CHAPTER IX.
"Now, if this earthly love has power to make
Men's being mortal, immortal; to shake
Ambitions from their memories, and brim
Their measure of content: what merest whim
Seems all this poor endeavour after fame."
One day Judith, who had been in the village, went up to see Miss Myers. It was intensely warm. To the eye the air seemed to quiver with heat; a brazen sun shone in a cloudless sky; the birds were still; nature was dumb; the only sounds which broke the stillness were echoes of enforced toil. As Judith walked along the lanes, now grown deep in grass, the fragrance of over-ripe clover came to her in waves of satiating sweetness. The birds she startled uttered no cry, but flew heavily to some near perch and sat there languidly, with feathers ruffled on their little heads, their tiny bills apart as if they gasped for breath, their wings drooping loosely with parted feathers at their sides.
When she reached the house on the hill, she went straight through the hall to the kitchen, for she had long ago been given the liberty of the house.
Miss Myers bustled up with grim kindness, took away her hat, made her sit by the window, and brought her a great cool goblet of raspberry syrup in water. It was very cool in this big kitchen. The windows were heavily hung with Virginian Creeper, and the stove was in the summer kitchen. Rufus lay stretched in one corner, his ears flapping as he snatched irascibly at a tormenting fly.
Miss Myers had been a little upset when Judith entered, and she proceeded to tell Judith her worries. She had come out to inspect the kitchen work, and found her milk pans set out without their bunches of grass.
"A silly notion of Sarah Myers," the Ovid women called it, but it was a dainty one nevertheless—one Miss Myers' mother and mother's mother had always observed, since ever the first Myers left the meadows of Devon. This notion was that all summer long Miss Myers insisted that the polished milk pans, when set out to sweeten in the sun, should each have a bunch of fresh grass or clover put in it, to wither in the pan. She declared it gave sweetness and flavour to the milk.
Miss Myers had many dainty ways in her house-keeping. The glossy linen sheets were laid away with clusters of sweet clover in their folds. Her snowy blankets were packed with cedar sprigs. Her table linen was fragrant all summer with the stolen perfume of violets or rose leaves strewn with them in the linen drawer. And in the winter there were twigs of lemon thyme and lemon verbena there, carefully dried for that purpose. "All notions," the villagers said contemptuously, adding something about old maids. Nevertheless, these notions savoured the whole household with sweetness, and seemed to add beauty to the more prosaic details of every-day work.
Since Judith had come so frequently to the house, there had always been flowers upon the dining table and in the parlour, and in the big dim bedroom.
Hot as it was, Miss Myers was ready to go out and patrol the garden, which, subdued beneath the sun's caresses, lay exhaling a hundred varied scents. The tall white lilies were in bloom at last, ineffably lovely, with golden hearts and petals whose edges were silvery in the sunshine.
When Andrew returned at night from his fields, his strong face a little weary, his eyes restless and eager, the first sight that met his vision was Judith Moore,—Judith, in a simple dark blue frock, standing in the doorway of his home, and looking—he dared hope—for him. She looked so consonant with the old house and the flowerful garden that Andrew felt no other presence in the world would have completed the picture so well.
How sweet to see a woman waiting there for him! Even as he had dreamed. He stood some time and watched her, himself unobserved. How sweet and calm her face was—yet anticipative, content—yet eager! He looked at her long across the narrow space from where he stood, and in after days recalled her untroubled beauty very clearly.
He tried to note in detail the form of her features, but he could only think of her faithful eyes, the beauty of her honest smile, the promise of her mouth, with the deep hollow between the lower lip and the dimpled hillock of her chin, which is, they say, the truest indication of a woman's capacity for real love, just as heavy eyelids denote modesty, and thin nostrils delicacy of the senses.
Some sympathy, some subtle mental influence, made Judith flush and look about her. Andrew slipped around the corner of the house, to come behind her in a few minutes rid of the day's dust. He touched her gently on the shoulder. She started, yet laughed. "I knew you were coming," she said; "I did not hear you, but I was certain of it."
