The Iron Woman Part 55

But he would not tell her. "It was nothing. Only she was very angry; and--she will do anything when she is angry." Mrs. Richie gave him a look, but he was too absorbed to feel its significance. "It was something about--well, a sort of silly threat. I didn't take it in at the time; but afterward I thought perhaps she meant something. Really, it was nothing at all. But-- " his voice died in his throat and his eyes were terrified. There was such pain in his face that before she knew it David's mother was sorry for him; she even put her hand on his shoulder.

"It was just a mood," she comforted him. And Blair, taking the white, maternal hand in both of his, looked at her speechlessly; his chin trembled. Instantly, without words of shame on one side or of forgiveness on the other, they were back again, these two, in the old friendship of youth and middle age. "It was a freak,"

said Mrs. Richie, soothingly. "She is probably at the hotel by this time. Don't be troubled, Blair. Go and see. If she isn't at the hotel let me know at once."

"Yes, yes; I will," Blair said. "She must be there now, of course. I know there's nothing the matter, but I don't like to have her out so late by herself." He turned to open the front door, fumbling with haste over the latch; Nannie called to him to wait and she would get him an umbrella. But he did not hear her.

He was saying to himself that of course she was at the hotel; and he was off again into the darkness!

As the door banged behind him the two women looked at each other in dismay. "Oh, Mrs. Richie, what can be the matter?" Nannie said.

"Just one of Elizabeth's moods. She has gone out to walk."

"At this time of night? It's after one o'clock!"

"She is probably safe and sound at the River House now."

"I wish we had one of those new telephone things," Nannie said.

"Mamma was always talking about getting one. Then Blair could let us know as soon as he gets to the hotel." Nannie was plainly scared; Mrs. Richie grave and a little cold. She had had, to her amazement, a wave of tenderness for Blair; the reaction from it came in anger at Elizabeth. Elizabeth was always making trouble!

"Poor Blair," she said, involuntarily. At the moment she was keenly sorry for him; after all, abominable as his conduct had been, love, of a kind, had been at the root of it. "I can forgive love," Helena Richie said to herself, "but not hate. Elizabeth never loved David or she couldn't have done what she did....

Nothing will happen to her," she said aloud. It occurred to this gentle woman that nothing ever did happen to the people one felt could be spared from this world; which wicked thought made her so shocked at herself that she hardly heard Nannie's nervous chatter: "If she hasn't come home, Blair will be back here in half an hour; it takes fifteen minutes to go to the hotel and fifteen minutes to come back. If he isn't here at a quarter to two, everything is all right."

They went into the parlor and lit the gas; Nannie suggested a fire, but Mrs. Richie said it wasn't worth while. "We'll be going up-stairs in a few minutes," she said. She was not really worried about Elizabeth; partly because of that faintly cynical belief that nothing could happen to the poor young creature who had made so much trouble for everybody; but also because she was singularly self-absorbed. Those words of Robert Ferguson's, when he kissed her in his library, had never left her mind. She thought of them now when she and Nannie sat down in that silence of waiting which seems to tingle with speech. The dim light from the gas-jet by the mantelpiece did not penetrate beyond the dividing arch of the great room; behind the grand piano sprawling sidewise between the black marble columns, all was dark. The shadow of the chandelier, m.u.f.fled in its balloon of brown paper muslin, made an island of darkness on the ceiling, and the four big canvases were four black oblongs outlined in faintly glimmering gilt.

"I remember sitting here with your mother, the night you children were lost," Mrs. Richie said. "Oh, Nannie dear, you must move out of this house; it is too gloomy!" But Nannie was not thinking of the house.

"Where _can_ she have gone?" she said.

Mrs. Richie could offer no suggestion. Her explanation to herself was that Blair and Elizabeth had quarreled, and Elizabeth, in a paroxysm of temper, had rushed off to spend the night in some hotel by herself. But she did not want to say this to Nannie. To herself she said that things did sometimes turn out for the best in this world, after all--if only David could realize it! "She would have made him dreadfully unhappy," Helena Richie thought; "she doesn't know what love means." But alas! David did not know that he had had an escape. She sighed, remembering that talk on the beach, and those wicked things he had said,--things for which she must be in some way to blame. "If he had had a different mother," she thought, heavily, "he might not have--" A sudden shock of terror jarred all through her--_could Elizabeth have gone to David?_ The very thought turned her cold; it was as if some slimy, poisonous thing had touched her. Then common sense came in a wave of relief: "Of course not! Why should she do such an absurd thing?" But in spite of common sense, Helena Richie's lips went dry.

