The Wishing Moon Part 37

"Will they stand for this?" Mr. Brady was demanding incoherently behind them, "as young as this? Will the town stand it? No. And they won't blame me now. They can't. It was coming to you--you----"

He was in the grip of his own troubles again, and breaking into little mutterings of hysterical speech, which he now addressed directly to Colonel Everard, standing over him and not seeming to feel the need of an answer. It was an uncanny proceeding. The girl and boy did not watch it. They were seeing only each other.

"Judith," Neil began stumblingly, "what were you doing there? What's frightened you so? What you heard out here? That's all that frightened you, isn't it? Isn't it? But what made you come here alone like this?

Didn't you know---- Oh, Judith----"

He stopped and looked down at her, saying nothing, but his eyes were troubled and dark with questions that he did not dare to ask. There was no answer to them in Judith's eyes, only blank fear. As Neil looked, the fear in Judith's eyes was reflected in his, creeping into them and taking possession there.

"Oh, Judith," he whispered miserably. "Oh, Judith."

Judith seemed to have heard what he said to her from far away, and to be only faintly puzzled by it, not interested or touched. Her eyes kept their secrets under his questioning eyes. They defied him. She was not like his little lost sweet-heart found again, but a stranger and an enemy, one of the people he hated, people who intrigued and lied, but were out of his reach and above him, and were all his enemies.

The boy's world was upsetting. Nothing that had happened to him in that room or ever had happened to him before had shaken it like that minute of doubt that he lived through in silence, with the strain of it showing in his pale face, and Charlie's voice echoing half heard in his ears. He drew back from Judith slightly as they stood. He was trembling. Judith's face was a blur of white before his eyes, then he could not see it--and then, as suddenly as it had come, his black minute was over.

"Take me away. I don't want to stay where he is any more. Is he dead?"

Judith said, and she slipped her hand into Neil's.

Judith's voice was as lifeless and strange as before, and the hand in his was cold, but it was Judith's own little clinging hand, and the boy's hand closed on it tight. He stood still, feeling it in his, and holding it as if the poor little cold hand could give him back all his strength again. He looked round him at the dim room and its motionless owner and Charlie as if he were seeing them clearly for the first time.

He was not angry with Charlie any longer. He was not angry at all. He drew a deep, sobbing breath of relief, dropped his dark head suddenly and awkwardly toward Judith's unresponsive hand and kissed it, and then very gently let it go.

"Judith, you're you," he said, "just you, no matter what happens, and nothing else matters; nothing in the world, as long as you are you."

Judith only smiled her faint half smile at him, as if she guessed that some crisis had come and pa.s.sed, but did not greatly care.

"Take me away," she repeated patiently. "I thought there'd be other people here. He said so. But I've come here alone before, only he was different to-day. He was different."

"Don't tell me. I don't want to know. I won't ever ask you again. I never ought to have asked you. It's all right, dear. It's all right."

"I didn't know people were like that--anybody, ever. I just didn't know----"

"Don't, dear," said Neil sharply. The small, bewildered voice that held more wonder and pain than her words broke off, but her bewildered eyes still wondered and grieved. Neil's arms went out to her suddenly and drew her close, holding her gently, and hiding her small, pathetic face against his shoulder.

"Don't," he whispered. "I'll take care of you. I'm going to take care of you. n.o.body's going to hurt you any more."

"Neil, I just didn't know. I didn't know."

"It's all right. I'm going to take you away. Just wait, dear. I'm going to take care of you."

He spoke to her softly, saying the same thing over and over, as if he were quieting a frightened child. She was quiet in his arms like a frightened and tired child in any arms held out to it. One arm had slipped round his neck and clung to him. She drew long choking breaths as if she were too tired to cry. Gradually they stopped, but the arm round his neck only clung tighter.

"Don't leave me," she whispered.

"No, I'm not going to. I'm going to take care of you. You know that, don't you, Judith?"

"Yes. Neil?"

"Yes, dear."

"Neil." Still in his arms, because she felt safe and protected there, Judith lifted her head and looked at him, and into her sweet, dazed eyes, full of a terror that she could not understand, came a faint flash of anger. This boy who held her so safe and comforted was her enemy, too. Long before the ugly accident of what had happened behind the library doors he had been her enemy, and he was her enemy now, though she needed his protection and took it. Their quarrel was not over.

"Neil, I don't forgive you. I'm never going to forgive you."

"All right, dear."

"And I hate you. You know that, don't you? I hate you."

"Yes, dear, I know it. We aren't going to talk about that now. Let me go."

Both arms were round him now. Judith let him draw them gently apart and down, and drew back from him. The anger was gone from her eyes. She watched him wide eyed and still, as children watch the incomprehensible activities of grownups, or devoted but jealous dogs watch them.

"Don't leave me," she said. "You're sweet to me." Then she gave a sharp, startled little cry.

"Neil," she begged, "don't touch him. I don't want you to touch him.

What are you going to do?"

The light had not had time to dim or s.h.i.+ft perceptibly in Colonel Everard's big room while so much was settling itself for Neil and Judith. The Colonel still lay with the pale shaft of afternoon light on his unconscious face. Now the boy was kneeling beside him. He slipped a strong, careful arm under his shoulders, and bent over him, touching him with quick, sure hands. He ignored Mr. Brady, who stood crying out incoherent protests beside him, and finally put a shaking hand on his shoulder.

Neil shook it off, and rose and stood facing his cousin.

"I thought so," he said, with a short laugh. "You had me going at first, Charlie, when I came in here and saw what a pretty picture you made. I believed you. I thought you had killed him. I might have known things like that don't happen in Green River."

Neil put both hands on his cousin's shoulders and looked at him. Mr.

Brady was not an attractive sight at that moment. The excitement that had held and swayed him was leaving him now, and he looked shaken and weak. An unhealthy colour purpled his cheeks, and his sullen eyes glared vindictively, but could not meet Neil's eyes.

"Don't laugh at me," he muttered. "Don't you dare to laugh at me."

"Going to beat me up, too?" his cousin inquired. "Poor old Charlie!

Let's hope your friend there will laugh at you when he talks this over with you. He'll come out of this all right, but he'll be in a better temper if he has a doctor here. I'll 'phone for one."

"What do you mean? I've killed him. I'm glad I killed him."

His cousin laughed again. "Killed him? The man's no more dead than you are. You've knocked him out, that's all. But you didn't kill him. Is that the 'phone over there?"

A desk telephone on a big Louis Quinze table at one end of the room, the instrument masked by the frilly skirts of a French mannequin, perhaps the only lady who had ever been permitted to be insipid in that room and to stay there long, answered Neil's question by ringing faintly, once and again. Neil started toward it, but did not reach it. Mr. Brady had flung himself suddenly upon him in a last burst of feverish strength, which he dissipated recklessly by shrieking out incoherent things, and striking misdirected blows.

Neil parried them easily, caught his thin arms and held them at his sides. Keeping them so, he forced him against the edge of the flimsy table and held him there and looked at him.

"You shan't answer that 'phone," Mr. Brady cried, in a last futile burst of defiance. "You shan't stop me. You shan't interfere. I'll kill him, I tell you, and you shan't answer that 'phone. You shan't----"

Mr. Brady's voice died away, and he was silent under his cousin's eyes.

"Through?" said Neil presently.

"Yes," he muttered.

"Do you mean it?"

Mr. Brady nodded sullenly.

"You've made a fool of yourself?"