The Iron Woman Part 31

When he had gone to his office, Miss White propped the telegram up on the table, so that Elizabeth's eyes might brighten the moment she opened the front door But to her dismay, Elizabeth did not open the door all that afternoon. Instead came a note, plainly in her hand, addressed to Mr. Ferguson. "Why! she is sending word that she's going to stay all night _again_ with Nannie," Miss White thought, really disturbed. If such a thing had been possible, Cherry-pie would have been vexed with her beloved "lamb," for after all, Elizabeth really ought to be at home attending to things! Miss White herself had spent every minute since the wonderful news had been flung at her, in attending to things. She had made a list of the people who must be invited to the wedding, she had inspected the china-closet, she had calculated how many teaspoons would be needed,--"Better borrow some forks from Nannie, too," she said, beginning, like every good housekeeper, to look careworn. "There's so much to be done!" said Cherry-pie, excitedly. Yet this scatter-brain girl evidently meant to stay away from home still another night.

"Well, she can't, that's all there is to it!" Miss White said, decidedly; "she must come home, so as to be here in the morning when David arrives. Perhaps I'd better go down to Mrs. Maitland's and take her the despatch."

She was getting ready to go, when the first rumble of the hurricane made itself heard. Nannie dropped in, and--

"'Where's Elizabeth?' I'm sure I don't know. Isn't she at home?

'Stayed with me last night?' Why, no, she didn't. I haven't seen Elizabeth for two days, and--"

Nannie sprang to catch poor old Miss White, who reeled, and then tried, as she sank into a chair, to speak: "What? _What_?

Not with you last night? Nannie! She must have been. She told me she was going--" Miss White grew so ghastly that Nannie, in a panic, called a servant.

"Send for her uncle!" the poor lady stammered. "Send--send. Oh, what has happened to my child?" Then she remembered the letter addressed to Mr. Ferguson, lying on the table beside David's telegram. "Perhaps that will say where she is. Oh, tell him to _hurry!_"

When Robert Ferguson reached home he found the two pallid, shaking women waiting for him in the hall. Miss White, clutching that unopened letter, tried to tell him: Elizabeth had not been at Nannie's; she had not come home; she had--

"Give me the letter," he said. They watched him tear it open and run his eye over it; the next instant he had gone into his library and slammed the door in their faces.

Outside in the hall the trembling women looked at each other in silence. Then Nannie said with a gasp, "She must have gone to--to some friend's."

"She has no friend she would stay all night with but you."

"Well, you see she has written to Mr. Ferguson, so there can't be anything much the matter; he'll tell us where she is, in a minute! If he can't, I'll make Blair go and look for her. Dear, _dear_ Miss White, don't cry!"

"There has been an accident. Oh, how shall we tell David? He's coming to-morrow to talk over the wedding, and--"

The library door opened: "Miss White."

"Mr. Ferguson! Where--? What--?"

"Miss White, that--creature, is never to cross my threshold again. Do you understand me? Never again. Nannie, your brother is a scoundrel. Read that." He flung the letter on the floor between them, and went back to his library. They heard the key turn in the lock. Miss White stared at the shut door blankly; Nannie picked up the letter. It was headed "The Mayor's Office," and was dated the day before; no address was given.

"Dear Uncle Robert: I married Blair Maitland this afternoon.

David did not want me. E.F."

They read it, looked at each other with astounded eyes, then read it again. Nannie was the first to find words:

"I--don't understand." Miss White was dumb; her poor upper lip quivered wildly.

"She and David are to be married," Nannie stammered. "How can she marry--anybody else? I don't understand."

Then Miss White broke out, "_I_ understand. Oh, wicked boy!

My child, my lamb! He has killed my child Elizabeth!"

"Who has? What do you mean? What _are_ you talking about!"

"He has lured her away from David," the old woman wailed shrilly.

"Nannie, Nannie, your brother is an evil, cruel man--a false man, a false friend. Oh, my lamb! my girl!"

Nannie, staring at her with horrified eyes, was silent. Miss White sank down on the floor, her head on the lowest step of the staircase; she was moaning to herself: "They quarrelled about something, and this is what she has done! Oh, she was mad, my lamb, my poor lamb! She was crazy; David made her angry; I don't know how. And she did this frightful thing. Oh, I always knew she would do some terrible thing when she was angry!"

Nannie looked at the closed door of the library, then at Miss White, lying there, crying and moaning to herself with her poor old head on the stairs; once she tried to speak, but Miss White did not hear her; it was intolerable to see such pain. Blair's sister, ashamed with his shame, stammered something, she did not know what, then opening the front door, slipped out into the dusk. The situation was so incredible she could not take it in.

Blair and Elizabeth--_married?_ She kept saying it over and over. But it was impossible! Elizabeth was to marry David on her birthday. "I feel as if I were going out of my mind!" Nannie told herself, hurrying down into Mercer's black, noisy heart. When she reached the squalor of Maitland's shantytown and saw the great old house on the farther side of the street, looming up on its graded embankment, black against a smoldering red sunset, she was almost sobbing aloud, and when Harris answered her ring, she was in such tension that she burst out at him: "Harris! where is Mr.

Blair? Do you know? Have you heard--anything?" She seized the old man's arm and held on to it. "Where is Mr. Blair, Harris?"

