‘I know,’ he said. ‘Are you glad, indeed? that’s very good of you. I’m not glad, not a bit. It doesn’t matter. I’ll work at it all the same, but I don’t care. It’s the same thing to me whether it goes on or whether it stops. You need not shake your head, for I know—I know it makes no difference. But I thought I must come and tell you. I am going to make my fortune: but it does not matter to anyone in the wide world, and I don’t care.’
‘Jack,’ said Elly, standing by his side, ‘have you made up your mind that you will pay no attention to what I think or what I say?’
He looked at her in such a bewildering passion of misery and hopelessness that all expression seemed to have gone out of his eyes.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I can’t, I can’t—even if you would.’ Then he paused, drawing a breath which was half choked by something hysterical in his throat. ‘But I had to come and tell you. It’s what we used to talk of long ago. It’s—it’s the lighthouse, Elly!’ he cried, with a sudden sob which all the manhood of twenty-one could not restrain, and buried his face in his hands.
She flung her arms round him, bent down over him, holding his bowed head to her breast. She was half-sister, half-mother, protector, guardian, as well as his love. Tender, domestic affection, unabashed, as well as the strong passion of the woman, shone in the eyes with which she turned to the weeping spectator.
‘Do you think you or anyone will ever part me from Jack?’ she said.
‘Oh, children, do not break my heart! Your father will never, never consent—and Percy—and everybody who knows. Jack, for pity’s sake, tell her, tell her! She will listen, perhaps, to you.’
It was a minute at least, a long, long time, before John raised himself, detaching those dear arms.
‘Elly,’ he said, ‘I am my father’s son. People have distrusted me all my life, and I never knew why. They may distrust me yet, and I will know the reason, and God knows what it may make of me. No, I know that your father will not consent.’
‘And a girl’s own mind is nothing,’ she cried, indignant, ‘I know you all think so, whatever you may say.’