“Thus repuls’d, our final hope
Is flat despair.”
During the week that Robert was trying to choose his path for life,
Mrs. Malloy watched him with anxious, loving eyes, conscious of his
struggle, herself elated and depressed according to the moods his face
reflected.
On the morning of the day he called on Meg, he had gone to his mother,
and nestling at her feet as had been his habit since his early
childhood, had leaned his head against her knee. She laid her hand
caressingly on his head, as though inviting him to speak.
With averted eyes, and a manner he strove to make careless, he said,
“Dear Mother mine, would you despise me for a weak, shilly-shally sort
of creature if—” he hesitated a moment,—“if I should, after all, alter
the plan of my life and not go into the monastery?”
Her face was transfigured, but she answered calmly, realizing fully
that it was delicate ground upon which they were treading: “Of course I
would not, dear. Whatever is for your happiness is that which I desire.
And no one, not even a mother, can decide for you.”
He reached up, and pulling her hand down, kissed it reverently. And
then she said softly: “While my boy was little I guided him through the
shoals, avoiding the rocks, and I longed,—oh, _how_ I longed to be
always at the helm, to keep his boat in the still, deep waters. But I
realized that it would be no kindness to have him depend on me alone
for guidance. I would grow old,—my hand would lose its cunning, my eyes
their keenness of vision,—or I would have to leave him altogether—”
He kissed her hand again, in protest. “Old age and death have nothing
in common with my young mother,” he whispered.
She smiled sadly as she shook her head. “Nevertheless, one must always
be prepared. At any rate, I taught you how to steer your own boat, my
boy.”
“Then you desert the ship, do you, O most wise woman?” he asked gayly.
“I but abdicate the captaincy,” she replied in the same strain.
When he left the house to make his call, there was something in his
bearing which would have convinced his mother, even without their
previous conversation, that his decision was made and that he went to
put his life in the hands of the one woman in the world she would have
chosen for him. Her heart was light, for she had no doubt as to the
outcome.
Mr. Spencer came in singing, “Hail to the chief who in triumph
advances,” and then, seeing his sister, he stopped abruptly and said,
“I told you so.”
“You think he has gone to put his fate ‘to the test, to win or lose it
all?’”
“Did you see the set of his shoulders as he left the house?” demanded
her brother, and then, without waiting for a reply, he continued: “You
can’t fool me. I know the signs of the zodiac. It’s the full of the
moon, that part of the month when it gets into a fellow’s blood, and he
forgets everything except that here is the one being he loves. Why,
Stella, I’d have been infected with that same fever every full moon for
forty years, if I hadn’t been vaccinated.”
Mrs. Malloy laughed heartily, and then he said, more earnestly: “Robert
will be a lucky man to win that girl. I’ve known her for so long, and
have been so fond of her, that nothing but my age prevents my stepping
in now and interfering with Robert. The first time I ever saw her,” he
continued reminiscently, “she was a mere child, a quaint red-headed
little thing, with a world of tragedy in her big eyes. That was a few
months after she had lost her father. She had replied to a question of
her aunt’s, simply ‘yes,’—and Mrs. Weston was striving to make her say
‘yes, ma’am.’”
“Which won?” Mrs. Malloy asked idly.
“I don’t know. The last I saw of them they were walking down the
street, Mrs. Weston dragging her along and saying, ‘You _won’t_ say
“Yes, ma’am,” to me! Well, I’ll teach you some manners if you live with
me!’ But as I have never since heard Meg say ‘Yes, ma’am,’ I have an
idea that she won the day.”
When Robert returned, he sought his mother and said briefly: “Another
hand than mine has turned the boat back into the still waters of the
monastery. My novitiate begins in six weeks. Let us leave here in a few
days, that we may spend the remainder of the time alone together.”
All the glory had departed from her face, and she only nodded, not
trusting herself to speak.