"What do you mean?"
"We're not going back," he repeated deliberately.
"We are!" flashed Judith.
"We're not going back. We're never going back."
Judith drew back and stared at him, her hands still in his, and the boy
stared back with a look that matched her own in his big, deeply lit,
dark eyes. White faces, with angry, dark eyes, were all that they could
see clearly, though they were crossing a patch of road where a ragged
gap in the trees let some of the moonlight through; white faces like
strangers' faces.
They were only a boy and girl jolting through the woods in the night in
a rattletrap buggy behind a caricature of a horse, but what looked out
of their angry eyes and spoke in their tense young voices was greater
than the immediate issue of their quarrel, and older and wiser than they
were; as old as the world. Ancient enemies were at war once more. A man
and a woman were making their age-old fight for mastery over themselves
and each other.
"Never, Judy."
"Where are we going, then?"
"What difference does it make?"
"Where?"
"To Wells. We can make it by morning. I've got the mortgage money with
me."
"Your uncle's?"
"Yes. What difference does that make? That, or anything? We'd go if we
hadn't any money at all. We'd have to. Oh, Judith----"
"You don't know what you're saying. Take me home. What are you laughing
at?"
"You. You sounded just like them, then, giving me orders--just like your
whole rotten crowd, but you're through with them now, and you're through
ordering me about and making a fool of me. I've been afraid to say my
soul was my own. It wasn't, I guess. But we're all through with that.
We're through, Judith."
"Yes, of course. Of course we're through. It's all right. Everything's
all right, Neil dear."
"Everything's all wrong, and I know whose fault it is now: it's your
fault. Maybe I only had one chance in a hundred to get on, but one
chance is enough, and I was taking it. You made me ashamed to take it. I
was ashamed to do the work that was all I could get to do, and I had my
head so full of you I couldn't do any work. Maggie's better than I am.
She don't sit around with her hands folded and wait for Everard to get
tired of her. And the whole town don't laugh at her. The whole town
don't know----"
"Neil, I said I was sorry. Please don't."
"You've got the smooth ways of them all, but it's too late for that
between us, Judy. Smooth, lying ways."
"We can't go to Wells, Neil dear. What could we do there? Think."
"I'm sick of thinking. I'd get work maybe. I don't know. I don't care.
Judith----"
"We can't. Not to-night, Neil. Wait."
"I'm sick of waiting. I've got nothing to gain by it. I've done all the
waiting I could. I've stood all I could. You're the only thing I want in
the world, and I couldn't wait for you any longer if I could get you
that way--and I wouldn't get you. I'd lose you."
"Not to-night. To-morrow, if you really want me to go. To-morrow,
truly."
"You're lying to me, and I'm tired of it."
"No, Neil--Neil dear."
"You're lying."
"How dare you say that! I hate you!"
"That's right. We'll talk straight now. It's time."
"I hate you. Don't touch me. You're going to take me home--you
must--and I'm never going to speak to you again. I think you're crazy.
But I'm not afraid of you--I'm not afraid."
The low-keyed, hurrying voices broke off abruptly. There was no sound in
the buggy but Judith's rapid breathing, more and more like sobs, but no
tears came. The two faces that confronted each other were alike in the
gloom, white and angry and very young; alike as the faces of enemies are
when they measure each other's strength in silence. It was a cruel,
tense little silence, but the sound that broke it was more cruel. It was
dry and hard and had nothing to do with his own conquering laugh, that
the girl knew, but it came from the boy.
"How dare you laugh at me. I hate you!" Judith's voice came hoarse and
unrecognizable.
A hand caught blindly at the reins; another hand closed over it. Then
there was silence again in the buggy, broken by panting sounds and
little sobs. At the end of it Judith, forced back into her corner and
held there, was really crying now, with hysterical sobs that hurt, and
hot tears that hurt, too.
"Let me go," she panted. "I hate you! You've got to let me go."
"What for?"
"I'm going home. I'm going to get out and walk home."
"Ten miles?"
"I'd walk a hundred miles to get away from you."
"You'd have to walk farther to do that." The dry little laugh cut
through the dark again, and Judith struck furiously at the arm that held
her.
"I hate you!" she sobbed.
"No."
"Oh, I do--I do----"
"I don't care." The boy's voice sounded light and dry, like his laugh.
"I don't care. Kiss me."
"I won't! I won't! I'll never speak to you again. I'll never forgive
you."
"Lying to me--fooling me; taking me up and dropping me like Everard does
to women.... You're no better than he is. You're one of his crowd, but
you're through with them.... Lying to me, when you do care. You do."
"I hate you!"
"Ah, no, you don't."
Little bursts of confused speech, all they had breath for and more,
disconnected, not always understood, not always articulate, but always
angry, came from them, with intervals of silent, panting struggle
between. The two young creatures in the buggy were struggling in earnest
now. The struggle was clumsy, like most really significant ones; sudden
and clumsy and blind. The two figures swayed aimlessly back and forth.
