The Iron Woman Part 8

When their elders had left them, the "young people" drew a long breath and looked at one another. Nannie, almost in tears, tried to make some whispered explanation to Blair. but he turned his back on her. David, with a carefully blase air, said, "Bully dinner, old man." Blair gave him a look, and David subsided. When the guests began a chatter of relief, Blair still stood apart in burning silence. He wished he need never see or speak to any of them again. He hated them all; he hated--But he did not finish this, even in his thoughts.

When the others had recovered their spirits, and Nannie had begun to play on the piano, and somebody had suggested that they should all sing--"And then let's dance!" cried Elizabeth--Blair disappeared. Out in the hall, standing with clenched hands in the dim light, he said to himself he wished they would all clear out!

"I am sick of the whole darned business; I wish they'd clear out!"

It was there that Elizabeth found him. She had forgotten her displeasure at David, and was wildly happy; but she had missed Blair, and had come, in a dancing whirl of excitement, to find him. "What are you doing? Come right back to the parlor!"

Blair, turning, saw the smooth cheek, pink as the curve of a sh.e.l.l, the soft hair's bronze sheen, the amber darkness of the happy eyes. "Oh, Elizabeth!" he said, and actually sobbed.

"Blair! What _is_ the matter?"

"It was disgusting, the whole thing."

"What was disgusting?"

"That awful dinner--"

"Awful? You are perfectly crazy! It was lovely! What are you talking about?" In her dismayed defense of her first social function, she put her hands on his arm and shook it. "Why! It is the first dinner I ever went to in all my life; and look: six- b.u.t.ton gloves! What do you think of that? Uncle told Cherry-pie I could have whatever was proper, and I got these lovely gloves.

They are awfully fashionable!" She pulled one glove up, not only to get its utmost length, but also to cover that scar which her fierce little teeth had made so long ago. "Oh, Blair, it really was a perfectly _beautiful_ dinner," she said, earnestly.

She was so close to him that it seemed as if the color on her cheek burned against his, and he could smell the rose in her brown hair. "Oh, Elizabeth," he said, panting, "you are an angel!"

"It was simply lovely!" she declared. In her excitement she did not notice that new word. Blair trembled; he could not speak.

"Come right straight back!" Elizabeth said; "please! Everybody will have a perfectly splendid time, if you'll just come back. We want you to sing. Please!" The long, sweet corners of her eyes implored him.

"Elizabeth," Blair whispered, "I--I love you."

Elizabeth caught her breath; then the exquisite color streamed over her face. "Oh!" she said faintly, and swerved away from him.

Blair came a step nearer. They were both silent. Elizabeth put her hand over her lips, and stared at him with half-frightened eyes. Then Blair:

"Do you care, a little, Elizabeth?"

"We must go back to the parlor," she said, breathing quickly.

"Elizabeth, _do_ you?"

"Oh--Blair!"

"Please, Elizabeth," Blair said; and putting his arms round her very gently, he kissed her cheek.

Elizabeth looked at him speechlessly; then, with a lovely movement, came nestling against him. A minute later they drew apart; the girl's face was quivering with light and mystery, the young man's face was amazed. Then amazement changed to triumph, and triumph to power, and power to something else, something that made Elizabeth shrink and utter a little cry. In an instant he caught her violently to him and kissed her--kissed the scar on her upraised, fending arm, then her neck, her eyes, her mouth, holding her so that she cried out and struggled; and as he let her go, she burst out crying. "Oh--oh--_oh_--" she said; and darting from him, ran up-stairs, stumbling on the unaccustomed length of her skirt and catching at the banisters to keep from falling. But at the head of the stairs she paused; the tears had burned off in flashing excitement. She hesitated; it seemed as if she would turn and come back to him. But when he made a motion to bound up after her, she smiled and fled, and he heard the door of Nannie's room bang and the key turn in the lock.

Blair Maitland stood looking after her; in that one hot instant boyishness had been swept out of his face.

CHAPTER V

"They have all suddenly grown up!" Mrs. Richie said, disconsolately. She had left the "party" early, without waiting for her carriage, because Mrs. Maitland's impatient glances at her desk had been an unmistakable dismissal.

"I will walk home with you," Robert Ferguson said.

"Aren't you going to wait for Elizabeth?"

"David will bring her home."

"He'll be only too glad of the chance; how pretty she was to- night! You must have been very proud of her."

"Not in the least. Beauty isn't a thing to be proud of. Quite the contrary."

Mrs. Richie laughed: "You are hopeless, Mr. Ferguson! What is a girl for, if not to be sweet and pretty and charming? And Elizabeth is all three."

"I would rather have her good."

"But prettiness doesn't interfere with goodness! And Elizabeth is a dear, good child."

"I hope she is," he said

"You _know_ she is," she declared.

"Well, she has her good points," he admitted; and put his hand up to his lean cheek as if he still felt the flower-like touch of Elizabeth's lips.

"But they have all grown up," Mrs. Richie said. "Mr. Ferguson, David wants to smoke! What shall I do?"

"Good heavens! hasn't he smoked by this time?" said Robert Ferguson, horrified. "You'll ruin that boy yet!"

"Oh, when he was a little boy, there was one awful day, when--"

Mrs. Richie shuddered at the remembrance; "but now he wants to really smoke, you know."

"He's seventeen," Mr. Ferguson said, severely. "I should think you might cut the ap.r.o.n-strings by this time."

"You seem very anxious about ap.r.o.n-strings for David," she retorted with some spirit. "I notice you never show any anxiety about Blair."

At which her landlord laughed loudly: "I should say not! He's been brought up by a man--practically." Then he added with some generosity, "But I'm not sure that an ap.r.o.n-string or two might not have been a good thing for Blair."

Mrs. Richie accepted the amend good-naturedly. "My tall David is very nice, even if he does want to smoke. But I've lost my boy."

"He'll be a boy," Robert Ferguson said, "until he makes an a.s.s of himself by falling in love. Then, in one minute, he'll turn into a man. I--" he paused, and laughed: "I was twenty, just out of college, when I made an a.s.s of myself over a girl who was as vain as a peac.o.c.k. Well, she was beautiful; I admit that."

"You were very young," Mrs. Richie said gravely; the emotion behind his careless words was obvious. They walked along in silence for several minutes. Then he said, contemptuously:

"She threw me over. Good riddance, of course."

"If she was capable of treating you badly, of course it was well to have her do so--in time," she agreed; "but I suppose those things cut deep with a boy," she added gently. She had a maternal instinct to put out a comforting hand, and say "never mind." Poor man! because, when he was twenty a girl had jilted him, he was still, at over forty, defending a sensitive heart by an armor of surliness. "Won't you come in?" she said, when they reached her door; she smiled at him, with her pleasant leaf-brown eyes,--eyes which were less sad, he thought, than when she first came to Mercer. ("Getting over her husband's death, I suppose," he said to himself. "Well, she has looked mournful longer than most widows!")

He followed her into the house silently, and, sitting down on her little sofa, took a cigar out of his pocket. He began to bite off the end absently, then remembered to say, "May I smoke?"

The room was cool and full of the fragrance of white lilies. Mr.

Ferguson had planted a whole row of lilies against the southern wall of Mrs. Richie's garden. "Such things are attractive to tenants; I find it improves my property," he had explained to her, when she found him grubbing, unasked, in her back yard. He looked now, approvingly at the jug of lilies that had replaced the grate in the fireplace; but Mrs. Richie looked at the clock.