Apron-Strings Part 36

The blue eyes glinted with satisfaction. "Well, you are an old maid."

"An old maid! In other words, my purity's a joke!"

"Now, we're getting vulgar."

"Vulgar? Have you forgotten what you said to Laura Farvel? You taunted her because she's not 'good' as you call it. And you taunt me because I am! But who is farther in the scheme of things--she or I? I envy her because she's borne a child. At least she's a woman. Nature means us to marry and have our little ones. The women who don't obey--what happens to them? The years go"--she looked away now, beyond the walls of Tottie's front-parlor, at a picture her imagining called up--"the light fades from their eyes, the gloss from their hair; they get 'peculiar.' And people laugh at them--and I don't wonder!" Then pa.s.sionately, "Look at me! Mature! Unmarried! Childless! Where in Nature do I belong? Nowhere! I'm a freak!"

"No, my dear." Mrs. Milo smiled derisively. "You're a martyr."

"Yes! To my mother."

"Don't forget"--the well-bred voice grew shrill--"that I _am_ your mother."

"You gave me birth. But--reproduction isn't motherhood."

"Ah!"--mockingly. "So I haven't loved you!"

"Oh, you've loved me," granted Sue. "You've loved me too much--in the wrong way. It's a mistaken love that makes a mother stand between her daughter and happiness."

"I deny----"

"Wait!--I got the proof today! I repeat--you forgot everything you've ever stood for at the mere thought that happiness was threatening to come my way."

Mrs. Milo's eyes widened with apprehension. Involuntarily she glanced at the hand which Farvel had lifted to kiss.

"I ought to have known that my first duty was to myself," Sue went on bitterly; "--to my children. But--I put away my dreams. And now! My eyes are open too late! I've found out my mistake--too late! No son--no daughter--'Momsey,' but never 'Mother.' And, oh, how my heart has craved it all--a home of my own, and someone to care for me. And my arms have ached for a baby!"

"Ha! Ha!"--Mrs. Milo found it all so ridiculous. "A baby! Well,--why don't you have one?"

For a long moment, Sue looked at her mother without speaking. "Oh, I know why you laugh," she said, finally. "I'm--I'm forty-five.

But--after today, _I'm_ going to do some laughing! I'm going to do what I please, and go where I please! I'm free! I'm free at last!"

She cried it up to the chandelier. "From today, I'm free! This is the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation! This is the Declaration of Independence!"

Mrs. Milo moved away, smiling. At the door she turned. "What can you do?" she asked, teasingly; "--at _your_ age!"

Sue b.u.t.toned her coat over the bridesmaid's dress. "What can I do?"

she repeated. "Well, mother dear, just watch me!"

CHAPTER X

The Close was the favorite retreat of the Rectory household. In the wintertime, it was a windless, sunny spot, never without bird-life, for to it fared every sparrow of the neighborhood, knowing that the two long stone benches in the yard would be plentifully strewn with crumbs, and that no prowling cat would threaten a feathered feaster.

With the coming of spring, the small inclosure was like a chalice into which the sun poured a living stream. Here the lawn early achieved a startling greenness as well as a cutable height; here a pair of peach trees dared to put out leaves despite any p.r.o.nouncement of the calendar; and in the Close, even before open cars began their run along the near-by avenue, a swinging-couch with a shady awning was installed at one side; while opposite, beyond the sun-dial, and nearer to the drawing-room, a lawn marquee went up, to which Dora brought both breakfast and luncheon trays.

The Close, shut in on its four sides, afforded its visitors perfect privacy. The high blank wall of an office building, which had conformed its architecture to that of the Church and the other structures related to the Church, lifted on one hand to what--from the velvet square of the little yard--seemed the very sky. Directly across from the office building was the Rectory; and two windows of the drawing-room, as well as two upper windows (the window of a guest-room and the window of "the study") opened upon it.

