His mother had forgiven him—his mother loved him.
She knew he was a thief, and she loved him.
How he had tried to keep this knowledge from her, how he had hoped that during these past three years she had supposed him dead! Her only son, and she a widow, dead! Far better—far, far better, than that she should believe him to be a thief!
He recalled now the last time he had seen her—he recalled, as he had never dared to do hitherto, the history of that parting. He had been wild for some time, irregular at school, and in many ways grieving his parents’ hearts; and his father, before he started on that last voyage, had spoken to him, and begged him to keep steady, and had entreated him, as he loved his mother, as he loved him, his father, as he loved his God, to keep away from those bad companions who were exercising so hateful an influence on his hitherto happy, blameless life. And with tears in his eyes, the boy had promised, and then his brave sailor father had kissed him, and blessed him, and gone away never to return again. And for a time Jenks was steady and kept his word, and his mother was proud of him, and wrote accounts, brilliant, happy accounts, of him to his father at sea. But then the old temptations came back with greater force than before, and the promise to his father was broken and forgotten, and he took really to bad ways.
His mother spoke to him of idleness, of evil companions, but she never knew, he felt sure, how low he had sunk, nor at last, long before he left her house, that he was a confirmed thief. He was a confirmed thief, and a successful thief, and he grew rich on his spoils.
One evening, however, as he expressed it, his luck went against him. He had been at a penny gaff, where, as usual, he had enriched himself at the expense of his neighbours. On his way home he saw a policeman dodging him—he followed him down one street and up another. The boy’s heart beat faster and faster—he had never been before a magistrate in his life, and dreaded the disgrace and exposure that would ensue. He managed to evade the policeman, and trembling, entered his home, and stole up the stairs, intending to hide in his own little bed-room. He reached it, and lay down on his bed. There was only a thin canvas partition between his tiny room and his mother’s. In that room he now heard sobs, and listening more intensely, heard also a letter being read aloud. This letter brought the account of his father’s death—he had died of fever on board ship, and been buried in the sea. His last message, the last thing he said before he died, was repeated in the letter.
“Tell wife, that Willie will be a comfort to her; he promised me before I went away to keep a faithful and good lad.”
The boy heard so far, then, stung with a maddening sense of remorse and shame, stole out of the house as softly as he had entered it—met the policeman at the door, and delivered himself into his hands; by him he was taken to the police-station, then to prison for a day or two.
But when he was free he did not return home, he never went home again. His mother might suppose him dead, drowned, but never, never as long as she lived should she know that he was a thief. For this reason he had given himself up to the policeman; to prevent his entering that house he had met him on the threshold and delivered himself up. And his only pure pleasure during the past guilty years was the hope that his mother knew nothing of his evil ways.
But now she did know, the letter said she did know. What suffering she must have gone through I what agony and shame! He writhed at the thought.