THE DAY OF JUDGMENT
Forbes woke refreshed from his sylvan nap, and sat for a little
discoursing on the invigorating effect of contact with mother earth,
while Agatha, by drastic massage, restored the circulation to her
temporarily paralyzed arm. The sun had dipped but little toward the
western horizon when they turned their faces homeward, and they walked
slowly. Agatha exulted in heat. A temperature of ninety stimulated her
both physically and mentally. But Forbes found the warmth of the day
relaxing, and she set the pace with that fact in mind.
Toward the last of their long leisurely walk, Forbes brought up the
subject he had introduced earlier in the day. Though he made no effort
to hurry her to a decision, he sketched entertainingly some of the
diversions she might anticipate, if she accepted his invitation for the
winter. The program was planned with due regard for the infirmities of
age, but Agatha listened raptly.
They were but a few rods from their destination, Forbes talking
earnestly, and Agatha hanging on his words, when some mysterious sixth
sense warned her of danger. She looked ahead and instantly halted.
Forbes felt her figure stiffen against his arm, and instinct told him
she was frightened. "What is the matter?" he cried, sickening with a
new realization of his helplessness.
Agatha did not answer, but as she stared ahead she understood that
doomsday had arrived unheralded. A young woman was tripping toward
them, a handsome young woman, who even without beauty would have
attracted all eyes by the distinction of her dress and bearing. It
could be no other than Julia. The ample lady in the background,
following with a haste that empurpled her complexion, that she might
not be left tête-à-tête with a maniac, failed to attract Agatha's
attention. Julia's graceful figure dominated the landscape.
"What _is_ the matter?" Forbes again demanded. He laid his hand
reassuringly over the fingers trembling upon his arm. And at that
moment a voice subtly reproachful, suggestively tender, spoke his name.
"Burton!"
"Julia!" Forbes shouted. His dear old friend, Miss Kent, and her
mysterious perturbation, were instantly forgotten. He started forward,
remembered that he was blind, stood irresolute, his hands outstretched.
"Julia!" he cried again, this time with entreaty as well as rapture.
Agatha was ready to believe that then and there she had amply atoned
for her sins, past and present. Even the certainty that the hour of
her humiliation was at hand could not hurt worse than the joy ringing
through his voice as he spoke another woman's name. She wondered dully
at her own folly. She had been warned and had not heeded. She had known
all the time of his love for Julia, and yet had foolishly assumed that
since Julia's selfish decision had put her out of his reach, he would
turn to her for consolation. Her pride had not rebelled over taking
what Julia had thrown away. Indeed she had thought very little about
herself. Her one desire was to be light to his blind eyes, balm to his
wounded heart. But her castle of dreams was in ruins, as soon as he
spoke the name she had hated from the first day she had heard it on his
lips.
Julia approached him as swiftly as was consistent with grace, a rather
insolent triumph in the glance she shot over his shoulder toward the
pale girl standing in the background. "Yes, Burton," she said gently,
"it is Julia," and extended both hands.
He caught them ardently and held them fast, his eager face questioning
her dumbly, though he only said, "What a wonderful surprise! How good
of you, how very good of you!"
"My aunt, Mrs. Knox, is with me, Burton," continued Julia, the
pensiveness of her tone flatly contradicted by her air of elation. "I
think you have met Mr. Forbes, Aunt Estelle."
Aunt Estelle, still panting, brought herself into hand-shaking distance
and this formality helped to recall Forbes to the realization that
there were other people in the world besides Julia and himself. He
turned toward Agatha.
"This is a pleasure I have been promising myself," he said. "Julia, I
want you to know my dear friend, Miss Kent. Miss Kent, let me present
Mrs. Knox and Miss Studley."
The blankness of the silence that ensued was as definite as a blow.
Forbes stood awaiting the conventional formula, but his quick ear could
detect only the sound of hurried breathing. Again he turned toward
Agatha, but for the first time she failed him.
"Miss Kent is still here, is she not?" queried Forbes. He remembered
his ideas had been chaotic after discovering Julia's presence. His late
companion might easily have withdrawn without attracting his attention.
For so simple a question, the effect was startling. "Burton," Julia
cried, her voice sharp to the point of shrillness, "what are you
talking about?"
Aunt Estelle caught her sleeve. "Can't you understand, Julia?" she
hissed. "This place is a private asylum. That crazy old creature on the
porch, and now him. It's perfectly plain. Let us go away at once."
Forbes caught most of this sibilant outburst. He turned white with
anger. "Miss Kent?" he pleaded, and Agatha pulled herself together. Her
voice was steady if slightly unnatural, as she answered, "Yes, I am
here."
