Roger awoke the following morning in a repentant mood. Slowly and painfully he marshalled the facts of the preceding evening, dim and hazy some of them, while others stood out with humiliating and alarming distinctness. And the more he analysed them, the more unpleasantly he became aware that Judith had been in deadly earnest. In his first hopelessness, he caught illogically at one faint chance. His sister's great fear seemed to be that this latest escapade might leak out. The fight had been the starting point of all her amazing change of front. Well, he could prevent it from leaking out, by swallowing his pride. Perhaps after all he had been over-hasty.
Accordingly, acting on this new resolution, Roger caught Faxon's eye as they were rising from table, and nodded.
The latter waited. Roger reddened slightly, and was silent until the others were out of earshot. Then he held out his hand.
"I'm sorry, Joe," he said manfully. "I'm a damn fool when I've got a load. I hope you'll forget anything I may have said or done."
Faxon took the extended hand a little surprisedly.
"Surest thing you know, Roger. And I'm sorry too. I struck at a sober man—you understand, don't you? I was too hasty. One forgets. He hears things—and acts before he thinks. Bad business—but it's over and we'll bury it."
"That's particularly what I want," said Wynrod, with what seemed to Faxon rather unnecessary earnestness. "Absolutely buried. I don't want it to get out at all. I can depend upon Baker...."
"And you can depend upon me," said Faxon heartily. "I won't breathe a whisper."
"Thanks." They shook hands gravely, and after an embarrassed little pause, Roger excused himself and went to hunt up his sister.
"About that stuff last night—are you still in earnest?" he asked doggedly, but not unpleasantly.
She looked at him with a curiously tender expression in her eyes, but with her jaw firmly set.
"Absolutely, Roger," she said quietly.
But the outburst she expected did not come. Instead, he looked at her quizzically and smiled.
"Well, sister, maybe there's something in what you say. I've been thinking about it. But you've set me up against an almighty hard proposition. I'm willing—but what on earth can I do?"
Judith was tremendously surprised, although she should not have been, knowing her brother's customary acquiescence in whatever she dictated. But she concealed her amazement and answered him in as matter-of-fact a way as she could muster. And Judith was by no means an inferior actress.
"Why don't you see Judge Wolcott?"
"He's a lawyer."
"I know. But he's interested in all sorts of business matters. And before he went on the bench he was a corporation lawyer. At least he could tell you who to see."
"The idea is not without merit, sister. I think I'll see the Judge on Monday. And then watch little Roger proceed to climb the dizzy heights of industry. I'll show you a thing or two about him you never guessed."
Judith's eyes filled with tears and she threw her arms about his neck. "Oh, Roger—you're fine. And Iamcruel to you. I haven't any business to treat you this way. You're so much bigger than I am. You'll make a success—a great success. I know you will. And I will be so proud of you!"
The possibility was a novel one. Roger considered it carefully, for a moment. "By Jove, you will!" he cried finally. "I'll be hanged if you won't," he added with enthusiasm. He wondered why the tears seemed to well the faster in his sister's eyes.
The news of Judith's "mad whim" spread rapidly through Braeburn, and various were the comments it evoked. For the most part they savoured of condolence, although there was some sentimental approbation for what was characterised by one enthusiast as the "nobility" of her course. This had its effect upon Roger, and in time, he also came to feel admiration for her, and then, as a natural consequence of his own participation in the affair, he came to feel an admiration for himself. From out and out hostility to the idea, therefore, he changed insensibly to ardent and voluble sympathy.
At first Judith had admitted to herself quite frankly that the situation bore possibilities of annoyance. Aside from her guest's potentially dangerous familiarity with her daily life, she sensed in him a certain lack of knowledge—or at least of observance—of those social amenities upon which her training, more than her instinct, led her to place considerable emphasis. It was with this feeling of an unbridgeable gulf between them, that she approached their first meeting after the accident. And it was with no little embarrassment, therefore, that she entered his room.
The lines of pain had disappeared from his face, and the removal of the stubble which had covered his chin when they had had their first encounter, together with his rest, and—though she did not suspect that—several meals much more bounteous than those to which he was accustomed, had improved his appearance surprisingly. He greeted her unaffectedly.
"Hello," he said. "I've been waiting to see you. I can't begin to tell you how grateful I am for—all this."
"And I," she cried, "can't begin to tell you how sorry I am that it all happened. I...."
"Well, then," he said with a smile which revealed two rows of strong, even and very white teeth, "let's not either of us try."
That seemed to break the ice, and because he appeared to feel no embarrassment, she found that hers had quite left her. Before she realised it, the morning was well advanced, and when she left him it was with a curious feeling that they had known each other for years and years ... very well.
And that was only the beginning of the very odd, but very real, friendship which sprang up between them. It would have surprised—perhaps shocked—her friends to know how much time she spent with him; but it would have shocked them still more to know the topics of the conversations between them. She herself was amazed every time she left him; not at the range and depth of his interests and his knowledge—but at her own. He seemed to evoke ideas and words that she had never dreamed were there. It struck her as little short of sorcery.
But the situation was not wholly pleasant. There were little rifts to mar the lute. The first came after several weeks. It was Roger who introduced it.
"Say, Judith," he said suddenly, one night at dinner, "Good's going to be up and around pretty soon. You can't keep him cooped up there forever, you know. When are you going to have him down to meals?"
He voiced a question which had been occurring with troublesome frequency in her own mind. She was silent for a moment, as she struggled with a decision she could no longer evade. It was a curious predicament in which events had placed her—not easy to understand readily. It was indisputable that Good was ignorant of either the theory or practice of those conventions of the table upon which, against her will, she set much store. It was equally certain that he was quite conscious of his deficiencies in that respect. Were she in his place, she told herself, she would prefer not to suffer the embarrassments which the contrasts between themselves and him must entail. But on the other hand, did she not perhaps over-emphasise his sensitiveness, and was it not more than probable that to his sense of proportion her conception of themannerof human intercourse was absurd, if not pitiful? She found herself in a situation where, in an effort to be kind, she might be cruel. And what was to her merely tact, might be to him pure snobbishness. That settled the problem. She could not risk even the appearance of pettiness. The decision made her realise, as nothing else had, how much his judgments had come to mean to her.
"You're right, Roger," she said finally; "we'll have him down to-morrow."
Roger looked at her quizzically.
"Where?" he asked.
"Where?" She affected bewilderment.
"Yes. Here ... or alone ... or...?"
She struggled momentarily.
"Why, here—of course—with us," she said firmly. Then very quickly, and with finality, she changed the subject. It was a trifling incident; but had she settled all later problems as she settled that one, the course of her life would have been changed completely.
