“And you shall be paid, whichever way is decided,” said Miss Trevisa. “Every thing now rests with my niece.”
Judith seemed as one petrified. One hand was on her bosom, staying her heart, the other held the peacock’s feather before her, horizontally. Every particle of color had deserted, not her face only, but her hands as well. Her eyes were sunless, her lips contracted and livid. She was motionless as a parian statue, she hardly seemed to breathe. She perfectly understood what her aunt had laid upon her, her bodily sensations were dead whilst a conflict of ideas raged in her brain. She was the arbiter of Jamie’s fate. She did not disguise from herself that if consigned to the keeper of the asylum, though only for a week or two, he would not leave his charge the same as he entered. And what would it avail her or him to postpone the decision a week or a fortnight.
The brothers Scantlebray knew nothing of the question agitating her, but they saw that the determination at which she was resolving was one that cost her all her powers. Mr. Obadiah’s heavy mind did not exert itself to probe the secret, but the more eager intellect of his elder brother was alert, and wondering what might be the matter that so affected the girl, and made it so difficult for her to pronounce the decision. The hard eyes of Miss Trevisa were fixed on her. Judith’s answer would decide her future—on it depended Othello Cottage, and an annuity of fifty pounds. Jamie looked through a veil of tears at his sister, and never for a moment turned them from her, from the moment of his entry into the room. Instinctively the boy felt that his freedom and happiness depended on her.
One or the other must be sacrificed. That Judith saw Jamie was dull of mind, but there were possibilities of development in it. And, even if he remained where he was, he was happy, happy and really harmless, if a little mischievous; an offer had been made which was likely to lead him on into industrious ways, and to teach him application. He loved his liberty, loved it as does the gull. In an asylum he would pine, his mind become more enfeebled, and he would die. But then—what a price must be paid to save him? Oh, if she could have put the question to her father. But she had none to appeal to for advice. If she gave to Jamie liberty and happiness, it was at the certain sacrifice of her own. But there was no evading the decision, one or the other must go.
She stretched forth the peacock’s feather, laid the great indigo blue eye on the bands that held Jamie, on his gagged lips, and said: “Let him go.”
“You agree!” exclaimed Miss Trevisa.
Judith doubled the peacock’s feather and broke it.
CHAPTER XXX.
THROUGH THE TAMARISKS.
For some time after Judith had given her consent, and had released Jamie from the hands of the Scantlebrays, she remained still and white. Uncle Zachie missed the music to which he had become used, and complained. She then seated herself at the piano, but was distraught, played badly, and the old bird-stuffer went away grumbling to his shop.