"NEVER MIND, MOMMIE"
YET in thinking it over, this course had seemed to Mrs. Burnham
eminently wise. Mr. Conway was quite as much in touch with the
fashionable world as a clergyman could well be; he had been brought up
in its atmosphere and had turned from what were supposed to be very
alluring prospects to live the comparatively straitened life of a
minister of the gospel. His undoubted scholarship commended him
especially to a young fellow like Erskine who came of a scholarly line.
If, without being directly appealed to for advice, the minister could be
drawn into an expression of opinion about these questionable matters, it
would certainly help; and under her skilful management he expressed
himself; but behold, he was on the wrong side! At least he was not on
the side that Ruth Burnham, having been for years accustomed to the
pastorate of Dr. Dennis, had taken it for granted that he would be.
There was, he assured her, something to be said on the other side of
that question. Of course he was opposed to all forms of gambling, but a
social game of cards in the parlor of a friend was innocent amusement
enough--much better than certain others he could name that seemed to
have escaped the ban of the over-cautious. He was really in earnest
about this matter. He considered that there was positive danger in
drawing the lines too taut. He knew a fellow in college who had been
very carefully reared in one of those very narrow homes where a card was
never allowed to penetrate, and where they looked in holy horror upon
the idea of his touching one elsewhere; but he hadn't been in college an
entire year before he spent half his nights at cards! and he went to the
bad as fast as he could. That, the clergyman believed, was what often
happened when young people were held too closely. That was by no means
the only instance which had come under his personal knowledge, and
indeed he believed that, of the two extremes, he feared the narrow the
more. Human nature was such that there was sure to be a rebound from
over-strictness, and the clearer, keener brained the victim was, the
more fear of results. There was much more of the same sort. Poor Ruth,
who had not meant to argue, and who had wished of all things to avoid
anything that would look in the least like a personal matter, tried in
vain to change the subject. Erskine, with an occasional mischievous
glance for her alone, led his pastor on to say much more than he had
probably intended at first. Not that he differed from him in the least;
on the contrary he took the rôle of an eager youth to whom it was a
vital matter to have the "narrowness" of his surroundings immediately
widened.
Mrs. Burnham, disappointed and hurt, became almost entirely silent, and
when she finally walked down the hall with her departing pastor, felt no
wish to consult him about a matter on which she had intended to ask his
advice at the first opportunity. She had a feeling that it made little
difference to her what his advice was on any subject; yet she knew that
that was real narrowness and that she must rise above it. Such was the
condition of things on that evening in late autumn when she stood
looking out of the bay window at the swiftly gathering night and
appeared to be watching the passers-by through a mist of unshed tears,
while Erskine played exquisite strains of harmony. His mother,
listening, or rather letting the music melt unconsciously into her
being, felt peculiarly alone with her responsibilities. Who was she that
she should hope, alone and unaided, to battle successfully with the
temptations of this great wicked world full of yawning pitfalls
especially prepared for the feet of young men? How was she ever to hope
to guide a boy like Erskine successfully through its snares, without
even a pastor to lean upon? What if Erskine should be like that college
boy Mr. Conway had taken such pains to describe graphically and insist
upon going to the bad as soon as he was away from her influence? She
could see that that was just what was being feared for him; it was
probably what Mr. Conway meant.
Wait, must her boy, her one treasure, be away from her influence? Yes,
of course he must; everybody said so. Why, there were people who were
certain that she was ruining her son by keeping so close to him even
now. Not only now, but away back in his young boyhood. She recalled with
a shiver of pain how her husband had once said to her:--
"Have a care, Ruth; you don't want to make a Molly Coddle of the boy,
remember."
Later, she had heard of one of the Mitchells as declaring that "Mrs.
Burnham was making a regular 'Miss Nancy' of that boy of hers, and if
somebody did not take him in hand, he would be ruined."
