The Iron Woman Part 19

The two years of absence were to begin in April. It was in February that Robert Ferguson was told definitely just when his tenant would terminate her lease; he received the news in absolute silence. Mrs. Richie's note came at breakfast; he read it, then went into his library and shut the door. He sat down at his writing-table, his hands in his pockets, an unlighted cigar between his teeth. He sat there nearly an hour. Then, throwing the cigar into his waste-basket, he knocked his gla.s.ses off with a bewildered gesture; "Well, I'll be hanged," he said, softly. It was at that moment that he forgave Mrs. Maitland her outrageous joke of more than a year before. "I've always known that woman was no fool," he said, smiling ruefully at the remembrance of his anger at Sarah Maitland's advice. "It was darned good advice!" he said; but he looked positively dazed. "And I've always said I wouldn't give Life the chance to play another trick on me!" he reflected; "well, I won't. This is no silly love-affair; it's good common sense." Ten minutes later, as he started for his office, he caught sight of his face in the mirror in the hall. He had lifted one hand to take his hat from the rack, but as he suddenly saw himself, he stood stock-still, with upraised arm and extended fingers; Robert Ferguson had probably not been really aware of his reflection in a looking-gla.s.s for twenty-five years.

He saw now a lean, lined, sad face, a morose droop of thin and bitter lips; he saw gray hair standing up stiffly above a careworn forehead; he saw kind, troubled eyes. And as he looked, he frowned. "I'm an ugly cuss," he said to himself, sighing; "and I look sixty." In point of fact, he was nearly fifty. "But so is she," he added, defiantly, and took down his hat. "Only, _she_ looks forty." And then he thought of Mrs. Maitland's "fair and fifty," and smiled, in spite of himself. "Yes, she is rather good-looking," he admitted.

And indeed she was; Mrs. Richie's quiet life with her son had kept her forehead smooth, and her eyes--eyes the color of a brook which loiters in shady places over last year's leaves--softly clear. There was a gentle placidity about her; the curious, shy hesitation, the deep, half-frightened sadness, which had been so marked when her landlord knew her first, had disappeared; sometimes she even showed soft gaieties of manner or speech which delighted her moody neighbor to the point of making him laugh.

And laughing had all the charm of novelty to poor Robert Ferguson. "I never dreamed of her going away," he said to himself. Well, yes; certainly Mrs. Maitland had some sense, after all. When, a week later, blundering and abrupt, he referred to Mrs. Maitland's "sense," Mrs. Richie could not at first understand what he was talking about. "She 'knew more than you gave her credit for'? I thought you gave her credit for knowing everything! Oh, you don't want me to leave Mercer? I don't see the connection. _I_ don't know everything! But you are very flattering, I'm sure. I am a 'good tenant,' I suppose?"

"Please don't go." She laughed at what she thought was his idea of a joke; then said, with half a sigh, that she did not know any one in Philadelphia; "when David isn't at home I shall be pretty lonely," she said.

" Please don't go," he said again, in a low voice. They were sitting before the fire in Mrs. Richie's parlor; the gla.s.s doors of the plant-room were open,--that plant-room, which had been his first concession to her; and the warm air of the parlor was fragrant with blossoming hyacinths. There was a little table between them, with a bowl of violets on it, and a big lamp.

Robert Ferguson rose, and stood with his hands behind him, looking down at her. His hair, in a stiff brush above his forehead, was quite gray, but his face in its unwonted emotion seemed quivering with youth. He knocked off his gla.s.ses irritably. "I never know how to say things," he said, in a low voice; "but--please don't go."

Mrs. Richie stared at him in amazement.

"I think we'd better get married," he said.

"_Mr. Ferguson!_"

"I think I've cared about you ever since you came here, but I am such a fool I didn't know it until Mrs. Maitland said that absurd thing last fall."

"I--I don't know what you mean!" she parried, breathlessly; "at any rate, please don't say anything more about it."

"I have to say something more." He sat down again with the air of one preparing for a siege. "I've got several things to say.

First, I want to find out my chances?"

"You haven't any."

His face moved. He put on his gla.s.ses carefully, with both hands.

"Mrs. Richie, is there any one else? If so, I'll quit. I know you will answer straight; you are not like other women. _Is there anybody else?_ That--that Old Chester doctor who comes to see you once in a while, I understand he's a widower now; wife's just died; and if--"

"There is n.o.body; _never_ anybody."

"Ah!" he said, triumphantly; then frowned: "If your attachment to your husband makes you say I haven't any chance--but it can't be that."

Her eyes suddenly dilated. "Why not? Why do you say it can't be that?" she said in a frightened voice.

"I somehow got the impression--forgive me if I am saying anything I oughtn't to; but I had kind of an idea that you were not especially happy with him."

She was silent.

"But even if you were," he went on, "it is so many years; I don't mean to offend you, but a woman isn't faithful to a memory for so many years!" he looked at her incredulously; "not even you, I think."

"Such a thing is possible," she told him coldly; she had grown very pale. "But it is not because of--of my husband that I say I shall never marry again."

