THE JUDGE IS IMPRESSED
It was late September; the yellow maples threw gold on sky and ground;
oaks and hickories were mantled in ruddy purples. Along the banks of
the river the solemn procession of outgoing summer was begun; on dry
nights mountain fires spread crackling smoky fringes. The Westchester
hills, the hills of Pocantico, were trailed in grape-colored mists;
bloom was on the Ramapos; amethystine smokes along the Highlands and
the Palisades.
There was drowse and arrest in the air, a kind of heat that was
different from summer, more dazing, more intensely keyed, with greater
power to make one restless. Sard, lying on her couch in the tower-room,
felt as if a world was closing in on her, as if the sky pressed and
the hills leaned to smother. She had been reading to Dunstan, for the
first time sitting up in his wheeled chair, had seen him drift off to
sleep, and had then put down her book with an unconquerable sense of
listlessness, of lack of purpose that had somehow closed in on her.
The girl, her body and mind built for action, for creative and
progressive things, found herself victimized by a slowly narrowing
circle of life, static, unimaginative, unprogressive; she was the fiery
center of a wooden wheel of existence that revolved in accustomed
sameness with no effort, to no purpose.
"When Dunstan gets well," thought Sard desperately, "when Dunstan
doesn't need me, what shall I do then? Aunt Aurelia doesn't really
need me, Father will have nothing to do with me unless I--just--just
capitulate. And I can't do that. What shall I do?"
The girl's mind, shrinking from her father's idea of her, went over
the situation; the only way to clear up that situation was to say she
had been mistaken in Colter, that she proudly told herself she could
never do. But supposing Colter never came back, never--came--back to
Willow Roads? Life would go on the same and, of course, one could adapt
one's self to anything; with a shiver the girl tried to think what this
adaptation would mean.
As far as those of her own group were concerned, there was no life.
All mingling with the Bunch was over. Life, then, would mean social
cliques and women's clubs, more or less boss controlled, politically
influenced, "run" by one or two personalities, powerful in prestige
but prejudiced and limited as to opportunity or progress. In such
gatherings the girl instinctively felt there could be nothing
constructive for her; the chemistry of these organizations was
controlled by the acids of personal dislike or preference, or jealousy.
Little careful nothings of possessions or dress were the intellectual
meat of these associations, the inhibitions of the mentally torpid or
the censorious attitude of the unimaginative virtuous. None of these
things attracted a girl of Sard's impulse, a soul that demanded
fine contacts, the eager mingling of men and women in associations
of tolerance and forward looking, the stimulus of persons of vivid
experience. Sard mentally said "No" to it all.
Yet it was characteristic of her inherent nobility that she should
attempt to force herself to an interest in these home matters, to
attempt to form herself humbly on that narrow model. "It isn't nice
to be choosy and exclusive," thought the girl; "real people are never
that. I mustn't be 'superior,' whatever I do." She bent puzzled brows.
"What would Colter have thought to be the right thing, to stay here and
grow smaller and more timid and with less fresh impulse, or to break
away, earn my own living, and, from Father's point of view, forfeit my
right to my home?" "Ah! what would Colter think?" That was the sentence
that dominated all Sard's life now.
From under her pillow the girl drew a letter from Watts
Shipman--eagerly her eye sought one passage--one she had read and
reread:
"I must not tell you all the circumstances, they are not mine to tell.
Colter will want to tell you himself, but I have been able to help a
little and I am rejoiced for the man you helped to save. Our friend
Colter has surely come into his own, Miss Sard, and it is rather a
magnificent Own. I do congratulate you on your discrimination in
tramps. I suspect you have created a tradition that will some day be
like a final degree. 'In 19-- he was discovered by Miss Sard Bogart,
which justified his previous achievements in a blaze of glory. Forgive
me for being enigmatic. Courage! Miss Winged Victory, that you may be
happy in a parlous world is the deep wish of your true friend,
"WATTS SHIPMAN."
Sard went over it hungrily for the hundredth time. She knew this
paragraph by heart; it swept her with impatient excitement. Why was it
all so obscure? Why was so little told her? Had Colter really found
himself? What was that real self? The girl's heart stood still; perhaps
since Watts wrote this something had happened....
