ON THE PRECIPICE.
Richard Storms was there, leaning against the wall. He reached out his
hand to help her over--an attention that made the heart leap in her
bosom.
"Oh, Richard, I am so glad that you have come," she exclaimed,
clinging fondly to his arm.
"Hush," he said, "wait till we get farther from the house. The old man
will hear us."
"No, no. He is down in the village. I sent him away."
This was what Storms wished to learn, but in his subtle craft he would
not ask the question directly.
"He knows nothing--you have not told him that I might be here?" he
questioned.
"Not a word."
"That is wise. He might be talking to the neighbors and set them
clamoring at you again. I shouldn't like that, just as everything is
coming right with us."
"There's no danger of that; he speaks to no one--poor old man. The
neighbors know nothing about my leaving home; he felt it too much for
talking."
"Of course, and you got back safely?"
"Oh, yes. How good of you to ask! But you have something to tell me."
"Let us walk farther on," said Storms, passing his arm around the
girl's waist.
Thus persuasive in his speech and unusually affectionate in manner,
Storms led the girl down the orchard path. Once under the old apple
tree where their last stormy interview had taken place, he paused and
leaned against the trunk, while she stood before him, waiting for the
information he had brought with some impatience; for, with all his
strange gentleness, few words had been spoken on the way.
"Well," she said, "have you brought no news--good or bad? Have you
seen Sir Noel?"
"No."
"No! Why not? Afraid to go on, were you?"
"Afraid? You, Judith, ought to know me better than that. I found an
easier way of getting what I want. Women, after all, are safest to
deal with. Instead of a farm I shall have land in my own right."
"You will! You are sure; and I gave it to you!"
Storms made no reply to this exultant outburst, but went on counting
over the benefits he had secured with tantalizing particularity.
"In one week from now, I shall be a rich landholder, with plenty of
money in my pocket, and a house that any gentleman in England might be
proud to take his lady into."
Judith's eyes flashed triumphantly.
"It was I who helped you to all this land, money, the grand house we
shall live in. Oh, who ever thought that a bit of crumpled paper would
do so much?"
Storms shrugged his shoulders, and prepared to walk onward.
Judith saw this, and her temper, always ready to take fire, kindled
up.
"You lift your shoulders--you keep silent when I speak of the paper
which brought all these grand things, as if you did not mean to give
me credit for giving it to you."
"What would the paper have been without a shrewd man to use it?
Besides, you found it in the bushes where any other person might have
picked it up."
Judith felt a strange choking in her throat.
"What does this mean, Richard Storms?"
"Mean? why, nothing. Only it is getting stormy here. When you lift
your voice in that way, it might be heard from the house. Walk on; you
have nothing to flare up about."
There was something in the man's voice that would have warned Judith,
but for her own rising temper. As it was, she walked toward the
precipice, sometimes keeping ahead, and looking back at him over her
shoulder. He certainly looked pale in the moonlight.
"Now, Richard, what is the meaning of this offish talk? Is it that you
want to get rid of your promise, with all these twistings and
turnings?"
When Judith put this question, she had halted close by the brink of
the precipice and turned around, facing the young man, who came up
more slowly.
Storms attempted to laugh, but he was too hoarse for that.
"I haven't said a word about being off; but, if I had, all this temper
wouldn't hold me back. What should hinder me doing as I please? The
paper was as much mine as yours."
"What should hinder you, Dick Storms? Don't ask me that. I do not want
to talk about the things I saw, that night."
Judith stood close to the precipice as she said this, between the very
edge and Storms, who strode forward till his white sinister face was
close to hers.
"You saw what? No more hints, I am tired of them. You saw what?"
"I will not talk about it here. When I do speak, it will be to Sir
Noel Hurst," answered the girl, bravely.
"Sir Noel Hurst will be very likely to believe you against my oath,
and the paper signed by Jessup himself."
"The paper that I gave you, fool that I was!"
"Exactly, if you could not trust me."
"I did trust you--I did shield you. I gave you the paper. I kept still
as the grave about what I saw that night."
"Still as the grave--there is no stillness like that," said the man,
in a voice so hoarse and strange that Judith instinctively attempted
to draw sideway from her perilous position.
But Storms changed as she did, still with his face to hers, pressing
her toward the edge.
"If I kept back another paper, it was because I meant to give it you
on our wedding day, and prove how much a poor girl could do toward
saving the man she loved from--"
"From what?" questioned Storms, throwing his arm around the girl and
drawing her back from the precipice, as if he had for the first time
seen her danger. "Of what are you speaking, Judith?"
"Of a paper I found in the dress that was taken off William Jessup
after he died, which makes the one I gave you of no worth at all."
"You have such a paper, and kept it back?" The man absolutely threw a
tone of tender reproach into a voice that had been cold as ice and
bitter as gall a minute before. "Let me read it; the moonlight is
strong enough."
"It is not with me. I have put it by in safe hiding, meaning to burn
it before your face and pay you for the marriage lines with your
life."
Storms drew the girl farther away from the precipice, for he feared to
trust the instinct of destruction that had brought him there, and
would not all at once be subdued. He felt that his own life was, for
the time, bound up in hers, and absolutely shuddered as he thought of
the fate from which a word had saved him and her.
For a time they walked back to the orchard in silent disturbance: she
unconscious of the awful danger she had run; he pondering new schemes
in his mind.
"Why will you always doubt me?" he said, at last.
"Because you force me to doubt," she answered, almost patiently, for
the ebb-tide of her anger had set in.
"No; it is your own bad temper, which always drives me into teasing
you. I have the license in my pocket, and came to settle everything."
"The license!"
At this word Judith turned her face to the moonlight, and Storms saw
that his falsehood had done its work.
"While you have been doubting me," he said, with a look and tone of
deep injury, "I have been upon my knees almost, persuading the old
people to give up this Jessup girl, and take you in her place."
"And they have? Oh, Richard!"
"I came to set the day when you would come to the farm and stop a bit
with the old mother."
"Ah!" said Judith, with tears in her eyes, "I cannot remember when I
had a mother."
Storms lifted his hand impatiently. Even he shrunk from using the name
of his kind old mother as a snare for the girl.
"You will say nothing of this to your father, or of my coming here at
all. When we are wedded and ready to start for the new home, it will
be a grand surprise for him."
"Shall we--oh, Richard, shall we take him with us?" cried Judith.
"That may be as you wish. I will not object."
"Oh, Richard, I would give up that horrible paper now if I had it with
me!"
"No, let it rest until I can exchange it for the marriage lines; then
it will be as much for your interest as mine that it should be made
ashes of. But be sure and have it about you then."
"I will, I will. Only it is like putting a snake in my bosom when I
hide it there."
"And that pretty dress. Leave nothing behind you. On the second day
from this I will be at the nearest station. Meet me there, but mind
that no one sees us speaking to each other."
"I will be careful."
"Good-night, then."
The girl looked at him wistfully, as if she expected something more;
but Storms only reached out his hand. He was not quite a Judas, and
did not kiss her.