But, unable to support any longer the strife for mastery that was tearing at his heart, he gave way to his wrath, and cried out in a loud voice, "Out on you, woman! Out on you! God forgive me the evil day I set eyes on you! God forgive me the damned day I took you to my breast to rend it."
While this had been going forward Greeba had stood silent at the back of her father's chair, with eyelashes quivering and the fingers of both hands clenched together. But now she stepped forward and said, "Forgive him, mother. Do not be angry with him. He will be sorry for what he has said: I'm sure he will. But only think, dear mother: he is in great, great trouble, and he is past work, and if this is not his home, then he is homeless."
And at the sound of that pleading voice Adam's wrath turned in part to tenderness, and he dropped back to the chair and began to weep.
"I am ashamed of my tears, child," he said; "but they are not shed for myself. Nor did I come here for my own sake, though your mother thinks I did. No, child, no; say no more. I'll repent me of nothing I have said to her—no, not one word. She is a hard, a cruel woman; but, thank heaven, I have my sons left to me yet. She is not flesh of my flesh, though one with me in wedlock; but they are, they will never see their father turned from the door."
At that instant three of the six Fairbrothers, Asher, Ross and Thurstan, came in from the stackyard, with the smell of the furze-rick upon them that they had been trimming for the cattle. And Adam, without waiting to explain, cried in the fervor of his emotion, "This is not your will, Asher?" Whereupon Asher, without any salutation, answered him, "I don't know what you mean, sir," and turned aside.
"He has damned your mother," said Mrs. Fairbrother, with her morning apron to her eyes, "and cursed the day he married her."
"But she is turning me out of the house," said Adam. "This house—my father's house."
"Ask her pardon, sir," Asher muttered, "and she will take you back."
"Her pardon! God in heaven!" Adam cried.
"You are an old man now, sir," said Thurstan.