The Iron Woman Part 44

He and Elizabeth went back to the hotel in silence, each deeply shaken by the mere physical fact of death. When they reached the gloomy granite columns of the old River House, Blair left his wife, saying briefly something about "walking for a while." He wanted to be alone. This was not because he felt any lack of sympathy in Elizabeth; on the contrary, he was nearer to her than at any time since their marriage; but it was a moment that demanded solitude. So he wandered about Mercer's streets by himself until after midnight--down to the old covered bridge, past Mrs. Todd's ice-cream saloon, out into the country, where the wind was rising, and the tree-tops had begun to sway against the sky.

There is a bond, it appears, between mother and child which endures as long as they do. It is independent of love; reason cannot weaken it; hate cannot destroy it. When a man's mother dies, something in the man dies, too. Blair Maitland, walking aimlessly about in the windy May midnight, standing on the bridge watching the slipping twinkle of a star in the inky ripples below him, was vaguely conscious of this. He thought, with a reluctance that was almost repulsion, of her will. He did not want to think of it, it was not fitting! Yet he knew, back in his mind, that within a few days, as soon as decency permitted, he would take the necessary steps to contest it. Nor did he think definitely of her; certainly not of all the unbeautiful things about her, those acute, incessant trivialities of ugliness which had been a veil between them all his life. Now, the veil was rent, and behind it was a holy of holies,--the inviolable relation of the child and the mother. It was of this that he thought, inarticulately, as he stood on the bridge, listening to the rush of the wind; this, and the bare and unbelievable fact that she "was not." As he struggled to realize her death, he was aware of a curious uneasiness that was almost fright.

When he came to Nannie the next morning, he was still deeply absorbed; and when she put something into his hands and said it was from his mother, he suddenly wept.

They had respected Nannie's desire to be alone that night, but it was nearly twelve before she was really left to herself, and the house was silent. Robert Ferguson had made her go up-stairs to bed, and bidden the worn-out nurse sleep in the room next to her so that she would not be so entirely solitary. He himself did not go home until those soft and alien footsteps that cross our thresholds, and dare as business the offices that Love may not essay, had at last died away. Nannie, in her bedroom, sat wide- eyed, listening for those footsteps. Once she said to herself: "When _they_ have gone--" and her heart pounded in her throat. At last "they" went; she heard the front door close; then, out in the street, another door banged softly; after that there was the sound of wheels.

"Now!" she said to herself. But still she did not move.... Was the nurse asleep? Was Harris up in his room in the garret? Was there any one downstairs--except Death? Death in Mrs. Maitland's bedroom. "For G.o.d's sake, _lock her door!_" Harris had said.

And they locked it. We generally lock it. Heaven knows why! Why do we turn the key on that poor, broken, peaceful thing, as if it might storm out in the night, and carry us back with it into its own silence?

It was almost dawn--the high spring dawn that in May flushes even Mercer's skies at three o'clock in the morning, when, lamp in hand, Nannie Maitland opened her bedroom door and peered into the upper hall. Outside, the wind, which had begun to blow at sunset, was roaring around the old house; it rumbled in the chimneys, and a sudden gust tore at a loose shutter, and sent it banging back against the bricks. But in the house everything was still. The window over the front door was an arch of glimmering gray barred by the lines of the cas.e.m.e.nt; but toward the well of the staircase there was nothing but darkness. Nannie put a hesitating foot across her own threshold, paused, then came gliding out into the hall; at the head of the stairs she looked down into a gulf of still blackness; the close, warm air of the house seemed to press against her face. She listened intently: no sound, except the muttering indifference of the wind about the house. Slowly, step by step, shivering and shrinking, she began to creep down- stairs. At the closed door of the dining-room--next to that other room which Harris had bidden them lock up; she stood for a long time, her fingers trembling on the k.n.o.b; her lamp, shaking in her hand, cast a nimbus of light around her small gray figure. It seemed to her as if she could not turn that k.n.o.b. Then, with gasp of effort, it was done, and she entered. Her first look was at that place on the floor, where for the last two days the pillows had been piled. The pillows were not there now; the room was in new, bleak order. Instantly, after that shrinking glance at the floor, she looked toward Mrs. Maitland's room, and her hand went to her throat as if she could not breathe. A moment afterward she began to creep across the floor, one terrified step dragging after another; she walked sidewise, always keeping her head turned toward that silent room. Just as she reached the big desk, the wind, sucking under the locked door, shook it with sly insinuation;--instantly she wheeled about, and stood, swaying with fright, her back against the desk. She stood there, panting, for a full minute. The terror of that furtively shaken door was agonizing. Then, very slowly, with a sidewise motion so that she could look toward the room, she put her lamp down on the top of the desk, and began, with constant bird-like glances over her shoulder, to search.... Yes; there it was! just where she herself had put it, slipped between the pages of a memorandum-book, so that if, in another gleam of consciousness, Blair's mother should ask for it, there need be no delay in getting it. When her fingers closed on it, she turned, swiftly, so that the room might not be behind her. Always watching the locked door, she groped for pen and ink and some sheets of paper, which she carried over to the table. Then she drew up a chair, folded back the sleeves of her wrapper, propped the memorandum-book--which had on the inside page the flowing signature of its owner--open before her.

