“I think I must go in—I must go in, I can’t let them go on like this. What if they were to lift their hands to each other, father and son, oh! father and son,” and then she made a sudden impulsive step towards the door; but paused again with a convulsive pressure together of her worn hands.
“Let them alone mother,” said Joan, “what good could you do? Only turn both of them upon yourself.”
“I know, I know,” moaned the poor lady. Then she stopped in the middle of the light. “Oh!” she said, raising her arms with a gesture which would have been theatrical had it not been so real, “oh! what have I done, what have I done that I can never have peace in my house?”
Joan never took her eyes from this moving figure, but the long grey stocking jerked and turned round in her hands, and the needles twinkled without intermission.
“You expect too much,” she said; “bless me! there’s quarrels in all houses, and lads go wrong, and all sorts of things happen. Girls too, which is worse. We should be thankful nothing of that kind has happened to us. If Will and Tom have been a little wild in their time they’ve settled down; and I’ve always behaved myself. You have a deal to be thankful for, mother. As for sons at home when the father is a hale man like father, they’re always quarrelling. What young fellows want is their own way. Father’s too young to manage Harry, he’s too strong and likely, just as good a man as any of them. That’s my opinion; so are you a deal too young. Bless me, you’re not a bit older than I am. If I wasn’t so steady I shouldn’t like it, I’d rather have an old wife that would give in to me and admire me, whatever I did—”
Joan continued the monologue with a little curve at one corner of her mouth which did duty for a smile. It was not much more than a soliloquy, if truth were told. She knew very well her mother was not listening and did not hear her. Mrs. Joscelyn had re-commenced the walk with which she was trying to subdue her restlessness. And now the voices grew louder than ever. There was a long volley of sounds, in the deepest tone, a sort of discharge of musketry, vituperation rounded off with a large mouth-filling oath or two; then a louder noise like the pushing back of chairs, one of which was thrown down with a heavy crash on the floor. Even Joan started at this noise, and her mother rushed trembling to the door. But before she could open it the door of the next room was thrown violently against the wall, and some one plunged out, rushing across the hall and flinging forth at the outer door. Another volley from the deep voice accompanied this hasty retreat. The mother turned, and hurrying across the room to the window, disappeared behind the drawn curtain that covered it. She opened the shutter as softly and quickly as her trembling would permit, and looking out watched the owner of the hasty steps disappearing, with a clang of the garden gate, in the faint wintry moonlight, which made the landscape beyond look like a white mist. She stood and watched him, shaking her head with a low moan.
“Now he is away to the village,” she said piteously, “oh, my poor lad! the ‘Red Lion,’ that’s all the fireside my Harry will get. Oh, good Lord, good Lord! and me here breaking my heart; and neither sleep nor rest will I get this night till I hear my boy come home. But it is not his fault, it’s not his fault; and what is to be the end of it?” the poor lady cried.
Joan, though she was so tranquil, was not unsympathetic. She made a little remonstrative sound with her tongue in unison with the clicking of her needles.
“Bless me! dear me! but he’ll take no harm at the ‘Red Lion;’ don’t always be thinking the worst, and making things out more dreadful than they are,” she said.
Mrs. Joscelyn emerged from the heavy dark-hued curtains with a sigh, but yet there was a certain softening in her face. Her anxiety was changed, at least, if not relieved. She came and stood in front of the fire, holding up a thin shapely foot to the red glow.