These were agreeable days, on the whole, for Judith and her guest, but not for Roger. Pursuant to his sister's ultimatum and his own high resolution taken thereon, he had fared forth, paladin-like, to conquer that mysterious world wherein men bought and sold all manner of things, not excluding themselves. But it had proven anything but the high road to glory that he had secretly anticipated; he shivered lances daily with an intangible enemy which neither showed its face nor gave its name, but before which he seemed quite powerless.
He had gone first, as he said he would, to Judge Wolcott, and had, with perhaps less humility than he himself thought he was displaying, but with more than might naturally have been expected, announced his readiness to consider any satisfactory (emphasised) "position" to which he might be directed.
To his resentment, not to say surprise, the Judge had first laughed unrestrainedly. But on realising the offence he was giving, which Roger was at no pains to conceal, he had become quite serious, and had directed the young man to a number of gentlemen, whose names he wrote out on a bit of cardboard.
These gentlemen, however, had proved to have their habitat behind corps of more or less impertinent menials. It had required very explicit answers to what he considered a great number of entirely unnecessary questions before he earned even the privilege of having his card presented.
Once in the inner sancta, however, he had been treated most courteously, the objects of his calls being impressed with the name of Wynrod no less than with that of Wolcott. But after the exchange of sundry pleasantries and compliments, he had invariably been shunted, though with exquisite tact and delicacy, on to someone else.
He had found this process of education in the ways of the business world excessively tiresome; but there was in his character a powerful, if inconspicuous, vein of obstinacy, and he stuck grimly to the task in hand. But he was nothing if not human, and his constant failure gradually wore down his courage. To advance slowly would be hard enough, he told himself; but not to move at all was altogether disheartening.
The natural consequence of it all was that he went into town later and later, and came out earlier and earlier. There even came days when he did not go in at all.
And the consequence of that was that he saw more and more of Good, with the result that he fell under the stranger's spell even more completely than his sister had.
In that fact, curiously enough, Judith found something to reconcile her with the lad's failure to consummate the task she had set for him. He might spend his time with worse men, she told herself, than with Brent Good. But she saw to it that the latter's hours were not wholly spent with Roger.
As the stranger grew in strength, she procured him a pair of crutches, and with their aid, and that of the motor-car, they were able to take little jaunts off into the surrounding country-side. On these trips it almost brought the tears to her eyes to perceive the exquisite pleasure the sight and the smell of growing things seemed to give him.
"I've never known anyone who enjoyed the country as much as you do," she said one day, after he had waxed particularly enthusiastic over a view from one of the near-by hills.
"I've never seen anything but city," he answered. Then he added very simply: "I was pretty nearly a man before I saw my first cow." His brow clouded reminiscently, and although she ached to draw him out on his past, his evident unwillingness to speak of it further made her hesitate.
Only once did he make any other reference to his childhood. She had been saying how difficult it was to make people spell her name correctly.
"You don't have any difficulty there," she added.
"Not much," he admitted. "Queer name, isn't it," he said after a pause. "Queer the way I got it, too. Like to hear about that?"
She smiled at the innocence of the query, but forced herself merely to nod her head.
He smiled, and a curious expression of tenderness came into his eyes.
"You see, I was born without a name. That is, I never had any parents—or never knew who they were, which amounts to the same thing. I was just one of those nameless little scraps of a city's flotsam that get found on people's doorsteps every now and then. That is, I think I was. I guess I was about five when I began to be conscious of self. As far back as I can remember, I was selling chewing gum and getting food by begging from restaurants at night and sleeping in doorways and packing-boxes. Then I sold newspapers, and got prosperous, and when I was about ten—I guess it was ten—you see, I don't really know even how old I am—I got into the hands, somehow or other, of an old Jew rags-old-iron man." He was silent for a moment, and the expression of tenderness spread over his whole face. "He was a good sort—that old kike. He fed me as well as he could—which wasn't very well—and taught me to write and figure and read—good books too. I knew the Public Library better than you know your own house. He didn't just make me read books—he made me like them. He'd come from Russia where he couldn't get them, and he knew what books were. What your Church and brother and friends and home are to you, books were to old Zbysko. He taught me to love them, too. He did lots of things for me when doing things wasn't easy. And he gave me the only name I ever had."
"Your name? I don't understand."
"Yes, the old chap was a great believer in patent medicines. He honestly thought the men who made them were philanthropists. He gave me the name of one of them." He laughed reminiscently. "I suppose I have one of the best known names in the world! I see it everywhere."
"And the old man...?"
"They didn'tcallit starvation—doctors never do name things right. I think I was about thirteen then. They tried to send me to an institution, but I ran away. I've shifted for myself since."
He lapsed into silence, and Judith could get no more out of him that day. He was too obviously busy with his memories.
One Sunday morning, about a month or so after the accident, Judith was struck by a whimsical idea. She broached it to her guest immediately.
"Mr. Good," she said at breakfast, "I have a favour to ask of you...."
"It's granted already," he said gallantly.
"Wait—it may not prove so easy. I know you don't care for church-going, but I want you to go with me—this morning."
He looked dejected. "I should be delighted—honestly. But look—" He indicated his old brown suit, which in spite of the constant and earnest endeavours of Roger's valet, still looked indisputably shabby.
"No matter. We'll go late and sit in the back and nobody will see us. But here's the real favour. There's to be a clergyman out from the city, this morning, who is a friend of mine. Arnold Imrie is to preach, and ..."
"Is Arnold coming?" broke in Roger. "By George, I'll go myself. He's a wonder."
"That's what I wanted to find out," said Judith. "That is, I want to find out ifyouthink so, Mr. Good. The people here think just that. I want to get your opinion."
"That's hardly fair, is it, Miss Wynrod? He's a personal friend of yours, and you know already what I think of church—yet you want my opinion of both."
"No—not both; just the man."
Good shook his head. "I doubt if they can be separated," he said dubiously.
"Well, we'll worry about that later. It's settled that you'll come?"
"Of course, but—"
"Thank you. I'll be ready in a minute."
All the way to the church Good protested that she was taking an unfair advantage of him. But Judith refused to heed his protests.
They paused for a moment on the low rise overlooking the church, to survey it. Judith was very fond of its weathered grey stones, almost buried in the luxuriant ivy. She had been christened and confirmed in it, and the stained glass windows at opposite ends of the transept—masterpieces they were, too—were gifts of hers, in memory of her long-dead father and mother. It was an exquisite little edifice, a genuine bit of Tudor, without a particle of "adaptation," looking as if it had been transplanted bodily from some English vale, together with the soil upon which it stood, and the well trimmed trees which surrounded it. She felt a little catch in her throat, as the memories clustered before her.
