CHAPTER THE SECOND
MY MOTHER'S LAST DAYS
Section 1
NEXT day I came home to Clayton.
The new strange brightness of the world was all the brighter there,
for the host of dark distressful memories, of darkened childhood,
toilsome youth, embittered adolescence that wove about the place
for me. It seemed to me that I saw morning there for the first time.
No chimneys smoked that day, no furnaces were burning, the people
were busy with other things. The clear strong sun, the sparkle in
the dustless air, made a strange gaiety in the narrow streets. I
passed a number of smiling people coming home from the public
breakfasts that were given in the Town Hall until better things
could be arranged, and happened on Parload among them. "You were
right about that comet," I sang out at the sight of him; and he
came toward me and clasped my hand.
"What are people doing here?" said I.
"They're sending us food from outside," he said, "and we're going
to level all these slums--and shift into tents on to the moors;"
and he began to tell me of many things that were being arranged,
the Midland land committees had got to work with remarkable celerity
and directness of purpose, and the redistribution of population
was already in its broad outlines planned. He was working at
an improvised college of engineering. Until schemes of work were
made out, almost every one was going to school again to get as much
technical training as they could against the demands of the huge
enterprise of reconstruction that was now beginning.
He walked with me to my door, and there I met old Pettigrew coming
down the steps. He looked dusty and tired, but his eye was brighter
than it used to be, and he carried in a rather unaccustomed manner,
a workman's tool basket.
"How's the rheumatism, Mr. Pettigrew?" I asked.
"Dietary," said old Pettigrew, "can work wonders. . . ." He looked
me in the eye. "These houses," he said, "will have to come down,
I suppose, and our notions of property must undergo very considerable
revision--in the light of reason; but meanwhile I've been doing
something to patch that disgraceful roof of mine! To think that
I could have dodged and evaded------"
He raised a deprecatory hand, drew down the loose corners of his
ample mouth, and shook his old head.
"The past is past, Mr. Pettigrew."
"Your poor dear mother! So good and honest a woman! So simple and
kind and forgiving! To think of it! My dear young man!"--he said
it manfully--"I'm ashamed."
"The whole world blushed at dawn the other day, Mr. Pettigrew," I
said, "and did it very prettily. That's over now. God knows, who
is NOT ashamed of all that came before last Tuesday."
I held out a forgiving hand, naively forgetful that in this place
I was a thief, and he took it and went his way, shaking his head
and repeating he was ashamed, but I think a little comforted.
The door opened and my poor old mother's face, marvelously cleaned,
appeared. "Ah, Willie, boy! YOU. You!"
I ran up the steps to her, for I feared she might fall.
How she clung to me in the passage, the dear woman!. . .
But first she shut the front door. The old habit of respect for my
unaccountable temper still swayed her. "Ah deary!" she said, "ah
deary! But you were sorely tried," and kept her face close to my
shoulder, lest she should offend me by the sight of the tears that
welled within her.
She made a sort of gulping noise and was quiet for a while, holding
me very tightly to her heart with her worn, long hands . . .
She thanked me presently for my telegram, and I put my arm about
her and drew her into the living room.
"It's all well with me, mother dear," I said, "and the dark times
are over--are done with for ever, mother."
Whereupon she had courage and gave way and sobbed aloud, none
chiding her.
She had not let me know she could still weep for five grimy years. . . .
