MOTHER
Peter Rolls, as it oddly happened, had run up to New York that hot
night in order to see a girl do a "turn" at a vaudeville theatre--an
English girl about whom he had read a newspaper paragraph, and who
might, he thought, be Winifred Child. The girl's stage name was
Winifred Cheylesmore. The newspaper described her as "tall, dark, and
taking, with a voice like Devonshire cream."
She was a new girl, of whom nobody had heard, and Peter had been
thrilled and impatient. Her "singing stunt" was to be heard at ten
o'clock, and Peter had dined at his club, meaning to be early in his
seat at the theatre. But a man he knew, sitting at a table near, was a
budding journalist, an earnest amateur photographer. He began passing
samples of his skill to Peter Rolls, calling out rather loudly the
names of ladies snapshotted. Among them was Winifred Cheylesmore, whom
he had interviewed. She was no more like Winifred Child than Marie
Tempest is like Ethel Barrymore. Consequently Peter gave his ticket
away and sat longer over his dinner than he had meant.
If he had started out even five minutes earlier he would have missed
Jim Logan and the adventure in the shut-up house. He would not have
known that there was hope--indeed, almost a certainty--of finding the
lost dryad in one of New York's great department stores.
He was excited, and would have liked to spend half the night walking
off his superfluous energy in the streets or the park where that lying
beast said he had made Miss Child's acquaintance. Peter would have
felt that he was marching to meet the dawn and that the day he longed
for would come to him sooner if he walked toward the horizon. But
father was in town that night--presumedly at his club, and Peter did
not like to leave mother alone. She had exacted no promise--she never
did exact promises, for that was not her way. Peter had said, however,
that he would motor home after the theatre, and though mother mustn't
sit up, she would know that he was in the house.
He determined to keep to this plan, which, of course, would not
prevent his returning to New York early enough next day for the first
opening of the first shop. He wished there were not so many shops.
Unless luck were with him on his search, he might not reach the dryad
for days.
In spite of all that had happened, midnight was not long past when
Peter tiptoed softly through the quiet house at home and opened the
door of his own den. He had expected to find the room in darkness, but
to his surprise the green-shaded reading lamp on the book-scattered
mahogany table was alight, and there in the horsehair-covered
rocking-chair sat mother with her inevitable work. Close by the window
was wide open, and the night breeze from over the Sound was
rhythmically waving the white dimity curtains.
The sweetness of home-coming swept over Peter with the perfume of
wallflowers which blew in on the wind--a sweetness almost as poignant
as that of fresias. Half unconsciously he had been wishing to see his
mother--perhaps not even to speak, but just to see her placid face in
its kind womanliness. It was almost as if his wish had been whispered
to her telepathically and she had answered it. She made a charming
picture, too, he thought, in the shadowy room where the pale, moving
curtains in the dimness were like spirits bringing peace, and all the
light focussed upon the white-haired, white-gowned woman in the high,
black chair seemed to radiate from her whiteness.
Mother looked up, pleased but not surprised, as the opening door
framed her son.
"Howdy do, deary!" She smiled at him. "I thought you'd be coming along
about this time."
Peter threw his hat and coat at the whale, whose large, shining
surface hospitably received them. Mrs. Rolls's small, plump feet in
cheap Japanese slippers rested upon a "hassock" on whose covering
reposed (in worsted) a black spaniel with blue high lights. This
animal she had herself created before the birth of Peter or Ena, but
it was as bright a beast as if it had been finished yesterday. No one
at Sea Gull Manor except Peter would have given Fido house room. But
he liked the dog, and now sat down on it, lifting his mother's little
feet to place them on his knee.
"You oughtn't to have waited up," he remarked, having kissed her
snow-white hair and both apple-pink cheeks and settled himself more or
less comfortably on Fido.
"I thought I would," she returned placidly. "I like being here. And I
had just this to finish." She held up a wide strip of crocheted lace.
"It's 'most done now. It's go'n' to be a bedspread for Ena. But I
don't know if she---"
Mrs. Rolls did not finish the sentence, but it was a long, long ago
established custom of hers not to finish sentences. Except when alone
with Petro, she seldom made any attempt to bring one to an end. It was
life at Peter senior's side which had got her out of the habit of
trying to complete what she began to say. As he generally interrupted
her when she spoke, even in their early years together, she had almost
unconsciously taken it for granted that he would do so, and stopped
like a rundown mechanical doll at about the place where her
quick-minded husband was due to break in.
Peter junior, who never interrupted (though he, too, had a quick
mind), knew as well as if she had gone on that his mother meant: "I
don't know if Ena will think a homemade coverlet of crocheted lace
smart enough for a real, live _marchesa_, but I feel I should like to
make my daughter some bridal present with my own hands."
