Howard’s mother arranged a place at the table next to him for Katie, then brought in a platter of cold meats, some potato salad, and a pot of coffee. Howard, as was his custom, held the chairs for his mother and their guest, then seated himself.
“I hope you like cold meat and potato salad, Katie?” Marjorie asked, as she began to serve. “Howard prefers it to anything else on Sunday evening, especially during the warm weather.”
“I think it’s fine,” Katie answered, playing nervously with her napkin, “and it saves a lot of work—cooking.”
“Don’t you care about housework?”
“Well, I ain’t crazy about it, but it’s got to be done. Ma says: ‘ ’tain’t no use killin’ yourself over cleanin’ a house—it only gets dirty all over again.’ And Ma’s nearly always right.”
Marjorie sat almost dumfoundedly looking back and forth between Katie and Howard. Surely she must be dreaming all this. Her wonderful boy—intending to marry this girl who couldn’t even speak grammatically.
“Please pour my coffee, mother.” Howard was anxious to say something.
“Yes, dear.” She began pouring the coffee, her mind miles away from what she was doing.
“You’re spilling it, mother.” He stopped her, impatiently.
“I—I’m sorry, dear,” she murmured as she handed a cup to Katie. “I don’t know what made me so careless.”
She never remembered how she finished the meal. With a sort of fascinated horror she kept her eyes upon the girl whom her son had chosen. It was really pitiful to watch the child struggling to handle her knife and fork correctly. Once or twice Marjorie tried to draw her into a conversation, but when she realized how uncomfortable she was making her, she gave it up. So it was Howard who kept up a meaningless chatter until the supper was over.
“I—I think I’ll be goin’ now, if you don’t mind, Mrs. Benton,” Kate Walsh announced as soon as they rose. “Ma will wonder what’s keepin’ me. Thank you for my elegant supper. I enjoyed it very much.”
She lost no time getting her hat and bag.
Marjorie held out her hand. “I—I suppose you’ll come soon again?” she asked, politely.
“Oh, yes!” The girl placed her hand in Marjorie’s rather timidly. “I will. Now that you and me’ve met, I won’t be no stranger.”
Howard’s nerves were fairly on edge as he helped his fiancée into her jacket. Everything she said seemed to magnify ten-fold in front of his mother. He hadn’t noticed it nearly as much when they were alone.
“Good-by,” Marjorie said. “Come in—whenever you wish.”
“All right—I’ll run in from work to-morrow. Oughten’ I to kiss you, Mrs. Benton—now that I’ll be callin’ you—Ma?”
Marjorie hesitated an instant, but one look at Howard’s flushed cheeks and pleading eyes, made her answer: “Why, certainly—Katie.” She kissed her, then turned to Howard. “Shall you remain out late, dear?”
“No, mother, I’ll be home early. Will you wait for me?”
“Yes—I’ll wait.”
As soon as the door closed after them, she sank to her knees and buried her head in her hands.
“Oh, God,” she prayed fervently, “don’t let me live to see this! He can’t marry a girl like that—it will ruin his life! He has suffered so much, and so have I. We have gone through a great deal and borne up, but in mercy, spare us this awful thing. Please, God—Oh, please,” she moaned, as she rocked to and fro.
On the way to Katie’s house, Howard made a last effort. “Do you think you’re going to love my mother, Katie?” he asked her.
“You just bet I am, Howard—she’s so sweet and kind.”
“Well, then—won’t you reconsider about living with her, dear?” he asked anxiously.
“No—I—I just can’t! I don’t know nothin’.” She blushed furiously as she made the admission. “I seen it to-night plainer than ever. I just got to learn a lot, before I could be around a woman like your mother!”
“But she’ll help you, dear—she’ll help you all the time,” he pleaded.
“No—I couldn’t stand that, Howard. I—I want to learn, and I will learn, but I just couldn’t have no woman tellin’ me what to do every minute. I wish I could make you understand—what I mean,” she said wistfully.
“I think I do understand,” he said gently, “and I love you so much I guess you’ll have to have it your way.”
“Gee, you are good, Howard—and some day when I learn everything, you’re goin’ to be proud of me!”
“Well, then,” he tried to throw off his disappointment, “I suppose you know I’ll have to take care of my mother.”
“Of course,” she answered emphatically. “It’s only right for you to do that.”
“Well, you know, I don’t make a million a month. It will mean a lot of scrimping.”
“That will be all right with me,” she assured him, “I’m used to scrimpin’. I ain’t never done nothin’ else since I can remember.”
“We’ll have to look about for a flat. I’d like to stay in this neighborhood in order to be near mother.”
“I don’t see why we don’t keep your flat,” she suggested, as a vision of the “handsome” furniture appeared before her. “It would be easier to get a couple of rooms for your mother.”