"Pretty, isn't it?"
"Yes," said Good slowly. "It's pretty...."
She did not like the hesitant qualification implied in his tone.
"Is there a reservation?"
"Well,"—he cocked his head on one side, and knitted his brows. "Yes. It's too beautiful. It's beauty in the wrong place. The people out here have beauty enough without it. I'd like it better if it was in the city—in the heart of the city—with its trees and its vines and its grass. It's needed more there." Then he laughed. "Oh, Miss Wynrod, you must be careful what you ask me. I'm a queer fellow. Most of the things you think are all right, I think are all wrong. You'd have to have lived my life to see things the way I see them."
She was vaguely disappointed and hurt, and she made no attempt to reply. Every now and then he did bewilder her by flights of thought which she found herself incapable of following. Usually she tried to argue, but the little church was too intimate a thing for that. She said nothing, and silently they went on into it.
She had timed their arrival carefully so as to get there just before the sermon, and unobtrusively they slipped into one of the side pews in the rear. But the building was so small that they had a very good view of the Reverend Arnold Imrie, sometime stroke of the Yale crew, Fellow of Oxford, and one of the strongest heads that ever succumbed to a Heidelbergkneipe.
He was a well-built, good-looking young man, with close cropped curly blonde hair, and a clear skin and eyes. His complexion was ruddy, but bronzed, as if he were still not unused to out-of-doors. Yet there were two lines between his eyes, and a stoop to his shoulders that seemed to betoken an equal familiarity with the study. Indeed his whole manner and appearance gave the same paradoxical impression. It seemed to Good, as he studied him, that Doctor Imrie was the product of a victory of the mind over the body. He was the conscious ascetic, triumphing over the instinctive sensualist. It was not hard to imagine that the clergyman was very fond of the good things of the world, however much he might neglect them in favour of the things of the spirit.
And in that estimate he was substantially correct. Imrie had gone into the ministry, not really from choice, but from a painfully acute sense of duty inherited from his Knoxian forbears. Contradicting an abounding vitality was an overwhelming consciousness of sin, based, it must be confessed, on a fair modicum of actuality, impelling him, irresistibly, toward a fear and a hatred of the flesh. Some men enter the Church positively, out of love for their God and their fellow men: but Imrie had entered it negatively, from a fear and a distrust of the devil in himself. Of his fellow men, in the mass, at least, he never thought at all.
All these things Good sensed very clearly. But, he thought to himself, Imrie was a young man, whose life had progressed in one channel ... and there were a great many channels in the world. If anything should ever occur to move him from his channel, a great many things might happen. There were more Imries than the congregation, gazing respectfully with tranquil eyes, saw.
It was quite characteristic of Imrie's neglect for the human equation in life, that he should choose for his text that morning, the Evils of Idleness—when fully two-thirds of his auditors represented the very apotheosis of idleness. But it was equally explanatory of his popularity among them. He had the faculty, wholly unconscious though it was, of being able to castigate them eloquently for their sins, but in such an abstract and impersonal fashion as to leave them quite untroubled at its close.
His words, now, uttered with unquestioned sincerity, were hot and forceful, his logic clear, his conclusions inescapable. He spoke eloquently, his manner was impressive, and his delivery beyond criticism. His hearers gave him their closest attention. Many of them heard so well that later they would recall graphic bits, to quote, and to use as explanation of their admiration of him. But not a brow clouded. Not a soul was pained. He never perturbed his congregation. Judge Wolcott expressed its feelings when he said, "I like to hear Arnold preach because it brightens the day for me." Imrie was hardly a Savonarola.
They had had disagreeable preachers at Braeburn, once or twice. One was a particular disappointment. He was a missionary bishop from somewhere in Africa, and the renown of his exploits had filled every seat. But he proved to be an unattractive little man, with a falsetto voice and shabby clothes, who not only spoke very badly, but who said some very unnecessary and unpleasant things. Arnold Imrie was different. He spoke their language, and they understood him. He was one of them. He had grown up in their midst. Many of them called him by his first name. He was perhaps a trifle too serious to people who found life rather more amusing than otherwise, but on the whole they thought him more than satisfactory. He was a gentleman. He was good. He was sincere. He was orthodox. He never failed to point out the error of their ways—but he never failed to do it with subtlety. And in a day when so many clergymen were allowing themselves to wander into undesirable, if not absolutely forbidden fields, he stuck to religion, where he belonged. And he was not only delightful in the pulpit, but one could ask him to dine, with perfect confidence in the result. As Good listened he turned to survey the congregation. There was unqualified approval on every face. He listened for a moment or two longer. Then he smiled faintly, as one might at a play he has seen several times, and fell to counting the ticking of his watch, wondering how much longer the sermon would last.
Nor was his impatience lost on Judith.
But Imrie never preached long sermons. In a very few minutes he had wound up with his usual stirring peroration, and left the pulpit. Good had an almost irresistible impulse to clap, not as expressing approbation, but admiration for a difficult task well done. He smiled—not wholly pleasantly—at the look of devout complacency on the faces of all the well dressed men and women about him. Not one, he reflected, who had listened so attentively to this stirring denunciation of idleness, knew what realtoilwas—or had any desire to know. He wanted to rush to the pulpit himself—and tell them what it was. But he followed Judith out quietly enough.
She had planned their exit so as to be well in advance of the crowd, but she could not miss them all. She was irritated at the curious glances flung at her and her companion, though she tried not to notice them. It was only when a bow was quite unavoidable that she acknowledged it. She was angry with herself for her self-consciousness. But when she glanced at her companion, with his spotted, weather-beaten, shapeless suit, and his antiquated, sun-burned hat, not to speak of his lean and angular figure; and then at her own trim presence, she had to smile. They did present a curious spectacle, and the covert smiles were justified. Still—she was honest enough to admit it—it would please her more to see Good somewhat better dressed. It did not occur to her that it would please him too.
They walked along slowly for a little while, in silence. Good was the first to speak.
"The inside was beautiful, too. That carved oak was fine. Just enough carving. Not too much. Usually there is. And the windows—the sunlight filtering in through that one on the left was like the organ when the vox humana pedal is on—all shimmering. It was very beautiful. So restful. All churches should be like that. The Catholics have the right idea. It...."
"And the sermon?" she broke in quizzically.
He stopped short and looked at her narrowly. Her faint smile was not lost on him.
"Now, Miss Wynrod—that isn't fair," he expostulated. "I told you not to do that. Really...."
