The Wishing Moon

by Louise Elizabeth Dutton

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  On an afternoon in June a year later than the interrupted party at theEverards' a young man sat at Mr. Theodore Burr's desk in Judge Saxon'souter office. It was still technically Mr. Burr's desk, but the youngman looked entirely at home there. A litter of papers which thatfastidious gentleman would never have permitted himself now covered it,and the air was faintly scented with the smoke of a cigarette widelypopular in Green River, but not with devotees of twenty-five-centcigars, like Mr. Burr. The bulky volume open on the desk was thumbed andused as Mr. Burr had never used any book that looked or was so heavy.The book was Thayer on Constitutional Law, and the young man dividinghis attention between it and Main Street under his window flooded withJune sunshine was Neil Donovan.

  He divided his attention unequally, as Main Street late on that sunnyafternoon might persuade the most studious of young men to do. Thesquare was crowded--crowded, it is true, much as a busy street on thestage is crowded, where the same overworked set of supers pass andrepass. The group of bareheaded girls now pacing slowly by arm in armunder the window were returning from what was approximately their fourthvisit that afternoon to the post-office, the ice-cream parlours, the newgift shop and tea-room, or some kindred attraction. The Nashes' newtouring car, driven by the prettiest girl in Willard's June house party,under the devoted instruction of Willard himself, was whirling throughthe shopping district for at least the third time.

  However, it was an imposing pageant enough, though the boy at the windowdid not appear to find it so, regarding it with approving but graveeyes, and returning Mr. Nash's flourishing salute unsmilingly--a bravepageant of gay and flimsy gowns, of youth returning to the town, andmovement and colour, and June fairly begun.

  June so far was like other Junes in Green River. Colonel Everard and theseason of social and political intrigues were here. Rallies in the townhall would soon begin. Men with big names in state politics would makespeeches there, while the Colonel presided with his usual self-effacingcharm, which did not advertise the known fact that he was a bigger powerin the state than any of them. The good old question of prohibition wasthe chief issue, as usual; discreet representatives of the peoplewould, according to a catch phrase at the capital, vote for prohibition,and then go round to the best hotel and get drunk; and discreetpoliticians, like the Colonel, would make money out of both these factsin their own way.

  Behind the closed door of Judge Saxon's office low-keyed, monotonousvoices were talking, and a secret conference was going on. Troubledtimes were here again for those deep in the Colonel's councils. Theywere never sure of a permanent place there, but always on the watch forone of his sudden changes of front, which threatened not only hisenemies but his friends. But he had recovered and held their confidencebefore, and he could this year.

  All scandals of the year before were decently hidden. Maggie Brady wasmissing and continued to be missing. By this time it was the generalverdict that she had always been bound to come to a bad end, and CharlieBrady to drink himself to death. Nobody interrupted his attempts to doso. His drunken outburst of speech had echoed a growing sentiment in thetown, but it grew slowly, for under its thin veneer of sophisticationGreen River was only a New England town still, conservative and slow tochange.

  Green River had not changed much in a year, but Neil Donovan's fortuneshad. Nobody knew the full history of the change except Neil, but otherscould have thrown sidelights upon it, among them Mrs. Randall's secondmaid, Mollie. On the morning after that same party of the Colonel's,which Mr. Brady attended so unexpectedly, and Judith did not attend,Mollie opened the Randalls' door to an early caller.

  Even in curl papers, she was usually too much for the young man now onthe doorstep. He was in the habit of looking at his boots and addressingthem instead of her, and Mollie quite understood that, for they wereshabby boots. They looked shabbier than ever to-day, and so did hisshiny coat, but his eyes were steady and clear, and there was clearcolour in his cheeks, as if he had had the only restful and well-earnedsleep in Green River.

  "Miss Judith," he said.

  "Not at home," said Mollie, in a manner successfully copied from Frenchmaids in the ten, twenty, thirties.

  "Nonsense. Her curtains aren't up," replied the young man who wasusually made speechless by it.

