“You don’t understand—it’s quite different,” said Harry, hotly; “you’re a woman, you’re an old—Good Lord, can’t you see the difference? Where should you be but at home? but what would you have me do, stuck between two women and that—that father of mine?—” Harry here menaced the dark world with his fist, and burst, in his turn, into an outcry of passion. “I’ll neither sleep under his roof nor call him father, nor reckon myself to belong to him more! You hear what I say, Joan; you can bear witness. Not if I were to starve; not if I were to die; not if I were to cadge about the streets!—White House has seen the last of me. You can tell my mother I think upon her: but she must not expect ever to see me again.”
“Tut, tut,” said Joan, tranquilly; “to be sure you must have your fling. Ay, ay, say away, my lad; it’s always a relief: and we’ll not keep you to it when you come to yourself.”
“That’s well for you, Joan,” said her brother; “but for me, I don’t mean to come to myself. He’s done it, I can tell you. What did he ever do for me? but if he had been the best father in the world now he’s made an end of it. Am I to be treated like this, home on a visit and I cannot put my affairs before him, and ask for my share to buy me into the business, but I’m met with abuse: and when I go out for a little peace the door’s shut upon me. You can do what you please, but I’ll not stand it. We’ve all lived a wretched life, but I’ll make an end of it. Don’t you think it’s all a flash-in-the-pan, and that I don’t mean what I say.”
“Well, well, lad—if it keeps your spirits up a bit. Are you not sleepy? Let’s make the best of it. Harry: after all it’s but one night. Though this is not to call an easy seat. I’m that sleepy I shall go off, I know I shall. If you see me tumbling be sure you catch me. I cannot keep awake another minute. Good night, lad, good night.”
This was half real, on Joan’s part, and half put on to calm her brother down; but in that part of her intention she was not very successful. After a while she really did as she had threatened, and fell into a sound, if uneasy, sleep. But Harry had no inclination that way. He sat and pondered over all his wrongs, and as he mused the fire burned. What was home to him?—nothing. A place where there was no peace—a pandemonium—and when there was either quarrelling or dulness—dulness beyond description; either a fight with his father or a drowse by his mother’s side—that was all the comfort he had of his home. And after all, when he put the question to himself, and nobody else interfered, he was obliged to allow that the entertainment at the “Red Lion” was not of a very exciting character. There was not much in that to make up for the want of everything else. He sat upon the edge of the copper dangling his legs, and, notwithstanding that warmth, the chill of the night got into his heart. He had no overcoat, as his mother had remembered, when he went out; and as the slow moments passed on, the night became intolerable to Harry, and the sense that his enemy, his father, was chuckling in the warmth upstairs over his outcast condition, distracted him with impotent rage. Never again would he subject himself to such a shame. He clenched his fist and made a vow within himself, while Joan, leaning her head against him, slumbered uneasily. After a while Joan had a little shock in her sleep, half woke, and felt her pillow displaced, and dreaming, not knowing where she was, threw herself back against the copper and settled down somehow again. She dreamt there had been an earthquake, and that the copper itself was a volcano and had made an eruption and tumbled down upon her, catching her fast by the feet. A little after, poor Mrs. Joscelyn, lying awake crying silently and saying her prayers over and over again, heard a handful of gravel flung violently against her window and the sound of footsteps. What did it mean? The tyrant had gone to sleep a few minutes before, and he slept heavily. She crept out of bed with a sinking heart, and after a great deal of alarmed searching found the keys, of her own room first, and then of the doors below. She did not even turn to find something to cover her, but fled downstairs, like a ghost, with her naked feet and a wild flutter in her heart. When she made her way with some difficulty to the place where her children had found refuge, she came just in time to deliver Joan, who had almost broken her neck in her struggles to get out of the way of the earthquake, and was lying, with her head back and her mouth open, among the tubs. Though she was conscious of being in some convulsion of nature it was not easy to wake Joan, and there was no one else to be seen. Mrs. Joscelyn, with her candle in her hand, went searching into every corner while her daughter picked herself up. “Harry,” she cried, “Harry! oh where is my boy?” There was not a trace of him about; not even an impromptu couch, like Joan’s, made up of benches and washing tubs. The mother flitted about into all the offices, while Joan roused herself with many yawns, rubbing her stiff neck and knotting up her straggling locks, and gathering her shawl round her shoulders. “Oh that copper,” Joan was saying, “it’s been the saving of my life.”
“But where is my boy? Oh! Joan, what have you done with him? Where is my boy?”
“I have not got him in my pocket,” Joan said, with a sleepy smile. Then as she roused herself quite up, “To be sure, mother, the lad’s not a fool though we give him the credit of it. He’s gone back to his blessed ‘Red Lion,’ and is safe in his bed, as I would like to be. And if I had let him alone and not poked in where I wasn’t wanted, there’s where he would have been from the first. You see that’s just your way. I have a little bit of it in me, if not much; and, instead of letting him be, I must meddle. But he’s safe in his bed at the ‘Red Lion;’ and you’d better go back to yours, and let me go to mine, and make the best of a bad night.”
“I cannot think he has gone to the ‘Red Lion,’” said Mrs. Joscelyn, standing in her white nightdress, with her glaring candle, against the great darkness of the night in the doorway, and investigating the gloom by that poor assistance with her anxious eyes.
“Then where else would he go to?” Joan said.