"But that's what I brought you for," she said. "Of course you like the church. Anyone would. But I want to know about the rest of it. You promised, you know."
He studied her thoughtfully. "Well," he said finally, "let's wait till we get to that bosky dell up there. Then we can sit down and have it out."
When they were seated, Good fell to toying with a stick, and making little circles in the sand. She waited patiently for him to begin. Finally he raised his head and looked at her half timorously from under his bushy eyebrows.
"You won't be angry or disgusted if I tell you what's on my mind?" he inquired.
"Have I ever been?"
"No—you've been quite remarkable in that respect," he admitted. "But this is different."
"Go on—don't excuse yourself any more."
"Well, his text ... they nearly lynched a priest out in Colorado for that. You see, he was preaching to strikers, and when he told them that idleness was the root of all evil ... you couldn't hardly blame them, now could you?"
She laughed at that. "But there aren't any strikers here," she persisted.
"No, but to talk about idleness is almost as pointless here as there. Why didn't he say something that would get under their hides? Look at them coming up the street. Do they look as if they had been filled with a fear of the Lord?"
"Do you think people go to church to be frightened?"
"I'm sure I don't know why they go," he said cheerfully. "I never could. I'd rather do almost anything. Church-going always irritates me. The preachers are so spineless—like this Mr. Imrie. He had a good theme. But he didn't carry it out. Maybe he didn't know how. Maybe he didn't dare...."
"You don't know Mr. Imrie," she said. "He'd dare—anything."
"All right. But that doesn't change what would happen if he did dare, or did know. I've read the Bible quite a bit. Suppose Jesus came back and got up in the pulpit and lit into his congregation the way he lit into the money changers—'vipers' and all that? Why, the vestry would have his scalp before the sun set, wouldn't they?"
"You seem to be rather hostile to religion, Mr. Good," said Judith, vaguely offended.
He shrugged his shoulders in a manner indicative of helpless annoyance.
"Oh, Miss Wynrod—I didn't expect that of you. That's what they all say. Roast the established Church and they call you an atheist or worse. I'm not opposed to religion—why should I be? I can't say I dislike the air I breathe, can I? But I haven't much use for an organisation that doesn't live up to its confession of faith. Here are your Christian Churches, founded on a rebellion against hypocrisy and privilege and materialism, deliberately encouraging complacency and selfishness and peace and quiet and oh—everything that its founder got crucified for. I've come to know Jesus pretty well. I like him. He's the kind of leader men want to follow. If he was alive to-day I'd be one of his lesser disciples. And I'll bet a dollar that all your eloquent, dogmatic, spiritual, irrelevant Imries would be running to the local Pilate to have us jugged!"
"What makes you think you know Jesus better than—our Imries?" she asked softly.
"I don't," he answered earnestly. "Knowing people is a subjective affair. I know you as one person. Your brother knows you as another. You may know yourself as very different from either of the two. It's the same way with Jesus. We both made his acquaintance in the same way, so we are both entitled to our opinion. But look here. You think Imrie's nearer to Jesus than I am, don't you?"
"Why, really, I...." she stammered and coloured slightly.
"Of course you do. Well, I ask you this. Do you honestly think that Imrie's Jesus—the Jesus he serves up to you on Sundays,—the cold, logical, snobbish abstraction—would ever have gotten anybody so sore that they'd crucify him? Of course you don't. Well what do you think that congregation would do to me if I got up in the pulpit and gavemyJesus—the fiery, human, uninspired, blood-red revolutionary that I conceive him to be? You know without my telling you. Why, they'd have me arrested if I used his own thoughts expressed in modern language—yes, if I used his actual words—andappliedthem. Suppose Imrie took that stuff about the millstone, and applied it to Corey's cash girls and delivery boys. Do you think the old man would be anxious to hear Imrie again?"
"You seem to have thought a great deal about Jesus," said Judith, with a faintly veiled sarcasm. But he did not sense that.
"Yes," he said naïvely. "Haven't you?"
She was silent at the unconscious rebuke, profoundly stirred by the paradoxicality of the situation. She wanted to answer him in the affirmative, wanted to very, very much. But she knew that she could not. Jesus was not the living, breathing companion of every day that he seemed to be to this irreverent infidel. He was far more sacred to her, but far less a vital factor in the commonplaces of existence. She was honest enough to admit it. But he appeared not to notice her tacit confession.
"You see," he went on patiently, as if expounding a very simple problem to a rather young and stupid child, "your stained-glass faith isn't founded on Jesus at all. You're a Paulist. Like him, you're a Roman citizen, an aristocrat, a mystic. Jesus wasn't any of those things. He was the next thing to a slave, a man of the common people, and for all purposes of comparison, a thorough-going materialist. He had no dogma to preach, other than that the kingdom of the earth should belong to the dwellers therein. But Paul was a different sort of chap. He changed the propaganda so that it read 'kingdom of heaven,' which was a very different thing, and much more comfortable for the shaking seats of the mighty. Then the Greek philosophers got interested in that strange abortion called Christianity, added Eleusinian mysteries and what not, devised the doctrine of the immaculate conception to cover the illegitimacy of Jesus, adapted the idea of the trinity from Egyptian theology and...."
"You must study a great deal, too?" she asked, breaking in on the fluent rush of his words.
"Yes," he said, almost apologetically; "it's great stuff. I like it."
Again she was silenced by the ingenuousness of his reply. She was puzzled. She had thought she possessed a religion of conviction, but she realised, in a sudden panic, that she had not. She had been born to her faith as she had been born to her wealth and her position in society. She did not dodge the consequent thought—it could be taken from her as easily as the other things. This vagabond before her had been born with nothing—not even a name—but what he had was his own. His very impudence before sacred matters, the freedom with which he disregarded the eminence of people and ideas, betokened his superiority to her. She wanted to be disdainful, angry, displeased with him. She could not be. She was humbled before the power of his faith, as she had never in her life been humbled before the faith of Imrie. Though Good did not suspect it, she was, in a way, at a crisis.
She was silent for a little while. Then she rose with a smile.
"Well, Mr. Good, I'm not a match for you in these matters, but Mr. Imrie is coming to supper to-night and you can have it out with him face to face."
"I'd be glad to," said Good as he scrambled to his feet, very awkwardly. "But it wouldn't be any use. That's another reason for my dislike of clergymen. You can't argue with them. The major premise, though it isn't expressed of course, when you start off, is that they are right and you are wrong. They are trying to convince you—always—never to learn. They can go back to supernatural inspiration and I can't—so the argument stops before it starts. You can't do much, you know, with a man who's absolutely convinced that he's got a pipe line direct to eternity. But I'll be polite to him. I'll try to forget that he's a parson and only remember that he's your friend."
