"It's no credit at all the son you've bore me, ma'am, but a sorrow and
a woe that'll be killing us in our old age and maybe damning our souls
at the heel of it. Where he got his blackguardly ways from I'm not
saying, but it wasn't from my side of the house anyway, so it wasn't,
and that's a moral. Get out of my sight you sniffling lout, and if
ever I catch you at your practices again I'll lam you till you won't be
able to wink without help, so I will."
"Musha," sobbed his wife, "don't be always talking out of you. Any one
would think that it was an old, criminal thief you were instructing,
instead of a bit of a child that'll be growing out of his wildness in
no time. Come across to me, child, come over to your mother, my lamb."
That night, when his father got into bed, he prodded his foot against
something under the sheets. Investigation discovered a brown paper bag
at the end of the bed. A further search revealed a wasp's nest, inside
of which there was an hundred angry wasps blazing for combat. His
father left the room with more expedition than decency. He did not
stop to put on as much as his hat. He fled to the stream which ran
through the meadow at the back of their house, and lay down in it, and
in two seconds there was more bad language than water in the stream.
Every time he lifted his head for air the wasps flew at him with their
tails curled. They kept him there for half an hour, and in that time
he laid in the seeds of more rheumatism than could be cured in two
lifetimes.
When he returned home he found his wife lying on the floor with a
blanket wrapped about her head, groaning by instinct, for she was
senseless.
Her face had disappeared. There was nothing where it had been but
poisoned lumps. A few days later it was found that she was blind of
one eye, and there was danger of erysipelas setting in.
The boy could not be found for some time, but a neighbour, observing a
stone come from nowhere in particular and hit a cat, located the first
cause in a ditch. He brought the boy home, and grabbed his father just
in time to prevent murder being done.
It was soon found that the only thing which eased the restless moaning
woman was the touch of her son. All her unmanageable, delirious
thoughts centred on him--
"Sure he's only a boy; beating never did good to anything. Give him a
chance now for wouldn't a child be a bit wild anyhow. You will be a
good boy, won't you? Come to your mother, my lamb."
So the lad grew, from twelve to fifteen, from fifteen to twenty. Soon
he attained to manhood. To his mother he seemed to have leaped in a
day from the careless, prattling babe to the responsibly-whiskered
miracle at whom mothers sit and laugh in secret delight. This
towering, big-footed, hairy person! was he really the little boy who
used to hide in her skirts when his father scowled? She had only to
close her eyes and she could feel again a pair of little hands clawing
at her breast, sore from the violent industry of soft, wee lips.
So he grew. Breeches that were big became small. Bony wrists were
continually pushing out of coat cuffs. His feet would burst out of his
boots. He grew out of everything but one. A man may outgrow his
breeches, he cannot outgrow his nature: his body is never too big or
too small to hold that.
Every living thing in the neighbourhood knew him. When a cat saw him
coming it climbed a tree and tried to look as much like a lump of wood
as it could. When a dog heard his step it tucked its tail out of sight
and sought for a hole in the hedge. The birds knew he carried stones
in his pockets. No tree cast so black a shadow in the sunlight as he
did. There were stories of a bottle of paraffin oil and a cat that
screeched in flames. Folk told of a maltreated dog that pointed its
nose to heaven and bayed a curse against humanity until a terrified man
battered it to death with a shovel. No one knew who did it, but every
one said there were only two living hearts capable of these
iniquities--one belonged to the devil, the other to our young man, and
they acquitted Satan of the deeds.
The owner of the dog swore by the beasts in the field and the stars in
the sky that he would tear the throat of the man who had injured his
beast.
The father drove his one-eyed wife from the house, and went with her to
live elsewhere; but she left him and went back to her son, and her
husband forswore the twain.
When women saw him in the road they got past him with their breath
hissing through their teeth in fear. When men passed him they did it
warily, with their fists clenched and their eyes alert. He was shunned
by every one. The strength of his arms also was a thing to be afraid
of, and in the world there was but two welcomes for him, one from his
mother, the other from an old, grey rat that slept in his breast--
"Sure, you're all against him," his mother would say. "Why don't you
give the boy a chance? It's only the hot blood of youth that's working
in him--and he never did it either. Look how kind he is to me! never
the bad word or the hard look! Ye black hearts that blame my boy, look
among yourselves for the villain. No matter who is against you, come
to your mother, my lamb."
He was found one day at the foot of the cliff with his neck broken.
Some said that he had slipped and fallen, some said he had committed
suicide, other some pursed their lips tightly and said nothing. All
were relieved that he was gone, saving his mother only, she mourned for
her only son, and wept bitterly, refusing to be comforted until she
died.