He took the letter from his pocket again, and read it in the fading light. It was native, naive, brutal, and unconsciously clever—and the girl who had written it was beautiful. It had only a few lines. It asked him why he had deserted her, his wife. It said that he would find American law protected the deluded stranger. It asked if he had so soon forgotten the kisses he had given her, and did he not realize they were married? He felt that, with her, beneath all, there was more than malice; there was a passion which would run risks to secure its end.
A few moments later he was in the room where his mother, with her strong, fine, lonely face, sat sewing by the window. The door opened squarely on her, and he saw how refined and sad, yet self-contained, was the woman who had given him birth. The look in her eyes warmly welcomed him. Her own sorrows made her sensitive to those of others, and as Carnac entered she saw something was vexing him.
“Dear lad!” she said.
He was beside her now, and he kissed her cheek. “Best of all the world,” he said; and he did not see that she shrank a little.
“Are you in trouble?” she asked, and her hand touched his shoulder.
The wrong she had done him long ago vexed her. It was not possible this boy could fit in with a life where, in one sense, he did not belong. It was not part of her sorrow that he had given himself to painting and sculpture. In her soul she believed this might be best for him in the end. She had a surreptitious, an almost anguished, joy in the thought that he and John Grier could not hit it off. It seemed natural that both men, ignorant of their own tragedy, believing themselves to be father and son, should feel for each other the torture of distance, a misunderstanding, which only she and one other human being understood.
John Grier was not the boy’s father. Carnac was the son of Barode Barouche.
After a moment he said: “Mother, I know why I’ve come to you. It’s because I feel when I’m in trouble, I get helped by being with you.”
“How do I help, my boy?” she asked with a sad smile, for he had said the thing dearest to her heart.
“When I’m with you, I seem to get a hold on myself. I’ve always had a strange feeling about you. I felt when I was a child that you’re two people; one that lives on some distant, lonely prairie, silent, shadowy and terribly loving; and the other, a vocal person, affectionate, alert, good and generous.”