WAITING FOR HIM.
Judith stood within her father's porch once more--this time leaning
forward eagerly, shading her eyes with one hand, and looking from
under it in an attitude of intense expectation.
As she waited there, with fire on her cheeks and longing in her eyes,
the change that a few months had made was marvellous. Those eyes, at
first boldly bright, were now like velvet or fire, as tenderness or
passion filled them. She had grown taller, more graceful, perhaps a
little less vigorous in her movements; but in spirit and person the
girl was vividly endowed with all that an artist would have desired
for a picture of her own scriptural namesake Judith.
This question was on her lips and in her eyes: "Will he come alone?
Oh, will he come alone?"
Was it her father she was watching for, and did she wish him to come
alone? If she expected that, why were those scarlet poppies burning in
the blackness of her hair? Why had she put on that chintz dress with
tufts of wild flowers glowing on a maroon ground?--all cheap in
themselves, but giving richness of color to match that of her person.
Her father had gone to bed supperless one night because the money for
that knot of red ribbon on her bosom had been paid to a pedlar who
cajoled her into the purchase.
Evidently some one besides the toiling old man was expected. Judith
never in her life had waited so anxiously for him. There was a table
set out in the room she had left, on which a white cloth was spread; a
glass dish of blackberries stood on this table, and by it a
pitcher-full of milk, mantled temptingly with cream.
Does any one suppose that Judith had arranged all this for the father
whom she had sent supperless to bed only a few days before, because of
her longing for the ribbon that flamed on her bosom?
No, no; Richard Storms had made good use of his opportunities. Riding
his blood-horse, or walking leisurely, he had mounted that hill almost
every day since his second visit to the old house.
I have said that a great change had taken place in Judith's person.
Indeed, there was something in her face that startled you. Until a few
months since her deepest feelings had been aroused by some sensational
romance; but now all the poetry, all the imagination and rude force of
her nature were concentrated in a first grand passion. Females like
Judith, left to stray into life untaught and unchecked--through the
fervor of youth--inspired by ideas that spring out of their own
boundless ignorance, sometimes startle one with a sudden development
of character.
As a tropical sun pours its warmth into the bosom of an orange tree,
ripening its fruit before the blossoms fall, first love had awakened
the strong, even reckless nature of this girl, and inspired all the
latent elements of a character formed like the garden in which we
first saw her, where fruit, weeds, and flowers struggled for life
together. Without method or culture, these elements concentrated to
mar or brighten her future life.
For a while after that second visit of Storms, Judith had held her
independence bravely. When the young man came, she was full of quaint
devices for his entertainment, bantering him all the time with
good-natured audacity, which he liked. She took long rambles with him
down the hillside, rather proud that the neighbors should witness her
conquest, but without a fear, or even thought, of the scandal it might
occasion.
Sometimes they sat hours together under the orchard-trees, where she
would weave daisy-chains or impatiently tear up the grass around her
as he became tender or tantalizing in his speech.
For a time her voice--a deep, rich contralto--filled the whole house
as it went ringing to and fro, like the joyous out-gush of a
mocking-bird, for in that way she gave expression to the pride and
glory that possessed her.
The girl told her father nothing of this, but kept it hoarded in her
heart with the secret of her novel-reading. But he saw that she grew
brighter and more cheerful every day, that her curt manner toward
himself had become almost caressing, and that the house had never been
so well cared for before. So he thanked God for the change, and went
to his work more cheerfully.
No, it was not for the old father that worshipped her that Judith
stood on the porch that day. The meagre affection she felt for him was
as nothing to the one grand passion that had swallowed up everything
but the intense self-love that it had warmed into unwholesome vigor.
She was only watching for her father because of her hope that another
and a dearer one was coming with him.
"Dear me, it seems as if the sun would never set!" she exclaimed,
stepping impatiently down from the wooden stool. "What shall I do till
they come? I wonder, now, if there would be time to run out and pick a
few more berries? The dish isn't more than half full, and father
hinted that some were getting ripe on the bushes by the lower wall.
I've a good mind to go and see. I hate to have them look skimpy in the
dish. Anyway I'll just get my sun-bonnet and try. Father seemed to
think that I might pick them for our tea. As if I'd a-gone out in the
hot sun for the best father that ever lived! But let him think so if
he wants to. One may as well please the poor old soul once in a
while."
Judith went into the kitchen, took a bowl from the table, and hurried
down toward the orchard-fence, where she found some wild bushes
clambering up the stonework, laden with fruit. A flock of birds
fluttered out from the bushes at her approach, each with his bill
stained blood-red and his feathers in commotion.
Judith laughed at their musical protests, and fell to picking the ripe
berries, staining her own lips with the largest and juiciest now and
then, as if to tantalize the little creatures, who watched her
longingly from the boughs of a neighboring apple tree.
All at once a shadow fell upon the girl, who looked up and saw that
the golden sunshine was dying out from the orchard.
"Dear me, they may come any minute!" she said, shaking up the berries
in her bowl. "A pretty fix I should be in then, with my mouth all
stained up and my hair every which way; but it is just like me!"
Away the girl went, spilling her berries as she ran. Leaving them in
the kitchen, she hurried up to her own room and gave herself a rapid
survey in the little seven-by-nine looking-glass that hung on the
wall.
"Well, if it wasn't me, I should almost think that face was going to
be handsome one of these days," she thought, striving to get a better
look at herself by a not ungraceful bend of the neck. The mirror took
in her head and part of the bust on which the scarlet ribbon flamed.
The face was radiant. The eyes full of happy light, smiled upon her
until dimples began to quiver about the mouth, and she laughed
outright.
The beautiful gipsy in the glass laughed too, at which Judith darted
away and ran down-stairs in swift haste, for she heard footsteps on
the porch, and her heart leaped to meet them.