At last, one after the other, they climbed the fence at the side of the Bonbright place. The air was soft, heavy with coming rain. Up through the weed-grown yard they went, greeted and beckoned by the odours of Mary Bonbright’s garden, thyme and southernwood, herbs by the path-side, clumps of brave chrysanthemums, a wandering spray or two of late-blooming honeysuckle. Judith trembled and locked her teeth together in anguish as she remembered that other night in the odorous dusk when she and Creed had stood under these trees and sought in the darkness for the bush of sweet-scented shrub.
The empty house bulked big and black before them in the gloom. She took the key from her pocket and opened the front door, Pendrilla and Cliantha clinging to her in an ecstasy of delicious terror. She stepped into the front room, struck a match, and lighted her candle. It was half-past eleven by the small nickel alarm-clock which she carried. Its busy, bustling, modern tick roused strange, incongruous echoes in the old house, and reproved their errand.
Speaker made himself at home, coming in promptly, seeking out the corner he preferred, and turning around dog-fashion before he lay down and composed himself to half-waking slumbers.
“I reckon in here will be the best place,” murmured Cliantha, seeking a candlestick from the mantel for their light. “We could set around this table.”
“It’s more better ef we-all set on the flo’,” reminded Pendrilla doubtfully. “Don’t ye ricollect? all the dumb suppers we ever hearn tell of was held thataway. Set on the flo’ and put yo’ bread and salt on the flo’ in front of you.”
“Mebbe that’s becaze they was held in desarted houses, and most generally desarted houses don’t have no tables nor chairs in ’em,” Cliantha speculated.
From the moment the lantern revealed the room to them, Judith had stood drawn back against the wall curiously rigid, her hand at her lip, her over-bright eyes going swiftly from one remembered object to another. This fleeting gaze fixed itself at last on the inner door.
“I’ll go in the other room a minute for—for something,” she whispered finally. “You gals set here. I’ll be right back. I’ve got two candles.”
She lighted the second candle, left the girls arranging the dumb supper, and stole, as though some one had called her, into that room which she had made ready for Creed’s occupancy on the night of the play-party. It had reverted to its former estate of dust and neglect. She looked about her with blank, desolate eyes which finally found upon the bed a withered brown something that held her gaze as she crept toward it—the wreath of red roses!
There it was, the pitiful little lure she had put forward to Love, the garland she had set in place to show Creed how fine a housewife she was, how grandly she would keep his home for him. The brave red roses, the bold laughing red roses, their crimson challenge was shrivelled to darkened shreds, each golden heart was a pinch of black dust; only the thorny stems remained to show what queen of blossoms had been there.