He interrupted her. "If it isn't a dead man nor a live man that's ahead of me, then it seems to me you can't say I haven't any chance--unless I am personally offensive to you?" There was an almost child-like consternation in his eyes; "am I? Of course I know I am a bear."

"Oh, please don't say things like that!" she protested. "A bear?

You? Why, you are just my good, kind friend and neighbor; but--"

"Ah!" he said, "that scared me for a minute! Well, when I understood what was the matter with me (I didn't understand until about a week ago), I said to myself, 'If there's n.o.body ahead of me, that woman shall be my wife.' Of course, I am not talking sentimentalities to you; we are not David and Elizabeth! I'm fifty, and you are not far from it. But I--I--I'm hard hit, Mrs.

Richie;" his voice trembled, and he twitched off his gla.s.ses with more than usual ferocity.

Mrs. Richie rose; "Mr. Ferguson," she said, gently, "I do appreciate the honor you do me, but--"

"Don't say a thing like that; it's foolish," he interrupted, frowning; "what 'honor' is it, to a woman like you, to have an ugly, bad-mannered fellow like me, want you for a wife? Why, how could I help it! How could any man help it? I don't know what Dr.

King is thinking of, that he isn't sitting on your doorsteps waiting for a chance to ask you! I ought to have asked you long ago. I can't imagine why I didn't, except that I supposed we would go on always living next door to each other. And--and I thought anything like _this_, was over for me... . Mrs.

Richie, please sit down, and let me finish what I have to say."

"There is no use, Mr. Ferguson," she said; but she sat down, her face falling into lines of sadness that made her look curiously old.

"There isn't anybody ahead of me: so far, so good. Now as to my chances; of course I realize that I haven't any,--to-day. But there's to-morrow, Mrs. Richie; and the day after to-morrow.

There's next week, and next year;--and I don't change. Look how slow I was in finding out that I wanted you; it's taken me all these years! What a poor, dull fool I am! Well, I know it now; and you know it; and you don't personally dislike me. So perhaps some day," his harsh face was suddenly almost beautiful; "some day you'll be--_my wife!_" he said, under his breath. He had no idea that he was "talking sentimentalities"; he would have said he did not know how to be sentimental. But his voice was the voice of youth and pa.s.sion.

She shook her head. "No," she said, quietly; "I can't marry you, Mr. Ferguson."

"But you are generally so reasonable," he protested, astonished and wistful; "why, it seems to me that you _must_ be willing--after a while? Here we are, two people getting along in years, and our children have made a match of it; and we are used to each other, that's a very important thing in marriage. It's just plain common sense, after David is on his own legs in the hospital, for us to join forces. Perhaps in the early summer? I won't be unreasonably urgent. Surely"--he was gaining confidence from his own words--"surely you must see how sensible--"

Involuntarily, perhaps through sheer nervousness, she laughed.

"Mrs. Maitland's 'sensible arrangement'? No, Mr. Ferguson; please let us forget all about this--"

He gave his snort of a laugh. "Forget? Now _that_ isn't sensible. No, you dear, foolish woman; whatever else we do, we shall neither of us forget this. This is one of the things a man and woman don't forget;" in his earnestness he pushed aside the bowl of violets on the table between them, and caught her hand in both of his. "I'm going to get you yet," he said, he was as eager as a boy.

Before she could reply, or even draw back, David opened the parlor door, and stood aghast on the threshold. It was impossible to mistake the situation. The moment of sharp withdrawal between the two on either side of the table announced it, without the uttering of a word; David caught his breath. Robert Ferguson could have wrung the intruder's neck, but Mrs. Richie clutched at her son's presence with a gasp of relief: "Oh--David! I thought you were next door!"

"I was," David said, briefly; "I came in to get a book for Elizabeth."

"We were--talking," Mrs. Richie said, trying to laugh. Mr.

Ferguson, standing with his back to the fire, was slowly putting on his gla.s.ses. "But we had finished our discussion," she ended breathlessly.

"For the moment," Mr. Ferguson said, significantly; and set his jaw.

"Well, David, have you and Elizabeth decided when she is to come and see us in Philadelphia?" Mrs. Richie asked, her voice still trembling.

"She says she'll come East whenever Mr. Ferguson can bring her,"

David said, rummaging among the books on the table. "But it's a pity to wait as long as that," he added, and the hint in his words was inescapable.

Robert Ferguson did not take hints. "I think I can manage to come pretty soon," he retorted.

CHAPTER XIII

When Mr. Ferguson said good night, David, apparently unable to find the book he had promised to take in to Elizabeth, made no effort to help his mother in her usual small nightly tasks of blowing out the lamps, tidying the table, folding up a newspaper or two. This was not like David, but Mrs. Richie was too absorbed to notice her son's absorption. Just as she was starting up- stairs, he burst out: "Materna--"

"Yes? What is it?"

He gave her a keenly searching look; then drew a breath of relief, and kissed her. "Nothing," he said.

But later, as he lay on his back in bed, his hands clasped behind his head, his pipe between his teeth, David was distinctly angry.