He smiled. "You can!" said he. "Do you know you haven't kissed me once of your own accord?" He drew her towards him, and she lifted her face.
"Agatha!" said he, in a low tone, "I wonder if you know how I love you?"
"Oh, I know more than that," said she, with a little happy, shy laugh. "I know how I love you!"
CHAPTER XXI
It was the next day, and evening was far advanced. The idiot was sitting in the garden outside mumbling to himself, and stupidly turning and twisting a sort of white rag between his fingers. Through the dense mist in which his soul ever sat, one spark of light had penetrated. The white rag was the medium. Whenever he looked at the crumpled bit of cambric he held, the idiot seemed to feel, or to see, or to be conscious of—something. And that something—vague and wild as it was—meant hatred—blind, unfathomable hatred!
It had taken the place of his idolatry of his mother. She was gone; he did not know where—it was impossible for him to grasp that—but she was gone. She had been taken from him. And he knew by whom! Yes, he knew that, at all events. He could not have explained it to himself, but he knew his father had taken his mother away from him, and hatred—that "madness of the heart" —tore at his breast, crying aloud for vengeance.
He sat there, in the dying sunshine, and twisted the white rag. Whenever he looked at it, a queer vision rose within his blighted brain. His mother's room, and the big bed, and her hand hanging over the side of it. And over there his father.... He used to grow confused at that point. It was impossible for him to follow it out to the end, the poor brain got so obscured; but after a few minutes or so he could see again his father rising, with something white in his hand, and then—then—his mother's face was under it, and—and—that was all—except his father's hand pressing—pressing—pressing down!
The poor boy had stolen into his mother's sick-chamber during that eventful evening, and had hidden himself behind the large bed-curtains. He had, indeed, squeezed himself between the bed and the wall, fearful lest the nurses should send him away. They had been a little rough with him in the beginning of the day, and he distrusted them, believing, foolishly, that they meant to harm "Sho." He had been there off and on for hours—ever since his mad effort, indeed, to bring Agatha to his mother's help— crouching, waiting, beyond the knowledge of things. To be near her was all he asked: the adoration he had for her was only the blind, wild affection of an unreasoning animal, but it carried him far.
He saw him go back again to his chair, and again rise and approach the bed, this time with a handkerchief in his hand.
The poor boy had watched eagerly. Into his dull mind the sure conviction grew that with the wet handkerchief his father was going to do something to his mother that would enable her to talk again to him, to caress, to fondle him. He almost betrayed himself in his delight. He did not like his father, but many things had taught him that Darkham was clever. The idiot, watching and waiting, was firmly convinced that a miracle was going to be performed with the handkerchief, that it would make the dull, dead figure on the bed talk and smile again.