Love's Guerdon
When Judith left Andy in charge of her patient and mounted the ladderlike
stair to her own small room under the eaves, she felt no disposition to
sleep. She did not undress, but sat down by the window and stared out
into the black November night. Despite everything, there had come a sort
of peace over her tumult, a stilling that was not mere weariness. She was
like a woman who has just been saved from a shipwreck, snatched away from
the imminent jaws of doom--chastened, and wondering a little. Intensely
thankful for what she had escaped, she sat there in the dark, cold little
room, Judith Barrier, safe from the sin of a godless union, from the life
that would have been hers as Blatchley Turrentine's wife.
In the light of her danger, familiar things took on a new face, strange,
yet dear and welcome. She turned and gazed with childish eyes up at the
decent beams of her rooftree, glad that they still sheltered her a maid,
glad that the arms of her home were about her.
With remorseless honesty she went back over her years. Always in the past
months of suffering she had blamed this or that extraneous circumstance
with her undoing; now she saw and recognised and acknowledged that
nothing and nobody had brought disaster upon her but herself. It was not
because Blatchley Turrentine was a bad, lawless man, not because the boys
were reckless fellows, led and influenced by him, that all this trouble
had come. If she, Judith Barrier, had dealt fairly and humbly by her
world, she might have had the lover of her choice in peace as other girls
had--even as Cliantha and Pendrilla had. But no, such enterprises as
contented these, such stir as they made among their kind, would not do
her. She must seek to cast her spells upon every eligible man within her
reach. She must try her hand at subjugating those who were difficult,
pride herself on the skill with which she retained half a dozen in
anxious doubt as to her ultimate intentions concerning them.
Her forehead drooped to the window pane and her cheeks burned as she
recollected times and seasons and scenes that belonged to the years when
Blatch was building up his firm belief that she loved him, and would
sometime marry him. It had been a spirited, dangerous game to her then,
nothing more.
Her passionate, possessive nature was winning to higher ground, leaving,
with pain and travail of spirit, the plane on which her twenty years had
been lived. The past months of thwarting, failure, and heart-hunger had
prepared for this movement, to-night it was almost consciously making.
She was coming to the place where, if she might not have love, she could
at least be worthy of it. The little clock which had measured her vigils
that night of the dumb supper slanted toward twelve. She got to her feet
with a long sigh. She did not know yet what she meant to do or to forbear
doing; but she was aware, with relief, of a radical change within her, a
something awakened there which could consider the right of Creed--even of
Huldah; which could submit to failure, to rejection--and be kind. Slowly
she gathered up her belongings and took her way downstairs.
When the door of the sick-room closed behind the boys, she went and knelt
down beside the bed and looked fixedly at the sleeper. With the birth of
this new spiritual impulse the things Blatch Turrentine had said of Creed
and Creed's intentions dropped away from her as fall the dead leaves from
the bough of that most tenacious of oak trees which holds its withered
foliage till the swelling buds of a new spring push it off. He was a good
man. She felt that to the innnermost core of her heart. She loved him.
She believed she would always love him. As for his being married to
Huldah, she would not inquire how that came about, how it could have
happened while she felt him to be promised to herself. There was--there
must be--a right way for even that to befall. She must love him and
forgive him, for only so could she face her life, only so could she patch
a little peace with herself and still the gnawing agony in her breast.
Long she knelt thus.
Who that knows even a little the wonders of the subjective mind, who that
has tested the marvellous communication between the mood of nurse and
patient, will doubt that the sick man, lying passive, receptive, got now
Judith's message of peace and relaxation. The girl herself, powerful,
dominating young creature, had been fought to a spiritual standstill. She
was at last forced to her knees, and the atmosphere which her passionate
struggles had long disturbed grew serene about her. Even a wavering note
of something more joyous than mere peace, a courage, a strength that
promised happiness must have radiated from her to him. For Creed's eyes
opened and looked full into hers with a wholly rational expression which
had long been absent from their clear depths.
"Judith--honey," he whispered, and fumbled vaguely for her hand upon the
coverlet.
"Yes, Creed--what is it? What do you want?" she asked tremulously, taking
the thin fingers in her warm clasp.
"Nothing--so long as I've got you," he returned contentedly. "Can't I sit
up--and won't you sit down here by me and talk awhile?"
Gently smiling, Judith helped him to sit up, and piled the pillows back
of his head and shoulders, noting almost with surprise how well he
looked, how clear and direct was his gaze.
"I've been sick a long time, haven't I?" he asked.
"Yes," the girl replied, drawing up a chair and seating herself. "Hit's
more'n six weeks that Uncle Jep an' me has been takin' care of you."
He lifted her hand and stroked it softly.
"A body gets mighty tired of a sick fellow," he said wistfully.
Judith's eyes filled at the pitiful little plea, but she could not offer
endearments to Huldah's husband.
"I ain't tired of you," she returned in a low, choked voice. "I most
wisht I was. Creed----"
She slipped from her chair dropping on her knees beside him.
