Presently he was told that his mother was better – that she wanted him to take her home; but she did not say anything to him when he went into the next room where she was. She had her little black bonnet on, which always made so great a difference between her and the village women in their white caps, and which John had been unconsciously proud of, as a sign that she was not as they were, but an English lady such as he had read of in books. Her face was covered with a thick veil, and she took hold of his boyish arm with a sort of clutch, holding it against his, and almost resting her head upon his shoulder, for she was a little woman, and he was taller already than she was. In this way he led her through the crowd at the door, feeling the importance of it, even though he felt his heart turned from his mother in the shock of this discovery. She had deceived him in some dreadful way, he scarcely as yet knew how; but, at all events, he was her protector now, her defence against all these prying people. He held her up with his arm, and he made signs to them with his disengaged hand not to press upon her, not to speak to her. He was her protector, that was certain, – even though he might be angry with her, it was his business to take care of her, and not that of any other person in the world. They went along together, she always holding fast by his arm, her head bowed, her face hidden by her veil, along the white line of the Route Nationale, where scattered groups stood about every house, though thinning as they went on, and stared at her and him – until they turned into the valley road and the slopes of broken ground, beyond which the cottage lay. It was only when they were there, and no one within sight or hearing, that she spoke.
"Oh, John, you are angry with me," she said.
"How can I be angry with you? But you have deceived me, mother," said the boy.
"I have never deceived you – nor any one. All that – that was said of me, that I suppose you have heard – was not from me, John. I said nothing at all. I meant always when you were older to tell you, but I never thought you seemed to care."
"Not care!" he said.
He could not have told her even now the pang which was hot in his heart for the loss of his sailor father, the young father of whom he had dreamed so often, who had been coming home so joyfully to his wife and child, and whom death had seized in the middle of his happiness. He had thought of him so often, imaging him forth to himself, that it almost seemed to John as if he could have painted a picture of the young man sweeping the horizon to be the first to see land – that land which he was never to see. He meant to paint a picture of it one day, which should move every heart. He had almost heard the swish of the waves along the vessel's side, the sound of the wind in the sails, and seen the wistful look in that face, – which now he was to learn had never existed, never looked out for land, never borne that disappointment which had wrung his son's heart for him so many, many times. It was with a visionary anguish that the boy realised all this. "Not care!" What was there that he had cared for more? Scarcely even this mother, bowed down with trouble, who clung to his arm. The mother, though he loved her, was still a mortal and fallible: little questions rose between them: she came to decisions which were not always just according to John's way of thinking, and said things that jarred upon him. But the father was beyond all that. He was the true ideal, without fault, full of unknown treasures of tenderness and wisdom. It would have astonished that mother beyond measure, she who thought she knew her son so well and possessed all his affection, to know how much closer still that vision was to John's heart.
"You never said a word," she cried now, with a vague pang; "you never asked a question. How was I to know? But I meant always to tell you when you should be older. Oh, John! I know now that I was very rash and imprudent; but then I did not think of that, I was so young, and life was very hard upon me. I was disposed of just as they pleased. I was more unhappy than any one can ever know. And I have never regretted it till now. I have lived a life of peace with my own child. I have been quite happy – I who was so wretched, John."
"I wish you would tell me how it all happened," he said, almost coldly.
He turned his head away from her. He gave her still the support of his arm – so much support as was in it, for it began to tremble in her close pressure and even with her slight weight. He was so young, such a child, to encounter such a sudden tempest of feeling; but he did not in any way return the mute caress with which from time to time she pressed that boyish arm. It is seldom, perhaps, that a mother is to a child as she thinks she is; but she consoled herself that he was angry, and had perhaps some right to be angry now; and she waited until they had reached the house – the little home full of all the associations of his life – before she told him her tale.