  "She's asleep," conceded Mollie, in a manner more colloquial but alsomore forbidding. "She don't want to see you."

  Mollie was incapable of interpreting Judith's wishes, but the young manwas not; his smile conveyed this, though it was friendly enough. "WhenMiss Judith gets up, tell her----"

  "I tell you she don't want to see you," snapped Mollie in a tone anyFrench maid would have deplored. "She don't want to see anybody."

  "Tell her that I'll call again at three this afternoon," directed theyoung man calmly, and completed his disturbing effect upon Mollie byturning and walking briskly away without a backward glance, and withouthis usual air of self-consciousness when her eyes were upon him. Hecarried his shabby coat with an air, and held his head high, and swungout of sight down the sleepy little street as if he were the onlywide-awake thing in the whole sunny, sleepy town.

  It was a disconcerting moment for Mollie or any lady properly consciousof her power, and sorry to see a sign of it disappear, even the humblestof signs. It would still have been disconcerting, if she could haveforeseen that Judith would not receive this young man alone, either atthree that afternoon, or for many afternoons. The young man was notoverawed by Mollie. That was established once and for all. He wouldnever be overawed by her again. She slammed the door rather viciously.

  "Keep quiet there," said Norah, appearing inopportunely, as her habitwas, with a heavily laden breakfast tray. "She needs her rest. Butshe's awake. She rang. You can take this up and leave it outside herdoor. Who was talking to you?"

  "Well, I don't know what's come to him," Mollie complained. "Who does hethink he is? Did anybody leave him a fortune over night? It was theDonovan boy."

  A few minutes after Neil's encounter with Mollie, when Mr. Theodore Burradmitted him listlessly after his third knock at Judge Saxon's door, hecould see no evidence that any one had left the Donovan boy a fortuneover night, but did note a change in him. There was somethingappealingly grave and sedate about his face, as if a part of its youth,the freakish, unconquerable laughter of it, that had defied andantagonized Mr. Burr, were gone forever, burned away, somehow, in anight. It was a look Mr. Burr was to grow well used to in the next fewmonths. Perhaps the unaccountable affection he was to feel for the boyin the course of them was born then and there.

  Neil emerged from the Judge's private office after a briefer talk thanusual, and the Judge did not escort him to the door in his accustomed,friendly fashion. Mr. Burr did, and made him clumsy and unwontedconfidences there.

  "The old man's not quite fit to-day," he said. "I ought to have toldyou. It's a poor time to get anything out of him. Been shut up there byhimself doping out something. Won't say two words to me."

  "Then he must be in a bad way, Theodore," said the boy, with the ghostof his old, mocking smile, which Mr. Burr somehow did not find annoyingat all.

  "Look here, Neil," he surprised himself by saying, "I like you. I alwaysdid. You deserve a square deal. You're too good for the Brady gang.You're too good for the town. If there was anything I could do foryou----"

  "Maybe there is, Theodore," the boy turned in the corridor to say."Cheer up. You'll have a chance to see. I'm coming to work for theJudge, I start in next week."

  "But the Judge turned you down." Mr. Burr's brain struggled with theproblem, thinking out loud for the sake of greater clearness, but tooevidently not achieving it. "The Judge likes you, too, but he couldn'ttake you in if he wanted to. He talked of it, but gave it up. He'd beafraid to. Everard----"

  "I start in next week," repeated Mr. Donovan.

  "But what did you say to him?" demanded Mr. Burr. "What did he say toyou? How did you dare to ask him again?"

  "I didn't ask him. Don't worry, Theod
ore. I haven't been trying anyblack magic on the Judge. I don't know any. Maybe I'll learn some. I'mgoing to learn a good deal. I've got to. Nobody knows how much. Even theJudge don't know. I'm coming to work for the Judge, that's all, but Ididn't ask him." Mr. Burr, listening incredulously, did not know thatthis was a faithful if condensed account of his talk with the Judge andmore, the key to much that was to happen to this pale and determinedyoung man, the secret of all his success. He gave it away openly, andwithout pride:

  "I just told him so."