After tea, they three (for Judith felt shy of Andrew to-night, and clung to Miss Myers, and gently compelled her to step forth with them) walked up and down the garden walks.
The flowers, their fragrance freshened by the dew, flung forth their odours royally. The birds, revived by the coolness, were singing their deferred songs. An oriole's liquid note was answered from the lindens; the robins were flying about from tree to tree with happy confidence; some Phoebe birds were fluttering about the porch; sparrows were wrangling in the box; a humming-bird was darting from bed to bed; emerald-throated, ruby-crested, it vibrated from flower to flower, itself like an animated vagrant blossom; the swallows were darting in long, graceful flights high in air, or soaring in slanting circles over the barns, where their nests were; now and then, flying slowly homeward, a crow crossed their vision, a shadow on the sky.
The heavy toads hopped lumberingly forth from their hiding-places to search for slugs; a tree toad gave its shrill call from a cedar tree. Andrew had once shown Judith one, clinging like a lichen to the bark, and of much the same greyish-green colour. The crickets sang shrilly and sweetly, like boy sopranos in a vestured choir; the frogs, in a far-off pond, added their unfinished notes to Nature's vespers; bats flew silently and weirdly overhead.
"Do you know what the frogs say?" asked Andrew of Judith.
"No; what?" she asked, looking up so eagerly, so trustingly, that a smile twitched the corners of his mouth, even as he longed to gather her in his arms.
"The little frogs with the shrill voices say, 'Cut across! cut across! cut across!' The wise old frogs, the big ones, with the bass voices, say, 'Go round! go round! go round!'"
Judith listened, her eyes big with interest. "Why, so they do," she said, and looked at him as at a wizard revealing a mystery.
Miss Myers laughed, her grimness tempered by a tear. "Tell her about the mill-pond frogs, Andrew," she said.
"Oh, well, the frogs in the mill-pond over beyond Ovid, used to say, 'Old Andy Anderson is a thief! Old Andy Anderson is a thief!' and no one paid any attention; but after a while people found out he was cheating them, not giving them the proper weight of flour, and so on, for their grists. Then they found the frogs were telling the truth."
"Mr. Cutler," said Judith, "did people know what the frogs said before they found out that the miller stole?"
"Well," admitted Andrew, laughing a little, "I don't believe they did."
In the instance of the mill-pond frogs the oracle was fitted to the event, as it has been in other cases.
Later the dusk fell, and the moon slowly soared aloft; a midsummer moon, indescribably lovely; such a moon as is seen once in a lifetime—pale, perfect, lustrous as frosted silver, white as unsmirched snow, seeming to be embossed upon the sky. Such a moon haunted Keats, inspired Shelley, whispered a suggestion of kinship to Philip Sidney, and long, long ago, shone upon the Avon.
And beneath this moon, intense as white flame, pure as a snow crystal, Judith Moore and Andrew Cutler began their walk to the farmhouse by the wood. Judith held her skirts gathered up about her from the dew; she was bareheaded, her broad hat hanging on her arm. They had to pass along a path deep shadowed in trees. Judith started nervously at some sound; that start vibrated to Andrew's heart. He drew her arm within his, and Judith walked dreamily on, feeling secure against the world and all its fears. They emerged into the moonlight, and stopped where Andrew had constructed a rude stile over the rail fence, for Judith's convenience. Their eyes met in the moonlight, each knew the hour had come, and the heart of each leaped to its destiny.
"Judith," said Andrew, very softly.
"Yes," she whispered.
"What is the sweetest time in all the world?"
She paused a moment; then, as a flower bends to the sun, as a flame follows the air, she swayed slowly towards him. "Now," she breathed, her heart in the word.
And the next moment she was in his arms; their lips had met.
From the shadows of the wood they had passed came the silvery call of the cat-bird that sings to the moon—and they two had drunk of "life's great cup of wonder;" only a sip perhaps, but their mouths had touched the golden brim, their lips had been dipped in its priceless nectar (the true nectar of the fabled gods!) and their nostrils had known the sweets of its ineffable perfume.
