"Aw, very nate and amazing civil to dirks like that—go on, girl, go on," said the old woman, tossing her head and hand in anger toward Mally.
"Mother, this is my concern, I'm thinking—what is it, sir?"
But the old woman's wrath at her daughter's patience was not to be kept down. "Behold ye!" she said, "it's my own girl that's after telling me before strangers that I've not a farthing at me, and me good for nothing at working, and only fit to hobble about on a stick, and fix the house tidy maybe, and to have no say in nothing—go on, och, go on, girl."
The Deemster explained his proposal. It was that the boy Jarvis should be given entirely into his control, and be no more known by his mother and his mother's mother, and perhaps no more seen or claimed or acknowledged by them, and that the Deemster should provide for him and see him started in life.
Mrs. Kerruish's impatience knew no bounds. "My gough!" she cried—"my gough, my gough!" But Mally listened and reflected. Her spirit was broken, and she was thinking of her poverty. Her mother was now laid aside by rheumatism, and could earn nothing, and she herself worked piecework at the net-making—so much for a piece of net, a hundred yards long by two hundred meshes deep, toiling without heart from eight to eight, and earning four, five, and six shillings a week. And if there was a want, her boy felt it. She did not answer at once, and after a moment the Deemster turned to the door. "Think of it," he said; "think of it."
"Hurroo! hurroo!" cried the old woman, derisively, from her stool, her untamable soul aflame with indignation.
"Be quiet, mother," said Mally, and the hopelessness that had spoken from her eyes seemed then to find a way into her voice.
The end of it was that Jarvis Kerruish was sent to a school at Liverpool, and remained there three years, and then became a clerk in the counting-house of Benas Brothers, of the Goree Piazza, ostensibly African merchants, really English money-lenders. Jarvis did not fret at the loss of his mother, and of course he never wrote to her; but he addressed a careful letter to the Deemster twice a year, beginning "Honored Sir," and ending "Yours, with much respect, most obediently."
Mally had miscalculated her self-command. If she had thought of her poverty, it had been because she had thought of her boy as well. He would be lifted above it all if she could but bring herself to part with him. She wrought up her feelings to the sacrifice, and gave away her son, and sat down as a broken-spirited and childless woman. Then she realized the price she had to pay. The boy had been the cause of her shame; but he had been the centre of her pride as well. If she had been a hopeless woman before, she was now a heartless one. Little by little she fell into habits of idleness and intemperance. Before young Jarvis sat in his frilled shirt on the stool in the Goree Piazza, and before the down had begun to show on his lean cheeks, his mother was a lost and abandoned woman.
But not yet had the Deemster broken his fate. When Ewan disappointed his hopes and went into the Church, and married without his sanction or knowledge, it seemed to him that the chain was gradually tightening about him. Then the Deemster went over once more to the cottage at the Cross Vein, alone, and in the night.