  Neil started in the next week. If Mr. Burr watched his young associatesomewhat jealously at first in the natural belief that a boy who hadchanged the course of his life in a five-minute interview would dosomething equally spectacular next, and if the Judge, who had said tohim at last, "Well, it's my bad morning, son, and your good morning, soyou get your way, but you're climbing on a sinking ship, and remember Itold you so. And I'll tell you something else. It will be poor pickingshere for all of us, and I'm sorry, but I'm the sorriest for you," wasinclined to follow him furtively over the top of his spectacles with alook that held all the pathetic apology of age to youth in his kind,near-sighted eyes, this was only at first.

  Colonel Everard, returning a few weeks later from one of his sudden,unexplained absences from town, and making an early morning visit to hisattorney, was admitted by a young man whom he recognized, but pretendednot to.

  "Who are you?" he inquired, "the office boy?"

  "Just about that, sir," the young man admitted, as if he had no higherambition, but the Judge, entering the room with more evidence ofbeginning the day with the strength that the day required, than he hadbeen showing lately in his carriage and look, put a casual hand on theboy's shoulder, and kept it there.

  "The last time we discussed enlarging my office force, you didn'tadvocate it, Everard," he said rather formally.

  "So you aren't discussing it with me now?"

  "Do you think you'd better discuss it?"

  "Do you?"

  "I think you are in no position to discuss it. You've been recentlyfurnished with much more important material to discuss. I haven't seenyou since your garden party, have I?"

  "No." Both men seemed to have forgotten the boy's existence, but now theColonel recalled it, and apparently without annoyance, and flashed adisarming smile at him, giving up gracefully, as he always did if he wasforced to give up at all. "Well, you're right, Hugh. You're alwaysright. Do as you please. But this boy's got a temper of his ownand--quite a flow of speech. Runs in his family, evidently. Properlyhandled, these are assets, but----"

  "I'm sorry, sir," Neil found himself stammering. "I shouldn't havespoken to you as I did that day. I'm sorry."

  "Next time be sure of your facts." The voice was friendly, almostpaternal, but it held an insidious challenge, too, and for one betrayingmoment all the native antagonism that was really there flashed in theColonel's eyes. Few enemies of his had been permitted to see it soclearly. It was a triumph for Neil, if a barren one. "Be very sure."

  "I will, sir," said Neil deliberately, but very courteously. Then theColonel disappeared into the private office with his arm about histrusted attorney's shoulders, and the young man for whose sake hisattorney had openly defied him for the first time in years began toempty the office waste-baskets.

  The winter weeks in the Judge's office passed without even moments ofrepressed drama like this. There was little to prove that they were themost important weeks of his life to Neil. At first they were lonelyweeks. Mr. Burr, unusually prompt, reached the office one crispSeptember morning in time to find him staring out of the window at astraggling procession passing on its way up the hill to the schoolhouse,hurrying on foot in excited groups, or crowded into equipages of varyingsizes and degrees of elegance, properly theirs or pressed into service.

  "First day of school," said Neil, and did not need to explain further,even to Mr. Burr. From to-day on new faces would look out of themany-paned windows of the old, white-painted building. New voices wouldsing in the night on their way home from barge rides and dances. Therewere to be new occupants of the seats of the mighty; a new crowd wouldown the town. The door of the country of the young was shut in thisboy's face from to-day, and that is always a hard day, but it waspeculiarly hard in Green River, where the country of the young was theonly unspoiled and safe place to live. And there were signs of a privateand more personal hurt in the boy's faraway eyes.

  "What's that letter?" said Mr. Burr.

  "Seed catalogue."

  "Don't she write to you every day?"

  "Who?"

  "Is she too proud, or did she forget all about you? She'll havetime to, away half the summer, and not coming home for vacations. Shewon't see you till next June."

