The Little White Bird | Page 4

I pass by.
Once she dared to address me, so that she could boast to David that I
had spoken to her. I was in the Kensington Gardens, and she asked
would I tell her the time please, just as children ask, and forget as they
run back with it to their nurse. But I was prepared even for this, and
raising my hat I pointed with my staff to a clock in the distance. She
should have been overwhelmed, but as I walked on listening intently, I
thought with displeasure that I heard her laughing.
Her laugh is very like David's, whom I could punch all day in order to
hear him laugh. I dare say she put this laugh into him. She has been
putting qualities into David, altering him, turning him forever on a
lathe since the day she first knew him, and indeed long before, and all
so deftly that he is still called a child of nature. When you release
David's hand he is immediately lost like an arrow from the bow. No
sooner do you cast eyes on him than you are thinking of birds. It is
difficult to believe that he walks to the Kensington Gardens; he always

seems to have alighted there: and were I to scatter crumbs I opine he
would come and peck. This is not what he set out to be; it is all the
doing of that timid-looking lady who affects to be greatly surprised by
it. He strikes a hundred gallant poses in a day; when he tumbles, which
is often, he comes to the ground like a Greek god; so Mary A---- has
willed it. But how she suffers that he may achieve! I have seen him
climbing a tree while she stood beneath in unutterable anguish; she had
to let him climb, for boys must be brave, but I am sure that, as she
watched him, she fell from every branch.
David admires her prodigiously; he thinks her so good that she will be
able to get him into heaven, however naughty he is. Otherwise he
would trespass less light-heartedly. Perhaps she has discovered this; for,
as I learn from him, she warned him lately that she is not such a dear as
he thinks her.
"I am very sure of it," I replied.
"Is she such a dear as you think her?" he asked me.
"Heaven help her," I said, "if she be not dearer than that."
Heaven help all mothers if they be not really dears, for their boy will
certainly know it in that strange short hour of the day when every
mother stands revealed before her little son. That dread hour ticks
between six and seven; when children go to bed later the revelation has
ceased to come. He is lapt in for the night now and lies quietly there,
madam, with great, mysterious eyes fixed upon his mother. He is
summing up your day. Nothing in the revelations that kept you together
and yet apart in play time can save you now; you two are of no age, no
experience of life separates you; it is the boy's hour, and you have come
up for judgment. "Have I done well to-day, my son?" You have got to
say it, and nothing may you hide from him; he knows all. How like
your voice has grown to his, but more tremulous, and both so solemn,
so unlike the voice of either of you by day.
"You were a little unjust to me to-day about the apple; were you not,
mother?"

Stand there, woman, by the foot of the bed and cross your hands and
answer him.
"Yes, my son, I was. I thought--"
But what you thought will not affect the verdict.
"Was it fair, mother, to say that I could stay out till six, and then
pretend it was six before it was quite six?"
"No, it was very unfair. I thought--"
"Would it have been a lie if I had said it was quite six?"
"Oh, my son, my son! I shall never tell you a lie again."
"No, mother, please don't."
"My boy, have I done well to-day on the whole?"
Suppose he were unable to say yes.
These are the merest peccadilloes, you may say. Is it then a little thing
to be false to the agreement you signed when you got the boy? There
are mothers who avoid their children in that hour, but this will not save
them. Why is it that so many women are afraid to be left alone with
their thoughts between six and seven? I am not asking this of you,
Mary. I believe that when you close David's door softly there is a
gladness in your eyes, and the awe of one