“Years ago, Comethup, when I first saw you in the house wherein your father lay dead, I drove a bargain with you—a bargain which, child though you were, you were fully capable of understanding. Do you remember it now?”
“Yes, of course.” His heart was beating thickly, and he had a dim and miserable feeling that he knew what was coming.
“I fear you may have forgotten it. I asked for your love and your confidence; swore that I would be your friend if you dealt with me openly and squarely through all things and at all times. Have I kept my word?”
“God knows you have!” he replied in a low voice.
“Have you kept yours?—Ah! you are silent on that point. I ask you to-night if you have anything to tell me—anything to say to me?”
He raised his head and looked at her; even made a step toward her with his arms stretched out. Then the arms fell to his sides again and he simply answered, “Nothing.”
Miss Charlotte Carlaw’s face hardened suddenly. “Then the talking must be done by me,” she said. “I reminded you just now of our compact when you were a child; perhaps it will be well to remind you of the penalty for breaking that compact. I swore to you then, and I meant it, that if you ever deceived me, ever proved yourself to be anything but the boy I believed you to be, I’d cast you out and you might starve. I meant it then, and, by the Lord, I’ll keep my word! It has come to my knowledge to-night that you have done what, in my eyes, is a shameful and disgraceful thing; that, trading on the fact that you believed yourself to be my heir, you have borrowed a large sum of money; have used the bounty and generosity of a foolish old woman who believed in you, and so have actually drawn money which you can not possess until after my death. Will you deny that? Is it true?”
“Yes, it’s true,” said Comethup.
She gave a long sigh, turned away from him, leaned her arm against the side of the fireplace, and laid her old face against the arm and began to cry helplessly. It was the most pitiful sight imaginable, and yet he could do nothing to comfort her, dared not even go near her. In a dim, forlorn fashion he seemed to see passing before him all that had happened in that very room—the riotous feasts, when he had been a child—the sound of merry laughter; he even seemed to see himself as he had once stood on the table, singing a foolish song, with the captain watching him silently; he could hear his own childish treble, could feel again the old woman’s hand grasping his ankle. And now the room was empty and the generous-hearted old creature, the giver of the feast, who had craved only for his love in return for all her bounty, was crying hopelessly over her shattered idol.
Presently she ceased her weeping and turned upon him with a certain sad fierceness of manner. “Have I ever denied you anything, boy? Was I so much in your way or had you given me so little of your love that you must long for the time when you could step into possession? O God! for the dream I have lost! Why, you’re worse than any murderer—for the things you have killed in me to-night! I honestly believe that that is the unpardonable sin—to kill some trusting fellow-creature’s belief in you.”