CHAPTER SIXTEEN
"Judith," Neil said.
Neil's visitor flashed a quick glance round the dim office, empty exceptfor the lean young figure that confronted her. It was a hunted glance,as if she really meant to turn without speaking and pick up herberuffled skirts, and run away down the dusty stairs, but she did notrun away. Suddenly quite herself, recovering by tapping some emergencyreserve of strength as only ladies can, but as most of them can, eventhe most amateurish and beruffled of ladies, she crossed the room tohim.
She came deliberately, with an impressive flutter of hidden silk. Shewas smiling a faint half-smile, sweet but indefinably teasing, andholding out a daintily gloved hand. It touched Neil's lightly andimpersonally, not like a girl's warm hand at all, but like the hand of asociety forever beyond his reach, held out patronizingly to this boybeyond its pale, only to emphasize the distance between them.
"How do you do?" she murmured, formally but sweetly.
"How do you do?" the boy stammered. "Judith, oh, Judith, I----"
He broke off, staring helplessly into her eyes. They were dark andaccusing and grave, and a heartache shadowed the depths of them, thelonely and infinite heartache of youth, when you cannot measure yourpain or argue it away, but must suffer and suffer instead. But the boywas too miserable just then to read it there.
"Judith," he began, "don't you care any more? Why wouldn't you read myletters? Why wouldn't you let me explain? Won't you let me now? I can,Judith."
Still smiling, not taking the trouble to interrupt him, she waited forhim to finish, and as she waited and smiled, he had suddenly nothingmore to say. Judith was so slender and white and still as she stoodthere. All the outraged dignity of an offended schoolgirl was helping tomake this overwhelming little effect of hers, and every trick of poiseand carriage that she had acquired in a year, and something else,something that shamed and silenced the boy as no tricks could have done,and made her pathetic little show of injured dignity real. A woman's shysoul was reaching out for every defence it had to protect itself; awoman's new-born, bewildered soul looked out of Judith's beautiful,grieved eyes.
It was very still in the office. Outside an automobile horn soundedaggressively, once and again, and Judith gave the boy an amused,apologetic glance.
"Parks is in a hurry," she said. "He ought not to do that. The Colonelwouldn't like it. But I won't keep him waiting. I'm going out to theCamp for supper. Father and mother are there already. I stopped for theJudge, but he doesn't seem to be here. He is walking out to the Camp, Isuppose. I'm--glad to have seen you." Her voice choked perilously overthis irreproachable sentiment, then steadied and modulated itselfaccording to the instructions of the highly accredited elocution teacherof which she had enjoyed the benefit for a year. "Good-night."
Again she put out her cool little hand, but this time the boy's handclosed on it tight.
"Judith," he began, his words coming fast, the contact seeming torelease all that had been storing itself up in his lonely heart for ayear. Once released, it came tumbling out incoherently, with the liltingbrogue of the ragged little boy that he used to be singing through it,and the breathless catch in his voice that is the supremest eloquencefor the kind of words that he had to say. But Judith gave no sign ofbeing moved by it, and while she listened, a hard look, too unrelentingfor any eloquence to reach, was growing in her eyes.
"Judith, you're so sweet, so sweet; sweeter than you were lastyear--sweeter than you ever were before. I didn't know anybody could besweeter, even you. I was so lonely. I wanted you so, and now you'vecome. Everything will be all right, now you've come. And you camestraight here. You knew I was here, and you came because you knew. Youcame straight to me."
"I came for the Judge," she corrected him gravely.
"But you knew I was here."
"I knew you were working for the Judge, but I didn't think you'd be hereso late in the afternoon. I didn't come to see you. I didn't want to.Why should I? But I'm glad you are doing so well. Good-night, Neil."
"Good-night," he muttered mechanically, checked once more in spite ofhimself.
But as he spoke, he felt her hands, both in his now, and held tight,tremble and try softly at first, and then in sudden panic, to pullthemselves away. Her voice, that had been so grave and cool, with noecho of the excitement that was in his, failed her now, though she kepther wide-open eyes bravely upon him. She was afraid of him, this younglady who was making such elaborate attempts to hide it, this young ladynot of his world, and so anxious to prove it to him, this calm strangerwith Judith's eyes. She was very much afraid, and she could not hide itany longer.
"Let me go," she tried to say.
"Judith," he dropped her hands obediently, but his arms reached out forher and caught her and held her close, "you didn't come for the Judge.You came to see me."
"No. No."
Her face was hidden against his shoulder. Her voice came muffled andsoft. Neil paid no further attention to it. "No," it insisted faintly."Let me go." Then it insisted no more, and the boy laughed a soft,triumphant little laugh.
