“Done!” Even Mrs. Harwood’s steady tones faltered a little. “Why should he have done anything, Dolff? He was mad. If it had been known that I had kept him here he would have been taken from me, and how could I tell that he would have been kindly treated, or humored, or waited on as he would be at home? He was never violent, and I knew Vicars could manage him. If you saw how carefully everything was arranged for him, you would not think it was from want of affection—too much perhaps,” she added, putting her handkerchief to her eyes.
“And what is the meaning, then, of this about paying, and the pocket-book?” asked Dolff, half convinced.
Mrs. Harwood put her hands together with a little gesture of appeal.
“How can I explain the fancies of a mind that is astray?” she said. “He has got something into his head, some distorted recollection of things that happened before. He was not quite fortunate in his business,” she added, with a slight trembling in her voice; “the worry about that was supposed to have something to do with his breakdown.”
“Then there were, I suppose, people to pay—whom he thinks he has provided for in that pocket book?”
He thought she gave an alarmed glance at some one behind him, and, turning round, caught what seemed to him an answering glance in the eyes of Meredith.
“He knows,” cried Dolff; “you take him into your confidence, but give only what you can’t help to me!”
“Charley is to appear for me before the commissioners,” said Mrs. Harwood, with dignity; “I have given him all the information which was ready for you had you not treated your mother as if she were an enemy trying to injure you. If you do not know, it is your own fault.”
Dolff did not know what to think: his courage failed before his mother. Perhaps it was true that Meredith (though he hated him) had stood by the mother more than he, Dolff, had done, and was of more use in this great family emergency. This thought stung him, but he could not escape from it. And to think that if she had but been frank and honest—if he had known of it, as he ought to have done, as soon as he was old enough to understand——
“Oh, mother,” he cried, “why did you keep it from us? Why did I not know long ago?”