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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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