"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
it, 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.