"You did come to see me, and you love me. You love me and I love you.You were angry, of course. Of course you sent back my letters. Butyou're going to listen to me now. You're going to let me explain. Icouldn't that night. I couldn't talk any more. I didn't dare. I had tokeep hold of myself. I had to get you home. And I did, dear. I turnedround and took you home, and I got you home--safe. You're going tolisten? And not be angry any more? You won't, will you? Youwon't--dear?"
Her face was still out of sight, and her white figure was motionless inhis arms. She did not relax there, but she did not struggle. She lookedvery slender and helpless so. Her futuristic hat had slipped from itsdaring and effective adjustment, and fallen to the Judge's dusty floor,where it lay unregarded. The silvery blond head against his shoulder waschanged like the rest of her, a mass of delicately adjusted puffs andcurls, but in the fast-fading light he saw only the soft, pale colour ofher hair and the tender curve of her throat. He kissed it reverently andlightly, once only, and then his arms let her go.
"You're so sweet," he whispered; "too sweet for me. But you're mine,aren't you? Tell me you are. And you forgive me for--everything? Tellme, Judith."
She seemed in no hurry to tell him. She faced him silently, her whitedress whiter than ever in the fading light, and her face big eyed andexpressionless. He waited reverently for her answer, and quiteconfidently, picking up the elaborate hat mechanically, and thensmoothing the ribbons tenderly, and pulling at the flowers, as herealized what he held.
"Poor little hat," he said softly, with the brogue coaxing insinuatinglyin his voice. "Poor little girl. I didn't mean to frighten you. And Ididn't mean to--that night.... Judith!"
It was undoubtedly Judith who confronted him, and no strange lady now.It was as if she had been waiting for some cue from him, and heard it,and sprung into life again, not the strange lady, not even the girl ofthe year before, but a long-ago Judith, the child who had come to hisrescue on a forgotten May night, the child of the moonlit woods, withher shrill voice and flashing eyes. She was that Judith again, but grownto a woman, and now she was not his ally, but his enemy. She snatchedthe beflowered hat away, and swung it upon her head with the samereckless hand that had swept the lantern to the ground in her childishdefence of him. Her eyes defied him.
"That night," she stormed, "that night. Don't you ever speak of thatnight to me again. I never want to hear you speak again. I never want tosee you again. I'll never forgive you as long as I live. I hate you!"
"Judith, listen to me," begged the boy. "Listen. You must."
But the girl who swept past him and turned to confront him at the doorwas past listening to him. Words that she hardly heard herself, andwould not remember, came to her, and she flung them at him in abreathless little burst of speech that hurt and was meant to hurt. Theboy took it silently, not trying to interrupt, slow colour reddening hischeeks, his eyes growing angry then sullen. The words that Judith usedhardly
mattered. They were futile and childish words, but because of theblaze of anger behind them, that had been gathering long and would go onafter they were forgotten, they were splendid, too.
"I hate you! I don't belong to you. I don't belong to anybody. I'm notlike anybody else. Nobody cares what I do, and I don't care. I don'tcare. Nobody ever takes care of me or knows when I need it. Well, I cantake care of myself. I'm going to now. I never want to belong toanybody. If I did, it wouldn't be you."
"Judith, stop! You'll be sorry for this."
"If I am, it's no business of yours. It's nobody's business but mine."
"You'll be sorry," the boy muttered again, and this time the girl didnot contradict him or answer. Her shrill little burst of defiance wasover, and with it the sullen resentment that had crimsoned the boy'sface as he listened began to die away. He was rebuffed and thrown backupon himself. His heart would not open so easily again. It would be along time before it opened at all. But he did not resent this. He onlylooked baffled and puzzled and miserable, and the girl staring mutely athim from the doorway with big, starved eyes, looked miserable, too. Shewould be angry again. All the hurt pride and anger that had beengathering in her heart for a year was not to be relieved by anunrehearsed burst of speech. It had been sleeping in her heart. It wasall awake now, and she would be angrier with the boy and the world thanever before, angrier and more reckless. But just now her anger wasblotted out and she was only miserable. In the gloom of the office therewas something curiously alike about the two tragic young faces.
The two were alone together there, but they had never been fartherapart. There was a whole world between them, a lonely world, wherepeople all speak different languages, and understand each other only bya miracle, and most of them are so used to being alone that they forgetthey once had a moment of first realizing it. But when it was upon them,it was a bitter moment. These two young creatures were both livingthrough it now. They looked at each other blankly, all antagonism gone.
