Page:The Green Bay Tree (1926).pdf/154

 Hattie. I wanted you to know because if ever it was necessary, I wanted Lily to come to you for help. It never will be. It isn't likely."

Hattie Tolliver sat up very stiff and red. "Tell!" she said, "Tell! Who should I ever tell in the Town? Why should I tell any of them?" The tribal instinct rose in triumph. It was a matter of her family against the Mills, the Town, all the world if necessary. Torture could not have dragged from her the truth.

Yet Hattie Tolliver was not unmoved by the confession. It may even have been that she herself long ago had suspicions of the truth which had withered and died since from too much doubt. To a woman of her nature the news of a thousand strikes, of murder and of warfare was as nothing beside the thing Julia Shane revealed. For a long time she said nothing at all, but her strong fingers spoke for her. They worked faster and more skilfully than ever, as if all her agitation was pouring itself out through their tips. The fingers and the flying needle said, "That this should have happened in our family! I can't believe it. Perhaps Aunt Julia is so sick that her mind is weakened. Surely she must imagine this tale. Such things happen only to servant girls. All this is unreal. It cannot be true. Lily could not be so happy, so buoyant if this were true. Sinners can only suffer and be miserable."

All this time she remained silent, breathing heavily, and when at last she spoke, it was to ask, "Who was the man?" in so terrible a voice that the old woman on the bed started for a moment and then averted her face lest her niece see the ghost of a smile which slipped out unwilled.

"It was the Governor," the aunt replied at last.

And then, "Why would he not marry her?" in a voice filled with accumulations of hatred and scorn for the ravishers of women.

This time Julia Shane did not smile. Her pride,—the old fierce and arrogant pride—was touched.

"Oh," she replied, "it was not that. It was Lily who refused to marry him. He begged her . . . on his knees he begged her. I saw him. He would have been glad enough to have her."