“I tell you if he were ten times condemned,” cried Luke, “I could not do it, father. It is madness to ask me, of all men, to fight on his behalf.”
“He—he did behave very badly to you, my boy. He’s a bad one, I’m afraid; but he is that poor creatures husband.”
“The only enemy I ever had, and you ask me to save him. It is not in human nature to do it. Why do you come and ask me such a thing?”
“You said you would not be angry with me, Luke; and she begged of me so hard, for the sake of the very old times, she said; and then she broke down, and said that if anything happened to her husband she should die.”
Luke walked to the window, and stood gazing out at the narrow lane below, with a great struggle going on in his breast. In his heart there was still left so tender an affection for Sage that he was ready to save her. For her sake he had given no thought to another of her sex, eschewing society, and devoting himself constantly to his profession; and now that his father had raised up before him, as it were, the face of the suffering wife, piteous and appealing, as she sent to him her message, asking, for the sake of old days, that he would come to her help, he felt that he must go—must devote his powers to saving the man she loved.
But it was impossible. He could not. He would not. He was but a man, he told himself, and this would be the work of an angel. No; he hated Cyril Mallow intensely, as the man who had robbed him of all he held dear, at the same time that he despised him in his honourable heart as a contemptible scoundrel who would sacrifice any one to gain his own ends.
Luke was not surprised to hear of Cyril being in fresh difficulties; he was ready, also, to believe that he was guilty, and he was asked to become this man’s advocate, to bring to bear his twelve years’ hard study and self-denial to try and save him from some richly-merited punishment. It was too much.
As he stood there, gazing out of the window, he seemed to see Cyril’s mocking, handsome, triumphant face, as he made him also his slave—one of those whose duty it was to try and drag him from the slough as soon as ever he thought proper to step in—one of those who were to lie down, that he might plant his foot upon the bended neck, step out into safety, and leave the helper in the mire.
On the other hand, strive to exclude it as he would, there was Sage’s appealing face, not the sweet girlish countenance he knew, but a face chastened by suffering, full of trust in him as in one who could and would help her in this supreme time of her trouble.
He fought against it, but in vain. He told himself that he should be mad to take up such a cause; that men would sneer and say evil things of him—that it was from no disinterested motives that he had done this thing; but there was ever the appealing face, the soft pleading eyes seeming to say to him, “I was weak and foolish, as well as cruel, in choosing as I did, but I humble myself now into the very dust, and ask you to forgive me and come to my help.”