The Mother by Norman Duncan (essential reading txt) 📖

boy, sitting upright and prim on the extreme edge of a chair, his feet on the rung, his hands on his knees, proceeded a stream of amiable chatter--not the less amiable for being grave--to which the curate, compelled to his best behavior, listened with attention as amiable, as grave: and this concerned the boats, afloat below, the lights on the river, the child's mother, the simple happenings of his secluded life. So untaught was this courtesy, spontaneous, native--so did it spring from natural wish and perception--that the curate was soon more mystified than entertained; and so did the curate's smile increase in gratification and sympathy that the child was presently off the chair, lingering half abashed in the curate's neighbourhood, soon seated familiarly upon his knee, toying with the dull gold crucifix.

"What's this?" he asked.

"It is the symbol," the curate answered, "of the sacrifice of our dear Lord and Saviour."

There was no meaning in the words; but the boy held the cross very tenderly, and looked long upon the face of the Man there in torture--and was grieved and awed by the agony....

In the midst of this, the boy's mother entered. She stopped dead beyond the threshold--warned by the unexpected presence to be upon her guard. Her look of amazement changed to a scowl of suspicion. The curate put the boy from his knee. He rose--embarrassed. There was a space of ominous silence.

"What you doing here?" the woman demanded.

"Trespassing."

She was puzzled--by the word, the smile, the quiet voice. The whole was a new, nonplussing experience. Her suspicion was aggravated.

"What you been telling the boy? Eh? What you been saying about me? Hear me? Ain't you got no tongue?" She turned to the frightened child. "Richard," she continued, her voice losing all its quality of anger, "what lies has this man been telling you about your poor mother?"

The boy kept a bewildered silence.

"What you been lying about?" the woman exclaimed, advancing upon the curate, her eyes blazing.

"I have been telling," he answered, still gravely smiling, "the truth."

Her anger was halted--but she was not pacified.

"Telling," the curate repeated, with a little pause, "the truth."

"You been talking about _me_, eh?"

"No; it was of your late husband."

She started.

"I am a curate of the Church of the Lifted Cross," the curate continued, with unruffled composure, "and I have been telling the exact truth concerning----"

"You been lying!" the woman broke in. "Yes, you have!"

"No--not so," he insisted. "The exact truth concerning the funeral of Dick Slade from the Church of the Lilted Cross. Your son has told me of his father's death--of the funeral, And I have told your son that I distinctly remember the occasion. I have told him, moreover," he added, putting a hand on the boy's shoulder, his eyes faintly twinkling, "that his father was--ah--as I recall him--of most distinguished appearance."

She was completely disarmed.

When, after an agreeable interval, the Rev. John Fithian took his leave, the boy's mother followed him from the room, and closed the door upon the boy. "I'm glad," she faltered, "that you didn't give me away. It was--kind. But I'm sorry you lied--like that. You didn't have to, you know. He's only a child. It's easy to fool him. _You_ wouldn't have to lie. But I _got_ to lie. It makes him happy--and there's things he mustn't know. He _must_ be happy. I can't stand it when he ain't. It hurts me so. But," she added, looking straight into his eyes, gratefully, "you didn't have to lie. And--it was kind." Her eyes fell. "It was--awful kind."

"I may come again?"

She stared at the floor. "Come again?" she muttered. "I don't know."

"I should very much like to come."

"What do you want?" she asked, looking up. "It ain't _me_, is it?"

The curate shook his head.

"Well, what do you want? I thought you was from the Society. I thought you was an agent come to take him away because I wasn't fit to keep him. But it ain't that. And it ain't _me_. What is it you want, anyhow?"

"To come again."

She turned away. He patiently waited. All at once she looked into his eyes, long, deep, intensely--a scrutiny of his very soul.

"You got a good name to keep, ain't you?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered. "And you?"

"It don't matter about me."

"And I may come?"

"Yes," she whispered.


_RENUNCIATION_

After that the curate came often to the room in the Box Street tenement; but beyond the tenants of top floor rear he did not allow the intimacy to extend--not even to embrace the quaintly love-lorn Mr. Poddle. It was now summer; the window was open to the west wind, blowing in from the sea. Most the curate came at evening, when the breeze was cool and clean, and the lights began to twinkle in the gathering shadows: then to sit at the window, describing unrealities, not conceived in the world of the listeners; and these new and beautiful thoughts, melodiously voiced in the twilight, filled the hours with wonder and strange delight. Sometimes, the boy sang--his mother, too, and the curate: a harmony of tender voices, lifted softly. And once, when the songs were all sung, and the boy had slipped away to the comfort of Mr. Poddle, who was now ill abed with his restless lungs, the curate turned resolutely to the woman.