Judith smiled furtively at this magnanimous offer. It was so characteristic of the man. If there was a drop of sycophantic blood in his veins, he had yet to reveal it. And it was this sublime confidence in himself which formed one of his most potent charms for her. From birth she had been waited upon, with varying degrees of servility, depending upon the station and the hopes of those who waited. There were servants. There were young men, of varying degrees of attractiveness, station, and impecuniousness, who wanted to marry her. There were beggars, of varying degrees of honesty, who wanted her to aid them. There were the proponents of various charitable schemes, with varying degrees of sincerity and intelligence, who wanted her to sign the cheques. And in addition to those who merely wanted money, were the great swarm of both sexes, who sought the smile of her social favour, who delighted to be seen with her, to have her accept their attentions, to be invited to her functions. There had been very few people in her life who were there with a wholly disinterested purpose. And even the individuals who were disinterested—or whom she thought disinterested—had relatives who were not. In spite of her temperament, the circumstances of her birth and wealth had forced her to surround herself with a well-defined armour of suspicion. In Good's lack of reverence, of tact, of taste, of manners, of anything approaching the conventions which made up her life, she found what she had craved. Of his utter clarity of soul there could be no doubt. She never once even suspected that he had a thought which he considered worth uttering, which, from motives of expediency, he did not utter. She had given him food and lodging. He had given her—all he had to give—his open heart. It was clear that he thought they were quits. And she was glad that he did. It was her first experience of such an exchange.
She smiled again as she recalled his promise not to enter into debate with Imrie. He would treat Imrie kindly—for her sake. How Arnold would fume if he knew of such forbearance. And if Good only knew what he was saying ... well, she reflected, he would doubtless say it just the same!
At supper, true to his promise, Good was extremely taciturn. He appeared respectfully interested in all that Imrie had to say, joked pleasantly with Roger, was politely intimate with Judith, and to her very great astonishment, even went so far as to tell several very entertaining anecdotes of his experiences in the diamond mines of South Africa.
"Why," she cried, "I never knew you had been there."
"No," he said, with a twinkle in his eye and a dry little twist to his lips, "I never told you."
But after that he relapsed into comparative silence, and shortly after the meal, excused himself rather deftly, though none the less certainly, and went to his room.
Roger, as usual, had an engagement elsewhere, and presently he, too, departed. Judith and Imrie were left alone.
"That was a splendid sermon, Arnold," she said, with an effort at enthusiasm, and a subconscious question as to whether she really meant what she said.
Imrie was thoughtful. "I did my best. The congregation seemed to like it. But it could be done much better."
"So could most things."
"Perfection is no trifle, is it," he smiled. "But let's not talk of such dreadful things as sermons. I haven't seen you for ages...."
"Six weeks, to be exact," she interrupted.
"Exactly!" he thanked her with his eyes for the implication, and woman-like, she took away his pleasure deliberately.
"The accident happened the day after you left."
"Oh." He was silent for a moment. "That was a splendid thing, Judith—your taking that fellow in. Just like you. But hasn't he been something of a—well, a care?"
"On the contrary. I've enjoyed him intensely."
"But don't you find him—a little uncouth?" he persisted.
"Yes—very. But a little roughness is a relief after too much polish, isn't it?"
"Yes, of course," he admitted. "But you wouldn't confess even if you had been put out. And that's like you, too." He looked at her with an expression in his eyes, the meaning of which there could be no doubt.
"Let's go out on the porch," she said abruptly. "It's so stuffy in here."
The moon was full and it shone over a picture of loveliness. Below them, as they sat on the stone balustrade of the terrace, stretched Judith's immaculate gardens, redolent with the soft perfume of sweet pea and mignonette. As the breeze faintly stirred the leaves, the shadows danced fantastically on the sod. Over in the velvet depths of the sunken tennis courts, the fireflies flashed their lanterns incessantly. Somewhere in the distance a guitar sounded now and again, and a woman's voice rose and fell softly. It was very peaceful and pleasant, and Imrie, thinking of the hot city and the morrow, drew a deep sigh. No power on earth could prevent him from going back—but he did not pretend to think that he wanted to go.
"Don't you ever wonder what those crickets are saying?" asked Judith, conscious instinctively that her companion's eyes still burned with the same light. "Just listen to them."
"I'd rather have you listen to me," said Imrie in a choking voice, as if struggling to control himself. Suddenly his hand shot out and caught hers in a grip like iron. "I want to tell you how much I love you!" he whispered passionately.
She looked at him for a long time without replying, and he could see by the movement of the shadows on her face, that her lip quivered. Her eyes glistened, too. Then, very slowly and thoughtfully, she withdrew her hand.
"It isn't fair, it isn't fair," she repeated dully. "You promised not to."
"I know, I know—but I can't help it, my darling. I love you so much. Nothing else matters. I can't help telling you. I looked for you in church this morning and when I couldn't find you, it was so hard to go on. I didn't care, after that. It's that way always. With you beside me—it would be so different. Can't you ... don't you feel ... any different?"
She shook her head sadly. It was hard to refuse Imrie—a million times harder than all the rest. That he loved her truly, there was no doubt in her mind. Of the others, she was not so sure. But she did not love him, and it hurt tremendously to tell him so. She could not tell why. He always begged her to give a reason, and she never could. He was a good man, and an attractive man. There was nothing lacking. As candid old Mrs. Waring had told her, "Don't be a silly, my dear. You could not possibly do better." She believed that, too. Imrie was as near her ideal as she had ever ventured to formulate one. And yet....
"But I thought ... the last time ..." he was saying. "It seemed as if ... there was more hope. And now ... it seems as if there was less. Why, my dearest? Have you changed? What have I done? What haven't I done? You seem further away from me now than ever ... won't you ever come to me ... is it always to be 'the desire of the moth for the star' ... please speak to me, darling ... please...."
His voice broke under the stress of his emotion. Never had she seen him so moved. She marvelled at it. She had a turbulent wish to ask him why he never lost himself like that in his pulpit—and immediately afterwards wondered where such an outrageous, irreverent thought could have come from. That was not like her. But she knew very well who it was like.
"Is there—someone else?"
The question made her start guiltily. She was glad that her face was in shadow.
"Was there?" she asked herself. Then the absurdity of the thought made her smile to herself.
"No," she said firmly. "There is no one else."
"Then perhaps...?" His voice trailed off.
"Yes," she said mechanically, as one who answered a question without hearing it, "perhaps."
