“You’ve not been a saint, and Di knows it,” repeated the weak brother of a girl whose fame belonged to the West; whose name was a signal for cheerful looks; whose buoyant humour and impartial friendliness gained her innumerable friends; and whose talent, understood by few, gave her a certain protection, lifting her a little away from the outwardly crude and provincial life around her.
When Rawley spoke, it was with quiet deliberation, and even gentleness. “I haven’t been a saint, and she knows it, as you say, Dan; but the law is on my side as yet, and it isn’t on yours. There’s the difference.”
“You used to gamble yourself; you were pretty tough, and you oughtn’t to walk up my back with hobnailed boots.”
“Yes, I gambled, Dan, and I drank, and I raised a dust out here. My record was writ pretty big. But I didn’t lay my hands on the ark of the social covenant, whose inscription is, Thou shalt not steal; and that’s why I’m poor but proud, and no one’s watching for me round the corner, same as you.”
Welldon’s half-defiant petulance disappeared. “What’s done can’t be undone.” Then, with a sudden burst of anguish: “Oh, get me out of this somehow!”
“How? I’ve got no money. By speaking to your sister?”
The other was silent.
“Shall I do it?” Rawley peered anxiously into the other’s face, and he knew that there was no real security against the shameful trouble being laid bare to her.
“I want a chance to start straight again.”
The voice was fluttered, almost whining; it carried no conviction; but the words had in them a reminder of words that Rawley himself had said to Diana Welldon but a few months ago, and a new spirit stirred in him. He stepped forwards and, gripping Dan’s shoulder with a hand of steel, said fiercely: