The Iron Woman Part 40

"Thank you, Uncle Robert."

As she spoke the door of the elevator in the hall clanged shut, and the next moment Blair entered. He carried a loose twist of white paper in his arms, and when, at the sight of Robert Ferguson, he tossed it down on the table it fell open, and the fragrance of roses overflowed into the room. Raging from the lash of his mother's tongue, he had rushed back to the hotel to tell Elizabeth what had happened, but in spite of his haste he stopped on the way to get her some flowers. He did not think of them now, nor even of his own wrongs, for here was Robert Ferguson attacking her! "Mr. Ferguson," he said, quietly, but reddening to his temples, "of course you know that in the matter of Elizabeth's hasty marriage I am the only one to blame. But though you blame me, I hope you will believe that I will do my best to make her happy."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "OF COURSE YOU KNOW MY OPINION OF YOU"]

"I believe," said Elizabeth's uncle, "that you are a d.a.m.ned scoundrel." He took up his hat and began to smooth the nap on his arm; then he turned to Elizabeth--and in his heart he d.a.m.ned Blair Maitland more vigorously than before: the lovely color had all been washed away by tears, the amber eyes were dull, even the brightness of her hair seemed dimmed. It was as if something had breathed upon the sparkle and clearness; it was like seeing her through a mist. So, barking fiercely to keep his lip from shaking, he said: "And I hope you understand, Elizabeth, I have no respect for you, either."

She looked up with faint surprise. "Why, of course not."

"I insist," Blair said, peremptorily, "that you address my wife with respect or leave her presence."

Mr. Ferguson put his hat down on the table, not noticing that the roses spotted it with their wet petals, and stared at him. "Well, upon my word!" he said. "Do you think I need _you_ to instruct me in my duty to my niece?" Then, with sudden, cruel insight, he added, "David Richie's mother has done that." As he spoke he bent over and kissed Elizabeth. Instantly, with a smothered cry, she clung to him. There was just a moment when, her head on his breast, he felt her soft hair against his cheek-- and a minute later, she felt something wet on her cheek. They had both forgotten Blair. He slunk away and left them alone.

Robert Ferguson straightened up with a jerk. "Where--where-- where's my hat!" he said, angrily; "she said I was hard. She doesn't know everything!" But Elizabeth caught his hand and held it to her lips.

When Blair came back she was quite gentle to him; yes, the roses were very pretty; yes, very sweet. "Thank you, Blair," she said; but she did not ask him about his interview with his mother; she had forgotten it. He took the stab of her indifference without wincing; but suddenly he was comforted, for when he began to tell her what his mother was going to do, she was sharply aroused. She lifted her head--that spirited head which in the old days had never drooped; and looked at him in absolute dismay. Blair was being punished for a crime that was more hers than his!

"Oh," she said, "it isn't fair! I'm the one to blame; it isn't fair!"

The indignation in her voice made his heart leap. "Of course it isn't fair. But Elizabeth, I would pay any price to know that you were my wife." He tried to take her hand, but she pushed him aside and began to pace about the room.

"It isn't right!" she said; "she sha'n't treat you so!" She was almost like the old, furious Elizabeth in that gust of distress at her own responsibility for an injustice to him. But Blair dared to believe that her anger was for his sake, and to have her care that he should lose money made the loss almost welcome. He felt, through his rage at his mother, a thrill of purpose, a desire to amount to something, for Elizabeth's sake--which, if she could have known it, might have comforted Sarah Maitland, sitting in her dreary bedroom, her face hidden in her hands.

"Dearest, what do I care for her or her money?" he cried out; "_I have you!_"

Elizabeth was not listening to him; she was thinking what she could do to save him from his mother's displeasure. "I'll go and see her, and tell her it was my fault," she said to herself. She had a vague feeling that if she could soften Mrs. Maitland she and Blair would be quits.

She did not tell him of her purpose, but the mere having a purpose made her face alert, and it seemed to him that she identified herself with him and his interests. His eager denial of her self-accusation that she had injured him, his ardent impulse to protect her from any remorse, to take all the blame of a possible "mistake" on his own shoulders, brought an astonishing unselfishness into his face. But Elizabeth would not let him blame himself.

"It was all my fault," she insisted. "I was out of my head!"

