The Iron Woman Part 30

But instead of the big, motherly old figure, beaming at them from the toll-house door, a slatternly maid-servant said her mistress was out. "We ain't doin' much cream now," she said, wrapping her arms in her ap.r.o.n and shivering; "it's too cold. I ain't got anything but vanilla."

"We'll have vanilla, then," Blair said, in his rather courtly way, and the girl, opening the door of the "_saloon_,"

scurried off. "By Jove!" said Blair, "I believe these are the identical blue paper roses--look at them!"

She sat down wearily. "I believe they are," she said, and began to pull off her gloves. Outside in the tollhouse garden the frosted stems of last summer's flowers stood upright in the snow.

She remembered that Mrs. Todd's geraniums had been glowing in the window that winter day when David had shouted his triumphant news. Probably they were dead now. Everything else was dead.

"Still the tissue-paper star on the ceiling!" Blair cried, gaily, "yes, everything is just the same!" And indeed, when the maid, glancing with admiring eyes at the handsome gentleman and the cross-looking lady, put down on the semi-translucent marble top of the table two tall gla.s.ses of ice-cream, each capped with its dull and dented spoon, the past was completely reproduced. As the frowsy little waitress left them, they looked at the pallid, milky stuff, and then at each other, and their individual preoccupations thinned for a moment. Blair laughed; Elizabeth smiled faintly:

"You don't expect me to eat it, I hope?"

"I won't make you eat it. Let's talk."

But Elizabeth took up her gloves. "I must go, Blair."

He pushed the tumblers aside and leaned toward her; one hand gripped the edge of the table until the knuckles were white: the other was clenched on his knee. "Elizabeth," he said, in a low voice, "have you forgiven me?"

"Forgiven you? What for?" she said absently; then remembered and looked at him indifferently. "Oh, I suppose so. I had forgotten."

"I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't loved you. You know that."

She was silent.

"Do you hate me for loving you?" On Elizabeth's cheeks the smudge of crimson began to flame into scarlet. "I don't hate you. I think you were a fool to love me. I think anybody is a fool to love anybody."

In a flash Blair understood. _She had quarrelled with David!_

It seemed as if all the blood in his body surged into his throat; he felt as if he were suffocating; but he spoke quietly. "Don't say I was a fool; say I am a fool, if you want to. Because I love you still. I love you now. I shall never stop loving you."

Elizabeth glanced at him with a sort of impersonal interest. So _that_ was the way a man might love? "Well, I am sorry for you, Blair. I'm sorry, because it hurts to love people who don't love you. At least, I should think it did. I don't love anybody, so I don't know much about it."

"You have broken with David," he said slowly.

"How did you know?" she said, with a surprised look; then added listlessly, "Yes; I've done with David. I hate him." She looked blankly down at her m.u.f.f, and began to stroke the fur. It occurred to her that before going to Willis's she must see Nannie, or else she would have told Miss White a lie; again the double working of her mind interested her; rage, and a desire to be truthful, were like layers of thought. She noted this, even while she was saying again, between set teeth, "I hate him."

"He has treated you badly," Blair said.

"How did you know?" she said, startled.

"I know David. What does a man like David know about loving a woman? He would talk his theories and standards to her, when he could be silent--in her arms!" He flung out his hand and caught her roughly by the wrist. "Elizabeth, for G.o.d's sake, _marry me._"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "ELIZABETH, MARRY ME!"]

He had risen and was leaning toward her, his fingers gripped her wrist like a trap, his breath was hot against her neck, his eyes glowed into hers. "Marry--me, Elizabeth."

The moment was primal; the intensity of it was like a rapier- thrust, down through her fury to the quick of womanly consciousness; she shrank back. "Don't," she said, faintly; "don't--" For one instant she forgot that she hated David.

Instantly he was tender.

"Dearest, dearest, I love you. Be my wife. Elizabeth, I have always loved you, always; don't you remember?" He was kneeling beside her, lifting the hem of her skirt and kissing it, murmuring crazy words; but he did not touch her, which showed that the excuse of pa.s.sion was not yet complete. And indeed it was not, for somewhere in the tumult of his mind he was defending himself--perhaps to his G.o.d: "_I have the right._ It's all over between them. Any man has the right now." Then, aloud: "Elizabeth, I love you. I shall love you forever. Marry me. Now.