"Oh, yes, she's certain to. It'll be beautiful, if it's anything like
the one you did for me," Petro assured her when the long pause had
told him that mother had no more to add. "Just think of Ena getting
married!"
"Yes, indeed," sighed Mrs. Rolls. "And it seems only a little while
since you were both---"
Peter knew that the missing word was "children." "Anyhow, she's happy,
I think," he reflected aloud, a far-away look in his eyes.
"I guess so," mother agreed. "She'll like real well being a--- I
wish---"
"_Marchesa"_ was easy for Peter to supply mentally, and would have
been much easier for him to pronounce than it was for Mrs. Rolls, who
had had small education in the management even of her native tongue.
She made dear little, cozy, common mistakes in grammar and other
things. Peter adored her mistakes, and Ena was ashamed of them. But in
those good manners which are taught by the heart and not by the head,
no queen could have given Mrs. Rolls lessons.
As for the next sentence, beginning with "I wish---" and ending in the
air, that was more difficult. Even mother, so placid, seemingly so
contented, must have many wishes. And so Petro ventured on a "What?"
"I wisht I could be just as sure _you_---"
"As sure that I'm happy?"
"Yes, dear."
Peter had been looking at his mother's feet in those blue Japanese
slippers, whose cheapness was rather pathetic. (With all their money,
she never enjoyed wearing expensive things herself. It was as if she
felt lost and un-at-home in them.) But suddenly he glanced up. The
pink-and-white face was as calm as usual, yet her tone had meant
something in particular. A chord seemed to vibrate in his soul, as if
she had softly, yet purposely, touched it with her finger.
"Don't you believe I am happy?" he asked.
"Not--just like you used to be," she said. Their eyes met as she
lifted hers from her work and began rolling it up, finished. She
blushed beautifully, like a girl.
Peter pressed both the little feet between his hands, pressed them
almost convulsively. He did not stop to think how strong his fingers
were, though Logan had had cause to realize their strength two hours
ago. The pressure hurt the small toes so lightly covered. And the
mother of this strong, though slight, young man gloried in the hurt.
She was proud of it, proud of Peter, the one thing in the world she
felt was really hers.
"Mother!" he said in a low, tense voice. "_What_ told you?"
"Why--just bein' your mother, I guess. I was wonderin'---"
"Wondering what?"
"Whether some day you'd say something."
"I wanted to. I wanted to talk to you about--about it all. But I was
afraid it might make you sad. I like to think of you always happy,
dearest. And I couldn't bear to be the one to chase away your smile I
love so much."
"It's thinking of you helps me to smile, Petie," said his mother,
reverting to the pet name of his childhood as she stroked his smooth,
black hair. "If 'twasn't for knowing I've got you--and your loving
me--I do believe I could never smile."
"You're not unhappy?" Peter cried out, startled. It would be a
dreadful pain to know that the placid reserve of this sweet, loved
woman meant unhappiness.
"Not while I have _you_. But---"
"You must go on, dear. Tell me what you feel. We're here together, all
alone in the night, talking out our hearts. It seems as if it was
meant to be--my finding you waiting here."
"I guess maybe it _was_, Petie. Something kind of said to me, 'You
wait up for him. He wants you.' And I--why, I always want you, boy."
"Darling! We've got each other fast."
"Thanks be, dear! My! You don't know the times I've sneaked in and set
in this room when you was away. And even now, if you're go'n' to be
out pretty late, I bring in my work 'most always when your pa's out. I
generally slip back to my room before you come in, because I know you
think I oughtn't to be sittin' up. You mightn't just understand that
'twas because this is my only real home."
"Your only real home? Why, Mother!"
"The rest of the house is so big--and so _awful_ new-fashioned and
grand. Not like me a bit," she apologized meekly--but not with the
flurried meekness of her apologies to Peter senior. "Here you've saved
all my dear old things I had in the days before everything was big. I
never _can_ get used to it, and I never will now. It's the bigness, I
guess, that's seemed--somehow--to take your pa and Ena away from
me--long ago. But I've got you. And you let me come here. So I am
happy. I'm a real happy woman, Petie. And I want you to be happy the
way you used to be--or some better way, not all restless like you are
now. I guess if there was some one you loved different from me you
wouldn't make a new life for yourself without a little place in it for
mother, would you--just a weenty little place I could come and live in
sometimes for a while?"
