“Making me feel how old I am by telling me about his children.”
“My grandchildren!” she exclaimed with a blush.
“Well, if you choose to put it so.”
She laughed again, vaguely, and was silent. I hesitated a moment and
then put out my hand.
“I see you are tired. I shouldn’t have ventured to come in at this hour
if your son--”
The son stepped between us. “Yes, I asked him to come,” he said to
his mother, in his clear self-assertive voice. “_I_ haven’t told him
anything yet; but you’ve got to--now. That’s what I brought him for.”
His mother straightened herself, but I saw her eye waver.
“Lancelot--” she began.
“Mr. Amyot,” I said, turning to the young man, “if your mother will let
me come back to-morrow, I shall be very glad--”
He struck his hand hard against the table on which he was leaning.
“No, sir! It won’t take long, but it’s got to be said now.”
He moved nearer to his mother, and I saw his lip twitch under his beard.
After all, he was younger and less sure of himself than I had fancied.
“See here, mother,” he went on, “there’s something here that’s got to be
cleared up, and as you say this gentleman is an old friend of yours
it had better be cleared up in his presence. Maybe he can help explain
it--and if he can’t, it’s got to be explained to _him.”_
Mrs. Amyot’s lips moved, but she made no sound. She glanced at me
helplessly and sat down. My early inclination to thrash Lancelot was
beginning to reassert itself. I took up my hat and moved toward the
door.
“Mrs. Amyot is under no obligation to explain anything whatever to me,”
I said curtly.
“Well! She’s under an obligation to me, then--to explain something in
your presence.” He turned to her again. “Do you know what the people in
this hotel are saying? Do you know what he thinks--what they all think?
That you’re doing this lecturing to support me--to pay for my education!
They say you go round telling them so. That’s what they buy the tickets
for--they do it out of charity. Ask him if it isn’t what they say--ask
him if they weren’t joking about it on the piazza before dinner. The
others think I’m a little boy, but he’s known you for years, and he must
have known how old I was. _He_ must have known it wasn’t to pay for my
education!”
He stood before her with his hands clenched, the veins beating in his
temples. She had grown very pale, and her cheeks looked hollow. When she
spoke her voice had an odd click in it.
“If--if these ladies and gentlemen have been coming to my lectures out
of charity, I see nothing to be ashamed of in that--” she faltered.
“If they’ve been coming out of charity to _me_,” he retorted, “don’t you
see you’ve been making me a party to a fraud? Isn’t there any shame
in that?” His forehead reddened. “Mother! Can’t you see the shame of
letting people think I was a d--beat, who sponged on you for my keep?
Let alone making us both the laughing-stock of every place you go to!”
“I never did that, Lancelot!”
“Did what?”
“Made you a laughing-stock--”
He stepped close to her and caught her wrist.
“Will you look me in the face and swear you never told people you were
doing this lecturing business to support me?”
There was a long silence. He dropped her wrist and she lifted a limp
handkerchief to her frightened eyes. “I did do it--to support you--to
educate you”--she sobbed.
“We’re not talking about what you did when I was a boy. Everybody who
knows me knows I’ve been a grateful son. Have I ever taken a penny from
you since I left college ten years ago?”
“I never said you had! How can you accuse your mother of such
wickedness, Lancelot?”
“Have you never told anybody in this hotel--or anywhere else in the last
ten years--that you were lecturing to support me? Answer me that!”
“How can you,” she wept, “before a stranger?”
“Haven’t you said such things about _me_ to strangers?” he retorted.
“Lancelot!”
“Well--answer me, then. Say you haven’t, mother!” His voice broke
unexpectedly and he took her hand with a gentler touch. “I’ll believe
anything you tell me,” he said almost humbly.
She mistook his tone and raised her head with a rash clutch at dignity.
“I think you’d better ask this gentleman to excuse you first.”
“No, by God, I won’t!” he cried. “This gentleman says he knows all about
you and I mean him to know all about me too. I don’t mean that he
or anybody else under this roof shall go on thinking for another
twenty-four hours that a cent of their money has ever gone into my
pockets since I was old enough to shift for myself. And he sha’n’t leave
this room till you’ve made that clear to him.”
He stepped back as he spoke and put his shoulders against the door.
“My dear young gentleman,” I said politely, “I shall leave this room
exactly when I see fit to do so--and that is now. I have already told
you that Mrs. Amyot owes me no explanation of her conduct.”
“But I owe you an explanation of mine--you and every one who has bought
a single one of her lecture tickets. Do you suppose a man who’s been
through what I went through while that woman was talking to you in the
porch before dinner is going to hold his tongue, and not attempt to
justify himself? No decent man is going to sit down under that sort of
thing. It’s enough to ruin his character. If you’re my mother’s friend,
you owe it to me to hear what I’ve got to say.”
He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead.
“Good God, mother!” he burst out suddenly, “what did you do it for?
Haven’t you had everything you wanted ever since I was able to pay for
it? Haven’t I paid you back every cent you spent on me when I was in
college? Have I ever gone back on you since I was big enough to
work?” He turned to me with a laugh. “I thought she did it to amuse
herself--and because there was such a demand for her lectures. _Such a
demand!_ That’s what she always told me. When we asked her to come out
and spend this winter with us in Minneapolis, she wrote back that she
couldn’t because she had engagements all through the south, and her
manager wouldn’t let her off. That’s the reason why I came all the way
on here to see her. We thought she was the most popular lecturer in the
United States, my wife and I did! We were awfully proud of it too, I can
tell you.” He dropped into a chair, still laughing.
“How can you, Lancelot, how can you!” His mother, forgetful of my
presence, was clinging to him with tentative caresses. “When you didn’t
need the money any longer I spent it all on the children--you know I
did.”
“Yes, on lace christening dresses and life-size rocking-horses with real
manes! The kind of thing children can’t do without.”
“Oh, Lancelot, Lancelot--I loved them so! How can you believe such
falsehoods about me?”
“What falsehoods about you?”
“That I ever told anybody such dreadful things?”
He put her back gently, keeping his eyes on hers. “Did you never tell
anybody in this house that you were lecturing to support your son?”
Her hands dropped from his shoulders and she flashed round on me in
sudden anger.
“I know what I think of people who call themselves friends and who come
between a mother and her son!”
“Oh, mother, mother!” he groaned.