“‘What is it thou knowest, sweet voice?’ I cried,
‘A hidden hope,’ the voice replied.”
—Tennyson.
“Judith, don’t stay in this little close entry when all out-doors is
calling to you,” said Aunt Affy.
“But I thought she might stir and want something,” replied Aunt
Rody’s nurse; “she looks up so patient and pitiful when she wants
something.”
“My work is all done; I’ll sit here; you are losing your color,
child. What will your Cousin Don say to me when he comes home to
claim you?”
“He will not come home to do that,” said Judith, rising reluctantly
to give Aunt Affy her low chair. “I have a foreboding that something
is happening to him. He never forgot me before.”
“Forebodings come out of tired head and feet and back. I am allowing
you to do too much. This is Saturday afternoon and your play time.
The baking is done, and now that we are rid of churning—what _would_
poor Rody say to me for selling the milk and making no butter? I feel
that I am ‘deceiving’ her at every turn about the house. Run up
stairs and put on the blue muslin you look so cool in, and go out in
the hammock and forget the responsibility that takes away your
appetite and gives you big eyes. Dear child, death must come. It is
the voice of the Lord calling Rody. You know what George MacDonald
says: Death is only going to sleep when one is downright sleepy. Rody
_is_ downright sleepy. Think how she sleeps half the time, poor old
soul.”
“Do you think she is glad to be ‘downright sleepy’?”
“Aren’t you, always, when your night comes?”
“But, Aunt Affy, she hasn’t been—she wasn’t—I did not think she
cared.”
“Her light has almost gone out, sometimes, I do believe. But it’s
there, burning. She has a spark of real faith that never went out.
She wasn’t as loving in her ways as she was in her heart. Now, don’t
stand another minute. I want you to go to church to-morrow, too. John
Kenney is out on the piazza waiting for you; he’s come to the
parsonage to spend Sunday.”
In an instant Judith was all light and color. John Kenney was the kind
of a friend that no one else in the world was; as grave as the
minister himself, at times, as book loving, and yet as full of fun
and frolic as a boy; he was taller than Roger, and handsome; Roger
was fine, but he was not handsome; she had no fear or reverence for
John, he stood beside her, and walked beside her; they were boy and
girl together; John was nearly three years older; he would be
twenty-one in the winter. She stood still radiant.
“You look rested enough now,” remarked Aunt Affy.
“I was not so tired, I was only blue; I was thinking about Don. John
has been away all summer; he has not been in Bensalem since my
birthday.”
“Did he come for that?” inquired Aunt Affy, keeping any suggestion
out of her voice. She would not put ideas into the child’s head.
“He said so. And to say good-bye to the parsonage. We agreed not to
write to each other while he was out west.”
“What for,” questioned Aunt Affy, suspiciously. “Had you ever written
to each other before?”
“No,” laughed Judith, softly, “and we agreed not to begin.”
“What for?” asked Aunt Affy, again.
“For fun, I think, as much as anything. I think we had no real
reason.”
“Two such reasonable creatures, too. Judith, you _had_ a reason or he
had. Why should the question come up?” Aunt Affy asked severely.
“Oh, questions are always coming up. He asked me if I would write and
I refused.”
“And that’s how you agreed together. What was _your_ reason?”
“I think,” began Judith slowly, “I was afraid Roger wouldn’t like it.
Or Marion. Marion is particular about such things. I’m afraid she had
something to trouble her once—she never will tease anybody about
anybody, even.”
“Well, be off, and dress. I told John you would not be out for some
time.”
“I’ll go in this dress. I haven’t seen him for months.”
Whether the haste augured well or ill for John, Aunt Affy could not
decide; she went into Aunt Rody’s bedroom, touched her forehead and
spoke to her.
“Are you sleepy, Rody?”
“Yes.”
“Would you like anything?”
“No.”
Aunt Affy, with her mending for her husband and for Joe, kept watch
in the entry, lighted by the open back door, all the afternoon.
After half an hour on the piazza, Judith gave John Aunt Affy’s latest
magazine to amuse himself with, and went up to her small chamber, to
braid her tumbled hair and to array herself in the fresh, blue muslin.
