“Yes. I brought them each six pillowcases with lace insertion. Of course, I crocheted the lace myself.”
“Did you sit up at night doing it?”
“Yes.”
“I guess you got pretty tired.”
“Yes. I got very tired.”
“Is it hard work being a housekeeper?”
“Well, Shaw, I find it pretty hard. I don’t think I’m quite so strong since your father died.”
“My work is very hard too,” he said, making his voice deep. “And I’m at the top of my class and I’m going to try to pass into the entrance class at Christmas.”
“You are a good boy, Shaw.”
Bowling along the road, he felt as though they two floated in a golden haze of happiness. They were enthroned on the seat of the buggy talking freely, intimately, of their lives, unburdening their hearts without fear.
When they reached the gate he flung down the reins, leaped out, bawled “Whoa” in true farmer fashion to the mare as she hastened through; slammed the gate, clambered back over the wheel, and let her have her head.
Jane Gower met her daughter at the door and kissed her. Jane always moistened her lips before kissing, so their imprint remained a moment as though an affectionate wave had touched the shore. Shaw lugged the suitcase after.
Already the house was swarming and every hour brought more of the old couple’s descendants. By midday all thirteen of their children were there, with sons and daughters-in-law. Shaw was always losing his mother in the crowd. When he found her he pressed close to her, rubbing his cheek against her.
“You’d think you were a gatepost, Cristabel, and Shaw was a calf,” remarked one of her brothers.
She gave Shaw a tenderly reproving look and gently pushed him away.
He could not stay away. He could not bear her out of his sight. His eyes seemed to her to be always staring into her face. What were the thoughts behind those gravely staring eyes? What was in the mind of her queer little boy?
But she was proud of him. He was different from the other grandchildren, clever, like his father. She took Shaw up to his room when it was time to get ready for church. She carried a jug of hot water and from it filled the basin. “Take off your coat,” she said; “I must wash your head. I do think that Ma or the girls might have seen to it. Indeed, you’re old enough yourself.”
“Ain’t I clean?” he asked, surprised.
“You just wait and see the water that comes off you.”
He pulled off his jacket and gave himself up. He surrendered himself utterly to the bliss of being handled by her loved hands. She lathered his head and with soapy washcloth sought the intricacies of his ears. He did not mind the suds. He did not mind feeling half drowned under the rinsing. As she vigorously rubbed his hair he looked up at her lovingly like a docile little dog.
“My goodness, Shaw, how you stare! You’d think you’d never seen me before.”
“I can’t help it, Mamma,” he said. “I sort of want to remember what you’re like.”
“Now I call that a clean head!” she exclaimed, running her fingers through his thick hair. “That’s the way I’d like to see you kept.”
He caught her hand and turned the wedding ring on her thin finger.
“I wish we could be always together, Mamma.”
“I wish we could, dear. You must work as hard as you can. That’s the only way. Then some day the two of us will make a home. Unless you’ll want to get married as soon as you’re grown up, like some boys.”
“Not me! I’ve seen enough of weddings to last me the rest of my life.”
The departure for the church was frantic. The brides mislaid first one thing, then another. Their sisters and sisters-in-law, helping them to dress, filled the small rooms to suffocation with starched petticoats and healthy, perspiring womanhood. At the last moment Beaty’s garter broke. She sat down on the stairs, weeping loudly.
“It’s a bad sign,” she sobbed. “I know it’s a bad sign.”
“Nonsense, Beaty, it’s a good sign,” comforted her mother. “It’s a warning you’d forgotten to wear something borrowed. Here, one of you, lend Beaty a garter.”
A garter was pulled from a plump leg; a safety pin substituted. From every room the wedding party poured out. The sunburnt faces of Mark and Luke were like hardy flowers above the stiff white stems of their starched collars. Their hair was plastered flat and parted in the middle.
Jane Gower had a new black silk dress and a bonnet trimmed with jet for the occasion. Against the rich blackness her pink face, her clear light eyes, her snow-white hair, had an air of benign tranquillity. Roger’s beard had been washed and combed for the occasion. He led his two daughters down the aisle of the church with solemnity, as though giving them away were a cause of sadness to him. But, in truth, he was glad to be spared the expense (as he thought) of them. It was Jane who would have to make up for their hard work in house and dairy. She and Esther.
Jane in her black silk was not to compare with Becky in her wine-colored velvet, with cherries nodding on her bonnet and the rosy bow beneath her chin making her sallow little face more sallow. She and Merton, parents of one of the grooms, occupied a front pew. It was many years since they had been in any but a Church of England. Becky wore an expression of lofty unacquaintance with the forms of the Presbyterian Church and Merton’s beard twitched his amused tolerance. Neither felt that their son would be properly wed by the ceremony. Both thought he was making a poor marriage.
Leslie himself was dapper and composed, in contrast to the flurried and somewhat disheveled aspect of the other groom. The faces of the brides beamed beneath their veils like harvest moons through mist. Mr. Blair’s address was so eloquent that Roger was moved to give looks of pride across the aisle at Merton, who stared back with an unconvinced, even truculent expression. Becky sniffed continuously, patting her eyes with a laced-edged handkerchief. Jane’s heavy upper lip quivered in bearable grief at the loss of Letitia and Beaty.
Shaw drank in all that passed, his ears and eyes missing no word or movement, his mind a strange jumble of impressions. And always at the back of his mind was the aching consciousness that he must part with his mother that evening.
All the way through the wedding breakfast he sat close to her, feeling her nearness in his every fibre. He wanted little to eat and that worried her. She bent over him, urging him and laying tempting bits on his plate. When he found that in this way he could hold her attention he ate next to nothing, nibbling languidly and staring into her face.
“Whatever is the matter with you!” she whispered, under cover of one of Leslie’s jokes.
“When will you come again, Mamma?”
“Oh, bless me, I don’t know!” She could have cried to see the expression in his eyes. “You must sleep on a piece of the wedding cake and wish to see me soon.”
“Will that help—truly?”
“It may.”
“I’ll wish on it every night till you come.”
Inexorably the time for her leaving drew nearer, swallowing up all color and movement in his surroundings, making him feel still and remote and despairing, but not quite without a hope. He hoped to go with her to the station, to see her go away in the train.
Perhaps the thought of Shaw at the railway station was more than Cristabel could bear. Whatever the reason, there was no room for him in the crowded democrat wagon. He kissed her quietly, grasping her suitcase in his hands. He had taken