"Go as far as you like, but be sure how far you like to go, Edith," said the Judge quietly. She flushed, and turned away abruptly, playing with a pile of songs.
"I"m looking for a lullaby. Our youngest seems to need it."
"Not in your line, are they?" said Sebastian, and began to improvise one, while Judith, in her corner, closed her eyes contentedly. Whether there was any truth or not in the report that he had been playing a ramshackle piano in an East Side restaurant in New York when the Colonel picked him up, Sebastian could do charming things with quite simple little tunes, if you did not inquire into problems of harmony and counterpoint too closely. He was doing them now, weaving odds and ends of familiar tunes, rather scapegrace and thin, into a lovely, rea.s.suring whole, that made you feel rested and safe. Judith, making herself comfortable against a stiff and unwieldy Arts and Crafts sort of cushion, as long experience had taught her to, listened, smiling.
She had no idea what a unique position she was occupying there. Judge Saxon grumbled and scolded, but he was part of the group in the room.
He had grown into it, and belonged to them, as he might have belonged to an uncongenial family. The Colonel"s distinguished guests saw them only on their best behaviour. Their local critics never penetrated here at all. Judith was the only outsider who did, and she had besides the irrevocable right of youth to p.r.o.nounce judgment upon those who have prepared the world for it to occupy. She was their only licensed critic.
What did she think of them? Her blond head drooped sleepily. She did not look disposed to say.
Sebastian played on, drifting into something sophisticated, with a suggestion of waltz rhythms running through it. There was a stir of movement in the room, and the sound of windows opening and shutting, once, and then again. Judith did not turn her head to see who had gone out. She was too comfortable. It was strange that he could make you so comfortable with his music, when he made you so uncomfortable if you talked to him, watching you so closely with his queer, bright eyes.
He stopped abruptly, with a big, crashing discord, and Judith rubbed her eyes and sat up. Mrs. Kent was going to sing now. She tossed some music to him.
"That"s over your head," she said; "over all your heads; better put me up there, too, Cleve. Besides, I want to dance. That table will do."
She cleared it unceremoniously, with her husband"s help, and established herself there, poised motionless, through the introductory bars of the song, her sleepy eyes wide awake now, and a red rose from a bowl on the table caught between her teeth.
Quietly, always careful to avoid the reputation of being shocked, like the Judge, Judith slipped down from her perch, and across the room, and out through the window.
"Please keep my folks from kickin"; Grab me while I"m a chicken, I"m getting older every day."
Mrs. Kent"s fresh voice was urging, as Judith tiptoed across the veranda.
The rowdy words of her little songs and the demure plaintiveness of Mrs.
Kent"s voice made an effective contrast. It amused Judith as much as any one, and she liked to laugh, but she liked better to cry, and if you could not hear the words, Mrs. Kent"s voice made you cry; big, luxurious tears, that stood in your eyes and did not fall. As she found her way across the lawn, among the elaborate flower-beds, the voice followed her, mellow and sweet. It had never sounded so sweet before. Everything sweet in the world was sweeter to-night.
At the edge of the lawn Judith paused. Ahead of her three marble steps, flanked by urns filled with ivy, glaring things in the daytime but glimmering shadowy white and alluring now, led up the terrace to the rose garden; a fairy place, far from the world, so hedged in and shadowed by trees that it was dark even by moonlight, entered through an old-fashioned trellised arbour, that was so mysterious and dark, she liked it almost as well now when the rambler roses were not in flower.
When she left the room her mother had been sitting in Colonel Everard"s chair, she seemed to remember, and the Colonel and Mrs. Burr were nowhere to be seen. The whole room looked emptier, though she did not know who else was missing. But there were two people now in the rose arbour. She could just hear their voices, low, with long silences between.
She wanted the place to herself. She stood still, hoping that they would go. There was a path into the woods on the other side of the little garden: the Colonel"s bare, semicultivated woods, combed clean of underbrush, but you did not miss it at night. The woods were full of adventure, but the garden was better to dream in, and Judith had a great deal to dream about.
The lighted house looked quite small and far away across the wide, moonlit lawn. They had stopped singing, and the laughter that followed the song did not sound so clear as the music; you could just hear it.
Presently you could hear nothing, and it was quiet in the rose arbour, too. She waited until she was sure, standing quite still at the edge of the dark enclosure, not a ruffle of her white dress fluttering, very slender and small against the dark of the leaves. Then she slipped into the arbour.