The boy and girl were both on their feet now. The boy had dropped the
reins. Both arms held the girl. Her pinioned arms fought to free
themselves.
"Judith, you don't hate me. Say it--say it."
[Illustration: "'_Judith, you don't hate me? Say it--say it_'"]
The two shadowy figures were like one now, but the girl's arms were
free, pushing the boy away, striking at him impotently.
"You needn't say it. I know. You had to come to-night. You couldn't stay
away. You don't hate me. You never will. You couldn't. I'm crazy about
you. You're the only thing that matters, if we should die the next
minute. Everything's all wrong, and it's not my fault or yours.
Everything's wrong, and this is wrong, too, but I don't care and you
don't. Do you? Do you?"
"Neil, let me go. I can't breathe."
"I love you."
"Let me go."
The shadow figures swayed and then were still. The girl's arms dropped.
The little, one-sided struggle was over. There was a long, tired sigh,
and then silence; silence, and one shadow face bending hungrily over the
other shadow face. "Judith," the boy whispered breathlessly, "do you
hate me now?"
"Yes."
"Do you want me to let you go? Do you want me to take you home?"
"Yes," came the same answering whisper, the faintest and most uncertain
of whispers, but two arms, gently freeing themselves, found their way to
his shoulders, two hands locked behind his head and drew it gently down,
until the two shadow faces were close once more, and lips that were not
shadow lips met and clung together; not shadow lips, but hungry and warm
and alive--untaught but unafraid young lips, ready for kisses that are
no two alike and can never come again--wonderful kisses that blot
everything out of the changing world but themselves.
"Judith"--the boy lifted his head at last, and looked down at the face
against his shoulder, pale and small, but with all the colour and light
and life that night had taken from the world and hidden, burning
undimmed in the awakening eyes--"you don't want me to take you home? You
don't--care what happens?"
"No."
He could hardly hear her low whisper, but her face was answer enough,
even for a boy who could not know what had touched it with new beauty,
but had to guess, as his own heart and the night might teach him.
"No, I don't care. I don't care."
"Judith, you do love me?"
"Yes. Oh, yes."
"You're so sweet," he whispered, "I feel as if I'd never kissed you
before--or seen you before. I love you, Judith."
"Yes."
"I love you and I don't want to hurt you. You know that, don't you?"
"Yes."
"But nothing's going to take you away from me now."
"Nothing."
"I don't want to hurt you."
"I tell you, I don't care what happens. I--don't--care."
"Judith!"
Once more her hands drew him close; shy hands, groping uncertainly in
the dark, and shy lips kissed him. It was the coolest and lightest of
kisses, but it was worth all the others, if the boy knew how much it
promised--more than all her broken speech had promised, more than any
spoken words.
Judith herself did not know, but some instinct older than she was made
her whisper: "Be good to me. Will you be good to me?"
"Yes, Judith."
The boy answered her small, shaken whisper solemnly, as if he were
taking a formal and irrevocable vow, but there was no one to listen to
it here, and bear witness to it as irrevocable. The girl did not answer
him. Suddenly shy, breathing quickly, and trying to laugh, she slipped
out of his arms.
The boy let her go. Some time before the trailing reins had been caught
up and twisted twice round the whip socket. He had done this
instinctively, he could not have told just when. He bent down and
untwisted them now, rather slowly and awkwardly, not looking at Judith.
Then he sat down stiffly beside her.
"You're tired," he said, with new gentleness in his voice. He put an arm
loosely round her waist in the manner of an affectionate but
inexperienced parent, and her head dropped on his shoulder. "Very
tired?"
"No."
"Judith, I'm sorry."
"No, I'm sorry. How could I be so horrid? What made me? Did I hurt you,
dear, with my hands?"
"You couldn't hurt me."
"Neil, you know what you said just now?"
"Never mind what I said."
"You said you didn't want anything to take me away from you. Well, if it
did, if anything did take me away from you--now, I'd----"
"What, dear?"
"I'd never forgive you. I couldn't. I'd despise you." This warning came
in a low, uncertain voice, wasted, as countless warnings have been
wasted on wiser masculine ears than the boy's. "Look at our moon up
there. It's glad, I guess--glad about you and me. Why don't you listen
to me?"
"I'm thinking, Judith. I've got to think."
"You look very nice when you think. Your eyes look so big and still. You
look--beautiful. I could really sleep now, I guess."
"All right, dear."
"But I don't want to. I'm too happy. How late is it?"
"I don't know."
"Well, it's late. We couldn't get home now before awfully late--two or
something. And the road's so narrow here, we couldn't turn round. We
couldn't go home if we wanted to. Could we?"
"Not very well, dear."
"I'm glad.... Neil."
"Yes."
"Are you thinking now?"
"Yes."
"You do look beautiful. I don't know just why. I never saw you look just
like this before; kind, but years older than I am, and miles away.
Neil----"
"Yes, dear."
"Neil, don't think any more. Just love me.... I love you."