The Iron Woman Part 13

"If I am so wicked, I wonder you want to be engaged to me!"

"Can't I like anybody but you?" Blair said, and yawned.

"You can like everybody, for all I care," she retorted. Blair whistled, upon which Elizabeth became absorbed in petting her dog, kissing him ardently between his eyes.

"I hate to see a girl kiss a dog," Blair observed;

"'Sing Polly-wolly-doo--'"

"Don't look, then," said Elizabeth, and kissed Bobby again.

Blair sighed, and gave up his song. Bobby, obviously uncomfortable, scrambled out of Elizabeth's lap and began to stretch himself on the uncertain floor of the skiff.

"Lie down!" Blair commanded, and poked the little creature, not ungently, with his foot. Bobby yelped, gave a flying nip at his ankle, and retreated to the shelter of his mistress's skirts.

"Confound that dog!" cried Blair.

"You are a horrid boy!" she said, consoling her puppy with frantic caresses. "I'm glad he bit you!"

Blair, rubbing his ankle, said he'd like to throw the little wretch overboard.

Well, of course, Elizabeth being Elizabeth, the result was inevitable. The next instant the ring lay sparkling in the bottom of the boat. "I break my engagement! Take your old ring! You are a cruel, wicked boy, and I hate you--so there!" "I must say I don't see why you should expect me to enjoy being bitten," Blair said hotly. "Well, all right; throw me over, if you want to. I shall never trust a woman again as long as I live!" He began to row fiercely. "I only hope that darned pup isn't going mad."

"I hope he _is_ going mad," said Elizabeth, trembling all over, "and I hope you'll go mad, too. Put me on sh.o.r.e this instant!"

"Considering the current, I fear you will have to endure my society for several instants," Blair said.

"I'd rather be drowned!" she cried furiously, and as she spoke, even before he could raise his hand to stop her, with Bobby in her arms she sprang lightly over the side of the boat into the water. There was a terrific splash--but, alas! Elizabeth, in preferring death to Blair's society, had not calculated upon the September shallows, and even before the horrified boy could drop his oars and spring to her a.s.sistance, she was on her feet, standing knee-deep in the muddy current.

The water completely extinguished the fires of wrath. In the hubbub that followed, the e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns and outcries, Nannie's tears, Miss White's terrified scolding, Blair's protestations to David that it wasn't his fault--through it all, Elizabeth, wading ash.o.r.e, was silent. Only at the landing of the toll-house, when poor distracted Cherry-pie bade the boys get a carriage, did she speak:

"I won't go in a carriage. I am going to walk home."

"My lamb! you'll take cold! You mustn't!"

"You look like the deuce," Blair told her anxiously; and David blurted out, "Elizabeth, you can't walk home; you're a perfect object!" Elizabeth, through the mud trickling over her eyes, flashed a look at him:

"_That's_ why I'm going to walk!" And walk she did--across the bridge, along the street, a dripping little figure stared at by pa.s.sers-by, and followed by the faithful but embarra.s.sed four-- by five, indeed, for Blair had fished Bobby out of the water, and even stopped, once in a while when no one was looking, to give the maker of all this trouble a furtive and apologetic pat.

At Elizabeth's door, in a very scared frame of mind lest Mr.

Ferguson should come out and catch him, Blair attempted to apologize.

"Don't be silly," Elizabeth said, muddy and shivering, but just; "it wasn't your fault. But we're not engaged any more." And that was the end of the love-story!

Elizabeth told Cherry-pie that she had "broken with Blair Maitland _forever!_" Miss White, when she went to make her report of the dreadful event to Mr. Ferguson, added that she felt a.s.sured the young people had got over their foolishness.

Elizabeth's uncle, telling the story of the ducking to David's horrified mother, said that he was greatly relieved to know that Elizabeth had come to her senses.

But with all the "tellings" that buzzed between the three households, n.o.body thought of telling Mrs. Maitland. Why should they? Who would connect this woman of iron and toil and sweat, of noise and motion, with the sentimentalities of two children? She had to find it out for herself.