Then, her intimate friends had been as plain with their cautions as they
dared. Had not Marian Dennis pleaded earnestly for a famous boys' school
fifty miles away? "It would be so good for him, Ruth; he would learn
self-reliance and patience; two lessons that a boy never can learn at
home, when there is but one." And Dr. Dennis had added his word: "As a
rule, my friend, a boy learns manliness by being compelled to be manly
and to depend upon himself."
There was her old friend Eurie, with four rollicking, romping boys of
her own, always looking doubtfully at Ruth's fair-haired, fair-skinned,
rather quiet, always gentlemanly boy.
"Let him come and spend a summer with us, Ruth," she urged, "and row and
swim and hunt and get almost shot and quite drowned a few times; it will
do him good, body and soul. Boys learn manhood by hairbreadth escapes,
you know." She had laughed at Ruth's shudder and had told Marian
privately that "Ruth was simply idiotic over that poor boy."
Only Flossy, their dainty, gentle, still beautiful Flossy, had seemed to
understand. Had she too meant a caution? As she kissed Ruth good-by, the
four girls of Chautauqua memory having spent a never-to-be-forgotten
week together at Ruth Burnham's home, she had said gently:--
"The best place in the world for a boy, dear Ruth, is as close to his
mother as he wants to be, just as long as he plans to be there. I have
studied boys a good deal, and I think I am sure of so much."
Ruth's face had flushed over this murmured word. She had been half vexed
with the others, but it had been given to their little Flossy, as often
before, to give her a new thought. She studied over it; she took it to
heart and let it color all her movements. More and more after that,
although Erskine was still quite young, she kept herself in the
background and pushed him forward. On their little trips to the larger
city and in any of their outings indeed, she compelled herself to sit
quietly in the waiting-room, while Erskine went to buy tickets and check
baggage. It is true that every nerve in her body quivered with
apprehension until he was safely beside her again, yet she held firmly
to her purpose.
Very early in their life alone together she ceased any attempt to drive
the ponies that were Erskine's delight, and sat beside him outwardly
quiet and inwardly quaking until she had learned her lesson--reminding
herself continually that the boy's father had taught him to love and to
manage horses when he was too small to touch his feet to the carriage
floor.
She gave up early, and with a purpose, the taking Erskine to town with
her for a round of shopping or pleasure-seeking, and learned to say
meekly and in a natural tone of voice:--
"Can you take me to town on Saturday, dear? I have many errands to do,
and I don't like to go alone."
She had lived through all these things, and it was not in any such
directions that either she or her friends had fears any more. Erskine
was self-reliant enough; in fact he was masterful, though so courteous
in his ways that few beside herself suspected it. He had inherited much
from his father. Still, the mother knew that there was a strong sense in
which she dominated his life. That he went to certain places and
refrained from going to certain others simply to please her and not at
all as a matter of principle. She was far from being satisfied with
this, and was always asking herself: "How long will he do this?" and
"Are such concessions worth anything in the way of character?"
She had many questions, this anxious mother of one child; there were
days, and this was one, when they pressed her sorely.
The music flowed on; now soft and tender as a caress, now breaking into
great waves of sound that meant energy, and possibly conflict.
Suddenly it ceased with a great crash of keys, still in harmony, and the
boy wheeled on his stool, looked at his mother, and laughed.
"You woke up the wrong chap that time, didn't you, mother?" he said. "It
was as good as a play to hear him go on and to watch your face. I
haven't enjoyed anything so much in a long time."
He laughed again over the memory. His mother did not join in the laugh;
just then she could not. Those tears that she had managed, not allowing
them to fall, had somehow got into her throat. She felt that she should
choke if she attempted to speak, and she could not summon at the moment
more than the ghost of a smile.
Erskine wheeled back to the piano for a moment, played a few bars of a
popular song with one hand, humming it softly; then, in the midst of a
line, arose and strolled over to the window where his mother stood.
