Gaslight Sonatas Part 13

He toed the carpet.

"I--I'd sooner be hit in the face, Millie, than--have this happen. Swear I would! But you see for yourself we--we can't go on this way."

She sat for a moment, her stare widening above the palm clapped tightly against her mouth.

"Then you mean, Harry, you want--you want a--a--"

"Now, now, Millie, try to keep hold of yourself. You're a sensible woman.

You know I'll do the right thing by you to any amount. You'll have the boy till he's of age, and after that, too, just as much as you want him. He'll live right here in the flat with you. Money's no object, the way I'm going to fix things. Why, Millie, compared to how things are now--you're going to be a hundred per cent, better off--without me."

She fell to rocking herself in the straight chair.

"Oh, my G.o.d! Oh, my G.o.d!"

"Now, Millie, don't take it that way. I know that nine men out of ten would call me crazy to--to let go of a woman like you. But what's the use trying to keep life in something that's dead? It's because you're too good for me, Millie. I know that. You know that it's not because I think any less of you, or that I've forgot it was you who gave me my start. I'd pay you back ten times more if I could. I'm going to settle on you and the boy so that you're fixed for life. When he's of age, he comes into the firm half interest. There won't even be no publicity the way I'm going to fix things.

Money talks, Millie. You'll get your decree without having to show your face to the public."

"O G.o.d--he's got it all fixed--he's talked it all over with her! She--"

"You--you wouldn't want to force something between you and me, Millie; that--that's just played out--"

"I done it myself. I couldn't let well enough alone. I was ambitious for 'em. I dug my own grave. I done it myself. Done it myself!"

"Now, Millie, you mustn't look at things that way. Why, you're the kind of a little woman all you got to have is something to mother over. I'm going to see to it that the boy is right here at home with you all the time. He can give up those rooms at the college--you got as fine a son as there is in the country, Millie--I'm going to see to it that he is right here at home with you--"

"O G.o.d--my boy--my little boy--my little boy!"

"The days are over, Millie, when this kind of thing makes any difference.

If it was--the mother--it might be different, but where the father is--to blame--it don't matter with the boy. Anyways, he's nearly of age. I tell you, Millie, if you'll just look at this thing sensible--"

"I--Let me think, let--me--think."

Her tears had quieted now to little dry moans that came with regularity.

She was still swaying in her chair, eyes closed.

"You'll get your decree, Millie, without--."

"Don't talk," she said, a frown lowering over her closed eyes and pressing two fingers against each temple. "Don't talk."

He walked to the window in a state of great perturbation, stood pulling inward his lips and staring down into the now brilliantly lighted flow of Broadway. Turned into the room with short, hasty strides, then back again.

Came to confront her.

"Aw, now, Millie--Millie--" Stood regarding her, chewing backward and forward along his fingertips. "You--you see for yourself, Millie, what's dead can't be made alive--now, can it?"

She nodded, acquiescing, her lips bitterly wry.

"My lawyer, Millie, he'll fix it, alimony and all, so you won't--"

"O G.o.d!"

"Suppose I just slip away easy, Millie, and let him fix up things so it'll be easiest for us both. Send the boy down to see me to-morrow. He's old enough and got enough sense to have seen things coming. He knows.

Suppose--I just slip out easy, Millie, for--for--both of us. Huh, Millie?"

She nodded again, her lips pressed back against outburst.

"If ever there was a good little woman, Millie, and one that deserves better than me, it's--"

"Don't!" she cried. "Don't--don't--don't!"

"I--"

"Go--quick--now!"

He hesitated, stood regarding her there in the chair, eyes squeezed closed like Iphigenia praying for death when exiled in Tauris.

"Millie--I--"

"Go!" she cried, the wail clinging to her lips.

He felt round for his hat, his gaze obscured behind the s.h.i.+ning gla.s.ses, tiptoed out round the archipelago of too much furniture, groped for the door-handle, turning it noiselessly, and stood for the instant looking back at her bathed in the rosy light and seated upright like a sleeping Ariadne; opened the door to a slit that closed silently after him.

She sat thus for three hours after, the wail still uppermost on the silence.

At ten o'clock, with a gust that swayed the heavy drapes, her son burst in upon the room, his stride kicking the door before he opened it. Six feet in his gymnasium shoes, and with a ripple of muscle beneath the well-fitting, well-advertised Campus Coat for College Men, he had emerged from the three years into man's complete estate, which, at nineteen, is that patch of territory at youth's feet known as "the world." Gray eyed, his dark lashes long enough to threaten to curl, the lean line of his jaw squaring after the manner of America's fondest version of her manhood, he was already in danger of fond illusions and fond mommas.

"h.e.l.lo, mother!" he said, striding quickly through the chairs and over to where she sat.

"Edwin!"

"Thought I'd sleep home to-night, mother."

He kissed her lightly, perking up her shoulder b.u.t.terflies of green sequins, and standing off to observe.

"Got to hand it to my little mother for quiet and sumptuous el-e-gance!

Some cla.s.sy spangy-w.a.n.gles!" He ran his hand against the lay of the sequins, absorbed in a conscious kind of gaiety.

She moistened her lips, trying to smile.

"Oh, boy," she said--"Edwin!"--holding to his forearm with fingers that tightened into it.

"Mother," he said, pulling at his coat lapels with a squaring of shoulders, "you--you going to be a dead game little sport?"

She was looking ahead now, abstraction growing in her white face.

"Huh?"

He fell into short strides up and down the length of the couch front.