‘Do me one favour, John,’ she cried, grasping his arm closer; ‘do this one thing for me. Before he can come home again, before he can find you out, this very night, if you are safe so long, leave this place. Find somewhere else to live in. Oh! you shall have no trouble. I will find you a place; but leave this, leave it now at once. Leave him no clue. What? he has left you none, you say? Why should you hesitate? Come away with me, John. For the love of God! and if you have learned to feel any respect or any pity for your mother—for the poor woman whom once you called Emily—— John, think what it was to me that you should call me Emily, that you should refuse me the name of mother. And yet you were my boy, for whom I had denied myself that you might take no harm. Oh, if you have anything to make up to me for that, do it now. Come away with me to-night, leave this place, let him find no clue, no clue!’
Something of this was said almost in dumb show, her voice giving way in her passion of entreaty. She had clasped his arm in both her hands as her excitement grew. Her breath was hot on John’s cheek. There was something in the clasp of her hands, in the force of her passionate determination, that made him feel like a child in her hold.
‘Mother,’ he said, ‘what would be the use? Do you think I could disappear? If ever that was possible, it isn’t now. Whoever wants to find me, if not here, will find me at the office, or wherever I may be working. I can’t sink down through a trap-door into the unknown; that might be on the stage but not in real life. How could one like me, with work to do for my living, and employers and people that know me, disappear?’
A remnant, perhaps, of John’s own self-esteem, which had been so bitterly pulled down by the incidents of this day, awoke again. It was only the insignificant who could obliterate themselves and leave no clue. For him to do it was impossible. It was but a melancholy pride, but it was pride still.
‘He will not go to the office after you. He knows none of your friends. If you leave this, and give no address, he will perhaps not seek for you, for that would be a great deal of trouble. He never liked trouble. We should gain time at least to think what should be done. John, do what I ask you! Come away with me to-night. I will manage everything. You shall have no trouble. John!’
‘Mother,’ he cried, taking her hands into his, ‘at the end, when all is said that can be said, he is our father, Susie’s and mine. We can’t leave him alone to perish. We can’t forsake him. Mother, now that I know the truth, I know it, and there is an end. I can’t put it out of my mind again. I thought my father was dead, but he is not dead, he is alive. It can never be put out of sight again. It may be bitter enough, terrible enough, but we can’t put it out of our minds. There it is—he is alive. He is my business more than anything else. There can be no choice for Susie and me.’
She had been trying to free her hands while he spoke. She wrung them out of his hold now, thrusting him from her.
‘I might have known,’ she said, trembling with anger and misery, ‘I might have known! Susie, too. What does it matter that I have protected you, saved you, guarded you? I am not your business, I or my comfort—but he—he—— What will you do with him? where will you take him? If he comes here, the woman of this house will not bear it long, I warn you. What will you do, John? Will you take him to your village among the people you care for? Where will you take him? What will you do with him, John?’
‘My village?’ John said. And there came over him a chill as of death. His face grew ashy pale, his limbs refused to support him longer; he sank into the vacant chair, and leaned his head, which swam, on his two hands, and looked at his mother opposite to him with eyes wild with sudden dismay and horror: all the day long amid his troubles he had not thought of that. His village! And must he tell this dreadful story there? and unfold all the new revelations of failure, betrayal, disgrace—and of how he had no name, and only shame for an inheritance? Must he tell it all there?