The Mother Part 20

"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 da.s.sn'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 compa.s.sionately.

"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 d.i.c.k.

What's he sneaking around here for--taking d.i.c.k's boy away? The boy's half mine and half d.i.c.k's. The curate ain't got no share. And now d.i.c.k'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 pa.s.sion. "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 b.u.t.t 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 G.o.d!" the man pa.s.sionately 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.