The Mother Part 5

O'erwhelming grief! This here love will be the ruin of me. 'Bank Cas.h.i.+er Defaulted For a Woman.' I've lost more priceless strands since I seen that charming creature than I'll get back in a year. I've bit 'em off! I've tore 'em out! If this here goes on I'll be a Hairless Wonder in a month. 'Suicided For Love.' Same thing exactly. And what's worse," he continued, dejectedly, "the objeck of my adoration don't look at it right. She takes me for a common audience. No regard for talent. No appreciation for hair in the wrong place. 'Genius Jilted By A Factory Girl.' And she takes that manufactured article of a tattooed man for a regular platform attraction! Don't seem to _know_, Richard, that freaks is born, not made. What's fame, anyhow?"

The boy did not know.

"Why, cuss me!" the Dog-faced Man exploded, "she treats me as if I was dead-headed into the Show!"

"Excuse me, but----"

"Thanks. G.o.d knows, Richard, I ain't in love with her throat and stummick. It ain't because the one's unequalled for resistin'

razor-edged steel and the other stands unrivalled in its capacity for holdin' cold metal. It ain't her talent, Richard. No, it ain't her talent. It ain't her beauty. It ain't even her fame. It ain't so much her ma.s.sive proportions. It's just the way she darns stockings.

Just the way she sits up there on the platform darnin' them stockings as if there wasn't no such thing as an admirin' public below. It's just her _self_. Git me? 'Give Up A Throne To Wed A Butcher's Daughter.' Understand? Why, G.o.d bless you, Richard, if she was a Fiji Island Cannibal I'd love her just the same!"

"I think, Mr. Poddle," the boy ventured, "that I'd tell her."

"I did," Mr. Poddle replied. "Much to my regrets I did. I writ.

Worked up a beautiful piece out of 'The Lightning Letter-writer for Lovers.' 'Oh, beauteous Sword-Swallower,' I writ, 'pet of the public, pride of the sideshow, bright particular star in the constellation of natural phenomenons! One who is not unknown to fame is dazzled by your charms. He dares to lift his stricken eyes, to give vent to the tumultuous beatings of his manly bosom, to send you, in fact, this note. And if you want to know who done it, wear a red rose to-night.'

Well," Mr. Poddle continued, "she seen me give it to the peanut-boy.

And knowin' who it come from, she writ back. She writ," Mr. Poddle dramatically repeated, "right back."

The pause was so long, so painful, that the boy was moved to inquire concerning the answer.

"It stabs me," said Mr. Poddle.

"I think I'd like to know," said the boy.

"'Are you much give,' says she, 'to barkin' in your sleep?'"

A very real tear left the eye of Mr. Poddle, ran down the hair of his cheek, changed its course to the eyebrow, and there hung glistening....

It was apparent that the Dog-faced Man's thoughts must immediately be diverted into more cheerful channels. "Won't you please read to me, Mr. Poddle," said the boy, "what it says in the paper about my mother?"

The ruse was effective. Mr. Poddle looked up with a start. "Eh?" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

"Won't you?" the boy begged.

"I been talkin' so much, Richard," Mr. Poddle stammered, turning hoa.r.s.e all at once, "that I gone and lost my voice."

He decamped to his room across the hall without another word.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Headpiece to _At Midnight_]

_AT MIDNIGHT_

At midnight the boy had long been sound asleep in bed. The lamp was turned low. It was very quiet in the room--quiet and shadowy in all the tenement.... And the stair creaked; and footfalls shuffled along the hall--and hesitated at the door of the place where the child lay quietly sleeping; and there ceased. There was the rumble of a man's voice, deep, insistent, imperfectly restrained. A woman protested.

The door was softly opened; and the boy's mother stepped in, moving on tiptoe, and swiftly turned to bar entrance with her arm.

"Hist!" she whispered, angrily. "Don't speak so loud. You'll wake the boy."

"Let me in, Millie," the man insisted. "Aw, come on, now!"

"I can't, Jim. You know I can't. Go on home now. Stop that! I won't marry you. Let go my arm. You'll wake the boy, I tell you!"

There was a short scuffle: at the end of which, the woman's arm still barred the door.

"Here I ain't seen you in three year," the man complained. "And you won't let me in. That ain't right, Millie. It ain't kind to an old friend like me. You didn't used to be that way."

"No," the woman whispered, abstractedly; "there's been a change. I ain't the same as I used to be."

"You ain't changed for the better, Millie. No, you ain't."

"I don't know," she mused. "Sometimes I think not. It ain't because I don't want you, Jim," she continued, speaking more softly, now, "that I don't let you in. G.o.d knows, I like to meet old friends; but----"

It was sufficient. The man gently took her arm from the way. He stepped in--glanced at the sleeping boy, lying still as death, shaded from the lamp--and turned again to the woman.

"Don't wake him!" she said.

They were still standing. The man was short, long-armed, vastly broad at the shoulders, deep-chested: flashy in dress, dull and kind of feature--handsome enough, withal. He was an acrobat. Even in the dim light, he carried the impression of great muscular strength--of grace and agility. For a moment the woman's eyes ran over his stocky body: then, spasmodically clenching her hands, she turned quickly to the boy on the bed; and she moved back from the man, and thereafter regarded him watchfully.

"Don't make no difference if I do wake him," he complained. "The boy knows me."

"But he don't like you."

"Aw, Millie!" said he, in reproach. "Come off!"

"I seen it in his eyes," she insisted.

The man softly laughed.

"Don't you laugh no more!" she flashed. "You can't tell a mother what she sees in her own baby's eyes. I tell you, Jim, he don't like you.

He never did."

"That's all fancy, Millie. Why, he ain't seen me in three year! And you can't see nothing in the eyes of a four year old kid. You're too fond of that boy, anyhow," the man continued, indignantly. "What's got into you? You ain't forgot that winter night out there in Idaho, have you? Don't you remember what you said to d.i.c.k that night? You said d.i.c.k was to blame, Millie, don't you remember? Remember the doctor coming to the hotel? I'll never forget how you went on. Never heard a woman swear like you before. Never seen one go on like you went on.

And when you hit d.i.c.k, Millie, for what you said he'd done, I felt bad for d.i.c.k, though I hadn't much cause to care for what happened to him.

Millie, girl, you was a regular wildcat when the doctor told you what was coming. You didn't want no kid, then!"

"Don't!" she gasped. "I ain't forgot. But I'm changed, Jim--since then."

He moved a step nearer.

"I ain't the same as I used to be in them days," she went on, staring at the window, and through the window to the starry night. "And d.i.c.k's dead, now. I don't know," she faltered; "it's all sort of--different."

"What's gone and changed you, Millie?"