APOTHEOSIS
After declaring that she alone was David's mother, Miss Eastman
was called away to the telephone. It was Dr. Redfield inquiring
anxiously about the little boy. Pulse normal, temperature normal,
no symptoms of any sort, she told the physician, but she could
scarcely control her voice to answer his questions. There was a
tightness in her throat, and she spoke with crisp brevity,
instead of detailing anything of what had passed between her and
David.
When she had hung up the receiver and gone back to the child, she
took him in her lap and tried to entertain him with a book of
"Mother Goose" jingles, turning the pages slowly and concealing
her emotion under the silliness of the nursery rhymes. In the
midst of her comical recital about Jack and Jill who went up the
hill, she suddenly exclaimed:
"What great fun it was to be with Doctor!"
No matter how much she might try to divert her little boy, he was
only indifferently amused; but presently he remembered something
which, for the time being, caused him to forget the broken and
pilfered miniature.
"Mother," he exulted, "Mother, I got 'em! They have pockets--deep
pockets. You don't hardly know me, do you?"
David began strutting up and down the room; he stood still, with
legs wide apart, and then dug his fists deep into his pockets.
Of course mother was astounded. It required only a little
make-believe on her part to indicate that this was some strange
boy whom she had never seen before. The surprising change in him
had impressed her so disagreeably that she had been in no mood to
speak of it. Even as she had taken off the wide-brimmed sailor
hat, when David reached the house in Dr. Redfield's arms, she had
made no comment on the close-cropped, flaxen head. She had of
course remarked each detail of the little boy's altered
appearance, but what she had seen even more clearly was the look
in the man's face when he had told her that her little boy was
not well. It was this that she had seen at a glance, and it was
this that she had taken deeply to heart, but now she diligently
tried to enter into the spirit of trouvers.
All of a sudden the earnest look in David's face was swept away
by a smile. His little legs began to dance; his hands danced, and
his piping laughter danced best of all. Making a prancing dash
for Mother's skirts, he demanded that she smell the good, barber
smell of his hair. But she laughed such a queer laugh, as she
gathered him up in her arms, that the gleefulness suddenly went
out of him.
"I'm afraid," she said, "I'm afraid there's not enough left of
your hair to smell."
The suspicion came to David that Mother was not glad. Instead of
applauding his fine hair-cut, she had a silly way of asking what
had been done with the curls.
This is the way mothers act sometimes when they want to be
downright discouraging. David showed how he felt about it by
asking if supper wouldn't soon be ready, and throughout the meal
he bore himself with dignity. Although it is not easy to pass the
rolls when one's arms are so short and the plate is so large and
wobbly, the little boy was sure that to-night he was reaching a
surprising distance across the table. Surely Mother must have
been impressed with this new and astonishing length of arm.
When it came bed-time, David felt it would be weakness on his
part, now that he was almost grown to be a man, to allow Mother
to continue her absurd habit of sitting beside him while he went
to sleep. He told her very delicately that in the future she need
not go to so much trouble. He was resolved not to be such a
nuisance. Hereafter he would always go to sleep all by himself.
But in beginning this practice he did not think it advisable to
take off his trousers. Perhaps he would not feel so man-grown if
he took them off; perhaps the kilts-and-blouse feeling would come
on him in the night, unless he were consciously secure in
knickerbockers.
"I--I couldn't keep them on, could I, Mother?" The question came
plaintively, from the very depths of his desire.
"But, David," said Mother, "if you wear them out by sleeping in
them, then how are you to get any more? And besides, don't you
think they need a rest as well as you?"
Anybody could see the logic of that. David reluctantly permitted
his trousers to be taken off, and he was particularly eager to
see that they should have honorable treatment. He had a
misgiving that Mother did not know where they should properly be
stowed for the night, and his doubt thus found expression:
"Where does Doctor put his?"
The result of the question was not satisfying. David found that
he had brought up suddenly at the never-mind period. But his
close-cropped head leaned out over the edge of the crib; and his
eager eyes attentively regarded the floppy little legs of
trouvers as they were folded over the back of a chair. Then came
a sigh of resignation, and the shorn head was plumped down
resolutely upon the pillow.
For the first time in many months he forgot to make a little
smacky sound with his lips as a suggestion to Mother that she
might have a kiss. Evidently such a matter was now of no
importance, nor did he hold out his arms to her. All such
childish ways as that had been put aside, and perhaps that is why
a wistful look came into Mother's face.
After she had left David in the big, dark room, she took up some
dull-blue linen from her sewing-table. Only a short while ago she
had been stitching upon this apparel for her baby--a foolish
little dress, all edged about with a narrow lace braid.
Mother sat down by the shaded lamp and slipped a finger into her
thimble. But her needle, which in the afternoon had glanced and
glinted swiftly, as the dainty braid was being fastened into
place, somehow refused to do its work. The little blue suit fell
from her hands; the thimble rolled across the floor.
Hers was the bereavement which comes to every mother. It comes
upon her suddenly, leaving her surprised, wondering, and full of
foolish little fears that in the boyhood of her boy she may not
hold so big a place as was given her to hold through all his
babyhood.
Where was the child of yesterday? Who had stolen from Mother and
her little boy the elfin charm and the sweet wonderland which,
for so long a time, had been his and hers together? Gone, as it
must always go, when the little one of to-day goes speeding on
and still on into the dust and weary prose of the hurrying
years.