You know he shows his feelings less, but I can
never tell you how very, very deeply he has felt for you. Sometimes at
night I have thought I have heard footsteps in the garden, and have
got quietly out of bed lest I should wake him, and gone to the
window to look out, but there has been only dark or the greyness of
the morning, and I have gone crying back to bed again. Still I think
you have been near us though you were too proud to let us know- and
now at last I have you in my arms once more, my dearest, dearest boy."
How cruel, how infamously unfeeling Ernest thought he had been.
"Mother," he said, "forgive me- the fault was mine; I ought not to
have been so hard; I was wrong, very wrong"; the poor blubbering
fellow meant what he said, and his heart yearned to his mother as he
had never thought that it could yearn again. "But have you never," she
continued, "come although it was in the dark and we did not know it-
oh, let me think that you have not been so cruel as we have thought
you. Tell me that you came if only to comfort me and make me happier."
Ernest was ready. "I had no money to come with, mother, till just
lately."
This was an excuse Christina could understand and make allowance
for: "Oh, then you would have come, and I will take the will for the
deed- and now that I have you safe again, say that you will never,
never leave me- not till- not till- oh, my boy, have they told you I
am dying?" She wept bitterly and buried her head in her pillow.
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