“I give my sacred word. Whatever the provocation, I will not lift my hand against him. Never, never!” Then the same voice, vibrant, appealing. “Judith! It isn’t because—because—you care for him?”
He had plunged away in the darkness before her answer came. What had it mattered then to him what she had replied? And that very night had befallen the fatal quarrel!
The major started. How that name had blown away the dust! “That’s a long time ago, Judith.”
“Think of it! I wore my hair just as Shirley does now. It was the same color, with the same fascinating little lights and whorls in it.” She turned toward him, but he sat rigidly upright, his gaze avoiding hers. Her dreamy look was gone now, and her eyes were very bright.
“Thirty years ago to-morrow they fought,” she said softly, “Valiant and Sassoon. Every woman has her one anniversary, I suppose, and to-morrow’s mine. Do you know what I do, every fourteenth of May, Monty? I keep my room and spend the day always the same way. There’s a little book I read. And there’s an old haircloth trunk that I’ve had since I was a girl. Down in the bottom of it are some—things, that I take out and set round the room ... and there is a handful of old letters I go over from first to last. They’re almost worn out now, but I could repeat them all with my eyes shut. Then, there’s a tiny old straw basket with a yellow wisp in it that once was a bunch of cape jessamines. I wore them to that last ball—the night before it happened. The fourteenth of May used to be sad, but now, do you know, I look forward to it! I always have a lot of jessamines that particular day—I’ll have Shirley get me some to-morrow—and in the evening, when I go down-stairs, the house is full of the scent of them. All summer long it’s roses, but on the fourteenth of May it has to be jessamines. Shirley must think me a whimsical old woman, but I insist on being humored.”
She was silent a moment, the point of her slender cane tracing circles in the gravel. “It’s a black date for you too, Monty. I know. But men and women are different. I wonder what takes the place to a man of a woman’s haircloth trunk?”
“I reckon it’s a demijohn,” he said mirthlessly.
A smile flashed over her face, like sunshine over a flower, and she looked up at him slowly. “What bricks men are to each other! You and the doctor were John Valiant’s closest friends. What did you two care what people said? Why, women don’t stick to each other like that! It isn’t in petticoats! It wouldn’t do for women to take to dueling, Monty; when the affair was over and done, the seconds would fall to with their hatpins and jab each other’s eyes out!”
He smiled, a little bleakly, and cleared his throat.