The Best Short Stories of 1920 Part 29

"Mother, come let's talk to one another. You think perhaps I have stopped loving you. It isn't true. I love you deeply. All this is breaking my heart. But how can I help it? Can't you see that I am young, and my life all before me? The best of your life is behind you. You have lived, I haven't. You have tasted the sweet mysteries of love, the agonies of death and birth, the terrors of lonely struggle. And I must have these, too. I am hungry for them. I can't help myself. I am like a leaf in the wind, like a rain-drop in the storm.... How can you keep me here? If you compel me, I'll become a shadow, all twisted and broken. I won't be a man, but a helpless child. Perhaps I shall go out of my mind.

And what good will that do you? You will suffer more if I stay, than if I go. Oh, understand me, mother, understand me!"

His mother began to cry. She spoke at first as she always spoke, and then more like a mother in a poem.

"Understand? What do you understand? You know nothing about life. Oh, I only wish you had children and your children turned against you! That's the only way that you will ever learn.... I worked for you so hard. I gave up everything for my children. And your father died, and I went on alone, a woman with a great burden.... What sort of life have I had?

Sacrifice, toil, tears.... I skimped along. I wore the same dress year after year, for five, six years.... I hung over your sickbeds, I taught you at my knees. I have known the bitterness of child-bearing, and the bitter cry of children.... I have fought alone for my little ones....

And you, Paul! You who were the darling of my heart, my little man, you who said you would take your father's place and take care of me and of your sisters and brother! You who were to repay me for everything; to give me a future, to comfort my old age, the staff I leaned on, my comfort, my son! I was proud of you as you grew up: so proud to see your pride, and your ambition. I knew you would succeed, that you would have fame and power and wealth, and I should be the proudest mother in the world! This was my dream.... Now I see you a failure, one who cares for nothing but self-indulgence and pleasure, a rolling stone, a flitter from place to place, and I--I am an old woman, deserted, left alone to wither in bitterness.... I gave everything to you--and you--you give back despair, loneliness, anguish. I gave you life: you turn on me and destroy me for the gift.... Oh, mother-love! What man will understand it--the piercing anguish, the roots that clutch the deep heart?... I feel the chill of death creeping over me...."

The tears rolled down Paul's cheeks. He pressed her hand now with both of his.

"Oh, mother, but I do understand! I have understood always, I have tried so hard to help you. I have tried so hard to be a good son. But this is something greater than I. We are in the hands of G.o.d, mother, and it is the law that the young must leave the old. Why do parents expect the impossible of their children? Does not the Bible say, 'You must leave father and mother, and cleave to me'? Didn't you leave grandmother and grandpa, to go to your husband? Can't you remember when you were young, and your whole soul carried you away to your own life and your own future? Mother, let us part with understanding, let us part with love."

"But when are you going, Paul?"

"To-night."

His mother flung her arms about him desperately and clung to him....

"I can't let you go, Paul," she moaned.

"Oh, mother," he sobbed. "This is breaking my heart...."

"It is Agnes you are going to," she whispered.

"No, mother," he cried. "It is not Agnes. I am going to college. I shall never marry. I shall still take care of you. Think--every vacation I will be back here...."

She relaxed, lay back, and his inventions failed. He had a confused sense of soothing her, of gentleness and reconciliation, of a last good-bye....

And now he sat, head on hand, slowly realizing again the little gas-lit room, the shaking window, the autumn wind. A throb of fear pulsed through his heart. He had pa.s.sed his mother's door without greeting her.

And there was his valise, and here his tickets. And the time? It was nearly eleven.... A great heaviness of futility and despair weighed him down. He felt incapable of action. He felt that he had done some terrible deed--like striking his mother in the face--something unforgivable, unreversible, struck through and through with finality....

He felt more and more cold and brutal, with the sullenness of the criminal who can't undo his crime and won't admit his guilt....

