CHAPTER XXXVIII.
"GOD BLESS YOU!"
Late the same night, Mrs. Haworth, who had been watching for her son alone in the grand, desolate room in which it was her lot to sit, rose to her feet on hearing him enter the house.
The first object which met his eye when he came in was her little figure and her patient face turned toward the door. As he crossed the threshold, she took a few steps as if to meet him, and then stopped.
"Jem!" she exclaimed. "Jem!"
Her voice was tremulous and her eyes bright with the indefinable feeling which seized upon her the moment she saw his face. Her utterance of his name was a cry of anxiousness and fear.
"What!" he said. "Are you here yet?"
He came to her and laid a hand upon her shoulder in a rough caress.
"You'd better go to bed," he said to her. "It's late, and I've got work to do."
"I felt," she answered, "as if I'd like to wait an' see you. I knowed I should sleep better for it—I always do."
There was a moment's pause in which she stroked his sleeve with her withered hand. Then he spoke.
"Sleep better!" he said. "That's a queer notion. You've got queer fancies, you women—some on you."
Then he stooped and kissed her awkwardly. He always did it with more or less awkwardness and lack of ease, but it never failed to make her happy.
"Now you've done it," he said. "You'd better go, old lady, and leave me to finish what I've got to do."
"It's late for work, Jem," she answered. "You oughtn't to try yourself so much."
"It ain't work so much," he said, "as thinking. There's summat I've got to think out."
For the moment he seemed quite to forget her. He stood with his hands thrust into his pockets and his feet apart, staring at the carpet. He did not stir when she moved away, and was still standing so when she turned at the door to look at him.
What she saw brought her back, hurried and tearful.
"Let me stay!" she cried. "Let me stay. There's trouble in your face, Jem, for I see it. Don't keep it from me—for the sake of what we've been through together in times that's past."
He bestirred himself and looked up at her.
"Trouble!" he repeated. "That's not the word. It's not trouble, old lady, and it's naught that can be helped. There's me and it to fight it out. Go and get your sleep and leave us to it."
She went slowly and sadly. She always obeyed him, whatever his wish might be.
When the last sound of her faltering feet had died away upon the stairs, he went to the side-board and poured out a glass of raw brandy and drank it.
"I want summat to steady me," he said,—"and to warm me"
But it did not steady him, at least. When he sat down at the table, the hand he laid upon it shook.
He looked at it curiously, clinching and unclinching it.
"I'm pretty well done for when it goes like that," he said. "I'm farther gone than I thought. It's all over me—over and through me. I'm shaking like a fool."
He broke out with a torrent of curses.
"Is it me that's sitting here," he cried, "or some other chap? Is it me that luck's gone agen on every side or a chap that's useder to it?"
Among all his pangs of humiliation and baffled passion there was not one so subtle and terrible in its influence upon him as his momentary sense of physical weakness. He understood it less than all the rest, and raged against it more. His body had never failed him once, and now for the first time he felt that its power faltered. He was faint and cold, and trembled not merely from excitement but from loss of strength.
Opposite to him, at the other side of the room, was a full-length mirror. Accidentally raising his eyes toward it he caught sight of his own face. He started back and unconsciously glanced behind him.
"Who!" he began.
And then he stopped, knowing the face for his own—white-lipped, damp with cold sweat, lined with harsh furrows—evil to see. He got up, shaking his fist at it, crying out through his shut teeth.
"Blast her!" he said. "Who's to blame but her?"
He had given up all for her, his ambition, which had swept all before if, his greatest strength, his very sins and coarseness, and half an hour ago he had passed the open door of a room and had seen Murdoch standing motionless, not uttering a word, but with his face fairly transfigured by his ecstasy, and with her hand crushed against his breast.
He had gone in to see Ffrench, and had remained with him for an hour in one of the parlors, knowing that the two were alone in the other. He had heard their voices now and then, and had known that once they went upon the terrace and talked there. He had grown burning hot and deadly cold, and strained his ears for every sound, but never caught more than a word or low laugh coming from Rachel Ffrench. At last he had left his partner, and on his way out passed the open door. They had come back to the room, and Murdoch was saying his good-night. He held Rachel Ffrench's hand, and she made no effort to withdraw it, but gave it to his caress. She did not move nor speak, but her eyes rested upon his rapt face with an expression not easy to understand. Haworth did not understand it, but the rage which seized and shook him was the most brutal emotion he had ever felt in his life. It was a madness which left him weak. He staggered down the stairs and out into the night blindly, blaspheming as he went. He did not know how he reached home. The sight his mother had seen, and which had drawn a cry from her and checked her midway in the room had been cause enough for tremor in her. Nothing but the most violent effort had saved him from an outbreak in her presence. He was weaker for the struggle when she was gone.
He could think of nothing but of Rachel Ffrench's untranslatable face and of Murdoch's close clasp of her surrendered hand.
"What has she ever give me?" he cried. "Me, that's played the fool for her! What's he done that he should stand there and fondle her as if he'd bought and paid for her? I'm the chap that paid for her! She's mine, body and soul, by George, if every man had his rights!"
And then, remembering all that had gone by, he turned from hot to cold again.
"I've stood up agen her a long time," he said, "and what have I got? I swore I'd make my way with her, and how far have I gone? She's never give me a word, by George, or a look that 'd be what another woman would have give. She's not even played with me—most on 'em would have done that—but she's not. She's gone on her way and let me go on mine. She's turned neither right nor left for me—I wasn't man enough."
He wore himself out in the end and went to the brandy again, and drank of it deeply. It sent him upstairs with heated blood and feverish brain. It was after midnight when he went to his room, but not to sleep. He lay upon his pillow in the darkness thinking of the things he had done in the past few months, and of the fruit the first seed he had sown might bring forth.
"There's things that may happen to any on us, my lad," he said, "and some on 'em might happen to you. If it's Jem Haworth that's to lose, the other sha'n't gain, by George!"
He had put the light out and lay in the darkness, and was so lying with this mood at work upon him when there came a timid summons on the door, and it opened and some one came in softly.
He knew who it was, even before she spoke.
"Jem," she said, "Jem, you're not asleep, my dear."
"No," he answered.
She came to the bed-side and stood there.
"I—I couldn't sleep," she said. "Something's a little wrong with me. I'm gettin' foolish, an'—an' fearful. I felt as if you wasn't quite safe. I thought I'd come and speak to you."
"You're out o' sorts," he answered. "You'll have to be looked after."
"It's nothing but my foolish way," she replied. "You're very good to me—an' me so full of fancies. Would you—would you mind me a-kneelin' down an' sayin' a prayer here to myself as I used to when you was a boy, Jem? I think it 'd do me good. Would you mind it?"
"No," he answered hoarsely. "Kneel down."
And she knelt and grasped for his hand and held it, and he heard her whispering in the dark as he had been wont to hear her nearly thirty years before.
And when it was over, she got up and kissed him on the forehead.
"God bless you, my dear!" she said. "God bless you!" and went away.