HALDANE'S RESOLVE
It was not in accordance with nature nor with Haldane's peculiar
temperament that he should remain long under a stony paralysis of shame
and despair. Though tall and manlike in appearance, he was not a man.
Boyish traits and impulses still lingered; indeed, they had been
fostered and maintained longer than usual by a fond and indulgent
mother. It was not an evidence of weakness, but rather a wholesome
instinct of nature, that his thoughts should gradually find courage to
go to that mother as his only source of comfort and help. She, at least,
would not scorn him, and with her he might find a less dismal refuge
than his narrow cell, should it be possible to escape imprisonment. If
it were not, he was too young and unacquainted with misfortune not to
long for a few kind words of comfort.
He did not even imagine that Mrs. Arnot, the wife of his employer, would
come near him in his deep disgrace. Even the thought of her kindness and
his requital of it now stung him to the quick, and he fairly writhed as
he pictured to himself the scorn that must have been on Laura's face as
she saw him on his way to prison like a common thief.
As he remembered how full of rich promise life was but a few days since,
and how all had changed even more swiftly and unexpectedly than the
grotesque events of a horrid dream, he bowed his head in his hands and
sobbed like a grief-stricken child.
"O mother, mother," he groaned, "if I could only hear your voice and
feel your touch, a little of this crushing weight might be lifted off my
heart!"
Growing calmer after a time, he was able to consider his situation more
connectedly, and he was about to summon the sheriff in charge of the
prison, that he might telegraph his mother, when he heard her voice as,
in the company of that official, she was seeking her way to him.
He shrank back in his cell. His heart beat violently as he heard the
rustle of her dress. The sheriff unlocked the grated iron door which led
to the long, narrow corridor into which the cells opened, and to which
prisoners had access during the day.
"He's in that cell, ladies," said the officer's voice, and then, with
commendable delicacy, withdrew, having first ordered the prisoners in
his charge to their cells.
"Lean upon my arm," urged a gentle voice, which Haldane recognized as
that of Mrs. Arnot.
"O, this is awful!" moaned the stricken woman; "this is more than
_I_ can endure."
The pronoun she used threw a chill on the heart of her son, but when she
tottered to the door of his cell he sprang forward with the low,
appealing cry:
"Mother!"
But the poor gentlewoman was so overcome that she sank down on a bench
by the door, and, with her face buried in her hands, as if to shut out a
vision that would blast her, she rocked back and forth in anguish, as
she groaned:
"O Egbert, Egbert! you have disgraced me, you have disgraced your
sisters, you have disgraced yourself beyond remedy. O God! what have I
done to merit this awful, this overwhelming disaster?"
With deep pain and solicitude Mrs. Arnot watched the young man's face as
the light from the grated window fell upon it. The appeal that trembled
in his voice had been more plainly manifest in his face, which had worn
an eager and hopeful expression, and even suggested the spirit of the
little child when in some painful emergency it turns to its first and
natural protector.
But most marked was the change caused by the mother's lamentable want of
tact and self-control, for that same face became stony and sullen.
Instead of showing a spirit which deep distress and crushing disaster
had made almost childlike in its readiness to receive a mother's comfort
once more, he suddenly became, in appearance, a hardened criminal.
Mrs. Arnot longed to undo by her kindness the evil which her friend was
unwittingly causing, but could not come between mother and son. She
stooped down, however, and whispered:
"Mrs. Haldane, speak kindly to your boy. He looked to you for sympathy.
Do not let him feel that you, like the world, are against him."
"O no," said Mrs. Haldane, her sobs ceasing somewhat, "I mean to do my
duty by him. He shall always have a good home, but oh! what a blight and
a shadow he has brought to that home! That I should have ever lived to
see this day! O Egbert, Egbert! your sisters will have to live like
nuns, for they can never even go out upon the street again; and to think
that the finger of scorn should be pointed after you in the city where
your father made our name so honorable!"
"It never shall be," said Haldane coldly. "You have only to leave me in
prison to be rid of me a long time."
"Leave you, in prison!" exclaimed his mother; "I would as soon stay here
myself. No; through Mrs. Arnot's kindness, arrangements are made for
your release. I shall then take you to our miserable home as soon as
possible."
"I am not going home."
"Now, this is too much! What will you do?"
"I shall remain in this city," he replied, speaking from an angry
impulse. "It was here I fell and covered myself with shame, and I shall
here fight my way back to the position I lost. The time shall come when
you will no longer say I'm a disgrace to you and my sisters. My heart
was breaking, and the first word you greet me with is 'disgrace'; and if
I went home, disgrace would always be in your mind, if not upon your
tongue. I should have the word and thought kept before me till I went
mad. If I go home all my old acquaintances would sneer at me as a
mean-spirited cur, whose best exploit was to get in jail, and when his
mother obtained his release he could do nothing more manly than hide
behind her apron the rest of his days. As far as I can judge, you and my
sisters would have no better opinion of me. I have been a wicked fool, I
admit, but I was not a deliberate thief. I did hope for a little comfort
from you. But since all the world is against me, I'll face and fight the
world. I have been dragged through these streets, the scorn of every
one, and I will remain in this city until I compel the respect of its
proudest citizen."
