Chapter XVII: The Day of Judgment

Forbes woke refreshed from his sylvan nap, and sat for a little discoursing on the invigorating effect of contact with mother earth, while Agatha, by drastic massage, restored the circulation to her temporarily paralyzed arm. The sun had dipped but little toward the western horizon when they turned their faces homeward, and they walked slowly. Agatha exulted in heat. A temperature of ninety stimulated her both physically and mentally. But Forbes found the warmth of the day relaxing, and she set the pace with that fact in mind.

Toward the last of their long leisurely walk, Forbes brought up the subject he had introduced earlier in the day. Though he made no effort to hurry her to a decision, he sketched entertainingly some of the diversions she might anticipate, if she accepted his invitation for the winter. The program was planned with due regard for the infirmities of age, but Agatha listened raptly.

They were but a few rods from their destination, Forbes talking earnestly, and Agatha hanging on his words, when some mysterious sixth sense warned her of danger. She looked ahead and instantly halted. Forbes felt her figure stiffen against his arm, and instinct told him she was frightened. "What is the matter?" he cried, sickening with a new realization of his helplessness.

Agatha did not answer, but as she stared ahead she understood that doomsday had arrived unheralded. A young woman was tripping toward them, a handsome young woman, who even without beauty would have attracted all eyes by the distinction of her dress and bearing. It could be no other than Julia. The ample lady in the background, following with a haste that empurpled her complexion, that she might not be left tête-à-tête with a maniac, failed to attract Agatha's attention. Julia's graceful figure dominated the landscape.

"What _is_ the matter?" Forbes again demanded. He laid his hand reassuringly over the fingers trembling upon his arm. And at that moment a voice subtly reproachful, suggestively tender, spoke his name. "Burton!"

"Julia!" Forbes shouted. His dear old friend, Miss Kent, and her mysterious perturbation, were instantly forgotten. He started forward, remembered that he was blind, stood irresolute, his hands outstretched. "Julia!" he cried again, this time with entreaty as well as rapture.

Agatha was ready to believe that then and there she had amply atoned for her sins, past and present. Even the certainty that the hour of her humiliation was at hand could not hurt worse than the joy ringing through his voice as he spoke another woman's name. She wondered dully at her own folly. She had been warned and had not heeded. She had known all the time of his love for Julia, and yet had foolishly assumed that since Julia's selfish decision had put her out of his reach, he would turn to her for consolation. Her pride had not rebelled over taking what Julia had thrown away. Indeed she had thought very little about herself. Her one desire was to be light to his blind eyes, balm to his wounded heart. But her castle of dreams was in ruins, as soon as he spoke the name she had hated from the first day she had heard it on his lips.

Julia approached him as swiftly as was consistent with grace, a rather insolent triumph in the glance she shot over his shoulder toward the pale girl standing in the background. "Yes, Burton," she said gently, "it is Julia," and extended both hands.

He caught them ardently and held them fast, his eager face questioning her dumbly, though he only said, "What a wonderful surprise! How good of you, how very good of you!"

"My aunt, Mrs. Knox, is with me, Burton," continued Julia, the pensiveness of her tone flatly contradicted by her air of elation. "I think you have met Mr. Forbes, Aunt Estelle."

Aunt Estelle, still panting, brought herself into hand-shaking distance and this formality helped to recall Forbes to the realization that there were other people in the world besides Julia and himself. He turned toward Agatha.

"This is a pleasure I have been promising myself," he said. "Julia, I want you to know my dear friend, Miss Kent. Miss Kent, let me present Mrs. Knox and Miss Studley."

The blankness of the silence that ensued was as definite as a blow. Forbes stood awaiting the conventional formula, but his quick ear could detect only the sound of hurried breathing. Again he turned toward Agatha, but for the first time she failed him.

"Miss Kent is still here, is she not?" queried Forbes. He remembered his ideas had been chaotic after discovering Julia's presence. His late companion might easily have withdrawn without attracting his attention.

For so simple a question, the effect was startling. "Burton," Julia cried, her voice sharp to the point of shrillness, "what are you talking about?"

Aunt Estelle caught her sleeve. "Can't you understand, Julia?" she hissed. "This place is a private asylum. That crazy old creature on the porch, and now him. It's perfectly plain. Let us go away at once."

Forbes caught most of this sibilant outburst. He turned white with anger. "Miss Kent?" he pleaded, and Agatha pulled herself together. Her voice was steady if slightly unnatural, as she answered, "Yes, I am here."

