The Iron Woman Part 21

"So did I. Perhaps he'll tell you why he has changed his mind. He hasn't deigned to give me his reasons yet."

And Blair, watching her, said to himself, "Same old Elizabeth!"

He began to talk to her in his gay, teasing way, but she was not listening; suddenly she interrupted him, saying that she must go home. "I thought David was coming in, but I suppose he's walking up and down, waiting for me."

"If he doesn't know which side his bread is b.u.t.tered, I'll walk home with you," Blair said; "and Nancy dear, while I'm gone, you see Mother and do your best, won't you?"

"Yes," poor Nannie sighed, "but I do wish--"

Blair did not wait to hear what she wished; he had eyes only for this self-absorbed young creature who would not listen when he spoke to her. At the gate she hesitated, looked hurriedly about her, up and down the squalid street; she did not answer, did not apparently hear, some question that he asked. Blair glanced up and down the street, too. "David doesn't appreciate his opportunities," he said.

Elizabeth's lip tightened, and she flung up her head; the rose in her cheeks was drowned in scarlet. She came out of her absorption, and began to sparkle at her companion; she teased him, but not too much; she flattered him, very delicately; she fell into half-sentimental reminiscences that made him laugh, then stabbed him gently with an indifferent word that showed how entirely she had forgotten him. And all the time her eyes were absent, and the straight line in her cheek held the dimple a prisoner. Blair, who had begun with a sort of good-natured, rather condescending amus.e.m.e.nt at his old playmate, found himself, to his surprise, on his mettle.

"Don't go home yet," he said; "let's take a walk."

"I'd love to!"

"Mercer seems to be just as hideous as ever," Blair said; "suppose we go across the river, and get away from it?"

She agreed lightly: "Horrid place." At the corner, she flashed a glance down the side street; David was not to be seen.

"Will David practise here, when he is ready to put out his shingle?"

"I'm sure I don't know. I can't keep track of David's plans."

"He is just as good as ever, I suppose?" Blair said, and watched her delicate lip droop.

"Better, if anything." And in the dusk, as they sauntered over the old bridge, she flung out gibe after gibe at her lover. Her cheeks grew hotter and hotter; it was like tearing her own flesh.

The shame of it! The rapture of it! It hurt her so that the tears stood in her eyes; so she did it again, and yet again. "I don't pretend to live up to David," she said.

Blair, with a laugh, confessed that he had long ago given up any such ambition himself. On the bridge they stopped, and Blair looked back at the town lying close to the water. In the evening dusk lights were p.r.i.c.king out all along the sh.o.r.e; the waste- lands beyond the furnaces were vague with night mists, faintly amethyst in the east, bronze and black over the city. Here and there in the brown distances flames would suddenly burst out from unseen stacks, then sink, and the shadows close again.

"I wish I could paint it," Blair said dreamily; "Mercer from the bridge, at twilight, is really beautiful."

"I like the bridge," Elizabeth said, "for sentimental reasons.

(Now," she added to herself, "now, I am a bad woman; to speak of _that_ to another man is vile.) David and I," she said, significantly,--and laughed.

Even Blair was startled at the crudeness of the allusion. "I didn't suppose David ever condescended to be spoony," he said, and at the same instant, to his absolute amazement, she caught his arm and pulled his hand from the railing.

"Don't touch that place!" she cried; Blair, amused and cynical, laughed under his breath.

"I see; this is the hallowed spot where you made our friend a happy man?"

"We'll turn back now, please," Elizabeth said, suddenly trembling. She had reached the climax of her anger, and the reaction was like the shock of dropping from a dizzy height.

During the walk home she scarcely spoke. When he left her at her uncle's door, she was almost rude. "Goodnight. No; I'm busy. I'd rather you didn't come in." In her own room, without waiting to take off her things, she ran to her desk; she did not even pause to sit down, but bent over, and wrote, sobbing under her breath:

"DAVID: I am just as false as I can be. I ridiculed you to Blair.

I lied and lied and lied--because I was angry. I hated you for a little while. I am low, and vulgar, and a blasphemer. _I told him about the bridge._ You see how vile I am? But don't--don't give me up, David. Only--understand just how base I am, and then, if you possibly can, keep on loving me. E.