They were silent, then, for a long time. Finally Imrie held out his hand. His face, clear in the moonlight, was drawn and seemed pallid. He was visibly affected.
"I'm sorry, Judith," he said, with a perceptible tremor in his voice, "but I can't help it. Sometime—perhaps...."
"Yes." Her eyes filled with tears again, and she dared not trust herself to speak. She wanted to throw her arms around his neck and comfort him. But she would do it as she would comfort Roger—and he would know that. So she held out her hand.
"I'm sorry, too, Arnold. But let us be the good friends we have always been, anyway."
She regretted that, as she saw him wince. It was not friendship that he wanted. But she forced herself to finish in that key. It was safest.
"I hope the plans for the new church are getting on famously?"
"Yes," he said apathetically. "It's doing very well."
"You must bring out the sketches and let me see them. I'm tremendously interested."
"I will—mail them to you," he said heavily. Slowly, as if reluctant, he took her hand again, held it just a moment, and then, with a suddenness that overwhelmed her, seized her in his arms and kissed her hotly on the lips. Then, like a shadow, he fled.
For a long time after he had gone Judith sat on the balustrade, listening to the myriad noises of the night, and pondering on what had befallen her. It had been a very eventful day. She smiled as she pondered on its contrasts. But she sobered as she thought of Imrie. She felt her cheek grow warm as she recalled his kiss. Then a faint smile widened her lips at the impetuosity of it. It was so unlike him. He had never shown such—she knew he would call it disrespect—but that was not the word she would use. She hoped he would not apologise. That would spoil it all. Perhaps—if he were a little less respectful....
She could love Imrie the man, she reflected, as she walked slowly into the house. But Imrie the clergyman—she knew for a certainty that that was impossible.
"You see, Miss Wynrod, I'm as sound as a nut. I can gambol like a lamb. I am ready again to dance to the world's piping."
It was just six weeks to a day after his introduction to her that Good made this announcement, and executed a lumbering step of his own devising, to prove its truth.
"It's now the season of the sere and yellow leaf. There's work to be done. I must be about it," he added more seriously.
"If you work as you gambol, I shouldn't think you'd be much in demand," laughed Judith.
"Quite so," admitted Good, blithely. "But if my feet are clumsy my wits are nimble. I guess I can find someone to hire them at twelve dollars per week."
"Twelve dollars a week! You don't mean to say...."
Good raised his eyebrows. "Why, surely. Does that surprise you? Of course," he added half apologetically, "that doesn't represent my own valuation, by any means. ButThe Worldis a poor paper for poor people. It couldn't pay much."
"That's all very well," she cried, "but why did you work for it?"
"It needed me," he said simply, and she was silenced. There were stranger things in this man revealed at every conversation. She had never known anyone before who toiled because someone "needed" him. She was shamed by her own amazement.
"I guess I'll go on the 10.46," he said.
"No," she cried. "You won't."
He looked up at her in some surprise.
"That is, you won't," she added more mildly, "if you care to do me a favour."
"What an absurd 'if.' Give your orders."
"Well, I have some people coming to dinner on Wednesday. I—I—want them to know you."
"What a treat!" he said sarcastically.
"I want you to know them, too. You see, they're all rich people. And you've hated them without knowing what very ordinary human beings they really are. I think you owe it to your own sense of fairness to see some of the oppressors of the poor in the flesh."
"It's quite impossible," he declared firmly.
She chose to ignore the finality of his tone.
"It isn't quite just, is it, to write articles about the feelings and the motives of people you don't really know?"
He strove to divert the argument. "There's something in perspective, you know."
"Before chance threw us together you thought me distinctly wicked. You don't think that now, do you?"
"I told the paper I was in the camps of the Persians," he said sententiously. "They fired me then. Why tarry with the flesh-pots further?"
"I've often heard you say that men couldn't preach heaven until they knew life."
He threw up his hands in exasperation. "It isn't fair for a woman to be logical—it takes a man unawares."
"Then you admit I am logical?"
"Even if I wanted to stay, I couldn't."
"Why not?"
His head drooped and a faint colour showed under the bronze of his skin. But he remained silent.
"What's lacking?"
His discomfort was apparent. "I'd like to fix up a bit—get a hair-cut—and things," he stammered.
"Well, why don't you? You've got two whole days."
Suddenly he straightened, and a smile broke over his reddened features, "There's no use being silly about it, I guess. The fact is—I'm broke."
"Oh, is that all. Well, that's easily fixed. Why didn't you say so before?" she said with a smile. "You ought to take lessons from my brother."
"I don't need all this," he stammered, fingering the bill she held out to him.
"It's the smallest I have. But why didn't you tell me?"
"One doesn't like to beg."
"You're hardly consistent, are you?"
"No, I'm too human."
"Will you be human enough to forsake your principles and come to my party?"
"I'd rather not."
"That's understood. It makes the favour greater. But you will come?"
"If I must."
"I'll be very grateful."
"Then I will." The words came from him with such obvious reluctance that she could not resist a smile.
"Do be back in plenty of time."
"I'd rather break my leg again," he said gloomily. Then declining her offer of the motor-car to take him to the station, he left her.
"You're stealing my class-consciousness from me," he called from the gate way.
She laughed, not quite understanding what he meant, and watched his ungainly figure until it was out of sight. Would he return? Or had she seen the last of Brent Good? Finally she shrugged her shoulders and tried to dismiss him from her mind.
But when Wednesday came, and no Good, nor word from him, she was more keenly disappointed than she cared to admit. The two o'clock train brought a party which had arranged for some golf with Roger.
"Anyone come out with you?" she asked, as if the question were of no consequence.
"Only Joe Faxon," said one of the men. "He was bound for the Warings'."
At three Molly Wolcott came, only to disappear promptly in the direction of the golf course. At five-thirty all had arrived with the exception of Della Baker, her taciturn husband,—and Good. But on the next train, which was the last, the first two came. She greeted them as gaily as she could, with studied carelessness inquiring if anyone had been left at the station, and when they assured her that no one had, she abandoned hope definitely.
"You have the darkest, lonesomest woods out here I ever saw," cried Della. "I had all sorts of thrills. Every time I saw a man my heart came up in my mouth!"
"That," said her husband cryptically, "is quite as usual."
But Judith heard him only vaguely. She had caught sight of a familiarly angular figure striding briskly up the drive way, looming grotesquely tall in the dusk. She did not follow the others as they went into the house. She remained on the porch, a prey to conflicting emotions. It was with some difficulty that she restrained the laugh which sprang to her lips as Good came into the light from the hall. His hair had been trimmed, his face was newly shaven, and his finger-nails, she noted, as he held out his hand, were cleaner than she had ever seen them. That was enough to amaze her. But when he flung back his long rain-coat, worn in spite of the continued drought of days, and revealed evening dress—her head swam. He was quite conscious of the effect he had made. Indeed, though she made a strong effort, she could not possibly conceal it. But it did not appear to displease him. He smiled like a child, and turned around twice for her inspection.