The afternoon wore on; the girl, with an ejaculation, sprang up. "What
do I mean by loafing around like this?" Sard inquired hotly. "Colter
never loafed, he was always busy mending, rearranging, working,
studying. I can't stand this lazy life, I won't, I won't just drift; I
will be like Colter."
She went into the little dressing-room and bathed her face, looking
with wonder into the eyes grown so dark and wide, so strangely
listening and startled. She flung open a drawer and lifted out a clean
white dimity, a frock with fresh frills and a soft sash. Sard rustled
into it with a little winged sense of pining for the air, to be moving,
going somewhere, experiencing something. But the soft white seemed
vapid to the serious brown eyes so unaware of their own vitality. Sard,
frowning upon this absence of color, opened a casket and took out a
long rope of cut amber beads. Her mother's necklace, a thing honey-like
with sun-color, quivering with golden lights. "Funny," thought the
girl, ruminatively, "I never cared to wear these before." She ran the
smooth clicking morsels of amber through caressing fingers. "Little
Mother," she thought tenderly, "I suppose these reached almost to your
knees; they hardly come to my waist. I'm not a bit like you."
With yearning face, the girl turned to her bookshelves. Sard vaguely
thought of going down to the river edge to read. The young fingers
paused over "The Sonnets from the Portuguese"; not until this summer
had Sard understood these exquisite verses. Now, almost with reverence
she drew the volume forth. It was a girl's way to evade all the cold
questions, all the sneering comments, the Gorgon stare of "practical
life." With some sense of being companioned by the little book, Sard
gave a touch here and there to her pretty room, patted a pillow, pulled
down a shade and started to leave it.
Miss Aurelia's flat heels clapped up the stairs; the face that met
Sard's look was mystified and potential. Her aunt, taking a chair,
gasped a little.
"Aunt Reely," scolded Sard, "how you pant; you take these stairs too
fast. I do believe you get more tired than you let us see; you've got
to go easier," said Sard in gentle bullying.
The girl these days had been wistfully tender of her aunt. Sard had
great need to be tender to someone. Miss Aurelia exulted in the
solicitude. "Sard and I are very much alike," she had told Mrs. Spoyd;
"we are congenial." The timid lady exulted in what seemed to her like
the opening of a new régime. To have Sard's companionship in all her
little flutters and wonderings and excitements! Miss Aurelia had
carefully swept up Sard's heart for her. Everything to the aunt's
perception was neatly ticketed and put away; all reminiscence of that
er--unfortunate--er, infatuation for the "Man on the Place." Now,
however, the rabbity mouth looked awed. Miss Aurelia was more uncertain
than usual; she eyed Sard irresolutely.
"Someone has er--called--could you go down at once--I see you are
presentable. I--you see," said Miss Aurelia with elaboration, "I am
very untidy."
Miss Bogart was invariably perfectly groomed and arranged; Sard giggled
in derision.
"Aunt Reely, what more could you do to be 'presentable,' as you call
it?"
"My--er--hands," explained Miss Aurelia, with curious firmness--"I have
been polishing those little Chinese brasses on my desk and they----"
She displayed fingers that looked immaculate, but which she insisted
smelled of brass polish. "It takes so long to get off. Now, if you
could run down," insisted the lady mildly.
"Of course." The girl ran a comb through her tawny hair. "Don't you
know who it is?"
"Dora said some name like the minister's, I thought. Or was it a
lady? I did not pay attention." Miss Aurelia sniffed violently at her
fingers. "Phew, phew! Sometimes I think they should invent a brass
polish that is odorless. You never know when you've got rid of it.
Could you go down at once? It seems so rude to keep them--him--waiting,
and I always think," said Miss Aurelia nervously, "that when
one is not sure the living-room is dusted, it is better to give
him--her--them--less time to look about."
It was not different from her aunt's usual incoherence. Sard hardly
noticed the tremor, the little excited pat. She went slowly down
the stairs across the hall, pushing back the heavy portière of the
living-room.
