"MY ONLY BOY!"
MRS. STUART felt her loneliness more than she would have liked to
say, and very bitter and sorrowful grew her spirit, as time went by
and Archie appeared not. She could not read, could not employ herself,
could not turn her mind to any other subject. She would not go out, for
fear Archie might return to find her gone.
"It would serve him right," she told herself; and once she rose and put
her bonnet on, determined to punish him. But resolution failed there,
and she took it off and sat down again.
So the minutes dragged slowly past, and Mrs. Stuart watched in weary
solitude; and her face fell into a sad dreary set, which anybody must
have been grieved to see.
Suddenly a brisk footstep could be heard without. Mrs. Stuart stirred
out of her stooping postures and was in one moment stiffly upright.
She wiped hastily away the traces of two tears which had insisted on
having their way, and hardened her features into an expression of cold
indifference. Archie should not know what she had suffered. If he did
not care to be with her, she would not seem to care about being with
him.
"Well, mother?" Archie spoke in a bright voice as he entered, for he
wanted to make a pleasant impression. "Like to have a walk with me?"
Mrs. Stuart made no answer. She would not look at Archie, but stood up,
stalked to a drawer, pulled out a duster, and began polishing a corner
of the small bookshelf, which needed no polishing.
"Come, mother! Now you're not going to be vexed with me still,"
expostulated Archie. "There's no need. Let's have a walk and forget it."
Mrs. Stuart went on with her polishing industriously, just as if she
had not heard a word.
"Of course if you don't want me, I can be off again," said Archie, in
a rather aggrieved tone. "But I should think you might as well forgive
and forget. I'm sorry now that I went away in such a hurry from dinner.
And I do think you've been angry long enough."
Mrs. Stuart faced round upon Archie.
"Where have you been all this while?" she demanded.
"I went for a walk, mother, first."
"And after that?"
"I just went in for a little chat with Mrs. Dunn. But I didn't stay
long. She wouldn't let me stay. She told me I'd ought to come back to
you; so I've come."
Mrs. Stuart's thin nostrils began to quiver.
"I'm much beholden to Mrs. Dunn," she said hoarsely. "So I'm to have my
boy's company at the bidding of a stranger! That's it, is it? Not as he
cares to be with his mother! O no, I quite understand all about it now!
And all I've got to say is, that if you don't want to be here, I don't
want to have you. So there! You'd best go back to Mrs. Dunn, and stay
there till bedtime. Why shouldn't you? I don't care whether you go or
stay. I'm not going to have you come to me just at Mrs. Dunn's bidding."
She did not mean it, of course; people seldom do mean what they say
in a passion. She did care very much—even terribly. It went to her
heart to have this difference with her boy. But pride and temper were
stronger than love. They had been allowed to grow rampant during many
long years of indulgence; and the gentler plant of love was well-nigh
choked by these great rank weeds. So bitter was her tone, so severe was
her manner, that Archie at the moment believed her words. He looked
strangely at Mrs. Stuart, growing almost pale.
"Very well, mother!" he said, husky in his turn. "If you don't want
me, I'll go. I'm sure I shan't bother you, against your will. I'll go
somewhere, though it won't be to the Dunns. And you needn't look for me
till bedtime." Archie stopped, hesitating. "If you mean it," he added.
"It isn't my way to say one thing and mean another," retorted Mrs.
Stuart. "May be the way of your friends, the Dunns,—likely enough! A
set of—"
"Mother, you'd better not! You don't know them!" broke in Archie.
"I know enough about 'em," she said scornfully. "Trying to wheedle you
away from me—you that I've just lived for! I know all about it! But I
don't mean to say no more. You'll do as you choose. And if you don't
want to stay, I don't mean to have you just at Mrs. Dunn's bidding, nor
that spoony-faced chit of a girl's neither."
Archie broke into one angry utterance, and then he was gone—this time
with a heavy unmistakable bang of the front door. Mrs. Stuart could see
him striding past the window, not towards Woodbine Cottage, but the
other way.
Would he come back? Might he not think better of his annoyance, and
return? She had not meant him to take her at her word. She had not
intended really to send him from her. Was it only the allusion to Nancy
Dunn which he would not endure? Mrs. Stuart's face grew rigid at this
thought.
She stood very long near the window, watching and waiting. Then she
sat down, and watched and waited still. The afternoon wore away, and
tea-time approached. Mrs. Stuart laid the table, and put the kettle on
to boil; but she could not resolve to sit down alone to eat and think;
and Archie did not come.
"I've driven him away," she murmured at length. "And he's my only boy."
Time went on, and by-and-by the Church bells began to ring. Would
Archie not reappear in time for Church? He had always gone with her.
Mrs. Stuart made herself a cup of tea, and drank it off feverishly.
It was of no use to think of eating. Then she dressed, putting on her
boots and her best shawl and bonnet. Just at the last moment he would
run in—having had tea doubtless somewhere else.
But the last moment came, and with it no Archie. The bells had ceased
chiming, and the last five minutes' tinkle had come to an end. Mrs.
Stuart stood waiting still.
Suddenly she came to a resolution. She would go and try to find her
boy. Why had she not started sooner on this errand? The two had been
parted long enough. Mrs. Stuart meant to forgive him now, and to take
him back into favour. As for the Dunns, that matter must settle itself
somehow. It was not her intention to give way about them; but, on the
other hand, she could not forego her boy's companionship. She had had a
lesson against pulling the reins too sharply.
"I'll find him and bring him back," she murmured. "I mustn't drive him
away. He's getting masterful—not a child any longer, and I mustn't
forget that."
And she started on the search, her mother's heart all unstrung and
aching with the strain of the afternoon, her whole soul going out in a
passionate longing for the boy she so loved.
Yet, if Archie had that moment walked up with a smile, I am not at
all sure whether her features would not have stiffened instantly with
cold disdain, and whether she might not have turned her back upon him
straightway.