The all-absorbing topic to Martin just then was his own history and not the half-comprehended tragedy of the rural lovers. If his mother’s friends knew that which was hidden from him, why should he compel his tongue to wag falsely? Somehow, the air seemed thick with deception just now, but his heart would have burst had he attempted to restrain the words that welled forth.
“Mother,” he said, and his lips quivered at the remembrance that the affectionate title was itself a lie, “Mr. Benson told the squire I was not your boy—that father and you adopted me thirteen years ago.”
Mrs. Bolland’s face glowed with quick indignation. No one spoke. Martin’s impetuous repudiation of his name was the last thing they looked for.
“It is true, I suppose,” he went on despairingly. “If I am not your son, then whose son am I?”
Martha lifted her eyes to the ceiling.
“Well, of all the deceitful scoundrels!” she gasped. “Te think of me fillin’ his blue coat wi’ meat an’ beer last neet, an’ all t’ return he maks is te worry this poor lad’s brains wi’ that owd tale!”
“Oh, he’s sly, is Benson,” chimed in stout Mrs. Summersgill. “A fortnight sen last Tuesday I caught him i’ my dairy wi’ one o’ t’ maids, lappin’ up cream like a great tomcat.”
A laugh went round. None paid heed to Martin’s agony. A dullness fell on his soul. Even the woman he called mother was angered more by the constable’s blurting out of a household secret than by the destruction of an ideal. Such, in confused riot, was the thought that chilled him.
But he was mistaken. Martha Bolland’s denunciations of the policeman only covered the pain, sharp as the cut of a knife, caused by the boy’s cry of mingled passion and sorrow. She was merely biding her time. When chance served, she called him into the larder, the nearest quiet place in the house, and closed the door.
“Martin, my lad,” she said, while big tears shone in her honest eyes, “ye are dear to me as my own. I trust I may be spared to be muther te ye until ye’re a man. John an’ me meant no unkindness te ye in not tellin’ ye we found ye i’ Lunnun streets, a poor, deserted little mite, wi’ nather feyther nor muther, an’ none te own ye. What matter was it that ye should know sooner? Hev we not done well by ye? When ye come to think over ’t, ye’re angered about nowt. Kiss me, honey, an’ if anyone says owt cross te ye, tell ’em ye hev both a feyther an’ a muther, which is more’n some of ’em can say.”