“Sometimes I wonder whether I do love her. Sometimes I feel hard and cold, so that I wouldn’t care if it were all ended. Sometimes I almost hate her. I want to start afresh—but I haven’t the courage. I know myself. If I were certain that I’d lost her, I should begin to idealize her as I did at first. God, if I could only forget!”
“My dear! My dear!” Mrs. Sheerug’s voice was broken. Her tired hands wandered over him, patting and caressing. “My poor Hal! To think that any woman should dare to use you so and that I can’t prevent it! Why, Hal, if I could bear your burdens, and see you glad, and hear your laughter in the house, I’d—I’d die for you, Hal, to have you young and happy as you were. Doesn’t it mean anything to you that your mother can love you like that?”
He raised his face and put his arms about her neck. “I haven’t been good to you, mother. It’s like you to say that I have; but I haven’t. I’ve ignored you and given the best of myself to some one for whom it has no value. I’ve been sharp and irritable to you. You’ve wanted to ask questions—you had a right to ask questions; I’ve kept you at arm’s length. You’ve wanted to do what you’re doing now—to hold me close and show me that you cared; and I’ve—I’ve felt like striking you. That’s the way with a man when he’s pitied. You know I have.”
The gray head nodded. “But I’ve always understood, and—and you don’t want to strike me any longer.”
“You’re dearer than any woman in the world.”
“Dearer, but not so much desired.” She drew back from him, holding his face between her hands. “Hal, you’re my son, and you must listen to me. Perhaps I’m only a prejudiced old woman, years behind the times and jealous for my son’s happiness. Put it down to that, Hal; but let me have my say out. When I was young, girls didn’t treat men as Vashti treats you. If they loved a man, they married him. If they didn’t love him, they told him. They didn’t play fast and loose with him, and take presents from him, and keep him in suspense, and waste his power of hoping. It’s the finest moment in a good girl’s life when a good man puts his life in her hands. If a girl can’t appreciate that, there’s something wrong with her—something so wrong that she can never make the most persistent lover happy. Vashti’s beautiful on the outside and she’s talented, but—but she’s not wholesome.”
There was a pause full of unspoken pleadings and threatenings. The man jerked sharply away from his mother. Her hands slipped from his face to his shoulders. They stayed there clinging to him. His attitude was alert with offense.
“Shall I go on?” she asked tremulously.
His answer came grimly. “Go on.”
“It’s the truth I’m telling you, Hal—the truth, as any one can see it except yourself. Beneath her charm she’s cold and selfish. Selfishness is like frost; it kills everything. In time it would kill your passion. She’s gracious till she gets a man in her power, then she’s capricious. You haven’t told me what she’s done to you, my dear. I’m a woman; I can guess—I can guess. She doesn’t love you. She loves to be loved; she never thinks of loving in return. She’s kept you begging like a dog—you, who are my son, of whom any girl might be proud. Perhaps you think that, if she were your wife, it would make a difference. It wouldn’t. You’d spend all your life sitting up like a dog, waiting for her to find time to pet you. You’re my son—the best son a mother ever had. It’s a woman’s business to worship her man, even though she blinds herself to do it You shan’t be a vain woman’s plaything.”