"P. S. I am not worth loving."

When David read that poor little letter, his face quivered for an instant, then he smiled. "Materna," he said--they were sitting at supper; "Materna, she certainly is perfect!"

His mother laughed, and put out her hand. But he shook his head.

"Not even you!" he said.

When he went to see Elizabeth that evening, he found her curiously broken. "David, how could I do it? I made _fun_ of you! Do you understand? Yes; I truly did. Oh, how vile I am! And I knew I was vile all the time; that's the queer part of it. But I piled it on! And all the time it seemed as if I was just bleeding to death inside. But I kept on doing it. I loved being false. I loved to blacken myself." She drew away from him, shivering. "No; don't touch me; don't kiss me; I am not worthy.

Oh, David, throw me over! Don't marry me, I am not fit--" And as he caught her in his arms, she said, her voice smothered against his breast, "You see, you didn't come in at Nannie's. And it looked as if--as if you didn't care. It was humiliating, David.

And last night you didn't bring me the book, or even send any message; and that was sort of careless. Yes, I really think you were a little horrid, David. So I was hurt, I suppose, to start with; and you know, when I am hurt--Oh, yes; it was silly; but--"

He kissed her again, and laughed. "It was silly, dear."

"Well, but listen: I am not excusing myself for this afternoon, but I do want you to understand how it started. I was provoked at your not explaining to me why you go away a whole month earlier than you need; I think any girl would be a little provoked, David. And then, on top of it, you let Blair and Nannie see that you didn't care to walk home with me, and--"

"But good gracious!" said David, amused and tender, "I thought you didn't want me! And it would have been rather absurd to hang round, if I wasn't wanted."

"Oh," she cried, sharply, lifting her wet face from his breast, "don't you see? _I want you to be absurd!_ Can't you understand how a girl feels?" She stopped, and sighed. "After all, why should you show Nannie and Blair that you care? Why should you wait? I am not worth caring for, or waiting for, anywhere, any time! Oh, David, my temper--my dreadful temper!"

He lifted her trembling hand and kissed the scar on her left wrist silently.

"I ought not to see you to-night, just to punish myself," she said brokenly. "You don't know how crazy I was when I was talking to Blair. I was _crazy!_ Oh, why, when I was a child, didn't they make me control my temper? I suppose I'm like--my mother,"

she ended in a whisper. "And I can't change, now; I'm too old."

David smiled. "You are terribly old," he said. Like everybody else, save Mrs. Richie, David accepted Elizabeth's temper as a matter of course. "She doesn't mean anything by it," her little world had always said; and put up with the inconvenience of her furies, with the patience of people who were themselves incapable of the irrationalities of temper. "Oh, you are a hardened sinner," David mocked.

"You do forgive me?" she whispered.

At that he was grave. "There is nothing I wouldn't forgive, Elizabeth."

"But I have stabbed you?"

"Yes; a little; but I am yours to stab."

Her eyes filled. "Oh, it is so wonderful, that you go on loving me, David!"

"You go on loving me," he rallied her; "in spite of my dullness and slowness, and all that."

But Elizabeth was not listening. "Sometimes it frightens me to get so angry," she said, with a somber look. "It was just the same when I was a little girl; do you remember the time I cut off my hair? I think you had hurt my feelings; I forget now what you had done. I was always having my feelings hurt! Of course I was awfully silly. It was a relief then to spoil my body, by cutting off my hair. This afternoon it was a relief to put mud on my soul."

He looked at her, trying to find words tender enough to heal the wounds she had torn in her own heart; not finding them, he was silent.

"Oh, we must face it," she said; "_you_ must face it. I am not a good girl; I am not the kind of girl you ought to marry, I'm perfectly sure your mother thinks so. She thinks a person with a temper can't love people."

"I'll not go away in March!" David interrupted her pa.s.sionately;-- of course it might be pleasanter for Materna to get away from old Ferguson; but what is a man's mother, compared with his girl!

Elizabeth's pain was intolerable to him. "I won't leave you a day before I have to!"

For a moment her wet eyes smiled. "Indeed you shall; I may be wicked--oh, I am! but I am not really an idiot. Only, David, _don't_ take things so for granted, dear; and don't be so awfully sensible, David."