Through a fringe of drooping vine that half hid the picture, she could see the garden, empty and dimly moonlit, with the marble benches faintly white. She hurried through, pushed a trailing vine aside, then dropped it and shrank back under the trellis.
The garden was empty. But across it, just at the entrance of the wood path, she saw a man and a woman. At first she took the two figures for one, they were standing so closely embraced. She could not see their faces, only the two dark figures standing there like one. They stood still a long time. They might have been lovers in a picture, only you could not paint pictures of darkly clothed, ungraceful, shapeless people. Finally they moved, the man turning suddenly, slipping an arm higher around the woman"s shoulders, and putting his face down to hers.
Then he drew her into the wood path, and they pa.s.sed down it out of sight. Judith did not know who the woman was, but the man was Colonel Everard. And they had kissed each other.
Now they were gone. Judith drew a deep breath of relief and stepped out into the enclosure, pacing across it with slow steps, possessing it for her own and dismissing alien presences. There was a high-backed marble erection between the benches, which looked like a memorial to the dear departed, but was designed for a chair. She seated herself there deliberately, leaning back, at ease somehow in the unfriendly depths of it, a slender, uncompromising creature, like a young princess sitting in judgment on her throne.
They had kissed each other. She knew they did things like this, but now she had seen it, which was different, and not very pleasant. But they were all so old. Did it really matter whether they kissed each other or not?
"Stupid old things," said Colonel Everard"s only authorized critic, "I don"t care what they do."
Here in the quiet of the garden you were free to think about more interesting things than the Everards or even fairy princes.
"Stupid," repeated Judith absently, and forgot the Everards. The moon, far away but very clear, shone down at her in an unwinking, concentrated way, as if it were shining into the Colonel"s garden and nowhere else, and at n.o.body but Judith. She did not look disconcerted by the attention, but stared back at it with eyes that were not sleepy now, but very big and bright--wondering, but not afraid.
On still nights like this you could just hear the church clock strike from the garden, but you could not count all the strokes. Judith listened for the sound. It was early, and out here, in the cool, still air, it felt early, though the time had pa.s.sed so slowly in the Colonel"s sleepy rooms. She could hear no music from the house. They would soon begin to put out the bridge tables. There was always a chance that they would need her to complete a table, but if they did not, the Colonel"s car was to take her home at nine.
And the Colonel"s youngest guest had further plans for the evening.
CHAPTER SIX
"That will be all, Miss?"
"Yes," said Judith, with unnecessary emphasis. "Oh, yes, indeed!"
The Everards" car turned and flashed out of the drive and up the street.
Judith stood still on the steps and watched it, if a young lady with her breath coming fast and her eyes shining bright in the dark, and her heart beating unaccountably hard can be said to be standing still. One light burned forlornly over the entrance of the inn. Light was Judge Saxon"s one extravagance, and plenty of it was waiting for him in the house next door, though it would be two before any one left the Everards" but Judith.
The house before her was dark, and the dimly lighted street was profoundly still, with the heavy and brooding stillness that comes upon village streets after nine and is to be found nowhere else in the world.
Judith did not seem depressed by it. Somewhere on a side street solitary footsteps echoed hollow through the silence, and she listened intently, but they came no nearer, and presently died away. She fumbled excitedly with her key, threw open the door, and groped her way across the unlighted hall. She encountered the telephone table prematurely, clutched it, and laughed a high-keyed, strange little laugh.
"Who"s there?" demanded a voice from the stairs, disconcertingly close.
The lights, switched suddenly on, flashed into Judith"s eyes, and Norah confronted her, peculiarly forbidding in a discarded cape of Judith"s and her own beflowered best hat.
"Oh, it"s you," she said.
"Who did you expect? Anybody else? Did--anybody come?"
"I expected you a half hour ago."
"What made you wait for me?"
"Didn"t you want me to?"
"Nana, of course, but if your sister is sick and needs you----"
Norah listened to this irreproachable sentiment suspiciously. "It"s late to go," she said.
"I"ll walk up with you if you"re frightened."
"You! Can you unhook that dress?"
"Yes. I"m going to bed pretty soon. I"m awfully sleepy."
"There"s some ginger ale on the ice."
"I can get it open myself. Did anybody come?"
"A boy you know."