CHAPTER TEN
"They won't like it, Judith," said Mrs. Randall for the last time, asshe slipped into her evening coat.
"They? If you mean the Colonel----"
"I do."
Judith, looking up at her mother from the chaise-longue, could not haveseen the radiant vision that she had adored as a child, when the springand the Everards and the habit of evening dress all returned at once toGreen River. Mrs. Randall's blue gown was the creation of a Wellsdressmaker, but lacked the charm of earlier evening frocks, anxiouslycontrived with the help of a local seamstress, when the clear blue thatwas still her favourite colour had been her best colour, when there wasa touch more pink in the warm white of her complexion, and before thetiny, worried line in her broad, low forehead was there to stay. Butthere was no reflection of these changes in her daughter's big, watchingeyes.
"It will do him good not to like it," said Judith sweetly.
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, nothing, Mamma. Is that the carriage? Don't belate."
Minna Randall looked down at her daughter in puzzled silence a moment,with the little line in her forehead deepening, then slipped to herknees beside her with a disregard for her new gown which was unusual,and put a caressing hand on her forehead, a demonstration which was moreunusual still.
"Your head does feel hot," she said, "but to stay away from a dance atyour age, just for a headache----"
"I went to one last night."
"A high school dance!"
"There won't be any more of them. You needn't grudge it to me." Judithburied her face in the cushions, and lay very still.
"But the Colonel really arranged this for you. Dancing bores him. Hesaid you ought to be amused."
"He didn't say so to me."
"Are you laughing? I thought you were crying a minute ago." Judith gaveno further signs of either laughing or crying. "Judith, what does he sayto you? When you went with him to look at that night-blooming flowerwith the queer name, last week, and were gone so long, what did he talkto you about? You heard me. Please answer."
"He's a stupid old thing."
"What did he talk about?"
"I don't remember."
"Judith," Judith's mother stood plucking ineffectively at her longgloves, and looking at the motionless white figure, very slender andchildish against the chintz of the cushions, soft, tumbled hair, andhidden face, with a growing trouble in her eyes, "I ought to talk toyou--I ought to tell you--you're old enough now--old enough----"
Judith turned with a soft, nestling movement, and opened her eyes again,deep, watchful eyes that asked endless questions, and made it impossibleto answer them, eyes that knew no language but their own, the secret andalien language of youth. Her mother sighed.
"You're the strangest child. Sometimes you seem a hundred years old, andsometimes--you don't feel too badly to stay alone? Mollie would havestayed in with you, or Norah."
"No. I would have gone, if I'd known you cared so much, but it won't doany good to make yourself late, Mamma. Father's calling," said Judithgravely. Still grave and unrelaxed, she returned her mother's raregood-night kiss, and watched her sweep out of the room, turning therose-shaded night lamp low as she passed.
There was a hurry of preparation downstairs, her mother's low, fretfulvoice and her father's high and strained one joined in a heatedargument, and they started still deep in it, for her father did not calla good-night to Judith. The street door shut, and she was alone in thehouse. Carriage wheels creaked out of the yard and there was noreturning sound of them in search of some forgotten thing; a long enoughinterval passed so that it was safe to infer that there would not be,but Judith lay as her mother had left her, as still as if her headachewere really authentic, her questioning eyes on the rose-shaded light.
There was much that might have increased her mother's concern for her inher face, if you could interpret it fully; sometimes the eyes suggesteda fair proportion of the hundred years her mother had credited her with,sometimes there was dawning fear in them, and sometimes an inconsequent,gipsy light; sometimes her soft lips trembled pitifully, and sometimesthey smiled. Always it was a lovely face, rose flushed and eager in therosy light, and always something was evident which was enough to accountfor her mother's concern and for more concern than her mother wascapable of feeling; Miss Judith Devereux Randall was growing up.
Whatever questions occupied her answered themselves in a satisfactoryway at last, even an amusing way, for her smile had come to stay andher eyes were dancing, when she jumped up from the chaise-longue atlast, turned on more lights, opened closets and bureau drawers all atonce, dropped various hastily chosen and ill-assorted articles on theimmaculate counterpane of her bed, and began to dress.
She dressed without a glance into the mirror, and without need of it, itappeared, when she stood before it at last, pulling a left-over wintertam over rebellious curls which she had made no attempt to subdue. Shehad buttoned herself hastily into the dress she had taken off last, atumbled organdy, and thrown a disreputable polo coat over it, white likethe cap, but of more prehistoric date, but on her slender person theseincongruous garments had acquired a harmony of their own, and become acostume somehow. It might not have withstood a long or criticalinspection, but it was not subjected to one. Youth, in its divinelysuited garb of white, regarded itself with grave eyes for one breathlessminute, flushed and coquetted with itself for another, and then was gonefrom the mirror. Judith turned off the lights and stole out of the room,and downstairs.
There was nothing in the dark and empty house to frighten her. It musthave been fear of whatever was before her that made her slip so softlyacross the hall, and tremble and stand still when the door chainrattled. The door was open at last. With a soft, inarticulate gasp ofexcitement, she stepped out into the May night.
Colonel Everard had an ideal night for the little dance in his garden,warm, but with a quiver of new life in the air. The May moon was in itslast quarter, but lanterns were to supplement it. But the Colonel'sguest of honour, pausing at the corner of Main Street and lookingsharply to left and right, and then turning quickly off it, found verylittle light on the narrow and tree-fringed cross-street through whichshe was hurrying now but the moon.
It hung slender and pale and low above the ragged row of little houses,and seemed to go with her through the dark, but she took no notice ofits companionship. The street was deserted, and the tap of her littleheels sounded disconcertingly loud in the emptiness of it as she hurriedon, turning from the narrow street into a narrower one.
This street had only one real end; pending the appropriation needed tocarry it straight through, witheld by agencies which could only beconnected by guess with Colonel Everard, it led feebly past a few houseswhich were nearly all untenanted and looked peculiarly so to-night, to aclump of alders at the edge of an unpenetrated wood lot, where it hadpaused. Just in front of it the girl paused, too.
Her small, white-coated figure was only dimly to be seen in the dark ofthe street; the group in the shadow of the trees was harder to see, butit moved; a horse pawed the ground impatiently, the boy in the buggyleaned forward and spoke to him. Then Judith started uncertainly towardhim, and spoke softly, in the arrogant phrasing of lovers, to whom thereis only one "you" in the world:
"Is that you?"
"Is it you?" the boy's voice came hoarse through the dark. "I thoughtyou weren't coming. I waited an hour for you yesterday on the Rock."
"I couldn't help it. I oughn't to be here now, and I almost didn't come,but I thought we'd have to-night. Neil, you hurt my hand. Be nice tome."
She was standing close beside him now, and they could see each other'sfaces, white and strange in the dark, but the boy's looked whiter, andhis breath came oddly, in irregular gasps. He held both her hands inhis, but he did not bend down to her, nor kiss her.
"What makes you look so queer? I don't like you. Be nice to me." Therewas something terribly wrong with the smug little phrases, or with anywords at all just then, there
in the heart of the silent dark, andfacing the strangeness of the boy's eyes; words failed her suddenly, andshe pulled her hands away, and hid her face in them. "I won't go withyou--I'll go home, if you aren't nice to me--if----"
"You can't go home now." There was something in the boy's voice that waslike the fierce clasp of his hands, something from which it was not soeasy to escape. "It might be better if you hadn't come, better for bothof us, but you can't go back now. It's too late. Yes, we'll haveto-night. Get in, Judith."