  "If you mean Judith Randall," her late class-mate replied in a carefullyexpressionless voice, "why should she write to me, and why shouldn't sheforget all about me?" There was a faint, reminiscent light in his eyes,as if he were not seriously threatened with the prospect, but it diedaway quickly, and his face grew very grave.

  "I'm a business man now, Theodore."

  "You are," said his newest friend, "and we couldn't keep house withoutyou now. You're in a class by yourself."

  This was true. Neil did not take his big chance at life as other boysequally in need of it would have done. He did not lose his head. Heshowed no pride in it. Green River, soon seeing this, rewarded him invarious ways, each significant in its own fashion. Nondescript groupsround the stove in his uncle's little store ceased to look for signsthat he felt superior to them, and welcomed him as before, restoring tohim his privilege of listening to talk that was more important than itseemed, public sentiment uncoloured and without reserve, the real voiceof the town. Mrs. Saxon, of the old aristocracy of the town, withinborn social prejudices stronger than any acquired from the Everards,broke all her rules and invited him to Sunday-night supper.

  "The boy's not spoiled," his old friend Luther Ward said to the Judgeapprovingly. "He knows his place."

  "That's the surest way to climb out of it," said Judge Saxon, advisedly,for it was the Judge who had the closest and most discerning eyes uponNeil Donovan's career. Listlessly at first, because he had looked on attoo many uphill and losing fights against the world, but later withinterest, forced from him almost against his will, he watched it grow.

  To a casual observer the boy would have seemed to be fitting himself notfor an ornament to the legal profession, but for the office boy ColonelEverard had called him, but he would have seemed a willing office boy.He spent hours uncomplainingly looking up obscure points of law for somepurpose nobody explained to him. He devoted long, sunny afternoons tolooking up titles connected with some mortgage loan which nobody gavehim the details of, and he seemed satisfied with his occupation, andequally satisfied to devote a morning to plodding through new-fallensnow delivering invitations to some party of Mrs. Saxon's.

  When he was actually studying, he lost himself in the Judge'sout-of-date reference books, as if they contained some secret as vitalas the elixir of youth, and might yield it at any moment. Mr. Burr, atfirst ridiculing pupil and course of instruction alike, and with someshow of reason, began shamefacedly and afterward openly to give him whatbenefit he could from the more modern education which had been wastedupon him. Between his two teachers the boy arrived at conclusions of hisown. Neil was studying law by the old method which evolved so manydifferent men of letters and keen-witted lawyers, a method obsolete asthe Judge's clothes, but Neil gave allegiance to it ardently, as if ithad been invented for him.

  "What do you get out of this?" the Judge demanded, coming upon Neil lateone afternoon, poring over the uninspired pages of Mr. Thayer by thefading light. "What do you hope to get?"

  "All there is in it," said the boy simply, and without oratoricalintent.

  "Suppose you do pass your bar examinations. What then? What will you dowith it?"

  "I'll wait and see then. I had to begin somewhere."

  "Why?" said the Judge, and
as he asked the question, the answer to it,which he had once known so well and forgotten, looked at him in theboy's pale face and glowing eyes, the great answer not to be silenced,youth, and the wonderful, wasteful urge of youth. "Don't you know thistown's sick?" he demanded abruptly. "It's dirty. You can't clean it up.Don't you ever try. Don't you stir things up. Don't you dig in too deep.I suppose you know the town's got no room for you?"

  "Yes, sir, I know."

  "Where do you expect to end?" the Judge began irritably, "in thepoorhouse? You're so damn young," he grumbled. "It's a good thing Ididn't know you when I was young. I'd have listened to you then."

  "You will now, sir," said the boy, and the Judge did not contradict him,but instead, under shy pretence of groping for the switch of the desklamp, found the boy's hand and gripped it.

  "You're a good boy," he remarked irrelevantly. "Mind what I said, anddon't dig in too deep."

