She said these words very low, with a pause between. “There, you have all my story,” with a glimmer of a smile on her face. “It is a tragedy, but simple enough, after all. I was never to see the child again; but my heart betrayed me, and I deceived your father. I went and looked at my boy out of windows, waited to see him pass—once met him on a railway journey when you were with me, Rosalind—which was all wrong, wrong—oh, wrong on both sides; to your father and to him. I don’t excuse myself. Then, poor boy, he fell into trouble. How could he help it? His father’s blood was in him, and mine too—a woman false to my vow. He was without friend or home. When he was in great need and alarm, he came—was it not natural?—to his mother. What could be more natural? He sent for me to meet him, to help him, to tell him what to do. What could I do but go—all being so wrong, so wrong? Jane knows everything. I begged my poor boy to go away; but he was ignorant, he did not know the danger. And then Russell, you know, who had never loved me—is she there, poor woman?—found us out. She carried this story to your father. You think, and she thinks,” said Mrs. Trevanion, raising herself with great dignity in her chair, “that my husband suspected me of—of— I cannot tell what shameful suspicions. Reginald,” she went on, with a smile half scornful, “had no such thought. He knew me better. He knew I went to meet my son, and that I was risking everything for my son. He had vowed to me that in that case I should be cut off from him and his. Oh, yes, I knew it all. My eyes were open all the time. And he did what he had said.” She drew a long breath. There was a dispassionate sadness in her voice, as of winding up a history all past. “And what was I to do?” she resumed. “Cut off from all the rest, there was a chance that I might yet be of some use to him—my boy, whom I had neglected. Oh, John and Rosalind, I wronged you. I should have told you this before; but I had not the heart. And then, there was no time to lose, if I was to be of service to the boy.”
Everything was perfectly still in the room; no one had stirred; they were afraid to lose a word. When she had thus ended she made a pause. Her voice had been very calm, deliberate, a little feeble, with pauses in it. When she spoke again it took another tone; it was full of entreaty, like a prayer. She withdrew her hand from Rosalind.
“Reginald!” she said, “Rex! have you nothing to say to me, my boy!”
The direction of all eyes was changed and turned upon the lad. He stood very red, very lowering, without moving from his post against the door. He did not look at her. After a moment he began to clear his voice. “I don’t know,” he said, “what there is to say.” Then, after another pause: “I suppose I am expected to stick to my father’s will. I suppose that’s my duty.”
“But for all that,” she said, with a pleading which went to every heart; her eyes filled, which had been quite dry, her mouth quivered with a tender smile—“for all that, oh, my boy! it is not to take me in, to make a sacrifice; but for once speak to me, come to me; I am your mother, Rex.”
Sophy had been behind the curtain all the time, wrapped in it, peering out with her restless, dancing eyes. She was still only a child. Her little bosom had begun to ache with sobs kept in, her face to work, her mind to be moved by impulses beyond her power. She had tried to mould herself upon Rex, until Rex, with the shadow of the other beside him, holding back, repelling, resisting, became contemptible in Sophy’s keen eyes. It was perhaps this touch of the ridiculous that affected her sharp mind more than anything else; and the sound of her mother’s voice, as it went on speaking, was more than nature could bear, and roused impulses she scarcely understood within her. She resisted as long as she could, winding herself up in the curtain; but at these last words Sophy’s bonds were loosed; she shook herself out of the drapery and came slowly forward, with eyes glaring red out of her pale face.
“They say,” she said suddenly, “that we shall lose all our money, mamma, if we go to you.”
Mrs. Trevanion’s fortitude and calm had given way. She was not prepared for this trial. She turned towards the new voice and held out her arms without a word. But Sophy stood frightened, reluctant, anxious, her keen eyes darting out of her head.
“And what could I do?” she cried. “I am only a little thing, I couldn’t work. If you gave up your baby because of being poor, what should we do, Rex and I? We are younger, though you said you were young. We want to be well off, too. If we were to go to you, everything would be taken from us!” cried Sophy. “Mamma, what can we do?”
Mrs. Trevanion turned to her supporters on either side of her with a smile; her lips still trembled. “Sophy was always of a logical mind,” she said, with a faint half-laugh. The light was flickering round her, blackness coming where all these eager faces were. “I—I have my answer. It is just enough. I have no—complaint.”