At that he frowned sharply--"when you are eaten up with jealousy," his mother had said. Oh, he did not need his mother to tell him what jealousy meant: Elizabeth would not have married him if she had not been 'out of her head'! "She still thinks of him," he said to himself, as he had said many, many times in these two months of marriage--months of alternate ecstasies and angers, of hopes and despairs. As for her indignation at the way he had been treated, it meant nothing personal, after all. In his disappointment he went out of the room in hurt silence and left her to her thoughts of "him." This was the way most of their talks ended.

But Elizabeth's indignation did not end. In the next two days, while Mrs. Maitland was in Philadelphia making her naive offer to David, she brooded over the situation. "I won't have Blair punished for my sins," she said to herself; "I won't have it!"

Her revolt at an injustice was a faint echo of her old violence.

She had no one to talk to about it; Nannie was too shy to come to see her, and Miss White too tearful to be consulted. But she did not need advice; she knew what she must do. The afternoon following Mrs. Maitland's return from Philadelphia she went to see her... . She found Nannie in the parlor, sitting forlornly at her drawing-board. Nannie had heard, of course, from Blair, the details of that interview with his mother, and in her scared anger she planned many ways of "making Mamma nice to Blair," but she had not thought of Elizabeth's a.s.sistance. She took it for granted that Elizabeth would not have the courage to "face Mamma."

"I have come to see Mrs. Maitland," Elizabeth said. "Is she in the dining-room?"

Nannie quailed. "Oh, Elizabeth! How do you dare? But do go; and make her forgive him. She wouldn't listen to me. And after all, Elizabeth, you know that _you_--"

"Yes, I'm the one," Elizabeth said, briefly; and went swiftly across the hall. She stood for a moment by Sarah Maitland's desk unnoticed. "Mrs. Maitland!" Elizabeth's voice was peremptory.

Blair's mother put her pen down and looked up over her spectacles. "Oh--Elizabeth?"

"Mrs. Maitland, I came to tell you that you must not be angry at Blair. It was all my fault."

"I guess, as I told your uncle, it was the pot and the kettle, Elizabeth."

"No, no! I was angry, and I was--willing."

"Do you think it excuses Blair if you did throw yourself at his head?"

Elizabeth, who had thought that no lesser wound than the one she had dealt herself could hurt her, flinched. But she did not defend herself. "I think it does excuse him to some extent, and that is why I have come to ask you to forgive him."

"Oh," said Mrs. Maitland, and paused; then with most disconcerting suddenness, sneezed violently and blew her nose; "bless you, I've forgiven him."

"Then," said Elizabeth, with a gasp of relief, "you won't disinherit him!"

"Disinherit him? What's that got to do with forgiving him? Of course I will disinherit him,--or rather, I have. My will is made; signed, sealed. I've left him an income of a thousand dollars a year. That will keep you from starvation. If Blair is worth more he'll earn more. If he isn't, he can live on a thousand dollars--as better men than he have done. Or he can go to the workhouse;--your uncle can take care of you. I reckon I've paid taxes in this county long enough to ent.i.tle my son to go to the workhouse if he wants to."

"But Mrs. Maitland," Elizabeth protested, hotly, "it isn't fair, just because I--I let him marry me, to punish him--"

Mrs. Maitland struck her fist on the arm of her chair. "You don't know what you are talking about! I am not 'punishing' him; that's the last thing I was thinking of. If there's any 'punishing'

going on, I'm the one that's getting it. Listen, Elizabeth, and I'll try to explain--you look as if you had some sense, so maybe you can understand. Nannie couldn't; she has no brains. And Blair wouldn't--I guess he has no heart. But this is how it is: Blair has always been a loafer--that's why he behaved as he did to you.

Satan finds some mischief still, you know! So I'm cutting off his allowance, now, and leaving him practically penniless in my will, to stop his loafing. To make him work! He'll have to work, to keep from starving; and work will make a man of him. As for you, you've done an abominable thing, Elizabeth; but it's _done_!

Now, turn to, and pay for your whistle: do your duty! Use your influence to induce Blair to work. That's the best way to make up for the injury you've done him. As for the injury he's done you, I hope the Lord will send you some children to make up for that.

Now, my--my dear, clear out! clear out! I've got my work to do."

