The Whistling Mother | Page 5

remembrance of my foolish youth. I'm pretty fond of that old room. I don't need to explain that much, probably. Any fellow would know.
I took one look around before Mother came--I thought one would be about all that would be good for me. The fire was burning rather brightly on the hearth, but I'd put out the other lights.... Then Mother came in.
If I hadn't caught a glimpse of her hands I shouldn't have known, but I did happen to see them as she came in. They were clinched tight at her sides, just the way I've often clinched mine before I went into a game on which a good deal depended. But the next minute her arms were round my neck in the old way, and she was holding me so tight I could hardly breathe--and I don't believe she could breathe much, either, for I was giving her back every bit of that, with some to spare. I have an idea she was saying, inside, "I won't--I _won't"_--just the same way I was. And she didn't--and I didn't--though not to certainly pulled harder than anything I ever _didn't_ do in my life!
She didn't keep me long. Just that one great hug, and something else that goes with it, and then what do you think she said? If I'd had a hat on I'd have taken it off to her at that moment. She looked up into my face, and showed me hers, all smiling, and not a tear in her eyes, and said:
_"Jacky, you're a brick!"_
And then I just broke out into a great laugh of relief, and I shouted:
_"Mother, you're a whole brickyard!"_
And we went downstairs carrying my luggage between us, and the worst was over, and the thing I dreaded hadn't happened.
Perhaps you think she ought to have prayed over me, and given me a Bible, and a lot of good motherly advice. Don't you think it! The prayers had been spread over twenty-two years of my life, and the Bible was all marked up with her markings. As for the good advice--well--if she hadn't done her level best, long before that, to teach me to keep clean, and think straight, and "hit the line hard"--it was too late to begin then. But she didn't have to begin then, because the thing was done, as well as any mother on earth could do it. And if you think that little thumb-marked book wasn't in my bag at that minute, you don't think right, that's all.
Dad said a few fatherly things to me before I went, like the all-round trump he is, and I was glad to have him. I could stand that all right. But I couldn't have borne anything from Mother--not then--and she knew it. How did she know? That's what gets me. But she did, the way she's always seemed to know things without being told. She's that sort, you see.
They all went down to the station with me, in the seven-passenger, with Dad driving. We didn't talk much on the way. I tried not to see the familiar old streets. I hadn't told anybody what train I was going on, but some of my old friends found out and came down just the same, and were there in a bunch to send me off. They hurried up to us, and shook hands and jollied me, and everything was lively. When the train came in we all went together to it, and then I saw the boys stand back and look at Mother. I don't know what they expected to see, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't what they did see.
It was evening, but instead of putting on an awfully stunning fur-bordered coat over the things she'd worn to dinner, as she usually does when she goes out in the car at night, Mother'd taken the trouble to go back to the tailored suit and little close hat she wears in the street and for driving. She knows I like her best that way--and I certainly did that night. I can't tell you why, except that the things we've always done together have been mostly in street-and-sports clothes--tramping and motoring and golfing--and so forth. She always seems more like a sort of good chum dressed like that than when she puts on trailers and silky things--though, my word! if you don't think she's a peach in evening dress you never saw her. Her neck and shoulders--but that's neither here nor there just now. The thing I'm telling is that she'd gone back to the clothes that make her look like a jolly girl, and I knew she'd done it so I could remember her that way.
It wasn't so hard then to go. It was all over in a minute. Nobody hung round my neck.