Mother and son sat up talking late into the night. It was the mother’s hours and she used them as a mother would with a son who was leaving her for a space of months, and maybe, years. She told of old remedies for this ail and that ill. She gave him motherly cautions regarding wet feet, damp bedding and draughts. She gave him a little ditty-bag well furnished with needles, cottons, threads, darning wool, buttons and such like, and her last and greatest gift was a small Bible. They were holy hours, and they sat and talked until her regard for his sleep caused her to send him reluctantly to bed. She came to him then and tucked him in and kissed him as she always did, and when she went away, her tears wetted his cheek. He tried, as boys do, to carry it off “big,” but when she left him he cried, too, as many a brave man has cried in similar partings since the world was young.
He awoke at four next morning to find his mother beside his bed. She had never closed her eyes, but now she was smiling. She wasn’t going to send him to sea with tears and heart-burnings to pain his recollections of parting. He dressed hurriedly, gulped the tea and toast she had procured for him, and sat awaiting the cab which was to take him down to his ship. His sea-chest was packed and ready, and the mother had gone through it and replaced to the best of her ability some of the shoddy gear which she knew would never stand sea-faring.
They heard the rattle of the wheels and hoofs on the stony street. The mother clasped her son in a close embrace. “Don’t you worry about me, dear,” she said. “I shall go to the Hydropathic and I will be quite comfortable there. Be a good boy and take care of yourself. God bless you and keep you, dear, and may your dear father watch over you!”
The cab-man came up into the room and the wet streamed off his clothes. “Dirrty mornin’, ma’am,” he said huskily. “Ah’ll jist hond this box doon.” And he shouldered the sea-chest and led the way.
The boy entered the cab and drove away, and Mrs. McKenzie stood in the rain at the door and watched it vanish just as she had watched, many times, the departures of her husband. “He’s gone! he’s gone!” she murmured dully, and only turned to enter the house when the woman who kept it led her away with a “Cheer up, mum! He’ll be back, never fear! Come and hae a cup o’ tea. It’s guid med’cine fur a sair heart!”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Kelvinhaugh was lying in the Queen’s Dock and the cab rattled down the silent streets which glistened wet in the glow of the gas-lamps. It was a typical Glasgow morning—dark, cheerless and with a cold drizzle descending from the brooding skies. They passed men—hands in pockets and shoulders hunched—hurrying through the rain to their “wurrk.” Dock policemen loafed under the eaves of the sheds, standing like statues with their oilskin capes reflecting the vagrant flickering of near-by gas jets. It was a ghastly morning to be going to sea, and Donald’s spirits were at a very low ebb. There was very little romance in this sort of thing.
The clatter of hoofs stopped and the cabman hailed a passer-by. “Hey, you! Whaur’s th’ Kelvinhaugh lyin’?”