The dark mother

by Waldo David Frank

“Good night,” said David....

The following evening, he was not to be with her. She had so many engagements. But she was going to break one so he could come, only three evenings later.

Through three days David went, repeating to himself that he loved Constance Bardale. Needful it was to his peace that he be persuaded of this. Good it would be for the new hunger of his life—to spread forth, make fresh dwellings for his spirit—if this was true. Yet all that had occurred was sudden and strange. All this woman was remote. This was why he had so fast retreated from Tom on that first night. Tom was very real: in his light, the new fire in himself did not appear. He was sure that he loved: a transfiguration had been made in him: the future of Constance Bardale must in some inscrutable way be one with his. Yet he could not talk of this joyous revelation to his best friend. Indeed, with his best friend all of it was dim. He did not solve the strangeness of this. He said to himself: “It is all too mysterious yet to be spoken of. Tom would not believe me. He would ask me what had happened to make me know.” Had David these three days seen Cornelia, he could have spoken. He did not know this since he had no plan to see Cornelia. He remained with his secret. Wondering, trying to wonder about it, his thoughts reeled in a dance with his upstarting senses. He could not even clearly wonder about it all.

The conviction was there, however: he was bound by a sacred tie to Constance Bardale. He made great what was between this woman and himself because he needed it great. Also he made it great because he needed thereby to justify it to himself. Was it not plain how great all this must be to Constance Bardale? He knew so little of her ways that he had no sense even of ignorance about her. She was a lady. She was one fortunate in every circumstance: handsome, intelligent, rich: not one to alloy or to misprize her value. This lovely lady had given herself to him. A madness must have moved her. That madness love. Or perhaps something still more sacred: belief in his love, the desire in her heart that it should be requited. She had miraculously cared for him. But even this explained little—explained not at all her sudden discard of those womanly reserves that must be her nature, the swiftness of her bestowal. This could be explained alone by his own love’s plea upon her. She had felt and answered his love, before he was aware of it. She had done as women always by some mystery: given blindly where she was needed, not asked, not judged,—responded in faith and a sweet helplessness to the cry of man.

And all his life—whatever she wanted of his life—he owed to repay her.

Feeling his mighty debt to Constance Bardale, David thought of his mother; and of his mother with his father that last dim year he had lived, and of his questionings on birth and death and love. What he had seen and been taught then, the facts of his life had not disturbed since they were simply heaped upon it. His mother had great pleasure of her son. When he was near to her, her face brightened. When he came running and asked: “Take me with you, Mummy, to the village,” she would drop her basket and fold him in her arms and say: “Put on your leggins, Boy, and you may come.” It made her happy. Unendingly to give to him was, in her heart, unendingly to receive. So David learned of women: that they are mothers and that they hunger after their children and have great joy of them. His mother loved his father, but she had no joy of him at all. She took care of him, gave to him, also, without stint. But she seemed to receive nothing of her bestowal. She never kissed him, as she did David. When he came into the room, though she was swift to respond to his desires, it was with heavy face and heavy feet. There was more: his father made hidden demands on other women, took something from them, took what the child had once heard called “liberties” with them. For this, his mother suffered and pitied the women. It was “the poor girl!” “How could you, how could you, Adolph!” “What is going to become of Emma!” So David learned of women: that they are the hunted of men and have no joy of them but only sorrow and humiliation. And David learned of men: that they can, in some miraculous way, make women sacrifice themselves, and love them, although this love is a burden and a blight.

There had been Anne. She did not disturb what he had learned of women. The self-bestowal of woman was a part, a great part, of the goodness of God. Woman had no need save for children: no joy save in the bitterness of serving. Anne was there like a sweet delirious dream in the fevered night. She had lain beside him and mothered his distress; she had given him of her strength to be strong in the morning. When she judged he had had enough of her, very calmly, very like a mother weaning her child, she had put him aside. All of it a sort of passionate nursing: the sort that the passionate nights with their drain of fire demanded. Anne had always been silent.

His heart’s way of woman remained. In a veiled moment, she came and offered up her sweetness to the yearning of man. A mystery—a mystery that now had come to him! In the flesh. In the lovely flesh of Constance!

She received him in the same small room.

David was momently chilled by her precise difference from the image of his three days’ thoughts. She came up to him and let her arms glide softly over his and warmed him. He looked down at her. He saw how the loose folds of her cérise robe parted and fell from her uplifted elbows: how, underneath, her bosom was held tight in a white band of lace. He thought that he might take that lace away and truly see this bosom, crush it with his mouth. He could scarcely see at all.