THOMAS AND HIS FATHER.
When he was shown into his father's room he was writing a letter.
Looking up and seeing Tom he gave a grin--that is, a laugh without the
smile in it--handed him a few of his fingers, pointed to a chair, and
went on with his letter. This reception irritated Tom, and perhaps so
far did him good that it took off the edge of his sheepishness--or
rather, I should have said, put an edge upon it. Before his father he
did not feel that he appeared exactly as a culprit. He had told him
either to give up Lucy, or not to show his face at home again. He
had lost Lucy, it might be--though hope had revived greatly since his
interview with Mr. Stopper; but, in any case, even if she refused to
see him, he would not give her up. So he sat, more composed than he
had expected to be, waiting for what should follow. In a few minutes
his father looked up again, as he methodically folded his letter, and
casting a sneering glance at his son's garb, said:
"What's the meaning of this masquerading, Tom?"
"It means that I am dressed like my work," answered Tom, surprised at
his own coolness, now that the ice was broken.
"What's your work, then, pray?"
"I'm a sailor."
"You a sailor! A horse-marine, I suppose! Ha, ha!"
"I've made five coasting voyages since you turned me out," said Tom.
"I turned you out! You turned yourself out. Why the devil did you come
back, then? Why don't you stick to your new trade?"
"You told me either to give up Lucy Burton, or take lodgings in
Wapping. I won't give up Lucy Burton."
"Take her to hell, if you like. What do you come back here for with
your cursed impudence? There's nobody I want less."
This was far from true. He had been very uneasy about his son. Yet
now that he saw him--a prey to the vile demon that ever stirred up
his avarice till the disease, which was as the rust spoken of by the
prophet St. James, was eating his flesh as it were fire--his tyrannical
disposition, maddened by the resistance of his son, and the consequent
frustration of his money-making plans, broke out in this fierce, cold,
blasting wrath.
"I come here," said Thomas--and he said it merely to discharge
himself of a duty, for he had not the thinnest shadow of a hope that
it would be of service--"I come here to protest against the extreme
to which you are driving your legal _rights_--which I have only just
learned--against Mrs. Boxall."
"And her daughter. But I am not aware that I am driving my _rights_, as
you emphasize the word," said Mr. Worboise, relapsing into his former
manner, so cold that it stung; "for I believe I _have_ driven them
already almost as far as my knowledge of affairs allows me to consider
prudent. I have turned those people out of the house."
"You have!" cried Thomas, starting to his feet. "Father! father! you
are worse than even I thought you. It is cruel; it is wicked."
"Don't discompose yourself about it. It is all your own fault, my son."
"I am no son of yours. From this moment I renounce you, and call you
_father_ no more," cried Thomas, in mingled wrath and horror and
consternation at the atrocity of his father's conduct.
"By what name, then, will you be pleased to be known in future, that I
may say when I hear it that you are none of mine?"
"Oh, the devil!" burst out Tom, beside himself with his father's
behavior and treatment.
"Very well. Then I beg again to inform you, Mr. Devil, that it is your
own fault. Give up that girl, and I will provide for the lovely siren
and her harridan of a grandam for life; and take you home to wealth and
a career which you shall choose for yourself."
"No, father. I will not."
"Then take yourself off, and be--" It is needless to print the close of
the sentence.
Thomas rose and left the room. As he went down the stairs, his father
shouted after him, in a tone of fury:
"You're not to go near your mother, mind."
"I'm going straight to her," answered Tom, as quietly as he could.
"If you do, I'll murder her."
Tom came up the stairs again to the door next his father's where the
clerks sat. He opened this and said aloud:
"Gentlemen, you hear what my father has just said. There may be
occasion to refer to it again." Then returning to his father's door, he
said, in a low tone which only he could hear: "My mother may die any
moment, as you very well know, sir. It may be awkward after what has
just passed."
Having said this, he left his father a little abashed. As his wrath
ebbed, he began to admire his son's presence of mind, and even to take
some credit for it: "A chip of the old block!" he muttered to himself.
"Who would have thought there was so much in the rascal? Seafaring must
agree with the young beggar!"
Thomas hailed the first hansom, jumped in, and drove straight to
Highbury. Was it strange that notwithstanding the dreadful interview he
had just had--notwithstanding, too, that he feared he had not behaved
properly to his father, for his conscience had already begun to speak
about comparatively little things, having been at last hearkened to in
regard to great things--that notwithstanding this, he should feel such
a gladness in his being as he had never known before? The second and
more awful load of duty was now lifted from his mind. True, if he had
loved his father much, as it was simply impossible that he should, that
load would have been replaced by another--misery about his father's
wretched condition and the loss of his love. But although something
of this would come later, the thought of it did not intrude now to
destroy any of the enjoyment of the glad reaction from months--he would
have said years--yea, a whole past life of misery--for the whole of
his past life had been such a poor thing, that it seemed now as if the
misery of the last few months had been only the misery of all his life
coming to a head. And this indeed was truer than his judgment would yet
have allowed: it was absolute fact, although he attributed it to an
overwrought fancy.