"It's a quarter to two," Nannie said. "He hasn't come; she must be at the hotel."

"I'm sure she is," Mrs. Richie agreed.

"Let's wait five minutes," Nannie said; "but I'm certain it's all right."

"Of course it's all right," Mrs. Richie said again, and got on her feet with a shiver of relief.

"It gave me a terrible scare," Nannie confessed, and turned out the gas. "I had a perfectly awful thought, Mrs. Richie; a wicked thought. I was afraid she had--had done something to herself. You know she is so crazy when she is angry, and--"

The front gate banged. Nannie gave a faint scream. "Oh, Mrs.

Richie! Oh--"

It was Helena Richie who opened the door before Blair had even reached it. "Well? Well?"

"Not there... ."

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

All night long Elizabeth watched a phantom landscape flit past the window of the sleeping-car. Sometimes a cloud of smoke, shot through with sparks, brushed the gla.s.s like a billowing curtain, and sometimes the thunderous darkness of a tunnel swept between her and spectral trees or looming hilltops. She lay there on her pillows, looking at the flying glimmer of the night and drawing long breaths of peace. The steady, rhythmical pounding of the wheels, the dull, rushing roar of the rails, the black, spinning country outside her window, shut away her old world of miseries and shames. Behind the stiff green curtains, that swung in and out, in and out, to the long roll of the car, there were no distractions, no fears of interruption, no listening apprehensions; she could relax into the wordless and exultant certainty of her purpose.

For at last, after these long months of mere endurance, she had a purpose.

And how calmly she was fulfilling it! "For I am not angry," she said to herself, with the same surprise she had felt when, at Willis's that afternoon, she had denied Blair's charge of anger.

Outside in the darkness, all the world was asleep. The level stretches of vanishing fields, the faint glisten of roads, were empty. When the train swept thundering through little towns, the flying station lights, the twinkle of street lamps, even the solitary lanterns of switchmen running along the tracks, made the sleep seem only more profound. But Elizabeth was awake in every fiber; once or twice, for the peace of it, she closed her eyes; but she did not mean to sleep. She meant to think out every step that she must take; but just at first, in the content of decision, she did not even want to think. She only wanted to feel that the end had come.

It was during the row up the river that her purpose had cleared before her eyes; for an instant the sight of it had startled her into that pallor which had frightened Blair; then she accepted it with a pa.s.sionate satisfaction. It needed no argument; she knew without reasoning about it what she must do. But the way to do it was not plain; it was while she and Blair sat at dinner, and he read his paper and she played with her food, that a plan grew slowly in her mind. The carrying it out--at least to this point; the alert and trembling fear of some obstacle, had greatly exhausted her. It had also blotted out everything but itself. She forgot her uncle and Miss White; that she was going to give them pain did not occur to her until safe from their possible interference, in the dark, behind the slowly swaying curtains of her section, her fatigue began to lessen. Then, vaguely, she thought of them... . they would be sorry. She frowned, faintly troubled by their sorrow. It was midnight before she remembered Blair: poor Blair! he cared so much about her. How could he,-- when she did not care for him? Still, it did not follow that not being loved prevented you from loving. David had ceased to love her, but that had not made her love cease. Yes; she was afraid they would all be unhappy; but it would be only for a while. She sighed; it was a peaceful sigh. Her regret for the sorrow that she would cause was the regret of one far off, helpless to avert the pain, who has no relation to it except that of an observer.

She said to herself, calmly, "Poor Uncle Robert."

As she grew more rested, the vagueness of her regret sharpened a little. She realized with a pang how worried they would be-- before they began to be sorry; and worry is so hard to bear! "I wish I could have spared Uncle Robert and Cherry-pie," she said, in real distress. It occurred to her that she had given them many unhappy moments. "I was always a trouble; what a pity I was ever born." She thought suddenly of her mother, remembering how she used to excuse her temper on the ground that her mother had had no self-control. She smiled faintly in the darkness at the childishness of such an excuse. "She wasn't to blame. I could have conquered it, but I didn't. I did nothing all my life but make trouble." She thought of her life as a thing of the past.

