"Oh, I should certainly say so. It is nothing but books all over the house. Really, he has more books than Dad." This statement was to strengthen the one regarding the family ancestors--both telling arguments about Kennedy Square.
"And this girl--is she a lady?"
The question somehow put to flight all his mental manoeuvres. "She is more than a lady, mother.
She is the dearest--" He stopped, hesitated for an instant, and slipping his arm around his mother's neck drew her close to him. Then, in a torrent of words--his cheeks against hers--the whole story came out. He was a boy again now; that quality in him that would last all his life. She listened with her eyes on the floor, her heart torn with varying. emotions. She was disturbed, but not alarmed.
One phase of the situation stood out clearly in her practical mind--his poverty and the impossibility of any immediate marriage. Before that obstacle could be removed she felt sure his natural vacillation regarding women would save him. He would forget her as he had Sue.
"And you say her brother works in the fields and that her father and mother permitted this girl to leave home and sit night after night with you young men with no other protection than that of a common Irishwoman?" There was a tone of censure now in her voice that roused a slight antagonism in Oliver.
"Why not? What could harm her? There was no other place for her to go where she could learn anything."
Mrs. Horn kept still for a moment, looking on the floor. Oliver sat watching her face.
"And your family, my son," she protested with a certain patient disapproval in her tones. "Do they count for nothing? I, of course, would love anybody you would make your wife, but you have others about you. No man has a right to marry beneath him. Do not be in a hurry over this matter.
Come home for your wife when you are ready to marry. Give yourself time to compare this girl, who seems to have fascinated you, with--Sue, for instance, or any of the others you have been brought up with."
Oliver shrugged his shoulders at the mention of Sue's name. He had compared her.
"You would not talk this way, dearie; if you could see her," he replied in a hopeless way as if the futility of making his mother understand was now becoming apparent to him. "She is different from anyone you ever met--she is so strong, so fine--such a woman in all that the word means. Not something you fondle and make love to, remember, but a woman more like a Madonna that you worship, or a Greek goddess that you might fear. As to the family part of it, I am getting tired of it all, mother.
What good is Grandfather Horn or anybody else to me? I have got to dig my way out just as they did.
Just as dear old Dad is doing. If he succeeds in his work who will help him but himself? There have been times when I used to love to remember him sitting by his reading-lamp or with his violin tucked under his chin, and I was proud to think he was my father. Do you know what sets my blood on fire now? It is when I think of him standing over his forge and blowing his bellows, his hands black with coal. I understand many things, dearie, that I knew nothing about when I left home. You used to tell me yourself that everybody had to work, and you sent me away to do it. I looked upon it then as a degradation. I see it differently now. I have worked with all my might all summer, and I have brought back a whole lot of sketches that the boys like. Now I am going to work again with Mr. Slade.
I do not like his work, and I do love mine, but I am going to stick to his all the same. I have got something to work for now," and his face brightened.
"I am going to win!"
She did not interrupt him. It was better he should unburden his heart. She was satisfied with his record; if he went wrong she only was to blame.
But he was not going wrong; nor was there anything to worry about--not even his art--not so long as he kept his place with Mr. Slade and only took it up as a relaxation from more weighty cares. It was only the girl that caused her a moment's thought.
She saw too, through all his outburst, a certain independence and a fearlessness and a certain fixedness of purpose that sent an exultant thrill through her even when her heart was burdened with the thought of this new danger that threatened him.
She had sent him away for the fault of instability, and he had overcome it. Should she not now hold fast, as she had before, and save him the second time from this girl who was beneath him in station and who would drag him down to her level, and so perhaps ruin him?
"We will not talk any more about it to-night, my son," she said, in tender tones, leaning forward and kissing him on the cheek--it was through his affections that she controlled him. "You should be tired out with your day's journey and ought to rest.
Take my advice--do not ask her to be your wife yet.
Think about it a little and see some other women before you make up your mind."
A delicious tremor passed through Oliver. He HAD asked her, and she HAD promised! He remembered just the very day, the hour, the minute. That was the bliss of it all! But this he did not tell his mother. He would not hurt her any further now.
Some other day he would tell her; when she could see Madge and judge for herself. No, not to-night, and so with the secret untold he kissed her and led her to her room.
And yet strange to say it was the one only thing in all his life that he had kept from her.
Ah! these mothers! who make lovers of their only sons, dominating their lives! How bitter must be the hours when they realize that another's arms are opening for them!
And these boys--what misgivings come; what doubts. How the old walls, impregnable from childhood, begin to crumble! How little now the dear mother knows--she so wise but a few moons since.
How this new love steps in front of the old love and claims every part of the boy as its very own.