"Creed, I want to tell you now while I can do it that the boys is gone to
get Huldy. She can take care of you after this--but I'll help. I ain't
mad about it. I was aimin' to tell you that the next time she come in you
should bid her stay. God knows I want ye to be happy--whether it's me or
another."
Bewilderment grew in the blue eyes regarding her so fixedly.
"Huldah?" he repeated. And then again in a lower, musing tone, "Huldah."
"Yes--yo' wife, Huldy Spiller," Judith urged mildly. "Don't you mind
namin' it to me the first time she slipped in to visit you?"
An abashed look succeeded the expression of bewilderment. A faint, fine
flush crept on the thin, white cheek.
"I--I do," Creed whispered, with a foolish little smile beginning to
curve his lips; "but there wasn't a word of truth in it--dear. I've never
seen the girl since she left Aunt Nancy's that Saturday morning."
"What made you say it then?" breathed Judith wonderingly.
"I--I don't know," faltered the sick man. "It seemed like you was mad
about something; and then it seemed like Huldah was here; and then--I
don't know Judith--didn't I say a heap of other foolishness?"
The simple query reproved his nurse more than a set arraignment would
have done. He had indeed babbled, in his semi-delirium, plenty of "other
foolishness," this was the only point upon which she had been credulous.
"Oh Creed--honey!" she cried, burying her face in the covers of his bed,
"I'm so 'shamed. I've got such a mean, bad disposition. Nobody couldn't
ever love me if they knew me right well."
She felt a gentle, caressing touch on her bowed head.
"Jude, darling," Creed's voice came to her, and for the first time it
sounded really like his voice, "I loved you from the moment I set eyes on
you. I didn't sense it for a spell, but I come to see that you were the
one woman in the world for me. There never was a man done what went more
against the grain than I the night I parted from you down at the railroad
station and let you go back when you would have come with me--so
generous--so loving--"
He broke off with a choking sigh, and Judith raised her head in a sort of
consternation. Were these the exciting topics that her Uncle Jep would
have banished from the sick-room? she wondered. But no, Creed had never
looked so nearly a well man as now. He raised himself from the pillows.
"Don't!" she called sharply, as she sprang up and slipped a capable arm
under his shoulders, laying his head on her breast. "You ort not to do
thataway," she reproached him. "When you want anything I'll git it."
"I don't want a thing, but this," whispered Creed, looking up into her
eyes. "Nothing, only----"
Judith read the mute prayer aright, and tears of exquisite feeling
blinded her. As she looked at him, there was loosed upon her soul the
whole tide of passionate tenderness which had gathered there since first
she saw him standing, eager, fearless, selfless, on the Court House steps
at Hepzibah. The yellow head lay on her arm now; those blue eyes which,
in many bitter hours since that time, had seemed as unattainable to her
love as the sky itself, were raised to her own, they were pleading for
her kiss. She bent her face; the full red lips met Creed's. The weary
longing was satisfied; the bitterness was washed away.
They remained quietly thus, Creed drinking in new life from her nearness,
from her dearness. When she would have lifted her head, his thin hand
went up and was laid over the rounded cheek, bringing the sweet mouth
back to his own.
"I'll need a heap of loving, Judith," he whispered,--"a heap. I've been
such a lone fellow all my days. You'll have to be everything and
everybody to me."
[Illustration: "They had forgotten all the world save themselves
and their love."]
Judith's lavish nature, so long choked back upon itself, trembled to its
very core with rapture at the bidding. It seemed to her that all of
Heaven she had ever craved was to do and be everything that Creed
Bonbright needed. She answered with an inarticulate murmur of tenderness,
a sound inexpressibly wooing and moving. All that she had felt, all that
she meant for the future, surged strong within her--was fain for
utterance. But Judith was not fluent; she must content herself with doing
and being--Creed could speak for her now. She cherished the fair hair
with loving touch, nestling the thin cheek against her soft, warm one.
The beautiful storm-rocked craft of Judith's passion was safe at last in
Love's own harbour; the skies were fair above it, and only Love's tender
airs breathed about its weary sails.
"We'll be wedded in the spring," Creed's lips murmured against her own.
"I'll carry home a bride to the old place. Oh, we'll be happy, Judith."
All through the latter part of the night, while the two lovers were
drawing out of the ways of doubt and pain and misunderstanding, into so
full and sweet a communion, the November breeze had been rising; toward
dawn it moved quite steadily. And with its impulse moved the cedar tree,
a long, smooth swaying, that set free that tender, baritone legato to
which Judith's ears had harkened away last March, when she came home from
Hepzibah after first seeing Creed Bonbright. It was the voice which had
talked to her throughout the spring, the early summer, through autumn's
desolate days, when the waiting in ignorance of his whereabouts and of
his welfare seemed almost more than she could bear; it was the voice
which had called upon her so tragically, so insistently, the night of the
raid on Nancy Card's cabin. But Creed himself was here now; Creed's own
lips spoke close to her ear. The cedar tree had its song to itself once
more; she no longer needed its music. Its sound was unheard by her, as
the flame of a candle is unseen in the strong light of the sun.