"I was a great trial to them; it will be better for everybody this way," she said; and nestled down into the thought of the "way,"

with a satisfaction which was absolute comfort. Better; but still better if she had never lived. Then Blair would not have been disinherited, and by being disinherited driven into the dishonor of keeping money not intended for him. "It's really all my fault," she reflected, and looked out of the window with unseeing eyes. Yes; all that had happened was her fault. Oh, how many things she had hurt and spoiled! She had injured Blair; his mother had said so. And poor Nannie! for Nannie's offense grew out of Elizabeth's conduct. As for David--David, who had stopped loving her... .

Well, she wouldn't hurt people any more, now. Never any more.

Just then the train jarred slowly to a standstill in a vast train-shed; up under its gla.s.s and girders, arc-lamps sent lurching shadows through the smoke and touched the clouds of steam with violet gleams. Elizabeth could see dark, gnome-like creatures, each with a hammer, and with a lantern swinging from a bent elbow, crouching along by the cars and tapping every wheel.

She counted the blows that tested the trucks for the climb up the mountains: click-click; click-click. She was glad they were testing them; she must get across the mountains safely; there must be no interference or delay; she had so little time! For by morning they would guess, those three worried people--who had not yet begun to be sorry--they would guess what she had done, and they would follow her. She saw the gnomes slouching back past the cars, upright this time; then she felt the enormous tug of the engine beginning the up-grade. It grew colder, and she was glad of the blankets which she had not liked to touch when she first lay down in her berth. Outside there was a faint whitening along the horizon; but it dimmed, and the black outlines of the mountains were lost, as if the retreating night hesitated and returned; then she saw that her window was touched here and there by slender javelins of rain. They came faster and faster, striking on and over one another; now they turned to drops; she stopped thinking, absorbed in watching a drop roll down the gla.s.s--pause, lurch forward, touch another drop; then a third; then zigzag rapidly down the pane. She found herself following the racing drops with fascinated eyes; she even speculated as to which would reach the bottom first; she had a sense of luxury in being able, in the fortress of her berth, to think of such things as racing raindrops. By the time it was light enough to distinguish the stretching fields again, it was raining hard.

Once in a while the train rushed past a farm-house, where the smoke from the chimney sagged in the gray air until it lay like a rope of mist along the roof. It was so light now that she could see the sodden carpet of yellow leaves under the maples, and she noticed that the crimson pennons of the sumacs drooped and dripped and clung together. The monotonous clatter of the wheels had fallen into a rhythm, which pounded out steadily and endlessly certain words which were the refrain of her purpose: _"Afterward, they will say I had the right to see him."_ Sometimes she reminded herself, meekly, that he no longer loved her. But there was no trace of resentment in her mind; how could he love her? Nor did the fact that his love had ceased make any difference in her purpose: "Afterward, they will say I had the right to see him."

When the day broke--a bleary, gray day, cold, and with sweeping showers of rain, she slept for a little while; but wakened with a start, for the train was still. Had they arrived? Had she lost a moment? Then she recognized the locality, and knew that there was an hour yet before she could be in the same city with him; and again the wheels began their clamorous a.s.sertion: "the right to see him; the right to see him."

Her plan was simple enough; she would go at once to Mrs. Richie's house and ask for the doctor. "I won't detain him very long; it will only take a little while to tell him," she said to herself.

It came over her with the shivering sense of danger escaped, that in another day she would have been too late, his mother would be at home! "She wouldn't let him see me," she thought, fearfully.

Afterward, after she had seen him, she would take a train to New York and cross the ferry.... "The water is pretty clean there,"

she thought.