The moment he ceased his passionate utterance, Mrs. Arnot said kindly
and gravely:
"Egbert, you are mistaken. There was no scorn in my eyes, but rather
deep pity and sorrow. While your course has been very wrong, you have no
occasion to despair, and as long as you will try to become a true man
you shall have my sympathy and friendship. You do not understand your
mother. She loves you as truly as ever, and is willing to make any
sacrifice for you. Only, her fuller knowledge of the world makes her
realize more truly than you yet can the consequences of your act. The
sudden shock has overwhelmed her. Her distress shows how deeply she is
wounded, and you should try to comfort her by a lifetime of kindness."
"The best way I can comfort her is by deeds that will wipe out the
memory of my disgrace; and," he continued, his impulsive, sanguine
spirit kindling with the thought and prospect, "I will regain all and
more than I have lost. The time shall come when neither she nor my
sisters will have occasion to blush for me, nor to seclude themselves
from the world because of their relation to me."
"I should think my heart was sufficiently crushed and broken already,"
Mrs. Haldane sobbed, "without your adding to its burden by charging me
with being an unnatural mother. I cannot understand how a boy brought up
as religiously as you have been can show such strange depravity. The
idea that a child of mine could do anything which would bring him to
such a place as this!"
His mother's words and manner seemed to exasperate her son beyond
endurance, and he exclaimed passionately:
"Well, curse it all! I am here. What's the use of harping on that any
longer? Can't you listen when I say I want to retrieve myself? As to my
religious bringing up, it never did me a particle of good. If you had
whipped my infernal nonsense out of me, and made me mind when I was
little--There, there, mother," he concluded more considerately, as she
began to grow hysterical under his words, "do, for God's sake, be more
composed! We can't help what has happened now. I'll either change the
world's opinion of me, or else get out of it."
"How can I be composed when you talk in so dreadful a manner? You can't
change the world's opinion. It never forgives and never forgets. It's
the same as if you had said, I'll either do what is impossible or throw
away my life!"
"My dear Mrs. Haldane," said Mrs. Arnot, gently but firmly, "your just
and natural grief is such that you cannot now judge correctly and wisely
concerning this matter. The emergency is so unexpected and so grave that
neither you nor your son should form opinions or make resolves until
there has been time for calmer thought. Let me take you home with me
now, and as soon as Egbert is released he can join you there."
"No, Mrs. Arnot," said Haldane decidedly; "I shall never enter your
parlor again until I can enter it as a gentleman--as one whom your
other guests, should I meet them, would recognize as a gentleman. Your
kindness is as great as it is unexpected, but I shall take no mean
advantage of it."
"Well, then," said Mrs. Arnot with a sigh, "nothing can be gained by
prolonging this painful interview. We are detaining Mr. Melville, and
delaying Egbert's release. Come, Mrs. Haldane; I can take you to the
private entrance of a quiet hotel, where you can be entirely secluded
until you are ready to return home. Egbert can come there as soon as the
needful legal forms are complied with."
"No," said the young man with his former decision, "mother and I must
take leave of each other here. Mother wants no jail-birds calling on her
at the hotel. When I have regained my social footing--when she is ready
to take my arm and walk up Main street of this city--then she shall see
me as often as she wishes. It was my own cursed folly that brought me to
the gutter, and if mother will pay the price of my freedom, I will alone
and unaided make my way back among the highest and proudest."
"I sincerely hope you may win such a position," said Mrs. Arnot gravely,
"and it is not impossible for you to do so, though I wish you would make
the attempt in a different spirit; but please remember that these
considerations do not satisfy and comfort a mother's heart. You should
think of all her past kindness; you should realize how deeply you have
now wounded her, and strive with tenderness and patience to mitigate the
blow."
"Mother, I am sorry, more sorry than you can ever know," he said,
advancing to her side and taking her hand, "and I have been bitterly
punished; but I did not mean to do what I did; I was drunk--"
"Drunk!" gasped the mother, "merciful Heaven!"
"Yes, drunk--may the next drop of wine I take choke me!--and I did not
know what I was doing. But do not despair of me. I feel that I have it
in me to make a man yet. Go now with Mrs. Arnot, and aid in her kind
efforts to procure my release. When you have succeeded, return home, and
think of me as well as you can until I make you think better," and he
raised and kissed her with something like tenderness, and then placed
within Mrs. Arnot's arm the hand of the poor weak woman, who had become
so faint and exhausted from her conflicting emotions that she submitted
to be led away after a feeble remonstrance.
Mrs. Arnot sent Mr. Melville to the prisoner, and also the food she had
brought. She then took Mrs. Haldane to a hotel, where, in the seclusion
of her room, she could have every attention and comfort. With many
reassuring words she promised to call later in the day, and if possible
bring with her the unhappy cause of the poor gentlewoman's distress.