I answered that she had given no hint of any such intention.
'Perhaps,' said my mother, 'Mr. Glover being by restrained her.'
'Perhaps,' I replied curtly.
As the tone in which I spoke denoted that I did not wish to continue
the conversation, my mother said nothing more. Not that she had grown
indifferent to the subject upon which we were conversing, but that she
studied my moods more closely than ever. Her heart had never been
stirred by such tender love for me as during this time; it showed
itself in a thousand little undemonstrative ways, and with a delicate
cunning which I am sure has never been excelled, she said and did
precisely the things which were most comforting to me. I have only her
to thank that my sorrow did not make a cynic of me.
My thoughts ran so much upon Mr. Glover, that I dreamt of him
frequently in connection with some singular fancies. The principal
persons who played parts in these dreams were we two and Jessie. In
one of my dreams he was standing on a height, with his fingers to his
mouth, curling his moustache into it as usual; I stood below, at a
great distance from him; and Jessie was midway between us. He was
beckoning to Jessie, saying in a boastful tone that he was a gentleman
and a man of honour, and Jessie was walking towards him. In another of
my dreams he was standing over me, preaching the same text. In
another, Turk was very seriously impressing upon me the fact that Mr.
Glover came from a highly-respectable family, and that it _was_ a
thing to be proud of. This was the leading idea of all my dreams.
I did not go again to see Jessie at the rehearsals. I knew I had no
right to be in the theatre on those occasions, and I did not intend to
give Mr. Glover a chance of placing me in an unpleasant position. I
had scarcely a hope of seeing Jessie at our house; my mother thought
differently, saying that in certain things she was seldom mistaken,
and this was one of them. It was known to me that she had never ceased
making inquiries for uncle Bryan, and that she had taken many and many
a journey about London in the hope of finding him. I did not question
her as to the result of these inquiries, and she herself was silent on
the subject.
'Oh,' said Josey West to me, a couple of days after I had seen Jessie,
'so you've seen her.'
'Yes, Josey,' I replied, 'I have seen her.'
'And never told me!' she exclaimed.
'Why should I tell you, Josey? You have kept things from me which I
think you might have told me, without doing any great harm.'
'Do you, my sweet child? How wise we are, to be sure! But I don't
blame you. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. I tell
you what, Chris! On the first night that Jessie plays, you and I will
go arm-in-arm to the theatre.'
'No, we will not.'
'Why, my sweet child?' she inquired, not in the least disturbed by my
abrupt tone.
'Because I have not made up my mind whether I shall be there.'
'Oh, indeed!' she said, with a little laugh.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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