The Mother by Norman Duncan (essential reading txt) 📖

I ain't," she replied, doggedly. "I'm different since I got him. That's all. And I'd like Dick to know that I look at him different since he died. I can't love Dick. I never could. But I could thank him if he was here. Do you mind what I called the boy? I don't call him Claud now. I call him--Richard. It's all I can do to show Dick that I'm grateful."

The man caught his breath--in angry impatience. "Millie," he warned, "the boy'll grow up."

She put her hands to her eyes.

"He'll grow up and leave you. What you going to do then?"

"I don't know," she sighed. "Just--go along."

"You'll be all alone, Millie."

"He loves me!" she muttered. "He'll never leave me!"

"He's got to, Millie. He's got to be a man. You can't keep him."

"Maybe I _can't_ keep him," she replied, in a passionate undertone. "Maybe I _do_ love you. Maybe he'd get to love you, too. But look at him, Jim! See where he lies?"

The man turned towards the bed.

"It's on my side, Jim! Understand? He lies there always till I come in. Know why?"

He watched her curiously.

"He'll wake up, Jim, when I lift him over. That's what he wants. He'll wake up and say, 'Is that you, mother?' And he'll be asleep again, God bless him! before I can tell him that it is. My God! Jim, I can't tell you what it means to come in at night and find him lying there. That little body of a man! That clean, white soul! I can't tell you how I feel, Jim. It's something a man can't know. And do you think he'd stand for you? He'd say he would. Oh, he'd say he would! He'd look in my eyes, Jim, and he'd find out what I wanted him to say; and he'd _say_ it. But, Jim, he'd be hurt. Understand? He'd think I didn't love him any more. He's only a child--and he'd think I didn't love him. Where'd he sleep, Jim? Alone? He couldn't do it. Don't you _see_? I can't live with nobody, Jim. And I don't want to. I don't care for myself no more. I used to, in them days--when you and me and Dick and the crowd was all together. But I don't--no more!"

The man stooped, picked a small stocking from the floor, stood staring at it.

"I'm changed," the woman repeated, "since I got the boy."

"I don't know what you'll do, Millie, when he grows up."

She shook her head.

"And when he finds out?"

"That's what I'm afraid of," she whispered, hoarsely. "Somebody'll tell him--some day. He don't know, now. And I don't want him to know. He ain't our kind. Maybe it's because I keep him here alone. Maybe it's because he don't see nobody. Maybe it's just because I love him so. I don't know. But he ain't like us. It would hurt him to know. And I can't hurt him. I can't!"

The man tossed the stocking away. It fell upon a heap of little under-garments, strewn upon the floor.

"You're a fool, Millie," said he. "I tell you, he'll leave you. He'll leave you cold--when he grows up--and another woman comes along."

She raised her hand to stop him. "Don't say that!" she moaned. "There won't be no other woman. There can't be. Seems to me I'll want to kill the first that comes. A woman? What woman? There won't be none."

"There's _got_ to be a woman."

"What woman? There ain't a woman in the world fit to--oh," she broke off, "don't talk of _him_--and a woman!"

"It'll come, Millie. He's a man--and there's got to be a woman. And she won't want you. And you'll be too old, then, to----"

The boy stirred.

"Hist!" she commanded.

They waited. An arm was tossed--the boy smiled--there was a sigh. He was sound asleep again.

"Millie!" The man approached. She straightened to resist him. "You love me, don't you?"

She withdrew.

"You want to marry me?"

Still she withdrew; but he overtook her, and caught her hand. She was now driven to a corner--at bay. Her face was flushed; there was an irresolute light in her eyes--the light, too, of fear.

"Go 'way!" she gasped. "Leave me alone!"

He put his arm about her.

"Don't!" she moaned. "You'll wake the boy."

"Millie!" he whispered.

"Let me go, Jim!" she protested, weakly. "I can't. Oh, leave me alone! You'll wake the boy. I can't. I'd like to. I--I--I want to marry you; but I----"

"Aw, come on!" he pleaded, drawing her close. And he suddenly found her limp in his arms. "You got to marry me!" he whispered, in triumph. "By God! you can't help yourself. I got you! I got you!"

"Oh, let me go!"

"No, I won't, Millie. I'll never let you go."

"For God's sake, Jim! Jim--oh, don't kiss me!"

The boy stirred again--and began to mutter in his sleep. At once the woman commanded herself. She stiffened--released herself--pushed the man away. She lifted a hand--until the child lay quiet once more. There was meantime breathless silence. Then she pointed imperiously to the door. The man sullenly held his place. She tiptoed to the door--opened it; again imperiously gestured. He would not stir.

"I'll go," he whispered, "if you tell me I can come back."

