The Iron Woman Part 32

Harris considered. "Yes, Miss, she would. Mr. Blair don't put things right to his ma. He'd say something she wouldn't like.

He'd say something about some of his pretty truck. Them things always make her mad. That picture he bought--the lady nursin' the baby, in your parlor; she ain't got over that yet. Oh, no, she'll take it better from you. You be pretty with her, Miss Nannie. She likes it when you're pretty with her. I once seen a chippy sittin' on a cowcatcher; well, it made me think o' you and her.

You be pretty to her, and then tell her, kind of--of easy,"

Harris ended weakly.

Easy! It was all very well to say "_easy_"; Harris might as well say knock her down "easy." At that moment the back door banged.

Mrs. Maitland burst into the room in intense preoccupation; the day had been one of absorbing interest, culminating in success, and she was alert with satisfaction. "Harris, supper! Nannie, take my bonnet! Is your brother to be here to-night? I've something to tell him! Where's the evening paper?"

Nannie, breathless, took the forlorn old bonnet, and said, "I--I think he isn't coming, Mamma." Harris came running with the newspaper; they exchanged a frightened glance, although the mistress of the house, with one hand on the carving-knife, was already saying, "Bless, O Lord--"

At supper Mrs. Maitland, eating--as the grocer said so long ago, "like a day-laborer"--read her paper. Nannie watching her, ate nothing at all and said nothing at all.

When the coa.r.s.e, hurried meal was at an end, and Harris, blinking with horrified sympathy, had shut himself into his pantry, Nannie said, faintly, "Mamma, I have something to tell you."

"I guess it will keep, my dear, I guess it will keep! I'm too busy just now to talk to you." She crumpled up her newspaper, flung it on the floor, and plunged over to her desk.

Nannie looked helplessly at the back of her head, then went off to her parlor. She sat there in the firelit darkness, too distracted and frightened to light the gas, planning how the news must be told. At eight o'clock there was a fluttering, uncertain ring at the front door, and Cherry-pie came quivering in: had Nannie heard anything more? Did she know where _they_ were?

"I asked her uncle to come down here and see if Mrs. Maitland had heard anything, but--he was dreadful, Nannie, dreadful! He said he would see the whole family in--I can't repeat where he said he would see them!" She broke down and cried; then, crouching at Nannie's side, she read Blair's letter by the uncertain light of the fire. After that, except for occasional whispered e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of terror and pain, they were silent, sitting close together like two frightened birds; sometimes a lump of coal split apart, or a hissing jet of gas bubbled and flamed between the bars of the grate, and then their two shadows flickered gigantic on the wall behind them; but except for that the room was very still. When the older woman rose to go, Nannie clung to her:

"Oh, won't you tell her? Please--please!" Poor old Miss White could only shake her head:

"I can't, my dear, I _can't!_ It would not be fitting. Do it now, my dear; do it immejetly, and get it over."

When Cherry-pie had wavered back into the night, Nannie gathered up her courage to "get it over." She went stealthily across the hall; but at the dining-room door she stood still, her hand on the k.n.o.b, not daring to enter. Strangely enough, in the midst of the absorbing distress of the moment, some trick of memory made her think of the little 'fraid-cat, standing outside that door, trying to find the courage to open it and get for Blair--for whose sake she stood there now--the money for his journey all around the world! In spite of her terror, she smiled faintly; then she opened the door and looked in. Mrs. Maitland was still at work, and she retreated noiselessly. At eleven she tried again.

Except for the single gas-jet under a green shade that hung above the big desk, the room was dark. Mrs. Maitland was in her chair, writing rapidly; she did not hear Nannie's hesitating footstep, or know that she was in the room, until the girl put her hand on the arm of her chair.

"Mamma."

"Yes?"

"Mamma, I have something to--to tell you."

Mrs. Maitland signed her name, put her pen behind her ear, flung a blotter down on the heavily written page, and rubbed her fist over it. "Well?" she said cheerfully; and glanced up at her stepdaughter over her steel-rimmed spectacles, with kind eyes; "what are you awake for, at this hour?" Then she drew out a fresh sheet of paper, and began to write: "My dear Sir:--Yours received, and con--"

"Mamma ... Blair is married."

The pen made a quick, very slight upward movement; there was a spatter of ink; then the powerful, beautiful hand went on evenly "--tents noted." She rubbed the blotter over this line, put the pen in a cup of shot, and turned around. "What did you say?"

"I said ... Blair is married."

Silence.

"He asked me to tell you."

Silence.

"He hopes you will not be angry. He says he is going to be a--a tremendous business man, now, because he is so happy."

Silence. Then, in a loud voice: "How long has this been going on?"

"Oh, Mamma, not any time at all, truly! I am perfectly sure it-- it was on the spur of the moment."

"Married, 'on the spur of the moment'? Good G.o.d!"

