near the Church of the Lifted Cross."
They were soon within sight of the trees in the park. The boy's way
was then known to him. Again he extended his hand--again smiled.
"Thank you," he said. "Good-bye."
The acrobat was loath to let the little hand go. But there was nothing
else to do. He dropped it, at last, with a quick-drawn sigh.
"It'll come out all right," he muttered.
Then the boy went his way alone. His shoulders were proudly
squared--his head held high....
Meantime, they had revived Millie Slade. She was in the common
dressing-room--a littered, infamous, foul, place, situated below stage.
Behind her the gas flared and screamed. Still in her panderous
disguise, within hearing of the rasping music and the tramp of the
dance, within hearing of the coarse applause, this tender mother sat
alone, unconscious of evil--uncontaminated, herself kept holy by her
motherhood, lifted by her love from the touch of sin. To her all the
world was a temple, undefiled, wherein she worshipped, wherein the
child was a Presence, purifying every place.
She had no strength left for tragic behaviour. She sat limp, shedding
weak tears, whimpering, tearing at her finger nails.
"I'm found out!" she moaned. "Oh, my God! He'll never love me no
more!"
A woman entered in haste.
"You got it, Aggie?" the mother asked.
"Yes, dear. Now, you just drink this, and you'll feel better."
"I don't want it--now."
"Aw, now, you drink it! Poor dear! It'll do you lots of good."
"He wouldn't want me to."
"Aw, he won't know. And you need it, dear. _Do_ drink it!"
"No, Aggie," said the mother. "It don't matter that he don't know. I
just don't want it. I _can't_ do what he wouldn't like me to."
The glass was put aside. And Aggie sat beside the mother, and drew her
head to a sympathetic breast.
"Don't cry!" she whispered. "Oh, Millie, don't cry!"
"Oh," the woman whimpered, "he'll think me an ugly thing, Aggie. He'll
think me a skinny thing. If I'd only got here in time, if I'd only
looked right, he might have loved me still. But he won't love me no
more--after to-day!"
"Hush, Millie! He's only a kid. He don't know nothing about--such
things."
"Only a kid," said the mother, according to the perverted experience of
her life, "but still a man!"
"He wouldn't care."
"They _all_ care!"
Indeed, this was her view; and by her knowledge of the world she spoke.
"Not him," said Aggie.
The mother was infinitely distressed. "Oh," she moaned, "if I'd only
had time to pad!"
This was the greater tragedy of her situation: that she misunderstood.
[Illustration: Tailpiece to _The Mother_]
[Illustration: Headpiece to _Nearing the Sea_]
_NEARING THE SEA_
It was Sunday evening. Evil-weather threatened. The broad window of
top floor rear looked out upon a lowering sky--everywhere gray and
thick: turning black beyond the distant hills. An hour ago the
Department wagon had rattled away with the body of Mr. Poddle; and with
the cheerfully blasphemous directions, the tramp of feet, the jocular
comment, as the box was carried down the narrow stair, the last
distraction had departed. The boy's mother was left undisturbed to
prepare for the crucial moments in the park.
She was now nervously engaged before her looking-glass. All the tools
of her trade lay at hand. A momentous problem confronted her. The
child must be won back. He must be convinced of her worth. Therefore
she must be beautiful. He thought her pretty. She would be pretty.
But how impress him? By what appeal? The pathetic? the tenderly
winsome? the gay? She would be gay. Marvellous lies occurred to
her--a multitude of them: there was no end to her fertility in
deception. And she would excite his jealousy. Upon that feeling she
would play. She would blow hot; she would blow cold. She would reduce
him to agony--the most poignant agony he had ever suffered. Then she
would win him.
To this end, acting according to the enlightenment of her kind, she
plied her pencil and puffs; and when, at last, she stood before the
mirror, new gowned, beautiful after the conventions of her kind, blind
to the ghastliness of it, ignorant of the secret of her strength, she
had a triumphant consciousness of power.
"He'll love me," she thought, with a snap of the teeth. "He's got to!"
Jim Millette knocked--and pushed the door ajar, and diffidently
intruded his head.
"Hello, Jim!" she cried. "Come in!"
The man would not enter. "I can't, Millie," he faltered. "I just got
a minute."
"Oh, come on in!" said she, contemptuously. "Come in and tell me about
it. What did you do it for, Jim? You got good and even, didn't you?
Eh, Jim?" she taunted. "You got even!"
"It wasn't that, Millie," he protested.
"Oh, wasn't it?" she shrilled.
"No, it wasn't, Millie. I didn't have no grudge against you."
"Then what was it? Come in and tell me!" she laughed. "You dassn't,
Jim! You're afraid! come in," she flashed, "and I'll make you lick my
shoes! And when you're crawling on the floor, Jim, like a slimy dog,
I'll kick you out. Hear me, you pup? What you take my child in there
for?" she cried. "Hear me? Aw, you pup!" she snarled. "You're afraid
to come in!"
"Don't go on, Millie," he warned her. "Don't you go on like that.
Maybe I _will_ come in. And if I do, my girl, it won't be me that'll
be lickin' shoes. It might be _you_!"
