The paternal, almost bewildering familiar cordiality with which he had greeted her and the pompously jovial urgency of the invitation which he had come to deliver in person, urging acceptance upon her because she “saw entirely too little of the young folks of the town,” was hardly in accord with the childish recollection she had carried with her, year after year, of a purple faced, cursing figure who leaned over the rickety old fence that bounded the garden, shook his fists in John Anderson’s mildly puzzled face and roared threats until he had to cease from very breathlessness.
A far different Judge had bowed low before her that afternoon when she answered the measured summons at the door–a sleek, twinkling, unctuously solicitous, far more portly Judge Maynard–and Dryad Anderson, who could not know that he had finally come to agree with the rest of the village that he might “catch more flies with molasses than with vinegar,” and was ordering his campaign accordingly, flushed in painful memory for the half-clad, half-starved little creature that had clung to John Anderson’s rusty coat-tails that other day and glared black, bitter hate back at the man beyond the fence.
Leaning against the table there in the half light of the room, a slow smile curled back the corners of her lips, still childishly quizzical in contrast with that slim roundness of body which was losing its boyish litheness in a new slender fullness that throbbed on the threshold of womanhood. She smiled deprecatingly as she lifted one hand to search in the breast of the blouse that was always just enough outgrown to fail of closing across her throat, and drew out the thing which the Judge had delivered with every possible flourish, barely a few hours back.
Already the envelope was creased and worn with much handling, but the square card within, thickly, creamily white, was still unspotted. As if it were a perishably precious thing her fingers drew it with infinite care from its covering, and she leaned far across the table to prop it up before her where the light fell brightest. Pointed chin cupped in her palms, she lay devouring with hungry eyes the words upon its polished surface.
“– requests the pleasure of,” she picked up the lines which she already knew by rote; and then, “Miss Dryad Anderson’s company,” in the heavy sprawling scrawl which she knew must have come from the Judge’s own pen.
Suddenly her two hands flashed out and swept the card up to crush it against her with passionate impetuosity.
“Oh, you wonderful thing!” she crooned over it, a low laugh that was half a sob bubbling in her throat. “You wonderful thing! And to think that I’ve had you all the afternoon–almost all day–and he’s had to wait all this time for his to come. He’s had to wait for Jerry to bring his with the mail–and Jerry is so dreadfully slow at times.”
Lingeringly, as though she hated to hide it, her fingers thrust the card back inside its envelope. And she was tucking it away in its warm hiding place within the scant fullness of the white blouse when the clock on the wall behind her began to beat out the hour with a noisy whir of loosened cogs.
“Hours and hours,” she murmured, counting the strokes subconsciously.
And then as the growing total of those gong strokes beat in upon her brain, all the dreamy preoccupation faded from her face. The little compassionate smile which had accompanied the last words disappeared before the swift, taut change that straightened her lips. She whirled, peering from startled eyes up at the dim old dial, refusing to believe her own count; and as she stood, body tensely poised, gazing incredulously at the hands, she realized for the first time how fast the hours had flown while she bent, forgetful of all else, over her paper patterns.
The table rocked dangerously as she crowded her body between it and the windowsill and, back to the light, stood staring with her face cupped in her hands out into the blackness. Far across the valley the dilapidated farmhouse on the ridge showed only a blurred blot against the skyline.
Minutes the girl stood and watched. The minutes lengthened interminably while the light for which she waited failed to show through the dark, until a dead white, living fear began to creep across her face–a fear that wiped the last trace of childishness from her tightened features.
“He’s late,” she whispered hoarsely. “It’s the last week, and it’s just kept him later than usual!”
But there was no assurance in the words that faltered from her lips. They were lifelessly dull, as though she were trying to convince herself of a thing she already knew she could not believe.
As long as she could she stood there at the window, doggedly fighting the rising terror that was bleaching her face; fighting the dread which was never quite asleep within her brain–the dread of that old stone demijohn standing in the corner of the kitchen, which for all her broken pleading Young Denny Bolton had refused with a strange, unexplained stubbornness to remove–until that rising terror drove her away from the pane.
One wide-flung arm swept the stack of neatly folded patterns in a rustling storm to the floor as she pushed her way out from the narrow space between table edge and sill. The girl did not heed them or the lamp, that rocked drunkenly with the tottering table. She had forgotten everything–the thick white square of cardboard, even the stooped old man in the small back room–in the face of the overwhelming fear that reason could not fight down. Only the peculiarly absolute silence that came with the sudden cessation of his droning monotone checked the panic haste of her first rush. With one hand clutching the knob of the outer door she turned back.
John Anderson was sitting twisted about on his high stool, gazing after her in infantile, perplexed reproach, his long fingers clasped loosely about the almost finished figure over which he had been toiling. As the girl turned back toward him his eyes wandered down to it and he began to shake his head slowly, vacantly, hopelessly. A low moaning whimper stirred her lips; then the hand tight-clenched over the knob slackened. She ran swiftly across to him.
“What is it, dear?” Her voice broke, husky with fright and pity. “Tell me–what is the matter? Won’t it come right tonight?”
With shaking hands she leaned over him, smoothing the shining hair. At the touch of her fingers he looked up, staring with pleading uncertainty into her quivering face before he shook his head.
“It–it don’t smile,” he complained querulously. His fingers groped lightly over the small face of clay. “I–I can’t make it smile–like the rest.”
Sudden terror contorted the thin features, a sheer ecstacy of terror as white-lipped as that which marred the face of the girl who bent above him.
“Maybe I’ve forgotten how she smiled!” he whispered fearfully. “Maybe I’ll never be able to–”
Dryad’s eyes flitted desperately around the room, along the shelves laden with those countless figures–all white and finely slender, all upturned of face. Again a little impotent gasp choked her; then, eyes filling hotly at that poignantly wistful smile which edged the lips of each, she stooped and patted reassuringly the trembling hands before she stepped a pace away from him.
“You’ve not forgotten, dear. Why, you mustn’t be frightened like that! We know, you and I, don’t we, that you never could forget? You’re just tired. Now, that’s better–that’s brave! And now–look! Isn’t this the way–isn’t this the way it ought to be?”
Face uptilted, bloodless lips falling apart in the faintest of pallid smiles, she swayed forward, both arms outstretched toward him. And as she stood the wide eyes and straight nose and delicately pointed chin of her colorless face took line for line the lines of all those, chalky white, against the wall.
For a moment John Anderson’s eyes clung to her–clung vacant with hopeless doubt; then they glowed again with dawning recollection. He, too, was smiling once more as his fingers fluttered in nervous haste above the lips of the clay face on the bench before him, and almost before the girl had stepped back beside him he had forgotten that she was there.
“Marie!” she heard him murmur. “Marie, why, you mustn’t be afraid! We’ll never forget–you and I–we never could forget!”
Even while she waited another instant those plastic earthen lips began to curl–they began to curve with hungry longing