He stopped abruptly, with a big, crashing discord, and Judith rubbed her eyes and sat up. Mrs. Kent was going to sing now. She tossed some music to him.
"That's over your head," she said; "over all your heads; better put me up there, too, Cleve. Besides, I want to dance. That table will do." She cleared it unceremoniously, with her husband's help, and established herself there, poised motionless, through the introductory bars of the song, her sleepy eyes wide awake now, and a red rose from a bowl on the table caught between her teeth.
Quietly, always careful to avoid the reputation of being shocked, like the Judge, Judith slipped down from her perch, and across the room, and out through the window.
|
"Please keep my folks from kickin'; Grab me while I'm a chicken, I'm getting older every day." |
Mrs. Kent's fresh voice was urging, as Judith tiptoed across the veranda.
The rowdy words of her little songs and the demure plaintiveness of Mrs. Kent's voice made an effective contrast. It amused Judith as much as any one, and she liked to laugh, but she liked better to cry, and if you could not hear the words, Mrs. Kent's voice made you cry; big, luxurious tears, that stood in your eyes and did not fall. As she found her way across the lawn, among the elaborate flower-beds, the voice followed her, mellow and sweet. It had never sounded so sweet before. Everything sweet in the world was sweeter to-night.
At the edge of the lawn Judith paused. Ahead of her three marble steps, flanked by urns filled with ivy, glaring things in the daytime but glimmering shadowy white and alluring now, led up the terrace to the rose garden; a fairy place, far from the world, so hedged in and shadowed by trees that it was dark even by moonlight, entered through an old-fashioned trellised arbour, that was so mysterious and dark, she liked it almost as well now when the rambler roses were not in flower.
When she left the room her mother had been sitting in Colonel Everard's chair, she seemed to remember, and the Colonel and Mrs. Burr were nowhere to be seen. The whole room looked emptier, though she did not know who else was missing. But there were two people now in the rose arbour. She could just hear their voices, low, with long silences between.
She wanted the place to herself. She stood still, hoping that they would go. There was a path into the woods on the other side of the little garden: the Colonel's bare, semicultivated woods, combed clean of underbrush, but you did not miss it at night. The woods were full of adventure, but the garden was better to dream in, and Judith had a great deal to dream about.
The lighted house looked quite small and far away across the wide, moonlit lawn. They had stopped singing, and the laughter that followed the song did not sound so clear as the music; you could just hear it. Presently you could hear nothing, and it was quiet in the rose arbour, too. She waited until she was sure, standing quite still at the edge of the dark enclosure, not a ruffle of her white dress fluttering, very slender and small against the dark of the leaves. Then she slipped into the arbour.