Jim was sitting up. His chin was propped on the knuckles of his clasped hands, and his elbows were set upon his spread knees.
“You were right, Sis,” he went on. “I laughed at you when you said it, but I knew you were right even then. When I first saw Molly the thing got hold of me. And it wasn’t just gratitude to that boy, her father, that made me think and feel the way I did when I looked into her child’s eyes. No. Say, I carried that little kid in my arms right up to here. You can’t ever know what carrying a pretty kid like her in your arms means to a man. It just sets him crazy with pity and—love. It wasn’t my gratitude to her dead father made me do it. When I said to you the thing I meant to do, it was all dead fixed in my mind. I’m just crazy to death for that little girl, and I want to have her my wife. Oh, I know. I know it all. I’m only worried she won’t have learnt to hate that boy the way he deserves. And there’s the thing that’s always hanging over me. Would I dare, Sis, if she’d learned to hate that way, with the shadow of penitentiary always around my heels? Would it be right? Would it be honest? Sometimes I reckon it would, and sometimes I reckon I’d be little better than the skunk who betrayed her. I don’t know.” He smiled a little pathetically. “It seems I can’t think right about it. Tell me, Sis; you’re wise to these things. You see, you’re a woman.”
Blanche bent over her work, and spoke without looking up. This brother of hers, this strong, reliant man, seemed more like a child to her than ever.
“It’s all so simple to me, Jim,” she said, without a moment’s hesitation. “The world surrounds the business of marriage with a lot of stuff and notions that have no right to any place in it. A boy loves a girl, and she loves him. There isn’t a thing matters to them beyond the love which is pure, and good, and as natural as God Almighty intended it to be. What matters, to a girl feeling that way, if a human threat is dogging the man she loves? Doesn’t it make it sweeter to her to care for him, and think of him, and worry for him? Sure it does. Then think of her. A boy doesn’t love what has been, only what is. He loves her. Well? Folk say this, folk say that. Who cares what folk say? It doesn’t seem to me that they matter in the least. Their approval wouldn’t help in the hour of need. And their disapproval wouldn’t rob folk who love of one moment of their happiness. When the time comes, Jim, just be yourself. Tell Molly all you think. Make her your wife if she loves you. And if you two are to get the happiness I wish for you there’ll be one, anyway, whose approval will do its best to help it along.”
The first of the dawn had lit the valley with its twilight. Blanche was passing out of Molly’s sick-room. It was her last visit for the night. Three times she had left her own bed to assure herself of the girl’s well-being. At each visit she had found Molly sleeping calmly, and without a sign of fever. Her satisfaction was intense.
She was about to return to the warm comfort of her own room when the sound of a spurred footstep on the verandah broke upon the silence of the house. The meaning of it came to her instantly. It was Larry returned from his journey. And she knew that he must have ridden something like a hundred miles in fifteen hours. She drew her dressing-robe closely about her, and passed out on to the verandah to meet him.
She found him sprawled in a big chair gazing into the twilight of the dawn. The air was chill, but it signified nothing to her. That great, red-headed creature was the man of her woman’s dream, and her gladness in him rose above any thought of discomfort.
He raised a pair of astonished eyes as she appeared through the French windows.
“For goodness’ sake, child, you haven’t been sitting around waiting for me to get back?” he cried, springing to his feet.