Then, slowly and steadily, she began to do the thing she had come to do. Instantly she was calmer. When a great gust of wind rumbled suddenly in the chimney, and a wraith of ashes blew out of the fireplace, she did not even raise her eyes; but once she looked over toward the room, and smiled, as if to say "It is all right. I am making it all right!"

It took her a long time, this business that would make it "all right," this business that brought her, a creature who all her life had been afraid of her own shadow, creeping down to the dining-room, creeping past the room into which Death had been locked, creeping over to the desk, to that unsigned indors.e.m.e.nt which had been meant for Blair! It took a long time. Sheet after sheet of paper was scrawled over, held up beside the name in the notebook, then tossed into the empty grate. At last she did it:

_Sarah Maitland_

When she had finished, her relief, in having done what she could to carry out the purpose of the dying hand, was so great that she was able, without once looking over her shoulder, to put the pen and ink back into the desk and set a match to the papers in the fireplace. Indeed, as she took up her lamp to creep up-stairs again, she even stopped and touched the k.n.o.b of the locked door with a sort of caress.

But when, with a last breathless rush across the upper hall, she regained her own room, she bolted her door with furious panic- stricken hands, then sank, almost fainting, upon her bed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHE WHEELED ABOUT AND STOOD, SWAYING WITH FRIGHT]

CHAPTER x.x.x

The Maitland Works were still. High in the dusty gloom of the foundry, a finger of sunshine pointing down from a grimy window touched the cold lip of a cupola and traveled noiselessly over rows of empty molds upon the blackened floor. The cast-house was silent. The Yards were deserted. The pillar of fire was out; the pillar of smoke had faded away.

In the darkened parlor of her great house, Sarah Maitland was still, too. Lines of sunshine fell between the bowed shutters, and across them wavering motes swam noiselessly from gloom to gloom. The marble serenities of death were without sound; the beautiful, powerless hands were empty, even of the soft futility of flowers; some one had placed lilies-of-the-valley in them, but her son, with new, inarticulate appreciation, lifted them and took them away. The only sound that broke the dusky stillness of the room was the subdued brush of black garments, or an occasional sigh, or the rustle of a furtively turned page of a hymn-book. Except when, standing shoulder to shoulder in the hall, her business a.s.sociates, with hats held decorously before whispering lips, spoke to each other of her power and her money,-- who now had neither money nor power,--the house was profoundly still. Then, suddenly, from the head of the stairs, a Voice fell into the quietness:

_"Lord, let me know mine end and the number of my days, that I may be certified how long I have to live. When thou with rebukes dost chasten man for sin, thou makest his beauty to consume away, like as it were a moth fretting a garment: every man, therefore, is vanity. For man walketh in a vain show, and disquieteth--"_ the engine of a pa.s.sing freight coughed, and a cloud of smoke billowed against the windows; the strips of sunshine falling between the shutters were blotted out; came again--went again.