In the cracked glass over the old bureau she met the reflection of a
girl with joyful eyes and cheeks like pink roses. She knew that was
not the girl that had watched Aunt Rody in the entry.
Her summer companion had come back; he was her vacation friend;
perhaps she had missed him; perhaps her loneliness had not all been
for her Cousin Don. He was still in her world; across the continent
had not been in her world. He had not sent her one message through
letters to Marion or Roger. She had not dared write to him. But he
was home again, just as grave, and just as bright, with no reproach
in his eyes, and he was planning to stay a week. He had come to talk
to Roger and decide his choice of business in life; his father wished
to take him into his own business, the jeweller’s, either in the
factory or store, but he had no taste for making jewelry, or selling
it, he said; he would rather study; he was “not good enough” to be a
minister; he would like to study medicine.
Judith made herself as fresh and pretty as girls love to be,
pondering the while John’s choice of work in life. She would choose
for him to be like Roger, and do Roger’s work, but if he did not
believe himself to be “called” like Roger, that would not be
acceptable work; was not healing a part of Christ’s work; was not
John gentle, sympathetic, and in love with every human creature? He
had a copy of something of Drummond’s in his pocket; he said Drummond
was making a man of him. The beginning of his manhood was in joining
a Boy’s Brigade while he was away at boarding school up the Hudson.
When she came back to the piazza he said he would read to her
Drummond’s address to a Boy’s Brigade.
He had grown more grave since he went away; he told her the weight of
what to do and what not to do was heavy upon him night and day.
“And he has such laughing brown eyes,” she said, almost aloud, to the
girl in blue muslin, reflected in the cracked mirror.
“What are _you_ going to do?” he inquired as he pushed a piazza chair
near the hammock for her, and stretched himself in the hammock that
he might look up at her and watch her as he talked.
“Must I do something?”
“You are old enough to decide. Girls are always deciding. Martha and
Lou are forever taking up something new. They are not satisfied to be
housekeepers. How Marion has settled down since she came to Bensalem!
To be Roger’s housekeeper and a deaconess in his church has come to
be her only ambition. Is that yours, too?”
“Which?” she asked with serious lips and dancing eyes.
“Both.”
“My Cousin Don thinks he has my future in his right hand. But I’m
afraid his right hand is finding business he likes better.”
“Tell me true, what do you wish most to do?”
“If you cannot decide for yourself, how can you expect me to decide
for myself?”
“I do know. I have decided. I am simply waiting for Roger’s judgment
to confirm my choice. I want him to talk father over. Father wants
one of his sons in the business, and Maurice declares he will not go
in—he wants to be an architect. He has decided talent; as I have not,
but am only commonplace and a drudgery sort of a fellow; I may take
business instead of medicine to please father and help Maurice out.
Mother beseeches me to please father; she almost put it ‘obey’ my
father. What do _you_ advise me?”
“O, John, is it like that? I thought there was nothing in the way but
your own choice.”
“There is not. Father will give a grudging consent. I think he gave
me my California trip to give me time to think—perhaps to think of
his wishes. He went into the business to please his father.”
“He has not regretted it.”
“Far from it. He congratulates himself. I know a fellow whose father
gave him a ‘thrashing’ to make him go to college; his grandfather had
given his father a ‘thrashing’ and made him go.”
“Did he go?”
“The fellow I know? No; he ran away.”
“Do you want to run away?”
“I ran away to Bensalem to ask Roger.”
“I think Roger will urge you to please your father.”
“Father was glad enough for Roger to study.”
“That was because of the choice of study.”
“I knew that. But my choice is no mean one.”
“I think a natural bent should be respected,” reasoned Judith.
“I don’t know that I _have_ a natural bent. A great English physician
writes that he decided to study medicine when he was a boy because
his father’s physician came to the house with a coat trimmed with
gold lace. He was after the gold lace.”
“What are _you_ after?”
“Money, reputation—position—”
“I don’t believe it,” she answered, earnestly.