Forbes tried to laugh. The consciousness of being enveloped in baffling mystery made his blindness doubly intolerable. There was a bewilderment in his voice that wrung Agatha's heart.

"This is what I have been hoping for all summer. You know how often I've wished you and Miss Studley might know each other."

"Burton," Julia screamed, "who and what is this person?"

The contempt in her tone, even more than her disdainful phrasing, brought the blood racing to his forehead. "Julia!" He seemed to defy her to go on. "If you have read my letters at all," he said in a vibrant voice, "you know both who Miss Kent is and how much I am in her debt."

"Miss Kent! Your father's friend!"

"And mine as well, Julia." There was no ecstatic tenderness now in his use of her name, but indignant sternness.

"Burton, either you are insane or the woman is an impostor. She is not old. She is young, hardly more than a girl."

Forbes attempted to reply, but for a moment no words came. He put his hand to his forehead with a confused gesture. "I have been off in the woods with Miss Kent all day," he stammered. "I supposed--I had not noticed--" Again he turned in Agatha's direction. "Who are you, please?"

There was no trace of emotion in her composed answer. "I am Agatha Kent."

"Do you dare to say," shrieked Julia, "that you were the friend of Mr. Forbes' father?"

"I never saw Mr. Forbes' father."

Forbes took a step ahead, then halted, and stood with his feet a little apart, like one who balances himself on the deck of a heaving ship in a high sea. "But where," he stammered, "where is the other Miss Kent?"

"There is no other. My Great-aunt Agatha, for whom I was named, died twelve years ago."

There was a momentary palpitating silence which Julia was the first to break.

"And you mean," she arraigned her, "that all this summer you have been a deliberate impostor, palming yourself off on Mr. Forbes as an old woman, allowing him to think--oh, it's too shameful. I can't believe any girl would be so base."

"It is quite true, nevertheless," Agatha assured her gently. Her steady eyes met Julia's, and even that intrepid young woman drew back a step. Her momentary shrinking was not unreasonable for could concentrated hate smite like a lightning bolt, her life would have been measured by seconds.

Instinct taught Julia how to repay that level look by the deadliest hurt. She turned on Forbes furiously. "Do you mean to tell me that you have been the victim of a hoax all summer, that this girl has passed herself off on you for an old woman? But, no, it isn't possible. You've contrived this outrageous story between you to cover up something disgraceful. You couldn't have been such a dupe as you pretend. It's incredible!"

Forbes' color came and went during this attack. "It seems incredible," he owned when she gave him opportunity. "I don't blame you for questioning the truth of such a story. I can only remind you that it is easy to deceive a blind man."

Something in Agatha's stony whiteness convinced Julia that she had made no mistake in her choice of retribution. She gave the screws another turn.

"You mean for me to believe, Burton, that you've been only the gullible victim of a swindle, that this impostor has tricked you successfully all these months?"

There was a rather long silence. "Yes," said Forbes tonelessly, "that is what I mean."

Julia's first sense of being at a disadvantage had passed. She was thoroughly enjoying herself.

"I begin to understand your strange letter," she said, addressing Agatha. "Your letter of congratulation, you know. I suppose you are the young woman to whom you referred, the one with whom Mr. Forbes had spent so much time, you no doubt remember."

There was such malicious satisfaction in her tone that Forbes turned as if to interfere. Then his uplifted arm dropped rather heavily to his side.

"You'll laugh when I tell you, Burton," exclaimed Julia, setting him the example by laughing herself, most unpleasantly. "But she insinuated in this letter that you might marry her. That is at the bottom of this outrageous plot. She actually thought she could compromise you in some dreadful way and force you to marry her. Shocking as it is, one can't help being amused."

Forbes' only answer was again to lift his hand to his head. It was Agatha who spoke. Unmasked adventuress as she was, her dignity was in rather agreeable contrast to Julia's vindictive shrillness.

"It is hardly necessary to trouble Mr. Forbes with any further details," she said, "since, thanks to you, my plot against his peace has been exposed. I suppose you will want to take him away as soon as possible."

"Oh, at once." Julia showed signs of becoming hysterical. "The very first train. I feel as if I couldn't breathe in this atmosphere of deceit."

"I'm afraid there is no train before five o'clock, but I'll have the carriage ready in plenty of time. And now, if you will excuse me, I shall see about getting you some luncheon."

"Luncheon! Good heavens, I couldn't eat a mouthful. It would choke me."

Mrs. Knox seconded her niece admirably. "It would not be safe, Julia. A person capable of all this would not hesitate to poison our food."

