Sometime you may see her. She has changed a little. But then she was twenty-two, and the simplicity of her attire seemed to be at once the propriety of nature and the infinite skill of art. She wore a black gown, without ornamentation, and a black hat of graceful form. Not a harsh or stiff fol-de-rol was about her anywhere. You will pardon me for this detail. But, oh, she was so different from the others. She was a picture there among the law books.
The most attractive thing there can be in a woman is that combination of youth, innocence, glowing health, modesty. The perfect skin, with its grapelike, dusty bloom which shows where the collar droops at the front of the neck, the even lashes, from under which the deep eyes gaze out at you half timidly, the brave, honest uplifting of a rounded chin, the undulations of fine lungs, the almost imperceptible movement of restrained vigor in a poised, delicate, graceful figure, the gentleness and tenderness of a voice which at the same time suggests refinement and decision and strength, the absence of any effort to make an impression, either in manner or dress,—these are rare and beautiful attributes in an age when female children hatch out as artful women without the intervening period of girlhood. After all, the best men of us will not choose one of these modern maidens who imitate the boldness of the character and dress of the adventuress or the stage and opera favorite. It has become a tiresome feature of our modern life with the insidious faculty of corrupting the manners even of families who know better. She was so different! And in that moment I knew her superiority as a woman. I could not speak.
We exchanged no words. Yet as we looked at each other in the manner of children, the Judge, I thought, sensed a significance. When my eye sought his, I found a cloud upon his stern face, but immediately, as if he had tossed a haunting thought aside, he laughed.
“Julianna,” said he, “this is the Mr. Estabrook who is as insane as I. That is, he devotes no end of time and energy and seriousness to the game of chess. We have never yet met each other on the field of battle. Some afternoon, here in this room, however—”
She did not allow him to finish; she said hastily that she must witness the contest.
“Then at my home,” he said, beaming at me. “To-morrow will you come to dinner?”
I remember that Julianna had raised her eyes, that they were smiling, and that I received the definite, convincing impression that I was looking at a girl who never had given her love away. I tell you that one feels a truth like that by instinct, and that a woman wears not only her spotlessness, but also her purity of thought, like a faint halo. Yet at that moment I knew she was glad that I had accepted the invitation: there was a blushing eagerness in her eyes, upon her lips, in the movement of her graceful hands. For the rest of the morning I was half dizzy with the mad sense of triumph, of conquest—that strange onslaught of the emotions which gives no quarter to the disordered phalanx of reason.
I must admit that when I met Judge Colfax on the court-house steps the next afternoon to walk home with him, I had not given a thought to his daughter’s forebears or security of place in the social structure. In fact, the social structure had vanished; an individual had, at least for the time, filled its place.
I even jumped when the first sentence the Judge addressed to me began with her name.
“My daughter plays an excellent game herself,” he said, as if in explanation of her interest. “In fact, I may say, with an old man’s modesty, that there are only two persons in this city who can win from me consistently. She is one.”