Part 5 (1/2)
”No, thank you, Kate. Good-night.”
”Good-night, sir.”
The door shut.
”Is it late?” said the painter.
”Nearly eleven. That is all.”
”Are you tired, Uniacke? perhaps you are accustomed to go to bed early?”
”Not very. Besides to-night the gale would keep me awake; and I want to hear the end of your story.”
”Then--Drury Lane invaded me one evening, smelling of gin, with black bonnet c.o.c.ked over one eye, an impossible umbrella, broken boots, straying hair, a mouth full of objurgation, and oaths, and crying between times, 'Where's Jack? Where's my boy? What 'a yer done with my boy,--yer!' I received Drury Lane with astonishment but, I hope, with courtesy, and explained that my picture was finished, that Jack had left me to go home, that I meant to take care of his future.
”My remarks were received with oaths, and the repeated demand to know where Jack was. 'Isn't he at home?' I asked. 'No, nor he ain't been 'ome.' After a while I gathered that Jack had disappeared in darkness from my house on the night when I put the last touch to my picture, and had not been seen by his mother since. She now began to soften and to cry, and I observed that maternity was in her as well as cheap gin. I endeavoured to comfort her and promised that little Jack should be found.
”'If he ain't found,' she sobbed, 'I'm done for, I am; 'e's my hall.'
”There was something horribly genuine in the sound of this cry. I began to see beyond the gin in which this poor woman was soaked; I began to see her half-drowned soul that yet had life, had breath.
”'We'll find him,' I said.
”'Never, never,' she wailed, rocking her thin body to and fro, 'I know 'e's gone to sea, 'e 'as. Jack's run away fur a sailor.'
”At these words I turned cold, for I felt as if they were true. I saw in a flash the result of my experiment. I had shown the boy the way that led to the great sea. Perhaps that night, even as he left my door, he had seen in fancy the white waves playing before him in the distance, the s.h.i.+ps go sailing by. He had heard siren voices calling his youth and he had heeded them. His old mother kept on cursing me at intervals.
Instinct, rather than actual knowledge, led her to attribute this disappearance to my initiative. I did not attempt to reason her out of the belief, for alas! I began to hold it myself, Uniacke.”
”You thought Jack had run away to sea, prompted by all that you had told him of the sea?”
”Yes. And I think it still.”
”Think--then you don't--”
”I don't know it, you'd say? Do I not? Uniacke, a little while ago, when you told me of that--that woman for whom you cared much, you remember my saying to you, was there not something within you that would tell you if she were dead?”
”Yes, I remember.”
”That something which makes a man know a thing without what is generally called knowledge of it. Well, that something within me makes me know that little Jack did run away to sea. I searched for him, I strove, as far as one can do such a thing, to sift all the innumerable grains of London through my fingers to find that one little grain I wanted. I spared no pains in my search. Conceive, even, that I escorted Drury Lane in the black bonnet to the Docks, to s.h.i.+ps lying in the Thames, to a thousand places! It was all in vain; the wonder-child was swallowed up.
I had indeed drowned little Jack in the sea. I have never set eyes on him since he left me on the evening of the day when I completed my picture. Shall I ever set eyes on him again? Shall I, Uniacke? Shall I?”
Sir Graham put this strange question with a sort of morose fierceness, getting up from his chair as he spoke. The young clergyman could think of no reply.
”Why not?” he said at last. ”He may be well, happy, active in a life that he loves, that he glories in.”
”No, Uniacke, no, for he's far away from his duty. That hideous old woman, in her degradation, in her cruelty, in her drunkenness, loved that boy, loves him still, with an intensity, a pa.s.sion, a hunger, a feverish anxiety that are n.o.ble, that are great. Her hatred of me proves it. I honour her for her hatred. I respect her for it! She shows the beauty of her soul in her curses. She almost teaches me that there is indeed immortality--at least for women--by her sleepless horror of me.
Her hatred, I say, is glorious, because her love s.h.i.+nes through it. I feed her. She doesn't know it. She'd starve rather than eat my bread.
She would kill me, I believe, if she didn't fancy in her vague mind, obscured by drink, that the man who had sent her boy from her might bring him back to her. For weeks she came every day--walking all the way from Drury Lane, mind you--to ask if the boy had returned. Then she endured the nightmare of my company, as I told you, while we searched in likely places for the vanished sea urchin. Jack did nothing for the support of his mother. It was she who kept him. She beat him. She cursed him. She fed him. She loved him; like an animal, perhaps, like a mother, certainly. That says all, Uniacke. It was I who sent that boy away. I must give him back to that old woman. Till I do so I can never find peace. This thing preys upon my life, eats into my heart. It's the little worm gnawing, always gnawing at me. The doctors tell me I am morbid because I am in bad health, that my bad health makes the malady in my mind. On the contrary, it is my mind that makes the malady in my body. Ah! you are wondering! You are wondering, too, whether it's not the other way! I see you are!”