She kept standing, gazing at him for a moment more. Then a sort of shivering seized her, and in a moment all her defences seemed to fail. She gave him a look of agonised appeal, then came to him like a child flying from a suddenly realised danger, and dropped down by the side of his chair.
‘Oh, John,’ she cried, clinging to him, ‘save me. I cannot see him—oh, no, no! You don’t know what you ask. Say I am dead. Say I am—— Kill me rather, kill me! It would be kinder. Oh, no, no, no, no! I cannot, I cannot. I’ll rather die. Save me, John!’
A horrible dismay crept through and through him as he bent over her, exclaiming, ‘Mother, mother!’ trying to soothe her—but above all a profound, all-subduing pity. He had his answer; there was no possibility of misunderstanding what this meant: but the sight of the convulsed and broken figure clinging to him in utter self-abandonment penetrated to his very heart. He clasped with his own the hands that held his arm. He put down his head to the face which, full of mortal terror and misery, looked up to him imploring his protection. His protection! for her so strong, so self-sufficing, so immovable. To see her at his feet was more than he could bear.
‘Mother, I will; as far as I can, by every means I can. I will, I will—mother, it breaks my heart to see you. Then it is true, all true?’
And on the other side there seemed to rise before him another picture: the man with his smile arguing the question, persuading himself that anything he had done was, if not wholly right, at least far from being wrong, that it was the thing most natural to be done—with his air of mental confusion, yet satisfaction, his amiability, his conciliatory looks, his humorous self-consciousness, the subtle semi-intoxication which seemed to have got into his character. These things had made John smile a short time ago; they had filled him with a sort of compassionate kindness, an amused toleration of all the ways of this strange specimen of what human nature could come to. He was not amused or tolerant now. He thought with shrinking of this new, never-realised, impossible agent who had come into his life, impossible, yet, alas! real, never to be ignored again. But the first thing was his mother, his mother who, their positions reversed in a moment, clung to him with that face full of panic and anguish, flinging herself upon his protection. She, who was so strong, the embodiment of self-reliance and authority, to see her as weak as water, as weak as any poor woman, imploring her son to save her! He had never in his life till now given her more than the conventional kiss which their relationship seemed to demand when they met and parted. But now he held her close and kissed over and over again the white, agonised face which was pressed against his arm. Presently he raised her up tenderly and restored her to her seat—where gradually her panic calmed down, and she was able to speak. But it was very terrible and strange to John that she asked no questions, but took the miserable fact for granted, as if it were a thing that must have happened, that she had expected sooner or later, something inevitable in her way.
‘The only thing is,’ he said, with a sigh of subdued impatience, ‘why did you not tell me, mother. Why didn’t I know?’
His question brought the shivering back, but she replied, with an effort,
‘How can I tell you? We thought it was better so. I would not have you exposed to that knowledge. You were so young—and then it might never have been necessary—it might never have come——’
‘You mean that he might have died—there?’
‘It would,’ she said, bowing her head, ‘have been better so.’