So they stood, heart to heart. All that the world comprehended for Andrew was now in the circle of his arms. And Judith? All her world throbbed in Andrew's breast.
And for both there was no other universe but the heaven of their mutual love,—a heaven shut in and hedged about by two strong tender arms; a heaven sustained by two hands that fluttered pleadingly upon Andrew's breast. Not strong hands these, but strong enough to hold in safe-keeping the treasure-trove of a good man's love!
And their talk? Well, there are some sacred old-fashioned words, tender words, such as our fathers whispered to our mothers long ago, such as their fathers, and their fathers' fathers, wooed and won their wives with, such as their wives whispered back with trembling lips—these words passed between Andrew and Judith. We all dream these words. Some few happy ones hear them; some brave true souls have spoken them; and from some of us even their echo has departed, to be merged in unending silence. So we will not write them here.
And at last they parted. Andrew strode slowly homeward, his face glorified, stopping now and then to fancy he held her once more against his breast, feeling again the fragrance of her hair, hearing in the happy throbs of his heart her trembling words saying that she loved him.
Loved him! The mystery and magic of its meaning wrought into his heart, until it seemed too small to hold its store of joy. He took off his cap in the moonlight, and looked to the heavens a voiceless aspiration to be worthy.
And well might Andrew Cutler bare his brow, for there had been given into his hands the holiest chalice man's lips know, the heart of a good woman! Well might Judith Moore, in a burst of happy tears, vow vows to be worthy, resolving to be better, stronger, nobler, for she had been given that great gift for which, we are told, thanks should be rendered, fasting—the gift of a good man's love!
* * * * * *
"MY DEAR MASTER,—After all, you see, I am the one to write first, and I am afraid you will be very angry when you read my letter. But I hope you will forgive me. I will tell you now, at once, what it is, and while you read my letter try to forget I am Judith Moore the opera singer, and remember only that I am a woman first and foremost. And a woman needs love, and I have found it, and cannot bear to give it up, as I must, if I come back to you—to the stage. So, will you set me free? Will you let me stay here? Will you let me stop singing and be forgotten? I know how dreadful this will seem to you, how ungrateful I will appear, how ignoble to give up my art for what you will call 'a passion'; but oh, dear master! you cannot know all this is to me, this love. It is everything, health, happiness, hope, all. And it is not that I have forgotten your gifts; indeed, indeed, no. It is that I am so sure of your great generosity, that I want you to be still more generous; to add one more gift, the supreme one. For in spite of what I've said it all rests in your hands. I know what you have spent on me, in money alone, besides your continual thought for me. I know how patient you have been, letting me save my voice till it was mature and strong. I know you will have horrible forfeits to pay on the lease of the opera house, and then all the chorus on your hands, and the terrible advertising for this American season. I know the horrible fiasco it will seem to the public, and how your jealous rivals will make capital out of the mythical prima donna who did not materialize. But all this is the price of a woman's whole life, the purchase money of a life's happiness. Will you help pay it? For I will do what I can. There is the money you gave me after the Continental season. It is untouched; take that. And there are my jewels—all these gifts, you know—in the vault. I send you the order for those. And the man I love may be richer yet, and I will say to him, 'I owe a dear friend a debt,' and you shall have, year by year, all we can send. Does it not seem that in time I might make it up? And the artistic disappointment you feel, oh, master! To lose my art seems indeed a crucifixion to me, but in that there is hope of resurrection. To lose my love would be unending death.
