“Poor little mother,” he said tenderly, and knelt by her side, chafing her cold hands, and gazing anxiously into her face. She opened her eyes, and looked at him. She seemed not to know at first what had happened.
“Bertrand!” she murmured, as if astonished to see him there.
Her astonishment in itself was an involuntary reproach, so very little of his time did Bertrand spend with his sad-eyed, ailing mother. A sharp pang of remorse went right through him as he noted, for the first time, how very aged and worn she had become since last he had been at home. Tears now were pouring down her cheeks, and he put out his arms, with a vague longing to draw her aching head to his breast, and let her rest there, while he would comfort her. She saw the gesture, and the ghost of a smile lit up her pale, wan face, and in her eyes there came a pathetic look as of a dog asking to be forgiven. With a sudden strange impulse she seized his hand, and drew it up to her lips. He snatched it away ashamed and remorseful, but she recaptured it, and began stroking it gently, tenderly: and all the while her spare, narrow shoulders shook with spasms of uncontrolled sobbing, just like a child after it has had a big, big cry. Then suddenly the smile vanished from her face, the tender look from her eyes, and an expression of horror crept into them as they fastened themselves upon his hand.
“That ring, Bertrand,” she cried hoarsely, “take it off.”
“My father’s ring?” he asked. “I want to wear it.”
“No, no, don’t wear it, my dear lamb,” his mother entreated, and moaned piteously just as if she were in pain. “Your grandmother took it off his dear, dead hand—oh, she is cruel—cruel—and without mercy ... she took it off after she——Oh, my boy! my boy! will you ever forgive?”
His one thought was just to comfort her. Awhile ago, when first his grandmother had told him, he had felt bitterly sore. His father dying a shameful death by his own hand! The shame of it was almost intolerable! And in the brief seconds that elapsed between the terrible revelation and the moment when he had to expend all his energies in looking after his mother, had held a veritable inferno of humiliation for him. As in a swift and sudden vision he saw flitting before him all sorts of little signs and indications that had puzzled him in the past, but of which he had ceased to think almost as soon as they had occurred, a look of embarrassment here, one of pity there, his grandmother’s sneers, his mother’s entreaties. He saw it all, all of a sudden. People who knew pitied him—or else they sneered. The bitterness of it had been awful. But now he forgot all that. With his mother lying there so crushed, so weak, so helpless, all that was noble and chivalrous in his nature gained the upper hand over his resentment.
“It is not for me to forgive, mother dear,” he said, “I am not my father’s judge.”
“He was so kind and good,” the poor soul went on with pathetic eagerness, “so generous. He only borrowed in order to give to others. People were always sponging on him. He never could say no—to any one—and of course we had no money to spare, to give away....”
Bertrand frowned.