The boy awoke--but was yet blinded by sleep; and the room was dim-lit. He rubbed his eyes. The man and the woman stood rigid in the shadow.

"Is it you, mother?"

There was no resisting her command--her flashing eyes, the passionate gesture. The man moved to the door, muttering that he would come back--and disappeared. She closed the door after him.

"Yes, dear," she answered. "It is your mother."

"Was there a man with you?"

"It was Lord Wychester," she said, brightly, "seeing me home from the party."

"Oh!" he yawned.

"Go to sleep."

He fell asleep at once. The stair creaked. The tenement was again quiet....

He was lying in his mother's place in the bed.... She looked out upon the river. Somewhere, far below in the darkness, the current still ran swirling to the sea--where the lights go different ways.... The boy was lying in his mother's place. And before she lifted him, she took his warm little hand, and kissed his brow, where the dark curls lay damp with the sweat of sleep. For a long, long time, she sat watching him through a mist of glad tears. The sight of his face, the outline of his body under the white coverlet, the touch of his warm flesh: all this thrilled her inexpressibly. Had she been devout, she would have thanked God for the gift of a son--and would have found relief.... When she crept in beside him, she drew him to her, tenderly still closer, until he was all contained in her arms; and she forgot all else--and fell asleep, untroubled.


_A MEETING BY CHANCE_

Came, then, into the lives of these two, to work wide and immediate changes, the Rev. John Fithian, a curate of the Church of the Lifted Cross--a tall, free-moving, delicately spare figure, clad in spotless black, with a hint of fashion about it, a dull gold crucifix lying suspended upon the breast: pale, long of face, the eye-sockets deep and shadowy; hollow-cheeked, the bones high and faintly touched with red; with black, straight, damp hair, brushed back from a smooth brow and falling in the perfection of neatness to the collar--the whole severe and forbidding, indeed, but for saving gray eyes, wherein there lurked, behind the patient agony, often displacing it, a tender smile, benignant, comprehending, infinitely sympathetic, by which the gloomy exterior was lightened and in some surprising way gratefully explained.

By chance, on the first soft spring day of that year, the Rev. John Fithian, returning from the Neighbourhood Settlement, where he had delighted himself with good deeds, done of pure purpose, came near the door of the Box Street tenement, distributing smiles, pennies, impulsive, genuine caresses, to the children as he went, tipping their faces, patting their heads, all in the rare, unquestioned way, being not alien to the manner of the poor. A street piano, at the corner, tinkled an air to which a throng of ragged, lean little girls danced in the yellow sunshine, dodging trucks and idlers and impatient pedestrians with unconcern, colliding and tripping with utmost good nature. The curate was arrested by the voice of a child, singing to the corner accompaniment--low, in the beginning, brooding, tentative, but in a moment rising sure and clear and tender. It was not hard for the Rev. John Fithian to slip a cassock and surplice upon this wistful child, to give him a background of lofty arches and stained windows, to frame the whole in shadows. And, lo! in the chancel of the Church of the Lifted Cross there stood an angel, singing.

The boy looked up, a glance of suspicion, of fear; but he was at once reassured: there was no guile in the smiling gray eyes of the questioner.

"I am waiting," he answered, "for my mother. She will be home soon."

In a swift, penetrating glance, darting far and deep, dwelling briefly, the curate discovered the pathos of the child's life--the unknowing, patient outlook, the vague sense of pain, the bewilderment, the wistful melancholy, the hopeful determination.

"You, too!" he sighed.

The expression of kindred was not comprehended; but the boy was not disquieted by the sigh, by the sudden extinguishment of the beguiling smile.

"She has gone," he continued, "to the wedding of Sir Arthur Coll and Miss Stillison. She will have a very good time."

The curate came to himself with a start and a gasp.

"She's a bridesmaid," the boy added.

"Oh!" ejaculated the curate.

"Why do you say, 'Oh!'" the boy complained, frowning. "Everybody says that," he went on, wistfully; "and I don't know why."

The curate was a gentleman--acute and courteous. "A touch of indigestion," he answered, promptly, laying a white hand on his black waistcoat. "Oh! There it is again!"

"Stomach ache?"

"Well, you might call it that."

The boy was much concerned. "If you come up-stairs," said he, anxiously, "I'll give you some medicine. Mother keeps it for me."

Thus, presently, the curate found himself top-floor rear, in the room that overlooked the broad river, the roofs of the city beyond, the misty hills: upon which the fading sunshine now fell. And having gratefully swallowed the dose, with a broad, persistent smile, he was given a seat by the window, that the beauty of the day, the companionship of the tiny craft on the river, the mystery of the far-off places, might distract and comfort him. From the