He flung from the room. Billy prodded frantically after him.
“Don’t go, Matt! Don’t go! You’ll never come back again.”
The piteous appeal sounded like a prophecy. He paused in the hall, irresolute.
Rosina laughed hysterically. “You had better go with him, Billy, if you’re so frightened. And good riddance to the pair of you. I’ve got my bread and butter, thank God. My children sha’n’t starve, if their father does desert them.”
“Let me go, Billy,” he said, hoarsely, shaking off the cripple’s clutch. “I can’t breathe here. Come with me—write to me—do what you like.” He opened the hall-door and closed it behind him, and dashed against his children coming back through the gate, with their mouths full of almond-rock. Clara caught at the skirts of his coat.
“Don’t go away again, father,” she mumbled, peevishly. “Mother cries for you in the night, and I can’t get to sleep.”
He swayed as if struck by a bullet. Then he took the little girl’s sticky hand, and suffered himself to be led back through the area door. As Clara unlatched it he heard her mother sobbing hysterically above. The servant’s foolish face peeped, white and scared, from the kitchen door, and made his own scarlet with shame.
“Your mistress is ill,” he muttered, and ran hastily up-stairs.
Rosina detected his footstep, and the sobs changed back to frenzied laughter. Then she controlled both by sheer pride, all the steel in her springing back unsnapped from its bend, and she opposed a mocking smile to his discomfited concern. The strength that had kept her silent for years was now summoned to undo the effects of speech.
“What have you forgotten?” she asked, tauntingly. “Have you come back for your good-bye kiss or your umbrella or what? Kisses, they’re off; we’re an old married couple now, but I don’t want to stick to your umbrella. It might be a present from somebody nice. Is there an umbrella about, Billy? No? Dear me! Then it must be that rose. Ah, but Davie gave me that.” She called down the stairs. “Wasn’t it you that gave me the rose, Davie? Yes, and I’m not going to give it back. Don’t be afraid, dear. Mummy won’t give away her darling’s present. Did ’um bruise himself to give it to me? Poor Davie!”