“Turn mother out of her home!” For a moment he was angry with Kate Walsh. What could she mean? “Impossible!” He shut his teeth with a click.
“Don’t get sore at me, Howard.” There were tears in her voice, and a tremble that soothed the anger. After all, this little girl didn’t understand, he remembered. It was her training. “I didn’t mean nothin’ by that,” she went on as she timidly touched his arm. “I was just tryin’ to figure out the most savin’ way.”
“I’m sorry, dear. I didn’t mean to get cross with you—but I can’t bear to think about hurting my mother.”
Child as she was, though, Kate Walsh was a true daughter of Eve. She knew what she wanted. And she knew how to get it. From the moment of her first view of the dainty little apartment Marjorie had worked so hard to make homelike and pleasing, this little child of the people whose beauty had bound Howard Benton to her in bonds unbreakable, had made up her mind that it should be her own.
She slipped her arm through Howard’s and reached downward with her hand till the warm fingers found their way into his own. Her whole warm, round little body snuggled up to him.
“I don’t know much, as I told you, dear, but I think you’re kind of silly, Howard,” she began coaxing. “I just bet your mother would say the same thing herself. First of all, she’d never be wantin’ no four-room flat all by herself. Besides, ain’t it easier for one person to move into a couple of rooms than for us to have to hustle around and buy furniture and things?”
“Maybe—you’re right,” he admitted. “But it seems so cruel, I’m afraid she wouldn’t see it as we do——”
“I just bet she would!” the girl interrupted. “She’s got lots of good sense. Why don’t you ask her and see?”
“Yes—I suppose that would be the proper thing to do.” But he sighed at the prospect of such a proposed interview with the mother who had done so much for him; been so much to him.
When he returned home, he found his mother seated by the table in the dining room. She hadn’t even attempted to clear the supper things away and he could not help but notice that her eyes were red and swollen with weeping.
“Well, mother?” He tenderly touched her shoulder.
“Yes, dear—yes.” She reached up and patted his hand.
“I—I know you’re dreadfully disappointed. I—I’m sorry, mother.”
Marjorie shook her head sadly. She must control herself before speaking. Howard moved a chair over opposite her and sat down.
“You must give me a little time, Howard,” she said slowly. “This has all happened so suddenly—it is difficult for me to grasp.”
“Well you expected me to marry—some day. Didn’t you, mother?” he asked gently.
“Oh, yes, dear—yes!” she assured him. “I’ve always wanted you to marry and have a home—and babies—and—” Her sobs choked her, and she could not finish.
“Perhaps. But you don’t like Katie! It’s true she hasn’t an education, but——”
“It isn’t that,” she interrupted him. “I can’t hold the girl responsible for circumstances preventing her from obtaining one. It’s—it’s the difference!”
“The difference?”
“Yes,” she hurried on. “The great chasm—between you. You’re blinded by love now, dear, so you think that the only thing lacking in this girl you love is education, something one can always remedy to a certain extent. But it isn’t that. It’s the natural refinement, the inborn breeding, which go to constitute the lady. Those are the things she lacks. They are the things bound to raise a wall between you such as you will never be able to scale.”
“But mother,” Howard attempted to argue, “real love should be able to overcome every obstacle, haven’t you always held that?”
“Love could do a great deal, my son—if the break were only half or less than half way even. But you haven’t a thing in common with this girl. She is so entirely out of your class.”
“And—just what do you call my class?” Howard asked, with the impatience of the youth suddenly become a man, to whom the stings of pain of two years past were still fresh. “A girl like Nell Thurston, I suppose,” he suggested bitterly, “a fair weather friend who at the first hint of trouble packs her trunks, leaves for California, and marries the first man she meets.”
“You can’t judge every girl by that one.”
“Well, nearly all of the society butterflies I ever met were of the same sort,” he answered scornfully. “Besides, I’m away from all that now. You know, we’re living an entirely different life from that of two years ago.”
Marjorie Benton was at a loss for words. She felt that here was a situation that required the utmost diplomacy. She prayed for strength, but it came not.
“Howard,” she asked slowly and thoughtfully, her eyes on her son’s face to lose no shade of expression. “Have you absolutely made up your mind to marry this—Katie Walsh?”
“Yes, mother, I have,” he answered firmly, but gently. And watching him, Marjorie Benton knew that no matter what else she and Hugh might have endowed him with, that Howard had inherited the stubbornness that had been so big a part of both their natures, that had wrought so much ruin to them both. She knew that it was inevitable that the illiterate little Irish girl would become the wife of her son. “I love her. I can’t tell you how dearly! I was very lonely when I met her, and she crept into my heart. She’s a good, true girl, and after we’re married, you and I can teach her together.”
