'Let us come away,' whispered Michael in Mr. O'Brien's ear. 'They will get on better without us.'
The tears were running down the old man's face as they turned into the little parlour.
'It beats me, sir, it beats me utterly, to see my poor lad trying to make friends with his own children, and looking so shamed before them. That is a fine-looking chap, that eldest one,' he went on—'Miss Ross's sweetheart, as I used to call him. He is the sort any girl could fancy. And he has a look of Mat about him, too, only he is handsomer and better set up than Mat ever was. "I believe you are my uncle, sir." Few young chaps would have said that. A fine fellow, and she has lost him. Well, the Almighty sends trouble to the young as well as the old. May I light my pipe, Captain? For I am a bit shaky, and all this has overset me.'
Meanwhile Cyril was saying:
'We have not brought Mollie. If you wish to see her, she shall come another time.'
'Thank you, my lad; that is kindly spoken. And I have a sort of longing to set eyes on her again. But you need not think that I am going to trouble her, or you either. A man like me has no right to trouble anyone.'
How could they answer him? But Mat did not seem to notice their silence. His eyes were bent on the ground, and he twirled his gray moustache fiercely.
'My children belong to their mother, and not to me. I made you over to her years ago. She said I was not fit to have the charge of my own children; and maybe she was right. It was not a wifely speech, but I can't blame her. When you go home, tell her I'll keep my word—that I'll lay no sort of claim to any of you.'
He spoke in the slow, brooding tone that was natural to him, and the tears came into Kester's eyes as he listened.
Boy as he was, he understood the deep degradation of such words. This tall, hungry-eyed man, who stood aloof and talked so strangely, was his own father, who was voluntarily denuding himself of a father's rights—an outcast thrown over by his wife and children—an erring, and yet a deeply repentant man. Could anything be more unnatural and horrible? Kester's boyish sense of justice revolted against this painful condition of things; he longed to start up and take his father's hand.