"I know myself well now. I am a woman full-grown within these last weeks, and even as I write I know that I will have many bitter regrets, many sad hours thinking of my music; but what are these hours compared with an unceasing pain such as will be mine if you say no to my dream? Of course, I know I am bound to you by no contract; but the confidence you have shown in me binds me with a firmer bond, and if you feel you cannot release me I will do my best, my very best to realize your hopes. You know I am honourable enough for that. But one thing, dear master, I lay upon you. If you come for me, taking me away from my happiness, remember never to speak to me of it, never refer to this letter, never tell me your reasons for refusing the boon I crave from you on my knees. If I see you I shall know I have asked too much, and that it has been denied me. There is but one thing more. The man, my man, is utterly ignorant of my money value. He sees in me only a woman to love, take care of, and work for. He does not know that I can earn more in a week than he in years. He realizes most keenly the beauty of music, but he does not know what it brings in the markets of the world. I would ask him to let me sing, but I know well that such singing as mine demands the consecration of all; when I sell my voice, the body, the heart, the soul goes with it, all subordinated to the voice. That would not do. He has given all, he must and shall have all in return, all I have to give, or nothing. He knows me only as a woman who came here for rest, quiet and health; he does not dream my name is billed about the city on coloured posters, talked of as a common possession by every one—does not know the papers are full of my doings or intentions. So you see it is myself he loves. And now, master, this is good-bye. Good-bye to you and the old life, which, before I knew any better, seemed the best of all. I hope I may some time see you again, but not till I can greet you without too great joy in my release, without too keen pain for my music.
"Send me a line and tell me I am free, and believe me, ever and ever, Judith Moore, your own grateful little girl.
"P.S.—I have said nothing of my gratitude to you, but this letter means that or nothing. Means that I am so sensible of what I owe to you that I will give up my very life showing you that I do not forget your long-continued kindness. J. M."
This was the letter the post took away from Ovid next morning, a letter written not without tears.
* * * * * *
After the music of the gods has once been breathed through a Pipe, it is never quite content to echo common sounds, not even if its heart be given back to it, and it be born again a growing reed among its fellows; even if it echoes back the soughing of the summer wind, and is never torn by the tempest; even if it grows continually in the sunshine, and never bends its head beneath the blast; even if it be crowned with brown tassels, and all men call it beautiful. It still has the hungry longing, the dissatisfied yearning, the pain that comes of remembered greatness, even if that greatness was bought at bitter cost. The true gods may well
"Sigh for the cost and pain,
For the reed which grows never more again
As a reed with the reeds in the river."
For that pain is poignant, and perhaps more of us endure it than is imagined. It may be, these inexplicable yearnings of our souls for some vague good, these bitter times when not even life seems sweet, these regrets for what we have not known, for what we think we have never been, for what is not, these may be dim memories from ages back, from the times when the voices of the gods spake through men, and men gave heed to them, and, unmindful of their own personal pain, proclaimed to man the messages of the gods. And though this birthright brings pain with it, yet we, growing like other reeds, and proud as they of our brown tassels, or sorrowing, like them, for our lack, are proud also to know that of our kind the gods chose their instruments for the making known of their music to men. The yearning for the divine breath may be better borne than the cruel afflatus it imparts, and yet we are glad that once we were not unworthy to be so tried, and not all rejoiced that the keener pain, the higher honour, is taken from us.
* * * * * *
Sometimes before a great storm an illusive hush holds sway, a perilous peace falls upon the face of nature. With it, a mysterious light irradiates the sky; a solemn sunshine, prophetic of after rains, the forerunner of tempest—a luminous warning of wrath to come. In some such fashion surely the face of the angel shone when he, as the writers of tales tell us, drove our parents out of Paradise.
It was this illusory illumination that gilded the lives of Judith Moore and Andrew Cutler at this time. How few of us read the rain behind the radiance!
They were both happy. As a parched plant vibrates in all its leaves, stirs and quickens when given water that means life to it, so Judith Moore's whole being trembled beneath its baptism of love. For she seems to have had no doubt that her manager—her "master," as she lovingly called him—would grant her request. Already her past life, with all its work, and waiting, and triumph, seemed but a dim dream, her present hope the only reality. She ran about the Morris house so lightly that it seemed to Mrs. Morris she heard the patter of children's feet, the sweetest sound that ever wove itself into this simple woman's dreams.
Judith's heart was ever across the fields with her lover, and she "sang his name instead of a song," and found it surpassing sweet. And Andrew's heart and head were both busy with loving plans for Judith.
