“There’s one thing sure,” said Eliza, wounded. “You don’t catch me associating with them. I hold up my head as high as any one.” She smiled at him bitterly.
“Well, good-night, mama,” he said, ashamed and hurt. “Let’s forget about them for a while. What does it matter?”
“Be a good boy,” said Eliza timidly. “I want you to be a good boy, son.”
There was a sense of guilt in her manner, a note of regret and contrition.
“Don’t worry!” he said, turning away suddenly, wrenched bitterly, as he always was, by a sense of the child-like innocence and steadfastness that lay at the bottom of her life. “It’s not your fault if I’m not. I shan’t blame you. Goodnight.”
The kitchen-light went out; he heard his mother’s door click gently. Through the dark house a shaft of air blew coolly. Slowly, with thudding heart, he began to mount the stairs.
But on that dark stair, his foot-falls numbed in the heavy carpet, he came squarely upon a woman’s body that, by its fragrance, like magnolia, he knew was that of Mrs. Selborne. They held each other sharply by the arms, discovered, with caught breath. She bent toward him: a few strands of her blonde hair brushed his face, leaving it aflame.
“Hush-h!” she whispered.
So they paused there, holding each other, breast to breast, the only time that they had ever touched. Then, with their dark wisdom of each other confirmed, they parted, each a sharer in the other’s life, to meet thereafter before the world with calm untelling eyes.
He groped softly back along the dark corridor until he came to the door of “Miss Brown’s” room. It was slightly ajar. He went in.
She took all his medals, all that he had won at Leonard’s school— the one for debating, the one for declaiming, the one in bronze for William Shakespeare. W. S. 1616-1916—Done for a Ducat!
