Part 12 (1/2)
This word was forbidden in the upper circles of the Green River younger set, and Willard looked pained, but collected himself.
”We are the same as engaged,” he insisted st.u.r.dily.
He had forced an issue at last, but Judith evaded it, laughing softly in the dark.
”Oh, are we?”
”Aren't we?”
”How do you know there isn't anybody else?”
”Well, you won't look at Ed, and Murph don't count.” Willard made this p.r.o.nouncement lightly, though the adamantine rules and impa.s.sable barriers of a whole social order were embodied in it. ”Murph that you're so thick with, all of a sudden. He's a bully fellow, all right, next captain of the team, probably. Good thing he's broken into the crowd a little way. Too bad he's Irish. Murph don't count.”
”No--no!” A sudden and poignant sweetness thrilled in Judith's voice.
The tenor of the Green River High School quartette, not ordinarily sensitive to variations of tone in the voices of others, could not ignore it. The change had disturbed him vaguely. It seemed to call for some comment.
”Judy, you look great to-night.... I'd do anything for you.”
”Then go home, Willard.”
”You haven't answered my question.”
”What question?”
”Don't tease.”
”I honestly don't know.”
”You don't hear one word I'm saying to you.”
Judith laughed guiltily. ”Then what makes you talk to me?”
”Judith--are we the same as engaged?”
Judith hesitated. ”Kissing each other good-night--and all that--is silly. I don't want to. Only sometimes I want to, and then afterward I'm ashamed, and can't understand why. Willard, I don't want to grow up. I don't ever want to. I want things to stay just the way they are. They are--lovely. Oh, Willard----”
She stopped, with tears in her eyes. There had been a real appeal in his earnest young voice, and she had done her best to answer it, painfully thinking out loud, with her heart in her words, making him an authentic confidence. But the confidence was off the point, and he ignored it, pursuing his subject with the concentration which will keep his s.e.x the stronger one, votes for women or no votes for women.
”Are you the same as engaged to me?”
”Will you go home if I say I am?”
”Are you?”
”There isn't any such thing as being the same as engaged.”
”Are you?”
”Yes.”
Willard, forgetting himself in the heat of debate, had withdrawn his foot from the door. Judith, narrowly on the watch for this moment, now seized it, shutting him and his Belle Isle outside, and slamming the door in his face. He had gained his point, and would not linger. She heard him ring the bell once or twice in perfunctory protest, then put down his candy on the steps.