“I’m lookin’ at you! I’m lookin’!” he shouted menacingly. “An’ what good’s it doin’ yuh? I’ve got your number, O.K., and it’s all off! All off, I tell you!”
Evidently she had asked him to let her go with him to his room.
“No!” he raised his voice a half-notch higher. A passenger here and there looked up. “You don’t follow me about any more, you don’t. I’m on to you, I am. No more! That’s—final.”
She kept steadily at him.
“Stop it!” he shrieked and began to sway back and forth, “stop it or—or—or I’ll throw myself overboard. I will! Do you hear? I will! Aw!” he whimpered piteously, “can’t you shut up!”
Suddenly he darted towards the side and began frantically to put a leg over the swaying rail. A passenger struggled with him and delayed his attempt, which gave Mrs. Wells time to reach him. She put out a hand towards his shoulder; he struck her savagely. Other passengers including Richard and Geraldine soon surrounded the frantic boy and tried to calm him, but certain unsuspected depths of passion had come to the surface and gave him strength. His eye never left his mother. He seemed anxious not to avoid her, but to fight it out then and there for the mastery of himself, or rather, for his freedom from the mother’s superior will.
The blow had staggered her. He saw her falter and knew his chance. He fairly crowed his announcements that she would no longer settle on him and drive him here and there like a puppy. In spite of her magnificent appearance Mrs. Wells was no longer young. She was sixty and she had driven herself hard. The sudden fright at the boy’s jump to the railing and the unexpectedness of the blow, to say nothing of the power of the sickening thought that her own boy should offer to strike her in public, had its effect. An unusual weakness caught her limbs, and her heart lunged forward.
Summoning her will she presented a semblance of poise and dignity. To the group about her she explained that her boy was ill. He interrupted constantly. She asked the passengers to let her manage. She knew how. He would go to his room and she would go along and reason with him.
All of this he denied shrilly; and in her heart she knew she had lost her grip, as he cried aloud his victory. No! No! He would never again go with her.
“Will you go with me?” Richard asked mildly. “Let’s get out of this, old fellow, and talk it over. No use letting this gaping crowd know our business, eh? What d’y’ say?”