"You"re a good boy," he remarked irrelevantly. "Mind what I said, and don"t dig in too deep."
The Judge did not explain whose secrets he hoped to protect by this vague warning. Probably he could not have explained. It was one of those instinctive p.r.o.nouncements which shape themselves in rare moments when two people are close and mean more than either of them know. Certainly if the key to any secret was to be found within the Judge"s dingily decorated walls or in his battered safe, or learned from his partner, the boy had exceptional opportunities to unearth it. Theodore Burr"s intimacy with Neil developed rapidly. He stuck to it obstinately, in spite of his wife, showing more independence about it than he had in years. The two had tramped and snow-shoed together through long winter hours of intimate talk and more intimate silence, and they found the first Mayflowers of the year together. Only the week before he had committed the crowning indiscretion of giving up a poker game at the Everards" to go shooting with Neil.
The Judge, in the strenuous days of Colonel Everard"s summer campaign, had no time to observe the growth of this intimacy or to think much about Neil, but he might have been interested in a s.n.a.t.c.h of talk in the Brady kitchen one evening, if he could have overheard it, more interested than Mrs. Donovan, who did not remember it long.
Her son was an hour late for supper, but she was used to that, for now that he was on his feet the house revolved around him. She served him, and then sat watching him with her hands folded, and the new dignity that had come with his first bit of success straightening her tired shoulders, and the look of age and pain that had been growing there since Maggie disappeared widening her soft, deep eyes. He had dropped wearily into his chair, and he ate almost in silence, but she was used to that, too.
Outside the short, June twilight was over, and a pattering summer rain had begun to fall. Neil"s dark hair was damp with it and clung to his forehead in close curls. Once, pa.s.sing his chair, she smoothed it with a hand that was work hardened but finely made and could touch him lightly and shyly still. Her son pulled her suddenly close, and hid his face against her.
"What is it?" she asked, softly and not too soon as she stood still and held him. "What"s wrong, then? Where have you been?"
"Nothing"s wrong. Nothing new. I went round to Theodore Burr"s, but I left there at five. I didn"t mean to be late home or make work. But I had a hunch to look in at Halloran"s. I thought I"d find Charlie there.
I did, and I had to get him home."
"Taking your strength," said Mr. Brady"s aunt, unfeelingly but truthfully, "a good-for-nothing----"
"That"s not the worst thing he does."
"What is, then?"
"Talking."
"He don"t mean anything by that."
"Sometimes he does. Sometimes he tells you things that you never suspected and you don"t believe him at first, but you find they"re true; things that have been locked up in his addled brain so long that they"re out of date, and you don"t know how to profit by them or handle them, but they"re true--all true."
"Neil, you don"t half know what you"re saying. You"re tired."
Mrs. Donovan released herself abruptly to get the tea-pot from the stove. Her son, who had been talking in a low, monotonous voice, more to himself than her, watched her with dazed eyes that slowly cleared.
"I guess you"re right," he said. "I didn"t mean to frighten you. Charlie was no more loose mouthed to-day than he always is. I got hold of nothing new, but I have hold of more than I can handle, and I"m tired and I"m scared, and there"s only one of me."
But Mrs. Donovan preferred her own interpretation of the situation, as most ladies would have. She made it tactfully, keeping her eyes away from him, busy with the tea-pot. "You"re young, and it"s June. Neil, the children walked round with the Sullivan girl to take home the wash to the Randalls". They had some talk with Norah there. Judith will be home this week."
She had mentioned the much-debated name in a voice which she kept indifferent, but she flashed a quick, apprehensive glance at him. She was quite unprepared for its effect upon him. He only laughed, and then his face sobered quickly, and his eyes grew lonely and tired again.
"Judith," he said, "you think that"s my trouble, mother. Well, I"m not so young as I was last June." Then he began with considerable relish to drink his tea.
"You"re contrary and close mouthed, but you"re only a boy like all other boys," said Mrs. Donovan, sticking to her point, "and you"re a good son to me."
The boy who had made this rare and abortive attempt at confidences only the night before showed no need of repeating it as he gazed out of the Judge"s window. He looked quite competent to bear all his own troubles alone, and a generous share of other people"s, though somewhat saddened by them. Perhaps his mother"s diagnosis of him was correct. He leaned his chin on his hands and stared out of the window like any dreaming boy, as if it was. But the winter that had pa.s.sed so lightly over Green River had left traces of its own upon him. His profile had a clearer, more sharply outlined look. The lines at the corners of his mouth were firmer though they were no deeper, and the mouth was still a boy"s mouth, red-lipped and lightly closed. But the dreaming eyes were a man"s, dreaming still, but alert, and ready to banish dreams.
The afternoon light was fading fast. It was not so easy now to read the fine print of Mr. Thayer"s notes, and the boy made no further pretence of trying to. He let Mr. Thayer slip to the floor, and stretched himself in his chair with a sigh of relief. The sounds of talk in the Judge"s room had grown fainter and more intermittent and finally ceased. The Judge, still deep in conference with them, had left with his guests by the private door. The boy was alone in the office.
Gradually, as he sat there, the bright pageant of the busy little street had dimmed. It made a softer and mellower picture, a blend of delicate colours in the slant mellow light, and it was not so busy now. There were fewer pa.s.sers-by, and they hurried and did not loiter past. It was almost supper-time. Willard Nash, not joy riding now, but dispatched reluctantly alone on some emergency errand, flashed by in his car, and disappeared up Main Street.
