“Till you disprove it, it may stand. When you come down from Oxford, you will go into the factory and disprove it.”
“No.”
“I have been very patient, Edward. I have let you talk yourself out, but—”
“Lord, sir, the things I haven’t said!”
“Indeed? Do you wish to say them?”
Edward did, but he glanced at his mother, whose one contribution to their discussion had been a reproof of him, of him, who had been so splendidly restrained! Why, then, should he spare her? Why, if she had deserted to the other side, should he not roll out his whole impeachment? Why not, even though it implicated her, even though he must suggest’ that she was accessory to the weaving of the web in which he struggled? He thought she was, because of that one sharp cry, on Reuben’s side in this.
She read that thought. She saw how wildly he who should have known better was misunderstanding her, and it added to a suffering she had not thought possible to increase. Was this her moment, then? Sooner or later, she must intervene, she must throw in her weight for Edward at whatever strain upon her loyalty to Reuben, but it must be at the right moment and probably that moment would not come yet, when Edward was present to confuse her by his indiscretions, but later, when she was alone with Reuben. It was enormously, it was vitally important that she should choose her moment well. If she spoke now, she would of course correct the mistake that Edward was so cruelly making about her, but that was not to the main point. She would not, if she could help it, speak till she was sure that the favorable moment had arrived. All else was to be subordinate to that.
Reuben followed Edward’s glance. “Yes,” he said, “you are distressing your mother,” and, certainly, she felt her moment was escaping her. If she spoke now she must say, “No, Reuben. You, not Edward, are the cause of my distress,” and she could not say that. She could only wait, feeling that to wait was to risk her moment’s never coming at all.
“I see we are distressing her,” said Edward, studiously abstaining from putting emphasis upon the “we.”
“And the many more things that I might say shall not be said. I will take a short cut to the end. The end is my absolute refusal to go into the factory upon any terms whatever.”