They kept their secret from every one until May.
The greatest pang that Sophy felt at this time (and she had not a few)
was the fact that Bobby was to be left at Sweet-Waters during these
months of absence. They had never been a day, much less a night, apart
since he was born. Now she would leave him, in Charlotte's care, whom he
dearly loved, it is true, but--she would leave him.
Charlotte could not throw off the depression caused by this fulfilment
of her anxious prognostications.
"She may be happy _now_," she told her Joe; "but oh! what will she
feel--say in two years--_when she wakes up_?"
The Judge admitted the possibility of Sophy's present joy suffering a
diminution. He even went so far as to say that very possibly there might
be some disillusionment for her in the soberer future--but he roundly
approved her present joy.
"Doggone it, Charlotte!" he exclaimed, using the one form of oath that
he permitted himself. "The poor girl's seen enough misery. Why shouldn't
she be happy in her own way! This Loring is a nice fellow. He's rich ...
that's not to be sneezed at, let me tell you, old lady. He's
good-tempered: he's a gentleman--he's heels over head in love with
her...."
"And he's four ... nearly five years younger," put in Charlotte sternly.
The Judge rubbed his dusky wreath of hair the wrong way about his fine,
bald poll--a sure sign that he was "up against" a knotty question.
"That's a pity, I admit," he said rather lamely. Like Charlotte, he had
very old-fashioned notions about the desirability--almost the
necessity--of a husband's being the elder of his wife. It shocked his
fixed ideals, when brought face to face with it in this plump manner,
that Sophy should be her lover's senior by four years.
Charlotte's fly-away eyebrows came down and joined.
"It's a tragedy and it's a _shame_!" said she.
"No, no ... no, no," almost coaxed the Judge. "Not a shame, Chartie--a
pity if you like.... Yes ... it certainly is a pity--but...."
Charlotte's very apprehension for her sister made her bitter.
"It's just another of Sophy's tragic mistakes," said she. "I did think
that awful experience had cured her of making mistakes."
Her husband looked at her rather whimsically from under the fluff of
smoky black that he had forgotten to smooth down again.
"Are _you_ so doggone sure of making no more mistakes till you die, old
lady?"
Charlotte jerked a snarled place from her black curls by main force. She
did not even notice the acute pain, so great was her agitation over what
she considered this last dire error of her sister.
"That's not the point," she said firmly. She pinned up the now carded
mass with two long, silver hairpins as she had done every night for
twenty years, then went into her especial dressing-closet to fetch her
night-gown.
It was the evening of the fateful day on which Sophy had announced her
coming marriage to Loring, and husband and wife were preparing for
sleep, in the big, friendly room which they shared together. In this
room were two large, old-fashioned closets, each having its window, its
washstand, and its array of pegs whereon to hang the simple and more
necessary pieces of wearing apparel.
As Charlotte emerged again, attired in her nainsook gown that ended in
decent frills at neck and wrist, the Judge in his turn strode into his
sanctuary. He was in search of one of those old-fashioned garments which
Charlotte had been so reluctant to lend Loring on the occasion of his
first visit.
While she waited for him to appear again, she sat down at a little table
near one of the windows, and began arranging what she called her
"night-basket." She was the most methodical and orderly of souls, and
into this little hamper went her watch, her handkerchief, a bit of
"camphor-ice" for her lips, and a box of matches.
The moon was at its full again, and as she sat, sorting these familiar
articles, she could see the white blur of Sophy's gown in one of the
hammocks, and hear the soft undertone of voices, as she and her lover
talked together.
"Just run along, you and Joe, Charlotte, dear," Sophy had said. "We'll
come in by the time you're ready to put out the lights."
"And here," reflected Charlotte, frowning towards the hammocks, "it's
eleven o'clock, and Joe and I nearly ready for bed, and she isn't even
_thinking_ of coming in!"
Her mood was such as in a vigorous, old-fashioned mother means a sound
spanking for the offending child. And Charlotte felt that in some sort
Sophy _was_ her child, and dearly would she have liked to spank her.
Here Judge Macon came forth again, looking somewhat like the sheeted
dead in the extreme length of his linen garment, and armed with a large,
palmetto fan. He drew up a rocking-chair, and glancing out of the window
towards the culprits, said just a trifle sheepishly, to his wife's acute
ears:
"Let's give 'em as long as we can, old lady. Lovers on an old Virginia
lawn in the moonlight! It's enough to soften the cockles of a stoic's
heart."
Charlotte unbendingly smoothed out a bit of tin-foil and wrapped the
piece of camphor-ice in it.
"The cockles of the heart, and the apple of the eye have always seemed
absurd figures of speech to me," she then remarked, putting the unguent
into her basket.
Judge Macon tried to take one of her hands, but she withdrew it and
firmly wound up her watch before wrapping it in her handkerchief and
laying it beside the camphor-ice.
"Come, old lady," wheedled her softer-natured mate, "what's the matter?
Do you really foresee disaster?"
"Joe," replied Charlotte, clasping her hands over the handle of the
little basket, and looking sternly at him, "can you, a man who has sat
on the Virginia bench for over twenty years, seriously ask me such a
question?"
"Why the _Virginia_ bench, particularly, honey?" asked he, and from
under his shaggy brows came a droll gleam.
But Charlotte was not to be wheedled.
"I merely mentioned your office," said she, "to recall to you that as a
Judge you've had more opportunity than most to realise the rarity of
happy marriages."
The Judge in his unofficial capacity whistled softly at this Addisonian
language, but Charlotte went on undisturbed.
