As she tossed thus on a sleepless bed, now burning with fever, now shaking as with an ague, Mammy Cely's words suddenly recurred to her with startling distinctness. "If I had been a white woman I would have taken that child and gone." ... Well?... She was a white woman.... She lay very still then. But where could she go?... In all the world where could she go?
A curious thing is the human brain. It has its crannies and cubby-holes where it lays away its stores as a housewife piles up unused linen. Then these treasures are covered up by other and later accumulations and we straightway forget that they exist, until some day Memory without ado deftly extricates from underneath the load a name, a fact, a story, and holds it up before us; or, opening but a crack, she bids us listen at the door, and we hear perhaps as Margaret was hearing now, a forgotten voice, saying:
"—an obscure spot, my dear. You can hardly find it on the map. But if you ever need a friend, come to me."
Her trembling ceased. Her heart was almost brought to a stop by the sudden force of a hope that flung itself across her way.
For steadying the nerves of an essentially strong person suffering temporary collapse, there is nothing like an emergency requiring action. It is the helplessness of enforced inactivity that saps courage and bears us down. As Margaret lay there holding with a death-grip to her new-found hope, she felt herself thrilled as by an electric current. Strength and courage came flowing back to the heart that a moment before had been at ebb-tide. She thought rapidly. Then she got up and looked at the clock. It was not quite twelve. She had thought it was nearly morning.
Mammy Cely was in her usual deep sleep, but Margaret took the precaution to close her door. With swift noiseless steps she dressed herself, and taking a handbag filled it with baby garments. She stuffed a pocket book well down into the bag, having first taken from it a roll of bills and secreted them about her person. A superstitious thrill passed through her at sight of the money. It was much more than she was in the habit of drawing and it had been taken from the bank only yesterday. The teller had said to her as he handed it to her, "Mrs. De Jarnette, that is a large sum to have in the house. I should not let the amount be known to the servants—or to anybody." What had prompted her to draw so much money? Surely it was God's leading. He meant her to escape!
She went next to a drawer and took out her jewels, mostly gifts from her father, with a few simple things that were her mother's. There was a diamond brooch and earrings and necklace that had been Victor's mother's. She had forgotten them in her guilty flight, and they had come to Margaret. She put them back into the drawer and with them some gifts of Victor's that she could not bring herself just then to take, marking the box plainly, "The De Jarnette diamonds," and locking them up.
This done, she sat down with the clock before her and wrote two notes—one, a very brief one, to Richard De Jarnette. It said:
"I leave you the De Jarnette diamonds. I would willingly give up the De Jarnette money if you will relinquish your claim to Philip. But I shall never let you have my child."
It was in different vein that she wrote to Judge Kirtley. He must forgive her for going—she couldn't help it. She simply had to go. The appeal might fail as this had. The world was so large. She was sure that she could find some place in it where she could hide away and be at peace. She had not told him because she thought it might be better for a while for him not to know. Then, too, she had felt sure that he would try to dissuade her—and she must go. He would forgive her, she knew. He had been a father to her—