Hildegarde shuddered. Quietly she stepped back inside the door, stood there trembling a few moments, then opened it noisily and commenced to descend. She nodded to Philip, who looked at her queerly, and walked rapidly to the house.
She did not go to her room, but threw herself in a chair in the library. She could not be said to think for some time; her mind was in chaos. But matters arranged themselves before her after a time with cruel clearness. Her father was plotting deliberately to murder a man, for that is what it amounted to—to murder a watchman faithful at his post. That very night. And the watchman was Potter Waite’s! This attack was to be made upon him, and the labor which had meant so much to him for the past year would be brought to nothing, destroyed by one blast of devilish explosive.
She knew what Potter was doing; remembered those talks with him, his enthusiasm, his awakening to patriotism—and she, too, was a patriot. That work of his must have been of value; he must have achieved much to demand attention from her father and his companions. She was conscious of a glow of pride, and then was furious with herself for feeling pride. What interest had she in Potter Waite—and if she had an interest in him, or in any honest man, what could come of it? There was another decision she had reached: That she could be wife to no honest American. She, the daughter of a traitor, could make no honorable man the father of the grandchildren of a traitor. She had thought of those children—and of their shame, and of generations of shame that would follow them. The stigma would follow from mother to children to children’s children. Nearly a hundred and fifty years had passed since Benedict Arnold sought to betray his country, and his name was remembered, his treachery recalled, where noble men and noble acts had been forgotten. No children of hers should feel the shame that would be their birthright because the blood of Herman von Essen was in their veins. Such a conclusion is a terrible thing for a girl like Hildegarde, vivid with life, entering womanhood, ripe for love and marriage! But it was there, weighing her, overshadowing her, choking her with its noose of blackness.
Her duty was plain—her duty to her country and to decent citizenship; but opposing it was the demand of blood. To give her father over to the law was unthinkable. Had it been thinkable she doubted if she had evidence which would stand the test—her unsupported word.... But she could not see that crime committed, which it lay in her power to avert, and continue to live.... It would make her a party to the crime, an abettor of murder.... She could give warning; she must give warning—but how or to whom? How, without betraying her father?
There was but one answer that she could see—to go herself to Potter Waite, to warn him, to beg him to ask no questions as to the source of her information, to trust to his honor and his chivalry. She was confident she could trust him. In that moment she laid aside the pretense that she despised him—but she did not admit that she loved him. She saw him as a man, an American gentleman, trustworthy, brave, dependable. She rested herself on that quality of dependability; felt she could trust herself to it utterly. She could give warning; put him on his guard, frustrate the plotters—and escape from the complexity without betraying the secret she must not betray.
She dressed for the street, called for her car, which she told Philip she would drive herself, and started toward Potter’s hangar. She did not drive slowly; could not have driven slowly, for there was a certain frenzy upon her, driving her. Her car rushed along the broad street at reckless, headlong speed. Scarcely slackening her speed, she careened into the road that led toward the shore and the hangar, slammed on the brakes at the very door, and sprang out. She did not hesitate at the door, but snatched it open. Potter Waite was in the seat of a newer, smaller aeroplane than the old machine of their adventure.
“Potter,” she cried. “Potter....”
He looked, sprang from the machine, and was before her in an instant, his face glorified, his eyes alight with joy.
“Garde,” he said, exultantly, “you’ve come!... You’ve come back to me!”
She shrank from him, put out her hand as though to hold him away. “No,” she whispered, in sudden terror. “No. Not that.”