“If it was my concerns you asked me out here to discuss, I think I will go in,” said Lily, “for it is cold out of doors, and I have nothing to say to you.”
“You know well whose concerns it was. Is she coming? Does she understand that it’s for the last time? I know what she thinks. I’ve been such a fool hitherto she thinks I will be as great a fool as ever, and come hankering after her to the stroke of doom. If she thinks that, let her think it no more. This time I will never come back. I will just let myself go. Oh, it’s easier, far easier, than to hold yourself in, even a little bit, as I’ve done. I’ve always had the fear of her before my eyes. I’ve always said to myself: ‘Not that! not that! or she will never speak to me again;’ but now——” He swung his fist once more with a menacing gesture through the dim air. It seemed to Lily as if he were shaking it in the face of Heaven.
“And you don’t think shame to say so!” cried Lily, tremulous with cold and agitation, and finding no argument but this, which she had used before.
“Why should I think shame? There are things a woman like Eelen Blythe can look over, but there are some you would not let her hear of, not to save your soul. It’s a matter of saving a man’s soul, Lily Ramsay, whatever ye may think. The worst is she knows every word I have to say: there’s nothing new to tell her—except just this,” he said with vehement emphasis: “that this time I will never come back!”
“And that is not new either. I have heard you tell her so fifty times. Oh, man,” cried Lily, “cannot you go and leave her at peace? She will never forget you, but she will accept what cannot be helped. Me, I fight against it, but I have to submit too. And Helen will not fight. She will just live quiet and say her prayers for you night and day.”
“Her prayers! I want herself to stand by my side and keep my heart.”
“You would be better with her prayers than with many a woman’s company. Your heart! Can you not pluck up a spirit and stand for God and what is right without Helen? How will you do it with her, then? You would mind her at first—oh, I do not doubt every word she said—but then you would get impatient, and cry: ‘Hold your tongue, woman!’”
“Is that,” he cried quickly, “what he says to you? He is just a sneaking coward, and that I would tell him to his face!”
“You are a coward to call any man so that is not here to defend himself!” cried Lily, wild with rage and pain, “though who you mean I know not, and what you mean I care not. Never man spoke such words to me, but you would do it, you are of the kind to do it. You have thought and thought that she could save you, and then when you found it was not so, you would be fiercer at her and bitterer at her than you have been at your own self. Oh, let Helen be! She will never forget you, but she will never go with you so long as her old father sits there and cannot move in his big chair.”
“If I thought that——” he said, then paused. “If that’s what’s to come of it all after more than a dozen years! Would I have been a vagabond on the face of the earth if she had taken me then? I trow no. You will think I am not the kind good men are made of? Maybe no; but there’s more kinds than one, even of decent men. I would not drag what was her name in the dust.”