Forbes tried to laugh. The consciousness of being enveloped in baffling
mystery made his blindness doubly intolerable. There was a bewilderment
in his voice that wrung Agatha's heart.
"This is what I have been hoping for all summer. You know how often
I've wished you and Miss Studley might know each other."
"Burton," Julia screamed, "who and what is this person?"
The contempt in her tone, even more than her disdainful phrasing,
brought the blood racing to his forehead. "Julia!" He seemed to defy
her to go on. "If you have read my letters at all," he said in a
vibrant voice, "you know both who Miss Kent is and how much I am in her
debt."
"Miss Kent! Your father's friend!"
"And mine as well, Julia." There was no ecstatic tenderness now in his
use of her name, but indignant sternness.
"Burton, either you are insane or the woman is an impostor. She is not
old. She is young, hardly more than a girl."
Forbes attempted to reply, but for a moment no words came. He put his
hand to his forehead with a confused gesture. "I have been off in the
woods with Miss Kent all day," he stammered. "I supposed--I had not
noticed--" Again he turned in Agatha's direction. "Who are you, please?"
There was no trace of emotion in her composed answer. "I am Agatha
Kent."
"Do you dare to say," shrieked Julia, "that you were the friend of Mr.
Forbes' father?"
"I never saw Mr. Forbes' father."
Forbes took a step ahead, then halted, and stood with his feet a little
apart, like one who balances himself on the deck of a heaving ship in a
high sea. "But where," he stammered, "where is the other Miss Kent?"
"There is no other. My Great-aunt Agatha, for whom I was named, died
twelve years ago."
There was a momentary palpitating silence which Julia was the first to
break.
"And you mean," she arraigned her, "that all this summer you have been
a deliberate impostor, palming yourself off on Mr. Forbes as an old
woman, allowing him to think--oh, it's too shameful. I can't believe
any girl would be so base."
"It is quite true, nevertheless," Agatha assured her gently. Her steady
eyes met Julia's, and even that intrepid young woman drew back a step.
Her momentary shrinking was not unreasonable for could concentrated
hate smite like a lightning bolt, her life would have been measured by
seconds.
Instinct taught Julia how to repay that level look by the deadliest
hurt. She turned on Forbes furiously. "Do you mean to tell me that you
have been the victim of a hoax all summer, that this girl has passed
herself off on you for an old woman? But, no, it isn't possible. You've
contrived this outrageous story between you to cover up something
disgraceful. You couldn't have been such a dupe as you pretend. It's
incredible!"
Forbes' color came and went during this attack. "It seems incredible,"
he owned when she gave him opportunity. "I don't blame you for
questioning the truth of such a story. I can only remind you that it is
easy to deceive a blind man."
Something in Agatha's stony whiteness convinced Julia that she had made
no mistake in her choice of retribution. She gave the screws another
turn.
"You mean for me to believe, Burton, that you've been only the gullible
victim of a swindle, that this impostor has tricked you successfully
all these months?"
There was a rather long silence. "Yes," said Forbes tonelessly, "that
is what I mean."
Julia's first sense of being at a disadvantage had passed. She was
thoroughly enjoying herself.
"I begin to understand your strange letter," she said, addressing
Agatha. "Your letter of congratulation, you know. I suppose you are the
young woman to whom you referred, the one with whom Mr. Forbes had
spent so much time, you no doubt remember."
There was such malicious satisfaction in her tone that Forbes turned as
if to interfere. Then his uplifted arm dropped rather heavily to his
side.
"You'll laugh when I tell you, Burton," exclaimed Julia, setting him
the example by laughing herself, most unpleasantly. "But she insinuated
in this letter that you might marry her. That is at the bottom of this
outrageous plot. She actually thought she could compromise you in some
dreadful way and force you to marry her. Shocking as it is, one can't
help being amused."
Forbes' only answer was again to lift his hand to his head. It was
Agatha who spoke. Unmasked adventuress as she was, her dignity was in
rather agreeable contrast to Julia's vindictive shrillness.
"It is hardly necessary to trouble Mr. Forbes with any further
details," she said, "since, thanks to you, my plot against his peace
has been exposed. I suppose you will want to take him away as soon as
possible."
"Oh, at once." Julia showed signs of becoming hysterical. "The very
first train. I feel as if I couldn't breathe in this atmosphere of
deceit."
"I'm afraid there is no train before five o'clock, but I'll have the
carriage ready in plenty of time. And now, if you will excuse me, I
shall see about getting you some luncheon."
"Luncheon! Good heavens, I couldn't eat a mouthful. It would choke me."
Mrs. Knox seconded her niece admirably. "It would not be safe, Julia. A
person capable of all this would not hesitate to poison our food."
Agatha accepted this tribute without comment. "Will you pack Mr.
Forbes' things yourself?" she said, addressing Julia.
Again Mrs. Knox intervened. "Julia, I forbid you to go into that house,
with this girl, and that dreadful, crazy creature--"
Forbes interrupted with signs of irritation. "You said that once
before. There is no insane woman here."
"I am afraid you are not a very good judge of what _is_ or is _not_
here, Mr. Forbes," replied Aunt Estelle, scoring again. "We had a
most unpleasant encounter with a woman clearly insane. She positively
gibbered."
"Yes, Burton," Julia cried with shrewish enjoyment, "you have been made
a laughing-stock all summer, poor dear. You've kept writing about this
fine old place. I wish you could see it. It's simply in the last stages
of dilapidation."
"It's ready to fall to pieces," corroborated Aunt Estelle. "I didn't
venture inside, but the glimpses of the interior I got from the window
showed that everything was fairly moth-eaten."
"Yes," Agatha admitted quietly. "We are very poor, so poor that a
blind boarder seemed providential. Won't you sit on the porch till the
carriage is ready?" she added politely. "I'm sure Mr. Forbes is tired
after his long walk."
"Oh, please," protested Julia, her self-control shaken by the other's
calm, "please drop this pretext of being so interested in Mr. Forbes'
welfare. After the fraud you have practised on him all summer you can
hardly expect him to believe anything you say."
"Oh, no," said Agatha. "I don't expect that for a moment. And now if
you're sure you won't eat a little luncheon, I'll bid you all good
afternoon." She went across the grass to the house, carrying herself
with her chin high, moving deliberately. No one could have guessed
the fact of which she was so certain, that during the encounter she
had ceased to be a girl, that she had leaped without any intervening
stages of maturity and middle life, straight to old age, that dreadful
old age, beyond hope or joy, the age that is death in life. Agatha
remembered wonderingly that once the mere flicker of sunshine through
leaves, the mere fragrance of a flower, had a magic to quicken her
pulses.
A little after three the carryall appeared. Howard was driving, and
Forbes' suit-case and other impedimenta lay on the seat beside him. As
he helped his passengers in, he explained that the trunk would be sent
by express next day. This announcement was received in frigid silence
whereupon Howard, too, became sulkily silent and used the whip on the
fat bays with such effect that they covered the five miles between Oak
Knoll and the village station at an unprecedented rate of speed.
Forbes thawed a little when Howard helped him to alight, and stood for
a moment beside him. "Good-by, Mr. Forbes," the boy said huskily. "I'm
awfully sorry you're going."
He put out his hand and after an instant's hesitation Forbes gripped
it. He had grown fond of the boy. "Oh, Howard," he said, his voice
betraying his hurt, "I wouldn't have believed it of you."
He heard Howard gulp and then burst out sobbing. Fortunately for the
boy's pride, the hour was early and the station platform lacked its
customary contingent of loafers.
"We didn't mean anything, Mr. Forbes," Howard choked. "Aggie wanted to
take boarders, so she could send me to school, but when they saw how
old and shabby the house was, they wouldn't come."
"Is she your sister?"
"Kind of one. Her father married my mother. She's better than a
thousand real sisters."
"Burton," said Julia's voice beside them, "I wouldn't encourage the boy
by listening to him. Probably that young woman has coached him in a new
series of lies."
"Aggie never tells lies," Howard challenged her hotly. "This was like
a charade or something. Mr. Forbes thought she was old and so she
pretended to be. We had lots of fun and it didn't do anybody any harm."
He appealed to Forbes. "She took good care of you anyway, didn't she,
Mr. Forbes?"
"Really, Burton," expostulated Julia, "I can not allow this to go on.
These people evidently regard you as fair game. It's dreadful that your
blindness should put you so at the mercy of the unscrupulous, but I
shall see that you are not imposed on while I am with you. Send this
boy away."
"He doesn't need to send me away," Howard exploded indignantly. "I'm
going." He seized Forbes' hand again. "Good-by, Mr. Forbes. Come and
see us some time."
Julia gasped. "Did any one ever imagine such impertinence!" she asked
of high heaven. "Such people seem to be without natural shame. I
suppose they are so accustomed to being found out in falsehood and
fraud that they take it as a matter of course. In the interest of
justice there should be some way of punishing them. Couldn't they be
prosecuted, Burton, for obtaining money under false pretenses?"
Forbes made no reply. Apparently he did not share Julia's lofty
enthusiasm for abstract justice. His air of bewildered dejection
suggested a lost child, rather than a man rescued from a false and
intolerable position by the lady of his heart.