"I ask you," she continued, "_as a Judge_--what chances do you consider
that those two"--she waved one hand towards the hammocks--"have of real
happiness?"
Her husband rocked for a moment before replying, fanning himself with
the round, yellow disk that glistened in the moonlight (Charlotte had
blown out the candle for fear of midges).
At last he said seriously:
"You married me, my dear, and I am sixteen years older than you, yet I
think we've been pretty happy."
"Oh, how like a _man_ that is!" cried Charlotte, jumping up in her
exasperation, so that the carefully packed little hamper was upset, and
the two white-clad figures had to grovel for its contents on all fours
in the moonlight. As Charlotte's curly head came near his during this
operation, the Judge promptly kissed it, and Charlotte, much
disconcerted, scrambled to her feet again, exclaiming: "Joe! how _can_
you be so silly at our time of life?"
But the Judge only laughed, and pulled her down on his linen clad knees,
demure frills, "night-basket" and all.
"See here, madam," he demanded, "what do you mean by saying I'm 'like a
man'?"
Charlotte laughed in spite of herself.
"I meant it was like a man to take the very reverse of Sophy's case as
an example," she said, putting her arm about his neck as they rocked
gently together, and rubbing her cheek against his. "Don't you see? It's
quite, _quite_ different with us. Why _your_ being _my_ elder, by so
many years, only makes me look up to you...."
"'Look up to me!'" echoed he, with a burst of Homeric mirth. Charlotte
clapped her hand over his mouth. "Sssh!" she warned. "They'll hear you.
They'll think we're laughing at them."
"Poor things," said he, sobered. "It seems mighty sad to think of two
lovers being afraid of being laughed at."
"It _is_ sad," said Charlotte. "You think I'm cross about it, Joe, but I
could cry about it this minute."
She dropped her head on his shoulder, and her other arm went round his
neck.
"Don't," said the Judge softly. "Don't you cry, honey, whatever you do."
Charlotte from her refuge in his strong neck spoke passionately. Her
warm breath tickled him almost beyond endurance, but he held her and
suffered in silence with the true martyr spirit of the husband who is
born and not made.
"Oh, Joe," she murmured vehemently; "you're not a woman, so you can't
see it all as I see it. _Now_, perhaps, it's all right, but in a few
years ... just a few years.... Oh, my poor Sophy! The grey hairs ...
will come ... then wrinkles.... Little by little, little by little,
there, under his eyes--his hateful _young_ eyes--she will grow old. She
will look like his mother when she's fifty and he's only forty-five!"
"No, no, lady-bird, really you exaggerate!" slipped in the Judge.
"This _can't_ be exaggerated!" said Charlotte. "It _can't_ be----
_Shakespeare_ couldn't exaggerate it!"
"He's got a right smart gift that way, honey," slipped in the Judge
again.
Charlotte didn't hear him. She sat up, much to his relief, and putting
her hands on his shoulders looked at him solemnly.
"Joe," she said, "you're a man, so you don't know about one of the worst
tragedies in a woman's life--the tragedy of the hand-glass!"
"The _what_?" asked her husband.
"The hand-glass, Joe. That little innocent looking bit of silver-framed
glass that you _think_ I only use to do my hair with. Oh, some great
poet ought to write an ode to a woman with her hand-glass! Talk of
'Familiars,' of 'Devils'--there's no Imp out of Hell...."
"Charlotte!" cried her astounded husband.
"I said out--of--_Hell_," repeated she firmly--"there's no Imp so
cunning, so malicious, so brutal as a woman's hand-glass. First, like
all devils, it begins by flattering her--_when she's young_. Then
suddenly, one day, after long years of cunning flattery--suddenly--like
that!..." She snapped her fingers in his still more surprised face....
"Like that!--the hateful thing tells her the truth--that she _is growing
old_! Oh, just a shadow here--a line there--the first grey hair----
Nothing _really_--only--from that day, on and on and on relentlessly,
the message, the odious message never stops! Oh, if anything ought to be
buried with a woman, like her wedding ring, it ought to be her
hand-glass--for it's been just as much a part of joy and pain as the
ring has!"
She stopped, out of breath, and her husband, rather subdued yet trying
to make light of it, hugged her and said: "Seems to me, Sophy oughtn't
to claim all the laurels. Seems to me you're a right elegant little
poetess yourself!"
Charlotte extricated herself from this frankly marital embrace, and
pushing the curls out of her eyes went on, too excited and in earnest to
heed this funny little compliment.
"_That's_ what I see for Sophy!" she said. "The tragedy of the
hand-glass--the tragedy of love in her case. For that boy can't love her
soul and mind as he ought to--and what soul he's got she's given
him--for the time being. He's just a walking mirror--a reflection of
her. Sophy doesn't dream it--nor he--of course. But I can see it. Love
does that sometimes. Oh, you needn't grin, Joe!--I watch life though I
_do_ live in the country the year round. Sophy's just a woman Narcissus.
She's in love with her own reflection in Morris Loring. And some day
she'll want to draw him from that dream-pool. Then she'll find empty
wetness in her hands ... just tears...."
She broke off almost in tears herself. Suddenly she caught her husband's
head to her breast:
"Oh," she cried, "I do thank God that you are bald, Joe, and sixteen
years older than I am!"
"Lord love us!" exclaimed the Judge, bursting into inextinguishable
mirth this time, "I reckon that's the funniest prayer of thanksgiving
that ever went up to the Throne of Grace!"