The man who turned from the window and came toward her did not wear an
old gray flannel shirt and khaki trousers. He was clad in the white
flannels that make a man look taller, lighter, of a cooler vigor
and grace. The hair that swept back from his forehead was a bright
chestnut, and his face was----
Sard stood half turning for flight. The man did not yet take her hand,
but he looked swiftly into her eyes.
"Was it unfair to come like this?" he demanded. It was evident that he
could hardly leash the note of gladness in his voice. "Miss Aurelia
thought it better not to tell you, that if you knew you might not come
down." There was unutterable tenderness in the light of those eyes. "I
could not wait," the man admitted quickly.
There was a moment's silence, in which she stood staring at him. This
was Colter, the Man on the Place. This was _not_ Colter. This was a
glad, confident person, who, something came into Sard's throat, was
sure--sure of everything. Much younger, much more buoyant than that one
she had known! And, too sure!
The tall man looked at her, his expression changing slightly. Then as
he glanced at the hand she had not offered him, "I--I have been talking
with your father," he said quietly.
Sard tried to smile back, tried to smile in greeting, sympathy, but her
heart pounded. She was instinct for flight, a thing suddenly confronted
with strangeness, facing someone who was--too eager! Slight as the
hesitation was, the man saw it. He did not move except with great
gentleness to draw her to a chair. He stood speaking tranquilly, with
a curious authority Sard had never seen before. It made her thrill.
"I have been talking to Judge Bogart," this triumphant man in white
flannels said easily; "he gave me permission to see you. I have told
him about myself; you see," he smiled, "I have found out who I am!
Sard, aren't you glad? Don't you care?"
"You have found out--who you are?" said the girl thickly, childishly.
Her gaucherie was painful to her and evident and very dear to the man
perceiving it. The deep fire-blue eyes rested on hers a moment. An
indefinable softness crept into them, replacing that look of confidence
and power. The tall frame bent a little toward her, and she was aware
as of a curious tenseness of resolution--a self-control such as she had
felt that night in the little fruit orchard. Colter, who looked at her
with understanding, knew that for the moment his chiefest hold on Sard
was gone. Drinking her down with a thirst born of his knowledge of her,
yet this triumphant man before her realized that now that he no longer
had need of her compassion she had as yet no other kind of passion
for him! The dark days being over, Martin Ledyard, the scientific
adventurer, whose name was famous all over the world, was standing
irresolute, abashed, not able, it seemed, to win back the bright look
of pity from the brook-clear eyes, the little maternal cadence in a
girl's voice. He saw her disturbed, at bay.
If, however, he felt taken aback, disappointed, there was no hint of
it. He looked at her with unutterable tenderness, the kind of look Sard
had never before seen on a man's face. "I see," he said simply, "you
don't care for me--so much--in my triumph. You think that now I do not
need you, Sard? Not need you, my Happiness? Sard," she quivered at her
name on his lips, "are you sorry you saved me, sorry I came--back?"
She shook her head. She had risen. It was like them both that they
should take it standing, trying to be square with each other, striving
to get to the thing that lay between them. The Judge, passing through
the hall, on an uneasy excited walk, coughed gruffly. Hearing this
cough, with a strange feeling of unreality, Sard tried to realize what
had happened. There was her father outside, not caring that she was
with this man. Why--then--then--the Judge knew then that she had read
true!
"You say you have talked with Father?" A wild wave of relief tore
through the girl; she tried once more to lift her eyes to the face,
reading the wistful look dwelling on it, loving it, yet coming no
nearer to it. Ah, there would be no more Gorgon "practical life"
now. She had seen true, she had known, _known_--and with a curious
effort the girl tried to look smilingly and frankly back at this man.
On "Colter's" own face there was left only a trace of the old baffled
sadness; new triumph tore through her, "Colter" had won out, _won out!_
As in a dream, she listened to his voice.
"I hoped you and I might care for all the 'under-dogs' in the
world--together."
Then after another short silence:
"You remember the night in the little fruit orchard? I think you cared
for me then, and I," the man's voice faltered, "I adored you. You
remember other times, I think," he said gently, "that you _did_ care
and I wanted you to know that that was what cured me, brought things
back. I didn't frighten you then, did I, Sard? You put your hand in
mine, but," hesitatingly, "I seem to frighten you now; you wouldn't
come to me now?"
