The Blue Wall Part 27

Julianna, in that year, had begun going to a new school--fashionable, you might call it, and many is the time I have smiled, remembering how it came about. The woman with the old-fashioned cameo brooch, who kept it, did everything to invite the Judge to send his daughter there, except to ask him outright, and afterward I heard she had rejoiced to have the one she called "the best-born girl in all the city" at her school, which she boasted, in the presence of her servants, was not made like the others, with representatives of ten Eastern good families as social bait for a hundred daughters, of Western quick millionaires.

I mention this because it was the beginning of times when Julianna was being asked to other girls' houses and for nice harmless larks at fine people's country-places, when vacations came. On one of these times when she was away, a voice came whispering to us out of the past!

It was the Christmas season, bitter cold, and before I went to bed I could hear the wind snapping the icicles off the edge of the library balcony and sending them, like bits of broken goblets onto bricks and crusted snow below. I could see the flash of them, too, as they went by the light from the frosted windows in the kitchen bas.e.m.e.nt, but nothing else showed outside in the old walled garden, for it was as black as a pocket.

Not later than ten I crawled up the stairs and stood for a minute in the dining-room. I heard the scratch of the Judge's pen and knew he was hard at work, and I remember, when I looked through the curtains, how I thought of how old the Judge looked, with his hair already turning from gray to white, and of how the youth of all of us hangs for a moment on the edge and then slides away without any warning or place where a body can put a finger and say, "It went at that moment." Perhaps I would have stood there longer, but the Judge looked up and smiled, dry enough.

"You may think I am working," he said. "But I'm mostly engaged just now, Margaret, exerting will power to overcome a foolish fancy."

"What is that, sir?" I asked.

"That somebody is watching me," he said. "I've turned around a dozen times and left this seat twice already. It's an uncomfortable feeling, but I've made up my mind not to look again."

"Not to look?" I cried.

"No. There's nothing there."

"Where?" I said.

"Below--in the garden or on the balcony," he answered; "somewhere outside the window."

"Bless us, I'll look," I whispered, walking toward the back of the room.

It might have been my fancy or my own reflection, but whatever it was, I thought I saw a dark and m.u.f.fled thing move outside. It forced a scream from me, and that one little cry was enough to bring the Judge up out of his chair, knowing well enough without words that I had seen something.

"That's enough!" he said, his long legs striding toward the French windows. "Stand back, Margaret. We'll look into this."

He tore the gla.s.s doors open, the bitter cold wind flickered the lamp, and by some sensible instinct I pulled the cord of the oil burner. I knew that as he stood on the balcony, looking, he could see nothing with a light behind him. Furthermore, I did not move, because I knew that he was listening, too. Both of us heard the sc.r.a.pe of something on the icy garden walk, the moment the lights went out. Immediately after it the Judge called to me.

"Look!" he said. "Isn't something moving there along the shrubs?"

"Yes," I whispered. "It's near the ground. It crawls."

"What do you want?" called the Judge to the moving thing. Then, although he had no revolver at hand, he said, "Answer, or I'll shoot."

The only reply to this was the sound of breathing and one little cough that sounded human. The Judge reached behind him with one long arm, feeling around the little table by the window for some object. At last his fingers closed on it and I knew he had the little bronze elephant that now stands on the mantel, where Mrs. Estabrook turns it so it will not show that it has lost its tail.

"We are a pair of old fools," said the Judge, as if he was not sure. "It probably is a cat."

With these words he poised the bronze that was solid and must have weighed two pounds, and hurled it into the garden. There was a sound of striking flesh that a body can tell from all others. I heard it! And then, quicker than I tell it, the sharp clear air was filled with a cry which died away, as if it had flown up to the milky, starry sky and left us listening to strange, inhuman groans coming up from the garden.

"My G.o.d!" cried the Judge. "I did not mean to hit it! It wasn't a cat!

It is something else."

"The kitchen!" I cried, and without stopping to close the doors against the nipping cold, I led the way down the back stairs.

