Part 12 (2/2)

Indeed, there was no common topic about which we could speak. Besides, ever since that fatal Sunday evening, I saw that she suspected me and watched me. I had good reason to believe that she set spies upon my conduct. Poor dear mother! G.o.d forbid that I should accuse thee for a single care of thine, for a single suspicion even, prompted as they all were by a mother's anxious love. I would never have committed these things to paper, hadst thou not been far beyond the reach or hearing of them; and only now, in hopes that they may serve as a warning, in some degree to mothers, but ten times more to children. For I sinned against thee, deeply and shamefully, in thought and deed, while thou didst never sin against me; though all thy caution did but hasten the fatal explosion which came, and perhaps must have come, under some form or other, in any case.

I had been detained one night in the shop till late; and on my return my mother demanded, in a severe tone, the reason of my stay; and on my telling her, answered as severely that she did not believe me; that she had too much reason to suspect that I had been with bad companions.

”Who dared to put such a thought into your head?”

She ”would not give up her authorities, but she had too much reason to believe them.”

Again I demanded the name of my slanderer, and was refused it. And then.

I burst out, for the first time in my life, into a real fit of rage with her. I cannot tell how I dared to say what I did, but I was weak, nervous, irritable--my brain excited beyond all natural tension. Above all, I felt that she was unjust to me; and my good conscience, as well as my pride, rebelled.

”You have never trusted me,” I cried, ”you have watched me--”

”Did you not deceive me once already?”

”And if I did,” I answered, more and more excited, ”have I not slaved for you, stinted myself of clothes to pay your rent? Have I not run to and fro for you like a slave, while I knew all the time you did not respect me or trust me? If you had only treated me as a child and an idiot, I could have borne it. But you have been thinking of me all the while as an incarnate fiend--dead in trespa.s.ses and sins--a child of wrath and the devil. What right have you to be astonished if I should do my father's works?”

”You may be ignorant of vital religion,” she answered; ”and you may insult me. But if you make a mock of G.o.d's Word, you leave my house. If you can laugh at religion, you can deceive me.”

The pent-up scepticism of years burst forth.

”Mother,” I said, ”don't talk to me about religion, and election, and conversion, and all that--I don't believe one word of it. n.o.body does, except good kind people--(like you, alas! I was going to say, but the devil stopped the words at my lips)--who must needs have some reason to account for their goodness. That Bowyer--he's a soft heart by nature, and as he is, so he does--religion has had nothing to do with that, any more than it has with that black-faced, canting scoundrel who has been telling you lies about me. Much his heart is changed. He carries sneak and slanderer written in his face--and sneak and slanderer he will be, elect or none. Religion?

n.o.body believes in it. The rich don't; or they wouldn't fill their churches up with pews, and shut the poor out, all the time they are calling them brothers. They believe the gospel? Then why do they leave the men who make their clothes to starve in such h.e.l.ls on earth as our workroom? No more do the tradespeople believe in it; or they wouldn't go home from sermon to sand the sugar, and put sloe-leaves in the tea, and send out lying puffs of their vamped-up goods, and grind the last farthing out of the poor creatures who rent their wretched stinking houses. And as for the workmen--they laugh at it all, I can tell you. Much good religion is doing for them! You may see it's fit only for women and children--for go where you will, church or chapel, you see hardly anything but bonnets and babies!

I don't believe a word of it,--once and for all. I'm old enough to think for myself, and a free-thinker I will be, and believe nothing but what I know and understand.”

I had hardly spoken the words, when I would have given worlds to recall them--but it was to be--and it was.

Sternly she looked at me full in the face, till my eyes dropped before her gaze. Then she spoke steadily and slowly:

”Leave this house this moment. You are no son of mine henceforward. Do you think I will have my daughter polluted by the company of an infidel and a blasphemer?”

”I will go,” I answered fiercely; ”I can get my own living at all events!”

And before I had time to think, I had rushed upstairs, packed up my bundle, not forgetting the precious books, and was on my way through the frosty, echoing streets, under the cold glare of the winter's moon.

I had gone perhaps half a mile, when the thought of home rushed over me--the little room where I had spent my life--the scene of all my childish joys and sorrows--which I should never see again, for I felt that my departure was for ever. Then I longed to see my mother once again--not to speak to her--for I was at once too proud and too cowardly to do that--but to have a look at her through the window. One look--for all the while, though I was boiling over with rage and indignation, I felt that it was all on the surface--that in the depths of our hearts I loved her and she loved me. And yet I wished to be angry, wished to hate her. Strange contradiction of the flesh and spirit!

Hastily and silently I retraced my steps to the house. The gate was padlocked. I cautiously stole over the palings to the window--the shutter was closed and fast. I longed to knock--I lifted my hand to the door, and dare not: indeed, I knew that it was useless, in my dread of my mother's habit of stern determination. That room--that mother I never saw again. I turned away; sickened at heart, I was clambering back again, looking behind me towards the window, when I felt a strong grip on my collar, and turning round, had a policeman's lantern flashed in my face.

”Hullo, young'un, and what do you want here?” with a strong emphasis, after the fas.h.i.+on of policemen, on all his p.r.o.nouns.

”Hus.h.!.+ or you'll alarm my mother!”

”Oh! eh! Forgot the latch-key, you sucking Don Juan, that's it, is it? Late home from the Victory?”

I told him simply how the case stood, and entreated him to get me a night's lodging, a.s.suring him that my mother would not admit me, or I ask to be admitted.

The policeman seemed puzzled, but after scratching his hat in lieu of his head for some seconds, replied,

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