"Some rags, eh?" he cried, smoothing out the wrinkles. "Sorry the coat doesn't match, but it was the best I could get."
Almost tearfully she joined in his enthusiasm. She shut her eyes to the antiquated cut of the garment, its unmistakable shininess at the elbows, and what must have been apparent even to himself, the fact that it fitted him only, as one might say, intermittently. But he was too pleased to care, if he had noticed such trifles.
"That's really what I needed the money for," he explained. "I wanted to bloom like a green bay tree before your friends. Pretty cute, eh?" He turned around again, and catching sight of himself in the mirror, stood preening like a peacock. "Makes me feel half dressed, though," he admitted somewhat ruefully. "This open-work front ... I've been trying to hook it together all the way out—but there aren't any hooks! First time I ever wore one of these. Look at the buttons on the vest. Ever seen anything glitter so? I tell you, Solomon in all his glory had nothing on me!"
She had not dressed Roger for nothing, and her keen eye did not miss the numerous minute lapses from perfection in Good's attire. The general effect just missed being what it should be. But his naïve pride was contagious. She found herself forgetting the essential absurdity of his costume in his own unqualified delight.
His collar was prodigiously high, and being so much taller than she, it was impossible for their eyes to meet. He looked for all the world like some grotesque bird, fitted with a more or less painful and wholly unaccustomed harness.
She dropped her handkerchief and as he stooped to pick it up a subdued groan came from him.
"I wonder what maniac ever devised such a shirt," he grumbled. "It's correct—the man told me so—showed me pictures to prove it ... but it proves that civilisation isn't civilised. Catch a savage in a straight jacket like this—I guess not."
There was a dreadful pause as she entered the library with Good. For a fleeting instant which seemed minutes to her, everyone stared at the newcomer. Then breeding reasserted itself and Judith was able to go through the introductions without further embarrassment. Good stumbled cheerfully over ladies' trains, shook hands vigorously, was uniformly "pleased to meet" everyone, and appeared quite unconscious of the interested, not to say amused gazes which followed him. But Judith could see plainly that he was not sorry when the process of acquainting him with the other guests was over and he could slip out of the conversational maelstrom into the quiet backwaters formed by the space between the piano and the wall, to stand alone in a contemplative and awkward silence. She was relieved, too, when dinner was announced.
She had been in doubt as to just where to place him at the table, but had finally decided on Molly Wolcott. She was a very animated girl, if the companion and the topic interested her, and extraordinarily taciturn if they did not. Her range of interests was not large, being chiefly concerned with the various ramifications of sport. She had once been known to turn with deliberation from a distinguished British novelist, to a callow youth whose sole claim to distinction lay in having kicked a winning goal.
Judith felt confident that Good would prove quite without attraction for her. But she would, for that very reason, leave him severely alone, and she could, herself, take care of him. With that in view, she had left her own avenues open, by seating at her left a young man whose concerns were almost exclusively gastronomic.
But, as usual, Good surprised her. Molly began, as was to be expected, by giving her partner a cursory examination, and then plunging unceremoniously into a heated discussion of the afternoon's golf, with Roger who sat across the table.
"That was the most inexcusable putt I ever hope to see," she declared.
"I was afraid of it," confessed Roger dejectedly. "That hole looked like the eye of a needle."
"You can't hole short putts without confidence," observed Ned Alder, who was a notoriously bad golfer. "Now I always...."
"Why don't you take a course of lessons in confidence?" asked Molly rudely.
"Putting," began Good interrogatively, when the laugh at the allusion to the extent and fruitlessness of Alder's golf education had subsided, "is...."
"The act of putting the ball in the hole," said Molly with a mixture of surprise and impatience in her tone. A sudden silence fell around the board as the entire company listened. The tall stranger, such an object of curiosity to all of them, had spoken for the first time.
"And you call that 'holing,' I believe?" he went on imperturbably.
"Yes," said Roger, sympathetic with Good's isolation.
"And you have to have confidence to do it successfully?"
"Lord, yes," said Alder, under his breath.
"Golf must be a very ancient game," mused Good seriously. The painful silence continued. Judith ached to say something that would rescue him from the clumsy predicament into which he had thrust himself, and she wanted to slap Molly for the expression of supercilious disdain on her face. But no words came for the one and she was not quite atavistic enough for the other.
"Yes, it's mentioned in Scripture," continued Good finally, when the pause had become almost unbearable. "You recall the injunction—something like this—'have faith and it will make thee—hole'?"
The atrocious pun was uttered amid a silence which needed only a little less tact on the part of those present to make it derisive, and with the speaker looking down at his plate, seemingly oblivious to all his surroundings. For a moment even the quiet noises of service seemed to be stilled. Then, with first a half-intimated gasp of amazement, there was a burst of almost hysteric laughter.
It was a gay and intimate gathering, and Good's contribution to the wit of the evening, served to make him, temporarily at least, part of it. Molly Wolcott's coolness quite deserted her, and with characteristic animation she turned her attention to this curious-looking individual who had the audacity to make bad jokes.
Nor was it a temporary interest. With increasing frequency she laughed aloud. The man on her right joined her. Judith was amazed. She studied Good constantly, not overlooking the fact that his cocktail was untasted. She strained her ears to catch something of what he was saying, but his voice was low, and he seemed to be talking to Molly almost confidentially. Finally, at a particularly uproarious bit of hilarity, she gave way to her curiosity.
"What on earth are you talking about?" she demanded, when a lull in the conversation enabled her to be heard.
"Oh," he said, "I was just telling Miss Wolcott about a ball game I pitched in the Philippines. We were playing the 17th Infantry and they got me full ofnepal. I did some curious things," he added reflectively.
"Were you ever in the army?" she asked in amazement.
"Seven years," he answered. "Enough to be a corporal."
Then he turned back to Molly, and Judith was silent. Would she ever get to the end of his life and the things into which it had led him? She wanted to ask him more, but he was too obviously engrossed in his companion, and as the duties of her own position required attention, she had no further conversation with him.
But as the meal progressed, and the sherry followed the cocktails, and the claret followed the sherry, and the champagne followed the claret, the conversation began to centre more and more around Good. It became almost a monologue, as he talked and they listened.