"No time for caution," he said. "Unbolt this door. See, it is writhing there on the snow! It is a child!"

I believed at first that he was right. As we ran forward it seemed to be a naked, half-starved child of six or seven years, wallowing in the snow in some terrible agony. My heart jumped against my ribs as I saw it. I stopped in my tracks and let the Judge go on alone.

In a second his voice rose in a tone that braced me like a gla.s.s of brandy.

"See!" he cried. "Thank Heaven! It is only a poor, cringing dog--a s.h.a.ggy hound. Here, you poor beast. Did I hurt you? Come, Laddie, come, boy!"

"Laddie" he had called him, and it was the same "Laddie" that lived with us so long.

"Margaret!" cried the Judge, as he pulled the dirty creature into the kitchen. "A light! The thing is half-starved. Bring some food upstairs to the library."

The hound was licking his hand and cowering as if accustomed to abuse, and from that night it was nearly six months before the old fellow got his flesh and healthy coat of hair and his spirit back again. That night, having eaten, it looked about the room, found the Judge, went to him, and, laying his head in his lap, looked up at him out of his two sorrowful eyes. I knew then, by the smile of the Judge's mouth and the way he put on his tortoise-sh.e.l.l gla.s.ses, that "Laddie" would never be sent away. Just then, though, the master, after he had looked at the dog a minute, sprang up suddenly and stood staring at me with his mouth twitching.

"What is it, sir?" I asked.

"The dog!" he said.

"Yes, sir," I said. "The dog--"

"The gate swings shut with a spring!" he said. "Some human being must have opened the gate."

It was true! We looked at each other, and then the Judge laughed.

"Oh, well," said he carelessly, "if they want the dog they must come and claim him with proceedings at law. Make a bed for him in the back hall."

On my part, however, I was not satisfied so easily and many more peaceful moments I would have had if I had never pried further as I did.

After all, I only asked one question and that early the next morning. In the house next to ours a brick ell was built way out to the alleyway along half the yard. The kitchen windows looked out on the pa.s.sage.

There was a maid in that house,--a second girl, as they call them in this country,--and I knew she was a great person for staying up late, telling her own fortune with cards or reading a dream-book. She was hanging clothes in the early sun, with her red hair bobbing up and down above the sheets and napkins, when I stood on a chair and looked over the wall.

"Busy early?" I said. "But I saw your light late last night. Did you by any chance see anybody come in through our gate?"

"Only you," the stupid thing said. "At first I thought it was some other woman, because, begging your pardon, you looked thin. But it was after nine and I knew you'd not be having callers that late."

My tongue grew so dry it was hard to move it from the roof of my mouth, and before I could put in a word she threw a handful of clothespins into the basket and looked up again.

"When did you get a dog?" she asked. "I saw you had one with you."

"Dog!" I cried. "Oh, yes, the dog. That's the Judge's new dog."

I jumped down off the chair and looked up at the windows to be sure the Judge was not looking at me.

"A woman!" I whispered.

With a hundred thoughts I went across the garden, looking in the snow for a person's tracks. It had grown warmer, however. Water was dripping from the roof, and if there had been any story in the snow, it had thawed away. I walked along with my head down, thinking and wondering whether I would tell the Judge. Mrs. Welstoke used to say, "Silence, my dear, is the result of thinking. You might not suppose so, perhaps, but why tell anything without a reason? People find out the good or bad news soon enough without your help. If it's good, their appet.i.te is the sharper for it, and if it's bad, they have had just so much longer in peace." I thought of these words and wondered, too, what use it would be to worry the master. If evil was to come, it would come. And then, at that moment, my eye lit on something that shone in a hollow of the snow.

"A piece of jewelry!" I said to myself, stooping for it. My fingers never reached it in that attempt; instinct made them draw back as if the object had been of red-hot metal. But it was not of red-hot metal. It was of gold. It was a locket. It was the very locket and chain that had been taken from the neck of Monty Cranch's baby!

"So!" I cried, starting back as if it had been a tarantula; "so it is you! Found at last!"