Was it all over, then? Was he really leaving? Fear, and a prophetic breath of the devastating loneliness he should yet know, came upon him, paralyzed his mind, made him weak and aghast. He was going out into the night of death, launching on his frail raft into the barren boundless ocean of darkness, leaving the last landmarks, drifting out in utter nakedness and loneliness.... All the future grew black and impenetrable; but he knew shapes of terror, demons of longing and grief and guilt loomed there, waiting for him. He knew that he was about to understand a little of life in a very ancient and commonplace way: the way of experience and of reality: that at first hand he was to have the taste against his palate of that bitterness and desolation, that terror and helplessness, which make the songs and fictions of man one endless tragedy.... Destiny was taking him, as the jailer who comes to the condemned man's cell on the morning of the execution. There was no escape. No end, but death....

He was leaving everything that was comfort in a bleak world, everything that was safe and tried and known in a world of unthinkable perils and mysteries. Only this he knew, still a child, still on the inside of his mother's house.... He knew now how terrible, how deep, how human were the cords that bound him to his mother, how fierce the love, by the fear and deadly helplessness he felt.... What could he have been about all these months of darkening the house, of paining his mother and the children, of bringing matters to such inexorable finalities? Was he sane? Was he now possessed of some demon, some beast of low desire?

Freedom? What was freedom? Could there be freedom without love?

And now, as he sat there, there came slow deliberate footsteps on the stairs. There was no mistaking the sounds. It was Cora, his older sister.... His heart palpitated wildly, he shook with fear, the colour left his cheeks, and he tried to set his face and his throat like flint not to betray himself. She came straight on. She knocked.

"Paul," she said in a peremptory tone, clothed with all the authority of his mother....

He grew cold all over, his eyelids narrowed; he felt brutal....

"What is it?" he asked hard.

"Mother wants you to come right down."

"I will come," he said.

Her footsteps departed.... He rose slowly, heavily, like the man who must now face the executioner.... He stuck his pocketbook back in his coat and picked up his valise. Mechanically he looked about the room.

Then he unlocked and opened the door, shut off the gas, and went into the lighted hall.

And as he descended the steps he felt ever smaller before the growing terror of the world. Never had he been more of a child than at this moment: never had he longed more fiercely to sob and cry out and give over everything.... How had this guilt descended upon him? What had he done? Why was all this necessary? Who was forcing him through this strange and frightful experience? He went on, lower and lower....

The door of his mother's room was a little open. It was all as it had always been--the pin-point of light, the shading newspaper, the sick-room silence, the warm shadow.... He paused a second to summon up strength, to combat the monster of fear and guilt in his heart. He tried with all his little boyish might to smooth out his face, to set it straight and firm. He pushed the door, set down the valise, entered: pale, large-eyed, looking hard and desperate.

He did not see his sister at all, though she sat under the light. His mother he hardly saw: had the sense of a towel binding her head, and the dim form under the bedclothes. He stepped clumsily--he was trembling so--to the foot of her bed, and grasped the bra.s.s rail for support....

His mother's voice was low and thick; a terrible voice. Her throat was swollen, and she could speak only with difficulty. The voice accused him. It said plainly: "It was you did this."

She said: "Paul, this has got to end."

His tongue seemed the fork of a snake, his words came with such deadly coldness....

"It will end to-night."

"How ... to-night?"

"I'm leaving.... I'm going west...."

"West.... Where?"

"To Sam's...."

"Oh," said his mother....

There was a long cruel silence. He shut his eyes, overcome with a sort of horror.... Then she turned her face a little away, and he heard the faintly breathed words....

"This is the end of me...."

Still he said nothing. She turned toward him, with a groan.

"Have you nothing to say?"

Again he spoke with deadly coldness....

"Nothing...."

She waited a moment: then she spoke....

"You have no feelings. When you set out to do a thing, you will trample over every one. I have never been able to do anything with you. You may become a great man, Paul: but I pity any one who loves you, any one who gets in your path. You will kill whatever holds you--always.... I was a fool to give birth to you: a great fool to count on you.... Well, it's over.... You have your way...."

He was amazed: he trembling there, guilty, afraid, horrified, his whole soul beseeching the comfort of her arms! He a cold trampler?

He stood, with all the feeling of one who is falsely condemned, and yet with all the guilt of one who has sinned....

And then, suddenly, a wild animal cry came from his mother's throat....