Haworth's

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

But he did not come back. The day went on, and the excitement increased and waned by turns. The crowd grew and surged about the Bank and shouted itself hoarse, and would have broken a few windows if it had not been restrained by the police force, who appeared upon the field; and there were yells for Haworth and for Ffrench, but by this time Mr. Ffrench had reached Rotterdam and Haworth was—no one knew where, since he had not been seen at all. And when at length dusk fell upon the town, the crowd had dwindled away and gone home by ones and twos, and in Jem Haworth's house sat his mother, watching and waiting, and straining her ears to catch every passing sound.

She had kept up her courage bravely through the first part of the day, but the strangers who came one after the other, and sometimes even two or three together, to demand her son with loud words and denunciations and even threats, were a sore trial to her. Some of them flung their evil stories at her without remorse, taking it for granted that they were nothing new to her ears, and even those who had some compunction muttered among themselves and hinted angrily at what the others spoke outright. Her strength began to give way, and she quailed and trembled before them, but she never let their words pass without a desperate effort to defend her boy. Then they stared or laughed at her, or went away in sullen silence, and she was left to struggle with her grief and terror alone until some new call was made upon her, and she must bear all again. When the twilight came she was still alone, and sat in the darkened room battling against a dread which had crept slowly upon her. Of all those who had come none had known where he was. They did not know in the town, and he had not come back.

"He might go," she whispered, "but he'd not go without me. He's been true and fond of his mother, let them say what they will. He'd never leave me here alone."

Her thoughts went back over the long years from his birth to the day of his highest success. She remembered how he had fought with fate, and made his way and refused to be conquered. She thought of the wealth he had won, the power, the popularity, and of his boast that he had never been beaten, and she began to sob in the shadow of her corner.

"He's lost it all," she cried. "An' he won it with his own hands an' worked for it an' bore up agen a world! An' it's gone!"

It was when she came to this point that her terror seized on her as it had never done before. She got up, shaking in every limb.

"I'll go to him myself," she said. "Who should go to him but his mother? Who should find him an' be a help to him if I can't? Jem—Jem, my dear, it's me that's comin' to you—me!"

He had been sitting in a small back office in the Bank all through the day when they had been calling and searching for him. He had got in early and locked the door and waited, knowing well enough all that was to come. It was no feeling of fear that made him keep hidden; he had done with fear—if, indeed, he had ever felt it in his life. He knew what he was going to do and he laid his plans coolly. He was to stay here and do the work that lay before him and leave things as straight as he could, and then at night when all was quiet he would make his way out in the dark and go to the Works. It was only a fancy, this, of going to the Works, but he clung to it persistently.

He had never been clearer-headed in his life—only, sometimes as he was making a calculation or writing a letter he would dash down his work and fall to cursing.

"There's not another chap in England that had done it," he would say. "And it's gone!—it's gone!—it's gone!"