“My dear boy,” she said, “if you go to Paris, as I fear you must, I foresee great temptations for you. I have done all I could to bring you up a decent, respectable member of society, and to bring out in you the strain of your English blood; but several things have been against me, your Roman Catholic religion and your naturally difficult temper. I have never quite felt as if you understood me, but that doesn’t matter now. Try to be honourable, straightforward and economical, and whatever you do, don’t be like your father—I don’t like to mention such horrors, but there it is; you have that to fight against as well as the temptations natural to any young man—the poor man came, as we know, to a shocking end.”
Jean flung back his chair and sprang to his feet. He spoke in a tone Miss Prenderghast had never heard him use before, and he lapsed into quick, explosive French, which she always found it difficult to follow.
“Do not dare to say these things to me, Madame,” he said hoarsely. “Respect my father’s memory, if you respect nothing else that is mine. He had courage, he was a gallant man, he never did a dishonourable thing in his life—he died sadly!”
“He died by his own hand,” interrupted Miss Prenderghast dryly, “after he had lived what, in my religion, would very rightly be termed a life of sin.”
“Mon Dieu! you shall not say these things to me,” cried Jean, and suddenly he caught up the plate nearest him, and with the quick gesture of an angry child, flung it through the nearest window-pane. It crashed through the glass of the long French window, out on to the terrace beyond. The boy trembled all over with excitement and fury. Miss Prenderghast regarded him with scandalized contempt. He had really startled her, but even in her astonishment she was scornful. Shame overwhelmed him; he rushed past her out into the long corridor, and tore upstairs to his room.
Elizabeth heard him; she ran out of her room to intercept him in a sulphur-coloured dressing-gown, her gray hair hanging about her head in rigid wisps.
“Ah, Master Jean! Master Jean! Whatever in the world ’ave you been and done?” she moaned in terror.
“Let me go! Let me go, Elizabeth! or I shall go mad,” gasped the boy.
“There, there! don’t you take on so, Master Jean,” said Elizabeth softly, but she let him go—she knew that there is one thing a man prefers even to a woman’s sympathy, and that is his own freedom.
Jean reached his room and flung himself headlong on his bed, shaking with sobs. “Why should he feel so—why should he always feel so much too much?” he asked himself. “He had acted like a bad child, like a mere boy; his aunt despised him. Who was he to go out and face the world, to see Paris—a man who could not keep his temper with his aunt?” Even lying there alone in the dark he felt the hot waves of colour rushing over him afresh. He had been rude to her, and she was a woman, and she had done so much for him! How he hated her having done so much for him—why couldn’t she have left him alone?