The Muskoka woods might go, and their green mosses be torn for minerals! No more long, lonely hunts for him! He must reap golden harvests wherever he might for Judith, now. He knew all her insufficiencies as a housewife, which poor Judith felt very humble in confessing; and it gave Andrew great joy, in a modest way, that he would be able to let her be quite free of them.
And he had higher dreams. Politics offers a wide arena for ambition. Its sands may have been soiled by the blood of victims, trodden by the feet of hirelings, defiled by the struggles of mercenaries; but there are yet some godlike gladiators left, who war for right; there are yet noble strifes, and few to fight them; and Andrew, in whose heart patriotism was as a flaming fire, resolved to dedicate himself for the fray. To win glory for Judith, to do something to savour his life that it might be worthy of her acceptance, that it might leave some fragrance upon the tender hands that held it—that was his aim, and he felt he would not fail.
No inherent force can be very great and not give its possessor a thrill of power. Andrew felt within him that which meant mastery of men. And in spite of difficulties and obstacles, Andrew at last won the wreath to which he had aspired in the first flush of his hope and joy.
But that was after.
* * * * * *
One day, a week after Judith had sent the letter, a group of Ovidians were in Hiram Green's store. There was old Sam Symmons, Jack Mackinnon, Oscar Randall (who, together with his hopes of political preferment, aspired to the hand of Sam Symmons' Suse), and Bill Aikins. The latter would "catch it," as he well knew, when he got home, for loitering in the store, and therefore, with some vague thought of palliating his offence, forbore to make himself comfortable, but stood uneasily by the door, jostled by each person who came in, pushed by each who went out.
Jack Mackinnon was speaking, his thin dark face wreathed in smiles.
"How d'ye like the blind horse, Mr. Symmons? I tell ye blind horses are smart sometimes! There was one Frank Peters, wot I worked for in Essex, owned, and he never would eat black oats. Critters has their likes and dislikes same as people. I once knowed a dog—but that blind horse—well, he'd never eat black oats when he had his sight—went blind along of drawing heavy loads—doctored him all winter—t'wasn't any use, sight gone, gone complete—well, as I said, he wouldn't eat black oats when he had his sight, and when, the horse was blind, sir, he knowed the difference between black oats and white, yes, just the same as when he had his sight. You couldn't timpt that horse to eat black oats, then or no time, he wouldn't so much as nose at 'em, no sir. You couldn't fool that horse on oats. But pshaw! blind horses! why Henry Acres wot I worked for in Essex—"
"Oh, shut up, Jack!" said Hiram, and Jack accepted his quietus good-naturedly, quite unabashed.
The village arithmetician had once taken the trouble to calculate how long Jack Mackinnon must have worked in Essex, deducing the amount from Jack's account of the number of years he had worked for different people there. The result showed Jack must have spent some hundred and sixty years in Essex if all his tales were true; and Jack always repudiated with scorn any question of his veracity, hoping, with great fervour and solemnity, that he "drop down dead in his tracks" if he was lying, a judgment which never overtook him.
The talk turned upon politics, as it always did if Oscar Randall was there, and old Sam Symmons was soon holding forth.
"Yes," he said, "yes, the old elections were wont to be rare times. I do remember at one election, near the close of the polls, beguiling Ezra Thompson to a barn, and there two of us held him, by main strength and bodily force, till the polls were closed. Truly he was an angry and profane man when we set him free"—here came a reminiscent chuckle, cut short to answer Oscar Randall's tentative question.
"Trouble? Get us into trouble? Yes, of a private kind. Ezra Thompson and I fought that question with our fists some seventeen times, and the lad with me had much the same number of bouts over it. But we neither of us begrudged him satisfaction. In those days a man took satisfaction out of his enemy's skin; he didn't sneak away to lawyers to bleed him in his pocket. No, no.
