"Good-night," he muttered mechanically, checked once more in spite of himself.
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 pull themselves away. Her voice, that had been so grave and cool, with no echo of the excitement that was in his, failed her now, though she kept her wide-open eyes bravely upon him. She was afraid of him, this young lady who was making such elaborate attempts to hide it, this young lady not of his world, and so anxious to prove it to him, this calm stranger with Judith"s eyes. She was very much afraid, and she could not hide it any longer.
"Let me go," she tried to say.
"Judith," he dropped her hands obediently, but his arms reached out for her 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 m.u.f.fled and soft. 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. But you"re going to listen to me now. You"re going to let me explain. I couldn"t that night. I couldn"t talk any more. I didn"t dare. I had to keep hold of myself. I had to get you home. And I did, dear. I turned round and took you home, and I got you home--safe. You"re going to listen? And not be angry any more? You won"t, will you? You won"t--dear?"
Her face was still out of sight, and her white figure was motionless in his arms. She did not relax there, but she did not struggle. She looked very slender and helpless so. Her futuristic hat had slipped from its daring and effective adjustment, and fallen to the Judge"s dusty floor, where it lay unregarded. The silvery blond head against his shoulder was changed like the rest of her, a ma.s.s of delicately adjusted puffs and curls, but in the fast-fading light he saw only the soft, pale colour of her hair and the tender curve of her throat. He kissed it reverently and lightly, 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? Tell me, Judith."
She seemed in no hurry to tell him. She faced him silently, her white dress whiter than ever in the fading light, and her face big eyed and expressionless. He waited reverently for her answer, and quite confidently, picking up the elaborate hat mechanically, and then smoothing the ribbons tenderly, and pulling at the flowers, as he realized what he held.
"Poor little hat," he said softly, with the brogue coaxing insinuatingly in his voice. "Poor little girl. I didn"t mean to frighten you. And I didn"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 of the year before, but a long-ago Judith, the child who had come to his rescue on a forgotten May night, the child of the moonlit woods, with her shrill voice and flashing eyes. She was that Judith again, but grown to a woman, and now she was not his ally, but his enemy. She s.n.a.t.c.hed the beflowered hat away, and swung it upon her head with the same reckless hand that had swept the lantern to the ground in her childish defence of him. Her eyes defied him.
"That night," she stormed, "that night. Don"t you ever speak of that night to me again. I never want to hear you speak again. I never want to see 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 door was past listening to him. Words that she hardly heard herself, and would not remember, came to her, and she flung them at him in a breathless little burst of speech that hurt and was meant to hurt. The boy took it silently, not trying to interrupt, slow colour reddening his cheeks, his eyes growing angry then sullen. The words that Judith used hardly mattered. They were futile and childish words, but because of the blaze of anger behind them, that had been gathering long and would go on after they were forgotten, they were splendid, too.
"I hate you! I don"t belong to you. I don"t belong to anybody. I"m not like anybody else. n.o.body cares what I do, and I don"t care. I don"t care. n.o.body ever takes care of me or knows when I need it. Well, I can take care of myself. I"m going to now. I never want to belong to anybody. 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 n.o.body"s business but mine."
"You"ll be sorry," the boy muttered again, and this time the girl did not contradict him or answer. Her shrill little burst of defiance was over, and with it the sullen resentment that had crimsoned the boy"s face as he listened began to die away. He was rebuffed and thrown back upon himself. His heart would not open so easily again. It would be a long time before it opened at all. But he did not resent this. He only looked baffled and puzzled and miserable, and the girl staring mutely at him from the doorway with big, starved eyes, looked miserable, too. She would be angry again. All the hurt pride and anger that had been gathering in her heart for a year was not to be relieved by an unrehea.r.s.ed burst of speech. It had been sleeping in her heart. It was all awake now, and she would be angrier with the boy and the world than ever before, angrier and more reckless. But just now her anger was blotted out and she was only miserable. In the gloom of the office there was something curiously alike about the two tragic young faces.
The two were alone together there, but they had never been farther apart. There was a whole world between them, a lonely world, where people all speak different languages, and understand each other only by a miracle, and most of them are so used to being alone that they forget they 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 living through it now. They looked at each other blankly, all antagonism gone.
"You won"t listen?" said the boy wonderingly, admitting defeat. "You won"t forgive me?"
"No," said Judith pitifully. "I can"t."
Neil looked at her forlornly, but did not contest this. He came meekly forward, 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 her earlier airs and graces, she slipped out into the corridor, groped for the dusty stair rail, and clutched at it with a new disregard for her immaculate 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 faintly illuminating the half-deserted square, but the sun was just going down behind the court-house roof, a big, crimson ball of vanishing light.
Judith, appearing below in the doorway, stood regarding it deliberately for a minute, ignoring the chauffeur"s discreet manifestations of impatience, and then made herself comfortable deliberately in the Colonel"s car.