"I only mean he hasn't been planning it. He--"

"And what kind of woman has married him, 'on the spur of the moment'?"

"Oh,--Mamma ..."

Her voice was so terrified that Mrs. Maitland suddenly looked at her. "Don't be frightened, Nannie," she said kindly. "What is it?

You have something more to tell me, I can see that. Come, out with it! Is she bad?"

"Oh, _Mamma!_ don't! don't! It is--she is--Elizabeth--"

Then she fled.

That night, at about two o'clock, Mrs. Maitland entered her stepdaughter's room. Nannie was dozing, but started up in her bed, her heart in her throat at the sight of the gaunt figure standing beside her. Blair's mother had a candle in one hand, and the other was curved about it to protect the bending flame from the draught of the open door; the light flickered up on her face, and Nannie was conscious of how deep the wrinkles were on her forehead and about her mouth.

"Nannie, tell me everything."

She put the candle on the table at the head of the bed, and sat down, leaning forward a little, as if a weight were resting on her shoulders. Her clasped hands, hanging loosely between her knees, seemed, in the faint light of the small, pointed flame, curiously shrunken and withered. "Tell me," she said heavily.

Nannie told her all she knew. It was little enough.

"How do you know that Elizabeth had broken with David Richie?"

her stepmother said. Nannie silently handed her Blair's letter.

Mrs. Maitland took up her candle, and holding it close to the flimsy sheet, read her son's statement. Then she handed it back.

"I see; some sort of a squabble; and Blair--" She stopped, almost with a groan. "His _friend,_" she said, and her chin shook; "your father's son!" she said brokenly.

"Mamma!" Nannie protested--she was sitting up in bed, her hair in its two braids falling over her white night-dress, her eyes, so girlish, so frightened, fixed on that quivering iron face; "Mamma! remember, he was in love with Elizabeth long ago, before David ever thought--"

"In love with Elizabeth? He was never in love with anybody but himself."

"Oh, Mamma, please forgive him! It's done now, and it can't be undone."

"What has my forgiveness got to do with it? It's done, as you say. It can't be undone. Nothing can be undone. Nothing; nothing.

All the years that remain cannot undo the years that I have been building this up."

Nannie stared at her blankly. And suddenly the hard face softened. "Lie down. Go to sleep." She put her big roughened hand gently on the girl's head. "Go to sleep, my child." She took up her candle, and a moment later Nannie heard the stairs creak under her heavy tread.

Sarah Maitland did not sleep that night; but after the first outburst, when Nannie had panted out, "It is--Elizabeth," and then fled, there had been no anger. When the door closed behind her stepdaughter, Blair's mother put her hand over her eyes and sat perfectly still at her desk. _Blair was married._ And he had not told her,--that was the first thought. Then, into the pitiful, personal dismay of mortification and wounded love, came the sword-thrust of a second thought: he had stolen his friend's wife.

It was not a moment for nice discriminations; the fact that Elizabeth had not been married to David seemed immaterial. This was because, to Sarah Maitland's generation, the word, in this matter of getting married, was so nearly as good as the bond, that a broken engagement was always a solemn, and generally a disgraceful thing. So, when she said that Blair had "stolen David's wife," she cringed with shame. What would his father say to such conduct! In what had she been wanting that Herbert's son could disgrace his father's name--and hate his mother? For of course he must hate her to shut her out of his life, and not tell her he was going to get married! Her mind seemed to oscillate between the abstraction of his dishonor and a more intimate and primitive pain,--the sense of personal slight. "Oh, my son, my son, my son," she said. She was bending over, her elbows on her knees, her furrowed forehead resting on her clenched hands; her whole big body quivered. He had shut her out.... He hated her....

He had never loved her.... "My son! my son!" Then a sharp return of memory to the shame of his conduct whipped her to her feet and set her walking about the room. It was long after midnight before she said to herself that the first thing to do was to learn exactly what had happened. Nannie must tell her. It was then that she went up to her stepdaughter's room.

When Nannie had told her, or rather when Blair's letter had made the thing shamefully clear, she went down-stairs and faced the situation. Who was responsible for it? Who was to blame--before she could add, in her mind, "Elizabeth or Blair?" some trick of memory finished her question: who was to blame--"_this man or his parents?_" The suggestion of personal responsibility was like a blow in the face. She flinched under it, and sat down abruptly, breathing hard. How could it be possible that she was to blame? What had she left undone that other mothers did? She had loved him; no mother could have loved him more than she did!-- and he had never cared for her love. In what had she been lacking? He had had a religious bringing up; she had begun to take him to church when he was four years old. He had had every educational opportunity. All that he wanted he had had. She had never stinted him in anything. Could any mother have done more?

Could Herbert himself have done more? No; she could not reproach herself for lack of love. She had loved him, so that she had spared him everything--even desire! All that he could want was his before he could ask for it.