The two cousins, Mr. Brady shocked into sudden silence, stood with
Colonel Everard's unconscious body behind them, unregarded, like any
other bulky and motionless shape in the dim room, and stared at the girl
who had come from the locked library.
"Not you," Neil's voice said dully. "Not here."
But the girl was Judith.
Bare-headed, slender in soft-falling white, she stood in the library
door with both hands behind her, clasping her big, limp hat by its
flaring brim. Her lightly poised, blond head was fluffy with small,
escaping curls, her clear-coloured cheeks were warmly flushed, and
between her red, slightly parted lips her breath came too quickly, but
softly, still. A sheer, torn ruffle trailed from her skirt. One
rose-coloured bow hung from her girdle awry and crushed, and looked the
softer for that, like a crumpled flower.
About her dress and her whole small self there was a drooping and
crumpled look. It was the look of a child that has played too hard.
Surely the most incongruous and pathetic little figure that had ever
appeared from a room where a distressed or designing lady was suspected
of hiding, she stood and returned Neil's look, but there was blank panic
in her eyes.
They turned from Neil to Mr. Brady, wild eyed and pale beside him, to
the disordered room, and back to Neil again, with no change of
expression at all. They were wide and dilated and dark, intent still on
some picture that they held and could not let go. Judith came an
uncertain step or two forward into the room, stiffly, as if she were
walking in her sleep, and stood still.
"Neil, what did you come here for?" she said. "I'm glad you came."
Her voice was sweet and expressionless, like her eyes, and though she
had called Neil by name, she looked at him as if she had never seen him
before. One small hand reached out uncertainly, pulled at his sleeve,
and then, as he made no move to take it, dropped again, and began to
finger the big hat that she held, and pluck at the flowers on it, but
her eyes did not leave his face.
"Will they stand for this?" Mr. Brady was demanding incoherently behind
them, "as young as this? Will the town stand it? No. And they won't
blame me now. They can't. It was coming to you--you----"
He was in the grip of his own troubles again, and breaking into little
mutterings of hysterical speech, which he now addressed directly to
Colonel Everard, standing over him and not seeming to feel the need of
an answer. It was an uncanny proceeding. The girl and boy did not watch
it. They were seeing only each other.
"Judith," Neil began stumblingly, "what were you doing there? What's
frightened you so? What you heard out here? That's all that frightened
you, isn't it? Isn't it? But what made you come here alone like this?
Didn't you know---- Oh, Judith----"
He stopped and looked down at her, saying nothing, but his eyes were
troubled and dark with questions that he did not dare to ask. There was
no answer to them in Judith's eyes, only blank fear. As Neil looked, the
fear in Judith's eyes was reflected in his, creeping into them and
taking possession there.
"Oh, Judith," he whispered miserably. "Oh, Judith."
Judith seemed to have heard what he said to her from far away, and to be
only faintly puzzled by it, not interested or touched. Her eyes kept
their secrets under his questioning eyes. They defied him. She was not
like his little lost sweet-heart found again, but a stranger and an
enemy, one of the people he hated, people who intrigued and lied, but
were out of his reach and above him, and were all his enemies.
The boy's world was upsetting. Nothing that had happened to him in that
room or ever had happened to him before had shaken it like that minute
of doubt that he lived through in silence, with the strain of it showing
in his pale face, and Charlie's voice echoing half heard in his ears. He
drew back from Judith slightly as they stood. He was trembling. Judith's
face was a blur of white before his eyes, then he could not see it--and
then, as suddenly as it had come, his black minute was over.
"Take me away. I don't want to stay where he is any more. Is he dead?"
Judith said, and she slipped her hand into Neil's.
Judith's voice was as lifeless and strange as before, and the hand in
his was cold, but it was Judith's own little clinging hand, and the
boy's hand closed on it tight. He stood still, feeling it in his, and
holding it as if the poor little cold hand could give him back all his
strength again. He looked round him at the dim room and its motionless
owner and Charlie as if he were seeing them clearly for the first time.
He was not angry with Charlie any longer. He was not angry at all. He
drew a deep, sobbing breath of relief, dropped his dark head suddenly
and awkwardly toward Judith's unresponsive hand and kissed it, and then
very gently let it go.
"Judith, you're you," he said, "just you, no matter what happens, and
nothing else matters; nothing in the world, as long as you are you."
Judith only smiled her faint half smile at him, as if she guessed that
some crisis had come and passed, but did not greatly care.
"Take me away," she repeated patiently. "I thought there'd be other
people here. He said so. But I've come here alone before, only he was
different to-day. He was different."
"Don't tell me. I don't want to know. I won't ever ask you again. I
never ought to have asked you. It's all right, dear. It's all right."
"I didn't know people were like that--anybody, ever. I just didn't
know----"
"Don't, dear," said Neil sharply. The small, bewildered voice that held
more wonder and pain than her words broke off, but her bewildered eyes
still wondered and grieved. Neil's arms went out to her suddenly and
drew her close, holding her gently, and hiding her small, pathetic face
against his shoulder.
"Don't," he whispered. "I'll take care of you. I'm going to take care of
you. Nobody's going to hurt you any more."
"Neil, I just didn't know. I didn't know."
"It's all right. I'm going to take you away. Just wait, dear. I'm going
to take care of you."
He spoke to her softly, saying the same thing over and over, as if he
were quieting a frightened child. She was quiet in his arms like a
frightened and tired child in any arms held out to it. One arm had
slipped round his neck and clung to him. She drew long choking breaths
as if she were too tired to cry. Gradually they stopped, but the arm
round his neck only clung tighter.
"Don't leave me," she whispered.
"No, I'm not going to. I'm going to take care of you. You know that,
don't you, Judith?"
"Yes. Neil?"
