The Wishing Moon Part 14

"I don't know."

"Oh, Judith!" Her sweet, flushed face was close above him now, eyes drooping, lips faintly apart, drawn down to his as gently and inevitably as tired eyes close into sleep. "Judith, some day you'll have to care."

"Not yet. Neil, don't talk any more."

"I--can't."

"Then kiss me."

CHAPTER SEVEN

It was winter in Green River.

The town, attracting Colonel Everard to it sixteen years before, newly prosperous, outgrowing its old lumbering days, with the ship-building industry already a thing of the past, with the power in the little river awaiting development, money in the small but thriving bank, and a new spirit everywhere, beyond the control of old leaders, too progressive for a provincial magnate's direction, had been in the interesting and dangerous condition of a woman ready for her next love affair; if the right man comes, she may live happy ever after, but even if the wrong man comes, a flirtation is due. Like a woman again, the town showed the strength of his hold on her in his absence; in winter, when the big, unfriendly house was shuttered and closed, the ladies of the inner circle wore out their summer evening gowns at mild winter gayeties, church socials, Village Improvement Society bridge parties, and the old-fashioned supper parties which the Nashes and Larribees and Saxons still ventured to give.

Humble festivities which he would not have honoured with his presence lacked allurement because he was not in town and staying away from them.

Great matters and small hung fire to await his deciding vote, from the list of books to be bought for the library to the chairmanship of the school board. Marking time and waiting for the Colonel to come home; that was what winter meant to most of Green River, but not to Judith Randall. Winter was a charmed time to her; the time when her mother did not care what she did. Freedom was always sweet, but this winter it was sweeter than ever before to Judith.

She was never lonely now. Whispering groups in the dingy corridor of the old schoolhouse, or in that sacred spot, the senior's corner, a cl.u.s.ter of seats in the northwest corner of the a.s.sembly-room devoted by tradition to secret conclaves, though not distinguishable from the rest of the seats in the room to uninitiated eyes, drew her in without question, slipping intimate arms round her waist.

Attempts at informal gatherings in the Randall drawing-room were failures, chilled by brief but devastating invasions of Mrs. Randall with a too polite manner and disapproving eyes. But wherever the crowd drifted after school hours, Judith drifted, too, or was summoned by telephone, by imperative messages, vague, and of infinite possibilities:

"Judy, this is Ed. There'll be something doing to-night at our house.

Bring your new dance records." Or, as the outer fringe of the younger set, jealously on the watch for sn.o.bbishness, but disarmed at last, claimed her diffidently but eagerly, new names at which her mother raised her eyebrows appeared on her dance orders: Joe Garland, whose father kept the fish market, and Abie Stern, Junior, the tailor's son.

"Is this Judith Randall? Well, Judith, this is Joe; Joe Garland. I'm getting up a crowd to go skating to-night, and have a rarebit afterward.

Would you care to come?"

She was one of the crowd. Natalie, little, sparkling-eyed, and black-haired, with the freshest and readiest of laughs, was more popular, filling her dance orders first and playing the lead in theatricals, and Rena Drew was more prominent, president of the cla.s.s and the debating society, and the proud owner of the strongest voice in the school quartette, a fine big contralto which wrapped itself round Judith's small, clear soprano at public appearances and nearly extinguished it. Willard, the most eligible of the boys, was Judith's unquestioned property, otherwise nothing distinguished her. She was one of the crowd, and accepted the fact demurely, as if it were a matter of course, not a dream come true. Just as discreetly she conducted her affair with Neil Donovan, captain-elect of the team, literary editor of the school paper, star debater, and in his way a creditable conquest, if she had cared to claim him openly.

"Neil danced three dances with me," confided Natalie, in the hushed whisper appropriate to the confidences that were part of the ceremony of spending the night together after a party, though Natalie's room, with the old-fashioned feather bed, where the two were cuddling together, was on the third story of the rambling white house, and safe out of hearing.

"Neil?"

"Judy, it's too bad to call him Murph and make fun of him. The day he came into the store to solicit ads for the _Record_ father said that boy would go far, if he had half a chance, but no boy had a chance in this town, the way it is run, and no Irish boy ever did have a chance. Well, an Irish boy is just as good as anybody, if they only thought so."

"But they don't."

"Judy, you are horrid about Neil. You always are about any boy I get crushed on. Neil has perfectly beautiful eyes, and he is so sensitive.

He kept looking at you all through that last schottische as if you had hurt his feelings. He must have gone home soon after that. I didn't see him again. You didn't dance with him once."

"No."

"Poor boy. And he's up there in the schoolhouse with you, hour after hour, practising quartette stuff, and Willard so crazy about you he can't see, and Rena crazy about Willard----"

"Rena can have Willard."

Miss Ward was not to be diverted. "Neil's father did keep a saloon, but he died when Neil was a baby. His uncle that he lives with keeps a store at the Falls, and that's all right. His aunt took in washing, but his mother never did. Charles Brady does get drunk, but Maggie drives him to it. She's getting awfully wild. She's a perfect beauty, though, and I wish I had her hair. But Charlie's only Neil's second cousin. And Neil is so quiet and pleasant, not like that Brady boy that was in my sister Lutie's crowd; just as fascinating, but Neil doesn't take liberties."

"I'm getting sleepy, Nat."

"Judy, the way I feel about Neil, about Irish boys, is this: we can't go with them afterward, but while they're in school with us, they are just as good as we are, and we ought to give them just as good a time as we can. If you know what I mean."

"I don't. I'm sleepy."

"I'm not. I shan't shut my eyes." But Miss Ward did shut them. "Judy."

"Well?"

"Judy, Abraham Lincoln split rails."

"Cheer up. The Warren Worth Comedy Company is going to play at the Hall next week, and Warren Worth has perfectly beautiful eyes, too."

"Not like Neil's."

"Go to sleep, Nat."

But Judith did not go to sleep until after an hour of staring wide-eyed into the dark, and she did not confide to Natalie or any one what had happened in the intermission after the schottische.

"You act restless," Willard complained to her then. "You hardly looked at me all through the encore."

"I'll look at you now, but get me some water first," she directed, and having disposed of him, slipped out alone into the dim and draughty corridor. Odd Fellows' Building, the centre of various business activities by day, looked deserted and forlorn at night, when the suites of offices were dark and closed, and the hall where they danced, gayly lighted and tenanted, was a little island of brightness in the surrounding dark.

"Neil," Judith called softly, "Neil, where are you? I saw you come out here. I know you're here." The corridor was empty, but several office doors opened on it, and on one of them she saw Charlie Brady's name. She knocked at it. "You're in there. I know you are. Let me in." She tried the door, found it unlocked, and opened it. The room was dark, faintly lighted by the street lamps outside the one uncurtained window, where he sat with his head in his hands, huddled in a discouraged heap over Charlie Brady's desk. Judith came and perched on it triumphantly.

"Running away?" she said.

"It's all I'm good for."

"Look at me."

"I thought you hadn't any dances free."

"I haven't. This is Willard's."

"Go back to Willard.... What did you come here for?"

"I don't know."

"Don't you?" He looked up now, with magic in his eyes and voice, the strange magic that came and went, and when it left him Judith could never believe it would come again. But it was here. With a little sigh she slipped off the desk and into the arms he held out for her, closing her eyes.

"I didn't want to dance with you," she whispered; "not with all those lights, and before those people."

"No, dear."