第21章
He wondered an instant, for the boy's sake, whether he might successfully pretend not to understand.Not successfully, he felt, as Mr.and Mrs.Moreen, dinnerless by their extinguished hearth, rose before him in their little dishonoured salon, casting about with glassy eyes for the nearest port in such a storm.They were not prostrate but were horribly white, and Mrs.Moreen had evidently been crying.Pemberton quickly learned however that her grief was not for the loss of her dinner, much as she usually enjoyed it, but the fruit of a blow that struck even deeper, as she made all haste to explain.He would see for himself, so far as that went, how the great change had come, the dreadful bolt had fallen, and how they would now all have to turn themselves about.
Therefore cruel as it was to them to part with their darling she must look to him to carry a little further the influence he had so fortunately acquired with the boy - to induce his young charge to follow him into some modest retreat.They depended on him - that was the fact - to take their delightful child temporarily under his protection; it would leave Mr.Moreen and herself so much more free to give the proper attention (too little, alas! had been given) to the readjustment of their affairs.
"We trust you - we feel we CAN," said Mrs.Moreen, slowly rubbing her plump white hands and looking with compunction hard at Morgan, whose chin, not to take liberties, her husband stroked with a paternal forefinger.
"Oh yes - we feel that we CAN.We trust Mr.Pemberton fully, Morgan," Mr.Moreen pursued.
Pemberton wondered again if he might pretend not to understand; but everything good gave way to the intensity of Morgan's understanding."Do you mean he may take me to live with him for ever and ever?" cried the boy."May take me away, away, anywhere he likes?""For ever and ever? Comme vous-y-allez!" Mr.Moreen laughed indulgently."For as long as Mr.Pemberton may be so good.""We've struggled, we've suffered," his wife went on; "but you've made him so your own that we've already been through the worst of the sacrifice."Morgan had turned away from his father - he stood looking at Pemberton with a light in his face.His sense of shame for their common humiliated state had dropped; the case had another side -the thing was to clutch at THAT.He had a moment of boyish joy, scarcely mitigated by the reflexion that with this unexpected consecration of his hope - too sudden and too violent; the turn taken was away from a GOOD boy's book - the "escape" was left on their hands.The boyish joy was there an instant, and Pemberton was almost scared at the rush of gratitude and affection that broke through his first abasement.When he stammered "My dear fellow, what do you say to THAT?" how could one not say something enthusiastic? But there was more need for courage at something else that immediately followed and that made the lad sit down quietly on the nearest chair.He had turned quite livid and had raised his hand to his left side.They were all three looking at him, but Mrs.Moreen suddenly bounded forward."Ah his darling little heart!" she broke out; and this time, on her knees before him and without respect for the idol, she caught him ardently in her arms."You walked him too far, you hurried him too fast!" she hurled over her shoulder at Pemberton.Her son made no protest, and the next instant, still holding him, she sprang up with her face convulsed and with the terrified cry "Help, help! he's going, he's gone!" Pemberton saw with equal horror, by Morgan's own stricken face, that he was beyond their wildest recall.He pulled him half out of his mother's hands, and for a moment, while they held him together, they looked all their dismay into each other's eyes, "He couldn't stand it with his weak organ," said Pemberton -"the shock, the whole scene, the violent emotion.""But I thought he WANTED to go to you!", wailed Mrs.Moreen.
"I TOLD you he didn't, my dear," her husband made answer.Mr.Moreen was trembling all over and was in his way as deeply affected as his wife.But after the very first he took his bereavement as a man of the world.
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