"Yes, 'twere a great election that! Twas the time Mr. Brown ran against Mr. Salmon. Now, it was told of Mr. Salmon, that though of good presence, and very high and mighty towards his neighbours, yet he was ignorant; and when his election came on, it was told of him how he met an English gentleman on the train once, who, wishing to learn of Canada, spoke at length with Mr. Salmon, and in the course of the talk (during which Mr. Salmon was much puffed up), the English gentleman said to him: 'And have you many reptiles in Canada?' 'No,' said Mr. Salmon (and a pompous man he was, very)—'No, we have very few reptiles, only a few foxes.' It was Mr. Salmon, too, who once refused when he was J.P. to look into the case of a poor man whose horse's leg had been broken in a bad culvert. And the man cried in a gust of rage: 'What! did you not swear to see justice done? and now you won't consider this?' 'Swear,' said Mr. Salmon, 'I did no such thing. I only took my affidavit.'" Old Sam's voice died away.
Hiram spoke from behind the counter. "The roadmasters do bring the country into terrible expenses. Look at the bill of costs that's been run up in that case at Jamestown."
"Yes," said Oscar Randall, as one having authority, "the people's money is wasted in this country with an awful disregard of the public welfare."
"You're right there, Os." "Now you bet your head's level." "Don't you mistake yourself, it's level!" "I tell you, you just hit the nail on the head that time!"
When this chorus subsided, Mr. Horne, who had just entered, said:
"What do you think of that concession, Os, out back of Braddon's?"
"There is no doubt," said Oscar, promptly, "but that is a question which must be adjusted. It is such internal disputes as these which weaken and destroy the unity of the country, and lay us open to an unexpected attack from the States, which we, by reason of disunion and strife, would be unable to cope with."
The house, composed of Hiram on his sugar barrel, Sam in the one chair, Jack Mackinnon on a cracker box, and a row of men braced against the counters on each side, fairly rose at this. Clearly Oscar Randall had the makings of a great speaker in him!
But Mr. Horne was a man of slow mental methods, who always decided one point before he left it for another. He waited till the chorus of "That's so; that's the ticket," "Bet your life; that's the way to talk," "Let 'em try it; we'd be ready for 'em" (this last from Jack Mackinnon who was a volunteer) had died away, when he said:
"That's right, Os; you're right there, right enough; but what do you think—ought it to be closed or should it be opened?"
"I think," said Oscar, slowly, and with confidential emphasis—"I think, as every patriotic and honest man thinks, that the rights of the people must be preserved."
A diversion occurred here. A shout from the roadway took them all out. Before the door stood a carriage with a little black-a-vised man in it; and behind that, an express waggon, beside the driver of which sat a perky-looking woman, different from anything ever seen in Ovid, for French maids of the real Parisian stripe were not apt to visit this village often.
"The way to old man Morris'? yes," said Oscar Randall, and proceeded to give minute directions.
The little cavalcade started again, the gentleman leaning back in the carriage, murmuring to himself:
"Now, I wonder which of these specimens he was."
* * * * * *
And at that moment Andrew Cutler and Judith Moore were taking farewell, for a few hours as they thought, beneath the shadows of Andrew's chestnut trees.
"Darling," he whispered, holding her gently to him, "my arms seem always aching for you when we are parted; my heart cries for you continually. Judith, dear little girl, you won't make me wait too long?"
She clung to him silently, hiding her face on his arm. A tremour shook her; after all he was a man, the dominant creature of the world. True, he trembled at her voice and touch now—but then, after?
"Andrew," she whispered, "will you be good to me?"
"Trust me, dear, and see," he whispered back.
"You know I have no one but myself," she said, putting back her head and looking at him with pale cheeks and tear-rilled eyes. "If you are cruel to me or harsh to me: if you make love a burden, not a boon, I will have no one to turn to. I—" she stopped with quivering lips.
"My own girl," he said, "trust me. I know I am rough compared to you, but I will be tender. I know my man's ways frighten you, but it shall be all my thought to make you trust me. Give me your presence always, that's all I ask—to see you, feel you near, hear you about the house, have your farewells when I go away, your welcome when I return, your encouragement in what I undertake, your sympathy in what I do. That means heaven to me, but only when you are happy in it. Dearest, you don't think I would be bad to you?"