"Yes, dear."
"Neil." Still in his arms, because she felt safe and protected there,
Judith lifted her head and looked at him, and into her sweet, dazed
eyes, full of a terror that she could not understand, came a faint flash
of anger. This boy who held her so safe and comforted was her enemy,
too. Long before the ugly accident of what had happened behind the
library doors he had been her enemy, and he was her enemy now, though
she needed his protection and took it. Their quarrel was not over.
"Neil, I don't forgive you. I'm never going to forgive you."
"All right, dear."
"And I hate you. You know that, don't you? I hate you."
"Yes, dear, I know it. We aren't going to talk about that now. Let me
go."
Both arms were round him now. Judith let him draw them gently apart and
down, and drew back from him. The anger was gone from her eyes. She
watched him wide eyed and still, as children watch the incomprehensible
activities of grownups, or devoted but jealous dogs watch them.
"Don't leave me," she said. "You're sweet to me." Then she gave a sharp,
startled little cry.
"Neil," she begged, "don't touch him. I don't want you to touch him.
What are you going to do?"
The light had not had time to dim or shift perceptibly in Colonel
Everard's big room while so much was settling itself for Neil and
Judith. The Colonel still lay with the pale shaft of afternoon light on
his unconscious face. Now the boy was kneeling beside him. He slipped a
strong, careful arm under his shoulders, and bent over him, touching him
with quick, sure hands. He ignored Mr. Brady, who stood crying out
incoherent protests beside him, and finally put a shaking hand on his
shoulder.
Neil shook it off, and rose and stood facing his cousin.
"I thought so," he said, with a short laugh. "You had me going at first,
Charlie, when I came in here and saw what a pretty picture you made. I
believed you. I thought you had killed him. I might have known things
like that don't happen in Green River."
Neil put both hands on his cousin's shoulders and looked at him. Mr.
Brady was not an attractive sight at that moment. The excitement that
had held and swayed him was leaving him now, and he looked shaken and
weak. An unhealthy colour purpled his cheeks, and his sullen eyes glared
vindictively, but could not meet Neil's eyes.
"Don't laugh at me," he muttered. "Don't you dare to laugh at me."
"Going to beat me up, too?" his cousin inquired. "Poor old Charlie!
Let's hope your friend there will laugh at you when he talks this over
with you. He'll come out of this all right, but he'll be in a better
temper if he has a doctor here. I'll 'phone for one."
"What do you mean? I've killed him. I'm glad I killed him."
His cousin laughed again. "Killed him? The man's no more dead than you
are. You've knocked him out, that's all. But you didn't kill him. Is
that the 'phone over there?"
A desk telephone on a big Louis Quinze table at one end of the room, the
instrument masked by the frilly skirts of a French mannequin, perhaps
the only lady who had ever been permitted to be insipid in that room and
to stay there long, answered Neil's question by ringing faintly, once
and again. Neil started toward it, but did not reach it. Mr. Brady had
flung himself suddenly upon him in a last burst of feverish strength,
which he dissipated recklessly by shrieking out incoherent things, and
striking misdirected blows.
Neil parried them easily, caught his thin arms and held them at his
sides. Keeping them so, he forced him against the edge of the flimsy
table and held him there and looked at him.
"You shan't answer that 'phone," Mr. Brady cried, in a last futile burst
of defiance. "You shan't stop me. You shan't interfere. I'll kill him, I
tell you, and you shan't answer that 'phone. You shan't----"
Mr. Brady's voice died away, and he was silent under his cousin's eyes.
"Through?" said Neil presently.
"Yes," he muttered.
"Do you mean it?"
Mr. Brady nodded sullenly.
"You've made a fool of yourself?"
Mr. Brady nodded again.
"Neil," he got out presently, "I can make it up to you. I haven't been
square with you, but I can. I will. You don't know----"
"You've done talking enough. Will you go now?"
"Yes."
"You'll quiet down and go to mother's and stay there till I come?"
"Yes."
Neil let him go.
"Maybe I'll finish up your friend for you myself, Charlie, after you
leave here," he offered. "I've thought of it often enough. Now I come
here and fight for him instead of fighting against him. I fight with
you. Poor old Charlie. Murder and sudden death! I tell you, things like
that don't happen in Green River."
Neil stopped talking suddenly. The telephone at his elbow had rung
again, this time with a sharp, sudden peal, peremptory as an impatient
voice speaking. Neil caught it up, jerked off the simpering lady by her
audacious hat, and answered.
At once, strangely intimate and near in that room where the three had
been shut in for the last half hour alone and away from the rest of the
world while it went on as usual or faster, a man's voice spoke to him.
It was almost unrecognizable, so excited and hoarse, but it was Luther
Ward's.
"Hello," Neil said. "Hello. Yes, this is Everards'. No, he can't come to
the 'phone. He--what? What's that?"
Neil stopped and listened breathlessly. Mr. Brady, slinking head down
from the room, turned curiously to stare at him, and Judith, slipping
across the room like a little white ghost, drew close to him and felt
for his hand. Neil took her hand, this time with no response of heart or
nerves. He had put down the telephone, replacing the receiver
mechanically, but Luther Ward's voice still echoed in his ears.
It had spoken to an uncanny accompaniment of half-heard voices, rattling
unintelligibly in the room where Ward was, the prosaic, tobacco-scented
room that Neil knew so well.
"Tell Everard to come," Ward's voice had said. "He's to come down here,
to Saxon's office. I'm there now. Theodore Burr has shot himself. Yes,
shot himself. He won't live through the night. Who's this talking to me?
Neil Donovan, it's you. What are you doing at Everard's? Never mind.
Come down here yourself. Come straight down. Theodore's conscious, and
talking, and he's been asking for you."