Lena was right, she said; the rum people were very angry with Mr. Bayard: he had got so many shops shut up; and other places; he had shut up so much in Angel Alley this year. And now old Trawl had lost his license. Folks said a man couldn’t make a decent living there any longer.
“That’s what Ben said,” observed Jane, with a feeble sense of the poignancy of the phrase. “A man couldn’t make an honest living there, now. But there’s one thing,” added Jane with hanging head. “Lena don’t know it. I couldn’t tell Lena. God have mercy on me, for it’s me that helped it on!”
“I do not understand you, Jane,” replied Helen coldly; “how could you injure Mr. Bayard, or have any connection with any plot to do him harm?”
“I sent Ben off last Sunday night,” said Jane humbly. “I sent him marching for good. I told him I never could marry him. I told him I couldn’t stand it any longer. I told him what I heard on Ragged Rock—that night—last year.”
“What did you hear on Ragged Rock?” asked Helen, still distant and doubtful.
“Didn’t the minister ever tell you?” replied Jane. “Then I won’t.”
“Very well,” said Helen, after an agitated silence, “I shall not urge you. But if Mr. Bayard’s life is in real danger—I cannot believe it!” cried the sheltered, happy woman. Such scenes, such possibilities, belonged to the stage, to fiction; not to New England life. The Professor’s daughter had a healthy antagonism in her to the excessive, the too dramatic. Her mind grasped the facts of the situation so slowly that the Windover girl half pitied her.
“You don’t see,” said Jane. “You don’t understand. You ain’t brought up as we are.”
“If Mr. Bayard is in danger—” repeated Helen. “Jane!” she cried sharply, thinking to test the girl’s sincerity and judgment, “should you have come and told me what Lena said, if I had not overheard it?”
“Miss Carruth,” answered Jane, with a dignity of her own, “don’t you know there is not one of his people who would not do anything to save Mr. Bayard?”