Beyond the double row of shops the upper section of the street was empty. The maples, in full leaf now and delicately green, shadowed the upward slant of smooth road alluringly. Touched with golden afternoon light, and half hidden by the spreading green, the old, solidly built houses planted so heavily in the midst of their well-kept lawns had new and unguessed possibilities. Any one of them just then might have sheltered a fairy princess. The one that did was just within range of the boy"s grave, patient eyes, a protruding porch, disproportionately enlarged and ugly, a sweep of vividly green lawn stripped bare of the graceful, dishevelled growth of lilac and syringa bushes that had graced it before Mrs. Randall"s day.
Not from that house, but from somewhere beyond it, a car flashed into view and cut smoothly and quickly down through the street, almost deserted now. The boy followed it idly with his eyes. The low-built, graceful lines of it held them. It approached, and slowed down directly under the windows, and the boy leaned forward and looked.
It was stopping there. It was one of the Everard cars, as the trim lines and perfection of detail would have shown without the English chauffeur"s familiar, supercilious face. The car had only one occupant, a slender young person in white. She slipped quickly out, and disappeared into the dingy entrance hall below.
She had not seen the boy at the window. He stood still now in his corner, and waited. The tap of her feet was light even on the old creaking stairs, but he heard. She knocked once and a second time, and then threw open the door impatiently, saw who was there, and stopped just inside the door, and looked at him.
Her white dress and big, beflowered hat looked as cool and as new as June itself. They did not make the dingy room look dingier, they made you forget it was dingy. Her soft, befrilled skirts fluffed and flared in the brave and bewildering mode of the moment. Skirts, small shoes that were built to dance, not to walk, the futuristic blend of flowers in her hat, and the girdle, unrelentingly high and futuristic of colour, too, that gave her waist an unbelievably slender look, were all in the dainty and sophisticated taste of a sophisticated young lady, and under the elaborate hat there was a sophisticated young face. It looked smaller and more faintly pink. The small chin was more prominent. But she still had the wide, reproachful eyes of a child. They regarded the boy unwinkingly. One hand went behind her, found the k.n.o.b of the door, and closed it mechanically, but the eyes did not leave his face.
He stepped uncertainly forward, and stopped.
"Well, Judith," he said, in a voice that held all the authority Judge Saxon"s a.s.sistant had acquired in the long year of his service and more, "Well?" and then, in a voice that held no authority at all, but was suddenly husky and small: "Oh, Judith, won"t you speak to me?"
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
"Judith," Neil said.
Neil"s visitor flashed a quick glance round the dim office, empty except for the lean young figure that confronted her. It was a hunted glance, as if she really meant to turn without speaking and pick up her beruffled skirts, and run away down the dusty stairs, but she did not run away. Suddenly quite herself, recovering by tapping some emergency reserve of strength as only ladies can, but as most of them can, even the most amateurish and beruffled of ladies, she crossed the room to him.
She came deliberately, with an impressive flutter of hidden silk. She was smiling a faint half-smile, sweet but indefinably teasing, and holding out a daintily gloved hand. It touched Neil"s lightly and impersonally, not like a girl"s warm hand at all, but like the hand of a society forever beyond his reach, held out patronizingly to this boy beyond 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 and accusing and grave, and a heartache shadowed the depths of them, the lonely and infinite heartache of youth, when you cannot measure your pain or argue it away, but must suffer and suffer instead. But the boy was too miserable just then to read it there.
"Judith," he began, "don"t you care any more? Why wouldn"t you read my letters? 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 for him to finish, and as she waited and smiled, he had suddenly nothing more to say. Judith was so slender and white and still as she stood there. All the outraged dignity of an offended schoolgirl was helping to make this overwhelming little effect of hers, and every trick of poise and 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 shy soul was reaching out for every defence it had to protect itself; a woman"s new-born, bewildered soul looked out of Judith"s beautiful, grieved eyes.
It was very still in the office. Outside an automobile horn sounded aggressively, 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 Colonel wouldn"t like it. But I won"t keep him waiting. I"m going out to the Camp for supper. Father and mother are there already. I stopped for the Judge, but he doesn"t seem to be here. He is walking out to the Camp, I suppose. I"m--glad to have seen you." Her voice choked perilously over this irreproachable sentiment, then steadied and modulated itself according to the instructions of the highly accredited elocution teacher of 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 hand closed on it tight.
"Judith," he began, his words coming fast, the contact seeming to release all that had been storing itself up in his lonely heart for a year. Once released, it came tumbling out incoherently, with the lilting brogue of the ragged little boy that he used to be singing through it, and the breathless catch in his voice that is the supremest eloquence for the kind of words that he had to say. But Judith gave no sign of being moved by it, and while she listened, a hard look, too unrelenting for any eloquence to reach, was growing in her eyes.
"Judith, you"re so sweet, so sweet; sweeter than you were last year--sweeter than you ever were before. I didn"t know anybody could be sweeter, even you. I was so lonely. I wanted you so, and now you"ve come. Everything will be all right, now you"ve come. And you came straight here. You knew I was here, and you came because you knew. You came 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 here so 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."