"Yes, Jane Hemingway's daughter. You hate her, I know, with the unreasonable hatred that comes from despising her mother, but you've got to help me, Aunt Ann. You put me where I am, in education and standing, and you must not see me pulled down."
"How could I help you, even—even—oh, you don't know, you don't know that at this very minute—"
"Oh yes, he may be with her right now, for all I know," King broke in, passionately. "He may be pouring his lies into her confiding ear at this very minute, as you say, but Fate would not be cruel enough to let them harm her. You must see her, Aunt Ann. For my sake, you must see her. You will know what to say. One word from you would open her eyes, when from me it would be an offence. She would know that you knew; it would shock her to her very soul, but it would—if she's actually in danger—save her; I know her well enough for that; it would save her."
"You are asking too much of me, Luke," Ann groaned, almost in piteous appeal. "I can't do it—I just can't!"
"Yes, you will," King said. "You have got a grand soul asleep under that crust of sordid hatred and enmity, and it will awake, now that I have laid bare my heart. You, knowing the grim penalty of a false step in a woman's life, will not sit idle and see one of the gentlest of your kind blindly take it. You can't, and you won't. You'll save her for me. You'll save me, too—save me from the fate of a murderer."
He stood up. "I'm going now," he finished. "I must hurry on home. I won't have time to see you in the morning before I leave, but you now know what I am living for. I am living only for Virginia Hemingway. Men and women are made for each other, we were made for each other. She may fancy she cares for that man, but she doesn't, Aunt Ann, any more than you now care for—but I won't say it. Good-bye. You are angry now, but you will get over it, and—and, you will stand by me, and by her."
[XXI]
Left alone, still crouching on her door-step, Ann, with fixed eyes and a face like carved stone, watched him move away in the soft moonlight, the very embodiment of youth and faith. She twisted her cold hands between her knees and moaned. What was the matter with her, anyway? Was it possible that the recent raging fires of her life's triumph were already smouldering embers, half covered with the ashes of cowardly indecision? Was she to sit quaking like that because a mere youth wanted his toy? Was she not entitled to the sweet spoils of victory, after her long struggle and defence? Yes, but Virginia! After all, what had the innocent, sweet-natured girl to do with the grim battle? Never, in all Ann had heard of the constant gossip against her, had one word come from Virginia. Once, years ago, Ann recalled a remark of Mrs. Waycroft that the girl had tried to keep her mother from speaking so harshly of the lone brunt of general reproach, and yet Virginia was at that very moment treading the crumbling edge of the self-same precipice over which Ann had toppled.
The lone woman rose stiffly and went into the house to go to bed—to go to bed—to sleep! with all that battle of emotion in her soul and brain. The clock steadily ticking and throwing its round, brass pendulum from side to side caught her eye. It was too dark to see the hands, so she lighted a tallow-dip, and with the fixed stare of a dying person she peered into the clock's face. Half-past ten! Yes, there was perhaps time for the rescue. If she were to get to Chester's in time, her judgment of woman's nature told her one word from her would complete the rescue—the rescue of Jane Hemingway's child—Jane's chief hope and flag of virtue that she would still wave defiantly in her eyes. Without undressing—why, she could not have explained—Ann threw herself on her bed and buried her face in the pillow, clutching it with tense, angry hands.
"Oh, what's the matter with me?" she groaned. "Why did that fool boy come here to-night, telling me that it would bring him to the gallows stained to the bone with the dye of hell, and that I must keep her in the right road—me? Huh, me keep a girl in the right track, so they can keep on saying I'm the only scab on the body of the community? I won't; by all the powers above and below, I won't! She can look out for herself, even if it does ruin an idiot of a man and pull him—It really would ruin him, though. Maybe it would ruin me. Maybe he's right and I ought to make a life business of saving others from what I've been through—saving even my enemies. Christ said it; there is no doubt about that. He said it. He never had to go through with what I have, though, for He was free from the desire to fight, but He meant that one thing, as the one great law of life—the only law of life! Oh, God, I must do something! I must either save the girl or let it go on. I don't know which to do, as God is my creator, I don't actually know which to do. I don't—I don't—I don't—really—know—which—I want to do. That's it—I don't know which I want to do. I'm simply crazy to-night. I've never felt this way before. I've always been able to tell whether I wanted, or didn't want, a thing, but now—"