To-night." When he said that, it was as if he had struck his G.o.d upon the mouth--for the accusing Voice ceased. And when it ceased, he no longer defended himself. Elizabeth looked at him, dazed. "No, I know you don't care for me, now," he said. "Never mind that! I will teach you to care; I will teach you--" he whispered: "the meaning of love! _He_ couldn't teach you; he doesn't know it himself; he doesn't"--he was at a loss for a word; some instinct gave him the right one--"want you."

It was the crack of the whip! She answered it with a look of hate. But still she was silent.

"You love him," he flung at her.

"I do not. I hate him! hate him! hate him! I wish he were dead in this room, so I could trample on him!" Even in the scorch of that insane moment, Blair Maitland flinched at such a declaration of hate. Hate like that is the left hand of Love. He had sense enough left in his madness to know that, and he could have killed David because he was jealous of such precious hate.

"You'll get over that," he a.s.sured her; neither of them saw in such an a.s.surance the confession that he knew she loved David still. And still his smitten G.o.d was silent! "You--you hate him because he slighted you," Blair said, stammering with pa.s.sion.

"But for G.o.d's sake, Elizabeth, _show_ him that you hate him. Since he despises you, despise him! Will you let him slap you in the face, and still love him?"

"I do not love him."

They were both standing; Elizabeth, staring at him with unseeing eyes, seemed to be answering some fierce interrogation in her own thought: What? was _this_ the way to kill David Richie? That it would kill her, too, never occurred to her. If it had occurred to her, it would have seemed worth while--well worth while!

"Then why do you let him think you love him?" Blair was insisting, in a violent whisper, "why do you let him think you are under his heel still? Show him you hate him--if you do hate him? Marry me, _that will show him._"

They were standing, now, facing each other--Love and Hate. Love, radiant, with glorious eyes, with beautiful parted lips, with outstretched hands that prayed, and threatened, and entreated: "Come! I must have you,--G.o.d, I _must!_" And Hate, black- browed, shaking from head to foot, with dreadful set stare, and hands clenched and trembling; hands that reached for a dagger to thrust, and thrust again! Hands reaching out and finding the dagger in that one, hot, whispered word: "Come." Yes; that would "show him"!

"When?" she said, trembling.

And he said, "Now."

Elizabeth flung up her head with a look of burning satisfaction.

"_Come!_" she said; and laughing wildly, she struck her hand into his.

CHAPTER XIX

When Robert Ferguson came in to luncheon the next day, he asked for Elizabeth. "She hasn't come home yet from Nannie's," Miss White told him; "I thought she would be here immejetly after breakfast. I can't imagine what keeps her, though I suppose they have a great deal to talk over!"

"Well, she'll have to wait for her good news," Mr. Ferguson said; and handed a telegram to Miss White. "Despatch from David. He's bringing a patient across the mountains to-night; says he'll turn up here for breakfast. He'll have to go back on the ten-o'clock train, though."

Cherry-pie nibbled with excitement; "I guess he just had to come and talk the arrangements over with her!"

"What arrangements?" Mr. Ferguson asked, vaguely; when reminded by Miss White, he looked a little startled. "Oh, to be sure; I had forgotten." Then he smiled:

"Well, I suppose I shall have to say 'yes.' I think I'll go East myself next week!" he added, fatuously; but the connection was not obvious to Miss White.

"Elizabeth got a letter from him yesterday," she said, beaming; "they've decided on her birthday--if you are willing."

"Willing? I guess it's a case of 'he had to be resigned!'" said Robert Ferguson--thinking of that trip East, he was positively gay. But Cherry-pie's romance lapsed into household concerns: "We must have something the boy likes for breakfast."

"Looking at Elizabeth will be all the breakfast he wants,"

Elizabeth's uncle said, with his meager chuckle. "David's as big a donkey as any of 'em, though he hasn't the gift of gab on the subject."