She had risen painfully to her feet while he was speaking. Going down on your knees may be a picturesque thing, but getting up from them, especially in petticoats, and in a large shawl, is not a graceful operation at all, and this, notwithstanding her despair, poor Mrs. Mowbray was vaguely conscious of. She stumbled to her feet, her skirts tripping her up, the corners of her shawl getting in her way. The poor woman had begun to cry. It was wonderful that she had been able to restrain herself so long; but she was old enough to be aware that a woman’s tears are just as often exasperating as pathetic to a man, and had heroically restrained the impulse. But when she fell on her knees, she lost her self-control. That was begging the question altogether. She had given up her position as a tragic and dignified appellant. She was nothing but a poor suppliant now, at anybody’s mercy, quite broken down, and overmastered by her trouble. It did not matter to her any longer what anyone thought. The state of mind in which she had dared to tell the minister that he spoke like an old woman, was gone from her completely. He was like God, he could save her, if he would; she could not tell how, there was no reason in her hope, but if he only would, somehow he could, save her—that was all her thought.
“Now, tell me exactly how it is,” she heard him saying, confusedly, through the violent beating of her heart.
But what unfortunate, in her position, ever could tell exactly how such a thing was? She told him a long, broken, confused story, full of apology, and explanation, insisting chiefly upon the absence of any ill meaning on her part, or ill intention, and the fatality which had caught her, and compelled her actions, so often against her will. She had been led into this and that, it had been pressed upon her—even now she did not see how she could have escaped. And it was all for Frank’s sake: every step she had taken was for Frank’s sake, that he might want for nothing, that he might have everything the others had, and feel that everything about him—his home, his mother, his society—were such as a gentleman ought to have.
“This long minority,” Mrs. Mowbray said, through her tears, “oh, what a mistake it is; instead of saving his money, it has been the destruction of his money. I thought always it was so hard upon him, that I was forced to spend more and more to make it up to him. I spent everything of my own first. Oh, Mr. Buchanan! you must not think I spared anything of my own—that went first. I sold out and sold out, till there was nothing left; and then what could I do but get into debt? And here I am, and I have not a penny, and all these dreadful men pressing and pressing! And everything will be exposed to Frank, all exposed to him on the fifth of next month. Oh, Mr. Buchanan, save me, save me. My boy will despise me. He will never trust me again. He will say it is all my fault! So it is all my fault. Oh, I do not attempt to deny it, Mr. Buchanan: but it was all for him. And then there was another thing that deceived me. I always trusted in you. I felt sure that at the end, when you found it was really so serious, you would step in, and compel all these people to pay up, and all my little debts would not matter so much at the last.”
Mr. Buchanan had forgotten the personal reference in all this to himself. It did not occur to him that the money which rankled so at his own heart, and which had already cost him so much, much more than its value, was the thing upon which she depended, from which she had expected salvation. What was it she expected? thousands, he supposed, instead of fifties, a large sum sufficient to re-establish her fortunes. It was with a kind of impatient disdain that he spoke.
“Are these really little debts you are telling me of? Could a hundred pounds or two clear them off, would that be of real use?”
“Oh, a hundred pounds!” she cried, with a shriek. “Mr. Buchanan, a hundred pence would, of course, be of use, for I have no money at all, and a hundred is a nice little bit of money, and I could stop several mouths with it: but to clear them off! Oh no, no, alas, alas! It is clear that you never lived in London. A hundred pounds would be but a drop in the ocean. But when it is thousands, Mr. Buchanan, which is more like facts—thousands, I am sure, which you know of, which you could recover for Frank!”
“Mrs. Mowbray, I don’t know what can have deceived you to this point. It is absolute folly: all that Mr. Anderson lent to people at St. Rule’s was never above a few hundred pounds. I know of nothing more. There is nothing more. There was one of three hundred—nothing more. Be composed, be composed and listen to me. Mrs. Mowbray!”
But she neither listened nor heard him, her excitement had reached to a point beyond which flesh and blood overmastered by wild anxiety and disappointment could not go.
“It can’t be true,” she shrieked out. “It can’t be true, it mustn’t be true.” And then, with a shriek that rang through the house, throwing out her arms, she fell like a mass of ruins on the floor.