"You won't listen?" said the boy wonderingly, admitting defeat. "Youwon't forgive me?"
"No," said Judith pitifully. "I can't."
Neil looked at her forlornly, but did not contest this. He came meeklyforward, not trying to touch her again, and opened the door for her.
"Well, good-night," he said. "Good-night, dear."
"Good-bye," Judith said. "Good-bye, Neil."
Then, jerking her flaunting hat into adjustment with trembling fingers,and shaking out her befrilled skirts with a poor little imitation of herearlier airs and graces, she slipped out into the corridor, groped forthe dusty stair rail, and clutched at it with a new disregard for herimmaculate whiteness, and disappeared down the stairs.
In the street below the last of the afternoon light still lingered,reflected from the polished windows of the bank building, and faintlyilluminating the half-deserted square, but the sun was just going downbehind the court-house roof, a big, crimson ball of vanishing light.Judith, appearing below in the doorway, stood regarding it deliberatelyfor a minute, ignoring the chauffeur's discreet manifestations ofimpatience, and then made herself comfortable deliberately in theColonel's car.
She sat there proudly erect, a dainty, aloof little lady. She seemed tohave recovered her high estate upon entering it, and become a princessbeyond Neil's reach once more. Watching her gravely from the Judge'swindow, he could not see the angry tears in her eyes or the recklesslight in them.
Little preliminary pants and puffs came from the car, discreetlyimpatient, as if they voiced all the feelings that the correct Parksrepressed. He relieved them with one blatant flourish of sound from thehorn, and swung the car grandly across the square, round the corner, andout of sight. Judith was gone, and she had not once looked up at the boyin the window.
She had not even seen another cavalier, who dashed out of a shop andtried to intercept and speak to her, but was just too late; Mr. WillardNash, thrilled by his first sight of her, ready to return to his oldallegiance at a word, and advertising the fact in every line of hisforlorn fat figure as he stood alone on the sidewalk gazing wistfullyafter the vanished car.
The boy at the window did not waste his time in this way. Judith wasgone, and with her the spell that had held him mute and helpless, and hewas a man of affairs once more. He was not a very cheerful man ofaffairs to-night. He was not singing or whistling to himself, as heusually did, but he moved competently enough about the room, enteringthe Judge's private office with its smell of stale tobacco smoke andgroup of chairs, so confidentially close that they looked capable ofcarrying on the conference their late occupants had begun without helpfrom them. He rearranged this room, giving just the straighteningtouches to the jumble of papers on the desk that the Judge permitted,and no more, and putting the outer office in order, too.
By his own desk he paused, fingering Mr. Thayer's thumbed pagesabsently. He had no attention to spare for them just then, or for thegraver questions that had absorbed him just before Judith came. Theywould soon claim him again. They awaited him now, but out in thegathering dark that he watched from the darkening office something elsewaited, too.
His heart ached with it, but it beat harder and stronger for it, and newstrength to meet old issues came pulsing from it, as if he were awakeagain after a year of sleep. He was grieved and miserable, but he wasawake. For his mother was right: he was only a boy like other boys; hewas young and it was June, and whether she was kind or unkind, JudithRandall was back in Green River.
* * * * *
Judith, whirled along the fast-darkening road between close-growingpines, dulling from green to black, and birches, silver against them,looked for the welcoming lights of Camp Everard through a mist of angrytears.
She shed them decorously, even under cover of the dark; she was still adainty and proud little lady, with nothing about her to advertiseconspicuously that she was crying, or why. But her little gloved handswere closing and unclosing themselves, her lips were trembling in spiteof her, and there was a hunted look in her eyes as she turned themtoward the dark woods, as if her quarrel with Neil were not her onlytrouble. The tears that she controlled so gallantly were a protestagainst a world only half understood and full of enemies whose alienpresence she was just beginning to feel.
But Neil, as she had just seen him, was enough to occupy the mind ofsuch a young lady, or a much older one. The look in his eyes as he stoodholding open the Judge's door for her was a highly irritating one forany lady to meet. He was older and wiser than she was, no matter whatshe could say or do to hurt him; he was stronger than she was, andpatiently waiting to prove it to her; that was what Neil's eyes weresaying.
They said it first when he left her at her own door without a good-nighton that strange May night a year ago; when she stood looking up at himchanged and alien and silent, with the May moon behind him, that hadbrought her bad fortune instead of good, still dim and alluring withfalse promises above the shadowy elms in the little street, and theylooked down at her just so--Neil's grave, unforgettable, conqueringeyes. They were eyes that followed you to-night, when you tried toforget them and look at the dark woods and fields; eyes that looked atyou still when you closed your own.