She had married – or rather had been married with very little consultation of her own wishes – an inexperienced girl, overcoming her own repugnances (of which, indeed, how could a mother speak to her boy?) in the belief that she was loved for the first time in her life; for she had no parents, no brothers or sisters, nobody to give her any affection. She had, however, found, even in the first fortnight of her married life, that the love which she longed for was as far from her as ever. An accident, the most foolish and purposeless – the husband getting out of a railway carriage and being left behind as the train went on – had left her, troubled, miserable, alone, with a whole day to think over her fate. And in that moment, in her girlish rashness, she had decided it. She had escaped, leaving no clue. Chance had brought her to Cagnes, the little smiling, ancient town on its hill, which had pleased her fancy. It was a place where no one was likely to look for the little runaway English bride; and though she had no doubt that pursuit had been made, she had never been disturbed by any inquiries – never till the day before, when, standing accidentally in the little railway-station with John, as he must remember, she had seen her husband's face look out, and knew that she was recognised. Then she had known what would happen. She had hung about the station all day to see if he came back. And he did come back, but so ill, and in such a tempest of passion, that it had been fatal to him.
She told her tale very quietly, shedding a few tears; and she said at the end, "I do not know if it was wrong: it was breaking my marriage-vow; but I did not know when I made that vow what I was binding myself to – nor how unbearable it would be. And I have never, never regretted – oh, John! never till to-day."
"And why do you regret it to-day?" asked the boy, harshly; "because you have been found out, or because he has died?"
"Oh, John! oh, John!" cried the poor woman, covering her face with her hands.
CHAPTER II
Perhaps he was not so kind as he ought to have been to his mother. At sixteen how can it be expected that a boy could enter into a woman's feelings and put himself in her place? It seemed utterly wild to him – without reason, without sense, a defiance of all laws. What a thing to do! to fling off the people who belonged to you, whoever they were, because they had made a mistake about a railway train!
After her story was told, there was not very much conversation between the mother and son. He went and worked in the garden a little with great energy: which was John's chief work, for the garden formed a great part of their living, – what with the flowers, which were sent into the Nice market, and vegetables, which were the staple of their own food. And then suddenly he threw down his spade and went out, feeling that he could think it all over better if he were out of reach of any call upon him. He went up the valley, which was so green and sweet – the valley where farther up the violets are grown in furrows like corn, filling the air with sweetness, though they have no higher destination than the greasy boilers of Grasse. John clambered up one side of the hills to a favourite spot among the trees, whence he could see all the wide landscape stretching out before him – the soft sea, in all its shimmering tints of blue, and the long cape of Antibes stretching far out into the water. There were not many of his comrades who cared at all for the view; but it was inarticulately dear to John, who never said anything about it, but climbed to that mount of vision in all his perplexities, to take counsel of the boundless horizon and the long-stretching lines of the hills. But to-night it made his heart sick to look out upon that vast panorama of sea and sky, one more blue than the other, crossed by soft whitenesses of cloud and shadow, and looking like one quarter, at least, of the great globe. How often had he gazed out over it, and thought of his sailor father nearing home! Oh, the fine vision of that hope unfulfilled, that life so full of gentle wishes long subdued, of longing love and expectation, and almost certainty of happiness to come! And now he was told that it had never been. This it was which filled him with the very rage of grief and loss. Hot tears like fire filled his eyes. No father, no sailor coming out of the unknown, with light in his face to bless the memory of his child! – no father at all, except that horrible figure at the hotel, the swollen and bloated face, the dead glare under the eyelashes, the ignoble countenance. John was French enough to fling himself down on the hillside, amid the bushes of cistus, and dig his hands into the soil in a paroxysm of pain and misery, though he was also English enough to be ashamed of this frenzy, and to pick himself up and do his best to subdue it. Must he give it up for ever, that vision which had accompanied him during almost all his conscious life? She said it had never come from her – she had not deceived him; and perhaps it was true, though he was quite unconscious that he had never betrayed to her that fancy and longing of his heart; but, at least, she must have known what the neighbours said – the story that some one must have invented, but which every one held as the truth, and he most of all. John wondered whether if he had ever betrayed that ideal she would have let him know that it was an illusion, and that his real father was very different. He doubted very much if she would have done so, or if he would ever have known the truth at all, except for the catastrophe of to-day; and with this thought a chill doubt of his mother and of everything in earth and heaven came into the boy's heart. Who would ever tell him the truth if she did not? and was he sure that he knew everything now, and that it might not change again, like a dissolving view? The foundations of the world were shaken, and he was not sure that at any moment the earth might not yawn and a gulf open before his very feet.