Rosalie said with extraordinary emphasis, leaning
forward on the chair in which she sat facing Keggo.
“Why is it, Keggo?”
If Keggo had answered, the thing would not have happened.
Keggo did not answer. She was sitting with her
hands crossed, one palm upon the other, and resting
on her lap, her eyes to the ground. Quite a long
time passed. Rosalie said, “You’re
drinking, aren’t you, Keggo?”
“Yes, drinking, Rosalie.”
“Oh, Keggo!”
It was then that Rosalie cried.
Sne cried. Her sympathies, though drying and
slower now to be aroused, still then were such that
she could weep for pity. It is a glimpse of her
not to be seen again. There was she on her knees
by Keggo, and with her arms about Keggo’s waist,
and with her head on Keggo’s lap, crying for
Keggo; and in the pauses of Keggo’s unfolding
of her story entreating her, as one that cried responses
to a litany, “Don’t mind, Keggo! Keggo,
don’t mind now! Dear Keggo, poor Keggo,
it’s all right now.”
And presently all the tale told: what Mr. Ponders’
medicine was; and all the humiliation suffered in
keeping in with “that vile man”; and that
vile man’s betrayal of her to the Sultana, and
her dismissal; and all the earlier dreadfulness of
her first steps down into her dreadful malady; and
all the dreadful secrecy of all those years; and all
the horrible humiliation secretly to get her poison;
and all the horrible humiliations when her poison got.
All the dark tale of that presently told; and her
head bowed down to Rosalie’s, and Rosalie’s
wet face against her face, and her face also wet;
and just her murmurs, murmured at intervals, as though
her heart that had discharged its grievous load ran
slowly now, slowly to rise and then to well with,
“God bless you, Rosalie; oh, Rosalie, God bless
you”; and for a long time just seated thus,
cheek to cheek, hand to hand, heart to heart; weakness
bound about with strength, sorrow in pity’s
arms, travail in sanctuary....
It is desired that one should try to see that picture.
Its counterpart was not again in the life of Rosalie,
hardening.
There were, after that, such happy evenings in Keggo’s
room. Keggo, with one to help her, fighting for
herself; Rosalie, with one to help, elevated upon
that high happiness that comes with fighting for another.
For a short time there seemed to be no lapses in Keggo’s
struggle. When they came (as Rosalie knew afterwards)
the practised cunning of years of secrecy had no difficulty
in concealing them from the unsuspecting eyes of Rosalie.
Ill that it was so! Rosalie was harder when came
the lapse that cunning could not hide. She did
not cry. Her eyes were hard. She said with
thin lips, “Why, even all this time you have
been deceiving me!” the which egged on, in that
vile way in which exchanges of a quarrel are as knives
sharpening one against the other, Keggo’s enflamed
retort, “The more fool you! Little fool!”