Agatha accepted this tribute without comment. "Will you pack Mr. Forbes' things yourself?" she said, addressing Julia.

Again Mrs. Knox intervened. "Julia, I forbid you to go into that house, with this girl, and that dreadful, crazy creature--"

Forbes interrupted with signs of irritation. "You said that once before. There is no insane woman here."

"I am afraid you are not a very good judge of what _is_ or is _not_ here, Mr. Forbes," replied Aunt Estelle, scoring again. "We had a most unpleasant encounter with a woman clearly insane. She positively gibbered."

"Yes, Burton," Julia cried with shrewish enjoyment, "you have been made a laughing-stock all summer, poor dear. You've kept writing about this fine old place. I wish you could see it. It's simply in the last stages of dilapidation."

"It's ready to fall to pieces," corroborated Aunt Estelle. "I didn't venture inside, but the glimpses of the interior I got from the window showed that everything was fairly moth-eaten."

"Yes," Agatha admitted quietly. "We are very poor, so poor that a blind boarder seemed providential. Won't you sit on the porch till the carriage is ready?" she added politely. "I'm sure Mr. Forbes is tired after his long walk."

"Oh, please," protested Julia, her self-control shaken by the other's calm, "please drop this pretext of being so interested in Mr. Forbes' welfare. After the fraud you have practised on him all summer you can hardly expect him to believe anything you say."

"Oh, no," said Agatha. "I don't expect that for a moment. And now if you're sure you won't eat a little luncheon, I'll bid you all good afternoon." She went across the grass to the house, carrying herself with her chin high, moving deliberately. No one could have guessed the fact of which she was so certain, that during the encounter she had ceased to be a girl, that she had leaped without any intervening stages of maturity and middle life, straight to old age, that dreadful old age, beyond hope or joy, the age that is death in life. Agatha remembered wonderingly that once the mere flicker of sunshine through leaves, the mere fragrance of a flower, had a magic to quicken her pulses.

A little after three the carryall appeared. Howard was driving, and Forbes' suit-case and other impedimenta lay on the seat beside him. As he helped his passengers in, he explained that the trunk would be sent by express next day. This announcement was received in frigid silence whereupon Howard, too, became sulkily silent and used the whip on the fat bays with such effect that they covered the five miles between Oak Knoll and the village station at an unprecedented rate of speed.

Forbes thawed a little when Howard helped him to alight, and stood for a moment beside him. "Good-by, Mr. Forbes," the boy said huskily. "I'm awfully sorry you're going."

He put out his hand and after an instant's hesitation Forbes gripped it. He had grown fond of the boy. "Oh, Howard," he said, his voice betraying his hurt, "I wouldn't have believed it of you."

He heard Howard gulp and then burst out sobbing. Fortunately for the boy's pride, the hour was early and the station platform lacked its customary contingent of loafers.

"We didn't mean anything, Mr. Forbes," Howard choked. "Aggie wanted to take boarders, so she could send me to school, but when they saw how old and shabby the house was, they wouldn't come."

"Is she your sister?"

"Kind of one. Her father married my mother. She's better than a thousand real sisters."

"Burton," said Julia's voice beside them, "I wouldn't encourage the boy by listening to him. Probably that young woman has coached him in a new series of lies."

"Aggie never tells lies," Howard challenged her hotly. "This was like a charade or something. Mr. Forbes thought she was old and so she pretended to be. We had lots of fun and it didn't do anybody any harm." He appealed to Forbes. "She took good care of you anyway, didn't she, Mr. Forbes?"

"Really, Burton," expostulated Julia, "I can not allow this to go on. These people evidently regard you as fair game. It's dreadful that your blindness should put you so at the mercy of the unscrupulous, but I shall see that you are not imposed on while I am with you. Send this boy away."

"He doesn't need to send me away," Howard exploded indignantly. "I'm going." He seized Forbes' hand again. "Good-by, Mr. Forbes. Come and see us some time."

Julia gasped. "Did any one ever imagine such impertinence!" she asked of high heaven. "Such people seem to be without natural shame. I suppose they are so accustomed to being found out in falsehood and fraud that they take it as a matter of course. In the interest of justice there should be some way of punishing them. Couldn't they be prosecuted, Burton, for obtaining money under false pretenses?"

Forbes made no reply. Apparently he did not share Julia's lofty enthusiasm for abstract justice. His air of bewildered dejection suggested a lost child, rather than a man rescued from a false and intolerable position by the lady of his heart.