"I should have thought so." Gwen was not quite happy about old Mrs. Picture's inner soul. How about a possible cruel corner in it?
The old lady seemed to suspect this question's existence, unexpressed. Apology in her voice hinted at need of forgiveness—pleaded against condemnation. "But," she said, after a faltered word or two, short of speech, "you do not know, my dear, how bad a man can be. How should you?"
Perhaps the tone of her voice threw a light on some obscurity accepted ambiguities had left. For Gwen said, rather suddenly: "You need not tell me any more. You have told me plenty and I understand it." And so she did, for working purposes, though perhaps some latitudes in the sea of this Ralph Daverill's iniquities were by her unexplored and unexplorable.
This particular atrocity of his has no interest for the story, beyond the fact that it was the one that led to his separation from his mother, and that it accounts for the very slight knowledge that she seems to have had of the details of his conviction and deportation. It must have happened between his desertion of his lawful wife, Dave's Aunt M'riar, and his ill-advised attempt at burglary. Whether his offence against "the girl" whose part his mother took was made the subject of a criminal indictment is not certain, but if it was he must have escaped with a slight punishment, to be able to give his attention to the strong room of that Bank so soon after. Those who are inclined to think that his mother was unforgiving towards her own son, to the extent of vindictiveness, may find an excuse for her in a surmise which some facts connected with the case made plausible, that he adduced some childish levities on this girl's part as a warrant for his atrocious behaviour towards her, and so escaped legal penalty. Those who know with what alacrity male jurymen will accept evasions of this sort, will admit that this is at least possible.
This is conjecture, by the way, as Gwen asked to know no more of the incident, seeming to shrink from further knowledge of it in fact. She allowed it to pass out of the conversation, retaining the pleasant and wholesome attempt to redistribute the Bank's property as at least fit for discussion, and even pardonable—an act due to a mistaken economic theory—redistribution of property by a free lance, not wearing the uniform of a School of Political Thought.
"But how long was his term of service?" she asked, coming back into the fresher air of mere housebreaking.
"I am afraid it was for fourteen years. But I have never known. I can hardly believe it now, but I know it is true for all that, that he was convicted and transported without the trial coming to my ears at the time. I only knew that he had disappeared, and thought it was by his own choice. And what means had I of finding him, if I had wanted to? That I never did."
"Because of ... because of the girl?"
"Because of the girl Emma.... Oh yes! I was his mother, but.... She stopped short. Her meaning was clear; some sons would cripple the strongest mother's love.
"Then you had to give up the house," said Gwen, to help her away from the memory that stung her, vividly.