from the First Families of that great commonwealth. The Howards and
Driscolls were of this aristocracy. In their eyes, it was a nobility.
It had its unwritten laws, and they were as clearly defined and as
strict as any that could be found among the printed statues of the land.
The F.F.V. was born a gentleman; his highest duty in life was to
watch over that great inheritance and keep it unsmirched.
He must keep his honor spotless. Those laws were his chart;
his course was marked out on it; if he swerved from it by so much as
half a point of the compass, it meant shipwreck to his honor;
that is to say, degradation from his rank as a gentleman.
These laws required certain things of him which his religion might forbid:
then his religion must yield–the laws could not be relaxed to
accommodate religions or anything else. Honor stood first;
and the laws defined what it was and wherein it differed in certain
details from honor as defined by church creeds and by the social laws
and customs of some of the minor divisions of the globe that had got
crowded out when the sacred boundaries of Virginia were staked out.
If Judge Driscoll was the recognized first citizen of Dawson’s Landing,
Pembroke Howard was easily its recognized second citizen.
He was called “the great lawyer”–an earned title. He and Driscoll
were of the same age–a year or two past sixty.
Although Driscoll was a freethinker and Howard a strong and
determined Presbyterian, their warm intimacy suffered no
impairment in consequence. They were men whose opinions were
their own property and not subject to revision and amendment,
suggestion or criticism, by anybody, even their friends.
The day’s fishing finished, they came floating downstream in their skiff,
talking national politics and other high matters, and presently met
a skiff coming up from town, with a man in it who said:
“I reckon you know one of the new twins gave your nephew a
kicking last night, Judge?”
“Did WHAT?”
“Gave him a kicking.”
The old judge’s lips paled, and his eyes began to flame. He choked with
anger for a moment, then he got out what he was trying to say:
“Well–well–go on! Give me the details!”
The man did it. At the finish the judge was silent a minute,
turning over in his mind the shameful picture of Tom’s flight over
the footlights; then he said, as if musing aloud,
“H’m–I don’t understand it. I was asleep at home. He didn’t wake me.
Thought he was competent to manage his affair without my help, I reckon.”
His face lit up with pride and pleasure at that thought, and he said
with a cheery complacency, “I like that–it’s the true old blood–
hey, Pembroke?”
Howard smiled an iron smile, and nodded his head approvingly.
Then the news-bringer spoke again.
“But Tom beat the twin on the trial.”
The judge looked at the man wonderingly, and said:
“The trial? What trial?”
“Why, Tom had him up before Judge Robinson for assault and battery.”
The old man shrank suddenly together like one who has received a
death stroke. Howard sprang for him as he sank forward in a swoon,
and took him in his arms, and bedded him on his back in the boat.
He sprinkled water in his face, and said to the startled visitor:
“Go, now–don’t let him come to and find you here. You see what an
effect your heedless speech has had; you ought to have been more
considerate than to blurt out such a cruel piece of slander as that.”
“I’m right down sorry I did it now, Mr. Howard, and I wouldn’t
have done it if I had thought; but it ain’t slander;
it’s perfectly true, just as I told him.”
He rowed away. Presently the old judge came out of his faint and
looked up piteously into the sympathetic face that was bent over him.
“Say it ain’t true, Pembroke; tell me it ain’t true!” he said in a weak voice.
There was nothing weak in the deep organ tones that responded:
“You know it’s a lie as well as I do, old friend. He is of