the trial. For he was still young, his personal conscience tender, and his professional one undeveloped. His duty as a man, and his duty as a lawyer, had not yet distinctly separated themselves into opposing segments.

So, while the whole town was ringing with the fame of his successful legal début, he sat moodily in his office, a prey to troubled and half-regretful thought, until Sleep, so long defrauded of her rights, stole upon him in his chair, and held him fast prisoned in her soft embrace.