The Blue Wall Part 8

She was there. Nor did she seem at all surprised that I had come.

"I am full of energy to-day," she said, smiling a welcome. "Let us take a long walk together."

"Good!" said I. "I will tell you about your father. As you know, I called on him Thursday afternoon."

But from the Judge she quickly turned the subject to discussion that was wholly impersonal, and it was the same on the following Monday when I saw her again. Had it not been for the expression in her eyes with which she greeted me, listened when I talked to her and bade me good-bye when I left her, these would have been depressing meetings for me, because I thought that I could clearly see that she was holding me at arm's length with that natural art of a good, true woman,--an art which needs no practice.

Imagine, then, my surprise, on this second occasion, when we had reached her door, when she had asked me to have tea and I had been forced to plead a previous engagement, when she stood there before me smiling, rosy, the form itself of health, beauty, and vivacity, and when her glance was raised to meet mine, I suddenly saw her smile fade and I thought her eyes were filling with tears.

She laughed, however,--a little choking laugh,--and looking down so that I could not see her face, she said, "I have liked these walks and chats with you better than any I have ever had." And so she bade me good-night.

Only when I had gone from her did I recall that she had spoken as if our companions.h.i.+p was not to continue, as if, for some cause unknown to me, there was to be an end of our intimacy. The thought made me stop stock-still upon the pavement.

"And yet," thought I, "might it not be--that she meant only to show that she is willing to continue our relations.h.i.+p--perhaps forever?"

Loving her as much as I did and wanting her--and no other on the breadth of the green earth--for my wife, this uncertainty was a torment which I could not stand. I remembered she had told me that the Judge walked each evening after his dinner, and I am ashamed to confess that the next evening dark found me waiting on their street corner, like a scullery maid's beau, until I saw his stoop-shouldered figure come down the steps with the lank, grizzled "Laddie" behind, and heard the beat of his grapevine stick recede down the avenue.

Margaret Murchie let me in. Had I been a wolf she could not have glared at me more; it was evident that her shrewd old eyes, whatever hidden knowledge lay behind them, regarded me as a brigand, as a menace, as some one who had come to take a precious treasure of art from the drawing-room or the household G.o.ddess from the front hall. And as I sat in the study once more, on the comfortable easy-chair of the Judge, with the empty feeling in my stomach telling me that my nerves were on edge, as they used to be when I rowed on our crew and sat listening for the gun, I was sure that after announcing me she lingered beyond the curtains, covertly watching me.

Julianna did not keep me waiting long, and as she came through the door into the light, I could not help but notice the poise and grace which comes from inherited refinement and health, and is only imitated badly by self-consciousness and the pose of the actress.

"I'm so sorry you did not come a moment earlier," she said. "Father would have been in. Now, you and I--"

She seated herself in her place on the old-fas.h.i.+oned mahogany sofa.

"Do you mind?" I asked.

"No, I'm glad!" she said, and wriggled like a pleased child, yet so slightly that no one could have accused her of it.

"Do you like me?" said I, after a moment.

Her eyes opened very wide and looked into mine seriously--half amused, half frightened. At last she nodded in a matter-of-fact way; it was only because I could see her hands pressed against the arm of the couch until they were white and little blue veins had begun to show that I knew she was capable of the stoicism of an Indian, and that her nod was not matter-of-fact, after all.

As I have told you, I am not of an habitually romantic temperament. I was well aware of my unfitness to deal with a girl who, herself, had never known the processes of lovers, but the belief that she was trying to restrain her true feelings toward me ran through my brain like an intoxicating liquor. I would have taken the breadth of her shoulders in the crook of my arm, and pressed my face into the rich ma.s.s of her hair, and kissed her upon her white forehead, had I not suddenly recalled that never had I even phrased to her a sentence explaining my feeling toward her.

"Of course I do," she said at that moment. I remember how cool the words sounded.

I remember, indeed, every word of that evening, every detail of that room, every play of expression about her mouth, and I cannot go on without speaking of these things. They meant so much to me and have meant so much ever since!

At last, then, I told her.

"Julianna--" said I. "I have never called you by that name before. I have not seen you long. But I must disregard all facts of that kind.

They may be important to some men and women. They are not of consequence to me. I have loved you from the first."

She gave a little cry, but whether it was of joy or surprise I cannot say. I only know that when I leaned forward and took one of her hands in my own, she left it there as if it belonged to me of right, and with my finger tips upon her soft wrist I could feel the beating of her heart.

"I don't want to love any one else," I whispered desperately. "I want you. I want you to love me. I want you to let me take you."

I thought when I had said this and pressed my lips to the back of her hand and looked up at her again that her face was illuminated with wonder, joy, and supreme gladness, and that her eyes were filled with light reflected from some bright revelation. What, then, was my astonishment to observe that, as I looked, the color seemed to fade from her skin, her parted lips slowly compressed themselves, her eyelids fell like those of one who suffered pain or shuts out some repulsive sight!

It may have been my imagination; but I was sure I felt her hand turn cold in mine and draw away as if to escape a menace. Her body stiffened as if preparing for effort or defense and she arose from her seat and stood before me.

So little did I understand the significance of her actions that I neither moved nor spoke.