And Judith, in a storm of sobs that seemed to melt away all the icy doubts and fears that had assailed her, laid her head upon his breast, and promised that soon, very soon, she would go to the house on the hill never to leave it; and, when she had grown calmer with a deeper peace than she had yet known, he left her—there, in the shadow of the trees—to return in a few hours.
And Judith stole into the kitchen door and up to her room, to find her French maid packing her trunks and be told that "Monsieur awaited her in the salon."
* * * * * *
Her vow had been required of her—that was all she could think, and she prepared herself to keep it.
The manager was clever and adroit in his way. He kept Mrs. Morris busy with him, so that she did not see Judith till she entered to say she was ready; and then, as Mrs. Morris told afterward, she got a "turn." For the Judith who came to say "good-bye," was the same Judith who greeted her at first, gracefully languid, pale, self-composed, and somewhat artificially, if charmingly, courteous.
"There was some difference," Mrs. Morris said, "but I can't just say what."
The difference was that Judith had come a girl, and left a woman.
So for the last time Judith crossed the little garden, feeling strangely unfamiliar with the homely flowers she passed. In the meantime the drivers of the conveyances had conferred with Mr. Morris, and the shorter road they took to the railway station was directly away from the village, away from the house on the hill.
They caught a glimpse of it as they turned a corner, and suddenly Judith seemed to feel the scent of white lilies, and hear an evening chorus of nature's composition. Her hand held tightly a little envelope, in which she had hurriedly slipped something before she left her room.
She was thinking how she could drop it unobserved, when from the shadow of some wild plum trees there issued a disreputable dog—Nip—with Tommy Slick behind him, a basket of wild plums in his hand.
She interrupted the manager's flow of news to say—
"Do stop the man a minute, I want to speak to that boy."
"I'll call him."
"No, no; I'll get out," she said.
So without more ado he stopped the carriage; the whims of a prima donna must needs be respected.
She got out and ran back to Tommy, who greeted her with a grin.
"Tommy," she said, "you like me, don't you? And you like Andrew Cutler? Now, will you do something for me that no one else in the world can do?"
"I'll do it," said Tommy, with business-like brevity.
"And you will not breathe it to any living soul?"
"I kin keep my mouth shut," said Tommy. "Often had to."
"Then," said Judith, "I'll trust you. Give this to Andrew Cutler; if you run you will catch him in his chestnut woods. Try to get there quickly, and meet him before he gets near Morris'. Give him this, and say: 'She has gone away! she sends all her love and this.'"
Tommy's impish face had a look of concern beyond his years. Tears were running down Judith's face.
"Say, be you never coming back?"
"Never, never, Tommy!" said Judith. "Good-bye."
* * * * * *
So in due time Andrew Cutler received from Tommy Slick's fruit-stained hand an envelope containing one long bright lock of hair, and a message sent with it; and was told also of the few other words that passed, and of Judith's tears. And Tommy having delivered his message, and seen the look on Andrew's face, dug his knuckles into his eyes, and with a veritable howl of grief fled away back as he had come; and Andrew suddenly looked about and found life emptied of all joy.
Judith seemed so very calm as the weeks went by, that her manager told himself he had been a fool to worry so that night—after he returned her letter to the post-office, and decided to go and fetch her from Ovid. He had sent it back, so that if she had refused to come, or—yes! he had thought of that, being so imbued with stage ways—if she had hinted at killing herself, he might declare with clean hands that he was guiltless, that he had never had her letter, that some one else had got it and sent it back to the Dead Letter office. But, after all, how foolish he was, he thought, watching Judith smile, and reply prettily to the courtesies of some guests whom he had just introduced to her. But then, her letter had seemed full of meaning! Well, that letter was doubtless a manifestation of the stage-craft with which she was thoroughly saturated! So he comforted himself. And meanwhile, Judith was learning that "Face joy's a costly mask to wear," and asking wearily of each day that dawned, "Is not my destiny complete? Have I not lived? Have I not loved? What more?"
And the time for her American début drew on.