The paper had come loose: he held it raised a little and then arrested so, as if he did not dare raise it farther. “And you can give me your word. I will believe.”
“Go seek your son,” the other said. “Go seek him.”
Now the Judge did not move at all. Holding the picture and the dissolving cigarette, he sat in a complete immobility. He seemed to sit in a kind of terrible and unbreathing suspension. “And find him? And find him?” The other did not answer. Then the Judge turned and looked at him, and then the cigarette dropped quietly into dissolution as the tobacco rained down upon his neat, gleaming shoe. “Is that your word? I will believe, I tell you.” The other sat, shapeless, gray, sedentary, almost nondescript, looking down. “Come. You cannot stop with that. You cannot.”
Along the path before them people passed constantly. A woman passed, carrying a child and a basket, a young woman in a plain, worn, brushed cape. She turned upon the man who Mothershed had said was Ingersoll a plain, bright, pleasant face and spoke to him in a pleasant, tranquil voice.
Then she looked at the Judge, pleasantly, a full look without boldness or diffidence, and went on. “Come. You cannot. You cannot.” Then his face went completely blank.
In the midst of speaking his face emptied; he repeated “cannot. Cannot” in a tone of musing consternation. “Cannot,” he said. “You mean, you cannot give me any word? That you do not know? That you, yourself, do not know? You, Robert Ingersoll? Robert Ingersoll?” The other did not move. “Is Robert Ingersoll telling me that for twenty years I have leaned upon a reed no stronger than myself?”
Still the other did not look up. “You saw that young woman who just passed, carrying a child. Follow her. Look into her face.”
“A young woman. With a. . . .” The Judge looked at the other. “Ah. I see. Yes. I will look at the child and I shall see scars. Then I am to look into the woman’s face. Is that it?” The other didn’t answer. “That is your answer? your final word?” The other did not move. The Judge’s lip lifted. The movement pouched upward about his eyes as though despair, grief, had flared up for a final instant like a dying flame, leaving upon his face its ultimate and fading gleam in a faint grimace of dead teeth.
He rose and put the photograph back into the briefcase. “And this is the man who says that he was once Robert Ingersoll.” Above his teeth his face mused in that expression which could have been smiling save for the eyes.
“It is not proof that I sought. I, of all men, know that proof is but a fallacy invented by man to justify to himself and his fellows his own crass lust and folly. It was not proof that I sought.” With the stick and the briefcase clasped beneath his arm he rolled another slender cigarette.
“I don’t know who you are, but I don’t believe you are Robert Ingersoll. Perhaps I could not know it even if you were. Anyway, there is a certain integral consistency which, whether it be right or wrong, a man must cherish because it alone will ever permit him to die. So what I have been, I am; what I am, I shall be until that instant comes when I am not. And then I shall have never been. How does it go? Non fui. Sum. Fui. Non sum.”
With the unlighted cigarette in his fingers he thought at first that he would pass on. But instead he paused and looked down at the child. It sat in the path at the woman’s feet, surrounded by tiny leaden effigies of men, some erect and some prone. The overturned and now empty basket lay at one side.
Then the Judge saw that the effigies were Roman soldiers in various stages of dismemberment — some headless, some armless and legless — scattered about, lying profoundly on their faces or staring up with martial and battered inscrutability from the mild and inscrutable dust. On the exact center of each of the child’s insteps was a small scar.
There was a third scar in the palm of its exposed hand, and as the Judge looked down with quiet and quizzical bemusement, the child swept flat the few remaining figures and he saw the fourth scar. The child began to cry.
“Shhhhhhhhh,” the woman said. She glanced up at the Judge, then she knelt and set the soldiers up. The child cried steadily, with a streaked and dirty face, strong, unhurried, passionless, without tears. “Look!” the woman said, “See? Here! Here’s Pilate too! Look!” The child ceased. Tearless, it sat in the dust, looking at the soldiers with an expression as inscrutable as theirs, suspended, aldermanic, and reserved.
