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I
Old Martha wondered if the Poor Boy would have a smile for her. He had
had so many in the old days, the baby days, the growing-up days, the
college days, the "world so new and all" days. There were some which she
would always remember. The smile he smiled one Christmas morning, when
he put the grand fur coat around her shoulders, and the kiss on her
cheek. The smile he smiled that day when they met in front of the
photographer's, and he took her in and had their photograph taken
together: she sitting and glaring with embarrassment at the camera, he
standing, his hand on her shoulder, smiling--down on her.
To save her life she could not recall a harsh word in his mouth, a harsh
look in his eyes. In the growing-up days he had been sick a great deal;
but the trustees and the doctors had put their trust in old Martha, and
she had pulled him through. When the pain was too great, her Poor Boy
was always for hiding his face. It was thus that he gathered strength to
turn to her once more, smiling. It was Martha who spoke stories of
princesses and banshees and heroes and witch-wolves through the long
nights when he could not sleep. It was old Martha who drew the tub of
red-hot water that brought him to life, when the doctor said he was
dead.
If he had been her own, she could not have loved him more.
How many hundred cold nights she had left her warm bed, to return, blue
with cold, after seeing that he was well covered! How she had dreaded
the passing of time that brought him nearer and nearer to manhood, in
whose multiple interests and cares old tendernesses and understandings
are so often forgotten. But wherever he went, whatever he did, he had
always an eye of his mind upon Martha's feelings in the matter. She was
old, Irish, unlettered, but as a royal duchess so was she deferred to in
the Poor Boy's great house upon the avenue.
Old Martha had seats for the play whenever she wanted them. And very
handsome she looked, with her red cheeks and her white hair, and her
thick black silk. One winter, when she had a dreadful cold, the Poor Boy
took her to Palm Beach in his car, and introduced all his smart friends
to her. But it was as if they had always known her, for the Poor Boy,
who talked a great deal, never talked for long without celebrating "my
nurse."
"Oh," he might say, "I, too, have known what it is to have a mother."
Or coming home late from some gay party, the sparkle still in his eyes,
he might say to the old woman herself:
"I love people, but I love you more."
Of the Poor Boy who gave her so much she had never asked but one thing.
One simple kindly act in the future. She had made him promise her that;
take his oath to it, indeed; cross his tender heart. She had made him
promise that when at last she lay dead, he would come to her and close
her eyes.
He would keep his word; not a doubt of it. But he would do more. He
would see to it that in Woodlawn, where his young father and mother lay,
old Martha should lie, too, and that the ablest sculptor of the time
should mark her grave for the ages.
The Poor Boy had the intuition of a woman, and the tenderness; he had
the imagination of a poet and the simplicity of a child. Everybody loved
him--the slim, well-knit, swift body, carrying the beautiful round head;
the face, so handsome, so gentle, and so daring. He was not cast in a
heroic mould, but he was so vivid that in groups of taller, stronger
men it was the Poor Boy whom you saw first. Half the girls did, anyway,
and most of the wives, and all the old grandmothers. The most ambitious
girls forgot that he was princely rich, and wanted him for himself
alone. But the "world-so-new-and-all" was cram-jammed with flowers, and
the Poor Boy was dazzled, and did not more than half make up his mind
which was the loveliest.
Old Martha was a firm believer in love at first sight (otherwise she
might never have been a wet-nurse), and often, when the Poor Boy came
home from some great gathering of people, she would ask him, "Did it
happen to yez?" And he knew what she meant, and teased her a little
sometimes, saying that he wasn't "just quite sure." (And he
wasn't--always.)
One day the world crashed about old Martha's ears. The Poor Boy stood up
in the court and said, "Not guilty," in his clear, ringing voice. But
they didn't believe her child, her angel, and when they sent him to
prison she tore her white hair, and beat her head against the wall of
her bedroom until she fell senseless. And indeed it was true that
Justice, the light woman, had again been brought to bed of a
miscarriage. But who was to believe that, when Justice's whole family
and her doctor gave out that the child was clean-run and full time? If
any believed there were not many. The Poor Boy was a poor boy, indeed,
and it seemed to him (trying so very hard not to go mad) that his life
was all over.
As a matter of fact, it was getting ready at last to begin.