“That shows what blood you’ve come of; your mother’s milk-and-water, not mine. I can’t take the name from you——”
“What do you mean?” cried Harry, springing to his feet. He had held himself in so long that now his passion would have vent, though he knew very well it was upon a fictitious occasion. “What do you mean?” he cried; “do you mean to slander my mother?” and faced this domestic tyrant with blazing eyes.
Joscelyn laughed scornfully.
“You can take it as you please,” he said. “You’re of her breed, not mine. Flare up as you like, it don’t touch me. You’re a poor, weakly piece of goods to carry a big name, but I can’t take it from you. Only mind you what I say, don’t ask a penny from me, for you’ll not get it; not a sixpence, not a farthing from me.”
“I’ll never trouble you again, that you may be sure. It is now or never,” cried Harry, worked to a pitch of passion which he could not restrain. And again, Joscelyn laughed, with a shout that blew into Harry’s indignant face, and moved his hair.
This sensation half maddened the young man. He pushed away his chair, throwing it down with a clang that rang over all the house, and crying, “That’s settled, then!” darted out and flung himself forth, out of the flush and heat of the quarrel into the cool and wintry freshness of the night.
Other interviews before this had ended in the same way. It is the worst of domestic quarrels that they are endless and full of repetition. What would be decisive between two friends is not decisive between two members of the same family, who are forced to meet again, and go over the same ground for scores of times. Harry Joscelyn had felt the same tingle and thrill as of fire in his veins before now, the same determination to fling out of sight, out of recollection of this tyrant who was his father, and who became periodically insupportable to him. He plunged out into the cold without any upper coat, his body all tingling with heat and shame, as his mind did. Indeed, he was at a pass in which body and mind so sympathize with each other as to feel like one. He sped along the familiar road in the white soft mist of the moonlight. The great slope of the Fells behind was the only object that loomed through that faint vaporous atmosphere, in which the light seemed diffused and disintegrated into a woolly confusing veil. The road lay between two grey dykes; there were no trees or bushes to interrupt or throw shadows into the general haze. He seemed to breathe it, as well as move in it; and after the first minute it chilled him to the very marrow of his bones. The whiteness made it colder, cold without and within, in the body and in the mind. And gradually it had upon the heated youth the effect of a cold bath, quenching out the warmth in him. His steps grew less hurried, he began to be able to think, not only, with a furious absorption over all his father’s words and ways, but with a recurring thought of his overcoat, and all the comfort he might have got out of it, which, though it was not a great matter, still gradually set up something to balance the other matter in his mind.
He walked quickly, his rapid youthful steps warning whosoever might be out and about, of his approach. There was no doubtfulness in these steps; he was not wandering vaguely, but had a certain end before him, the parlour of the “Red Lion,” which had made his mother wring her hands as much as all the other painful circumstances of the night. He had persuaded himself, as soon as the first novelty of his return home was over, that he had nowhere else to go. To sit between his mother and Joan in the parlour, they could not suppose that a young fellow would do that. Women are unreasonable; they had supposed it, not knowing in their own accustomedness and unexpectancy how dull it was. There was nothing very lively going on at the “Red Lion,” and a mother and sister might have been excused for wondering what charm there was in the dull and drowsy talk, the slow filling of glasses, the rustic opinions and confused ideas of the company there. Harry did not find much charm in it, but it was more congenial than sitting with the women. He was angry when his father assailed his mother, feeling it a kind of assault upon his own side, but his father’s ceaseless scorn of her, which he had known all his life, had influenced him in spite of himself. To sit at home with two women in a parlour was out of the question. The other parlour was not entertaining, but it was not home, and that was always something. The “Red Lion” was in the middle of the village, which lay on a considerably lower level than that of the White House, clustered upon the stream which divided the valley. It was quite a small stream ordinarily, but at present it was swollen with spring rains and with the melted snow, and made a faint roar in the night as it swept under the bridge, with here and there a gleam of light reflected in it from the neighbouring houses. It was not with any very highly raised expectations that Harry turned his eyes towards these lights. He would get out of the cold, that was one thing, and into the light, and would see something different from his father’s furious countenance, or his mother’s pale one, or Joan’s eyes, that paid attention to everything but her knitting. How strange it is that home, which is paradise at five, and so pleasant a place at fifteen, should be intolerable at five-and-twenty! As he approached the corner at which, coming from his exile at Wyburgh, he had first caught sight of the lights in the White House, he could not help remembering the shout of delight he used to send forth. How pleasant it had been to come home from Uncle Henry’s prim old place! but what was home to him now? at the best a duty, a weariness. As he began to think of this a kind of desire, a longing to go far away came over him. Why shouldn’t he go away? His mother would not like it, but nobody else would mind. His mother was the only creature, he reflected, whom he cared for at home; and of course it was his duty to come and see her from time to time. But an hour at the utmost exhausted what he had to say to her; indeed, he had never had so much to say to her as it would take an hour to tell. Half-an-hour, perhaps, now and then—that he would like to keep up, just to please her; and it would please himself too. But he did not care for any more. As for all the rest, he did not mind, not he! if he never saw the White House again.
Thus he was thinking as he hastened along the road, his hasty feet ringing upon the path notwithstanding that it was somewhat damp and the atmosphere dull, giving forth no particular echo. Some one else was coming along the Wyburgh Road, a small uncertain blackness in the white atmosphere. Harry knew very well at the first glance who it was, as familiar a figure as any in the country side. Anybody would have known him by his step even, that peculiar step as of one springy foot and one shuffling one which gave a one-sided movement to the man, and an unmistakable rhythm to the sound of him. Perhaps he knew Harry’s step too, for he paused at the corner, turning his face in the way the young man was coming.
“Who will that be?” he said, in the obscurity, “if I’m no mistaken an angry man—”