She swept the soldiers flat. “There!” she cried in a fond, bright voice, “see?” For a moment longer the child sat. Then it began to cry. She took it up and sat on the bench, rocking it back and forth, glancing up at the Judge. “Now, now,” she said. “Now, now.”
“Is he sick?” the Judge said.
“Oh, no. He’s just tired of his toys, as children will get.” She rocked the child with an air fond and unconcerned. “Now, now. The gentleman is watching you.”
The child cried steadily. “Hasn’t he other toys?” the Judge said.
“Oh, yes. So many that I don’t dare walk about the house in the dark. But he likes his soldiers the best. An old gentleman who has lived here a long time, they say, and is quite wealthy, gave them to him.
An old gentleman with a white mustache and that kind of popping eyes that old people have who eat too much; I tell him so. He has a footman to carry his umbrella and overcoat and steamer rug, and he sits here with us for more than an hour, sometimes, talking and breathing hard. He always has candy or something.”
She looked down at the child, her face brooding and serene. It cried steadily. Quizzical, bemused, the Judge stood, looking quietly down at the child’s scarred, dirty feet.
The woman glanced up and followed his look. “You are looking at his scars and wondering how he got them, aren’t you? The other children did it one day when they were playing. Of course they didn’t know they were going to hurt him. I imagine they were as surprised as he was. You know how children are when they get too quiet.”
“Yes,” the Judge said. “I had a son too.”
“You have? Why don’t you bring him here? I’m sure we would be glad to have him play with our soldiers too.”
The Judge’s teeth glinted quietly. “I’m afraid he’s a little too big for toys.” He took the photograph from the briefcase. “This was my son.”
The woman took the picture. The child cried steady and strong. “Why, it’s Howard. Why, we see him every day. He rides past here every day. Sometimes he stops and lets us ride too. I walk beside to hold him on,” she added, glancing up. She showed the picture to the child.
“Look! See Howard on his pony? See?” Without ceasing to cry, the child contemplated the picture, its face streaked with tears and dirt, its expression detached, suspended, as though it were living two distinct and separate lives at one time. She returned the picture. “I suppose you are looking for him.”
“Ah,” the Judge said behind his momentary teeth. He replaced the picture carefully in the briefcase, the unlighted cigarette in his fingers.
The woman moved on the bench, gathering her skirts in with invitation. “Won’t you sit down? You will be sure to see him pass here.”
“Ah,” the Judge said again. He looked at her, quizzical, with the blurred eyes of the old. “It’s like this, you see. He always rides the same pony, you say?”
“Why, yes.” She looked at him with grave and tranquil surprise.
“And how old would you say the pony is?”
“Why, I. . . . It looks just the right size for him.”
“A young pony, you would say then?”
“Why . . . yes. Yes.” She watched him, her eyes wide.
“Ah,” the Judge said again behind his faint still teeth. He closed the briefcase carefully. From his pocket he took a half dollar. “Perhaps he is tired of the soldiers too. Perhaps with this. . . .”
“Thank you,” she said. She did not look again at the coin. “Your face is so sad. There: when you think you are smiling it is sadder than ever. Aren’t you well?” She glanced down at his extended hand. She did not offer to take the coin. “He’d just lose it, you see. And it’s so pretty and bright. When he is older, and can take care of small playthings. . . . He’s so little now, you see.”
“I see,” the Judge said. He put the coin back into his pocket. “Well, I think I shall—”
“You wait here with us. He always passes here. You’ll find him quicker that way.”
“Ah,” the Judge said. “On the pony, the same pony. You see, by that token, the pony would have to be thirty years old. That pony died at eighteen, six years unridden, in my lot. That was twelve years ago. So I had better get on.”
And again it was quite unpleasant. It should have been doubly so, what with the narrow entrance and the fact that, while the other time he was moving with the crowd, this time he
