“Indeed!” said Lady Royland, gravely. “Yes? Go on.”
“I know they must see through me, from Ben down to the youngest farm hand. They’re very good and kind and obedient because I’m your son; but they, big strong fellows as they are, must laugh at me in their sleeves.”
“Ah! you feel that?” said Lady Royland.
“Yes, I feel what a poor, girlish, weak thing I am, and that all this is too much for me. Mother, if it were not for you and for very shame, I believe I should run away.”
“Go on, Roy,” sand Lady Royland; and her sweet, deep voice seemed to draw the most hidden thoughts of his breast to his lips.
“Yes, I must go on,” he cried, excitedly. “I hid it all when I went to face that officer, who saw through me in spite of my bragging words, and laughed; and in the wild excitement of listening to-night to the troopers closing us in and trying to capture those poor fellows, I did not feel anything like fear; but now it is all over and they are safe, I am—I am—oh, mother! it is madness—it is absurd for me, such a mere boy, to go on pretending to command here, with all this awful responsibility of the fighting that must come soon. I know that I can’t bear it—that I must break down—that I have broken down. I can’t go on with it; I’m far too young. Only a boy, you see, and I feel now more like a girl, for I believe I could lie down and cry at the thought of the wounds and death and horrors to come. Oh, mother, mother! I’m only a poor pitiful coward after all.”
“God send our poor distressed country a hundred thousand of such poor pitiful cowards to uphold the right,” said Lady Royland, softly, as she drew her son more tightly to her swelling breast. “Hush, hush, my boy! it is your mother speaks. There, rest here as you used to rest when you were the tiny little fellow whose newly opened eyes began to know me, whose pink hands felt upward to touch my face. You a coward! Why, my darling, can you not understand?”
“Yes, I understand,” he groaned, as he clung to her, “that it is my own dear mother trying to speak comfort to me in my degradation and shame. Mother, mother! I would not have believed I was such a pitiful cur as this.”
“No,” she said, softly; “I am speaking truth. You do not understand that after the work and care of all this terrible time of preparation, ending in the great demands made upon you to-day, the strain has been greater than your young nature can bear. Bend the finest sword too far, Roy, and it will break. You are overdone—worn-out. It is not as you think.”
“Ah! it is you who do not know, mother,” he said, bitterly. “I am not fit to lead.”