The old woman, however, wrung her hands and looked toward the room above as if to indicate to me that nothing was important but the fact that Julianna had possession of the Judge’s post-mortem message.
“Let her tell you if she will,” she cried. Then covering her face with her fat hands, as if to hide some terrible picture of the imagination, she stumbled forward out of the library.
I have often wondered since, as I wonder to-night, when those spectres have arisen again, what that old servant meant. At the time it never occurred to me that but one thing could happen. I had the utmost confidence in Julianna, and indeed, without thinking much of my own troubles, I passed that long vigil in the library only with regret that I could not wrest away from the true and noble woman who had promised to be my wife, all the terrible grief which, alone in the chamber above, she must have been suffering. For the first time, I think, in all my life, which, by training and inherited instincts, had been devoted, I might say, to the welfare of the Estabrook name and of myself, I felt my mind—and even my body—filled with a strange and passionate desire to be the instrument of good, not for myself, but in the name of others and perhaps in the name of God. My eyes filled with tears, springing not so much from grief as from belief in myself, not so much from weakness as from strength. I called upon an unknown force that I felt to be near me and directing me.
“Save her from misfortune,” I said aloud in that silent room. “Protect her. Comfort her.”
The old dog, as if he now understood, raised his head and licked my hand. I realized then that the wind had died down, and, looking up, I saw that the balcony and garden were lit by the pale rays of the morning moon, that the stars shone clearly again through the still air, and that the odor of flowers, nodding below the window, perfumed the Judge’s study. The pipe, with ashes tumbling out upon the table, by curious chance had not been moved from the place where he had laid it down.
It seemed to me that I had dreamed restlessly, that the old man had not left the room, and then, when this fancy had gone, I almost believed that he had come back as he used to do when he, in his absent-minded way, had left something behind. With my heart full of him, I got up and reaching for the pipe I dropped it into my own pocket.
At last the oil in the lamp had been consumed. The burner flickered, gurgled several times, snapped, and went out; but the failure of this light served to show that morning was near at hand. The rectangular squares of the window panes now appeared luminous with the first gray flow of the east. It seemed to me that the time had come when Julianna should no longer be alone with her own thoughts; with soft steps I climbed the stairs and softly I turned the knob of her closed door. If it had been locked, it was so no longer; it yielded to my gentle, cautious pressure. The crack widened. Then, for a moment, unseen and unheard, I stood on the threshold looking in.
She was no longer dressed as I had seen her, for now she was clad in the soft drapery of some delicate Oriental silk, which, if she had been standing, would have fallen from the points of her shoulders in voluminous folds to the floor. She had unloosened her hair; it had fallen in a torrent of brown and golden light. I could not see her face.
Her back was turned toward me, for she was sitting on the floor facing the hearth in the middle of the frame of old lavender-and-gold tiles which marked the fireplace. Her hands were pressed to her temples as if her head no longer could be relied upon to retain its contents, her fingers moved this way and that through the hair above her ears, and, in strange contrast with the glimmer of early day beyond the white curtains, an uncanny flickering light burned on the hearth, painting the delicate pallor of her shoulders, neck, ears, and hands with an outline of fire. It was a picture to give the impression of a beautiful sorceress crouching to perform some unholy rite.
“Julianna!” I exclaimed softly.