At breakfast on the morning of the day Blair was to start East, his mother, looking over the top of her newspaper at him, said abruptly:

"Blair, I have something to say to you before you go. Be at my office at the Works at ten-fifteen." She looked at him amiably, then pushed back her chair. "Nannie! Get my bonnet. Come! Hurry!

I'm late!"

Nannie, running, brought the bonnet, a bunch of rusty black crepe, with strings frayed with many tyings. "Oh, Mamma," she said softly, "do let me get you a new bonnet?"

But Mrs. Maitland was not listening. "Harris!" she called loudly, "tell Watson to have those roller figures for me at eleven. And I want the linen tracing--Bates will know what I mean--at noon without fail. Nannie, see that there's boiled cabbage for dinner."

A moment later the door banged behind her. The abrupt silence was like a blow. Nannie and Harris caught their breaths; it was as if the oxygen had been sucked out of the air; there was a minute before any one breathed freely. Then Blair flung up his arms in a wordless protest; he actually winced with pain. He glanced around the unlovely room; at the table, with its ledgers and clutter of unmatched china--old Canton, and heavy white earthenware, and odd cups and saucers with splashing decorations which had pleased Harris's eye; at the files of newspapers on the sideboard, the grimy walls, the untidy fireplace. "Thank Heaven! I'm going off to-day. I wish I need never come back," he said.

"Oh, Blair, that is a dreadful thing to say!"

"It may be dreadful, but that's the way I feel. I can't help my feelings, can I? The further mother and I are apart, the better we love each other. Well! I suppose I've got to go and see her bossing a lot of men, instead of sitting at home, like a lady;-- and I'll get a dreadful blowing up. Of course she knows about the engagement now, thanks to Elizabeth's craziness."

"I don't believe she knows anything about it," Nannie tried to encourage him.

"Oh, you bet old Ferguson has told her," Blair said, gloomily.

"Say, Nannie, if Elizabeth doesn't look out she'll get into awful hot water one of these days with her devil of a temper--and she'll get other people into it, too," he ended resentfully.

Blair hated hot water, as he hated everything that was unbeautiful. "Mother is going to take my head off, of course," he said.

But Sarah Maitland, entirely ignorant of what had happened, had no such intention; she had gone over to her office in a glow of personal pleasure that warmed up the details of business. She intended to take Blair that morning through the Works,--not as he had often gone before, tagging after her, a frightened child, a reluctant boy--but as the prince, formally looking over the kingdom into which he was so soon to come! He was in love: therefore he would wish to be married; therefore he would be impatient to get to work! It was all a matter of logical and satisfactory deduction. How many times in this hot summer, when very literally she was earning her son's bread by the sweat of her brow, had she looked at Elizabeth and Blair, and found enjoyment in these deductions! n.o.body would have imagined it, but the big, ungainly woman _dreamed!_ Dreamed of her boy, of his business success, of his love, of his wife,--and, who knows?

perhaps those grimy pink baby socks began to mean something more personal than the missionary barrel. It was her purpose, on this particular morning, to tell him, after they had gone through the Works, just where, when he graduated, he was to begin. Not at the bottom!--that was Ferguson's idea. "He ought to start at the bottom, if he is ever to get to the top," Ferguson had barked.

No, Blair need not start at the bottom; he could begin pretty well up at the top; and he should have a salary. What an incentive that would be! First she would tell him that now, when he was going to college, she meant to increase his allowance; then she would tell him about the salary he would have when he got to work. How happy he would be! For a boy to be in love, and have all the pocket-money he wanted, and a great business to look forward to; to have work--work! the finest thing in the world!-- all ready to his hand,--what more could a human being desire? At the office, she swept through the morning business with a speed that took her people off their feet. Once or twice she glanced at the clock; Blair was always unpunctual. "He'll get _that_ knocked out of him when he gets into business," she thought, grimly.

