“No, no!” she cried. “What could I do but go to the jail? Miss Wynne was away.”
“You might have told my father,” I said. Why had she not?
“Mr. Wynne is grown older, and—I—There was no time to be lost, and Arthur was gone on duty for I know not what.” She was seeing and answering what further might have seemed strange to me. “Aunt Peniston was in a rage, I assure you. My aunt in a rage, Mr. Wynne, is a tempest in a thimble. All in a minute it boils over and puts out the little fire, and there is an end of it, and she asks what ought to be done. But now I am penitent, and have been scolded by Arthur. I will never, never do it any more. My aunt was right, sir.”
“I think you gave me more than life, Darthea, that day. And did you think I would take the parole?”
“Never for a moment!” she cried, with flashing eyes. “I would have taken it, but I want my friends to be wiser and stronger than I. I—I was proud of you in your misery and ragged blanket.” And with this the wonderful face went tender in a moment, and for my part I could only say, “Darthea! Darthea!”
She was quick to see and to fear, and to avoid that which was ever on my lips when with her, and which she seemed to bid to live, and then to fly from as if she had never tempted me.
“Ah, you were a droll figure, and Arthur could not but laugh when I described this hero in a blanket. It was then he told me more fully what before he had wrote, how in the hurry of an inspection he saw many men dying, and one so like you that he asked who it was, and was given another name; but now he thought it must have been you, and that you had perhaps chosen, why he knew not, a name not your own, or you had been misnamed by the turnkey. It was little wonder where men were dying in scores and changed past recognition; it was no wonder, I say, he did not know you, Mr. Wynne. He was so sorry, for he says frankly that just because you and he are not very good friends—and why are you not?—he feels the worse about it. After he had scolded me well, and I made believe to cry, he said it was a noble and brave thing I had done, and he felt he should have been the one to do it had he known in season. He did really mean to get the parole, but then you ran away. And you do see, Mr. Wynne, that it was all a frightful mistake of Arthur’s, and he is—he must be sorry?”
I would then and there have said to her that the man was a liar, and had meanly left me to die; but it was my word against his, and Delaney had long ago gotten out and been exchanged and gone South, whither I knew not. As of course she must trust the man she loved, if I were to say I did not believe him we should quarrel, and I should see her no more.
“My dear lady,” I said, keeping myself well in hand, “the moral is that women should be sent to inspect the hungry, the ragged, the frozen, and the dying.”
I saw she did not relish my answer. Was she herself quite satisfied? Did she want to be fortified in her love and trust by me, who had suffered? A shadow of a frown was on her brow for a moment, and then she said, “He will write to you. He promised me he would write to you. And that dear old Sister of Charity!—you must go and thank her at the little convent beside St. Joseph’s, in Willing’s Alley. You upset her as you went out in that rude fashion. Any but a Quaker would have stayed to apologise. Mr. Wynne was pleased I went to the jail with the dear sister. I believe the man really thought I would have gone alone. And I would; I would! When he told me it was clever and modest to get the sweet old papist for company, I swept him a mighty curtsey and thanked him and puzzled him, which is what men are for.”