But Judith would not look at them. The eyes were lying to her. Neil wasnot really wise or kind. He was cruel. He had hurt her and slighted her,and she was through with him.
"Parks, can't you go faster?" she said suddenly, in her clear littlevoice. "It's so late, and I'm hungry and cold."
"It's bad going through here, Miss," the chauffeur said.
They were turning into a narrow mile or so of road that sloped graduallydown through a series of arbitrary curves and bends to the lake and thecamp, a changed and elaborate structure now, overweighted with verandasand uncompromisingly lit with new electric lights. But the road was oneof the things that the Colonel did not improve when he changed thepublic camp into a private one. It was unchanged and unspoiled, amysterious wood road still, alluring now in the gloom.
Judit
h's own people were waiting for her there at the end of that road.They were all the people she had. Willard and schooltime and playtimewere more than a year behind her; they were behind her forever. Shecould never go back to them. She had never really been part of them. Shehad forced herself into a place there, but she had lost it now, and itcould never be hers again.
These were her people. They were strange to her still, but she had grownup breathing the feverish air that they breathed, and with littlewhispers of hidden scandal about her. Judith was alone between twoworlds: one was closed to her, and she was before the door of another,where she did not know her way. She was really alone, as she had toldNeil, more alone than she knew; a lonely and tragic figure, white andsmall in the corner of the big car.
But she was not crying now. She dabbed expertly at her eyes with anoverscented scrap of handkerchief and sat up, looking eagerly down thedark road. She could catch far echoes of a song through the still nightair, faint echoes only, but it was a song that she knew, a gay littlesong, and it came from a place where people were always kind and gay. Itwas like a hand stretched out to her through the dark, a warm hand, tobeckon her nearer, and then draw her close. She leaned forward andlistened and looked.
There was the camp, the first glimpse of it, though soon a dip of theroad would hide it again. It was an enchanting glimpse, a far,low-lying flicker of light. And there, just by the big, upstandingboulder where the road turned abruptly, she saw something else. She sawit before Parks did, as if she had been watching for it. It was a man'sfigure that started forward, came to the edge of the road, and waited.The man looked more than his slender height in the shadow, but hislight, quick walk was unmistakable. It was Colonel Everard.
"Stop, Parks," Judith said, with new authority in her voice.
He stood waiting for her silently, without any greeting at all, and sheslipped her hand into his and stepped out and stood beside him.
"Go on," he said to the chauffeur. "It's too rough here for the car.It's easier on foot. Miss Randall will walk with me."
The car, skilfully manipulated along the steep, zigzag road, but aclumsy thing at best here in the woods, and an artificial and uglything, lumbered away, breaking through outreaching branches. Judithwatched it out of sight. Then and not till then she turned to her host.
"Aren't you going to speak to me?" the great man inquired respectfully,as if her intentions deserved the most serious consideration.
"Yes," said Judith serenely, unflattered by it.
"What are you going to say?"
"What do you want me to say?"
"I want you to shake hands with me."
A hand touched his lightly. It drew quickly away, but it was a confidinglittle hand.
"You don't seem surprised to see me."
"I'm not," said Judith.
"But you're glad to see me?"
"Yes."
"It's stuffy inside, and they've got a fire in the billiard room andwon't leave it. I wanted----"
Judith laughed and let him draw her hand through his arm as they beganto grope their way down the road. "You wanted to meet me."
She made the correction triumphantly and confidently, as she would havemade it to Willard. All this was coquetry, as she and Willard understoodit, and it was an old game to her, and a childish game, but there wassomething strangely exciting about the fact that the Colonel understoodit, too, and condescended to play at it. It was more exciting than usualto-night.
"Why should I want to meet you?" he said.
"I don't know."
"Why weren't you downstairs last night when I came to see your father?"
"I was tired."
"You weren't running away from me?"
"No."
"And you won't ever run away from me?"
"I don't know."
"You're afraid of me."
"Am I?"
"Aren't you?"
"I don't know," said Judith. "Look, there's the moon."
It was low above the trees, rising solemn and round and slow. It lookedreproachful and grave, like Neil's eyes. It was looking straight atJudith. Judith turned her eyes sternly away. What was the Colonelsaying? Something that did not sound like Willard at all, or like theColonel, either. Nobody had ever spoken to her in just that voicebefore. It was a choked, queer voice. But Judith smiled up at him andlistened, tightening the clasp of her hand on his arm.
"Don't be afraid of me. Don't ever be afraid.... You're so sweetto-night."
"No, I won't," said Judith defiantly, straight to the round, accusingmoon. "I won't be afraid."
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