It was eleven before he came loitering across the Yards. His mother, lifting her head for a moment from her desk, and glancing impatiently out of the dirt-begrimed office window, saw him coming, and caught the gleam of his patent-leather shoes as he skirted a puddle just outside the door. "Well, Master Blair," she said to herself, flinging down her pen, "you'll forget those pretty boots when you get to walking around your Works!"

Blair, dawdling through the outer office, found his way to her sanctum, and sat down in a chair beside her desk. He glanced at her shrinkingly, and looked away. Her bonnet was crooked; her hair was hanging in wisps at the back of her neck; her short skirt showed the big, broad-soled foot twisted round the leg of her chair. Blair saw the muddy sole of that shoe, and half closed his eyes. Then remembering Elizabeth, he felt a little sick; "she's going to row about it!" he thought, and quailed.

"You're late," she said; then, without stopping for his excuses, she proceeded with the business in hand. "I'm going to increase your allowance."

Blair sat up in astonishment.

"I mean while you're at college. After that I shall stop the allowance entirely, and you will go to work. You will go on a salary, like any other man." Her mouth clicked shut in a tight line of satisfaction.

The color flew into Blair's face. "Why!" he said. "You are awfully good, Mother. Really, I--"

"I know all about this business of your engagement to Elizabeth,"

Mrs. Maitland broke in, "though you didn't see fit to tell me about it yourself." There was something in her voice that would have betrayed her to any other hearer; but Blair, who was sensitive to Mrs. Richie's slightest wish, and careful of old Cherry-pie's comfort, and generously thoughtful even of Harris-- Blair, absorbed in his own apprehensions, heard no pain in his mother's voice. "I know all about it," Mrs. Maitland went on. "I won't have you call yourselves engaged until you are out of college, of course. But I have no objection to your looking forward to being engaged, and married, too. It's a good thing for a young man to expect to be married; keeps him clean."

Blair was struck dumb. Evidently, though she did not know what had happened, she did know that he had been engaged. Yet she was not going to take his head off! Instead she was going to increase his allowance because, apparently, she approved of him!

"So I want to tell you," she went on, "though you have not seen fit to tell me anything, that I'm willing you should marry Elizabeth, as soon as you can support her. And you can do that as soon as you graduate, because, as I say, when you are in the Works, I shall pay you"--her iron face lighted--"I shall pay you _a salary!_ a good salary."

More money! Blair laughed with satisfaction; the prospect soothed the sting of Elizabeth's "meanness"--which was what he called it, when he did not remember to name it, darkly, "faithlessness." He was so comforted that he had, for the first time in his life, an impulse to confide in his mother; "Elizabeth got provoked at me"-- there was a boyish demand for sympathy in his tone; "and--"

But Mrs. Maitland interrupted him. "Come along," she said, chuckling. She got up, pulled her bonnet straight, and gave her son a jocose thrust in the ribs that made him jump. "I can't waste time over lovers' quarrels. Patch it up! patch it up! You can afford to, you know, before you get married. You'll get your innings later, my boy!" Still chuckling at her own joke, she slammed down the top of her desk and tramped into the outer office.

Blair turned scarlet with anger. The personal familiarity extinguished his little friendly impulse to blurt out his trouble with Elizabeth, as completely as a gust of wind puts out a scarcely lighted candle. He got up, his teeth set, his hands clenched in his pockets, and followed his mother through the Yards--vast, hideous wastes, scorching in the September heats, full of endless rows of pig, piles of sc.r.a.p, acres, it seemed to Blair, of slag. The screeching clamor of the place reeked with the smell of rust and rubbish and sour earth, and the air was vibrant with the clatter of the "buggies" on the narrow-gauge tracks that ran in a tangled network from one furnace to another.

Blair, trudging along behind his mother, cringing at the ugliness of everything about him, did not dare to speak; he still felt that dig in the ribs, and was so angry he could not have controlled his voice.