A boy and a girl sat on the doorsteps of the Randall house.
It was almost a year since the night of the rally. It was an evening in
late May--late, but it was May, and the fairies' month still. There was
a pleasant, shivery chill in the air. A far sprinkling of stars made the
dark of the still, windless night look darker and warmer and safer to
whisper in. The big horse-chestnut tree at the corner of the syringa
hedge was only a darker blot against the surrounding dark, and the slope
of faintly lit street on the other side of the hedge looked far away,
with the dark sweep of lawn between. It was a night for the fairies, or
for the girl and boy, and that was quite as it should be, for it was
their first together for months.
Judith and Neil sat discreetly erect on the steps, undoing what those
months apart had done with little bursts of shy speech, and long, shy
silences that helped them more. In the longest and shyest silence their
hands had groped for each other once, met as if they had never touched
before, and clung together for a minute as if they never meant to let
go, but Judith kept firmly to impersonal subjects still.
"You did it all," she said. "Things do happen so fast when they happen.
Just think, this time last year he was like a king!"
"Everard?"
"Yes. Do you remember how I used to be cross when you called him that,
and wouldn't say Colonel? How childish that was!" Judith patronized her
dead self, as a young lady may, with her twentieth birthday almost upon
her.
"You weren't childish."
"What was I?"
"Just what you are now."
"What's that?"
"Wonderful." Neil chose his one adequate word, from the tiny vocabulary
of youth, small because few words are worthy to voice the infinite
dreams of it. "Wonderful."
"No, I'm not wonderful. You are. That dreadful old man, and every one
knew he was dreadful and wouldn't do anything about it till you----"
"Bawled him out? That's all I did, you know, really. It was a kid's
trick. He lost out because it was coming to him anyway. Poor Theodore
saw to that. He turned the town against Everard when he killed himself.
It wasn't turning fast, but it was turning. I did give it a shove and
make it turn faster, but I didn't even have sense enough to know I had
until the day after the rally, when the Judge sent for me and told me. I
didn't dare go near him until he sent for me, and I thought he had sent
for me to fire me."
"But you broke up the rally. They were dead still in the hall until you
left, and then they went crazy, calling for you, and all talking at
once, talking against you, some of them, till it really wasn't a rally
any more, but just like a mob. Oh, I know. The Judge tells me, every
time I go to ride with him, and when he came on to the school last
winter and saw me there, he told me all over again. Father has never
half told me. He hates to talk about the rally or the Colonel either,
but I don't care, he and mother are both so sweet to me lately--just
sweet.
"So it was just like a mob, and then poor Mrs. Burr got up and tried to
speak, and they got quiet and listened, and she said "Every word the boy
says is true and more--more----" just like that, and then she got faint
and had to stop, and then the Judge took hold. That's what he says he
did, took hold, and he says it was time, because they might have tarred
and feathered the Colonel if he hadn't. I don't suppose they would, but
I wish I could have seen the Judge take hold. I love him."
"Don't you love anybody else?"
Judith ignored this frivolous interruption, as it deserved.
"And so your work was done, though you didn't know it and ran away. And
the Judge says you are a born orator, Neil. That you've got the real
gift, the thing that makes an audience yours. I don't know just what he
means, but I know you've got it, too. You're going to be a great man,
Neil."
"I didn't do anything."
"You're the only man in town who thinks that, then, or has since that
night. He--Everard--was done for the minute you stepped on the stage,
the Judge says. Only they managed it decently, the Judge and the few
that kept their heads. They announced that Colonel Everard was
indisposed and couldn't speak, and the Judge took him home. He really
was ill next day. There's something wrong with his horrid heart. And
that gave him a good excuse not to run for mayor, he gave that up
himself. And in a few days the Judge and Luther Ward went to him and
told him what else he had to do, and he did it. He had to resign from
everything, everything he was in charge of or was trustee of, or had
anything to do with, and get out of town. If he'd do that, they wouldn't
make any scandal or bother him afterward, but let him start new. And
they gave him six months to do all that decently and save his face. Why
did he have to do it decently? Why couldn't they tar and feather him? I
wish they had. I wish----"
"Wish something else, Judith. Something about us."
"What do you mean by us?"
"You and me."
"Isn't it splendid the Judge is going to be president of the bank?" said
Judith hastily.
"Splendid," said a future president of the Green River Bank, who was
occupying the step beside her.