Over and over the raucous running jolt of backing cars, the rattling b.u.mp of sudden breaks, swallowed up the voice, declaring the eternal silence: "... _glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is ... of the sun, and another glory of the moon, for one star differeth from ... Dust to dust, ashes to ashes_ ..."

Out in the street the shadow of her house fell across the meager dooryard, where, on its blackened stems, the pyrus j.a.ponica showed some scattered blood-red blossoms; it fell over Shantytown, that packed the sidewalk and stared from dingy doors and windows; it fell on her men, standing in unrebuked idleness, their lowered voices a mutter of energy held, for this waiting moment, in leash. A boy who had climbed up the lamp-post announced shrilly that "It" was coming. Some girls, pressing against the rusted iron spears of the fence, and sagging under the weight of babies almost as big as themselves, called across the street to their mothers, "Here she is!"

And so she came. No squalor of her surroundings could mar the pomp of her approach. The rumble of her men's voices ceased before it; Shantytown fell silent. Out from between the marble columns of her doorway, out from under the twisted garland of wistaria murmurous with bees, down the curving steps, along the path to the crowded, curious sidewalk, she came. Out of the turmoil and the hurry of her life, out of her triumphs and arrogances and ambitions, out of her careless generosities and her extraordinary successes, she came. And following her, with uncovered head, came the sign and symbol of her failure--her only son.

Up-stairs, in the front hall, standing a little back from the wide arched window, Nannie,--forbidden by the doctor, because of her fatigue, to go to the grave; and Elizabeth and Miss White, who would not leave her alone,--looked down on the slowly moving crowd. When Sarah Maitland's men closed in behind her, nearly a thousand strong, and the people in twos and threes began to file out of the house, Nannie noiselessly turned a slat of the Venetian blind. Why! there were those Maitlands from the North End. "I didn't suppose they remembered our existence," she said, her breath still catching in a sob; "and there are the Knights,"

she whispered to Elizabeth. "Do you see old Mrs. Knight? I don't believe she's been to call on Mamma for ten years. I never supposed she'd come."

Miss White, wiping her eyes as she peered furtively through the blinds, said in a whisper that there was So-and-so, and that such and such a person was evidently going out to the cemetery. "Mrs.

Knight is dreadfully lame, isn't she?" Nannie said. "Poor Mamma always called her Goose Molly. It was nice in her to come, wasn't it?"

"Nannie," some one said, softly. And turning, she saw Mrs.

Richie. "I came on last night, Nannie dear. She was a good, kind friend to me. And David is here, too. He hopes you will feel like seeing him. He was very fond of her." Then she looked at Elizabeth: "How do you do? How is Blair?" she said, calmly.

The moment was tense, yet of the four women, Elizabeth felt it least. David was in the house! She could not feel anything else.

"Oh, Mrs. Richie--poor Mamma!" Nannie said; and with Mrs.

Richie's kind arm about her, she retreated to her own room.

Miss White went hurrying down-stairs--Elizabeth knew why! As for her, she stood there in the empty hall, quite alone. She heard the carriage doors closing out in the street, the sound of horses' feet, the drag of wheels--even the subdued murmur of Shantytown looking on at the show... . David was in the house.

She went to the end of the hall and stood leaning over the banisters; she could hear Miss White's flurried voice; then, suddenly, he spoke. It was only some grave word,--she did not catch the sense of it, but the sound--the sound of his voice! It turned her dizzy. Before she knew it she sank down on the top step of the stairs, her head against the banisters. She sat there, her face haggard with unshed tears, until Mrs. Richie came out of Nannie's room and found her. It was then that David's mother, who thought she had done her best in the courteous commonplace of how-do-you-do--suddenly did better; she stooped down and kissed Elizabeth's cheek.

"You poor child!" she said; "oh, you _poor_ child!" The pity of the slender, crouching figure touched even Helena Richie's heart,--that heart of pa.s.sionate and resentful maternity; so she was able to kiss her, and say, with wet eyes, "poor child!"

