Apron-Strings Part 44

"You--you _sure_?"

"Why, Ikey!" she cried, astonished.

"Alvays I--I like to t'ink de oder t'ing."

"What other thing?"

"Dat you vas found in de basket."

Balcome laughed, and Sue laughed with him. Even Ikey, guessing that he had inadvertently been more than usually witty, allowed a smile to come into those wet eyes.

"There!" cried Sue, putting both arms about him. "Momsey forgives."

"T'ank you. Und now I like to question--you don't go avay mit de preacher?"

"No! No!" Sue blushed like a girl.

"Den you don't marry mit him."

"N-n-n-n-no!"

"You feel better, don't you, old man?" inquired Balcome.

"Yes.--If I vas growed up, I vould marry mit her myself."

"Now little flattering chorister," said Sue, "there's something Momsey wants you to do. She'll have to leave here very soon. And before she goes she wants to hear that splendid voice again. So you go to the choirmaster, and ask him if he'll get all the boys together for Miss Susan, and have them sing something--something full of happiness, and hope."

"Momsey, can it be 'O Mutter Dear, Jerusalem?'"

"Do you like that best?"

"I like it awful much! De first part, she has Mutter in it; und--und also Jerusalem."

Sue kissed him. "And the second verse Momsey likes----

_'O happy harbor of G.o.d's Saints!

O sweet and pleasant soil!

In Thee no sorrow can be found, Nor grief, nor care, nor toil!'_"

"It's grand!" sighed Ikey.

"You ask the choirmaster if you may sing it. And if he lets you----"

"Goot!" He started away bravely enough. But the Church door reached, he turned and came slowly back. "Momsey," he faltered, "I don't remember my mutter. Vould you, now, mind if--just vonce before you go--if I called _you_--mutter?"

She put out her arms to him. "Oh, my son! My son!"

With a cry, he flung himself into her embrace, weeping. "Oh, mutter!

Mutter! Mutter!"

"Remember that mother loves you."

"Oh, my mutter," he answered, "Gott take fine care of you!"

"And G.o.d take care of my boy."

He sobbed, and she held him close, brus.h.i.+ng at the tousled head. While Balcome paced to and fro on the lawn, and coughed suspiciously, and blinked at the sun. "Say, I've got an idea," he announced. "Listen, young man! Come here."

Gently Sue unclasped the hands that clung about her neck, and turned the tear-stained face to Balcome.

"Up in Buffalo, in my business, I need a boy who knows how to keep his mouth shut. Now when do you escape from this--this asylum?" He swept his hat in a wide circle that included the Rectory.

Pride made Ikey forget his woe. "Oh," he boasted, "I can go venefer I like. You see, my aunt, she only borrows me here."

"Ah! And what do you think of my proposition?"

Ikey meditated. "Vell, I ain't crazy to stay here mit Momsey gone."

Balcome put a hand on his shoulder. "I thought you wouldn't. So suppose we talk this over--eh?--man to man--while we hunt the choirmaster?"

CHAPTER XII

When they were gone, Sue looked down at the check in her hand.

Yesterday, in the heat of a just resentment, she had boasted a new freedom. What had come of it was twelve hours without the presence of her mother--twelve hours shared with Hattie and Farvel.

They had been happy hours, for strangely enough Hattie had needed little cheering. It was Farvel who easily accomplished wonders with her. Sue did not know what pa.s.sed between the clergyman and the bride-who-was-not-to-be during a long conference in the library. She had heard only the low murmur of their voices. And once she had heard Hattie laugh. When the two finally emerged, it was plain that Hattie had been weeping, and Farvel was noticeably kind to her, even tender.

At dinner he was unwontedly cheerful, relieved at the whole solving of the old, sad mystery, though worried not a little by Clare's disappearance. After dinner he had taken himself out and away in a futile search that had lasted the whole night.

But happy as Sue had been since parting with her mother at Tottie's, nevertheless she felt strangely shaken, as if, somehow, she had been swept from her bearings. She attributed this to the fact that never before had she and her mother spent a night under different roofs.

Until Sue's twenty-fourth birthday, there had been the daily partings that come with a girl's school duties. (Sue had continued through a business college after leaving high school.) But beyond the short trip to school and back, Mrs. Milo did not permit her daughter to go anywhere alone, urging Sue's youth as her excuse.

They shopped together; they sat side by side in the Milo pew at St.

Giles; and after Sue's sixteenth birthday, though Wallace might have to be left at home with his father, Mrs. Milo did not permit her daughter to accept invitations, even to the home of a girl friend, unless she herself was included. It was said--and in praise of Mrs. Milo--that here was one woman who took "good care of her girl."

When Horatio Milo died (an expert accountant, he had no resistance with which to combat a sudden illness that was aggravated by a wound received in the Civil War), Mrs. Milo clung more closely than ever--if that was possible--to Sue. To the daughter, this was explained by her mother's pathetic grief; and by her dependence. For Sue was now, all at once, the breadwinner of the little family.

At this juncture, Mrs. Milo pleaded hard in behalf of an arrangement for earning that would not take her daughter from her even through a short business day. Sue met her mother's wishes by setting up an office in the living-room of their small apartment. Here she took some dictation--her mother seated close by, busy with her sewing, but not too busy to be graciousness itself to those men and women who desired Sue's services. There was copying to be done, too. The girl became a sort of general secretary, her clients including an author, a college professor, and a clergyman.

Thus for six years. Then, at thirty years of age, she went to fill the position at the Rectory. Her father had been a vestryman of the Church, and she had been christened there--as a small, freckle-faced girl in pigtails, fresh from a little village in northern New York.

And now, at this day that was so late, Sue knew that between her and her mother things could never again be as they had been. Their differences lay deep: and could not be adjusted. Mrs. Milo had always demanded from her daughter the unquestioning obedience of a child; she would not--and could not--alter her att.i.tude after so many years.

But there was a reason for their parting that was more powerful than any other: down from its high pedestal had come the image of Mrs. Milo that her daughter had so long, and almost blindly, cherished. All at once, as if indeed her eyes had been suddenly and miraculously opened, Sue understood all the hypocrisy of her mother's gentleness, the affection that was only simulated, the smiles that were only muscle deep.

How it had all happened, Sue as yet scarcely knew. But in effect it had been like an avalanche--an avalanche that is built up, flake by flake, over a long period, and then gives way through even so light a touch as the springing to flight of a mountain bird. The Milo avalanche--it was made up of countless small tyrannies and scarcely noticeable acts of selfishness adroitly disguised. But touched into motion by Mrs. Milo's frank cruelty, it had swept upon the two women, destroying all the falsities that had hitherto made any thought of separation impossible. As Sue fingered the check, she realized that her life and her mother's had been changed. It was likely that they might go on living together. Though they were two women who belonged apart.