“No, no, John,” she screamed, wringing her hands in pitiful supplication. “Speak more quietly.”
“You have sullied the name of your dead son with a cowardly crime. Woman! Woman! This is devil’s work. They think our boy fled like a thief with his pockets full of stolen money, whilst all the time you and I were evading the just reward of our follies and extravagance.”
“John, the money was used to pay your debts and his debts, as well as mine; to stave off ruin from you and from him as well as from myself, and to keep Netty’s husband for her. Do you think that Harry Bent could possibly marry Netty, if her mother were sent to jail?”
“Don’t bring our children into this, Mary. You—” 157
“I must speak of Netty—I must! Would she ever forgive us, if her lover cast her off?”
“And will he marry her, now that her brother is disgraced?”
“Oh, her brother’s disgrace is nothing. It is only gossip. They can’t arrest Dick and imprison him. Oh, I couldn’t bear it—I couldn’t!”
“And, yet, you will see your son’s name defamed in the moment of his glory.”
“John, John, I did it to save you. I didn’t think of myself. I’ve never been afraid to stand by anything I’ve done before. But this! Oh, take me away and kill me, shoot me, say that it was an accident, and I’ll gladly endure my punishment. But a mother is never alone in her sin. The sins of the fathers—you know the text well enough, John. Last night, I tried to kill myself.”
“Mary!”