Elizabeth could not speak. Later, when the mother and son had left the house, Miss White came upstairs and found her still sitting dumb and tearless, on the top step. She clutched at Cherry-pie's skirt with shaking hands: "Did he say--anything?"

"Oh, my poor lamb," old Miss White said, nibbling and crying, "how could he, _here?_"

David, coming with his mother over the mountains to be present at Mrs. Maitland's funeral, thought to himself how strange it was that it had taken death to bring him to Mercer. In all those long months of bewildered effort to adjust himself to the altered conditions of life, there had been an undercurrent of purpose: _he would see Elizabeth._ He would know from her own lips just how things were with her. It seemed to David that if he could do that, if he could know beyond doubt--or hope--that she was happy, he would himself be cured of the incessant, dull ache of remorse, which quickened sometimes into the stabbing suspicion that she had never really loved him. ... If she was happy, then he need no longer blame himself for injuring her. The injury he had done himself, he must bear, as men before him had borne, and as men after him would bear, the results of their own sins and follies. He had, of course, long since lost the wincing self- consciousness of the jilted man, just as he had lost the expectation that she would send for him, summon him to storm her prison and carry her away to freedom! That was a boy's thought, anyhow. It was when that hope had completely faded, that he began to say he must see for himself that she was happy and that she did not wish to leave the man who had, at any rate, been man enough to take her, and whom now, very likely, she loved. It was the uncertainty about her happiness that was so intolerable to him. Far more intolerable, he thought, than would be the knowledge that she was content, for that he would deserve, and to the honest mind there is a certain satisfaction in receiving its deserts. But his hatred of Blair deepened a little at the mere suggestion of her contentment. Those evil moments of suspecting her loyalty to him at the time of her marriage were very rare now; though the evil moments of speculating as to how G.o.d--or he himself, would finally punish Blair Maitland, were as frequent as ever. During the last six months the desire to know how things were with Elizabeth had been at times almost overwhelming. Once he went so far as to buy his railroad ticket; but though his feet carried him to the train, his mind drove him away from it, and the ticket was not used. But when the news came of Sarah Maitland's death, he went immediately to the station and engaged his berth. Then he went home and asked his mother if she were going to the funeral; "I am," he said. He spoke with affection of Mrs. Maitland, but so far as his going to Mercer went, her funeral was entirely incidental. Her death had ended his uncertainty: he would see Elizabeth!

"And when I see her," he said to himself, "the moment I see her,-- I will know." He debated with himself whether he should speak of the catastrophe of their lives, or wait for her to do so. As he thought of putting it into words, he was aware of singular shyness, which showed him with startling distinctness how far apart he and she were. Just how and when he would see her he had not decided; probably it could not be on the day Mrs. Maitland was buried; but the next day? "How shall I manage it?" he asked himself--then found that it had been managed for him.

When they came back from the cemetery, Mrs. Richie went to Robert Ferguson's. "You are to come home and have supper with me," he had told her; "David can call for you when he gets through his gallivanting about the town." (David had excused himself, on the ground of seeing Knight and one or two of the fellows; he had said nothing of his need to walk alone over the old bridge, out into the country, and, in the darkness, round and round the River House.) So, in the May twilight of Robert Ferguson's garden, the two old neighbors paced up and down, and talked of Sarah Maitland.

"I've got to break to David that apparently he isn't going to get the fund for his hospital," Mr. Ferguson said. "There is no mention of it in her will. She told me once, about two years ago, that she was putting money by for him, and when she got the amount she wanted she was going to give it to him. But she left no memorandum of it. I'm afraid she changed her mind." His voice, rather than his words, caught her attention; he was not speaking naturally. He seemed to talk for the sake of talking, which was so unlike him that Mrs. Richie looked at him with mild curiosity.

"Mrs. Maitland had a perfect right to change her mind," she said; "and really David never counted very much on the hospital. She spoke of it to him, I know, but I think he had almost forgotten it--though I hadn't," she confessed, a little ruefully. She smiled, and Robert Ferguson, fiercely twitching off his gla.s.ses, tried to smile back; but his troubled eyes lingered questioningly on her serene face. It was almost a beautiful face in its peace.