Elizabeth went back to Nannie's parlor, stinging under her mother-in-law's candor. That she was able to feel it showed that her apathy was wearing off. At any rate, the thought of the "injury" she had done Blair, which she took to be the loss of fortune, strengthened her sometimes wavering resolution to stay with him. She did not tell him of this interview, or of its effect upon her, but she told her uncle--part of it. She went to him that night, and sitting down on a ha.s.sock at his feet, her head against his knee, she told him how Blair was to be punished for her crime--she called it a crime. Then, in a low voice, she told him, as well as she could, just how the crime had been committed.

"I guessed how it was," he said. And they were silent for a while. Then he broke out, huskily: "I don't care a hang about Blair or his mother's will. He deserves all he gets--or won't get, rather! But, Elizabeth, if--if you want to be free--"

"Uncle Robert, what I want isn't of any importance any more."

"I talked it over as a supposit.i.tious case with Howe the other day, and he said that if Blair would agree, possibly--mind you, only _possibly_;--a divorce could be arranged."

She sunk her head in her hands; then answered in a whisper: "Uncle, I did it. I've got to see it through."

After a minute's silence he put his hand on her soft hair. "Bully for you, Elizabeth," he said, brokenly. Then, to escape from the emotional demand of the moment, he began to bark: "You are outrageously careless about money. How on earth a girl, who has been brought up by a man, and so might be expected to have some sense in such matters, can be so careless, I don't understand!

You've never asked me about that legacy. I've put the money in the bank. Your bank-book is there on my table."

Elizabeth was silent. That money! Oh, how could she ever touch it? But in view of Mrs. Maitland's decision it was perfectly obvious that ultimately she would have to touch it. "Blair can live on it." she thought--it was a relief to her to stab herself with words;--"_Blair_ 'can live on it for two years.'"

CHAPTER XXVII

Of course, after a while, as time pa.s.sed, all the people who had been caught in the storm the two reckless creatures had let loose, shook down again into their grooves, and the routine of living went on. There are few experiences more bewildering to the unhappy human heart than this of discovering that things do go on. Innumerable details of the unimportant flood in and fill up the cracks and breaches that grief has made in the structure of life; we continue to live, and even to find life desirable!

Miss White had been the first to realize this; her love for Elizabeth, being really (poor old maid!) maternal, was independent of respect, so almost the next day she had been able to settle down with complete happiness into the old habit of loving. Blair's mother was the next to get into the comfortable track of routine; the very day after she came back from that trip to Philadelphia she plunged into business. She did, however, pause long enough to tell her superintendent how she was going to "even things up with David."

"I am going to give him a lot of money for a hospital," she said.

"I'm not going to leave it to him; I'm only sixty-two, and I don't propose to die yet awhile. When I do Blair will probably contest the will. He can't break it. It's cast-iron. But I don't want David to wait until I'm dead and gone, and Blair has given up trying to break my will, and the estate is settled. I'm going to give it to him before I die. In a year or two, maybe. I'm realizing on securities now--why don't I give him the securities?

My dear sir, what does a doctor know about securities? Doctors have no more financial sense than parsons--at least, not much more," she added, with relenting justice. "No; David is to have his money, snug in the bank--that new bank, on Federal Street. I told the president I was rolling up a nest-egg for somebody--I could see he thought it was for Blair! I didn't enlighten him, because I don't want the thing talked about. When I get the amount I want, I'll hand Master David a bank certificate of deposit, and with all his airs about accepting money, he won't be able to help himself! He'll have to build his hospital, and draw his wages. It will make him independent of his outside customers, you see. Yes, I guess I can whip the devil round the stump as well as the next person!" she said, bridling with satisfaction.

So, with an interest and a hope, Sarah Maitland, like Miss White, found life worth living.

With David's mother the occupation of trying to help David made living desirable. It also made her a little more remote from other people's interests. Poor Robert Ferguson discovered this to his cost: it had occurred to him that now, when they were all so miserable, she might perhaps "be willing." But she was not. When, a day or two after he had gone to see Elizabeth, he went to Philadelphia, Mrs. Richie was tremulously glad to see him, so that she might pour out her fears about David and ask advice on this point and that. "Being a man, you understand better than I do," she acknowledged meekly; then broke down and cried for her boy's pain. And when the kind, barking old friend, himself blinking behind misty spectacles, said, "Oh, now, my dear, don't cry," she was so comforted that she cried some more, and for a single minute found her head most unexpectedly on his shoulder.

But all the same, she was not "willing."