Suddenly a loud roar burst from the little room next to Gilbert’s, in which Maurice had lately been installed. She hurried swiftly in that direction, but a passage and some steps lay between, and Gilbert had been beforehand with her.
She heard the words, ‘I don’t care! I don’t care if it is manly! I will tell; I can’t bear this!’ then as his brother seemed to be hushing him, he burst out again, ‘I wouldn’t have minded if papa wouldn’t give me the cannon, but he will, and that’s as bad as telling a lie!’ I can’t sleep if you wont let me off my promise!’
Trembling from head to foot, her voice low and quivering with concentrated, incredulous wrath, Albinia advanced. ‘Are you teaching my child falsehood?’ she said; and Gilbert felt as if her look were worse to him than a thousand deaths.
‘O mamma! mamma! Gilbert! let me tell her,’ cried the child; and Albinia, throwing herself on her knees, clasped him in her arms, as though snatching him from the demon of deceit.
‘Tell all, Maurice,’ said Gilbert, folding his arms; ‘it is to your credit, if you would believe so. I shall be glad to have this misery ended any way! It was all for the sake of others.’
‘Mamma,’ Maurice said, in the midst of these mutterings of his unhappy brother, ‘I can’t have the cannon without papa knowing it all. I couldn’t shake hands with Uncle Maurice for telling the truth, for I had not told it.’
‘And what is it, my boy?’ tell me now, no one can hinder you.’
‘I scratched and fought him—Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy—I kicked down the decanter of wine. They told me it was manly not to tell, and I promised.’
He was crying with the exceeding pain and distress of a child whose tears were rare, and Albinia rocked him in her arms.
Gilbert cautiously shut the door, and said sadly, ‘Maurice behaved nobly, if he would only believe so. You would be proud of your son if you had seen him. They wanted to make him drink wine, and he was fighting them off.’