The Indifference of Juliet Part 20

XX.--A PRIOR CLAIM

"Come up, come up--you're just the people we want," cried Anthony heartily from his own porch. "Thought you'd be getting out to see us some of these fine August nights. Sit down--Juliet will be out in a minute."

"Baby asleep?" asked Judith Carey, as she and Wayne settled comfortably into two of the deep bamboo chairs with which the porch was furnished.

"To be sure he's asleep at this hour," Anthony a.s.sured her proudly; "been asleep for two hours. Regular as a clock, that youngster. Nurse trained him right at the beginning, and Juliet has kept it up. Four months old now, and sleeps from six at night till four in the morning without waking.

How's that?"

"I suppose it's remarkable," agreed Wayne meekly, "but I don't know anything about it. He might sleep twenty-three hours out of twenty-four--I shouldn't understand whether to call him a prodigy or an idiot."

"Why, yes, you would," Judith interposed with spirit. "Think of that baby on the floor above us. They're walking the floor half the night with her."

"Girl babies may be different," Carey suggested diffidently, at which Anthony shouted. "I don't care--all the girls I ever knew wanted to sit up nights," Carey insisted with a feeble grin.

Juliet came out, welcoming her friends with the cordiality for which she was famous. "It's so hot in town," she condoled with them. "You should get out into our delicious air oftener. Somehow, with our breezes we don't mind the heat."

"It's heaven here, anyhow," sighed Carey, stretching back in his chair with a long breath. Judith looked sober.

"You say it's heaven," commented Anthony, staring hard at his friend, "and you profess to admire everything we do, and eat, and say, but you continue to pay good money every week for a lot of extremely dubious comforts--from my point of view."

"It's one of the very best places in that part of the city," protested Judith.

Anthony eyed her keenly. "Yes; if that's what you're paying for you've got it, I admit. If it's a consolation to you to know that the address you give when you go shopping is one that you're not ashamed of--why, you're all right. But I reckon Juliet here doesn't blush when she orders things sent home to the country."

"Oh, Juliet--" began Judith; "she doesn't need an address to make all the salespeople pay her their most respectful attention. She----"

"I understand," said Anthony. "That sweetly imperious way of hers when she shops--I remember it the first time I ever went shopping with her----"

Juliet gave him a laughing glance. "If I remember," she said, "it wasn't I who did all the dictating on that historic expedition when we furnished this house."

"We've got to go shopping again," Anthony informed them. "We're planning to put a little wing on the house, opening from under the stairs in the living-room, for a nursery and a den."

"Going to put the two together?" asked a new voice from the dimness of the lawn.

"Oh--hullo, Roger Barnes, M.D., F.R.C.S.--come up. No, I think we'll have a part.i.tion between. But I want a room below stairs for Tony, Junior, so his mother won't wear herself out carrying him up and down. That youngster weighs seventeen pounds and a fraction already."

"I was confident I'd get some statistics if I came out," said the doctor, settling himself near Juliet--with a purpose, as she instantly recognised.

"It seemed to me I couldn't wait longer to learn how much he had gained since I met Tony day before yesterday. It was seventeen without the fraction then."

"That's right--guy me," returned Anthony comfortably. "I don't mind--I've the boy."

"I want a talk with you," said the doctor softly to Juliet, as the others fell to discussing the project of the enlarged house. "I've got to have it, too--or go off my head."

Juliet nodded, understanding him. Presently she rose. "I have an errand to do," she said. "Will you walk over to the Evanstons' with me, Roger?"

"Now, tell me," began the doctor the instant they were off, "is she going to persist in this awful sacrifice?"

"Poor Rachel," breathed Juliet. "So many lovers--and so unhappy."

"Is she unhappy?" begged the doctor. "Is she? If I only were sure of it----"

"What girl wouldn't be unhappy--to be making even one man out of two as miserable as you?"

"But you know what I mean. Is she going to marry Huntington out of love as well as pity--or only pity?"

"Roger"--Juliet stood still in the road, regarding him in the dim light with kind eyes--"if I knew I wouldn't tell you. That's Rachel's secret.

But I don't know. She's as loyal as a magnet, and as reserved as--you would want her to be if you were Mr. Huntington."

"She's everything she ought to be. I'm a dastard for saying it, but I could forgive her for being disloyal enough to him to show me just a corner of her heart. Even if she loves him it's what I called it--an awful sacrifice--a man dying with consumption. If she doesn't--except as the friend of her early girlhood, when she didn't know men or her own heart--Juliet, it's impious."

"Roger, dear, keep hold of yourself," Juliet replied. "You're too strong and fine to want to come between her and her own decision--if she has made it."

"If you were a man," said he hotly, "would you let a woman marry you--dying?"

"Yes," answered Juliet stoutly, "if she insisted."

"Women are capable of saying anything in an argument," he growled. "I say it's outrageous to let her do it. She doesn't love him--she does love me,"

he blurted.

Juliet turned to him anxiously. "Roger, do you know what you are saying?"

"Yes, I do. I've got to tell somebody, and there's n.o.body but you--you perfect woman. If ever a man knew a thing without its being put into words I know that. It was only a look, weeks ago, but I'm as sure of it as I am of myself. I've had nothing but coolness from her since, but that's in self-defense. And the thought that, loving me, she's going to give herself to him--a wreck--do you wonder it's driving me mad?"

"You ought not to have told me this," said Juliet, tears in her voice. "If Rachel is doing this it's because she's sure she ought----"

"Of course she is. And that's why I tell you. You have more influence with her than any one. Can't you show her that duty, the most urgent in the world, never requires a thing like that? Let her be his friend to the last--the sort of friend she knows how to be, with a warm hand in his cold one. But never his----"

The doctor grew choky with his vehemence, and stopped short. Juliet was silent, full of distress. She thought of the two men--Huntington, a frail ghost, in the grip of a deadly illness, yet fighting it desperately, and desperately clinging to the girl he loved: a clever fellow, educated as a mining engineer, successful, even beginning to be distinguished in his work until his health gave out; Barnes, the embodiment of strength, standing high in his profession, life and the world before him, a fit mate for the girl who deserved the best there could be for her--Juliet thought of them both and found her heart aching for them--and for Rachel Redding.

They were slowly approaching the brown house at the foot of the hill, the errand at the Evanstons' forgotten, when suddenly a familiar figure in white came toward them from the doorway. The doctor started at sight of it, and Juliet grew breathless all at once.

"I thought it was you two," said Rachel. "This rising moon struck you full just now, and I could see you plainly. I've wanted to see you both--and this is my last chance. I am going away to-morrow."

There was an instant's silence, while Roger Barnes tried to choose which of all the things he wanted to say to her should come first. Juliet broke the stillness.

"Walk back up the road with us, dear," she said, "and tell us how and where you go."

"I have but a minute to spare," said Rachel. "Let me say good-bye to you both here----"

"No, by heaven, you shall not," burst out the doctor in a suppressed voice of fire which startled Juliet. "You owe me ten minutes, in place of the last letter you haven't answered. There are a score of them, you know--but the last has to be answered somehow."

Rachel hesitated. "Very well," she said at length, "but only with Mrs.

Robeson."

"Can't you trust me?" He was angry now.