She stood pulling at the amber chain, and after a moment "Colter" also
touched the chain. He followed her hand on the golden rope. It seemed
to them both that something rather terrible might happen. To Sard, it
was as if in this pause some wonderful gate might close, some beautiful
thing might pass out, never to return. But the woman that rose up in
the girl asserting with vehemence her right to this man frightened that
other untried creature, the Winged Victory of freedom and innocent
impulses. Things had changed!
Oh, how could Sard prevent the gate from closing, the lovely thing
from ending, unless she did the thing that it seemed to her she could
not do? Instinctively the girl looked to him for help; but he, it
seemed, either could not or would not help. No, "Colter" would not make
it easy for her.
"I came too suddenly," said he decisively; there was a stern note of
self-condemnation. "Dear, I wasn't fair to you; I should have thought
things out," stammered the man. A swift look of sorrow swept over his
face. "Things aren't quite the same, are they?" He hesitated.
Oh, no, they were not the same; they were not the same! The girl's
heart, plunging, recognized this. It has been so easy to be tender to a
baffled, helpless man, someone in trouble; it was so hard to meet this
strange, glad, powerful person who attracted her like fatal fire, who,
some way, had mastery of her.
The gruff cough sounded again outside, the curtain was pulled aside and
the Judge entered. He had a furtive air of curiosity and exultation.
It was plain he could not keep his hands off. "Hum--ha----" he said.
"I've been comparing your--um--papers with Mr. Shipman's--very strange
experiences, very strange experiences! Well, sir, I'm glad you came out
as you have." The Judge, realizing that he addressed Martin Ledyard,
a man whose name ranked high in universities all over the world, was
almost humble. He stood straighter, his gooseberry eyes shot honest
congratulation. Down deep in his heart, like all men, he honored the
man of adventure, more than the man of science. He could not, however,
keep the ring of pride from his voice as he turned benevolently to his
daughter.
"I congratulate you." The Judge blew his nose; he pushed his
handkerchief back in his pocket. He stared rather nervously at Sard.
"Hum--you've made a distinguished friend."
The blunt, carefully-concealed apology went home. Sard drew a long,
fluttering breath. This was the man who had stood between her and
the world all her life; this was the hard, stern man who had made
life possible and impossible for her, who had hindered and ignored
and indulged and scouted her; who had insulted and protected her!
Some sense of the conflicting laws of parenthood got to Sard's heart,
something new and keen leaped to life, this man's blood ran through her
veins, something mysterious, a great bond, connected them. Ah! it was
the Law. In spite of everything it was the Law! "We love Foddy, little
Sard." It was the Law!
"Dad," said the girl breathlessly, "you--you know now?"
Sard sobbed just once. It was like her to fly to this stern man,
to bury her tawny head on his breast. The Judge detached himself,
resolutely, with decision. Women did these things, they were to all
logic absurd. What did another man, under such circumstances, do?
The gooseberry eyes rather shamefacedly consulted the quiet eyes of
"Colter." "There," said the Judge to his daughter, "there, I don't know
what all this is about!"
But the other man knew, and he knew that when the Judge made his
embarrassed exit that there was no one for Sard to turn to but him!
Therefore, when she, with that little desperate sob, did turn, she did
not see his face, for he, somehow, contrived that her own could be
hidden. "Colter's" arms tightened about her and his lips whispered on
her hair. "I think," said the man softly, "that if we are very quiet
we can hear the river freshening." It was the old remembered voice,
like a quieting hand laid on her. It was the voice that had spoken that
midsummer night in the orchard. Sard, with a little quivering sigh,
gave herself to it.
No one saw the Judge that evening, but afar off the phonograph could be
heard playing, "The Heart Bowed Down With Weight of Woe." Miss Aurelia
paused to say "Good-night" to Dunstan. "I always feel relieved when I
hear your father playing that tune," she remarked. "It is an indication
that he is feeling better, that his mind is relieved. This, ahem,
affair of Sard's is--er--very interesting; Mrs. Spoyd, now that she
knows the particulars, says that to her it is--er--most affecting!"