“Madge?” said Mrs. Home. “Is she dead?”
Yet even as she spoke she knew it was not that. That, even that, would not have made Philip like this. He would have come to her to be comforted; it was not comfort that he asked for.
“No, she is not dead,” he said. “I wish she was. She has betrayed me and thrown me over. She is probably by this time married to Evelyn Dundas!”
He paused a moment.
“That is what has happened,” he said; “and, here to you and now, mother, I curse them both. I met them together yesterday, I cursed them to their faces. There is nothing I will not do that can damage them in any way. I will ruin him if I can, and I will wait long for my vengeance if need be. I tried to forgive them, I tried to go to the house and tell them so, but I could not. I don’t forgive them, and if for that reason God does not forgive me what I have done amiss, I don’t care. I would forgive them if I could; I can’t. If that is wrong I can’t help it. It is better you should know this at once. I am sorry if it hurts you, but there is no manner of use in my trying to ‘break it’ to you, as they call it. Break it! It is I who am broken!”
Then all the tenderness of maternity, all the years of love between her and Philip, the complete confidence which had forged so strong and golden a chain between them, rose in Mrs. Home’s mind and sent to her lips the only answer she could make. Sorrow for him, sympathy with him, of course he took for granted; there was no need to speak of things like these.
“Ah, dear Philip, unsay that, unsay that!” she cried. “Whatever happens to one, it is impossible that you should feel that!”
He looked at her with the same glooming face.
“I don’t unsay it,” he said, “I don’t unsay one single word of it. In proportion as both of them were dear to me, so is that which has happened detestable to me. I don’t want to talk about it—there is no use in that. I have got to begin my life again; that is what it comes to, and I have to begin it on a basis of hate and utter distrust. Two people who were the friends of my heart, people whom I could have trusted, so I should have thought, to the uttermost verge of eternity, have done this.”
Then all his bitterness, and there was much of that, all his resentment and anger, all his love gone sour, rose in his throat.