"Me!" she scorned. "You ain't got no hold on me no more. Come in and
try it!"
The man hesitated.
"Come on!" she taunted.
"I ain't coming in, Millie," he answered. "I didn't come up to come
in. I just come up to tell you I was sorry."
She laughed.
"I didn't know you was there, Millie," the man continued. "If I'd
knowed you was with the Forty Flirts, I wouldn't have took the boy
there. And I come up to tell you so."
Overcome by a sudden and agonizing recollection of the scene, she put
her hands to her face.
"And I come up to tell you something else," the acrobat continued,
speaking gently. "I tell you, Millie, you better look out. If you
ain't careful, you'll lose him for good. He took it hard, Millie.
Hard! It broke the little fellow all up. It hurt him--awful!"
She began to walk the floor. In the room the light was failing. It
was growing dark--an angry portent--over the roofs of the opposite city.
"Do you want him back?" the man asked.
"Want him back!" she cried.
"Then," said he, his voice soft, grave, "take care!"
"Want him back?" she repeated, beginning, now, by habit, to tear at her
nails. "I got to have him back! He's mine, ain't he? Didn't I bear
him? Didn't I nurse him? Wasn't it me that--that--_made_ him? He's
my kid, I tell you--_mine_! And I want him back! Oh, I want him so!"
The man entered; but the woman seemed not to know it. He regarded her
compassionately.
"That there curate ain't got no right to him," she complained. "_He_
didn't have nothing to do with the boy. It was only me and Dick.
What's he sneaking around here for--taking Dick's boy away? The boy's
half mine and half Dick's. The curate ain't got no share. And now
Dick's dead--and he's _all_ mine! The curate ain't got nothing to do
with it. We don't want no curate here. I raised that boy for myself.
I didn't do it to give him to no curate. What right's he got coming
around here--getting a boy he didn't have no pain to bear or trouble to
raise? I tell you _I_ got that boy. He's mine--and I want him!"
"But you give the boy to the curate, Millie!"
"No, I didn't!" she lied. "He took the boy. He come sneaking around
here making trouble. _I_ didn't give him no boy. And I want him
back," she screamed, in a gust of passion. "I want my boy back!"
A rumble of thunder--failing, far off--came from the sea.
"Millie," the acrobat persisted, "you said you wasn't fit to bring him
up."
"I ain't," she snapped. "But I don't care. He's mine--and I'll have
him."
The man shrugged his shoulders.
"Jim," the woman said, now quiet, laying her hands on the acrobat's
shoulders, looking steadily into his eyes, "that boy's mine. I want
him--I want him--back. But I don't want him if he don't love me. And
if I can't have him--if I can't have him----"
"Millie!"
"I'll be all alone, Jim--and I'll want----"
He caught her hands. "Me?" he asked. "Will you want me?"
"I don't know."
"Millie," he said, speaking hurriedly, "_won't_ you want me? I've took
up with the little Tounson blonde. But _she_ wouldn't care. You know
how it goes, Millie. It's only for business. She and me team up.
That's all. She wouldn't care. And if you want me--if you want me,
Millie, straight and regular, for better or for worse--if you want me
that way, Millie----"
"Don't, Jim!"
He let her hands fall--and drew away. "I love you too much," he said,
"to butt in now. But if the boy goes back on you, Millie, I'll
come--again. You'll need me then--and that's why I'll come. I don't
want him to go back on you. I want him to love you still. It's
because of the way you love him that I love you--in the way I do. It
ain't easy for me to say this. It ain't easy for me to want to give
you up. But you're that kind of a woman, Millie. You're that
kind--since you got the boy. I want to give you up. You'd be better
off with him. You're--you're--_holier_--when you're with that child.
You'd break your poor heart without that boy of yours. And I want you
to have him--to love him--to be loved by him. If he comes back, you'll
not see me again. I've lived a life that makes me--not fit--to be with
no child like him. But so help me God!" the man passionately declared,
"I hope he don't turn you down!"
"You're all right, Jim!" she sobbed. "You're all right!"
"I'm going now," he said, quietly. "But I got one more thing to say.
Don't fool that boy!"
She looked up.
"Don't fool him," the man repeated. "You'll lose him if you do."
"Not fool him? It's so easy, Jim!"
"Ah, Millie," he said, with a hopeless gesture, "you're blind. You
don't know your own child. You're blind--you're just blind!"
"What you mean, Jim?" she demanded.
"You don't know what he loves you for."
"What does he love me for?"
The man was at the door. "Because," he answered, turning, "you're his
mother!"
It was not yet nine o'clock. The boy would still be in the church.
She must not yet set out for the park. So she lighted the lamp. For a
time she posed and grimaced before the mirror. When she was perfect in
the part, she sat in the rocking-chair at the broad window, there to
rehearse the deceptions it was in her mind to practice. But while she
watched the threatening shadows gather, the lights on the river flash
into life and go drifting aimlessly away, her mind strayed from this
purpose, her willful heart throbbed with sweeter feeling--his childish
voice, the depths of his eyes, the grateful weight of his head upon her
bosom. Why had he loved her? Because she was his mother! A forgotten
perception returned to illuminate her way--a perception, never before
reduced to formal terms, that her virtue, her motherly tenderness, were
infinitely more appealing to him than the sum of her other attractions.
