Part 8 (1/2)

”Where do you live?” She gave an address altogether different from that she had given before--a place on the next avenue, within a block or two. ”You'd better go home. You can walk, can't you?”

”I can walk well enough,” she answered in a tone of vexation, and she made her word good by walking quite actively away in the direction she had given.

The kind colored girl became a part of the prevalent dark after refusing the thanks of the others. The daughter then fervently offered them to the policeman.

”That's all right, lady,” he said, and the incident had closed except for her emotion at seeing him enter a police-station precisely across the street, where they could have got a dozen policemen in a moment.

”Well,” the father said, ”we might as well go to our French _table d'hote_ now.”

”Oh,” the son said, as if that reminded him, ”the place seems to be shut.”

”Well, then, we might as well go back to the hotel,” the father decided. ”I dare say we shall do quite as well there.”

On the way the young people laughed over the affair and their escape from it, especially at the strange appearance and disappearance of the kind colored girl, with her tag of sentiment, and at the instant compliance of the old woman with the suggestion of the policeman.

The father followed, turning the matter over in his mind. Did mere motherhood hallow that old thing to the colored girl and her sort and condition? Was there a superst.i.tion of motherhood among such people which would endear this disreputable old thing to their affection and reverence? Did such people hold mothers in tenderer regard than people of larger means? Would a mother in distress or merely embarra.s.sment instantly appeal to their better nature as a case of want or sickness in the neighborhood always appealed to their compa.s.sion? Would her family now welcome the old thing home from her aberration more fondly than the friends of one who had arrived in a carriage among them in a good street? But, after all, how little one knew of other people! How little one knew of one self, for that matter! How next to nothing one knew of Somebody's Mother! It did not necessarily follow from anything they knew of her that she was a mother at all. Her motherhood might be the mere figment of that kind colored girl's emotional fancy. She might be n.o.body's Mother.

When it came to this the father laughed, too. Why, anyhow, were mothers more sacred than fathers? If they had found an old man in that old woman's condition on those steps, would that kind colored girl have appealed to them in his behalf as Somebody's Father?

VI

THE FACE AT THE WINDOW

He had gone down at Christmas, where our host Had opened up his house on the Maine coast, For the week's holidays, and we were all, On Christmas night, sitting in the great hall, About the corner fireplace, while we told Stories like those that people, young and old, Have told at Christmas firesides from the first, Till one who crouched upon the hearth, and nursed His knees in his claspt arms, threw back his head, And fixed our host with laughing eyes, and said, ”This is so good, here--with your hickory logs Blazing like natural-gas ones on the dogs, And sending out their flicker on the wall And rafters of your mock-baronial hall, All in fumed-oak, and on your polished floor, And the steel-studded panels of your door-- I think you owe the general make-believe Some sort of story that will somehow give A more ideal completeness to our case, And make each several listener in his place-- Or hers--sit up, with a real goose-flesh creeping All over him--or her--in proper keeping With the locality and hour and mood.

Come!” And amid the cries of ”Yes!” and ”Good!”

Our host laughed back; then, with a serious air, Looked around him on our hemicycle, where He sat midway of it. ”Why,” he began, But interrupted by the other man, He paused for him to say: ”Nothing remote, But something with the actual Yankee note Of here and now in it!” ”I'll do my best,”

Our host replied, ”to satisfy a guest.

What do you say to Barberry Cove? And would Five years be too long past?” ”No, both are good.

Go on!” ”You noticed that big house to-day Close to the water, and the sloop that lay, Stripped for the winter, there, beside the pier?

Well, there she has lain just so, year after year; And she will never leave her pier again; But once, each spring she sailed in sun or rain, For Bay Chaleur--or Bay Shaloor, as they Like better to p.r.o.nounce it down this way.”

”I like Shaloor myself rather the best.

But go ahead,” said the exacting guest.

And with a glance around at us that said, ”Don't let me bore you!” our host went ahead.

”Captain Gilroy built the big house, and he Still lives there with his aging family.

He built the sloop, and when he used to come Back from the Banks he made her more his home, With his two boys, than the big house. The two Counted with him a good half of her crew, Until it happened, on the Banks, one day The oldest boy got in a steamer's way, And went down in his dory. In the fall The others came without him. That was all That showed in either one of them except That now the father and the brother slept Ash.o.r.e, and not on board. When the spring came They sailed for the old fis.h.i.+ng-ground the same As ever. Yet, not quite the same. The brother, If you believed what folks say, kissed his mother Good-by in going; and by general rumor, The father, so far yielding as to humor His daughters' weakness, rubbed his stubbly cheek Against their lips. Neither of them would speak, But the dumb pa.s.sion of their love and grief In so much show at parting found relief.

”The weeks pa.s.sed and the months. Sometimes they heard At home, by letter, from the sloop, or word Of hearsay from the fleet. But by and by Along about the middle of July, A time in which they had no news began, And holding unbrokenly through August, ran Into September. Then, one afternoon, While the world hung between the sun and moon, And while the mother and her girls were sitting Together with their sewing and their knitting,-- Before the early-coming evening's gloom Had gathered round them in the living-room, Helplessly wondering to each other when They should hear something from their absent men,-- They saw, all three, against the window-pane, A face that came and went, and came again, Three times, as though for each of them, about As high up from the porch's floor without As a man's head would be that stooped to stare Into the room on their own level there.

Its eyes dwelt on them wistfully as if Longing to speak with the dumb lips some grief They could not speak. The women did not start Or scream, though each one of them, in her heart, Knew she was looking on no living face, But stared, as dumb as it did, in her place.”

Here our host paused, and one sigh broke from all Our circle whom his tale had held in thrall.

But he who had required it of him spoke In what we others felt an ill-timed joke: ”Well, this is something like!” A girl said, ”Don't!”

As if it hurt, and he said, ”Well, I won't.

Go on!” And in a sort of muse our host Said: ”I suppose we all expect a ghost Will sometimes come to us. But I doubt if we Are moved by its coming as we thought to be.