"Never mind, mommie," he said, bending his tall form low enough to kiss
the tip of one ear--a whimsical little caress peculiar to himself. "She
mustn't go and look at the clouds and the storm and the dark as though
there wasn't any sunshine anywhere. I am not intending to go to the dogs
as soon as I go away from home, merely because my mother did her level
best all her life to keep me right side up with care; and in my opinion
it would be a poor sort of chap who would do any such thing. And I don't
feel the need of a social game of cards now and then as a safeguard,
either. I don't feel especially 'taut,' mommie, honestly; and I don't
care a straw for the Mitchells' card party. Did you really think I cared
for it on that account? How absurd! Don't you worry one least little
mite, mamma, there is absolutely nothing to be troubled over except that
you have a pastor who doesn't know enough to talk a little bit on the
side that you want talked, or else keep still. Wasn't it funny?" He
laughed once more, then added, a trifle more gravely:--
"When that man is older, he will understand people better, perhaps.
Don't you hope so? Shall I read to you, mamma, a little while? I have a
delicious book here that I know you will enjoy."
Did he understand, would he ever understand, what a mountain weight he
had suddenly lifted from his mother's heart? What a gracious,
sweet-spirited, self-sacrificing boy he was! Had there ever been one
just like him? She knew he was fond of the Mitchells, and that they were
eager to have him with them in their social life; they had brought as
much pressure as they could, and he had resisted it for his mother's
sake.
It was sweet, but--She could not keep back one little sigh. She was a
devoted mother; but she would, oh, so much rather it had been for
Christ's sake.
There was an unexpected outcome from that interview with Mr. Conway. In
a very short time it became evident that he had lost his hold upon
Erskine. Not that the boy turned against him seriously; but he smiled
over some of his words and purposely misquoted others in a spirit of
mischief. Occasionally there was a curve to the smile that suggested a
sneer; and the strongest feeling he evinced for him might be called
indifference. In his secret heart Erskine knew that he was being
unreasonable, and was really resenting his mother's having been made
uncomfortable; but he could not get away from the feeling that Mr.
Conway, having been weighed in his mother's balance and found wanting,
was not to his mind, however much he himself might differ from her. Of
course all this was mere feeling, not principle.
Nevertheless, the clergyman, who prided himself on his influence with
young men and who puzzled anxiously over Erskine Burnham's changed
attitude which he vaguely felt and could not define, might have been
helped if some one had been frank enough to explain the situation.
Nobody did. The boy scoffed in secret, assuring himself that a minister
who could not be a comfort to a woman and a widow when she tried to lean
on him was a "poor sort of chap." As for the mother, she told herself
that if she had not been weak and foolish in carrying her anxieties to
others, Mr. Conway would not have lost his influence over Erskine; and
the minister remained perplexed and anxious; he was sincerely eager to
be helpful to young men.
Outwardly they all went on as before. The Mitchells and others of their
kind made their card parties and their social dances and their theatre
parties and continued to invite eagerly Mrs. Burnham's handsome young
son, who cheerfully declined all invitations and stayed with his mother.
But he argued no more; in fact he declined to do so, setting the whole
matter gayly aside, with a cheerful--
"Don't let us argue about these things any more, mommie. We shouldn't
agree, and they are not worth disagreeing over. I don't care a copper
for the whole crowd of entertainments that you think of with
interrogation points attached, and I don't care two straws about what
others think of me in connection with them; so let us taboo the whole
subject and enjoy ourselves."
His mother would have liked something very different. She would have
been glad if he had given himself to the study of such matters, and
settled them from principle. She harassed herself by imagining what an
unspeakably happy mother she would be if instead of his gay, kind words
he had said:--
"I have been looking into this matter carefully and I understand why you
take the position that you do. In fact I do not see how a Christian
could do otherwise. I shall take it with you, and you may consider that
the question is settled with me for all time."
However, it is something, indeed it is a great deal, for a lone and
lonely mother to have a boy go her way, and go smilingly, merely to
please her.