She started from the chair--her breast heaving with despairing alarm.
Again she stood before the mirror--staring with new-opened eyes at the
painted face, the gaudy gown: and by these things she was now horrified.
"He won't love me!" she thought. "Not this way. He--he--couldn't!"
It struck the hour.
"Nine o'clock!" she cried. "I got to _do_ something!"
She looked helplessly about the room. Why had he loved her? Because
she was his mother! She would be his mother--nothing more: just his
mother. She would go to him with that appeal. She would not seek to
win him. She would but tell him that she was his mother. She would be
his mother--true and tender and holy. He would not resist her plea....
This determined, she acted resolutely and in haste: she stripped off
the gown, flung it on the floor, kicked the silken heap under the bed;
she washed the paint from her face, modestly laid her hair, robed
herself anew. And when again, with these new, seeing eyes, she looked
into the glass, she found that she was young, unspoiled--still lovely:
a sweetly wistful woman, whom he resembled. Moreover, there came to
transform her, suddenly, gloriously, a revelation: that of the
spiritual significance of her motherhood.
"Thank God!" she thought, uplifted by this vision. "Oh, thank God!
I'm like them other people. I'm fit to bring him up!"
It thundered ominously.
[Illustration: Tailpiece to _Nearing the Sea_]
[Illustration: Headpiece to _The Last Appeal_]
_THE LAST APPEAL_
She sat waiting for him at the bench by the lilac bush. He was late,
she thought--strangely late. She wondered why. It was dark. The
night was close and hot. There was no breath of air stirring in the
park. From time to time the lightning flashed. In fast lessening
intervals came the thunder. Presently she caught ear of his step on
the pavement--still distant: approaching, not from the church, but from
the direction of the curate's home.
"And he's not running!" she thought, quick to take alarm.
They were inexplicable--these lagging feet. He had never before
dawdled on the way. Her alarm increased. She waited anxiously--until,
with eyes downcast, he stood before her.
"Richard!" she tenderly said.
"I'm here, mother," he answered; but he did not look at her.
She put her arms around him. "Your mother," she whispered, while she
kissed him, "is glad--to feel you--lying here."
He lay quiet against her--his face on her bosom. She was thrilled by
this sweet pressure.
"Have you been happy?" she asked.
"No."
"Nor I, dear!"
He turned his face--not to her: to the flaming cross above the church.
She had invited a question. But he made no response.
"Nor I," she repeated.
Still he gazed at the cross. It was shining in a black cloud--high in
the sky. She felt him tremble.
"Hold me tight!" he said.
She drew him to her--glad to have him ask her to: having no disquieting
question.
"Tighter!" he implored.
She rocked him. "Hush, dear!" she crooned. "You're safe--with your
mother. What frightens you?"
"The cross!" he sobbed.
God knows! 'twas a pity that his childish heart misinterpreted the
message of the cross--changing his loving purpose into sin. But the
misinterpretation was not forever to endure....
The wind began to stir the leaves--tentative gusts: swirling eagerly
through the park. There was a flash--an instant clap of thunder,
breaking overhead, rumbling angrily away. Two men ran past. Great
drops of rain splashed on the pavement.
"Let us go home," the boy said.
"Not yet!" she protested. "Oh, not yet!"
He escaped from her arms.
"Don't go, Richard!" she whimpered. "Please don't, dear! Not yet.
I--I'm--oh, I'm not ready to say good-night. Not yet!"
He took her hand. "Come, mother!" he said.
"Not yet!"
He dropped her hand--sprang away from her with a startled little cry.
"Oh, mother," he moaned, "don't you want me?"
"Home?" she asked, blankly. "Home--with me?"
"Oh, yes, mother! Let me go home. Quick I Let us go.... The curate
says I know best. I went straight to him--yesterday--and told him.
And he said I was wiser than he.... And I said good-bye. Don't send
me back. For, oh, I want to go home--with you!"
She opened her arms. At that moment a brilliant flash of lightning
illuminated the world. For the first time the child caught sight of
her face--the sweet, real face of his mother: now radiant, touched by
the finger of the Good God Himself.
"Is it you?" he whispered.
"I am your mother."
He leaped into her arms--found her wet eyes with his lips. "Mother!"
he cried.
"My son!" she said.
He turned again to the flaming cross--a little smile of defiance upon
his lips. But the defiance passed swiftly: for it was then revealed to
him that his mother was good; and he knew that what the cross signified
would continue with him, wherever he went, that goodness and peace
might abide within his heart. Hand in hand, while the thunder still
rolled and the rain came driving with the wind, they hurried away
towards the Box Street tenement....
Let them go! Why not? Let them depart into their world! It needs
them. They will glorify it. Nor will they suffer loss. Let them go!
Love flourishes in the garden of the world we know. Virtue is forever
in bloom. Let them go to their place! Why should we wish to deprive
the unsightly wilderness of its flowers? Let the tenderness of this
mother and son continue to grace it!
[Illustration: Tailpiece to _The Last Appeal_]
THE END