"Yes; and you'll ..." she went back to the table, picking up the
cutter--"you'll have some for supper if you'll--if you'll call me ma."
"But I do."
Her smile had the slow timidity that might have been born of disuse.
"Yes, when I ask you. But I want you to do it all the time, and
natural."
"All right then; I will--ma."
While he stood drinking a first, and then a second, cup of water, she
began on the memories dear to her, but which few now would listen
to. She had been born in Wilmington, Delaware, where Martin also had
been born. His father worked in a powder factory in that city. It was
owing to an explosion when he was a lad that Martin's frame had been
partially paralyzed.
"He wasn't blowed up or anything; he just got a shock. He was awful
delicate, and used to have fits till he grew out of them. I think the
crook in his face makes him look aristocratic, don't you?"
The boy having said that he didn't know but what it did, she continued
plaintively, cutting out her cookies with a heart-shaped cutter.
"I was awful pretty in those days, and that refined I wouldn't hardly
do a thing for my mother in the house, or carry the tiniest little
parcel across the street. I was just born ladylike. And when Martin
and I were married he let me have a girl for the first two years to do
everything. All he ever expected of me was to get up and dress, and
look stylish; and now...."
As she paused in her cutting to press back a sob, the boy took the
opportunity to speak of getting back to work.
"I think I must beat it, ma. I've got all those carrots--"
"Oh, wait a little while. He can spare you for a few minutes, can't he?
Anyhow, nothing you can do'll save him from going bankrupt. This place
don't pay. He'll never make it pay. His work was to run a hat store.
That's what he did when he married me, and he made swell money at it,
too."
The family history interested the boy, as all tales did which accounted
for the personal. He knew now how Martin Quidmore's health had broken
down, and the doctor had ordered out-of-door life as a remedy.
Out-of-door life would have been impossible if an uncle hadn't died
and left him fifteen thousand dollars.
"Enough to live on quite genteel for life," his wife complained, "but
nothing would do but that he should think himself a market-gardener,
him that couldn't tell a turnip from a spade. Blew in the whole thing
on this place, away from everywheres, and making me a drudge that
hardly knew so much as to wash a dish. Even that I could have stood if
he'd only gone on loving me as his marriage vows made it his duty to
do, but--"
"I'll love you, ma," the boy declared, tenderly. "You don't have to cry
because there's no one to love you, not while I'm around."
The new life in her eyes was as much of incredulity as of joy. "Don't
say that, dearie, if you don't mean it. You don't have to love me just
because I'm trying to be a mother to you, and look after your clothes."
"But, ma, I want to. I do."
They gazed at each other, she with the cutter in her hand, he with the
cup. What he saw was not a feeble, slatternly woman, but some one who
wanted him. He had not been wanted by anyone since the night when his
mudda--he still used the word in his deep silences--had gone away with
the wardress who looked like a Fate. In the five intervening years he
had suffered less from unkindness than from being shut out of hearts.
Here was a heart that had need of him, so that he had need of it. The
type of heart didn't matter. If it made any difference it was only that
where there was weakness the appeal to him was the greater. With this
poor thing he would have something on which to spend his treasure.
"You'll see, ma! I'll bring in the water for you, and split the
kindlings, and get up in the morning and light the fire, and milk the
cow, and everything."
Straight and sturdy, he looked at her with the level gaze of eyes that
seemed the calmer and more competent because they were hidden so far
beneath his bushy, horizontal eyebrows. The uniform tan from working in
the sun heightened his air of manliness. Even the earth on his clothes,
and a smudge of it across his forehead where a dirty hand had been put
up to push back his crisp ashen hair, hinted at his capacity to share
in the world's work. To the helpless woman whose prop had failed her,
the coming of this young strength to her aid was little short of a
miracle.
In the struggle between tears and laughter she was almost hysterical.
"Oh, you darling boy!" she was beginning, advancing to clasp him in her
arms. But with old, old memories in his heart he dreaded the paroxysm
of affection.
"All right, ma!" he laughed, dodging her and slipping out. "I've got
to beat it, or fath--" he stumbled on the word because he found it
difficult to use--"or father will wonder where I am." But once in the
yard, he called back consolingly, though keeping to the practical,
"Don't you bother about Geraldine. I'll go round by the pasture and
drive her home as I come back from work. I'll milk her, too."
"God bless you, dearie!"
Standing in the doorway, shading her eyes with her hand, her limp
figure seemed braced to a new power, as she watched him till he
disappeared within the plantation of blue spruces.