Judith was mostly silent, in sheer amazement, although occasionally she could not resist a smile at his drolleries. And when he told stories, she laughed with the rest. He possessed a remarkable faculty for imitation, and the characters in his stories required no "he said" to identify them. His voice and manner changed for each one.
Once, in a pause, she interrupted him.
"You ought to be on the stage," she cried admiringly.
"Never again," he said shortly, leaving her once more in dumfounded silence.
Never had she sensed this social side to her strange guest. Her interest in him had been primarily intellectual. He had seemed all serious. She had never forgotten the guise in which he had first appeared to her. But this was so utterly different. She found it impossible to understand.
As she scanned the laughing faces about the board, another curious thing struck her. The array of glasses in front of Good was quite untouched. But the same phenomenon was to be observed in front of her brother. It was the first time she had ever seen that, and as she rejoiced, she marvelled.
It was an unusually effective party, she reflected, as they rose, leaving the men to their cigars and coffee, and the cause of its success was plain. She smiled to herself at the fears with which she had decided upon his presence. She wondered if he guessed how surprised she was.
But later, when the gathering began to disintegrate into little groups of two's and three's, Good became strangely silent. The sparkle had gone out of his eyes, she thought, and with it, the sparkle from his mind. The bursts of laughter became less frequent, and finally ceased altogether. The lines of his face appeared to droop, as she had rarely seen them, and he stood to one side, rather moodily, as if in contemplation of his companions. His behaviour was singular. But the others appeared to notice nothing untoward. Indeed, many of them had ceased to notice him at all. He was a novelty, and like all novelties and new sensations, with them, he had begun to pall. If he was acting deliberately, she reflected, he was acting not unwisely. He was withdrawing at the apex of his hour.
Very quickly conversation flagged, as she knew it inevitably must. These friends of hers had little to say, she knew, nor said that little long. Bridge was proposed and accepted. Tables were quickly formed, and in a very few moments everyone was engrossed in the play. That is, every one but Della Baker, who had disappeared, pleading a headache, and her silent husband, who loathed cards; and Good, who did not play. Judith saw the two men stroll silently together out onto the terrace; and then, a moment later, through a door on the other side of the room, Molly Wolcott and Roger.
It must be something momentous she reflected, that could entice Molly Wolcott from a game of any sort—particularly if the stakes were likely to be high. And it was.
The momentum in this case was furnished by Roger with his determined insistence that she have a word with him.
They strolled silently through the garden until they came to one of the stone benches by the tennis courts. Roger made a gallant pretence of dusting it off with his handkerchief. Then he sat down beside her.
"Well," she said, after waiting for him to speak. "What do you want to tell me about?"
Roger lit a cigarette and threw the match away with a truculent gesture.
"You don't need to be so cold-blooded about it," he said irritably.
"About what?" she asked calmly.
"Oh, you know."
"I haven't an idea," she said artlessly.
"Oh, about everything," he stumbled helplessly.
"Everything?" There was an excellent imitation of astonishment in her voice. It brought him sharply to his feet, and he thrust his hands into his pockets with a snort of impatience.
"Yes, of course, my loving you—and all that."
"Oh...." Her noncommittal intonation was perfectly calculated.
"Well, I want an answer," he demanded belligerently. "You haven't any right to keep me dangling this way."
"But I gave you an answer."
"Not a definite one."
"I don't know how to make it any more definite. I told you I ... liked you better than anybody else, and some day, perhaps—"
"Well, that's not definite. Why don't you like me well enough to marry me?"
"Oh, but I do," she insisted warmly.
"You do...?" He was nonplussed by that example of logic.
"Yes, indeed I do."
"Well, why don't you?" There was more than a hint of exasperation in his voice. He was fast losing his temper.
"Because...."
"Because why? For goodness' sake, can't you give me a real reason ... something I can use my teeth on?"
He was striding rapidly up and down in front of her, and his growing wrath was so ill concealed under a very obvious effort at patience, that she could not resist a faint chuckle. He caught it and stopped short.
"You're laughing at me?" he declared, half interrogatively.
"Oh, Roger," she cried, "how could you think that."
"You were ... I heard you."
"I wasn't."
"Now what's the use of saying that?" he demanded.
"Don't you dare talk to me like that!" She was bolt upright herself, and wrath flamed in her own eyes. "Don't you ever dare use that tone to me, Roger Wynrod."
"I'm sorry," he said humbly, as if he really had committed a crime of incredible enormity. Then with one last gasp of justification, he added a timid "But you did...."
She would not allow him to finish. Quite illogically, but quite completely, she had changed the positions. From being the defence she had managed to make herself the prosecution, and Roger, being thoroughly masculine, was utterly dumfounded at the shift. And she, being as equally feminine, took up her new position with renewed vigour. Her voice was full of a most righteous scorn when she spoke.
"I didn't laugh at you. But suppose I did. I'd be justified. Why should I want to marry you? You're not even a man yet. You're just a boy. You've never done anything a man should. You even let that kid Jenkins beat you this afternoon. You're just a good-for-nothing lazybones, that's what you are, and you want me to marry you."
Roger tried unsuccessfully to interrupt her, each time she paused for breath, but it only seemed to intensify the flow of her condemnation. He grew more and more uncomfortable, because part, at least, of what she said, he knew to be true.
"I didn't mean to start anything like this," he put in mournfully. "I don't know how it ever started."
She did not know either, but she managed to convey to him the conviction that it was most deliberate. And that, as she knew it would, only made him more mournful still. It was in a very chastened voice and manner that he acquiesced in her suggestion that they return to the house.
He would have been astonished, as they walked silently in, had he known the very intense desire that consumed her, to kiss him.
From the funereal aspect of Roger's countenance, and the contented cheerfulness of Molly's, as they entered the room, Judith was able to surmise very shrewdly something of what had taken place. She ached to tell her doleful brother what, with true masculine obtuseness, he never in the world would guess.
Indoors, the evening dragged along, uneventful to the point of stupidity. There was a little excitement, not unmixed with acerbity, when Ned Alder, contrary to his usual habit, proved clever enough with the cards to add a not inconsiderable sum to his already swollen fortune. But his amazed joy was more than offset by Roger's patent depression and Molly's inexplicable apathy. Altogether it was not as successful a party, as it had given promise of being, and it broke up early.
As the adieus were being said, Judith realised that Good was missing. In the early part of the evening, he had wandered in and out, now watching the play, now chatting momentarily with someone who was free; but had finally disappeared. She could not believe that his unceremonious absence was permanent, although she knew that that was not impossible. So as soon as she could, after attending to the comfort of those who were to spend the night with her, she went in search of him.