She frowned at that and turned upon me fiercely, but her speaking was prevented, by a terrible fit of coughing, that seized her and shook and rent her, like one of the evil spirits in Scripture.
When quite exhausted, she leant against the wall and wiped her face with her torn shawl and tried to set her tattered bonnet straight, with a shaking hand; and all her hair—beautiful, chestnut hair like Nick’s—came tumbling about her face. And then—
“Whoever you are,” she says, with a lofty kind of air, “in doing, what you have done by this unfortunate child, you meant well, I daresay.” At which Nick, who had slipped his hand into mine, gave me a grateful squeeze.
“What I did, was done, first for Heaven’s sake, and then for his own,” says I; “so say no more about it. Me and Cheevers asks no thanks.”
“I don’t suppose, you expect me to go down on my knees to you,” says the poor lost soul defiantly, “and if you did, you’d be disappointed.
“I don’t thank you. Nor will the child thank you, when he grows to be a man. Better far, have let him die, and be put away, where shame can never come to him. Better far, if he had died, when he was born. Best of all, if I, his mother, had never drawn the breath of life.”
And the wretched creature dropped in a heap on a doorstep nigh by and rocked herself and moaned a bit. And then she pulled herself together, and struggled up.
“I must go,” she says dazedly. “I don’t know what led me back here, if it wasn’t Fate.
“I have walked days and nights to reach this place, driven by the same whip that, now I am here, goads me away. I must be moving—there’s no rest for me!” And she turned away blindly and went down the passage.
“Oh, mother, don’t go!” says Nick, following and pulling at her sleeve.