Then the men folk of such women were as bad as they were. There was a wicked, lying, evil spirit abroad these days that Jack was as good as his master, and if you were up you had to be pulled down, and if you were big you had to be made little.
"Only think what a cry these people would make if anything happened," said Janet, "wrecking your career perhaps, and making promotion impossible."
"Don't be afraid of that either, Janet. I can take care of myself, you know."
"So you can, dear," said Janet, "but then think of your father. Forty years a judge, and not a breath of scandal has ever touched him! But that's just why some of these dirts would like to destroy him, calling to him in the Courts themselves, perhaps, with all the dirty tongues at them, to come down from the judgment-seat and set his own house in order."
"My father can take care of himself, too, Janet," said Victor.
"I know, dear, I know," said Janet. "But think what he'll suffer if any sort of trouble falls on his son! More, far more, than if it fell on himself. That's the way with fathers, isn't it? Always has been, I suppose, since the days of David. Do you remember his lamentations over his son Absalom? I declare I feel fit enough to cry in Church itself whenever the Vicar reads it: 'O my son Absalom! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son.'"
There was silence for a moment, for Victor found it difficult to speak, and then Janet began to plead with him in the name of his family also.
"The Deemster is seventy years old now," she said, "and he has four hundred years of the Ballamoars behind him, and there has never been a stain on the name of any of them. That's always been a kind of religion in your family, hasn't it—that if a man belongs to the breed of the Ballamoars he will do the right—he can be trusted? That's something to be born to, isn't it? It seems to me it is more worth having than all the jewels and gold and titles and honours the world has in it. Oh, my dear, my dear, you know what your father is; he'll say nothing, and you haven't a mother to speak to you; so don't be vexed with your old Janet who loves you, and would die for you, if she could save you from trouble and disgrace; but think what a terrible, fearful, shocking thing it would be for you, and for your father, and for your family, and .... yes, for the island itself if anything should happen now."
"Nothing shall happen—I give you my word for that, Janet," said Victor.
"God bless you!" said Janet, and rising and reaching over in the darkness she kissed him—her face was wet.