Part 26 (2/2)

”Ah, if she was not ready for it, it was not _her_ opportunity. G.o.d is very patient with us, I believe.”

XXIII

RESTIVENESS

Mothers and sons are rarely very personal in their intimacy after the son has taken to himself a wife. Apart from certain moments not appropriate to piazza teas, Paul and his mother were perhaps as comfortable together as the relation averages. It was much that they never talked emotionally. Private judgments which we have refrained from putting into words may die unfruitful and many a bitter crop be spared.

”This is Paul's apology for being happy in spite of himself--and of us!” Moya teased, as she admired the beautifully drawn plans for the quarrymen's club-house.

”It doesn't need any apology; it's a very good thing,” said Mrs.

Bogardus, ignoring double meanings. No caps that were flying around ever fitted her head. Paul's dreams and his mother's practical experience had met once more on a common ground of philanthropy. This time it was a workingmen's club in which the interests of social and mental improvement were conjoined with facilities for outdoor sport. Up to date philanthropy is an expensive toy. Paul, though now a landowner, was far from rich in his own right. His mother financed this as she had many another scheme for him. She was more openhanded than heretofore, but all was done with that ennuyed air which she ever wore as of an older child who has outgrown the game. It was in Moya and Moya's prospective maternity that her pride reinstated itself. Her own history and generation she trod underfoot. Mistakes, humiliations, whichever way she turned. Paul had never satisfied her entirely in anything he did until he chose this girl for the mother of his children. Now their house might come to something. Moya moved before her eyes crowned in the light of the future. And that this n.o.ble and innocent girl, with her perfect intuitions, should turn to _her_ now with such impetuous affection was perhaps the sweetest pain the blighted woman had ever known. She lay awake many a night thinking mute blessings on the mother and the child to be. Yet she resisted that generous initiative so dear to herself, aware with a subtle agony of the pain it gave her son.

One day she said to Paul (they were driving home together through a bit of woodland, the horses stepping softly on the mould of fallen leaves)--”I don't expect you to account for every dollar of mine you spend in helping those who can be helped that way. You have a free hand.”

”I understand,” said Paul. ”I have used your money freely--for a purpose that I never have accounted for.”

”Don't you need more?”

”No; there is no need now.”

”Why is there not?”

Paul was silent. ”I cannot go into particulars. It is a long story.”

”Does the purpose still exist?” his mother asked sharply.

”It does; but not as a claim--for that sort of help.”

”Let me know if such a claim should ever return.”

”I will, mother,” said Paul.

There came a day when mother and son reaped the reward of their mutual forbearance. There was a night and a day when Paul became a boy again in his mother's hands, and she took the place that was hers in Nature. She was the priestess acquainted with mysteries. He followed her, and hung upon her words. The expression of her face meant life and death to him.

The dreadful consciousness pa.s.sed out of his eyes; tears washed it out as he rose from his knees by Moya's bed, and his mother kissed him, and laid his son in his arms.

The following summer saw the club-house and all its affiliations in working order. The beneficiaries took to it most kindly, but were disposed to manage it in their own way: not in all respects the way of the founder's intention.

”To make a gift complete, you must keep yourself out of it,” Mrs.

Bogardus advised. ”You have done your part; now let them have it and run it themselves.”

Paul was not hungry for leaders.h.i.+p, but he had hoped that his interest in the men's amus.e.m.e.nts would bring him closer to them and equalize the difference between the Hill and the quarry.

”You have never worked with them; how can you expect to play with them?”

was another of his mother's cool aphorisms. Alas! Paul, the son of the poor man, had no work, and hence no play.

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