He was very weary when he came at last to the door of his mother's house. Before knocking he had listened for a while to the low hum of her reading to his father. Then he heard her moving to open the door, and immediately she was silhouetted in the lamp-light.
"Is that you, John? We knew you were coming home. We got the rector's letter."
He noticed a queer coldness in her tone.
"I'd rather to God that anything in the world had happened than this. What'll they say now? They'll say you were expelled. As sure as God, they'll say you were expelled!"
He threw himself into the first chair he saw.
"Did any one meet you down the road? Did many meet you from this to Kilaconnaghan?"
He did not answer. This was a curious welcome he was receiving. Yet he noticed that tears were beginning to creep into her eyes, which were also red as if from much recent weeping.
"Oh, God knows, and God knows again, John, I'd rather have died than it should have come to this. And why was it that after all me contriving and after all me praying and good works this bitter cross should have fallen? I don't know. I can't think for what I am being punished and why misfortune should come to you. And what'll they say at all at all? Oh you may depend upon it that it's the worst thing they'll say. But you mustn't tell them that the college is finished. For I suppose it's finished now the way everything is going to be finished before the war. But you mustn't say that. You must say that it is on special holidays you are, after having passed a Special examination. And you must behave as if you were on holidays!"
Such a dreadful anxiety was upon her that she appeared no longer as his mother, the infinitely tender woman he had known. She now seemed to possess none of the pure contentment her loving tenderness should have brought her. She was altogether concerned as to what the people would say and not as to the effect of the happening upon her son's career. He had begun to think of this for himself, but it was not of it that she was now thinking.... She was thinking of herself, of her pride, and that was why she had not come to meet him. And now his clothes were wet and he was tired, for he had walked from Kilaconnaghan in the rain.