She came toward me then and placed the tips of her fingers upon my shoulder affectionately, I can say--as she might have touched her father, and as if she meant to cause some unsaid thing to flow through the contact into my body.

"Please do not get up," she said softly. "Do not follow me."

There was strength in that command.

She walked toward the long windows at the back of the room, the windows which overlooked the garden, and pulling them open, stepped out onto the balcony. The vine there being in bloom, her figure was framed with the soft purple of the flowers, which, lit by the light from within and pendant against the black background of night, might well have been blossoms embroidered on j.a.panese black satin. With my head swimming, I watched the movement of her bare shoulders, from which her modest scarf had half fallen, until she turned to enter again.

"I shall not tell you that I am sorry that you have spoken as you have,"

she said, s.p.a.cing her words so evenly that it gave the impression at first that she was repeating memorized sentences. "But I am young and no one else has ever done so. Perhaps I should have interrupted you and told you that my duty is toward my father, and that I am not sure of myself now, and that I am not ready to give myself to any other life. If this is true, it can profit neither of us to talk of love."

"Neither of us!" Again it seemed to me that she had disclosed herself. I stood before her and in a voice that shook with eagerness, I said, "You love me. At least you love me a little?"

She drew back.

"You do!" I cried under my breath. "I know it! You do!"

She raised her hands as if to keep me from her, and still retreated toward the hearth.

"You love me!" I said. The sound of my own voice was raising a madness within me. "Say it!" I cried. "Say it!"

She turned quickly away from me.

"You love me."

"No," she said. "I do not--love--you!"

I think for a second neither of us stirred; for a second, too, I could see that her body had relaxed as mine had relaxed. Then I felt the sting of wrecked pride--the pride from which I suppose I never shall escape. I can remember that I drew a long breath, made a low bow, which, though not so intended, must have been both insulting and absurd, and walked through the curtains into the hall. I looked back once and that fleeting glance showed me only a beautiful girl who stood very stiffly, like a soldier saluting, but who, unlike a soldier, stood with closed eyes and with her long lashes showing against a pale and delicate skin.

How miserable I was in the following hours, I cannot well describe.

After I had returned to my own apartments I sat in my study without desire for sleep, staring with burning eyes at the silk curtains fluttering in the June night wind, until they seemed to be ghosts dancing on my window sills, and my straining ears listened to the hourly booming of the clock on the Fidelity Tower, until it sounded like the cruel voice of Time itself. Long after the rosy dawn I got up, drank some water, lit a strong cigar, and prepared to dress myself for the day's work. I can well remember my determination never again to expose my feelings toward any living soul and my constantly repeated a.s.sertion to myself that I had been hasty and indiscreet, that I did not in truth any longer love Julianna and had been punished for a breach of that reserve and caution which had been a virtuous characteristic of my ancestors.

With my teeth shut together, with a frenzy to accomplish much work, without a breakfast, and with sharp and perhaps ill-tempered commands to my a.s.sistants, I spent the morning in the preparation of cases for which trials were pending. By noon the heat of the day had become intense, the sides of the battalions of towering buildings across the narrow street seemed to become radiators for the viciousness of the summer sun, the voices of newsboys, the murmur of the lunch-hour crowd tw.a.n.ged a man's nerves, and I noticed for the first time the devilish song of the electric fan on my wall. As you have foreseen, I felt suddenly the wilting of my will. Tired, hungry, sleepless, I slipped down into my chair, and there seemed no happiness left in a world which did not include the girl I had left the night before.

I seized my hat and, clapping it on my head, I stopped only to sweep the papers into the desk drawers and hurried toward the elevator.

"There's somebody on the 'phone for you, Mr. Estabrook," said the switchboard girl. "They're very anxious to talk."

"Tell 'em I've gone home for the day," I called back to her and then went down and out of the building to the sunbaked street.

I knew that I should put food in my stomach, so I ate a lunch somewhere.

I knew I should rest, but the thought of returning to my bachelor rooms suggested only a violent mental review of the events through which I had been. I was tempted to go to the Monument, but flung the idea aside as a piece of sentimental madness. Accordingly I walked toward the river front with its uninteresting and sordid warehouses, saloons and boxes, bales and crates of the wholesale produce commissioners. On that long, cobblestoned thoroughfare, with its drays and commercial riffraff, its lounging stevedores, its refuse barrels, its gutter children and its heat, I went forward mile after mile, without much thought of where I went or why I chose such surroundings for my way, unless it was that the breeze from the water was welcome to me.

The late afternoon found me on an uptown pier, watching the return of an excursion steamer, proud with flags and alive with children, girls with sunburned faces and young men with handkerchiefs tucked around their collars and carrying souvenir canes. They disembarked down a narrow gangplank, like ants crawling along a straw. I reflected that all were, like myself, with their individual comedies and tragedies, the representatives of the countless, forgotten, and ever reproducing millions of human gnats that through unthinkable periods of time come and go. I had seen none of them before. I would see none of them again.

Instead of being a depressing notion, I found this a cheerful idea; I welcomed the evidence of my own insignificance. I laughed. I even determined to amuse myself. If nothing better offered, I made up my mind I would visit the Sheik of Baalbec, and, by pitting my skill against his, prove that I could exclude, when I wished, the haunting thoughts to which my mind had been a prey.