Norston's Rest Part 7

At first a smile parted her red lips; then a sullen cloud came over her, and she turned her back, as if about to enter the house, at which he laughed inly, and walked a little faster until a new mood came over her, and she stood shyly before him on the porch, playing with the vine leaves, a little roughly; yet, under all this affectation, she was deeply agitated.

"I have come," he said, mounting the broken steps of the porch, "for another gla.s.s of water. You look cross, and would not give me a cup of milk if I asked for it ever so humbly."

"There is water in the well, if you choose to draw it," answered the girl, turning her face defiantly upon him. "I had forgotten all about the other."

"And about me too, I dare say?"

"You! Ah, now, that I look again, you have been here before. One cannot remember forever."

Storms might have been deceived but for the swift blushes that swept that face, and the smile that would not be suppressed.

"I have been so busy," he said; "and this is an out-of-the-way place."

Out-of-the-way place! Why, Judith had seen him ride by a dozen times without casting his eyes toward the poor house she lived in, and each time with a swift pang at the heart; but she would have died rather than let him know it, having a fair amount of pride in her nature, crude as it was.

"Will you come in?" she said, after an awkward pause.

The young man lifted his hat and accepted this half-rude invitation.

He did draw water from the well that day, while Judith stood by with a gla.s.s in her hand, exulting while she watched him toil at the windla.s.s, as she had done when he asked for a drink. Some vague idea of a woman's dignity had found exaggerated development since that time in Judith's nature, and though she dipped the water from the bucket, and held it sparkling toward him, it was with the air of an Indian princess, scorning toil, but offering hospitality. She was piqued with the man, and would not seem too glad that he had come back again.

"There is no water in all the valley like that in your well," he said, draining the gla.s.s and giving it back with a smile; "no view so beautiful as that which strikes the river yonder and looks up the gorge. There must be pleasant walks in that direction."

"There the river is awful deep, and a precipice shelves over it ever so high. I love to sit there sometimes, though it makes most people dizzy."

"Some day you will show me the place?"

"Oh, it is found easy enough. A foot-path is worn through the orchard.

Everybody knows the way."

"Still, I shall come to-morrow, and you will show it to me?"

The color rose in Judith's face.

"No," she said; "I shall have work to do."

There was pride, as well as a dash of coquetry, in this. Judith resented the time that had been lost, and the forgetfulness that had wounded her.

Perhaps it was this seeming indifference that inspired new admiration in the young man. Perhaps it was the unusual bloom of beauty dawning upon her that reminded him vividly of Ruth Jessup; for the same richness of complexion was there--the dark eyes and heavy tresses with that remarkable purple tinge that one sees but once or twice in a lifetime. Certain it is, he came again, and from that time the change in Judith, body and soul, grew positive, like the swift development of a tropical plant.

CHAPTER VIII.

WAITING FOR HIM.

Judith stood within her father's porch once more--this time leaning forward eagerly, shading her eyes with one hand, and looking from under it in an att.i.tude of intense expectation.

As she waited there, with fire on her cheeks and longing in her eyes, the change that a few months had made was marvellous. Those eyes, at first boldly bright, were now like velvet or fire, as tenderness or pa.s.sion filled them. She had grown taller, more graceful, perhaps a little less vigorous in her movements; but in spirit and person the girl was vividly endowed with all that an artist would have desired for a picture of her own scriptural namesake Judith.

This question was on her lips and in her eyes: "Will he come alone?

Oh, will he come alone?"

Was it her father she was watching for, and did she wish him to come alone? If she expected that, why were those scarlet poppies burning in the blackness of her hair? Why had she put on that chintz dress with tufts of wild flowers glowing on a maroon ground?--all cheap in themselves, but giving richness of color to match that of her person.

Her father had gone to bed supperless one night because the money for that knot of red ribbon on her bosom had been paid to a pedlar who cajoled her into the purchase.

Evidently some one besides the toiling old man was expected. Judith never in her life had waited so anxiously for him. There was a table set out in the room she had left, on which a white cloth was spread; a gla.s.s dish of blackberries stood on this table, and by it a pitcher-full of milk, mantled temptingly with cream.

Does any one suppose that Judith had arranged all this for the father whom she had sent supperless to bed only a few days before, because of her longing for the ribbon that flamed on her bosom?

