Mothers to Men. Zona Gale
Читать онлайн книгу.
and so did I, me through not quite knowing what to say, and him—well, I wasn't sure, but I thought he acted a good deal as if he had something nice to think about. I've seen that look on people's faces sometimes, and it always makes me feel a little surer that I'm a human being. I wondered if it was his new work he was turning over, or his liking the child's being cared for, or the mere nice minute, there by the grate fire. Then a door upstairs shut, and somebody come down and into the room, and when he got up, his look sort of centred in that new minute.
"It was Miss Sidney that come in, and she set down by the fire like something pleased her.
"'Aunt Eleanor is going to decorate Christopher herself,' she says. 'She believes that she alone can do whatever comes up in this life to be done, and usually she's right.'
"Insley stood looking at her for a minute before he set down again. She had her big black cloak off by then, and she was wearing a dress-for-in-the-house that was all rosy. She wasn't anything of the star any longer. She was something more than a star. I always think one of the nicest commonplace minutes in a woman's everyday is when she comes back from somewheres outside the house where she's been, and sets down by the fire, or by a window, or just plain in the middle of the room. They always talk about pigeons 'homing'; I wish't they kept that word for women. It seems like it's so exactly what they do do.
"'I love the people,' Miss Sidney went on, 'that always feel that way—that if something they're interested in is going to be really well done, then they must do it themselves.'
"Insley always knew just what anybody meant—I'd noticed that about him. His mind never left what you'd said floating round, loose ends in the room, without your knowing whether it was going to be caught and tied; but he just nipped right onto your remark and tied it in the right place.
"'I love them, too,' he says now. 'I love anybody who can really feel responsibility, from a collie with her pups up. But then I'm nothing to go by. I find I'm rather strong for a good many people that can't feel it, too—that are just folks, going along.'
"I suppose he expected from her the nice, ladylike agreeing, same as most women give to this sort of thing, just like they'd admit they're fond of verbenas or thin soles. But instead of that, she caught fire. Her look jumped up the way a look will and went acrost to his. I always think I'd rather have folks say 'I know' to me, understanding, than to just pour me out information, and that was what she said to him.
"'I know,' she says, 'on the train to-day—if you could have seen them. Such dreadful-looking people, and underneath—the giving-up-ness. I believe in them,' she added simple.
"When a thing you believe gets spoke by somebody that believes it, too, it's like the earth moved round a little faster, and I donno but it does. Insley looked for a minute like he thought so.
"'I believe in them,' he says; 'not the way I used to, and just because I thought they must be, somehow, fundamentally decent, but because it's true.'
"'I know just when I first knew that,' Miss Sidney says. 'It come to me, of all places, in a subway train, when I was looking at a row of faces across the car. Nobody, nobody can look interesting in that row along the side of a subway car. And then I saw....'
"She thought for a minute and shook her head.
"'I can't tell you,' she says, 'it sounds so little and—no account. It was a little thing, just something that happened to a homely woman with a homely man, in a hat like a pirate's. But it almost—let me in. I can do it ever since—look into people, into, or through, or with ...' she tries to explain it. Then her eyes hurried up to his face, like she was afraid he might not be understanding. He just nodded, without looking at her, but she knew that he knew what she meant, and that he meant it, too.
" ... I thought it was wonderful to hear them. I felt like an old mountain, or anything natural and real ancient, listening to the Song of Believing, sung by two that's young and just beginning. We all sing it sometime in our lives—or Lord grieve for them that never do—and I might as well own up that I catch myself humming that same song a good deal of the time, to keep myself a-going. But I love to hear it when it's just begun.
"They was still talking when Mis' Emmons come downstairs with Christopher. Land, land but the little chap looked dear, dragging along, holding up a long-skirted lounging dress of Mis' Emmons's. I never had one of them lounging dresses. There's a lot of common things that it never seems to me I can buy for myself: a nice dressing-gown, a block of black pins, a fancy-headed hat pin, and a lemon-squeezer. I always use a loose print, and common pins, and penny black-headed hat pins, and go around squeezing my lemons by hand. I donno why it is, I'm sure.
"'I'm—I'm—I'm—a little boy king!' Christopher stutters, all excited and satisfied, while Insley was a-packing him in the Morris chair.
"'Rained on!' says Mis' Emmons, in that kind of dismay that's as pure feminine as if it had on skirts. 'Water isn't a circumstance to what that dear child was. He was saturated—bless him. He must have been out for perfect hours.'
"Christopher, thinking back into the rain, mebbe, from the pleasantness of that minute, smiled and took a long breath.
"'I walked from that other place,' he explains, important.
"Mis' Emmons knew he was hungry, and she took Miss Sidney and Insley off to the kitchen to find something to eat, and left me with the little fellow, me spreading out his clothes in front of the fire to dry. He set real still, like being dry and being with somebody was all he wanted. And of course that is a good deal.
"I don't always quite know how to start talking to a child. I'm always crazy to talk with them, but I'm so afraid of that shy, grave, criticizin' look they have. I feel right off like apologizing for the silly question I've just asked them. I felt that way now when Christopher looked at me, real dignified and wondering. 'What you going to be when you grow up to be a man?' was what I had just asked him. And yet I don't know what better question I could of asked him, either.
"'I'm goin' to have a cream-puff store, an' make it all light in the window,' he answers ready.
"'All light in the window?' I says puzzled.
"'And I'm going to keep a church,' he goes on, 'and I'm going to make nice, black velvet for their coffings.'
"I didn't know quite what to make of that, not being able to think back very far into his mind. So I kept still a few minutes.
"'What was you doin' in the church?' he says to me, all at once.
"'I don't really know. Waiting for you to come, I guess, Christopher,' I says.
"'Was you?' he cried, delighted. 'Pretty soon I came!' He looked in the fire, sort of troubled. 'Is God outdoors nights?' he says.
"I said a little something.
"'Well,' he says, 'I thought he was in the house by the bed when you say your prayer. An' I thought he was in church. But I don't think he stays in the dark, much.'
"'Mebbe you don't,' I says, 'but you wait for him in the dark, and mebbe all of a sudden some night you can tell that something is there. And just you wait for that night to come.'
"'That's a nice game,' says Christopher, bright. 'What game is that?'
"'I donno,' I says. 'Game of Life, I guess.'
"He liked the sound; and he set there—little waif, full of no supper, saying it over like a chant:—
"'Game o' life—game o' life—game o' l-i-f-e—'
"Just at that minute I was turning his little pockets wrong side out to dry them, and in one of them I see a piece of paper, all crumpled up and wrinkled. I spread it out, and I see it had writing on. And I held it up to the light and read it, read it through twice.
"'Christopher,' I says then, 'where did you get this piece of paper? It was in your pocket.'
"He looked at it, blank, and then he remembered.
"'My