Laura Spencer Portor

“ She could afford to be a little generous now.
"Oh, but Mummy, no man with a mother like you expects his wife to do for him what his mother did." They sat a moment silent. He recalled the cruelty of his first rebuke, the harsh words he had spoken. "Mummy dear," he said, slowly, "I want to tell you something. You must never think that I love her as I love you. I love her as a man ought to love the woman he marries, but no one tells you you've got to love the woman you marry as you love the woman who brought you up. ”

“ Merington rose, stung, bewildered, shocked, angry. He could hardly believe he heard aright. His hand on the back of the chair trembled, and his voice trembled a little, too.
"Mummy! You're making a great success of this! For a man to love a girl, by Jove! like that, and be ordered away to war, and to have his own mother take the trouble to tell him that if he's killed the girl is going to console herself strumming Chopin and Grieg, meeting people, loving another fellow—yes, and marrying him and having children—" His words broke. ”

“ I would never care to travel. I am too old to undertake such things. And study— So many studies open nowadays to young people—law, and medicine, and suffrage, and day nurseries—a thousand interests."
"Mummy!" He turned in his chair, but she was at the other end of the room. Certainly she was talking a little daft. He returned to the fire. Gwendolen study medicine! Good Lord! The pink-and-white perfection of her!
His mother came again to his side. Her voice was easy, conciliatory, explanatory. "I mean just this; there are so many general interests for young people. ”

“ The Bible tells you you've got to leave your mother and father and cleave to her, and that's a good precaution to keep a man from running back to his mother." He smiled a little at his own cleverness. "But that's not meaning a man loves his wife better than his mother. Why, just think how long you've had me! As a rule, a man has only known a girl a year or two." Merington felt very clever somehow in handing back her own argument, with the handle turned toward her.
"Well, of course," his mother said, slipping her hand up to his head, "it really isn't like being a mother. ”

“ By all of which any one not knowing the inner workings of Merington's mind would have judged he had for years past lived with a soldier's hope—the hope of active service.
The fact was Merington never hesitated to tell an untruth when it could do no one harm and could ease the minds of others. It would certainly make things easier for everybody, which was to say for Gwendolen and his mother, if they believed he was really eager to go. Merington's entire moral code was built in a very personal way on others. ”

“ Merington turned and looked at the retreating figure. He was keenly sensible, for the first time, how stooped the shoulders were, how old she looked. He felt the unreasoning revulsion with which the mind defends itself against a too keen feeling of pity. How utterly without grace old people can be!
"She's got her music," his mother was saying again. "And there are other people coming into her life every day. Whereas when a woman marries and has children— Of course, some people trust their children to nurses. ”

“ He knew he would infinitely rather crack rocks for the rest of his life—if they would only let him crack them on a certain road, where he could get up now and then and run up a certain lovely lane, past the hawthorn hedge to a certain garden, typically English, where she sat, and where the larkspur and prince's-feather and mignonette of her tending, and roses of an incredible loveliness bloomed, but slight and negligible things, frail and on their way to wither, compared with that ever fresh and ever renewed loveliness of her. ”

“ The Boy's Mother
BY LAURA SPENCER PORTOR
FOR many days, off and on at frequent intervals, Merington might have been seen striding up the path of a certain garden. Then there was that one day when she met him in the library; the day when her lame brother limped out of the room on his crutches and left her and Merington and a perfectly dead silence.
Merington never knew exactly how he got to the subject; very few men who make a success of it ever do. Why should a man remember just what got him to the point where he is as melted wax before the woman he loves? ”

“ For himself, he asked nothing better than to be permitted to do his share. "For it's not going to amount to more than a jolly good beating for them. We'll be back to tea and jam sandwiches almost before we're there. Look at the Powers they've got against them!"
All this to young Brookby, who was, Merington knew, hard hit by the news. ”

“ The longest-living author of this work died in 1957, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 65 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works. ”