so sorry," he pleaded in a gentle voice.
She shrank from him as if his touch had been upon raw flesh.
"I did not want to hurt you…" he began again, trying to search his mind for something that might be said under terrible circumstances like this. What could be said? He had only shown her the truth, and there was no way of taking it back even if that were a right thing to do. It was too cruel that men had to sin and their children must suffer for it.
She shrank still further from his touch and lifted her face dry of tears, with a terrible look of despair and horror in her eyes.
"Don’t!" she said sharply. "You do not need to offer me sympathy—now!"
Her lips were white and trembling, but she was very quiet otherwise. There was a look in her face as if she had suddenly grown old, very old, with the sharpness that sudden great sorrow and revelation of sin brings.
"I know," he said simply, with miserable humility in his voice. "I must seem terrible to you. But I wish you would believe me that it was not my pleasure that brought me here. It was to save others from awful suffering! I did not know about you. I did not realize that there would have been you or anyone except the wrongdoer to suffer——"
"Don’t!" she said so sharply this time that he started as if she had struck him.
"Of course!" said he. "I am a fool! I should have kept my mouth shut. I am only making things worse. But at least you will let me do something for you. I could send for anyone you want."
She swept him with a silencing glance.
"It is too late!" she said significantly, and then with a little despairing gasp like a suppressed moan, "and it would not have mattered anyway, of course. But oh, won’t you go now? Haven’t you done all the awful things you had to do? Couldn’t I be alone?"
He took one determined step toward the door and then paused, hesitating and looking up the stairs.
"I see," she said with a tired voice, "you have to remain on guard. Never mind. If you will just let me alone till you are allowed to go, and if you will try and manage it so that I will never have to see you again if possible, I shall be very much obliged. You are anxious to help me. Do that if you please."
He stood looking straight at her sorrowfully for a moment. She had risen now and was looking straight and coldly at him. She seemed like a little sinking thing that was begging him to let her sink, and he stood trying to see a way out of it. Some strong emotion swept over his fine young face and passed.
"Very well," he said quietly, and looked at her again, thinking rapidly. "Very well, I will—on one condition, that you will let me know if there is any way in which I could help you."
"There would never be any way!" She held her hand sorrowfully high. "I have friends."
He was still again for a moment and then said slowly, as if realizing a new phase of her situation, "Of course—yet—if there should come a time when there was no one else who could help—I will do anything in my power for you—or your father—or brother!"
"There is always God," said Romayne briefly, and, turning, left him without a look, holding her head high and walking up the stairs with brave steps.
He watched her go, a gallant little figure with the look of wreck upon her, yet a spirit that would not surrender.
She took up her position outside her father’s bedroom door as if she intended to stand right there for hours if it were necessary, standing by till time passed and she was needed. She did not glance downstairs where the tall young officer stood guard. If she must bear her anguish thus in the eyes of a stranger, she would at least ignore his presence. She wanted him to know that henceforth for her he no longer existed. It was the only possible way in which she could go on and live. And live she must for her father’s sake. He might have done wrong, but he was her father still and needed her all the more if he had done wrong. She could not make it seem real that he had knowingly broken the law or put himself under its power. There must be some explanation by which others were to blame, and her father had been deceived about the business somehow, and thought he was carrying on a legitimate affair. That didn’t seem reasonable, either, after all that she had seen. Her father was not one easily deceived. Well, this was not the time to reason terrible possibilities out to a logical end, not while her father lay between life and death, a world that must have misjudged him! Her work now was to watch by that door and pray.
As she stood there trembling through what seemed hours, although in reality it was but minutes, her mind was fixed on the memory of the white drawn face of her father. She seemed to see like a panorama the scene upon which he had entered, the chalky face of Lawrence appearing an instant and then gone! Lawrence! What part had he in it all? Had it anything to do with his staying out late nights, and his surly air at the table of late? And those lines that had been etching around her father’s eyes and lips, that she suddenly realized now were deeper and more anxious than they had ever been? Had they been wholly on account of Lawrence?
But her shocked senses could not reason. She swept such thoughts away and stood there praying.
"Oh God! Oh—God!"
But she could think of no words further than merely to cry out that she was in dire need. As she had just told the young man, there was always God, and now all at once she knew there was only God. If all this was true that they were charging on her father and brother, there would not be other friends. Of course, there might be some who would be willing to share her disgrace but none that she would wish to drag down to so low a level. No, she would have to face this thing alone and bear what the world gave her. There would be God, and she must just keep on crying till she knew He heard, and let Him do His will. She had no power in her even to suggest what He should do. She did not know what to ask for. She dared not ask that it might all be a dream, and that morning would bring sweetness and sanity and a fair future once more. She had too much good common sense to deceive herself into any such hope or possibility. She must just cry till she felt God heard and then wait till He helped. If they might only all have died before this happened!
In the course of time the door opened silently, and a doctor came out, almost falling over her as she stood crouched close. Her eyes asked leave to go to her father, and he half waved assent, eyeing her curiously, sadly, as she slid like a wraith over to the bed and down upon her knees, taking the cold resistless hand in her warm one and laying her lips against it.
One look at his face told her he was no better. The features were even more drawn than she remembered them, yet she knew he was not dead. She could see by the faces of the nurse and the other doctor that they were still doing things for him, and when she lifted her eyes to the doctor who came near the bed and asked if she might speak to her father, he shook his head.
"He can’t hear you," he said. "He’s unconscious. Later he may rally. They do sometimes."
The tone was kind but merciless. Romayne sensed that everything after this was to be merciless. She must just understand that.
There was a long period when she knelt there trying to think, wondering if she had prayed as hard as she ought to have done, seeking vainly for a way out of this terrible situation, a friend upon whom she might really rely.
Downstairs the telephone rang several times, and a man’s voice answered in low tones. Twice she heard the front door open and close and voices in the hall, but it seemed to be no concern of hers. Others were in charge. She must remain here until something came, though she knew not what.
Now
