The Mother Part 8

There was no meaning in the words; but the boy held the cross very tenderly, and looked long upon the face of the Man there in torture--and was grieved and awed by the agony....

In the midst of this, the boy's mother entered. She stopped dead beyond the threshold--warned by the unexpected presence to be upon her guard. Her look of amazement changed to a scowl of suspicion. The curate put the boy from his knee. He rose--embarra.s.sed. There was a s.p.a.ce of ominous silence.

"What you doing here?" the woman demanded.

"Trespa.s.sing."

She was puzzled--by the word, the smile, the quiet voice. The whole was a new, nonplussing experience. Her suspicion was aggravated.

"What you been telling the boy? Eh? What you been saying about me?

Hear me? Ain't you got no tongue?" She turned to the frightened child. "Richard," she continued, her voice losing all its quality of anger, "what lies has this man been telling you about your poor mother?"

The boy kept a bewildered silence.

"What you been lying about?" the woman exclaimed, advancing upon the curate, her eyes blazing.

"I have been telling," he answered, still gravely smiling, "the truth."

Her anger was halted--but she was not pacified.

"Telling," the curate repeated, with a little pause, "the truth."

"You been talking about _me_, eh?"

"No; it was of your late husband."

She started.

"I am a curate of the Church of the Lifted Cross," the curate continued, with unruffled composure, "and I have been telling the exact truth concerning----"

"You been lying!" the woman broke in. "Yes, you have!"

"No--not so," he insisted. "The exact truth concerning the funeral of d.i.c.k Slade from the Church of the Lilted Cross. Your son has told me of his father's death--of the funeral, And I have told your son that I distinctly remember the occasion. I have told him, moreover," he added, putting a hand on the boy's shoulder, his eyes faintly twinkling, "that his father was--ah--as I recall him--of most distinguished appearance."

She was completely disarmed.

When, after an agreeable interval, the Rev. John Fithian took his leave, the boy's mother followed him from the room, and closed the door upon the boy. "I'm glad," she faltered, "that you didn't give me away.

It was--kind. But I'm sorry you lied--like that. You didn't have to, you know. He's only a child. It's easy to fool him. _You_ wouldn't have to lie. But I _got_ to lie. It makes him happy--and there's things he mustn't know. He _must_ be happy. I can't stand it when he ain't. It hurts me so. But," she added, looking straight into his eyes, gratefully, "you didn't have to lie. And--it was kind." Her eyes fell. "It was--awful kind."

"I may come again?"

She stared at the floor. "Come again?" she muttered. "I don't know."

"I should very much like to come."

"What do you want?" she asked, looking up. "It ain't _me_, is it?"

The curate shook his head.

"Well, what do you want? I thought you was from the Society. I thought you was an agent come to take him away because I wasn't fit to keep him. But it ain't that. And it ain't _me_. What is it you want, anyhow?"

"To come again."

She turned away. He patiently waited. All at once she looked into his eyes, long, deep, intensely--a scrutiny of his very soul.

"You got a good name to keep, ain't you?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered. "And you?"

"It don't matter about me."

"And I may come?"

"Yes," she whispered.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Headpiece to _Renunciation_]

_RENUNCIATION_

After that the curate came often to the room in the Box Street tenement; but beyond the tenants of top floor rear he did not allow the intimacy to extend--not even to embrace the quaintly love-lorn Mr.

Poddle. It was now summer; the window was open to the west wind, blowing in from the sea. Most the curate came at evening, when the breeze was cool and clean, and the lights began to twinkle in the gathering shadows: then to sit at the window, describing unrealities, not conceived in the world of the listeners; and these new and beautiful thoughts, melodiously voiced in the twilight, filled the hours with wonder and strange delight. Sometimes, the boy sang--his mother, too, and the curate: a harmony of tender voices, lifted softly.

And once, when the songs were all sung, and the boy had slipped away to the comfort of Mr. Poddle, who was now ill abed with his restless lungs, the curate turned resolutely to the woman.

"I want the boy's voice," he said.

She gave no sign of agitation. "His voice?" she asked, quietly.

"Ain't the boy's _self_ nothing to your church?"

"Not," he answered, "to the church."

"Not to you?"

"It is very much," he said, gravely, "to me."

"Well?"

He lifted his eyebrows--in amazed comprehension. "I must say, then,"

he said, bending eagerly towards her, "that I want the boy?"

"The boy," she answered.