“Oh, Tom—dear, dear Tom, don’t fret too much; try and bear it well.”
Tom turned his cheek passively to meet her entreating kisses, and there gathered a moisture in his eyes, which he just rubbed away with his hand. The action seemed to rouse him, for he shook himself and said: “I shall go home, with you, Maggie. Didn’t my father say I was to go?”
“No, Tom, father didn’t wish it,” said Maggie, her anxiety about his feeling helping her to master her agitation. What would he do when she told him all? “But mother wants you to come,—poor mother!—she cries so. Oh, Tom, it’s very dreadful at home.”
Maggie’s lips grew whiter, and she began to tremble almost as Tom had done. The two poor things clung closer to each other, both trembling,—the one at an unshapen fear, the other at the image of a terrible certainty. When Maggie spoke, it was hardly above a whisper.
“And—and—poor father——”
Maggie could not utter it. But the suspense was intolerable to Tom. A vague idea of going to prison, as a consequence of debt, was the shape his fears had begun to take.
“Where’s my father?” he said impatiently. “Tell me, Maggie.”
“He’s at home,” said Maggie, finding it easier to reply to that question. “But,” she added, after a pause, “not himself—he fell off his horse. He has known nobody but me ever since—he seems to have lost his senses. O father, father——”
With these last words, Maggie’s sobs burst forth with the more violence for the previous struggle against them. Tom felt that pressure of the heart which forbids tears; he had no distinct vision of their troubles as Maggie had, who had been at home; he only felt the crushing weight of what seemed unmitigated misfortune. He tightened his arm almost convulsively round Maggie as she sobbed, but his face looked rigid and tearless, his eyes blank,—as if a black curtain of cloud had suddenly fallen on his path.
But Maggie soon checked herself abruptly; a single thought had acted on her like a startling sound.