Alan was sitting on the sofa. He stirred a little, and then suddenly, without any warning, burst into tears. Although he admired his mother's personality and bearing, he had never been particularly attached to her; but with that conservative conventionalism characteristic of an English boy, he was mortified, and felt it to be a disgrace that there should be any serious disagreement between his parents.
Clifford Thornton looked at the boy whom he loved and whom he had wounded; and he recognised with a sharp pain of regret that Alan was still too young and too sensitive for the news which had been broken to him. Bitterly the man reproached himself for his selfishness. And yet he had waited for this moment for fifteen long years—more than that; for he and his wife had discovered at the onset that they were out of sympathy, each having an aura hostile to the other. Then the child had come, and these two naturally antipathetic people had thought: "We shall draw nearer to each other because of the child."
But Nature is merciless in many of her ways, and mysterious; and perhaps her greatest and subtlest human mystery is the strife, conscious or unconscious, of one individuality with another individuality. And she gives no balm for it. On the contrary, she gives a sort of morbid remorse, wholly out of proportion to the quality and quantity of mistakes and failings born necessarily of unsuitable companionship.
Clifford Thornton bent over him and put his hand on the lad's shoulder.
"Alan," he said, almost imploringly. "Don't fret like that. We will talk about it another time. Come, pull yourself together. We will go for a ride, and you can try the new cob."
The boy sobbed on as though he had not heard.
"Alan," Clifford Thornton said.
The boy looked up, and stifled his last sob.
"I don't want to go riding," he said. "I want to go and be alone."