One face of the Church, ivy-grown and beautified with glowing eyes of stained-gla.s.s, looked across the stretch of green to a high brick wall which shut off the sights and sounds of the somewhat narrow and fairly quiet street. It was over this wall that the peach trees waved their branches, and in the late summer dropped a portion of their fruit. And it was in this wall that there opened a certain door to the Close which was never locked--a little door, painted a gleaming white, through which the Orphanage babies came, to be laid in the great soft-quilted basket that stood on a stone block beneath a low gable-roof of stone.

On this perfect spring morning, the Close was transformed, for the swinging-couch and the lawn marquee were gone, and a great wedding-bell of h.o.a.ry blossoms was in its place, hung above the wide flagstone which lay before this side entrance to the Church. Flanking the bell on either hand, flowers and greenery had been ma.s.sed by the decorators to achieve an altar-like effect. And above the bell, roofing the improvised altar, was a canopy of smilax, as Gothic in design as the vari-tinted windows to right and left.

Discussing the unwonted appearance of their haunt and home, the bird-dwellers of the Close flew about in some excitement, or alighted on wall and ledge to look and scold. And fully as noisy as the sparrows, and laboring like Brownies to set the yard to rights following the departure of the florist and his a.s.sistant, a trio of boys from the choir raked and clipped and garnered into a sack.

Ikey was in command, and wielded the lawn mower. Henry, a tall mild-eyed lad, selected for the morning's pleasant duty in the Close in order to reward him for irreproachable conduct during the week previous, snipped at the uneven blades about the base of the sun-dial.

The third worker was Peter, a pale boy, chosen because an hour in the open air would be of more value to him than an hour at his books.

"I tell you she iss _not_ a Gentile!" denied Ikey, who was arrogant over being armed with authority as well as lawn mower.

"She is so!" protested Henry, with more than his usual warmth.

"I know she ain't!"

"Aw, she is, too!"

"I asks her, 'Momsey, are you a Gentile?'" went on Ikey. "Und she answers to me, 'Ikey, I am all kinds of religions.'--_Now_!"

"Ain't her mother a Gentile?" demanded Henry.

"I'm glat to say it!"

"And her father was."

"Sure! Just go in und look at him!"

"Then what's the matter with you! She's _got_ to be a Gentile!"

Ikey recognized the unanswerableness of the argument. "Vell," he declared stoutly, "I lof her anyhow!"

A fourth boy leaned from a drawing-room window. "Telephone!" he called down.

"Ach! Dat telephone!" Ikey propped himself against the sun-dial.

"Since yesterday afternoon alretty, she rings und nefer stops! 'Vere iss Miss Hattie?'--dat Wallace, he iss awful lofsick! 'I don't know.'

'Vere iss Miss Susan?' 'I don't know.' 'Vere iss my daughter?'--de olt lady! 'I don't know.'--All night by dat telephone, I sit und lie!"

"Ha! Ha!" Peter, the pale, seized the excuse to drop back upon the cool gra.s.s. "How can you _sit_ and _lie_?"

"Smarty, you're too fresh!" charged Ikey. "How can you sit und be lazy? Look vat stands on dis sun-dial!--_Tempus Fugits_. Dat means, 'De morning iss going.' So you pick up fast all de gra.s.s bits by de benches.--Und if somebody asks, 'Vere iss Mr. Farvel,' I says, 'I don't know,' und dat iss de truth. Because he iss gone oudt all night, und dat iss not nice for ministers." He shook his head at the lawn mower.

"Say, a woman wants to talk with Mrs. Milo," reminded the boy who was hanging out of the window.

"She can vant so much as she likes," returned Ikey, mowing calmly.

"Oo! You oughta heard her!--Shall I say she's gone?"

"Say she's gone, t'ank gootness," instructed Ikey. And as the boy precipitated himself backward out of sight, "Ach, dat's vat's wrong mit dis world!--de mutter business. Mrs. Milo, Mrs. Bunk.u.m, und your mutter, und your mutter----"