"Ending it all--in an obscure lodging. Afterward the earth would have
been shovelled on to a work-house coffin. It was an awful thing." He
shook off a passionate shudder. "There was no wealth on earth that could
give me a moment's ease--sleep--hope--life. The whole world was full
of things I loathed the sight and thought of. The doctors said my
condition was physical. Perhaps it was--perhaps to-day has strangely
given a healthful jolt to my nerves--perhaps I have been dragged away
from the agony of morbidity and plunged into new intense emotions which
have saved me from the last thing and the worst--SAVED me!"
He stopped suddenly and his face flushed, and then quite slowly turned
pale.
"SAVED ME!" he repeated the words as the curate saw the awed blood
creepingly recede. "Who knows, who knows! How many explanations one is
ready to give before one thinks of what we say we believe. Perhaps it
was--the Answer!"
The curate bowed his head reverently.
"Perhaps it was."
The girl Glad sat clinging to her knees, her eyes wide and awed and with
a sudden gush of hysteric tears rushing down her cheeks.
"That's the wye! That's the wye!" she gulped out. "No one won't
never believe--they won't, NEVER. That's what she sees, Miss Montaubyn.
You don't, 'E don't," with a jerk toward the curate. "I ain't nothin'
but ME, but blimme if I don't--blimme!"
Sir Oliver Holt grew paler still. He felt as he had done when Jinny
Montaubyn's poor dress swept against him. His voice shook when he
spoke.
"So do I," he said with a sudden deep catch of the breath; "it was the
Answer."
In a few moments more he went to the girl Polly and laid a hand on her
shoulder.
"I shall take you home to your mother," he said. "I shall take you
myself and care for you both. She shall know nothing you are afraid of
her hearing. I shall ask her to bring up the child. You will help
her."
Then he touched the thief, who got up white and shaking and with eyes
moist with excitement.
"You shall never see another man claim your thought because you have not
time or money to work it out. You will go with me. There are to-morrows
enough for you!"
Glad still sat clinging to her knees and with tears running, but the
ugliness of her sharp, small face was a thing an angel might have paused
to see.
"You don't want to go away from here," Sir Oliver said to her, and she
shook her head.
"No, not me. I told yer wot I wanted. Lemme do it."
"You shall," he answered, "and I will help you."
The things which developed in Apple Blossom Court later, the things
which came to each of those who had sat in the weird circle round the
fire, the revelations of new existence which came to herself, aroused no
amazement in Jinny Montaubyn's mind. She had asked and believed all
things--and all this was but another of the Answers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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