"I want the boy's voice," he said.

She gave no sign of agitation. "His voice?" she asked, quietly. "Ain't the boy's _self_ nothing to your church?"

"Not," he answered, "to the church."

"Not to you?"

"It is very much," he said, gravely, "to me."

"Well?"

He lifted his eyebrows--in amazed comprehension. "I must say, then," he said, bending eagerly towards her, "that I want the boy?"

"The boy," she answered.

For a little while she was silent--vacantly contemplating the bare floor. There had been no revelation. She was not taken unaware. She had watched his purpose form. Long before, she had perceived the issue approaching, and had bravely met it. But it was all now definite and near. She found it hard to command her feeling--bitter to cut the trammels of her love for the child.

"You got to pay, you know," she said, looking up. "Boy sopranos is scarce. You can't have him cheap."

"Of course!" he hastened to say. "The church will pay."

"Money? It ain't money I want."

To this there was nothing to say. The curate was in the dark--and quietly awaited enlightenment.

"Take him!" she burst out, rising. "My God! just you take him. That's all I want. Understand me? I want to get rid of him."

He watched her in amazement. For a time she wandered about the room, distraught, quite aimless: now tragically pausing; now brushing her hand over her eyes--a gesture of weariness and despair. Then she faced him.

"Take him," she said, her voice hoarse. "Take him away from me. I ain't fit to have him. Understand? He's got to grow up into a man. And I can't teach him how. Take him. Take him altogether. Make him--like yourself. Before you come," she proceeded, now feverishly pacing the floor, "I never knew that men was good. No man ever looked in my eyes the way you do. I know them--oh, I know them! And when my boy grows up, I want him to look in the eyes of women the way you look--in mine. Just that! Only that! If only, oh, if only my son will look in the eyes of women the way you look in mine! Understand? I _want_ him to. But I can't teach him how. I don't know enough. I ain't good enough."

The curate rose.

"You can't take his voice and leave his soul," she went on. "You got to take his soul. You got to make it--like your own."

"Not like mine!"

"Just," she said, passionately, "like yours. Don't you warn me!" she flashed. "I know the difference between your soul and mine. I know that when his soul is like yours he won't love me no more. But I can't help that. I got to do without him. I got to live my life--and let him live his. It's the way with mothers and sons. God help the mothers! It's the way of the world.... And he'll go with you," she added. "I'll get him so he'll be glad to go. It won't be nice to do--but I can do it. Maybe you think I can't. Maybe you think I love him too much. It ain't that I love him too much. It's because I love him _enough_!"

"You offer the boy to me?"

"Will you take him--voice and soul?"

"I will take him," said the curate, "soul and voice."

She began at once to practice upon the boy's love for her--this skillfully, persistently: without pity for herself or him. She sighed, wept, sat gloomy for hours together: nor would she explain her sorrow, but relentlessly left it to deal with his imagination, by which it was magnified and touched with the horror of mystery. It was not hard--thus to feign sadness, terror, despair: to hint misfortune, parting, unalterable love. Nor could the boy withstand it; by this depression he was soon reduced to a condition of apprehension and grief wherein self-sacrifice was at one with joyful opportunity. Dark days, these--hours of agony, premonition, fearful expectation. And when they had sufficiently wrought upon him, she was ready to proceed.

One night she took him in her lap, in the old close way, in which he loved to be held, and sat rocking, for a time, silently.

"Let us talk, dear," she said.

"I think I'm too sick," he sighed. "I just want to lie here--and not talk."

He had but expressed her own desire--to have him lie there: not to talk, but just to feel him lying in her arms.

"We must," she said.

Something in her voice--something distinguishable from the recent days as deep and real--aroused the boy. He touched the lashes of her eyes--and found them wet.

"Why are you crying?" he asked. "Oh, tell me, mother! Tell me _now_!"

She did not answer.

"I'm sick," he muttered. "I--I--think I'm very sick."

"Something has happened, dear," she said. "I'm going to tell you what." She paused--and in the pause felt his body grow tense in a familiar way. For a moment the prospect frightened her. She felt, vaguely, that she was playing with that which was infinitely delicate--which might break in her very hands, and leave her desolate. "You know, dear," she continued, faltering, "we used to be very rich. But we're not, any more." It was a poor lie--she realized that: and was half ashamed. "We're very poor, now," she went on,