What was it Mrs. Maitland had said about her looks? "Fair and--"

He was so angry at remembering the word that he swore softly at himself under his breath, and Helena Richie gave him a surprised look. He had sworn at himself several times in these five days since Sarah Maitland, half delirious, wholly shrewd, had said those impossible things about David's mother. Under his concern and grief, under his solemn preoccupations, Robert Ferguson had felt again and again the shock of the incredible suggestion: _"something on her conscience."_ Each time the words thrust themselves up through his absorbed realization of Mrs. Maitland's death, he pushed them down savagely: "It is impossible!" But each time they rose again to the surface of his mind. When they did, they brought with them, as if dredged out of the depths of his memory, some sly indors.e.m.e.nt of their truth... . She never says anything about her husband. "Why on earth should she? He was probably a bad egg; that friend of hers, that Old Chester doctor, hinted that he was a bad egg. Naturally he is not a pleasant subject of conversation for his wife." ... Her only friends, except in his own little circle, were two old men (one of them dead now), in Old Chester. "Well, Heaven knows a parson and a doctor are about as good friends as a woman can have." ... But no _women_ friends belonging to her past. "Thank the Lord!

If she had a lot of cackling females coming to see her, _I_ wouldn't want to!" ... She is always so ready to defend Elizabeth's wicked mother.

"She has a tender heart; she's not hard like the rest of her s.e.x."

No, Life had not played another trick on him! Mrs. Maitland was out of her head, that was all. As for him, somebody ought to boot him for even remembering what the poor soul had said. And so, disposing of the intolerable suspicion, he would draw a breath of relief--until the whisper came again: _"something on her conscience?"_

He was so goaded by this fancy of a dying woman, and at the same time so shaken by her death, that, as his guest was quick to see, he was entirely unreal; almost--if one can say such a thing of Robert Ferguson, artificial. He was artificial when he spoke of David and the money he was not to have; the fact was, he did not at that moment care, he said to himself, a hang about David, or his money either!

"You see," he said, as they came to the green door in the brick wall, and went into the other garden, "you see, your house is still empty?"

"Dear old house!" she said, smiling up at the shuttered windows.

He looked into her face, and its entire candor made him suddenly and sharply angry at Sarah Maitland. It was the old friendly anger, just as if she were not dead; and he found it curiously comforting. ("She ought to be ashamed of herself to have such an idea of Mrs. Richie. I'll tell her so--oh, Lord! what am I saying? Well, well; she was dying; she didn't know what she was talking about.") ... "We could pull down some part.i.tions and make the two houses into one," he said, wistfully.

But she only laughed and shook her head. "I want to see if my white peony is going to blossom; come over to the stone seat."

"You always shut me up," he said, sulkily; and in his sulkiness he was more like himself than he had been for days. Sitting by her side on the bench under the hawthorn, he let her talk about her peony or anything else that seemed to her a safe subject; for himself, all he wanted was the comfort of looking into her comforting eyes, and telling himself that he insulted her when he even denied those poor, foolish, dying words. When a sudden soft shower drove them indoors to his library he came back with a sigh to Mrs. Maitland; but this time he was quite natural: "The queer part of it is, she hadn't changed her mind about David's money up to within two days of her death. She meant him to have it when she spoke to me of writing to him; and her mind was perfectly clear then; at least"--he frowned; "she did wander for a minute.

She had a crazy idea--"

"What?" said Mrs. Richie, sympathetically.

"Nothing; she was wandering. But it was only for a minute, and except for that she was clear. When I urged her to make some provision for Blair, she was perfectly clear. Practically told me to mind my own business! Just like her," he said, sighing.

"It would have been a great deal of money," Mrs. Richie said; "probably David is better off without it." But he knew she was disappointed; and indeed, after supper, in his library, she admitted the disappointment frankly enough. "He has changed very much; his youth is all gone. He is more silent than ever. I had thought that perhaps the building of this hospital would bring him out of himself. You see, he blames himself for the whole thing."