The Mother

"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 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.