No, no; Richard Storms had made good use of his opportunities. Riding his blood-horse, or walking leisurely, he had mounted that hill almost every day since his second visit to the old house.

I have said that a great change had taken place in Judith's person.

Indeed, there was something in her face that startled you. Until a few months since her deepest feelings had been aroused by some sensational romance; but now all the poetry, all the imagination and rude force of her nature were concentrated in a first grand pa.s.sion. Females like Judith, left to stray into life untaught and unchecked--through the fervor of youth--inspired by ideas that spring out of their own boundless ignorance, sometimes startle one with a sudden development of character.

As a tropical sun pours its warmth into the bosom of an orange tree, ripening its fruit before the blossoms fall, first love had awakened the strong, even reckless nature of this girl, and inspired all the latent elements of a character formed like the garden in which we first saw her, where fruit, weeds, and flowers struggled for life together. Without method or culture, these elements concentrated to mar or brighten her future life.

For a while after that second visit of Storms, Judith had held her independence bravely. When the young man came, she was full of quaint devices for his entertainment, bantering him all the time with good-natured audacity, which he liked. She took long rambles with him down the hillside, rather proud that the neighbors should witness her conquest, but without a fear, or even thought, of the scandal it might occasion.

Sometimes they sat hours together under the orchard-trees, where she would weave daisy-chains or impatiently tear up the gra.s.s around her as he became tender or tantalizing in his speech.

For a time her voice--a deep, rich contralto--filled the whole house as it went ringing to and fro, like the joyous out-gush of a mocking-bird, for in that way she gave expression to the pride and glory that possessed her.

The girl told her father nothing of this, but kept it h.o.a.rded in her heart with the secret of her novel-reading. But he saw that she grew brighter and more cheerful every day, that her curt manner toward himself had become almost caressing, and that the house had never been so well cared for before. So he thanked G.o.d for the change, and went to his work more cheerfully.

No, it was not for the old father that worshipped her that Judith stood on the porch that day. The meagre affection she felt for him was as nothing to the one grand pa.s.sion that had swallowed up everything but the intense self-love that it had warmed into unwholesome vigor.

She was only watching for her father because of her hope that another and a dearer one was coming with him.

"Dear me, it seems as if the sun would never set!" she exclaimed, stepping impatiently down from the wooden stool. "What shall I do till they come? I wonder, now, if there would be time to run out and pick a few more berries? The dish isn't more than half full, and father hinted that some were getting ripe on the bushes by the lower wall.

I've a good mind to go and see. I hate to have them look skimpy in the dish. Anyway I'll just get my sun-bonnet and try. Father seemed to think that I might pick them for our tea. As if I'd a-gone out in the hot sun for the best father that ever lived! But let him think so if he wants to. One may as well please the poor old soul once in a while."

Judith went into the kitchen, took a bowl from the table, and hurried down toward the orchard-fence, where she found some wild bushes clambering up the stonework, laden with fruit. A flock of birds fluttered out from the bushes at her approach, each with his bill stained blood-red and his feathers in commotion.

Judith laughed at their musical protests, and fell to picking the ripe berries, staining her own lips with the largest and juiciest now and then, as if to tantalize the little creatures, who watched her longingly from the boughs of a neighboring apple tree.

All at once a shadow fell upon the girl, who looked up and saw that the golden sunshine was dying out from the orchard.

"Dear me, they may come any minute!" she said, shaking up the berries in her bowl. "A pretty fix I should be in then, with my mouth all stained up and my hair every which way; but it is just like me!"

Away the girl went, spilling her berries as she ran. Leaving them in the kitchen, she hurried up to her own room and gave herself a rapid survey in the little seven-by-nine looking-gla.s.s that hung on the wall.

"Well, if it wasn't me, I should almost think that face was going to be handsome one of these days," she thought, striving to get a better look at herself by a not ungraceful bend of the neck. The mirror took in her head and part of the bust on which the scarlet ribbon flamed.

The face was radiant. The eyes full of happy light, smiled upon her until dimples began to quiver about the mouth, and she laughed outright.

The beautiful gipsy in the gla.s.s laughed too, at which Judith darted away and ran down-stairs in swift haste, for she heard footsteps on the porch, and her heart leaped to meet them.