"No--no! it is for your good--Austin says so. Go--it is but the first
shock."
Then to my mother I opened the sluices of that deep I had concealed
from scholar and soldier. To her I poured all the wild, restless
thoughts which wandered through the ruins of love destroyed--to her I
confessed what to myself I had scarcely before avowed. And when the
picture of that, the darker, side of my mind was shown, it was with a
prouder face, and less broken voice, that I spoke of the manlier hopes
and nobler aims that gleamed across the wrecks and the desert, and
showed me my escape.
"Did you not once say, mother, that you had felt it like a remorse
that my father's genius passed so noiselessly away, half accusing the
happiness you gave him for the death of his ambition in the content
of his mind? Did you not feel a new object in life when the ambition
revived at last, and you thought you heard the applause of the
world murmuring round your scholar's cell? Did you not share in the
day-dreams your brother conjured up, and say, 'If _my_ brother could be
the means of raising _him_ in the world!' and when you thought we had
found the way to fame and fortune, did you not sob out from your full
heart, 'And it is _my_ brother who will pay back to _his_ son--all--all
he gave up for me?'"
"I cannot bear this, Sisty!--cease, cease!"
"No; for do you not yet understand me? Will it not be better still, if
_your son_--yours--restore to your Austin all that he lost, no matter
how? If through your son, mother, you do indeed make the world hear
of your husband's genius--restore the spring to his mind, the glory
to his pursuits--if you rebuild even that vaunted ancestral name,
which is glory to our poor sonless Roland--if your son can restore the
decay of generations, and reconstruct from the dust the whole house
into which you have entered, its meek presiding angel--ah, mother, if
this can be done, it will be your work; for unless you can share my
ambition--unless you can dry those eyes, and smile in my face, and bid
me go, with a cheerful voice--all my courage melts from my heart, and
again I say I cannot leave you!"
Then my mother folded her arms round me, and we both wept, and could
not speak--but we were both happy.