Chapter XI: "my Only Boy!"

MRS. STUART felt her loneliness more than she would have liked to say, and very bitter and sorrowful grew her spirit, as time went by and Archie appeared not. She could not read, could not employ herself, could not turn her mind to any other subject. She would not go out, for fear Archie might return to find her gone.

"It would serve him right," she told herself; and once she rose and put her bonnet on, determined to punish him. But resolution failed there, and she took it off and sat down again.

So the minutes dragged slowly past, and Mrs. Stuart watched in weary solitude; and her face fell into a sad dreary set, which anybody must have been grieved to see.

Suddenly a brisk footstep could be heard without. Mrs. Stuart stirred out of her stooping postures and was in one moment stiffly upright. She wiped hastily away the traces of two tears which had insisted on having their way, and hardened her features into an expression of cold indifference. Archie should not know what she had suffered. If he did not care to be with her, she would not seem to care about being with him.

"Well, mother?" Archie spoke in a bright voice as he entered, for he wanted to make a pleasant impression. "Like to have a walk with me?"

Mrs. Stuart made no answer. She would not look at Archie, but stood up, stalked to a drawer, pulled out a duster, and began polishing a corner of the small bookshelf, which needed no polishing.

"Come, mother! Now you're not going to be vexed with me still," expostulated Archie. "There's no need. Let's have a walk and forget it."

Mrs. Stuart went on with her polishing industriously, just as if she had not heard a word.

"Of course if you don't want me, I can be off again," said Archie, in a rather aggrieved tone. "But I should think you might as well forgive and forget. I'm sorry now that I went away in such a hurry from dinner. And I do think you've been angry long enough."

Mrs. Stuart faced round upon Archie.

"Where have you been all this while?" she demanded.

"I went for a walk, mother, first."

"And after that?"

"I just went in for a little chat with Mrs. Dunn. But I didn't stay long. She wouldn't let me stay. She told me I'd ought to come back to you; so I've come."

Mrs. Stuart's thin nostrils began to quiver.

"I'm much beholden to Mrs. Dunn," she said hoarsely. "So I'm to have my boy's company at the bidding of a stranger! That's it, is it? Not as he cares to be with his mother! O no, I quite understand all about it now! And all I've got to say is, that if you don't want to be here, I don't want to have you. So there! You'd best go back to Mrs. Dunn, and stay there till bedtime. Why shouldn't you? I don't care whether you go or stay. I'm not going to have you come to me just at Mrs. Dunn's bidding."

She did not mean it, of course; people seldom do mean what they say in a passion. She did care very much—even terribly. It went to her heart to have this difference with her boy. But pride and temper were stronger than love. They had been allowed to grow rampant during many long years of indulgence; and the gentler plant of love was well-nigh choked by these great rank weeds. So bitter was her tone, so severe was her manner, that Archie at the moment believed her words. He looked strangely at Mrs. Stuart, growing almost pale.

"Very well, mother!" he said, husky in his turn. "If you don't want me, I'll go. I'm sure I shan't bother you, against your will. I'll go somewhere, though it won't be to the Dunns. And you needn't look for me till bedtime." Archie stopped, hesitating. "If you mean it," he added.

"It isn't my way to say one thing and mean another," retorted Mrs. Stuart. "May be the way of your friends, the Dunns,—likely enough! A set of—"

"Mother, you'd better not! You don't know them!" broke in Archie.

"I know enough about 'em," she said scornfully. "Trying to wheedle you away from me—you that I've just lived for! I know all about it! But I don't mean to say no more. You'll do as you choose. And if you don't want to stay, I don't mean to have you just at Mrs. Dunn's bidding, nor that spoony-faced chit of a girl's neither."

Archie broke into one angry utterance, and then he was gone—this time with a heavy unmistakable bang of the front door. Mrs. Stuart could see him striding past the window, not towards Woodbine Cottage, but the other way.

Would he come back? Might he not think better of his annoyance, and return? She had not meant him to take her at her word. She had not intended really to send him from her. Was it only the allusion to Nancy Dunn which he would not endure? Mrs. Stuart's face grew rigid at this thought.

She stood very long near the window, watching and waiting. Then she sat down, and watched and waited still. The afternoon wore away, and tea-time approached. Mrs. Stuart laid the table, and put the kettle on to boil; but she could not resolve to sit down alone to eat and think; and Archie did not come.

"I've driven him away," she murmured at length. "And he's my only boy."

Time went on, and by-and-by the Church bells began to ring. Would Archie not reappear in time for Church? He had always gone with her.

Mrs. Stuart made herself a cup of tea, and drank it off feverishly. It was of no use to think of eating. Then she dressed, putting on her boots and her best shawl and bonnet. Just at the last moment he would run in—having had tea doubtless somewhere else.

But the last moment came, and with it no Archie. The bells had ceased chiming, and the last five minutes' tinkle had come to an end. Mrs. Stuart stood waiting still.

Suddenly she came to a resolution. She would go and try to find her boy. Why had she not started sooner on this errand? The two had been parted long enough. Mrs. Stuart meant to forgive him now, and to take him back into favour. As for the Dunns, that matter must settle itself somehow. It was not her intention to give way about them; but, on the other hand, she could not forego her boy's companionship. She had had a lesson against pulling the reins too sharply.

"I'll find him and bring him back," she murmured. "I mustn't drive him away. He's getting masterful—not a child any longer, and I mustn't forget that."

And she started on the search, her mother's heart all unstrung and aching with the strain of the afternoon, her whole soul going out in a passionate longing for the boy she so loved.

Yet, if Archie had that moment walked up with a smile, I am not at all sure whether her features would not have stiffened instantly with cold disdain, and whether she might not have turned her back upon him straightway.