She sat there proudly erect, a dainty, aloof little lady. She seemed to have recovered her high estate upon entering it, and become a princess beyond Neil"s reach once more. Watching her gravely from the Judge"s window, he could not see the angry tears in her eyes or the reckless light in them.
Little preliminary pants and puffs came from the car, discreetly impatient, as if they voiced all the feelings that the correct Parks repressed. He relieved them with one blatant flourish of sound from the horn, and swung the car grandly across the square, round the corner, and out of sight. Judith was gone, and she had not once looked up at the boy in the window.
She had not even seen another cavalier, who dashed out of a shop and tried to intercept and speak to her, but was just too late; Mr. Willard Nash, thrilled by his first sight of her, ready to return to his old allegiance at a word, and advertising the fact in every line of his forlorn fat figure as he stood alone on the sidewalk gazing wistfully after the vanished car.
The boy at the window did not waste his time in this way. Judith was gone, and with her the spell that had held him mute and helpless, and he was a man of affairs once more. He was not a very cheerful man of affairs to-night. He was not singing or whistling to himself, as he usually did, but he moved competently enough about the room, entering the Judge"s private office with its smell of stale tobacco smoke and group of chairs, so confidentially close that they looked capable of carrying on the conference their late occupants had begun without help from them. He rearranged this room, giving just the straightening touches 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 pages absently. He had no attention to spare for them just then, or for the graver questions that had absorbed him just before Judith came. They would soon claim him again. They awaited him now, but out in the gathering dark that he watched from the darkening office something else waited, too.
His heart ached with it, but it beat harder and stronger for it, and new strength to meet old issues came pulsing from it, as if he were awake again after a year of sleep. He was grieved and miserable, but he was awake. For his mother was right: he was only a boy like other boys; he was young and it was June, and whether she was kind or unkind, Judith Randall was back in Green River.
Judith, whirled along the fast-darkening road between close-growing pines, dulling from green to black, and birches, silver against them, looked for the welcoming lights of Camp Everard through a mist of angry tears.
She shed them decorously, even under cover of the dark; she was still a dainty and proud little lady, with nothing about her to advertise conspicuously that she was crying, or why. But her little gloved hands were closing and unclosing themselves, her lips were trembling in spite of her, and there was a hunted look in her eyes as she turned them toward the dark woods, as if her quarrel with Neil were not her only trouble. The tears that she controlled so gallantly were a protest against a world only half understood and full of enemies whose alien presence she was just beginning to feel.
But Neil, as she had just seen him, was enough to occupy the mind of such a young lady, or a much older one. The look in his eyes as he stood holding open the Judge"s door for her was a highly irritating one for any lady to meet. He was older and wiser than she was, no matter what she could say or do to hurt him; he was stronger than she was, and patiently waiting to prove it to her; that was what Neil"s eyes were saying.
They said it first when he left her at her own door without a good-night on that strange May night a year ago; when she stood looking up at him changed and alien and silent, with the May moon behind him, that had brought her bad fortune instead of good, still dim and alluring with false promises above the shadowy elms in the little street, and they looked down at her just so--Neil"s grave, unforgettable, conquering eyes. They were eyes that followed you to-night, when you tried to forget them and look at the dark woods and fields; eyes that looked at you still when you closed your own.
But Judith would not look at them. The eyes were lying to her. Neil was not 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 little voice. "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 gradually down through a series of arbitrary curves and bends to the lake and the camp, a changed and elaborate structure now, overweighted with verandas and uncompromisingly lit with new electric lights. But the road was one of the things that the Colonel did not improve when he changed the public camp into a private one. It was unchanged and unspoiled, a mysterious wood road still, alluring now in the gloom.
Judith"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 playtime were more than a year behind her; they were behind her forever. She could never go back to them. She had never really been part of them. She had forced herself into a place there, but she had lost it now, and it could never be hers again.
These were her people. They were strange to her still, but she had grown up breathing the feverish air that they breathed, and with little whispers of hidden scandal about her. Judith was alone between two worlds: 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 told Neil, more alone than she knew; a lonely and tragic figure, white and small in the corner of the big car.
But she was not crying now. She dabbed expertly at her eyes with an overscented sc.r.a.p of handkerchief and sat up, looking eagerly down the dark road. She could catch far echoes of a song through the still night air, faint echoes only, but it was a song that she knew, a gay little song, and it came from a place where people were always kind and gay. It was like a hand stretched out to her through the dark, a warm hand, to beckon her nearer, and then draw her close. She leaned forward and listened and looked.
There was the camp, the first glimpse of it, though soon a dip of the road would hide it again. It was an enchanting glimpse, a far, low-lying flicker of light. And there, just by the big, upstanding boulder where the road turned abruptly, she saw something else. She saw it before Parks did, as if she had been watching for it. It was a man"s figure that started forward, came to the edge of the road, and waited.
The man looked more than his slender height in the shadow, but his light, quick walk was unmistakable. It was Colonel Everard.