She was dressed and ready to leave the train long before the station was reached. When the unkempt, haggard crowd swarmed off the cars and poured its jostling, hurrying length through the train-shed dim with puffing clouds of steam and clamorous with engines, Elizabeth was as fresh as if she had just come from her own house. She looked at herself in one of the big mirrors of the station dressing-room with entire satisfaction. "I am a little pretty even yet," she told herself, candidly. She wanted very much to be pretty now. When she went out to the street and found it raining in a steady, gray downpour, her heart sank,--oh, she must not get wet and draggled, now! Just for this hour she must be the old Elizabeth, the Elizabeth that he used to love, fresh, with starry eyes and a sh.e.l.l-like color in her cheeks!--and indeed the cold rain was making her face glow like a rose; but her eyes were solemn, not starry. As her cab jolted along the rainy streets, past the red-brick houses with their white shutters and scoured door-steps--houses were people were eating their breakfasts and reading their morning papers--Elizabeth, sitting on the frayed seat of the old hack, looked out of the window and thought how strange it all was! It would be just like this to-morrow morning, and she would not know it. "How queer!"

she said to herself. But she was not frightened. "I suppose at the last minute I shall be frightened," she reflected. Then, for a moment, she forgot David and tried to realize the unrealizable: "everything will be going on just the same, and _I_--" She could not realize it, but she did not doubt it. When the cab drew up at Mrs. Richie's door, she was careful to pay the man before she got out so that her hat should not be spoiled by the rain when David saw it.

"He isn't in, miss," the maid told her in answer to her ring.

Elizabeth gasped. "What! Not here? Where is he?"

"He went down to the beach, 'm, yesterday, to see to the closing- up of the cottage, 'm."

"When is he coming back?" she said, faintly; and the woman said, smiling, "To-morrow, 'm."

Elizabeth stood blankly on the door-step. To-morrow? There was not going to be any to-morrow! What should she do? Her plan had been so definite and detailed that this interruption of his absence--a possibility which had not entered into her calculations--threw her into absolute confusion. He was away from home! What could she do?

Entirely forgetting the rain, she turned away and walked aimlessly down the street. "They'll know I've come here, and they'll find me before I can see him!" she said to herself, in terror. "I must go somewhere and decide what to do." She went into the nearest hotel and took a room. "I must plan; if I wait until he comes back, they'll find me!" But it was an hour before her plan was made; when it was, she sprang up with the old, tumultuous joyousness. Why, of course! How stupid not to have thought of it at once! She was so entirely oblivious of everything but her own purpose that she would have gone out of the hotel on the moment, had not the clerk checked her with some murmur about "a little charge." Elizabeth blushed to her temples.

"Oh, I _beg_ your pardon!" she said. In her mortification she wished that the bill had been twice as large. But when she was out in the rain, hurrying to the station, again she forgot everything except her consuming purpose. In the waiting-room-- there were four hours before the train started--the panic thought took possession of her that she might miss him if she went down to the beach. "It's raining, and he may not stay over until to- morrow; he may be coming up this afternoon. But if I stay here they'll come and find me!" She could not face this last alternative. "They'll find me, and I won't be able to tell him; they'll take me home, and he will not have been told!" Sitting on the wooden settee in the ladies' waiting-room, she watched the clock until its gaunt white face blurred before her eyes. How the long hand crawled! Once, in a spasm of fright, she thought that it had stopped, and perhaps she had lost her train!

But at last the moment came; she started,--and as she drew nearer and nearer her goal, her whole body strained forward, as a man dying of thirst strains toward a spring gleaming in the desert distance; once she sighed with that antic.i.p.ation of relief that is a shiver. Again the monotonous clatter of the wheels beat out the words that all night long over the mountains had grooved themselves into her brain: "Afterward, they will say I had the right to see him." Love, which that one mad hour, nearly three years before, had numbed and paralyzed, was awakening. It was as if a slowly rising torrent, dammed by some immovable barrier, had at last reached the brim,--trembled, hesitated: then leaped in foaming overflow into its old course! She thought of all the things she was going to tell him (but oh, they were so many, so many; how could she say them all?). "'I never was so true as when I was false. I never loved you so much as when I hated you. I never longed for your arms as I did when--' O G.o.d, give me time to tell him that! Don't let them find me before I can tell him that. _Don't_ let him have gone back. G.o.d, please, _please_ let me find him at the cottage so I can tell him."

She was sitting on the plush cushion of the jolting, swaying old car, her hand on the back of the seat in front of her, every muscle tense with readiness to spring to her feet the moment the train stopped.

It was still raining when she got off at the little station which had sprung up out of the sand to accommodate a summer population.

It was deserted now, and the windows were boarded over. A pa.s.ser- by, under a dripping umbrella, lounged along the platform and stopped to look at her. "Come down to see cottages?" he inquired.

She said no; but could she get a carriage to take her over to Little Beach?