_ CHAPTER XXIV. IN AN UPSTAIRS ROOM
It was characteristic of Rachel Carter that she should draw the window curtains aside in Viola's bedroom, allowing the pitiless light of day to fall upon her face as she seated herself to make confession. She had come to the hour when nothing was to be hidden from her daughter, least of all the cheek that was to be smitten.
The girl sat on the edge of the bed, her elbow on the footboard, her cheek resting upon her hand. Not once did she take her eyes from the grey, emotionless face of the woman who sat in the light.
In course of time, Rachel Carter came to the end of her story. She had made no attempt to justify herself, had uttered no word of regret, no signal of repentance, no plea for forgiveness. The cold, unfaltering truth, without a single mitigating alloy in the shape of sentiment, had issued from her tired but unconquered soul. She went through to the end without being interrupted by the girl, whose silence was eloquent of a strength and courage unsurpassed even by this woman from whom she had, after all, inherited both. She did not flinch, she did not cringe as the twenty-year-old truth was laid bare before her. She was made of the same staunch fibre as her mother, she possessed the indomitable spirit that stiffens and remains unyielding in the face of calamity.
"Now you know everything," said Rachel Carter wearily. "I have tried to keep it from you. But the truth will out. It is God's law. I would have spared you if I could. You are of my flesh and blood, you are a part of me. There has never been an instant in all these hard, trying years when I have not loved and cherished you as the gift that no woman, honest or dishonest, can despise. You will know what that means when you have a child of your own, and you will never know it until that has come to pass. You may cast me out of your heart, Viola, but you cannot tear yourself out of mine. So! I have spoken. There is no more."
She turned her head to look out of the window. Viola did not move. Presently the older woman spoke again. "Your name is Minda Carter. You will be twenty-two years old next September. You have no right to the name of Gwynne. The boy who lives in that house over yonder is the only one who has a right to it. But his birthright is no cleaner than yours. You can look him in the face without shame to yourself, because your father was an honest man and your mother was his loyal, faithful wife,--and Kenneth Gwynne can say no more than that."
"Nor as much," burst from the girl's lips with a fervour that startled her mother. "His father was not a loyal, faithful husband, nor was he an honest man or he would have married you."
She was on her feet now, her body bent slightly, forward, her smouldering eyes fixed intently upon her; mother's face.
Rachel Carter stared incredulously. Something in Viola's eyes, in the ring of her voice caused her heart to leap.
"I was his wife in the eyes of God," she began, but something rushed up into her throat and seemed to choke her.
"And you have told Kenneth all this?" cried Viola, a light as of understanding flooding her eyes. "He knows? How long has he known?"
"I--I can't remember. Some of it for weeks, some of it only since last night."
"Ah!" There was a world of meaning in the cry. Even as she uttered it she seemed to feel his arms about her and the strange thrill that had charged through her body from head to foot. She sat down again on the edge of the bed; a dark wave of colour surging to her cheek and brow.
"I am waiting," said her mother, after a moment. Her voice was steady. "It is your turn to speak, my child."
Viola came to her side.
"Mother," she began, a deep, full note in her voice, "I want you to let me sit in your lap, with your arms around me. Like when I was a little girl."
Rachel lifted her eyes; and as the girl looked down into them the hardness of years melted away and they grew wondrous soft and gentle.
"Is this your verdict?" she asked solemnly.
"Yes," was the simple response.
"You do not cast me out of your heart? Remember, in the sight of man, I am an evil woman."
"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 passing symbol.
How simple, how easy it was for this bright, gay vagabond to return to the silence from which he had come. _