With averted eyes, and a manner he strove to make careless, he said, “Dear Mother mine, would you despise me for a weak, shilly-shally sort of creature if—” he hesitated a moment,—“if I should, after all, alter the plan of my life and not go into the monastery?”
Her face was transfigured, but she answered calmly, realizing fully that it was delicate ground upon which they were treading: “Of course I would not, dear. Whatever is for your happiness is that which I desire. And no one, not even a mother, can decide for you.”
He reached up, and pulling her hand down, kissed it reverently. And then she said softly: “While my boy was little I guided him through the shoals, avoiding the rocks, and I longed,—oh, how I longed to be always at the helm, to keep his boat in the still, deep waters. But I realized that it would be no kindness to have him depend on me alone for guidance. I would grow old,—my hand would lose its cunning, my eyes their keenness of vision,—or I would have to leave him altogether—”
He kissed her hand again, in protest. “Old age and death have nothing in common with my young mother,” he whispered.
She smiled sadly as she shook her head. “Nevertheless, one must always be prepared. At any rate, I taught you how to steer your own boat, my boy.”
“Then you desert the ship, do you, O most wise woman?” he asked gayly.
“I but abdicate the captaincy,” she replied in the same strain.
When he left the house to make his call, there was something in his bearing which would have convinced his mother, even without their previous conversation, that his decision was made and that he went to put his life in the hands of the one woman in the world she would have chosen for him. Her heart was light, for she had no doubt as to the outcome.
Mr. Spencer came in singing, “Hail to the chief who in triumph advances,” and then, seeing his sister, he stopped abruptly and said, “I told you so.”
“You think he has gone to put his fate ‘to the test, to win or lose it all?’”