Marjorie Benton bowed her head to Fate’s decree. She had done what she could. She had tried before—and failed. But it was left for her this night to see the new monument to Hope she had raised up lie crumbling in ruins at her feet.
“I can’t say anything more to you, Howard,” she said falteringly, “because I love you too much, dear, to stand in the way of your happiness. I’ll just ask God to bless you—and I’ll pray that it is all for the best.”
“Mother, dear.” He leapt from his chair to kiss her. “You’re such a brick! You’ve made me so happy!”
“I’m glad of that.” She smiled up into his eager face, but he could not see the smile was soulless. He had turned to pace up and down, fidgeting about uneasily. Suddenly he stopped in front of his mother who had not moved. “I have something else to tell you, mother,” he gulped, “and I—I don’t know just how—to say it.”
Marjorie reached for his hand and stroked it gently. “You mustn’t hesitate to tell me anything,” she assured him. “We’ve been very close to each other since—since we came here. There must never again be a lack of confidence between us.”
“I’ll have to tell you, mother.” He clasped his hands behind him, and cleared his throat. “I hope you won’t misunderstand—you’ve got out of the way of misunderstanding me since—since—” he stammered.
His mother nodded encouragingly. “You know I love you,” he hurried on, “but I love Katie, too. We want to be married very soon, and she—we—want to start—living alone.”
“You—you mean—you want to move?” She closed her eyes for a moment, “into a place of your own? You want to live—by yourselves? I—I can’t blame you for that—only—only—it is going to be very lonely here—without you.”
“I—I’ll see you every day, mother—and so will Katie.” He was eager as the words tumbled over each other in his hurry to have done with the disagreeable task his promised wife had set him. “We—we don’t want to move! Katie likes this place very much—and it is just the right size—for us. We—we thought—if we could find you—a couple of rooms—in the neighborhood—you know—near to us—it would be fine—and it would be much easier—for you to move than it would be—for us—to—to—find a place.”
He was scarlet when he finished, and he could not lift his eyes from the floor. The mother sat as if carved in stone. But the only emotion she betrayed was a slight quivering of the lips, and a sudden twitching of her eyelids.
“I—I’ll always take care of you, dear,” Howard hastened to assure her. “Every week you shall have a certain amount of my pay.”
“You—you couldn’t do it, dear.” Marjorie found her voice at last, although it was faint and trembled pitifully. “You couldn’t afford to keep up two homes.”
“Oh, yes, I can!” he eagerly plead. “Kate says she doesn’t mind scrimping at all—she doesn’t care how hard we have to struggle. Only she’s taken it into her head that she doesn’t want to live with—her—mother-in-law.” His voice was a husky whisper as the word he knew would flay his mother, came.
A sob that she could not choke broke on the stillness. In a moment Howard was on his knees beside her, his arms holding her close.
“Please, mother!” he begged. “Don’t feel that way! I love you just the same—but I’m a man now, and I’ve met the woman I want to marry. This comes into everyone’s life.”
Her arm closed about his neck and she held him close.
“Oh, my dear—my dear!” and now the sobs came unchecked. “You’re so precious to me—all that is left to me in the world! Husband! Daughter! All gone! Only you, dear,—only you!”
“But I’m not going, mother. Don’t you understand? I’ll see you as much as ever.”
“Why—why can’t I stay here?” In her despair, she pleaded frantically. “I’ll keep to myself—I—I won’t interfere with a thing. I won’t be in anyone’s way—I just want to be where I can see you—where I can be near you—should you need me! See, I’m throwing away all my pride, dear,” as she slipped to her knees, “and begging you to let me stay—because—I love you so—I love you so!”
“Hush, mother.” He lifted her from her knees, and wiped his eyes. “You’re making this very hard for me. You know I wouldn’t intentionally hurt you for the world. I’ve talked this over again and again with Kate—but she won’t have it any other way. I—I don’t know what to do.”
“It’s—all right, dear,” she whispered, but the tone was barely audible and broken. “It’s all right! I—I’ll go.”
“I know just as soon as you’re calm, mother, you will see things in a different light.”
“Yes, dear—I understand, dear!” she said quietly, but the voice was one of despair that the son did not recognize nor heed. “I’ll be calm and sensible! You want me to be——”
“Yes, dear. Please try—I’ll be back in a minute.” He went into his room and closed the door.
With a calmness that was appalling she sat where he had left her, staring in front of her with glassy eyes. How long it had been with her she did not know, but she slowly became conscious of the physical pain gnawing at her heart. Oh, how she welcomed it! She wanted it to hurt and hurt until it would carry her off, where she would be free from pain forever. In a moment’s time, there flashed before her a panoramic view of her life. Oh, God, how useless—how in vain—it had all been! And now (she stretched her arms out before her) she stood ready to go out into the future—alone! Alone! Alone!