"I'd want you in it always," said Peter. He leaned up and wound his
arms around the plump, formless waist in the neat dressing-gown. "So
would _she_--if there were a she. I hate the 'bigness,' too--the kind
of false, smart bigness that you mean. We'll have a little house--she
and you and I. For your room will be there, and you'll be in it
whenever father'll spare you. But I'm running away in what I used to
call my 'dreamobile!' I haven't found her yet. That is, I found her
once and lost her again. I'm looking for her now. Mother, do you know
what a _'leitmotif'_ is?"
"No, dear, indeed I don't. I'm afraid I don't know many of the things
I---"
"There's no reason why you should know this. In Wagner's operas, which
I don't understand, perhaps, but which I love with thrills in my
spine--and that's a _kind_ of understanding--whenever a character
comes on the stage he or she always is followed by a certain strain of
music--music that expresses character, and seems even to describe a
person. Well, wallflower perfume might be your _leitmotif_. Can't you
_hear_ perfume? I can. Just as you can seem to see music--wonderful,
changing colours. The wallflower scent's all around us now. It's you.
But through it I imagine another perfume. It's here, too. It's been
with me for months. Because I've got to feel it's her spirit, her
_leitmotif_. The perfume of fresias. Do you know it?"
"I thought maybe she liked it," mother said calmly.
"What put that idea in your darling head?"
"Why, because you've been havin' fresias planted in the garden--and in
your room--as long as they lasted through the spring. You'd never
thought of 'em before as I know of."
"You witch! You notice everything. Who'd believe it, you're so quiet?"
"Of course I notice things about you. I wouldn't be fit to be your
mother if I didn't. Now, do you feel like tellin' me things about
her?"
"I'm longing to," said Peter.
They forgot it was late at night. He told her everything, beginning at
the moment when he had plunged through the dryad door and going on to
the moment when he had lost, not only the girl, but her friendship,
though he said nothing of the Moon dress or the shut-up house. Even
then he did not stop.
"I must have done something inadvertently," he went on, "to make her
stop liking me all of a sudden. For she did like me at first. There
was no flirting or anything silly about it. I felt there was a reason
for her changing, and ever since, every day and every night, I've been
trying to make out what it could have been. I've thought the idea
might come to me. But it never has. That's partly why I'm so anxious
to find her--to make her explain. I was too taken aback, too--sort of
stunned--to go about it the right way when she changed to me at the
last minute there on the dock. Once I could understand, why, I might
start with her again at the beginning and work up. It would give me a
chance--the chance I once thought I had, you know--to try to make her
care. Maybe it would be no use. Maybe I'm not the kind she could ever
like that way, even if things hadn't gone wrong. But--but, Mother,
it's been just agony to think that all this time she's hated me
through some beastly misunderstanding which might easily have been
cleared up."
"My poor boy!" the kind voice soothed him. "I guess that's the worst
pain of all. I knew there was something hurting you, but I didn't
know 'twas as hard a hurt as this. But 'twill come right. I feel it
will--if she's really the right girl."
"She's the only girl!" exclaimed Peter. "You'd love her, and she'd
adore you."
"Tell me just what she looks like," commanded mother, shutting her
eyes to see the picture better.
Peter excelled himself in his description of Winifred Child. "Nobody
ever even dreamed of another girl who looked or talked or acted a bit
like her," he raved. "She's so original!"
"Why, but that's just what somebody _did_!" mother cried, throwing off
the cloak of her placidity. "Lady Eileen."
"Lady Eileen did what?"
"Dreamed about such a girl. It must have been a real interesting
dream, because she couldn't get it out of her head and told me all
about it. She saw a tall, dark girl, with wonderful eyes and a
fascinating mouth and graceful sort of ways like you've been telling
me about. Hearing Lady Eileen talk was almost like seeing a
photograph. In the dream you were in love with the girl--English she
was, too, like the real one--and ransacking New York for her, while
all the time she---"
"Yes--yes, dear! All the time she---"
"Lady Eileen said particularly I was to tell you about her dream and
let you know she wanted you to hear it, because it seemed kind of
dramatic and made her almost superstitious, it was so real every way.
But she made me promise I wouldn't say a _word_ unless you spoke first
about such a girl as she dreamed of--and told me you loved her and
wanted to find her again. If _I_ began, it would spoil the romance,
and there wouldn't be anything in it. That was how Lady Eileen felt."
Peter listened, but his spirit had rushed on past these explanations.
Lady Eileen had chosen this method of leaving a message for him. It
was a strange method, and he did not understand why she had not
herself told him of the dream. But she was a kind and clever girl, a
true friend. There must have been a good motive for the delay. Loyal
himself, he believed in her loyalty and was grateful. But he could not
stop to think of her now.
"Where did Lady Eileen see my dryad girl--in the dream?" he asked.
"At father's place," said mother simply. "At the Hands."