"I know nothing," she said; "nothing! He was like himself yesterday morning, full of life. Unless he is ill, I cannot understand it. But, mother, I have to tell him—everything to-day."
"God grant it may not be too late, Elinor!" Mrs. Dennistoun said.
"Too late? How can it be too late? Yes; perhaps you are right, John and you. He ought to have known from the beginning; he ought to have been told when he was a child. I acknowledge that I was wrong; but it is no use," she said, wiping away some fiery tears, "to go back upon that now."
"John could not have told him anything?" Mrs. Dennistoun said, doubtfully.
"John! my best friend, who has always stood by me. Oh, never, never. How little you know him, mother! He has been imploring me every day, almost upon his knees, to tell Pippo everything; and I promised to do it as soon as the time was come. And then last night I was so glad to think that he was engaged with John, and I so worn out, not fit for anything. And then this morning——"
"Then—this morning I arrived, just when I would have been better away!"
"Don't say that, mother. It is always, always well you should be with your children. And, oh, if I had but taken your advice years and years ago!"
How easy it is to wish this when fate overtakes us, when the thing so long postponed, so long pushed away from us, has to be done at last! There is, I fear, no repentance in it, only the intolerable sense that the painful act might have been over long ago, and the soul free now of a burden which is so terrible to bear.
Philip did not leave his room all the morning. His mother, overwhelmed now by the new anxiety about his health, which had no part in her thoughts before, went to his door and knocked several times, always with the intention of going in, of insisting upon the removal of all barriers, and of telling her story, the story which now was as fire in her veins and had to be told. But he had locked his door, and only answered from within that he was reading—getting up something that he had forgotten—and begged her to leave him undisturbed till lunch. Poor Elinor! Her story was, as I have said, like fire in her veins; but when the moment came, and a little more delay, an hour, a morning was possible, she accepted it like a boon from heaven, though she knew very well all the same that it was but prolonging the agony, and that to get it accomplished—to get it over—was the only thing to desire. She tried to arrange her thoughts, to think how she was to tell it, in the hurrying yet flying minutes when she sat alone, listening now and then to Philip's movements over her head, for he was not still as a boy should be who was reading, but moved about his room, with a nervous restlessness that seemed almost equal to her own. Mrs. Dennistoun, to leave her daughter free for the conversation that ought to take place between Elinor and her son, had gone to lie down, and lay in Elinor's room, next door to the boy, listening to every sound, and hoping, hoping that they would get it over before she went down-stairs again. She did not believe that Philip would stand out against his mother, whom he loved. Oh, if they could but get it over, that explanation—if the boy but knew! But it was apparent enough, when she came down to luncheon, where Elinor awaited her, pale and anxious, and where Philip followed, so unlike himself, that no explanation had yet taken place between them. And the luncheon was as miserable a pretence at a meal as the breakfast had been—worse as a repetition, yet better in so far that poor Pippo, with his boyish wholesome appetite, was by this time too hungry to be restrained even by the unusual burden of his unhappiness, and ate heartily, although he was bitterly ashamed of so doing: which perhaps made him a little better, and certainly did a great deal of good to the ladies, who thus were convinced that whatever the matter might be, he was not ill at least. He was about to return up-stairs after luncheon was over, but Elinor caught him by the arm: "You are not going to your room again, Pippo?"
"I—have not finished my reading," he said.