“Oh, I would like them thrown in,” he laughed.
“In the Boy’s Brigade you didn’t make them first.”
“What do you make first?”
“Aunt Rody, just now.”
“What second, then?”
“Talking to you, on the piazza.”
“Judith,” catching her hands and holding them fast, “decide for me.
Shall I study medicine, or shall I please my father and mother?”
“I cannot decide for you,” she said, lightly, withdrawing her hands.
“You don’t care.”
“I do care.”
“Decide then.”
“I am not the one to decide.”
“You are; if I put the decision in your hands.”
“But I am only a girl.”
“That is why I ask you. Girls see clear. They do not love money, they
are not ambitious.”
“I do not love money. I may be ambitious.”
“How are you ambitious?”
She flushed and would not reply.
“About your stories? Do you expect to write?”
“I expect to write. I cannot help it; it is _in_ me and will come
out. Nothing much, perhaps; only little things, but I love them.”
“I do not think medicine is ‘in me’ like that. I simply like a
profession better than the routine and drudgery of business.”
“That is not a great motive.”
“No; and that boy’s gold lace wasn’t; but he made a success.”
“Yes,” was all Judith said.
“You are displeased with me.”
“I am disappointed. I thought you _cared_.”
“I do; in a certain way.”
“But not in the best way.”
“Judith, I am not ‘great’ or ‘best.’”
“I thought you were; I want you to be.”
“That is a motive,” he said, catching her hands again. “Judith, if
you will tell me you love me and will marry me, I will go home and
tell my father I will make gold rings and sell them to the end of my
days; but you must let me put one on your finger.”
“If you made it I’m afraid it wouldn’t fit,” she laughed, again
withdrawing her hands.
“Will you, if it fits?”
“I cannot tell until I try.”
“Don’t play with me. It is neither ‘great’ nor ‘best’ for a girl to
do that.”
“You frighten me,” she said, with a sound in her breath like a sob.
“I beg your pardon.”
“I cannot promise. I do not want to promise. I never thought of it.”
“You think I am only a boy.”
“I am only a girl.”
“I did not just think of it. You think I am too sudden and impulsive.
I thought of you all the time I was gone. I have loved you ever since
I knew you. How can anybody help loving you? You meant Bensalem to me
more than Roger and Marion did. I have been afraid somebody would
guess. I was afraid somebody would keep you away from me. Judith,
don’t you care for me, at all?”
“Yes, John; but not like _that_. I couldn’t promise that. I never
thought you cared like that.”
“How did you think I cared?” he asked, passionately; “in a
grandfatherly way like Roger?”
“I do not know,” she answered sadly; “you were so good to me, and I
liked you. I didn’t think.”
“Will you think now?” he asked, gently. “Will you think and tell me?”
“When?”
“As soon as you know yourself. I will wait years and years.”
“Yes, I will tell you as soon as I know myself,” she promised.
“Then I will wait. You are worth waiting for.”
“John, ought I to tell Marion?”
“No. Do not tell anybody. It is my secret. You haven’t any secret.
Nobody need ever know, I will never be pitied.”
Judith pitied him then.
“I am not bound in any way. I haven’t promised, John.”
“No; you haven’t,” he said, touched by the sorrow in her face. “I am
sorry to trouble you so; but I had to say it. I came to Bensalem to
say it.”
“Are you sorry you came?”
“No; I had to have it out. Perhaps it will make a man of me.
Something will have to. A man needs some kind of a fight.”
Judith thought that it was not only his “fight.”
“I am going home; I can’t stay here. I’ll tell Roger I decided not to
stay over Sunday. I don’t care what he thinks. We talked till twelve
o’clock last night. I know what he thinks. I’ll walk to Dunellen to
the train, I’d like to start and walk around the world.”
“John.” Judith’s eyes were filled with tears.
“Don’t feel like that,” he answered, roughly; “it’s bad enough for me
to feel for myself without feeling for you. I have always thought you
cared.”
“I _do_ care.”
“That’s no way to care.”
He walked off, not turning for her low word of farewell.
She would have kept him had she dared.