  The Judge did not explain whose secrets he hoped to protect by thisvague warning. Probably he could not have explained. It was one of thoseinstinctive pronouncements which shape themselves in rare moments whentwo people are close and mean more than either of them know. Certainlyif the key to any secret was to be found within the Judge's dingilydecorated walls or in his battered safe, or learned from his partner,the boy had exceptional opportunities to unearth it. Theodore Burr'sintimacy with Neil developed rapidly. He stuck to it obstinately, inspite of his wife, showing more independence about it than he had inyears. The two had tramped and snow-shoed together through long winterhours of intimate talk and more intimate silence, and they found thefirst Mayflowers of the year together. Only the week before he hadcommitted the crowning indiscretion of giving up a poker game at theEverards' to go shooting with Neil.

  The Judge, in the strenuous days of Colonel Everard's summer campaign,had no time to observe the growth of this intimacy or to think muchabout Neil, but he might have been interested in a snatch of talk in theBrady kitchen one evening, if he could have overheard it, moreinterested than Mrs. Donovan, who did not remember it long.

  Her son was an hour late for supper, but she was used to that, for nowthat he was on his feet the house revolved around him. She served him,and then sat watching him with her hands folded, and the new dignitythat had come with his first bit of success straightening her tiredshoulders, and the look of age and pain that had been growing theresince Maggie disappeared widening her soft, deep eyes. He had droppedwearily into his chair, and he ate almost in silence, but she was usedto that, too.

  Outside the short, June twilight was over, and a pattering summer rainhad begun to fall. Neil's dark hair was damp with it and clung to hisforehead in close curls. Once, passing his chair, she smoothed it with ahand that was work hardened but finely made and could touch him lightlyand shyly still. Her son pulled her suddenly close, and hid his faceagainst her.

  "What is it?" she asked, softly and not too soon as she stood still andheld him. "What's wrong, then? Where have you been?"

  "Nothing's wrong. Nothing new. I went round to Theodore Burr's, but Ileft there at five. I didn't mean to be late home or make work. But Ihad a hunch to look in at Halloran's. I thought I'd find Charlie there.I did, and I had to get him home."

  "Taking your strength," said Mr. Brady's aunt, unfeelingly buttruthfully, "a good-for-nothing----"

  "That's not the worst thing he does."

  "What is, then?"

  "Talking."

  "He don't mean anything by that."

  "Sometimes he does. Sometimes he tells you things that you neversuspected and you don't believe him at first, but you find they're true;things that have been locked up in his addled brain so long that they'reout of date, and you don't know how to profit by them or handle them,but they're true--all true."

  "Neil, you don't half know what you're saying. You're tired."

  Mrs. Donovan released herself abruptly to get the tea-pot from thestove. Her son, who had been talking in a low, monotonous voice, more tohimself than her, watched her with dazed eyes that slowly cleared.

  "I guess you're right," he said. "I didn't mean to frighten you. Charliewas no more loose mouthed to-day than he always is. I got hold ofnothing new, but I have hold of more than I can handle, and I'm tiredand I'm scared, and there's only one of me."

  But Mrs. Donovan preferred her own interpretation of the situation, asmost ladies would have. She made it tactfully, keeping her eyes awayfrom him, busy with the tea-pot. "You're young, and it's June. Neil, thechildren walked round with the Sullivan girl to take home the wash tothe Randalls'. They had some talk with Norah there. Judith will be homethis week."

  She had mentioned the much-debated name in a voice which she keptindifferent, but she flashed a quick, apprehensive glance at him. Shewas quite unprepared for its effect upon him. He only laughed, and thenhis face sobered quickly, and his eyes grew lonely and tired again.

  "Judith," he said, "you think that's my trouble, mother. Well, I'm notso young as I was last June." Then he began with considerable relish todrink his tea.

  "You're contrary and close mouthed, but you're only a boy like all otherboys," said Mrs. Donovan, sticking to her point, "and you're a good sonto me."

