"You are my mother. You did not desert me. You would not leave me behind. You have loved me since the day I was born. You will never be an evil woman in my eyes. Hold me in your lap, mother dear. I shall always feel safe then."
Rachel"s lips and chin quivered.... A long time afterward the girl gently disengaged herself from the strong, tense embrace and rose to her feet.
"You say that Kenneth hates you," she said, "and you say that you do not blame him. Is it right and fair that he should hate you any more than I should hate his father?" "Yes," replied Rachel Carter, "it is right and fair. I was his mother"s best friend. His father did not betray his best friend as I did, for my husband was dead.
There is a difference, my child."
Viola shook her head stubbornly. "I don"t see why the woman must always be crucified and the man allowed to go his way--"
"It is no use, Viola," interrupted Rachel, rising. Her face had hardened again. "We cannot change the ways of the world." She crossed the room, but stopped with her hand on the door-latch.
Turning to her daughter, she said: "Whatever Kenneth may think of me, he has the greatest respect and admiration for you. He bears no grudge against Minda Carter. On the contrary, he has shown that he would lay down his life for you. You must bear no grudge against him. You and he are children who have walked in darkness for twenty years, but now you have come to a place where there is light. See to it, Viola, that you are as fair to him as you would have him be to you. You stand on common ground with the light of understanding all about you. Do not turn your backs upon each other. Face one another. It is the only way."
Viola"s eyes flashed. She lifted her chin.
"I am not ashamed to look Kenneth Gwynne in the face," said she, a certain crispness in her voice. Then, with a quick change to tenderness, "You are so tired, mother. Won"t you lie down and sleep awhile?"
"After I have eaten something. Come downstairs. I want to hear what happened here this morning. Kenneth told me very little and you have done nothing but ask questions of me."
"Did he tell you that he struck Barry Lapelle?"
"No."
"Or how near I came to shooting him?"
"Merciful heaven!" "Well, I guess Barry won"t rest till he has told the whole town what we are,--and then we"ll have to face something cruel, mother. But we will face it together."
She put her arm about her mother"s shoulders and they went down the narrow staircase together.
"It will not cost me a single friend, Viola," remarked Rachel grimly. "I have none to lose. But with you it will be different."
"We don"t have to stay in the old town," said Viola bravely. "The world is large. We can move on. Just as we used to before we came here to live. Always moving on, we were."
Rachel shook her head. They were at the bottom of the stairs.
"I will not move on. This is where I intend to live and die. The man I lived for is up yonder in the graveyard. I will not go away and leave him now,--not after all these years. But you, my child, you must move on. You have something else to live for. I have nothing. But I can hold my head up, even here. You will not find it so easy. You will--"
"It will be as easy for me as it will for Kenneth Gwynne," broke in the girl. "Wait and see which one of us runs away first. It won"t be me."
"He will not go away and leave you," said Rachel Carter.
Viola gave her a quick, startled look. They were in the kitchen, however, before she spoke. Then it was to say:
"Now I understand why I have never been able to think of him as my brother." That, and nothing more; there was an odd, almost frightened expression in her eyes.
She got breakfast for her mother, Hattie having been sent down into the town by her mistress immediately upon her return home, ostensibly to make a few purchases but actually for the purpose of getting rid of her. Viola, in relating the story of the morning"s events, was careful to avoid using the harshest of Barry"s terms, but earnestly embellished the account of Kenny"s interference with some rather formidable expressions of her own, putting them glibly into the mouth of her champion. Once her mother interrupted her to inquire:
"Did Kenneth actually use those words, Viola? "Pusillanimous varlet,"--and "mendacious scalawag"? It does not sound like Kenneth."
Viola had the grace to blush guiltily. "No, he didn"t. He swore harder than anybody I"ve ever--"
"That"s better," said Rachel, somewhat sternly.
Later on they sat on the little front porch, where the older woman, with scant recourse to the graphic, narrated the story of Moll Hawk. Pain and horror dwelt in Viola"s wide, lovely eyes.
"Oh, poor, poor Moll," she murmured at the end of the wretched tale.
"She has never known a mother"s love, or a mother"s care. She has never had a chance."
Then Rachel Carter said a strange thing. "When all this is over and she is free, I intend to offer her a home here with me."
The girl stared, open-mouthed. "With you? Here with us?"
"You will not always be here with me," said her mother. "How can you say such a thing?" with honest indignation. Then quickly: "I know I planned to run off and leave you a little while ago, but that was before I came to know how much you need me."
Rachel experienced one of her rare smiles. "And before you came to know Kenneth Gwynne," she said. "No, my dear, the time is not far off when you will not need a mother. Moll Hawk needs one now. I shall try to be a mother to that hapless girl."
Viola looked at her, the little line of perplexity deepening between her eyes.
"Somehow it seems to me that I am just beginning to know my own mother," she said.
A bluejay, sweeping gracefully out over the tree-tops, came to rest upon a lofty bough in the grove across the road. They sat for a long time without speaking, these two women, watching him preen and prink, a bit of lively blue against the newborn green. Then he flew away. He "moved on,"--a pa.s.sing symbol.
How simple, how easy it was for this bright, gay vagabond to return to the silence from which he had come.
CHAPTER XXV
MINDA CARTER
Viola was alone on the porch when Kenneth came into view at the bend in the road. He had chuckled more than once after parting from the gambler; a mental vision of the inwardly agitated though outwardly bland Mr. Trentman making tracks as fast as his legs would carry him to warn Lapelle of his peril afforded him no small amount of satisfaction. If he knew his man,--and he thought he did,--Barry would lose no time in shaking the dust of Lafayette from his feet.
The thought of that had sent his spirits up. He went even farther in his reflections and found himself hoping that Barry"s flight might be so precipitous that he would not have the opportunity to disclose his newfound information concerning Rachel Carter.
He was nearing his own gate before he saw Viola, seated on the porch. Involuntarily he slackened his pace. A sort of panic seized him. Was she waiting there to question him? He experienced a sudden overwhelming dismay. What was he to say to her? How was he to face the unhappy, stricken,--but even as he contemplated a cowardly retreat, she arose and came swiftly down the path. He groaned inwardly. There was no escape.
Now, as he hesitated uncertainly at his own gate, his heart in his boots, she serenely beckoned to him.
"I want to see you, Kenny," she called out.
This was no stricken, unhappy creature who approached him. Her figure was proudly erect; she walked briskly; there was no trace of shame or humiliation in her face; if anything, she was far more at ease than he.
"I want to thank you," she said calmly, "for what you did this morning. Not only for what you did to him but for keeping me from shooting him." She held out her hand, but lowered it instantly when she saw that his own was rather significantly hidden inside the breast of his coat. A look of pain fluttered across her eyes.
"Where is your mother?" he asked lamely.
She seemed to read his thoughts. "Mother and I have talked it all over, Kenneth. She has told me everything."
"Oh, you poor darling!" he cried.