"My laws, Miss Nannie! how do I know? Ain't he at the hotel?

There's a letter come for you; it come just after you went out.

Looks like it was from him. There, now, child! Don't you take on like that! I guess if Mr. Blair can write letters, there ain't much wrong with him."

When he brought her the letter, she made him wait there in the dimly lighted hall until she opened it, she had a feeling that she could not read it by herself, "Oh, Harris!" she said, and began to tremble; "it's true! He did.... They are--oh, Harris!"

And while the old man drew her into the parlor, and scuffled about to light the gas and bring her a gla.s.s of water, she told him, brokenly--she had to tell somebody--what had happened.

Harris's e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns were of sheer amazement, untouched by disapproval: "Mr. Blair? Married to Miss Elizabeth? My land!

There! He always did git in ahead!" His astounded chuckle was as confusing as all the rest of it. Nannie, standing under the single flaring jet of gas, read the letter again. It was, at any rate, more enlightening than Elizabeth's to her uncle:

"Dear Nannie: Don't have a fit when I tell you Elizabeth and I are married. She had a row with David, and broke her engagement with him. We were married this afternoon. I'm afraid mother won't like it, because, I admit, it's rather sudden. But really it is the easiest way all round, especially for--other people. It's on the principle of having your tooth pulled _quick_!--if you have to have it pulled, instead of by degrees. I'll amount to something, now, and that will please mother. You tell her that I will amount to something now! I want you to tell her about it before I write to her myself--which, of course, I shall do to- morrow--because it will be easier for her to have it come from you. Tell her marrying Elizabeth will make a business man of me.

You must tell her as soon as you get this, because probably it will be in the newspapers. I feel like a cur, asking you to break it to her, because, of course, it's sort of difficult. She won't like it, just at first; she never likes anything I do. But it will be easier for her to hear it first from you. Oh, you dear old Nancy!--I am nearly out of my head, I'm so happy... .

"P.S. We are going off for a month or so. I'll let you know where to address us when I know myself."

Nannie dropped down into a chair, and tried to get her wits together. If Elizabeth had broken with David, why, then, of course, she could marry Blair; but why should she marry him right away? "It isn't--decent!" said Nannie. And when did she break with David? Only day before yesterday she was expecting to marry him. "It is horrible!" said Nannie; and her recoil of disgust for a moment included Blair. But the habit of love made her instant with excuses: "It's worse in Elizabeth than in him. Mamma will say so, too." Then she felt a shock of terror: "Mamma!" She smoothed out the letter, crumpled in her shaking hand, and read it again: "'I want you to tell her--' Oh, I _can't!_" Nannie said; "'it will be easier for her to have it come from you--'

And what about me?" she thought, with sudden, unwonted bitterness; "it won't be 'easy' for me."

She began to take off her things; then realized that she was shivering. The few minutes of stirring the fire which was smoldering under a great lump of coal between the bra.s.s jambs of the grate, gave her the momentary relief of occupation; but when she sat down in the shifting firelight, and held her trembling hands toward the blaze, the shame and fright came back again.

"Poor David!" she said; but even as she said it she defended her brother; "if Elizabeth had broken with him, of course Blair had a right to marry her. But how _could_ Elizabeth! I can never forgive her!" Nannie thought, wincing with disgust. "To be engaged to David one day, and marry Blair the next!--Oh, Blair ought not to have done it," she said, involuntarily; and hid her face in her hands. But it was so intolerable to her to blame him, that she drove her mind back to Elizabeth's vulgarity; she could bear what had happened if she thought of Blair as a victim and not as an offender.

"I can never feel the same to Elizabeth again," she said. Then she remembered what her brother had bidden her do, and quailed.

For a moment she was actually sick with panic. Then she, too, knew the impulse to get the tooth pulled "quick." She got up and went swiftly across the hall to the dining-room. It was empty, except for Harris, who was moving some papers from the table to set it for supper.

"Oh, Harris," she said, with a gasp of relief, "she isn't here!

Harris, I have got to tell her. You don't think she'll mind much, do you?"

But by this time Harris's chuckling appreciation of Mr. Blair's cleverness in getting in ahead had evaporated. "My, my, my, Miss Nannie!" he said, his weak blue eyes blinking with fright, "_I_ wouldn't tell her, not if you'd gimme the Works!"

"Harris, if you were in my place, would you try to, at supper?"

"Now, Miss, how can I tell? She'll be wild; my, my; wild!"

"I don't see why. Mr. Blair had a right to get married."

"He'd ought to have let on to her about it," Harris said.

For a few minutes Nannie was stricken dumb. Then she sought encouragement again: "Perhaps if you had something nice for supper, she'd be--pleased, you know, and take it better?"

"There's to be cabbage. Maybe that will soften her up. She likes it; gor, how she likes cabbage!" said Harris, almost weeping.

"Harris, how do you think she'll take it?"

"She won't take it well," the old man said. "Miss Elizabeth was Mr. David's girl. When I come to think it over, I don't take it well myself, Miss Nannie. Nor you don't, neither. No, she won't take it well."

"But Miss Elizabeth had broken with Mr. David," Nannie defended her brother; "Mr. Blair had a right--" then she shivered. "But _I've_ got to tell her! Oh, Harris, I think she wouldn't mind so much, if he told her himself?"