An Act in a Backwater

by E. F. Benson

“I said ‘this too,’” he went on. “I know that there is much in me that you do not approve. You would have had me choose a different way of life. That, I am afraid, cannot be remedied. Shall we not accept it? And, such as I am, I have tried to be a good son to you and father.”

The hand that lay unresistingly in his tightened its grasp. He looked up, but his mother only shook her head.

“Go, Jack,” she said; “kiss me, then go.”

He kissed her, and left the room without another word. Mrs. Collingwood sat quite still for a moment. Then her wide mouth widened, and she burst into tears.

Jack had been more moved by his interview with his mother than was convenient for social purposes, and he did not go straight back to the Aveshams, but took a stroll through the town first. He had not expected that his mother would suggest any arrangement other than an orphanage for the child, but he had thought it possible. What had moved him was the sudden deepening of their talk; in a moment they had gone from the instance to the great eternal principles of things, to sin and love and death. From that the talk had veered as suddenly to personal relations, the relations between his mother and himself. Deep down in him he knew what an empty place there was in his heart, a place empty and garnished, but ready and with the door open for the entering in of that exquisite presence, not less sacred and entrancing than any, the sympathetic, comprehending love between mother and son. All his life long he had missed that. His mother would never have committed a reckless, unconsidered act for his sake; the mere fact of motherhood, as in so many women, was not to her enough for that. For the glory of motherhood lies in this: that the child will instinctively take from her without question, and without question she gives. The joy of self-surrender must be made without question. And he, on his side, had missed the son’s part. His joys and troubles were not self-despatched presents to her; she would not have known what to do with them, they would have been to her like strange, savage implements of which she did not know the use. She might indeed have tried to find a use for them, and thus missed their significance. To use them at all was their abuse. They were her son’s; that to the mother is enough.

Jack wandered down the High Street and hung on the parapet of the stone bridge that crosses the river. This strange unrest was new to him. He had never been of the nature that toils in the soil of other human souls, or even of his own, and delves thereout so much that is worthless, and sometimes an unconjectured jewel. He had not ever been in the habit of considering life as a serious business. He got through his day’s work with cheerfulness and honesty, and the day’s work brought its own raptures. He was not carnal, but emphatically he was not spiritual. To him the tastes and the rewards of life lay in artistic and intellectual achievement; about them he had a store-house of kaleidoscopic theories and much sober practice; but as for problems of life and being, all such were an algebra to him. Being of a clean mind, and holding—a low gospel it may be, but an excellent working hypothesis—that sensuality means the death of the intellect, he had never troubled his head to make out moral codes. The tragedy of Frank Bennett’s life and death did not make him shudder and wince. He called him a fool, but with tenderness, and whether he was a knave or not did not concern him.

He was roused from his meditations by a short, staccato bark at his heels, and found the round retriever pup staggering up to him. Toby had an inability to walk straight; he rolled along like a drunken man with a jovial boisterousness. He had a large wire muzzle on, and the tip of his pink tongue hung through it.

“Oh, are you looking at the water?” said Jeannie, sympathetically. “That’s so nice of you. I have to look at running water every day. It clears one’s brain out, I think. Toby is shortly to have his bath.”

“It is a shame making him wear a muzzle while he has still his milk-teeth,” said Jack.

“It isn’t a muzzle,” said Jeannie, “it is his hat. Toby is rather proud of it. But don’t you agree with me about water?”