  The boy who had made this rare and abortive attempt at confidences onlythe night before showed no need of repeating it as he gazed out of theJudge's window. He looked quite competent to bear all his own troublesalone, and a generous share of other people's, though somewhat saddenedby them. Perhaps his mother's diagnosis of him was correct. He leanedhis chin on his hands and stared out of the window like any dreamingboy, as if it was. But the winter that had passed so lightly over GreenRiver had left traces of its own upon him. His profile had a clearer,more sharply outlined look. The lines at the corners of his mouth werefirmer though they were no deeper, and the mouth was still a boy'smouth, red-lipped and lightly closed. But the dreaming eyes were aman's, dreaming still, but alert, and ready to banish dreams.

  The afternoon light was fading fast. It was not so easy now to read thefine print of Mr. Thayer's notes, and the boy made no further pretenceof trying to. He let Mr. Thayer slip to the floor, and stretched himselfin his chair with a sigh of relief. The sounds of talk in the Judge'sroom had grown fainter and more intermittent and finally ceased. TheJudge, still deep in conference with them, had left with his guests bythe private door. The boy was alone in the office.

  Gradually, as he sat there, the bright pageant of the busy little streethad dimmed. It made a softer and mellower picture, a blend of delicatecolours in the slant mellow light, and it was not so busy now. Therewere fewer passers-by, and they hurried and did not loiter past. It wasalmost supper-time. Willard Nash, not joy riding now, but dispatchedreluctantly alone on some emergency errand, flashed by in his car, anddisappeared up Main Street.

  Beyond the double row of shops the upper section of the street wasempty. The maples, in full leaf now and delicately green, shadowed theupward slant of smooth road alluringly. Touched with golden afternoonlight, and half hidden by the spreading green, the old, solidly builthouses planted so heavily in the midst of their well-kept lawns had newand unguessed possibilities. Any one of them just then might havesheltered a fairy princess. The one that did was just within range ofthe boy's grave, patient eyes, a protruding porch, disproportionatelyenlarged and ugly, a sweep of vividly green lawn stripped bare of thegraceful, dishevelled growth of lilac and syringa bushes that had gracedit before Mrs. Randall's day.

  Not from that house, but from somewhere beyond it, a car flashed intoview and cut smoothly and quickly down through the street, almostdeserted now. The boy followed it idly with his eyes. The low-built,graceful lines of it held them. It approached, and slowed down directlyunder the windows, and the boy leaned forward and looked.

  It was stopping there. It was one of the Everard cars, as the trim linesand perfection of detail would have shown without the Englishchauffeur's familiar, supercilious face. The car had only one occupant,a slender young person in white. She slipped quickly out, anddisap
peared into the dingy entrance hall below.

  She had not seen the boy at the window. He stood still now in hiscorner, and waited. The tap of her feet was light even on the oldcreaking stairs, but he heard. She knocked once and a second time, andthen threw open the door impatiently, saw who was there, and stoppedjust inside the door, and looked at him.

  Her white dress and big, beflowered hat looked as cool and as new asJune itself. They did not make the dingy room look dingier, they madeyou forget it was dingy. Her soft, befrilled skirts fluffed and flaredin the brave and bewildering mode of the moment. Skirts, small shoesthat were built to dance, not to walk, the futuristic blend of flowersin her hat, and the girdle, unrelentingly high and futuristic of colour,too, that gave her waist an unbelievably slender look, were all in thedainty and sophisticated taste of a sophisticated young lady, and underthe elaborate hat there was a sophisticated young face. It lookedsmaller and more faintly pink. The small chin was more prominent. Butshe still had the wide, reproachful eyes of a child. They regarded theboy unwinkingly. One hand went behind her, found the knob of the door,and closed it mechanically, but the eyes did not leave his face.

  He stepped uncertainly forward, and stopped.

  "Well, Judith," he said, in a voice that held all the authority JudgeSaxon's assistant had acquired in the long year of his service and more,"Well?" and then, in a voice that held no authority at all, but wassuddenly husky and small: "Oh, Judith, won't you speak to me?"