"And isn't it nice that poor Mrs. Burr is going to marry Mr. Sebastian,
even if she does have to move away from Green River? I like people to be
happy, don't you?"
"No. No, I don't. Not other people. I don't care whether they are happy
or not, and I don't want to talk about them, only about you and me."
"If you don't like the way I talk, I'll keep still," Judith said, in a
severe but small voice, but a small hand groping for his softened the
threat, and a soft, sudden laugh as his arm slipped round her atoned for
it entirely. Then there was silence on the steps, a long, whispering,
wonderful silence. Long before Judith spoke again all the work of the
lonely months was undone. And the low whispers that the two exchanged
conveyed no further information about Colonel Everard.
But there was no more to tell. The master of Green River was master no
longer and the end of all the intricate planning and scheming that had
made and kept him master was a story that Judith could tell in a few
careless sentences and forget. If she had seen and guessed some things
that she could not forget, in the strange little circle that had found a
place for her, she would never see them again. That order was gone from
the town forever, with the man who had created it, and beside her on the
steps was the boy who could make her forget it, and see beyond the long,
hard years between. And, as she almost could guess, in these magic
minutes when she could dream and dream true, that boy was the future
master of Green River.
Judith sighed, and stirred in his arms.
"Are you happier now?" she whispered.
"Yes."
"But you're going to be great. You are, really."
"I am if you want me to. Judith, how long does your father think you and
I ought to wait?"
"I don't know. You can ask him. He likes you better than me. He always
wanted me to be a boy.... Neil, I want to tell you something. Keep your
arm like that, but don't look at me."
"Why?"
"It's about what you don't like me to talk about."
"Everard?"
"Yes, and it's about something dreadful, that day in his library when I
was alone with him, and you came. He--frightened me."
"Never mind, dear, now."
"He frightened me but that was--all. I wasn't hurt or anything. I just
didn't know he--anybody--could look the way he was looking, or act the
way he was acting, and then I felt sick all over. I was afraid. But he
was just trying to kiss me, of course, and I wasn't going to let him,
the horrid old man. So I think now it was silly to be frightened. Was
it?"
"No, it wasn't silly, dear."
"I'm glad. And Neil--I want to tell you something else. It's about--that
night--in the buggy, on the old road to Wells, you know, when you were
going to elope with me and changed your mind."
"When I frightened you so. Oh, Judith."
"You didn't--frighten me," said a very small voice indeed. "You----"
"What, dear?"
"Made me want you--want to go away with you. I never felt like that
before, all waked up and different and--happy. Oh, you didn't frighten
me. I wasn't angry because you tried to take me away. It was because you
brought me back."
"Don't you know why I brought you back?"
"No."
"Why, because I loved you. I didn't love you till then, not really; not
till that minute in the carriage. I know just what minute. When you let
me kiss you, and didn't mind any more. Then I knew about--love. I never
knew before, but I'll never forget again. It isn't just wanting people,
it's taking care of them, and not hurting them. Waiting till you can
have things--right. So I wanted to have you right and be fit for you,
and after that night I went to work and I wouldn't be stopped, not by
anything in this town or the world. Oh, Judith, why don't you speak to
me? It isn't much use to talk. You don't understand."
"I--do."
"You're crying!"
She was crying, and she did understand. Before this unexpected,
beautiful proof of it, the boy was reverent and half ashamed, as if a
woman's tears were a sacred miracle invented for him. He held her hand
timidly and pressed it. Presently she drew it away, and suddenly she was
not crying, but laughing, a low, full-throated laugh as wonderful to
him as her tears.
"I told you, you did it all," she said softly. "Well, you didn't. Neil,
there's what did it all. Because, if you only go on believing in things
and being sweet and true and not afraid, and--wishing, then everything
will come right. It's got to, just because you want it to. So there's
what did it all and made us so happy, you and me. I love it. Love it,
Neil."
Neil looked where Judith was looking. Above the horse-chestnut tree, so
filmy and faint that the stars looked brighter than ever, so pale that
it was not akin to the stars, but to the dark beyond, where adventures
were, so friendly and sweet that it could make the wish in your heart
come true, hung a new-risen silvery crescent of light.
"But it's only the moon," Neil said.
"It's--the wishing moon," said Judith.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Note:
Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected
without note. Some illustrations have been relocated for
better flow.